By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
March 13, 2013 – the day Pope Francis took on the divine mandate of leading the People of God. It has been five years and there are FIVE strong orientations that this wonderful person of God has given the Church and the world.
1. JOY – the centre of Christian life
Right from the beginning Pope Francis has been harping upon one theme: Joy! Without Joy you cannot think of a Christian according to Pope Francis. I have said all these that your joy may be full, said the Lord and Pope Francis holds that close to his heart. He wants the Church to be a beacon of hope and joy to the world. He wishes every Christian is filled with joy and fills the world with that same joy. If your faith cannot offer you, those around you and to the society at large a joy that can fill lives, your faith has to be questioned! The Word of God is a Good News and it has to be gladly proclaimed, joyfully lived, eagerly received and lovingly shared… the Joy of the Gospel has to fill the hearts of every person on earth and it is the responsibility of every Christian to take this forward.
There are challenges that abound, but nothing can take this Joy away if it is truly Christian because Jesus has promised us: I give you a joy that no one can take away from you! A Joy that is truly Christian cannot be wiped away by pain or loss or suffering or persecution, not even death! That is the kind of Joy we need to possess if we need to show the world that our faith is real.
2. MERCY – the mark of a true Christian
Mercy has been a keyword for Pope Francis right from the beginning. Just a few weeks into his papacy, he surprised everyone on a Sunday when he announced: “I wish to prescribe a medicine to you all” and proposed Misericordina…a box made like a sample tablet box with a rosary, a Divine Mercy chaplet and a picture of Divine Mercy Jesus…a kit that he symbolically handed over to all present at the Midday Angelus that Sunday. A call to Mercy!
This “Mercy” that he speaks of, has two essential dimensions and understanding both is an indispensable task for a true Christian.
Mercy of God: The first dimensions is the Mercy of God which is never lacking! God is never tired of forgiving, Pope Francis has repeated time and again. Mercy is the hallmark of the God we believe in…right from the beginning of creation up until now, because God is mercy! We need to understand God as the Merciful Father, Loving Mother, Bosom Friend, someone who is madly in love with us. Once we understand God to be such, we would insist more on an intimate relationship with God than mere religious practices of piety! This is the foundation on which the Holy Father invites us to build our faith and our daily Christian life.That leads us to the second dimension…
A Life of Mercy: Once we experience this unfathomable mercy of God, we should be transformed into living signs and expressions of that mercy. This is what Christ wants us to stand by and this is the criterion he gave for us to be called people who belong to God’s fold or not, in Matthew 25. When the Holy Father announced the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in the year 2015-2016, he had both these dimensions in mind – the former as the foundation for the celebration of the year and the latter as the fruit of the celebration. In short, he has been calling the Church to grow more and more merciful and become the face of the Mercy of God to the world today.
His natural tendency to go towards the sick and elderly whenever he is in a public audience, the compassion with which he embraces and hugs the persons with disabilities and the sick, the way he listens to people when they share their plights and the continuous call to be sensitive to those who are suffering due to various forms of poverty and misery – these are but his heart’s longings, brought into live actions and translated into his words. We would do well to take this to heart – to be persons filled with mercy!
3. PERIPHERY – where leads your Christian Faith
Periphery has been a predilected word of Pope Francis… go to the existential peripheries, he has called the Church repeatedly.
Existential Periphery is not a geographical region, we know it well. It is the existential condition of humanity where fundamental identity is sacrificed at the altar of sophisticated modernity – a condition where projects matter more than persons, money matters more than truth, pleasure matters more than relationships, comfort matters more than necessities, uniformity matters more than dignity, development matters more than equality, progress matters more than peace! Can the Christians remain silent about it, worse still, can they become perpetrators of it? Can the Church be blind to it? Pope Francis would respond with an emphatic NO.
I would prefer a bruised, hurt and bleeding Church to a Church that is so self conscious about its vulnerability, he has affirmed. Bringing good news to the blind and the deaf, the dumb and the maim, the oppressed and the imprisoned, the downtrodden and the marginalised, is not a task that can be done merely from your desks and your offices. The Church has to come to the streets. Reaching out to the poor is not merely writing projects and undertaking development works but being with them, empathising with them, empowering them and enabling them. The Church has to look at this as the Primary form of evangelisation, insists Pope Francis.
