Pope Francis - “The world’s parish priest”
“Simplicity is the New Chic!”
14th Sunday in Ordinary Time July 7,
2013
Isaiah 66:10-14 Galatians 6:14-18 Luke 10:1-9
Alleluia,
alleluia.
A reading
from the holy Gospel according to Luke
Glory to
you, Lord.
“Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this
household.’ If a peace-loving person lives there, your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink
what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move about
from one house to another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat
what is set before you, cure the sick in it and say to the people there, ‘The Kingdom
of God has come near you.’”
The
Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord
Jesus Christ.
----------------
Introduction
Ramadan - the Muslims’ Lent
Ramadan is the 9th month of the Islamic calendar, and it is the month in
which Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to
the prophet Mohamed in year 610 A. D. This year Ramadan begins at sundown this
coming Tuesday, the 9th of July. During Ramadan Muslims fast from dawn to sunset. Ramadan is the Muslims’ Lent.
Sent on mission
Jesus
chose twelve disciples and sent them forth on a mission “to drive out all
demons and to cure diseases.”(Lk. 9:1) Later on He chose another seventy-two men
and sent them also on a mission “to heal the sick in that town, and say to the
people there, `The Kingdom of God has come near you.’” (Lk. 10:1,9) After his
resurrection, Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples, wished them peace, showed
them his hands and side, and then said to them, “Peace be with you. As the
Father has sent me, so I send you.”(Jn. 20:21) We are a people sent on mission.
A missionary who baptized hundreds of thousands
Vatican II gave rise to a crisis in the old
concept of mission. It gave mission a new emphasis and direction. Mission now is
not about something we do to people: converting and baptizing them.
Mission now is something we do for people: when Jesus chose the twelve
disciples, He sent them forth to “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the
lepers and drive out demons.” (Mt. 10:8)
The old concept of mission as converting
and baptizing people was embodied in the legendary missionary model - St.
Francis Xavier. Born in Spain in 1506 he became a Jesuit priest, and eventually
became the greatest of all Christian
missionaries, with the possible
exception of St. Paul. He could count hundreds of thousands of people whom he
converted and baptized. He died in 1552,
and his body was buried in Goa, India, where it lies to this very day. His
right arm, however, which baptized so many thousands of converts, is preserved
in a glass reliquary in the Jesuit church of the Gesù in Rome for all to see!
A missionary who baptized no one
Compare
that legendary missionary St. Francis Xavier (who baptized everyone) with that
great missionary Mother Theresa of Calcutta (who baptized no one). She did nothing to the people she found dying in
the streets of Calcutta: she didn’t convert and baptize them. But she did
everything for them: she gathered them up and carried them to her
hospice for the dying, where she and her sisters bathed and fed them. Then
without pouring one drop of baptismal water over their heads, Mother Theresa
and her sisters kissed them and sent those poor souls off to heaven, as they
believed at long last that they were human beings worth loving. That indeed is mission
marvelously accomplished!
A mission of humility
When
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a
Jesuit, was elected pope on 13 March 2013, following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on the last
day of February, he did what no pope
has ever dared to do: he chose the name of Francis. And strange to say, he had
in mind not the legendary missionary St. Francis Xavier (a fellow Jesuit) but
the legendary St. Francis of Assisi.
Though
Pope Francis, a Jesuit, didn’t have in mind the legendary Jesuit missionary St.
Francis Xavier when he chose the name, he is indeed a man on mission. And it is
not a mission `to convert and baptize.’ He’s on a mission of humility. Jesuits
are well-known for the admirable qualities of brilliance, zeal, `thinking
outside the box’ and so on. Humility, however, does not finish near the top for
Jesuits, who have a strong sense of their own aptitudes. Ironically, this first
Jesuit pope exudes a sense of humility. In his debut on the world stage on the
evening of March 13, Francis humbly asked the crowds in St. Peter’s Square to
give him a blessing, and he bowed to receive it. In ways large and small
Francis has rejected the many ways by which popes separate themselves from the
people. He makes his own telephone calls, saying “It’s Jorge.” In fact, he
telephoned back to Buenos Aires to cancel his newspaper subscription, and to
make arrangement with his cobbler for a new pair of shoes. On Easter Sunday in
St. Peter’s Square he stopped the `pope mobile’ in order to cradle and kiss a
paralytic boy passed to him from the crowd.
A mission of service
And
Francis is also on a mission of service. One evening the new pope felt sorry
for the poor Swiss Guard who stood at attention every night until dawn at the
door of his simple and very `unpapal' apartment in the Casa Santa Marta. So Francis went and
got the poor man a chair, and told him: “At
least sit down and rest." The guard rolled his eyes and answered: “Santo
Padre, forgive me, but I may not sit down! The regulations don’t allow
that." Francis smiled, "Oh, really? Well, I'm the pope and I tell you
to sit down." Then Francis went back to his apartment, and minutes later
returned to the Swiss Guard who was still obediently seated in the chair. Francis
was carrying a `panino con marmallata’ (a little Italian bread roll spread with
jam) which the pope had prepared for the hungry guard. Before the guard could
say anything, the Holy Father, exhibiting his Argentinean smile, wished the
Swiss Guard "Buon appetito."
A mission of accessibility
Francis
is also on a mission of accessibility. He went to the small church of St. Anne
in the Vatican to say Mass on Sunday, March 17. Roughly 400 personnel who live
on Vatican grounds call St. Anne their parish church. After Mass, Francis stood
outside the church and greeted people as they left, patting kids on the head
and kissing them, shaking hands and exchanging hugs, with a quick word and a
smile for everybody. It’s a scene that plays out every Sunday in Catholic
parishes across the world, but one rarely sees a pope doing it. Italian
newspapers immediately dubbed Francis “the world’s parish priest.”
A mission of simplicity
He’s
also on a mission of simplicity. Before his election Cardinal Gorge Bergoglio,
a prince of the Church, took the subway to work rather than using a car and driver. He lived in a
modest apartment rather than the opulent archbishop’s mansion. (His Buenos
Aires quarters were so Spartan that he had to leave the oven on during the
winter to stay warm, because management
had turned off the heat.). Francis has carried that approach into the papacy.
His simplicity also shines in his reliance on gestures rather than elaborate
pronouncements to get his point across. Instead of preaching about the
priesthood as service on Holy Thursday in his cathedral church of St. John
Lateran in Rome, he visited the Casa del
Marmo youth prison in northwest Rome and washed the feet of 12 inmates,
including two young women and two Muslims.
Conclusion
Simplicity is the new chic!
In
late April, a veteran Italian cardinal entered a restaurant in the Trastevere
section of Rome, frequented by Vatican personnel who work in the nearby Piazza
San Calisto. Well over 80, the cardinal always looked like an ecclesiastical heavyweight,
wearing a crimson-trimmed cassock and sporting the insignia of his office. On
this day, however, he was dressed in modest black clothing without the usual
refinements. Asked about his look, the cardinal replied, “Under Pope Francis
simplicity is the new chic!”
