(May 29, 2013) Triumphalism brings the Church and Christians to a halt. A triumphalist
Church is a half-way Church that is happy, well-organised and efficient but
denies martyrdom and does not know that martyrs are necessary for the way of the Cross.
The Pope made this observation during his Mass Wednesday morning at the Santa Marta
Residence in the Vatican. He based his brief homily on the Gospel episode of James
and John seeking honourable places in the Kingdom of Jesus, who instead, points to
the way of the Cross. The Pope said “It is the temptation of Christianity without
the Cross, a half-way Church without Jesus. The Pope said that a Church that thinks
only of triumphs and successes, does not follow the rules of Christ, which is about
triumphing through failure, human failure, the failure of the Cross. This, he said,
is something which we all have . The Argentine Pope then recalled an episode in
a dark moment of his spiritual life and asked a favour from the Lord. On the last
day of an annual spiritual retreat, which he preached to nuns, an elderly nun of
80 years of age came to him for confession. As penance for the woman of God, Pope
Francis asked her to pray for a special grace for him, saying if she asked anything
of the Lord, He would grant it. The nun, stopped for a moment, as in prayer and said,
“Of course the Lord will grant you this grace but do not be deceived – in His own
divine manner. Pope Francis said that did him a lot of good, realizing that the Lord
always gives what we ask for - but in His own divine way. And the divine way involves
the Cross, not out of masochism, the Pope said, but for love to the very end. The
Holy Father concluded his homily with a prayer asking the Lord for the grace that
the church may not be a half-way church, but a humble one that walks resolutely just
like Jesus. Source: Sedoc