INBOX INSPIRATIONS
January 5, 2022
Pope Francis – 1
Dear Friends,
Today I am beginning a series of probably four or five columns on Pope Francis.
My objective is to give some appreciation of his thinking, maybe I should say, some appreciation of his faith and vision.
The first trait that comes clear to me is that the Holy Father sees faith as a relationship with God and Jesus Christ.
He sees the core of a life of faith not just as a list of truths.
It is that in the sense that we have beliefs about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, about personal and social morality, about sacraments, and on it goes.
But, first and foremost, faith must be an encounter with Jesus.
“Thanks solely to this encounter – or renewed encounter – with God’s love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption. We become fully human when we are more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being.”
How do we begin or enhance a relationship with Jesus?
I offer two ideas.
First, we need to make the gospel part of our life and spirituality.
Reading a section – maybe just a few verses, one teaching, or one story of a healing – this prayerful reading opens up Jesus to us.
Through it, Jesus opens up himself to us; he lets us know who he is, what he thinks, even how he feels about us.
Second, we don’t just read the gospel as we would read a biography of someone.
We actually try to engage Jesus as a person in our reading and then look within ourselves and ask: what is he saying to me in this passage?
What is he calling me to do or how is he calling me to live?
These two steps are very helpful in leading us to a relationship with Jesus and to the kind of faith that Pope Francis is lifting up for us.
More on Pope Francis in the Inbox Inspirations for next week, January 12.
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotation above from Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel, by Pope Francis, 2013.
Pope Francis – 2
Dear Friends,
This is the second in a series of columns that I am doing on Pope Francis.
My objective is to give some appreciation of his faith and of his vision for the Church and our ministry to the world.
One of Pope Francis’ main themes is joy.
At least three of his major writings, Apostolic Exhortations, express this in their title: Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel – 2013), Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love – 2016), and Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and Be Glad – 2018).
What emerges is that the Holy Father wants faith and religion and the living of it to be an uplifting experience. He does not want it to be, as it were, imposed as a burden. He wants us, as priests and all ministers of the Church, to be positive in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. He wants us to see the good in people and lift up the light that is there.
Pope Francis says this:
“There are Christians who seem like Lent without Easter. I realize of course that joy is not expressed the same way at all times in life, especially at moments of great difficulty…I understand the grief of people who have to endure great suffering, yet slowly but surely we all have to let the joy of faith revive as a quiet but firm trust, even amid the greatest distress…I can say that the most beautiful and natural expressions of joy which I have seen in my life were in poor people who had little to hold on to. I also think of the real joy shown by others who, even amid pressing personal obligations, were able to preserve, in detachment and simplicity, a heart full of faith.”
The Pope speaks from his experience of meeting with and ministering to people in real-life situations. His point seems to be this: the love of God for us, for each of us, for each person on this earth regardless of what they have done or not done and regardless of what they believe or do not believe, this love of God must be paramount in our Church.
More on Pope Francis in my column for next week, January 23.
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotation above from Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel, an Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Francis, 2013.
Pope Francis – 3
Dear Friends,
This is the third in a series of columns that I am doing on Pope Francis.
My objective is to give some appreciation of his faith and of his vision for the Church and our ministry to the world.
Pope Francis sees the Church as reaching out to people.
We are not to sit back and wait for people to first meet all of our expectations and then enter our doors.
Instead, our approach as a Church is to be much more inclusive, eager to engage with others, desiring to embrace and to welcome into the community of faith.
This is a matter of spirit, and it is crucial in this twentieth-first century.
“A Church which ‘goes forth’ is a Church whose doors are open. Going out to others in order to reach the fringes of humanity does not mean rushing out aimlessly into the world. Often it is better simply to slow down, to put aside our eagerness in order to see and listen to others, to stop rushing from one thing to another and to remain with someone who has faltered along the way. At times we have to be like the father of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open so that when the son returns, he can readily pass through it.”
I see this openness to others, to people in general, which Pope Francis exhorts, as leading us to be slow on judging and to be quick on including.
When we judge others as bad, wrong, or sinful, we distance them.
Almost inevitably, they feel unwelcome and feel excluded as unworthy.
On the contrary, our fundamental approach is to be like the father of the prodigal son – refraining from judgment, accepting, inviting, and welcoming.
Our energies need to be spent not on excluding or defining who should be excluded, but on including and figuring out how we can welcome others into our community.
I think this is why Pope Francis says:
“The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
More on Pope Francis in the Inbox Inspirations for next week, January 26.
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotations above from Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the Gospel, an Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Francis, 2013.