His heart has always been drawn towards the sick in the crowd, the poor in the society, the migrants in the cities, the refugees in the world – they are the peripheries just around us and we need to reach out to them. Our faith, if truly living, will lead us right there, to the peripheries!
4. FAMILY – where Christian faith is lived
Amoris Laetitia, the Joy of Love, as a Post Synodal Exhortation might have created unprecedented ripples in the Church among the theologians and the thinkers, but the message that the Pope underlines there is very simple and straightforward: Christian Families have to become schools of faith and love, from where the joy of the Gospel can emanate without ceasing. The synods, the World assembly of Families and the entire Catechesis that he undertook for families, married couples and couples who are in preparation for marriage, is a clear sign of the importance he attaches to families in living the Christian faith today.
One image that I just cannot forget of Pope Francis is when he met couples after an audience, he met an expectant young mother, and he did not only bless the couple but blessed the child in the womb drawing a sign of the Cross on her stomach… Oh what an awesome person he is, just awe-inspiring! Some just reduce him to a mere pro-lifer… no he is not just that. It is a clear statement of what a Family is called to – to bring forth into the world the miracles that God has in store! Pope Francis’ insistence on the need for the Family to become the place where faith is lived and shared, the children are educated in it and where the elders are edified by the children’s practice of it.
Family is a God given gift to humanity to experience God’s love in a inimitably concrete manner, in flesh and blood, in words and acts, in body and mind! May we give heed to the call from the Lord to grow in our families and grow our families, into true people of God.
5. YOUTH – the lifeline of the Church
Youth are the point of attraction for the Holy Father. He refuses to believe the theory of the world today: that youth feel the Church is irrelevant; and he says he cannot believe it because a million young voices keep shouting to him something different – that they need God, that the need real faith experiences, that they need relevant spirituality, that they need to make a difference in their world!
Pope Francis has become a friend of the young! He speaks their language, he likes what they like and he admires what they enjoy and he believes in their capacity to build an all new world, a transformed Church and a passion filled humanity! Not just himself, he has challenged the rest of the Church to change their mentality, shirk their prejudices and listen to the young.
The present preparation towards the Synod of the Young – he prefers to call it not ‘Synod for or about the Young’ but ‘Synod OF the young’. He has invited the youth to speak out their minds; say things without fear and challenge the Church towards transformation. The extensive survey that has been done among the young, the various meetings that he has had with groups of them, and the Presynodal Meeting that he is planning to have with over 300 youth from various parts of the world on 19th March, 2018 are just a few highlights of the importance that he gives to the youth and their participation in the Church.
The Papal Stations of the Cross, which is celebrated every Palm Sunday at the Colosseum, this is year is being written by the youth! A simple message that the Holy Father is giving them in this – that he wants their voice be heard by the Church! That does not mean he does not challenge them: he says, enough of burying yourself in the fake identities of your social network, stand and speak up. He has time and again instructed them : do not be afraid to love, do not be afraid to commit yourself, do not be afraid to serve! The Church is in need of courageous youngsters.
Youth, Faith and Vocational Discernment – is a project that he has given the young, calling their attention to their life of faith and their call to live their life to the full and play their role to the utmost. He incites them to create a chaos where they are, so that something new and fresh, alive and attractive can be born. He invites the youth, as he writes to the Canadian Youth: “flood the places where you live with the joy and enthusiasm typical of your youthful age, to irrigate the world and history with the joy that comes from the Gospel, from having met a person: Jesus, who has enthralled you and has drawn you to be with Him.”
Certainly the Holy Father does not consider this merely his special charism to relate to the Young, but wants the entire Church to trust in the Youth, to respect them and listen to them and confide in them the responsibility of leading the Church on in this new millennium.
These five orientations are five key areas of transformation that the Church stands in need of today, towards making itself relevant to the Gospel and the times. May the inspiration of this person of God, our beloved Pope Francis, motivate every disciple of Christ today to march on with hope towards making the Reign of God present here and now!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him on.