Pope Francis

It’s hard to believe that Pope Francis died. We had been talking about the possibility of his passing for some time now, but I don’t think anyone thought it would happen just yet. Still, as was his style, he surprised us all.

His words and gestures were never easy for us to anticipate. After all, the Holy Spirit (blowing where He wills) animated Francis, giving him to understand that God’s method will always surprise the man whose salvation depends on the upsetting of his plans.

At the very least, this seems to have been the way Pope Francis interpreted the Gospels. Our Lord’s unexpected affection for the marginalized, for example, apparently struck Francis deeply precisely because it was so surprising. So if Pope Francis did challenge us, perhaps it was because surprises, generally speaking, are challenging.

It belongs to the nature of a surprise to say, “You didn’t expect this, but it’s happening!” And that’s the challenge. But Pope Francis wanted us not to reject the surprise for being unexpected. Instead, he wanted us to see that a surprise proposes a question from God, namely, “Will you believe in the goodness of the place to which this surprise can lead you?”

What’s more, he extended this even to unwanted circumstances, like those we cause by our sins, which we resent because we can’t control them with our own strength. What do we do then? Do we give up on life? Or do we beg God for the grace to permit the question to be posed to us, even in our suffering, “Will you believe in the goodness of the place to which this can lead you?”

Pope Francis understood life as an adventure to be lived, even as it shares with all adventures many pains and dangers. This is how he challenged our tendency to reduce life to a problem to be solved, disbelieving its goodness and destiny. It would have been easier to accommodate us, but he didn’t, because experience had taught him that as soon as man thinks of life as a problem, he buys the devil’s lie that death is a solution. Just think about what it means today when someone says to someone who is suffering, “You can always go to Switzerland.”

Pope Francis called this kind of false compassion the very opposite of accompaniment. We think, he would say, that the purpose of accompaniment is to solve a person’s problem, but that’s not its purpose. The purpose of accompaniment is to make it possible for a person to live with hope, to believe in the goodness of the place to which suffering can lead us. In The Lord of the Rings, for example, Frodo says, “It’s a pity that Bilbo didn’t kill Gollum when he had the chance,” but Gandalf corrected him, saying, “It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand.” That companionship with Gollum - both unexpected and unwanted - would decide the fate of the Fellowship.

Here’s another example. I know a man who suffered severe brain damage from a car accident. His wife survived the accident too, but, shortly after, she left her husband and gave him to live with caretakers who would come to love him deeply. Pope Francis would have our heart break more for the wife who thinks of her husband as a problem to be solved than for the man who, although he is suffering terribly, is accompanied by love and can smile.

This is all, I think, connected to the Pope’s referring to those “on the peripheries.” Of course we prefer to imagine he was speaking only of the poor in Africa, abused women, and the excluded, but what would be surprising about that? What might surprise us, however, would be if he were speaking also of us: the comfortable, the presumptuous, the rich.

He did show a preference for the materially poor, but primarily because he saw them as the protagonists of history, teaching us how to be Christian by teaching us how to pray, since to pray is to beg. But this implied that we, the comfortably wealthy, live on the peripheries in a different way - we live on the peripheries of reality, alienated from our own humanity, enacting policies that degrade and marginalize others. Proof of this is how easily we preferred to sentimentalize Pope Francis’ words and convince ourselves that he was always talking about “them.”

Some may remain frustrated by Pope Francis, convinced that he had no use for us and was always chastising us, but God forbid; that’s how the Pharisees thought of Jesus. In truth, Pope Francis was only ever trying to help us to look at things with Christ, especially at our own poverty.

I’m thinking of Simon the Pharisee who criticized Christ for receiving the penitent woman. “If he only knew what kind of woman this is...” But Christ invited Simon to look at the woman with Him, to see her as He sees her. She knew the truth of her humanity: she was a sinner, begging for salvation. But on that occasion, it seemed to Simon that Our Lord was turning his back on him, when He was really inviting him into a kind of posture that foreshadowed the liturgical posture of praying ad orientum, of facing the same direction as Jesus, so as to look at life with Him.

This is what I think Pope Francis was doing. He wasn’t turning his back on us. It may have felt like that sometimes, because we want leaders to be problem-solvers, but he was doing something different: he was inviting us constantly to seek the kind of companionship with others that allows Christ to become present, Who then enables us to look at things with Him, to see clearly the goodness of life and the goodness of the destination, even while still suffering.

Nor did Pope Francis create problems, per se. Sufficient for the day are its own evils, all of which come from the devil and his perversion of God’s creation. He may have been accused by some of casting out demons by demons, but the pope was, rather, as he said in that famous 2013 interview, “a sinner,” like us, adding, “one who is looked upon by the Lord; the Lord has looked upon me with mercy and chosen me.”

Pope Francis understood that he and we are always both Simon the Pharisee and the penitent woman. As a sinner, we are marginalized from our own humanity, and yet, as penitents, we are restored to life again, capable of announcing the Resurrection. Pope Francis, like us, was in constant need of correction from Our Lord, but he learned to beg for it, and this is what allowed him to remain in the gaze of Our Lord, constantly being looked upon by the Lord with mercy.

And this is why he chose the name, Francis. It wasn’t from sentimental regard for the materially poor. It was, rather, because Saint Francis would sign his letters, “Francesco, il penitente,” Francis, the penitent. Other times, “Francesco, il peccatore,” Francis, the sinner.

Both Saint Francis and Pope Francis were something much greater than problem-solvers. They were Christians. They were sent from God, not to solve our problems, nor to make excuses for their own, but to model for us a companionship in the Church through which Christ becomes present in our midst, saving us from fear and emboldening us to return to the Jerusalem of our lives, to endure with hope this valley of tears, confident in the goodness of our destiny.

Mainstream media has understood nothing of Pope Francis. They could not see him, looking only through the lenses of political ideologies and economic agendas. And they are all liars. To them, Pope Francis was a potential pawn, an imagined ally. In truth, it was only to those who had ears to hear that Pope Francis was speaking. For us, this means accepting that he was speaking not to “them,” but to us. Only the man who realizes that Christ was sent by God for him becomes a Christian. All the others remain on the peripheries of salvation. +