Words on the Word
Easter Mass for Pope Francis RIP
1 Pet 5.5-14: Be steadfast in faith! Resist the Devil!
Mark 16.15-20: Proclaim the Gospel to the whole of creation!
Our Holy Father Pope Francis displayed great freedom in the way in which he engaged with liturgical customs. He was not afraid to improvise a little here and there.
Therefore it is appropriate, and rather lovely, that we celebrate Mass tonight, on the eve of his funeral, with a degree of ritual uncertainty. This will not be a requiem in the strict sense. The Church forbids the celebration of Masses for the dead during the Easter Octave, the eight days after the Sunday of Resurrection that constitute a single day of rejoicing. We pray for the pope, not with purple vestments and De profundis, but with shouts of Alleluia.
That suits his profile. Pope Francis was a witness to the resurrection, pastorally active until the end of his life. Just a few hours before he died, he made the sign of Christ’s victory urbi et orbi. Doing what popes do on Easter Day, he dispensed to the whole world the blessing of the Risen One. It is wonderful. No other institutional figure can do this and be perceived, by just about everyone, as doing something universally beneficent. The papal office is truly catholic, universal. Lovingly we pray for Pope Francis. We thank God that his steadfast servant was allowed to bless us before he took leave.
From the day of his election, Pope Francis has exercised his ministry of teaching by word and example. It is probably true to say that the exemplary aspect was the one with which he was most spontaneously at ease. We we shall remember his gestures above all: his pilgrimage to Lampedusa, the way he embraced a disfigured man, washed the feet of prisoners, and stood, in eloquent solitude on St Peter’s Square, holding the Body of the Lord and, in a time of pestilence (then, too) blessed the whole world.
When he preached at the funeral of his predecessor, Pope Francis showed us how he thought a departed pope should be remembered: not with eulogies, but with a simple prayer for mercy which lets us raise our eyes towards Christ’s mystery. We shall respect the example he set; we owe as much to this many-faceted servant of God’s servants who has left this world.
The Gospel set for today’s feast of St Mark gives us the apostolic commission as Mark recounts it. It bids us go out across the whole earth to proclaim the Gospel to ‘all creation’, πάσῃ τῇ κτίσει. The phrase is magnificent. It is especially helpful to us up here in the north, who tend to think of evangelisation as a flood of words. We envisage Ibsen’s Brand standing on a promontory with flowing robes and a pitch-dark Bibel in his hand, crying out: ‘Remember, I am rigorous in what I demand, I call for all or nothing!’
Hardened as we are, many of us, we need this kind of thunder once in a while. But what will such talk mean to ‘all creation’? To realise the Gospel of Jesus, more than just talk is required; it is about a way of living in this world.
God became flesh and passed through death for our sake not only to provide us with precepts, but to bring creation to perfection.
‘Look up to the sky and count the stars’, Abraham, our father, was told. That way the patriarch grasped the sense of his vocation, which now unfolds within the Church. Our task as human beings pilgrimaging in this world impinges on the whole universe: ‘the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now’ (Romans 8.22), waiting for the fulfilment of divine promise. Easter, Christ’s victory over death, has galactic impact. Upon the black holes of the cosmos an inextinguishable vital force hovers like the Spirit that ‘in the beginning’ hovered on the waters. We, who have received the articulate revelation of God’s promises, are responsible to, and for, the world that surrounds up. Of this responsibility Pope Francis forcefully reminded us.
‘He who believes and is baptised will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.’ The words may seem harsh. Would we have prepared to have them censured? Somehow they don’t fit into our image of the Good News as all-embracing mercy. Stil, they are ‘The Gospel of the Lord’. We greet them with the acclamation: ‘Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ’.
Pope Francis emphasised that the Church is for everyone. Repeatedly we heard him cry: ‘¡Todos, todos, todos!’ The Lord, meanwhile, states that salvation is not automatic. One day we shall answer for your choices, for that in which, and those in whom, we have believed. Was the pope’s message then wishful thinking?
No. The Bible assures us: The Lord ‘desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Timothy 2.4). The Church is the seed of a new humanity hoping for the realisation of God’s words to Abram: ‘In you all generations of the earth shall be blessed’ (Genesis 12.2).
There is space for all. But will I come in? Will I let the Lord work in my life and make me fit for fellowship with him? Or resist?
When he met opposition to Jesus’s fundamental call, Pope Francis could use words as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel. To be a human being is to make essential choices. Choices have consequences. We may invite people to choose rightly. We may implore them so to do. But no one, not even an almighty God, can oblige them. ‘¡Todos, todos, todos!’ does correspond to divine intention. But we must freely choose to form part of this totality on Christ’s terms, to be where he, the origin of all things, is.
The Philosopher Socrates likened himself to a gadfly whose mission it was to dispel Athenian self-satisfied complacency. There was something gadfly-like about Pope Francis. It was not always comfortable to be around him. He challenged us, and constrained us, to seek clarity in diverse circumstances, to work out what things are really about in order, then, to make responsible choices and to live credibly as Christians. Now this servant of God has come to the end of his earthly existence. What a load he carried!
We tenderly entrust him to the Mother of God, whom he loved. And we pray: Lord, admit your servant, our pope Francis, into your joy. Amen.
