As the body of Pope Francis is laid to rest today, I cannot help but be immensely grateful for him. If you like what Preambula Group is doing, you can thank God for Pope Francis. What we do is the direct result of his vision for Christian discipleship and the pastoral care of souls, which he has laid out in the 12 years of his pontificate. As Christian people, Catholics can focus so much attention on the objective character of our doctrines and disciplines, as though all we need to do is keep clarifying these things. Yet Pope Francis is the one who has challenged the Church to attend more generously to the subjective and lived experience of people seeking a deeper relationship with God, especially those outside the rank-and-file Catholic.
What is it really like to live in sin yet to encounter the infinite mercy of Jesus? Is that what people feel when they walk into our churches or meet us on the streets? Or do people encounter officious attitudes, judgmentalism, and a sense of spiritual elitism? Pope Francis has reminded us that people don’t need to behave properly before they belong to the Church. The Church is the place where people should feel loved enough to get their disordered lives together. Mercy precedes conversion, which is why we needed Pope Francis at this time. He was both a prophet, calling the Church to a higher standard of pastoral care, and also a shepherd who prioritized not the people of influence and power but the forgotten poor and voiceless. Pope Francis has recentered the Church on the Gospel mandates of the Kingdom, particularly the beatitudes. And we needed it because our times cannot tolerate a triumphalist attitude among Christian peoples.
It will be interesting to see who’s up next in the succession of St. Peter. We will find out soon enough. In the meantime, let us be grateful to God for the gift of Pope Francis. Let us entrust him to the mercy of God, which he so persistently proclaimed. The shoes of the fisherman are difficult to fill, and he did it admirably, although not perfectly. Yet who has? It’s not our place to judge or assess him. We simply need to be grateful that 2000 years later, Jesus continues to guide the Church into the future through his vicar (voice) on earth. That itself is a miracle worthy of our praise and thanksgiving.
