We Are Our Mother of Perpetual Help Parish

Pope Francis has died. 

And like so many of my Catholic brothers and sister around the world, I am heartbroken. 

Francis from the start was a surprise.  An unexpected choice for Pontiff.  A first pope from the Americas.  The first Jesuit Pope.  He was, in many ways, the Pope I had wished for all my life; and above all, I think he the right Pope for these times.  For even as the Church has shrunk in size, Francis was a Pope whose inspirational way reached well beyond the Catholic Church.   I do not think his charm was lost on many, Catholic or otherwise.

The charm of Pope Francis was the way of Pope Francis.  His infectious joy at meeting others, especially children, echoed the charm of his predecessor John Paul II.  While his light-hearted joy in his casual encounters could always bring a smile, it was his open heart, his beginning with love first of all that resounded like a symphony through the world.  To touch and embrace a child in a public audience is endearing, but I remember the wordless lesson of this Pope when he embraced without hesitation a man shockingly disfigured with the boils of neurofibromatosis with equal love and mercy and without hesitation.  In a moment, you were reminded that genuine love and compassion is what we are called to and the lesson needed no proclamation, just a reflection on how we are so often short of the mark.  While the world argued over the politics of refugees from the civil war in Syria, Francis insisted that 12 Muslim refugees return with him to Rome aboard the papal plane, speaking volumes to a world desperately trying to find the political reason not to get involved.  When a Catholic boy had lost his father who was an atheist asked Francis in an audience whether his Father was in heaven, Francis did not respond with doctrine or legalism.  He made a safe space for the child in pain and reminded him and all the room full of children that the starting point is not the disciplines of the faith but the goodness of a person’s heart and actions, reminding the boy and the world that God does not abandon any of his children when they are good.  In this time of Easter, Catholics are well familiar with and recently reminded of the moving ritual of washing the feet on Holy Thursday.  Pope Francis, true to form, did not choose to perform a symbolic act within the confines of a formal Mass, but reminded the Church and the world of the depth of this gift of service, washing the feet of refugees and migrants in Rome, not only Catholics but Christians of other rites and churches as well those of other faiths.        

To say Francis was the Pope I had wished for is to not to dismiss any others.  My not-so-young life has had only three papacies that this cradle Catholic has a conscious memory of.  Growing up in a Church infused with the fire of a Church renewed through Vatican II, I became deeply formed by the social justice emphasis of that fire.   My faith was and remains one that demands action, and my sense of the papacy is one that marks the actions of the Pope.  John Paul II was pope during those formative years; and, while for many years I was too young to take in his words, etched in my memory is when, after he was shot in an assassination attempt, I saw him go to his assassin, go into the small cramped cell, speak to him with forgiveness and mercy, sit with him while the world was stunned to silence.  My childhood was also filled with awareness of the conflicts of Latin America, places where heroic witness to the Gospel and charity was being made by the Church against terrible evils, and places where the Church did not always navigate skilfully the path between politics and justice.  Benedict as my second Pope gave me moments of similar beauty and similar challenge, such as when he met with victims of church abuse in Boston, listening to them, crying with them, praying with them.  More than anything, moments like that were what reminded me of what it means to live the Gospel.  As I grew older, I tried to live that example, putting myself into marginalized spaces, like the fights against poverty and AIDS.  I also began to study theology with some seriousness, and so I struggled with some parts of these papacies where the actions of mercy and compassion did not seem to connect with the words of leadership.  That is always the challenge of the papacy: to teach and to lead and to minister in ways that are not discordant with the others.  Francis may or may not have been more successful than any other Pope, but he began from a simple principle in his own words in his book for children: “Before creating anything, God loved.   That’s what God was doing: God was loving. God always loves. God is love.”  And I suspect we are heartbroken because whatever else one might say of his papacy, Francis made you believe that he started first and foremost with love.  And what a song that was to hear in a discordant world.

There are many moments of his papacy worthy of remembering, but in the midst of the global pandemic, I remembering watching this man, a man in particular danger from a worldwide respiratory disease, proceed out into an eerily empty St. Peter’s square in 2020 to give an Urbi et Orbi to a city in lockdown and a world in panic and fear.  Across the globe were all separated from one another, for safety and for fear.  And even within that eerie isolation, Pope Francis spoke to no immediate audience but at the same time to the audience of the whole world. 

"Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice it in people's gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost."

"In this storm, the façade of those stereotypes with which we camouflaged our egos, always worrying about our image, has fallen away, uncovering once more that (blessed) common belonging, of which we cannot be deprived: our belonging as brothers and sisters."

It was a most needed message for the moment and indeed perhaps the most repeated message throughout his papacy, albeit in different words or different contexts.  At our core, our faith starts from remembering one another first and foremost as brothers and sisters.  We are not divided…we are family, first.   

The immediate context of those words was the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but I think they apply well beyond that moment in time.  So much of the world, so much of our society and communities and relationships are covered with a thick darkness.  A darkness which divides us.  A darkness which prevents us from seeing one another.  We see politics.  We see disagreement.  We see the foreigner, the alien, not our family.  We see danger not opportunity.  We see our imperfections instead of our beauty.  We see the images of others but not a person.  We seek to guard and protect ourselves.  We see what separates us.  We forget that our call is to the Gospel, and it is not a call to be comfortable.. Again and again, Francis reminded us that we cannot live in that darkness, in that division.  Our stereotypes, our camouflage, our images….Francis always insisted that they must fall away.  Revealing one another truly as brothers and sisters. 

Francis has died.  Poetically and powerfully, he left us not in the desolation of Good Friday, the day of dark cruelty, horrifying suffering, the heartbreaking grief of death.  As we mourn his loss, one could be forgiven for having our moods feel the darkness and destruction of Good Friday as the circumstances of the world are often too dark to bear.  But Francis himself rose, despite his struggling health, on Easter Sunday and proclaimed the joy of our faith and coupled that joy with a reminder of prayers and hopes and solidarity with our brothers and sisters around the world, beset by war and grief and poverty and injustice.  What a grace to lead his Church through our most holy celebration one last time, and to remind us, as the liturgical year turns into the Easter season, that death is not the end in our faith.  It has no sting, no power, no permanence against the power of God and His love. But our faith dies when we forget one another, as brothers and sisters.  We celebrate our joy and we renew ourselves in our calling, not to a particular side, not to an opinion or judgment or a formulation but to justice and to one another in love and solidarity. 

And in doing so he has given us one final lesson: this is not the end.  We are an Easter people; we are community which believes is the power and the promise of the Resurrection.  Francis’s life has ended but the power and resonance and inspiration of his papacy have not.  The song he sung in life echoes through the Church…this Church today…our Church.  It echoes through how we live our faith and the Gospel in the days to come.  Francis’ papacy, like the Gospel which inspired it, does not end here.  We mourn, to be sure; but at this moment when we most keenly remember the Easter promise of the Resurrection, Francis has given the Church back to us to rise in joyful assurance and inspired renewal to go forth and remember and live the faith he shepherded.

Our faith is not confined to our weekly Mass, nor to one parish or place, nor to one gifted pastor and Pope.  Francis inspired because he was a humble reminder that our Faith is not simply collected as one place or time or ritual.  Our faith, our Church is built on the whole of moments and actions of our lives, actions large and small, flaws and mistakes both seen and unseen.  If we grieve and mourn for the loss of Francis, we must be genuine in those expressions by following that example he gave and by living that teaching he spoke to our hearts, in word and in deed.  If we recognize a darkness about the world, it is not for a Pope alone to be one who proclaims light in that darkness; it is for all of us to bring our light to a dark world.  If we were inspired by the humility of his papacy, we must remember that we are the body of Christ, and so the Church is what we are; it lives and breathes and is seen by how we live as the Church.   Francis demonstrated how our faith embraces the whole of the world, with hearts that start from compassion, a pastoral love, and humble generosity.  If we are to be a Church worthy of the Gospel, then that is what we must be as the Body of Christ in honour of Pope Francis: a people with hearts and arms open to our brothers and sisters, a people who start from compassion and love for one another.    It did not start with Francis.  It will not end with Francis.  It began and continues today insofar as we continue it, as Christians…as the Church.  Each day.  Each week.  Each year of our short lives.

Or phrased another way, as another gifted pastor has reminded me at the end of so many Masses….

We sing our song.  We go in peace to love and to serve the Lord.

Written by Christopher Rennie