Here, the Pope said, "Mary shows us the way: she set out to visit her elderly kinswoman, to stay with her, to help her, of course, but also and above all to learn from her – an elderly person – a wisdom of life."
Turning to the first reading, the Holy Father reflected on the commandment to "Honour your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you." (Ex. 20:12).
"A people has no future without such an encounter between generations," he said, "without children being able to accept with gratitude the witness of life from the hands of their parents."
This gratitude on the part of children to those who "gave you life is also gratitude for our heavenly Father."
Acknowledging how young people, "for complex historical and cultural reasons," at times feel the need to break free "from the legacy of the older generation" in a "kind of adolescent rebellion," the Pope called for "a new and fruitful intergenerational equilibrium" to be restored. Otherwise, the result is "a serious impoverishment for everyone," and a society in which prevails a "false freedom, which almost always becomes a form of authoritarianism."
Pope Francis turned his reflection to the letter of Paul to Timothy, stressing that "Jesus did not abolish the law of the family and the passing of generations, but brought it to fulfillment." Rather, he "formed a new family, in which bonds of kinship are less important than our relationship with him and our doing the will of God the Father."
At the same time, it is "the love of Jesus and the Father" which "completes and fulfills" the love and respect for the rest of the family," renewing "family relationships with the lymph of the Gospel and of the Holy Spirit."