Life Illumined
Habemus Papam
I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me. This is the bread come down from heaven; not like the bread our ancestors ate: they are dead, but anyone who eats this bread will live for ever (Jn 6.52-60).
The Gospel gives us today our Lord’s assurance that he will mystically remain present in his Church, also when he goes ‘to the Father’ (Jn 14.28).
He realises this promise primarily through his Body and Blood, the sacred mysteries we daily celebrate by way of sacrament with astonished reverence. He is present too in consecrated, wholly given women and men who, by following a particular call, bring Christ close to us.
Of this we have seen a grandiose example these past few days.
How weird it is, incomprehensible, really, that the eyes of the whole world have since Wednesday evening been fixed on a chimney above the Sixtine Chapel; that global society for all its professions of godlessness, has somehow felt orphaned while Peter’s chair has stood empty. Hardly anyone has not more or less consciously listened out for the Habemus papam!
When I watched the broadcast from St Peter’s Square last night, one scene struck me forcefully. The camera caught a little girl, about six or seven I should think, sitting on her daddy’s shoulders. When the protodeacon made his proclamation she burst into tears. She cried the way we cry when we meet someone deeply beloved we have not seen for a long time, when we come back home after a painful absence.
The girl is unlikely to have known the new pope personally. Did she even know who he was, Robertus Franciscus Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalis Prevost?
That would have made no difference at all. For she knew: he was her pope, a personal messenger of the Gospel, a credible bearer of Christ Jesus’s comforting light into this world’s darkness.
I suppose we all felt a bit like that girl last night — I know I did — overwhelmed by heartfelt gratitude.
We thank God for his provident care. We pray filially for our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV.
All the while remembering: all of us are called to service and testimony as Christ-bearers, that the light the Lord brought will not be left faintly glimmering under a bed but will be placed aflame on a candlestick, that the world may believe.