Pope Francis – 4
Dear Friends,
This is the fourth in a series of columns that I am doing on Pope Francis. My objective is to give some appreciation of his faith and of his vision for the Church and our ministry to the world.
Pope Francis has deep concern for the environment.
Along with his recent predecessors as Pope, he is aware of scientific reports about worsening ecological problems and sees this as a moral issue. He especially notes:
· the depletion of the earth’s resources, with the scarcity of good drinking water in many areas;
· the pollution of our atmosphere and soil;
· waste, especially the waste of food, with a third of all food produced being discarded or wasted.
Over-consumption and disregard of the effects of this are major causes of our environmental problems. Pope Francis is clear that the effects of these problems are hitting the poorer countries hardest.
“Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings…when our hearts are authentically open to universal communion, this sense of fraternity excludes nothing and no one.”
Pope Francis warns about the false assumption that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s resources and that unlimited material growth is, therefore, possible. He begs us to see the connectedness of all that we do. In fact, he sees the lack of respect for human life in all its forms as contributing to a lack of regard for the environment.
“When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected.”
Pope Francis also speaks of an excessive anthropocentrism. By this he means that the focus of our energies is too much on how the earth’s resources can satisfy our needs and desires right now. There is too much instant gratification. We have too little concern for the effects of what we do on the earth itself and on the future of humanity.
More on Pope Francis in the Inbox Inspirations for next week, February 2.
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotations above from Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home, an Encyclical Letter by Pope Francis, 2015.
Pope Francis – 5
Dear Friends,
This is the fifth in a series of columns that I am doing on Pope Francis. My objective is to give some appreciation of his faith and of his vision for the Church and our ministry to the world.
As he looks at our environmental problems, Pope Francis asks: "What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us?... We are led inexorably to ask other pointed questions: What is the purpose of our life in the world?. What need does the earth have of us?...Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is, first and foremost, up to us. The issue is one which dramatically affects us, for it has to do with the ultimate meaning of our earthly sojourn.”
With these thoughts, Pope Francis calls us to move away from thinking only about ourselves — what I want, what I think, what I prefer to do or not to do, what is good for me. He sees that this way of living can lead us into a feeling of emptiness. He wants us to move away from this attitude of “What’s in it for me?” and become more thoughtful of the common good of all. My looking beyond myself will actually give me a fullness that I would not otherwise experience. That empty feeling will be gone.
Finally, Pope Francis proposes a positive spirituality that will help us in caring for
our common home. He calls for: 1) gratitude, a recognition that the world is God's
loving gift to us; 2) connectedness, an awareness that we are connected to all that is in God's creation; and 3) responsibility, a commitment to do what we can to care for the earth and for all of humanity.
Beautifully, Pope Francis reminds us to pray the Grace or Blessing before Meals as
a way to be alive in this spirituality. "That moment of blessing, however brief, reminds us of our dependence on God for life; it strengthens our feeling of gratitude for the gifts of creation; it acknowledges those who by their labors provide us with these goods; and it affirms our solidarity with those in greatest need.”
More on Pope Francis in the Inbox Inspirations for next Wednesday, February 9.
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotations above from Laudato Si', On Care for Our Common Home, an Encyclical
Letter by Pope Francis, 2015.
Dear Friends,
This is the sixth and last in a series of columns that I am doing on Pope Francis. My objective is to give some appreciation of his faith and of his vision for the Church and our ministry to the world.
The mercy of God is one of this Pope’s dominant themes. Francis focuses on the Beatitudes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, especially on this: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Mt 5:7). The Pope states that there are two aspects to mercy: giving and forgiving.
First, mercy involves giving or sharing of something that we have. This could be money, possessions, time, a listening ear, a skill or competence that we have which would help another. Second, the mercy that Jesus talks about and lives also involves forgiving. It means letting go of our desire to get back at another for some hurt and having the willingness to forgive.
Pope Francis insightfully says: “Giving and forgiving means reproducing in our own lives some small measure of God’s perfection, which gives and forgives superabundantly. For this reason, in the gospel of Luke we do not hear the words, ‘Be perfect’ (Mt 5:48), but rather, ‘Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.’” So, when we are merciful, by giving and/or forgiving, we are allowing the life of God to become more fully alive in us and to flow through us.
I conclude these reflections on Pope Francis and on his theme of mercy by noting his strong valuing of human life. “Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly…” The Holy Father is consistent and comprehensive in the ethic of life that he proposes. His words inspire me to respect human life wherever it is found.
Father Michael Schleupner
Quotations above from Gaudete Et Exsultate, Rejoice and Be Glad, an Apostolic Exhortation by Pope Francis, 2018.
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