US CAPITOL STUNNED
It
sounds like a newspaper headline after 9/11 but it actually refers to a comment
by a friend in Washington DC on Pope Francis’ visit to the nation’s Congress.
The Speaker of the House was, according to the BBC, “close to tears.” Why such
commotion, such strong feelings, after the visit of a religious leader who
represents no political force? It seems that Francis found his way past all the
calculations of political speeches and appealed directly to the goodness that
resides somewhere in every human heart. He did not rant. He did not blame. He
did not judge. He simply appealed to people’s better nature and asked them to
listen to their own heart.
He
cited four star Americans, two who were not Catholic and two who were. They had
different aims but they were all fired by a desire for justice and what is
right. If the four (Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas
Merton) were in a room together they would have all sang the same tune. We are
moving away all the time from what divides us – politics, religion, colour,
gender – and finding strength and solidarity in what we share together. Francis
appealed to that and those who struggled to label him as right or left,
traditional or radical, had a hard time.
There
is a tiny sound bite in the Book of Numbers where Joshua tried to silence two
characters – Eldad and Medad – who were prophesying without permission. “Stop
them!” he told Moses. But Moses simply said let them be; “Would that all the
Lord’s people were prophets!” And in the gospel John tried to stop someone
casting out devils because, “he was not one of us.” “Let him be,” said Jesus,
“whoever is not against us is for us.”
The
migrant crisis in Europe, the tortoise pace Colombian peace negotiations, the
non-violent and not so non-violent efforts to rise above tribe in Africa – all
these movements illustrate the desire to break down the barriers between
people. The Catholic Church is moving away from telling people what to do and
how to live – as though she possesses an insider’s clarity about how to proceed
in every detail – to a way of proclaiming the gospel which is closer to how
Jesus used parables. In other words, she is moving towards announcing the good
news in a way that evokes a response at the deepest level from people, so that from
within their hearts they recognise the way to proceed without feeling lectured
at from the outside. Francis told the Americans to see the border jumpers from
Mexico as people with individual faces and names and not just numbers. This
doesn’t solve the problem but it touches it from another angle and appeals to
something deeper than efficiency and fear of others.
27 September 2015 Sunday
26 B
Numbers 11:25-29 James
5:1-6 Mark
9:38…48
