'It Would Be Good for Us to Journey Together'

Todd Graff, director of Lay Formation & RCIA, tgraff@dowr.org

-Pope Francis, Address to the Roman Curia December 21, 2020

Greetings of Peace, Friends in Christ!

In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned, and even distressed, about the state of the Church’s life. There is so much anger, and bitterness, and meanness among the members of the Church, and our “counter witness” to the Gospel is often on full public display. Sometimes I have felt almost in despair over the harsh and deeply divisive ways we communicate and relate to one another within the “Body of Christ.”

Recently, I came across an address of our Holy Father which has given me a way to reflect and assess the times we’re living in – both within and outside the Church – with hope and trust that God’s Spirit remains at work even in the midst of what appears to be only darkness.

Shortly before Christmas each year, the Holy Father speaks to the Vatican Curia and shares his thoughts on the Church and aspects of their shared ministry. I would like to offer an overview of what he shared with the Curia in his address this past December.

Early in his address, Pope Francis reflects on the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our experience. He sees the pandemic as both “a time of trial and testing” and “also a significant opportunity for conversion and renewed authenticity.”

He recalls his extraordinary Urbi et Orbi (“To the City and the World”) blessing and message given in a rain-soaked, deserted Saint Peter’s Square on March 27, 2020. With reference to the gospel story of Jesus’ calming the sea (Mark 4:35-41), he speaks of the pandemic as a “storm” that has struck our world.

It is a storm that “has exposed our vulnerability and uncovered those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities. It has shown us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and communities.”

He offers a striking metaphor as he describes how we “have lost the antibodies needed to confront adversity,” and, as the “camouflage” of concern about our “egos” and our “image” has “fallen away,” we are able to discover “once more that (blessed) common belonging, which we cannot evade: our belonging to one another as sisters and brothers.”

Pope Francis then moves from this specific reflection on the current pandemic to a broader consideration of the experience of living in the midst of a “crisis.” Crises cannot be avoided, and at certain times will come to affect “everyone and everything.” So, the question becomes not how to avoid a crisis, as that is not possible, but how to live in, and respond to, the crises that confront us, in a way that is faithful to the Gospel.

He cites several biblical figures who experienced crises in their lives – Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, and St. Paul – and describes how each of these figures who by their response to these crises “played their part in the history of salvation.”

Jesus, too, experienced “the crisis of temptation” in the desert (experiencing profound “hunger and weakness”), the “crisis in Gethsemane” (experiencing “solitude, fear, anguish, [and] betrayal”), and the “crisis on the cross” (even “feeling abandoned by the Father”). In each of these crises, Jesus’ “complete and trusting surrender” – by allowing himself to be “led by the Spirit” (Matthew 4:1), and by “commend[ing] his spirit into the hands of the Father” (Luke 23:46) – opens the way to the fruitful work of God’s grace and, ultimately, to “resurrection” (cf. Hebrews 5:7).

Our Holy Father cautions us in the Church from judging things too “hastily” in the midst of “the crises caused by scandals past and present.” God continues even in these dark times “to make the seeds of his kingdom grow in our midst.” We must view the crises we face “in the light of the Gospel” and see them as “a time of the Spirit.” With “courage and humility,” we will face our “experience of darkness, weakness, vulnerability contradiction and loss” with the trust “that things are about to take a new shape, emerging exclusively from the experience of a grace hidden in the darkness.”

The path that must be avoided in times of crises is that of “conflict.” Conflict seeks to identify “‘guilty’ parties” whom we can, then, scorn and stigmatize. In the midst of conflict, we lose the “sense of our common belonging” as we move into “‘cliques’ that promote narrow and partial mind-sets.” He summarizes our present moment with clarity: “When the Church is viewed in terms of conflict – right versus left, progressive versus traditionalist – she becomes fragmented and polarized, distorting and betraying her true nature.”

The Church, “precisely because she is alive,” will be “a body in continual crisis,” but she cannot allow herself to be “a body in conflict, with winners and losers.”

We must then, in Pope Francis’ view, be willing “to enter into crisis and to let ourselves be led by the Spirit.” We accept these “times of trial” as “a time of grace granted us to discern God’s will for each of us and for the whole Church.” We must also turn fervently to prayer, which “will allow us to ‘hope against all hope’” (cf. Romans 4:18). To turn away and try to shield ourselves from the demands that crises bring to us is to “hinder the work of God’s grace” which seeks to “manifest itself in us and through us.”

Our Holy Father describes the necessary and purifying work of grace in the midst of crisis:

“Everything evil, wrong, weak and unhealthy that comes to light serves as a forceful reminder of our need to die to a way of living, thinking and acting that does not reflect the Gospel. Only by dying to a certain mentality will we be able to make room for the newness that the Spirit constantly awakens in the heart of the Church.”

To conclude, let us take to heart Pope Francis’ simple request to his Vatican colleagues, and to us: “[I]t would be good for us to stop living in conflict and feel once more that we are journeying together, open to crisis.” Deo Gratias!

-Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, #8