Pope Francis did a little more than raise eyebrows in his recent interview with atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari. Sr. Anne Flanagan, the “nunblogger,” and a fellow Daughter of St. Paul, in an effort to calm nerves, aptly pointed out that the translation of the interview that was done in English was a bit sloppy. Nevertheless, Pope Francis’ quote about proselytism being “solemn nonsense” startled more than a few horses in the Catholic blogging corral.
Pope Francis has not said anything that runs contrary to Church teaching, yet, it remains true that no matter how you translate them, his words are often unsettling in their straightforward, simple frankness. Pope Francis says what many previous popes and holy men and women of the Church have said before; but he says it in new ways. And this is no surprise because this is what the Spirit does; communicates the Gospel in an ever fresh way.
Pope Francis is going to continue to surprise us; there is no getting around it. His patron saint is a man who removed his clothes in front of a bishop and probably heard the words, “Are you crazy?!” more than any other saint in history.
So how are we going to get used to this?
There are several options, but I think I am going to turn to Jesus for some advice. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells the disciples to go out like “lambs among wolves” to proclaim the Gospel (Lk 10:3). In this exhortation, Jesus is not just creatively using a simile, he is pointing to one of the central mysteries of Christianity. Jesus is the lamb. Like the Passover lamb whose blood was smeared on the doorposts of the Israelite people to save their first born sons, the blood of Jesus, the Son of God, was smeared on the wood of the cross for our sins.
“Behold the Lamb!”
We hear these words of John the Baptist every time we attend Mass. We bow our heads and may think very little about these words but like the Lamb of God, we are called to be broken and shared as an offering to others. We are invited to give up our view of how the Church or the pope should be and be open to how we are called to change – from wolves into lambs.
Certainly, this does not mean we have to blindly cheer on Pope Francis’ every move or let go of what we believe to be true. To be faithful daughters and sons of the Church, we are not required to believe that every time the pope picks up the phone or sits down with a reporter, he will utter infallible sentences. The Petrine office does not magically perfect a person’s every move, nor does it remove personality characteristics that we may or may not find appealing. However, I would suggest that it is even more absurd to name ourselves, by our own initiative, guardians of “the Church that makes us comfortable.”
Pope Francis has been asking us to make room for more people in the Church. He is inviting us to move from the seat at the head of the table to the last place. To do this, we have to accept that God is no longer nurturing, strengthening and loving his “elder sons” in the leadership style of our beloved Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy Spirit is changing course. He’s killed the fatted calf and is inviting more people to the party. Are we going to welcome this expanding invitation list or are we going to insist that there is only room for us, for our way, and for our “kind” of people. In other words, will we only have room in our hearts for a pope who is on board with our plans?
So what will it be?
Wolf or lamb?
I’m going to try my best, even when confused, to become like a lamb. Because the leader of our Church is Jesus, and I’d rather let him carry me on his shoulders than snap at his heels.
Pursued by Truth
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