Anyone who has been following my blog [along with family and
friends] know that I have had serious issues with Pope Francis since Holy Week. I have talked about it on my blog HERE and
HERE, and I have left comments on the National Catholic Register and the Crescat
blog and other Patheos Catholic blogs all year. Even NBC News took note of my issues with Pope Francis.
I have had two major problems with Pope Francis…1) his style
and 2) my inability to love him.
I like
people who “play by the rules”, the rules I know. I like my t’s crossed and my I’s dotted. That is my comfort zone. Pope Francis from the beginning took me
out of my comfort zone by washing Muslim women’s feet during Holy Week and that
made me unable to trust him and because I was unable to trust him, I couldn’t
love him. He wasn't following the rules that *I* knew and loved and trusted.
My distrust of him grew with each interview and his “Who am
I to judge?” comment because I felt my distrust was proven at those
moments. Pope Francis was a liberal and to
me that was as good as the Pharissees in the Bible.
I had accepted him as Pope, but I didn’t
like, trust or love him. I put him in
the “bad pope” category and turned my eyes to whoever the next pope would be.
I was DONE with him.
Or so I thought.
Today I watched EWTN’s coverage of the close of the Year of
Faith Papal Mass in St. Peter’s Square.
In all honesty I wasn’t expecting much because Pope Francis had never
before impressed me and I had already chalked him off- as the saying goes.
Then I listened to his homily and he reached me with the
words of the thief on the cross…
“Today’s solemnity of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, the crowning of the liturgical year,
also marks the conclusion of the Year of Faith opened by Pope Benedict XVI, to
whom our thoughts now turn with affection and gratitude. By this providential
initiative, he gave us an opportunity to rediscover the beauty of the journey
of faith begun on the day of our Baptism, which made us children of God and
brothers and sisters in the Church. A journey which has as its ultimate end our
full encounter with God, and throughout which the Holy Spirit purifies us,
lifts us up and sanctifies us, so that we may enter into the happiness for
which our hearts long.
I offer a cordial greeting to the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the
Eastern Catholic Churches present. The exchange of peace which I will share
with them is above all a sign of the appreciation of the Bishop of Rome for
these communities which have confessed the name of Christ with exemplary
faithfulness, often at a high price. With this gesture, through them, I would
like to reach all those Christians living in the Holy Land, in Syria and in the
entire East, and obtain for them the gift of peace and concord.
The Scripture readings proclaimed to us have as their common theme the
centrality of Christ. Christ as the centre of creation, the centre of his
people and the centre of history. 1. The apostle Paul, in the second reading,
taken from the letter to the Colossians, offers us a profound vision of the
centrality of Jesus. He presents Christ to us as the first-born of all
creation: in him, through him and for him all things were created. He is the
centre of all things, he is the beginning. God has given him the fullness, the
totality, so that in him all things might be reconciled (cf. Col 1:12-20).
This image enables to see that Jesus is the centre of creation; and so the
attitude demanded of us as true believers is that of recognizing and accepting
in our lives the centrality of Jesus Christ, in our thoughts, in our words and
in our works. When this centre is lost, when it is replaced by something else,
only harm can result for everything around us and for ourselves. 2. Besides
being the centre of creation, Christ is the centre of the people of God. We see
this in the first reading which describes the time when the tribes of Israel
came to look for David and anointed him king of Israel before the Lord (cf. 2
Sam 5:1-3). In searching for an ideal king, the people were seeking God
himself: a God who would be close to them, who would accompany them on their
journey, who would be a brother to them.
Christ, the descendant of King David, is the “brother” around whom God’s people
come together. It is he who cares for his people, for all of us, even at the
price of his life. In him we are all one; united with him, we share a single
journey, a single destiny. 3. Finally, Christ is the centre of the history of
the human race and of every man and woman. To him we can bring the joys and the
hopes, the sorrows and troubles which are part of our lives. When Jesus is the
centre, light shines even amid the darkest times of our lives; he gives us
hope, as he does to the good thief in today’s Gospel.
While all the others treat Jesus with disdain – “If you are the Christ, the
Messiah King, save yourself by coming down from the cross!” – the thief who
went astray in his life but now repents, clinging to the crucified Jesus, begs
him: “Remember me, when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42). And Jesus
promises him: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (v. 43). Jesus speaks
only a word of forgiveness, not of condemnation; whenever anyone finds the
courage to ask for this forgiveness, the Lord does not let such a petition go
unheard. Jesus’ promise to the good thief gives us great hope: it tells us that
God’s grace is always greater than the prayer which sought it. The Lord always
grants more than what he has been asked: you ask him to remember you, and he
brings you into his Kingdom!
Let us ask the Lord to remember us, in the certainty that by his mercy we will
be able to share his glory in paradise. Amen!”
Before the end of the homily I was
in tears. I loved the scriptures he
discussed and the humility of a sinner asking Jesus to remember him. That was me.
I always want forgiveness and to be remembered by my Lord. What Catholic wants to be forgotten by
Christ? As if!
Here I was wanting Jesus to ‘remember ME’, when I was doing my best to ignore and forget my Pope because I hadn’t
found a way to understand and love him.
MY faults, not his. How could I
ask to be remembered and forgiven when I was deliberately working to forget
Pope Francis was my pope?
I was the guilty thief on the cross
being punished for my sin and I knew it.
Seeing Pope Francis holding the
bones of our first Pope and praying recalled all the scriptures I knew of Saint
Peter. Jesus calling Simon son of John
as a disciple, Jesus renaming Simon son of John to ‘Rock’/Peter (John 1:42),
Peter being quick to act harshly lopping off a man’s ear (John 18:10) to defend
his Lord, Peter being given the keys (Matt.16:18) when Jesus tells him that He
will build His Church on Peter our first Pope and so many more verses flooded my
mind. Now here was our first Pope, Saint
Peter being held in the hands of our current Pope Francis.
That struck me – profoundly.
Saint Peter was not perfect. His ways were not always the Lord’s ways…as
scripture shows us. But in the end,
Peter did all Christ called him to do. He
was a sinner who became a Saint. He was
a fisherman who became a fisher of men.
A simple man who was called to be pope.
Saint Peter taught me to love Pope
Francis today.
I may not always
understand Pope Francis’ ways of doing things, any more than some in Saint Peter’s
day would have understood his ways, but the one thing I do know is that just as
Simon son of John, Saint Peter was chosen by Christ to be the first pope of
Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, so was Pope Francis chosen to be our current
Pope. And for that, I love him.
In Christ,
Julie @ Connecticut Catholic Corner
Link: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/15/20886834-not-everyone-loves-pope-francis-conservative-catholics-voice-concern-over-revolutionary-message?lite
