Fratelli Tuti Epilogue

The exercise in analysis that has been the last 7 bulletin essays was based on my conviction that Pope Francis has something important to say, that he says it in ways (and in length) that puts off most folks, and that my job is to be a presenter/interpreter of his thinking. 

What is the Holy Father’s vision, when we come right down to it?  It is the vision of the Kingdom of God, the vision of authentic Christian community, the vision of a return to life, to paraphrase Jesus, “the way it was to be in the beginning” (Matthew 19:8).

William Blake was certain that in his “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” that once we lost innocence it could not be recovered.  But he did think that we could still seek and find a life of wisdom—lost innocence tempered by experience and turned into something that is still beautiful.  Pope Francis shares this belief, and he shares it with Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb.  Part of the inspiration for Fratelli Tutti, after all, was the meeting they had in Abu Dhabi, when in the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together they declared,  “God has created all human beings equal in rights, duties, and dignity, and has called them to live together as brothers and sisters.”

Is this notion of the Kingdom simply utopian and impossible for us to realize, here and now?  Perhaps it is, but that is not really the question.  We should be asking if it is worth striving toward.  It is hard to answer “no” to that.   The Psalms teach us this: “How good and how pleasant it is, for brothers (and sisters) to live in unity!” (Psalm 133).  It is the basis of Jesus’ “Priestly Prayer” for unity (John 17).  It is the hope of St Paul in his theology of the Mystical Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:12ff).  It was the fervent prayer of St Ignatius of Antioch for all the churches to whom he wrote on his way to martyrdom in the Colosseum (ca 112 CE).  It was the vision of the Jesuit scientist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (quoted by Flannery O’Connor), that everything that rises must converge.  Our destiny is to unite—why not start now (or at least try to start now)?

The further question is how much do we trust in the working of the Holy Spirit, the power of the grace (that is, the transforming love) that comes to us in Jesus Christ, the willingness we have to put ourselves in the service of God.  Might this involve rejection?  Of course, it might—it probably will!  So what?  Mother Teresa would always say that God never called her to be successful, only faithful.  She was faithful through terrible dark nights—why not us?