Reading Francis

We are careening toward a very different Holy Week. Traditionally, Lenten disciplines have been an exercise in additional self-control: we commit to pray a little extra, fast from something, give a little more. And we measure our Lent by how much self-control we exert in keeping those commitments we made.

Maybe even in the face of the coronavirus and the near complete disruption of normal life, you have stuck faithfully by your Lenten commitments. If so, I’m truly impressed. I mostly have not.

But life in the time of coronavirus has been an opportunity for metanoia, for a transformation of heart, in its own way. Fundamentally, it has been a recognition that the idea that I control…much of anything…is and always has been a fiction. Which in itself poses a fundamental question of faith: Do you believe in God, really, or do you believe in yourself?

It has also brought a different set of disciplines that, unlike the ones I started Lent with, I didn’t get to choose. I’m fasting from a lot of different things – going to the office, traveling, vacationing, eating in restaurants, worshipping in person with fellow believers. Almsgiving looks different, too: giving time to neighbors who are in self-isolation, giving money to causes that are at the front line of need, giving a little extra to every person I see whose job or business is hanging on by a thread. And prayer has been more…desperate, pleading, questioning, and raw.

As we prepare for Holy Week, though, Pope Francis offers an outline for a sort of examination of conscience, whether we have access to the sacrament of reconciliation right now or are just open to the opportunity to take stock of how transformed our hearts actually are right now.

The visual of the pope, standing alone in the rain, lit in a dark and eerily empty St. Peter’s Square, may be the defining image of his papacy. But what he said is even more powerful. Between the opening and the closing of his address is a different but thorough examination of conscience. Read the whole thing, really. It’s all beautiful. But here, between the open and close, let me highlight the questions that jump out to me, that encounter me, to use Francis’ words, and measure what I have done and failed to do.

Pope Francis’ opening, verbatim, sets the mood:

“When evening had come” (Mk 4:35). The Gospel passage we have just heard begins like this. For weeks now it has been evening. Thick darkness has gathered over our squares, our streets and our cities; it has taken over our lives, filling everything with a deafening silence and a distressing void, that stops everything as it passes by; we feel it in the air, we notice in people’s gestures, their glances give them away. We find ourselves afraid and lost. Like the disciples in the Gospel we were caught off guard by an unexpected, turbulent storm. We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other. On this boat… are all of us. Just like those disciples, who spoke anxiously with one voice, saying “We are perishing” (v. 38), so we too have realized that we cannot go on thinking of ourselves, but only together can we do this.

From what follows this challenging but real opening, here are the questions that arise to weigh us:

1. When have we forgotten
   1. That we are all on the same boat?
   2. That we are all fragile and disoriented?
   3. That we are all important and needed?
2. When have we refused to row together?
3. When have we failed to comfort each other?
4. When have we believed that God does not care about us?
5. When have we forgotten what truly nourishes our souls?
6. When have we settled for spiritual anesthesia – for things that make us feel good but render us asleep to our deeper calling?
7. When have we lost touch with our roots and those who went before us?
8. When did we worry about our image and neglected our reality of belonging as brothers and sisters?
9. When have we gotten caught up in haste, greed, material things, conflict, injustice?
10. When did we ignore the cry of the poor?
11. When did we ignore our ailing planet?
12. When did we pretend we are well, ignoring our societal sickness?
13. When have we ignored the ordinary people who are so essential?

Unlike a traditional examination of conscience (and more like Matthew 25), Francis pivots from images that focus us on our failings to examples of virtue, perhaps a recognition that the pursuit of holiness isn’t just avoiding sin but also striving for virtue.

1. When did we choose what matters over what passes away?
2. When did we practice courageous and generous self-denial?
3. When did we exercise patience?
4. When did we offer hope?
5. When did we sow shared responsibility instead of panic?
6. When did we show others, especially children, how to face up to and navigate a crisis by adjusting our routines, lifting our gaze, and fostering prayer?
7. When have we prayed for the good of all?
8. How have we practiced solidarity and hope?
9. When did we embrace the cross by
   1. Abandoning our eagerness for power and possessions?
   2. Creating spaces where everyone can recognize that they are called?
   3. Allowing new forms of hospitality, fraternity and solidarity?
10. When did we embrace hope?

Read his whole thing. Sit with these questions and any others that arise. That seems like a good Lent, right there.

I’m not a priest, and even if I were, I couldn’t give you absolution via blog. But hear Francis’ words in closing and accept his blessing:

Dear brothers and sisters, from this place that tells of Peter’s rock-solid faith, I would like this evening to entrust all of you to the Lord, through the intercession of Mary, Health of the People and Star of the stormy Sea. From this colonnade that embraces Rome and the whole world, may God’s blessing come down upon you as a consoling embrace. Lord, may you bless the world, give health to our bodies and comfort our hearts. You ask us not to be afraid. Yet our faith is weak and we are fearful. But you, Lord, will not leave us at the mercy of the storm. Tell us again: “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28:5). And we, together with Peter, “cast all our anxieties onto you, for you care about us” (cf. 1 Pet 5:7).Dear brothers and sisters, from this place that tells of Peter’s rock-solid faith, I would like this evening to entrust all of you to the Lord, through the intercession of Mary, Health of the People and Star of the stormy Sea. From this colonnade that embraces Rome and the whole world, may God’s blessing come down upon you as a consoling embrace. Lord, may you bless the world, give health to our bodies and comfort our hearts. You ask us not to be afraid. Yet our faith is weak and we are fearful. But you, Lord, will not leave us at the mercy of the storm. Tell us again: “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28:5). And we, together with Peter, “cast all our anxieties onto you, for you care about us” (cf. 1 Pet 5:7).

Photo credit: (CNS photo/Guglielmo Mangiapane, pool via Reuters)