Nuala O’LoanPope Francis challenges each one of us to cast away our fear, writes Nuala O’Loan
Francis has challenged us mightily since the day of his appointment. Even before he blessed the people, he asked for their prayers: “I want to ask you a favour. Before the bishop blesses the people I ask that you would pray to the Lord to bless me.”
That has been an enduring theme of his papacy. It was what he said to me the day I met him in a busy public audience in Rome. My impression that day was of a big, joyful, tired, energetic, older man. For over an hour he had run up and down the steps and around the square meeting people, leaving those who were to be formally introduced standing watching in the glorious December sunshine. Quite the right thing to do, but so different from the past.
That difference has been sustained. He has been working across many fronts: on matters of Vatican integrity and financial probity, on reform of the curia, on real action to address the child abuse problem, including women and survivors of clerical sexual abuse on the commission he established to deal with the issue, and engaging women more in the business of the Church.
Of course, it is slow work. The Holy See is a mighty organisation, with long established practices, and it was never going to be easy to make a real difference.
Workrate
As I look at his work rate, at the speeches, the audiences, the complexity of the change, the much greater openness – even to the extent of revealing monies which have been identified, which were hitherto unknown, I see a man who is driving himself to use every possible moment in his service of the Lord.
His priorities are very different too. He is not afraid of controversy, and has said some things which caused a stir, in part because he generally talks the language of ordinary people. His spending of the money from gifts received, to bring real help to the homeless by the provision of showers and haircuts, even when he must have known that it would attract more homeless people to St Peter’s Square, and hence lead to criticism of him, seems very typical of the man.
His response when asked what to do with a homeless man who lived and died in the square was to bring his body in to the Vatican and bury him there, honoured in death as he had probably not been in life.
He challenges each one of us. Speaking in Buenos Aires in 2013 he said “I sometimes ask people do you give alms? They say to me ‘Yes Father’. And when you give the alms do you look the person you are giving them to in the eye? ‘Oh I don’t know, I don’t really notice.’ Then, you have not really encountered him. You tossed the alms and walked off. When you give alms, do you touch the person’s hand or throw the coin? ‘No, I throw the coin.’ So you did not touch him and if you did not touch him you don’t meet him.”
As Catholics we are called to see the face of Christ in all those whom we meet. It can be very difficult.
I remember when I lived in Africa there were people with leprosy outside the market where I shopped on Saturdays. Missing fingers, toes, noses and ears; they were disfigured, dirty, dusty as they sat there, begging to stay alive. I was happy to give them money, but I feared to touch them lest I take leprosy home to my two-year-old and my new baby.
One day one of the missionaries said to me that I should touch them, that if I washed my hands well, there was no risk. He had been doing it for 30 years. He loved them, visiting them in their homes, bringing them Holy Communion, planting seeds for them and doing many other things. Yet I was afraid; I feared too much to touch. Francis is asking us to cast away the fear, to do what is right.
We all know that how we are dealt with by all those whom we encounter can make such a difference to our day. We too can make a huge impact without knowing it even by simple acts of kindness, by saying hello to people, by stopping for a little chat with someone who is lonely and in so doing we will be blessed too.
Spirituality
As Francis says: “When we live out a spirituality of drawing nearer to others and seeking their welfare, our hearts are opened wide to the Lord’s greatest and most beautiful gifts. Whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God.”
He talks, too, of being a mission – something I am still trying to comprehend: “My mission of being in the heart of the people is not just a part of my life or a badge I can take off; it is not an ‘extra’ or just another moment in life. Instead, it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self. I am a mission on this Earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world. We have to regard ourselves as sealed, even branded, by this mission of bringing light, blessing, enlivening, raising up, healing and freeing.”
He tells us there must be no disjoint between our work and our personal lives.
“But once we separate our work from our private lives, everything turns grey and we will always be seeking recognition or asserting our needs.”
In so many of our interactions we walk on the sacred ground of people’s hopes and fears, believing that each life, no matter how limited, how painful, has a purpose, and that we do see the face of Christ in each other. So, inevitably, we must live, as Christ did, accepting the cross.
Francis said that: “Moved by [Christ’s] example, we want to enter fully into the fabric of society, sharing the lives of all, listening to their concerns, helping them materially and spiritually in their needs, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; arm in arm with others, we are committed to building a new world…we do so… as a burdensome duty, but as the result of a personal decision which brings us joy and gives meaning to our lives.”
Francis goes on to say: “Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune, and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated and we experience intensely what it is to be a people, to be part of a people.
“No single act of love is lost; no generous effort is meaningless; no painful endurance is wasted.”
Two years on, the question for each of us must be what have we learned from this man of God?