Two Homilies of Pope Francis

In class this morning we read together two homilies of the Pope—the Tacloban Homily and the Luneta Homily. They’re deep homilies….reminding me of the beatitude, “blessed are you who mourn”. Indeed, what can we do in front of the darkness we face? Jesus accompanies us all the way—the Lord on the cross. He accompanies us in our fragility, in our precarious conditions….even in our inability to fully address the darkness confronting us. 

Maybe all we can do is mourn, but we are so assured that Jesus mourns with us. 

Maybe it is necessary to be effective in our “advocacies” and “social involvements”. 

But we are also confronted with our own powerlessness. The temptation is to believe that we can “solve it all” or that we have enough strength and power to “correct it all”, as if it is all in our power. The victory, however, is, perhaps, elsewhere…in our powerlessness, in humility and in being a “child”. The victory is perhaps in clinging to our Mother’s mantle at the foot of the cross. 

Just as we read in Mark, the seed grows and sprouts in a mysterious way…in a way that is in the nailed hands of the Lord. I am reminded of Caryl Houselander’s image of the infant Christ with arms stretched out to stem the tide of darkness—arms that will, later, be on the cross. In a mysterious way the victory is achieved over darkness. 

Charles de Foucauld’s prayer starts this way, “Father I abandon myself into your hands”. 

Therese de Lisieux puts it this way: “You must navigate the tempestuous sea of the world with the love and utter trustfulness of a child who knows that his father loves him too much to forsake him in the hour of peril”.  This is how I “read” the Pope’s two homilies.