The advent of Francis:
What revolution?
March 19, 2013
These days, my colleagues in the media are vying to find the right words to describe the new Pontificate of Francis. Change of direction, turning point, and yes, revolution!
I'm not putting down literary license, which is necessary to narrate history. But only if it helps to narrate the true history, not to reconstruct it according to one's own interests. Some of that is happening these days.
'Revolution', though? Not that it is an exaggerated word, but it is simply absurd to use it in the life of the Church. It is not we men who 'made' the Church, she came to us from God. If that was not so, she would have disappeared long ago.
But as that 19th century cardinal said upon learning of Napoleon's plans to destroy the Church, "That's impossible, Even we have not succeeded to do that".
We cannot 'make' the Church - we can only respond to God's initiative. We can still hear the words of Benedict XVI at the start of the last Synodal Assembly of Bishops: "The Apostles didn't say, now we will create a Church. They didn't call a constituent assembly to draw up a constitution. No, they prayed, and waited in prayer, because they knew that only God could create his Church, of which he is the first agent. If God does not act, everything remains just about us, and we will always be insufficient... Just as then, only the initiative of God could create the Church,... so today we can only cooperate with him. The initiative must come from God".
So it was very significant that Pope Francis wanted his first appearance before the world to be marked by prayer. First, we must know what the Lord asks of us, entrust ourselves to his urging, then follow the path he indicates.
But already all the world's major editorial offices have their list of tasks to urge on Francis - so the Church may be in tune with the contemporary world, so it can modernize, etc.
Yet Francis has said that if we don't profess Christ, we end up professing the devil. I don't know if the media consider this 'modern' at all.
To speak of revolution ("To the barricaes!") may be very attractive to those who write the headlines. And to imagine that Pope Francis is about to turn everything upside down in the Church is exciting the imagination of many...
But meanwhile, he has said, we must 'walk, build, profess'. Walk in the light of the Lord, because only his light can make our life irreproachable. Build on the foundation of the Cross, on the blood shed by the Lord, because without the Cross, we become nothing more than a pious NGO (non-governmental organization) - which is precisely what major newspapers like El Pais and the New York Times want the Church to be. And profess the name of Christ, because if we dedicate ourselves to other things then we shall end up professing the spirit of the world, which in Scripture bears a name [of Satan] which is decidedly unwelcome to the do-gooders who are now celebrating Francis.
The Church's journey is long, during which both decadence and rejuvenation take place. Incrustrations grow which must be broken off because they can take the Church off her route and she must follow the true north. So that the Lord may generate new blood, let holiness emerge in order to mobilize the refractory and straighten out the crooked. It is a process that is never ending - the Church is a living tree, and while some branches rot and fall off, there are always branches that flourish again in unexpected greenness.
Revolution? No, for heaven's sake! That means rupture, violence, appropriation, man's presumptuousness. The first task of a Pope is simply to obey, as St. Peter learned hard. Renewal and purification, yes - always and everywhere, and let it be now, more profoundly.
Years ago, at the Rimini Meeting of C&L, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke of the '
Ecclesia semper fiformanda' - the Church that is always in need of reform. And with what intensity he reiterated it to us, in various ways, in the past eight years.
The Church is a living body that advances and is transformed throughout history while remaining loyal to her own nature and her vocation. But the plans for her always-ongoing reform are not for the architects of the world to draw up - where would we be if that were so?
The work for this ongoing reform derives from the profound spring that forever wells from her. The paradox is that in order for the Church to advance, it must always return to her origin, as St. Francis did. A personage who would perhaps frighten off those who now praise him for the wrong reasons if they met him today.