. . . As predicted, predictions failed. As it turned out, on Wednesday, when Francis appeared on that balcony (“the biggest moment in the world”), experts were not actually too expert. No commentator was uttering the name “Bergoglio” in the days leading up to the conclave. The Spirit moves where the Spirit wills. This was not politics, the choosing of a Pontiff, although it was presented in such a fashion by the media.
Already, there is a dramatic development: the new Pope, it appears, is going to start his “repair” and “rebuilding” of the Church (in the spirit of Saint Francis) with the clergy, and in particular the hierarchy. If this trend — reversing the course of a Church that had become very engaged with worldly perspectives — continues into his pontificate, the Holy Roman Catholic Church is poised to come roaring back. Over and again, the new Pope has stressed that bishops, cardinals, and priests should not live the high life, the way of the world, nor the way of legalism. He prays fifteen decades of the Rosary a day, seems open to apparitions, and was known to hand out medals of Our Lady, Undoer of Knots.
As a newspaper noted: “The path of the Church always entails difficulties, the Pope told Cardinals Thursday, and Church leaders should be prepared to embrace them. He explained that “when we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, when we profess a Christ without the Cross… we aren’t disciples of the Lord.” The Pontiff warned the cardinals that in this case: “We are worldly. We are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord.”
That cuts to the very heart of the Church crisis: pride, hyper-intellectualism, and worldliness, which are responsible not only for alienation from the flock, but even, in such aloofness, for the abuse crisis.
Francis, it appears, is attacking matters at a spiritual level. He is already telling the Church that it should not wrap itself in grandeur, that it is supposed to be carrying the Cross, not sitting at lush dinners, not riding with chauffeurs, not living in palaces, not mugging for TV (he rarely gave interviews as Cardinal), not running a diocese like a cold business, not favoring the wealthy contributor over the devout poor woman, not parading like nobility, not dismissing Adoration, not ignoring Mary (see: his visit to Maria Maggiore), but acting like the Apostles: getting out there on the street and radiating the power they have in Christ (healing, serving, exorcising). Here we recall also Saint Francis Xavier, an evangelist.
This is very potent, crucial stuff. It is also another definition of prophecy. To “prophesy” doesn’t only mean to predict; it means to pronounce (including tough truths).
Noted a newspaper: “Even after he became Argentina’s top church official in 2001, he never lived in the ornate church mansion where Pope John Paul II stayed when visiting the country, preferring a simple bed in a downtown building, warmed by a small stove on frigid weekends when the building turned off the heat. For years, he took public transportation around the city, and cooked his own meals. He accused fellow church leaders of hypocrisy and forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes. ‘Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony. Go out and interact with your brothers. Go out and share. Go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit,’ Bergoglio told Argentina’s priests last year. Bergoglio almost never granted media interviews, limiting himself to speeches from the pulpit, and was reluctant to contradict his critics, even when he knew their allegations against him were false, said Bergoglio’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin.”
Original post: The Spirit Daily
