28 March 2013
25 March 2013
Homily for a Mass to Pray for Pope Francis
If I were to seek my own glory that would be no glory at all
21 March 2013 – Thursday of the Fifth Week in Lent
Our new Holy Father has tagged
himself with some luminous markers in his first week in office. His baptismal
patron is St George, the soldier-saint chosen as the patron of the Crusades
against Islam’s occupancy of the Holy Places; yet for his pontifical name he
chose St Francis, who went to speak of the love of Christ to Sultan Malik
al-Kamil in Egypt, so as to bring the Crusades to a peaceful end.
Quite apparently chosen by the
Conclave to lead the Church in both institutional and spiritual renewal (and to
those who were expecting a Vatican placeman this is reminiscent of the
emergence of John XXIII from the midst of the Pian Church), the Jesuit might
have been expected to look to the patronage of Ignatius of Loyola for reform or
Aloysius Gonzaga for purity of life and purpose – and we have known neither a
Pope Ignatius nor a Pope Louis before. Instead he lighted upon Francis, “the
richest of poor men”, inspired by a fellow Cardinal, we are told, not to forget
the poor who are the Church in his native Latin America.
Immediately, however, clever
commentators thought he must have more in mind the great Jesuit missionary of
Japan, St Francis Xavier, on whose evangelical sanctity and evangelistic
labours the Catholic Church in the Far East was built, just at the time a
Church apprehensive of true renewal was losing its northern flocks to the
Reformation in the West. There could also have been the less than worthy Pope
Alexander VI’s grandson, St Francis Borgia, who gave up his dukedom to enter
the Society of Jesus, starting out as a cook and waiter at table, until he
became a second founder of the Jesuits, consolidating its novitiates and
setting up what was to become the Gregorian University. Another remarkable
Francis was not a Jesuit, but an Oratorian, the beloved Francis de Sales, the
beauty of whose preaching of the love of God, simplicity of life and purity of
discipleship won many who had been excited into the ferment of Calvin’s Reform back
to the unity of the Church. Although the city of Geneva of which he was bishop
was lost to him, his proclamation and living of the gospel was truly the new
evangelisation of its day. But all of these saints are named after St Francis
of Assisi and modelled themselves on him. Likewise it is to the humble,
innocent Poverello whom the Lord commanded to rebuild his Church - the person
in whom perhaps more than anyone else Jesus Christ has come again - that our
new Holy Father has turned for a pattern in living, inspiration in endeavour
and protection in prayer. We have already heard from him that the greatest
power in the Church is service; that the Church is a Church of the poor; and
that its duty is to protect those whom worldly society rejects and resents, along
with the creation God has given to sustain us all alike.
Another one of those luminous
markers was the acceptance of a ring once belonging to Pope Paul VI as his own
Fisherman’s Ring. After many years, in which the painstaking faithfulness and
leadership during an ear of the greatest social changes of such a beautiful and
holy soul as Pope Paul have been questioned and even despised, it is a blessing
to the Church that Pope Francis has signified the hermeneutic of continuity
between his new pontificate and that of the wise, bold popes of the great
Second Vatican Council. So the great tradition goes on and the Church brings
riches from its treasury both old and new.
Yet another marker is his
insistence that he is from the first successor to Peter not with grand titles
such as Supreme Pontiff or Universal Pastor but as bishop of the local Church
of Rome. Thus he has honoured the remarkable Petrine ministry and teaching
office of his predecessor not by reference to him as “the Pope Emeritus”, but
as “our retired bishop”. In this he echoes Pope Benedict’s call as successor of
the apostle Peter, that Britain heard in Westminster Abbey, to give a
convincing account of the hope that lies within us, not by a facile
accommodation to the spirit of the age but an ever deeper unity in the
apostolic faith in Jesus Christ truly risen from the dead. It is worth noting
here that it was the witness to Jesus’ resurrection and the purity of teaching
conserved by the Church at Rome, in direct continuity from the apostles Peter
and Paul, that caused it to be seen by all, in the words of St Ignatius of
Antioch, as “the church that presides in love”. Its prime role in speaking for
the whole Church and resolving the authenticity of its teaching was thus
respected for a millennium in both East and West. In our own day, Pope Francis
is well aware that the Eastern Churches’ diaspora is now everywhere in the West;
just as the Latin West is diffused throughout the world of the Christian East
too. His apparent expectation that the local Church of Rome will be trusting
the Churches locally to respond to the needs of humanity for the gospel by the
lights of where and who they are, whether that is Rome or Istanbul, Buenos
Aires or Lusaka, Kiev or Beijing, seems
to take into account the realities of how the People of God belong in the
communion of the Body of Christ, the need for the Churches to act and live in
collegial concert, and the urgency of mutual union among Christians for the
sake of realising the blessings in the Sermon on the Mount, “on earth as it is
in heaven”. Thanks to the openness of his immediate predecessor to the Orthodox
Church, which enabled some notable progress in the joint Orthodox-Catholic
theological dialogue, the ground has been prepared for a Patriarch of
Constantinople to witness for the first time the inauguration of the local
bishop of the Church which presides in love. And the real power-wielder in
Orthodoxy, the confident and globally expanding but also “local” Russian
Orthodox Church, was significantly represented in Metropolitan Hilarion of
Volokolamsk, a likely successor to Patriarch Kirill someday, who studied for
his doctorate here in the West in England. The Moscow Patriarchate has long
advocated an alliance from Latin West and Russian East in concert across Europe,
for recalling it to the faith that once civilised it by bringing it to Christ. In
rooting the Roman bishop’s wider ministry, authority and witness in the faith,
needs and experience of the City and culture where he is set – serving as its
own apostle of the gospel, rather than primarily ruler of the global church -
Pope Francis strikes a chord with Orthodox Churches that have a strong sense of
their local purpose, and challenges those which are tempted to rival the Roman
curia for binding communion to central control, rather than a presidency in
love. Perhaps Pope Francis will prove to be as radical for Christian Unity as
his predecessor was in ending the existential papacy, so that the primacy of
episcopal office might succeed him.
Perhaps the Pope’s most luminous
marker is to share the concerns of the poor. Of course it is true to say that
the poor are not necessarily poor because of the rich and the rich are not
necessarily rich because of their abuse of the poor. The causes are as complex
as the solutions are unpalatable to those with the power to deliver them. But
poverty is not just economic and social. It is spiritual too. The Holy Father
seems to be referring to another great saint of his Church of Rome, the 3rd
century deacon, St Lawrence. When commanded by the prefect of Rome to hand over
the wealth of the Church, Lawrence distributed it to the poor and told him that
the poor, the disabled, the blind and the suffering were the true treasures of
the Church. Sealing his own death sentence, he said that in them “the Church is
truly rich, far richer than your emperor”.
All these markers point to a new course
to the Church’s life for sure. In every image that Pope Francis has conjured
up, and every holy person whose name he seems to have invoked, he puts us in
mind of the Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: “If I were to seek my own glory
that would be no glory at all.” Instead, the Jesuit like the Master seeks “the
greater glory of God”; and, according to his own motto, is deeply aware that
the Master has chosen him not because he has some gifts or characteristics that
the Lord could now find useful, but miserando atque eligendo purely out of having mercy upon him.
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