Pope Francis celebrates Mass: a Jesuit perspective
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis celebrated Holy Mass on Wednesday morning, marking the
Feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, the Order to which
the Pope belongs.
The Church chosen for the celebration was the Jesuits’ Mother
Church in Rome, known simply as the “Gesù”.
Father Bernd Hagenkord SJ, director
of Vatican Radio’s German Programme, was part of the congregation. He told Vatican
Radio’s Linda Bordoni that the experience was a fantastic one…
Listen
to the interview…
Father Hangenkord
says that having a Jesuit Pope, celebrating the Feast of Saint Ignatius together at
the tomb of Ignatius was something, up to now, unheard of: “I had never imagined
this could have happened. It was very prayerful; it was a private Mass, so the Pope
was not very ‘Popish’ with all sorts of people helping him”. He celebrated Mass himself
with the help of the Jesuit Father General, Father Nicolas and with Archbishop Ladaria,
who is also a Jesuit.
“The rest were Jesuits and friends from other congregations,
celebrating St. Ignatius together: fantastic!”
Fr. Hagenkord says at the beginning
of the celebration Father General Nicolas mentioned the fact that Francis is both
Pope and a Jesuit. He said Francis will always be a Jesuit, “he thinks like a Jesuit,
he talks like a Jesuit – the way he prepares his homily – everything is Jesuit.”
He
affirmed that within the congregation there is a very strong feeling of community.
“You sense the familiarity of things, of thoughts, of expressions, of words, of the
way he composes a homily – always having three points for example – this is a very
Jesuitical, or Ignatian way of doing things”.
Regarding the homily, Fr. Hagenkord
says the Pope obviously understands St. Ignatius very well, and you can see that in
the fact that he hardly ever mentioned St. Ignatius. “It wasn’t a homily on Ignatius
but on the centrality of Jesus Christ for a Christian life”.
Below, please
find the complete text of Pope Francis' homily at the Gesù for the Feast of Saint
Ignatius of Loyola:
In this Eucharist in which we celebrate our Father
Ignatius of Loyola, in light of the Readings we have heard, I would like to propose
three simple thoughts guided by three expressions: to put Christ and the Church in
the centre; to allow ourselves to be conquered by Him in order to serve; to feel the
shame of our limitations and our sins, in order to be humble before Him and before
the brothers.
1. The emblem of us Jesuits is a monogram, the acronym of “Jesus,
the Saviour of Mankind” (IHS). Every one of you can tell me: we know that very well!
But this crest continually reminds us of a reality that we must never forget: the
centrality of Christ for each one of us and for the whole Company, the Company that
Saint Ignatius wanted to name “of Jesus” to indicate the point of reference. Moreover,
even at the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises he places our Lord Jesus Christ,
our Creator and Saviour (Spiritual Exercises, 6) in front of us. And this leads all
of us Jesuits, and the whole Company, to be “decentred,” to have “Christ more and
more” before us, the “Deus semper maior”, the “intimior intimo meo”, that leads us
continually outside ourselves, that brings us to a certain kenosis, a “going beyond
our own loves, desires, and interests” (Sp. Ex., 189). Isn’t it obvious, the question
for us? For all of us? “Is Christ the centre of my life? Do I really put Christ at
the centre of my life?” Because there is always the temptation to want to put ourselves
in the centre. And when a Jesuit puts himself and not Christ in the centre, he goes
astray. In the first Reading, Moses forcefully calls upon the people to love the Lord,
to walk in His ways, “because He is your life” (cf. Deut. 30, 16-20). Christ is our
life! The centrality of Christ corresponds also to the centrality of the Church: they
are two flames that cannot be separated: I cannot follow Christ except in and
with the Church. And even in this case we Jesuits and the whole Company, are
not at the centre, we are, so to speak, “displaced”, we are at the service of Christ
and of the Church, the Bride of Christ our Lord, who is our Holy Mother Hierarchical
Church (cf. Sp. Ex. 353). To be men routed and grounded in the Church: that is what
Jesus desires of us. There cannot be parallel or isolated paths for us. Yes, paths
of searching, creative paths, yes, this is important: to go to the peripheries, so
many peripheries. This takes creativity, but always in community, in the Church, with
this membership that give us the courage to go forward. To serve Christ is to love
this concrete Church, and to serve her with generosity and with the spirit of obedience.
2. What is the way to live this double centrality? Let us look at the experience
of Saint Paul, which was also the experience of Saint Ignatius. The Apostle, in the
Second Reading that we heard, writes: I press on towards the perfection of Christ,
“because I have indeed been conquered by Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:12). For Paul it came
along the road to Damascus, for Ignatius in his house at Loyola, but the fundamental
point is the same: to allow oneself to be conquered by Christ. I seek Jesus, I serve
Jesus, because He sought me first, because I was conquered by Him: and this is the
heart of our experience. But He is first, always. In Spanish there is a word that
is very graphic, that explains this well: He “primerea” first ahead of us, “El nos
primerea”. He is always first. When we arrive, He has already arrived and is expecting
us. And here I want to recall the meditation on the Kingdom in the Second Week. Christ
our Lord, the eternal King, calls each one of us, saying to us: “He who wants to come
with Me must work with Me, because following Me in suffering, he will follow after
Me likewise in glory” (Sp. Ex. 95): Being conquered by Christ in order to offer to
this King our whole person and all our hard work (cf. Sp. Ex. 96); to say to the Lord
that he would do anything for His greater service and praise, to imitate Him in bearing
even injury, contempt, poverty (Sp. Ex. 98). But I think of our brother in Syria in
this moment. To allow ourselves to be conquered by Christ means to be always directed
towards what is in front of me, toward the goal of Christ (cf. Phil. 3:14), and to
ask oneself with truth and sincerity: “What have I done for Christ? What am doing
for Christ? What must I do for Christ?” (cf. Sp. Ex. 53).
3. And I come to
the final point. In the Gospel, Jesus says to us: “Whoever would save his life will
lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it . . . If anyone is ashamed
of me . . .” (Lk 9:23). And so on. The shame of the Jesuit. The invitation that Jesus
makes is for us to never be ashamed of Him, but to always follow Him with total dedication,
trusting Him and entrusting ourselves to Him. But looking at Jesus, as Saint Ignatius
teaches us in the First Week, above all looking at Christ crucified, we have that
very human and noble feeling that is the shame of not reaching the highest point;
we look at the wisdom of Christ and at our ignorance; at His omnipotence and our weakness;
at His justice and our iniquity; at His goodness and our wickedness (cf. Sp. Ex. 59).
Ask for the grace of shame; the shame that comes from the constant dialogue of mercy
with Him; the shame that makes us blush before Jesus Christ; the shame that puts us
in tune with the heart of Christ who is made sin for me; the shame that harmonises
our heart in tears and accompanies us in the daily following of “my Lord”. And this
always brings us, as individuals and as a Company, to humility, to living this great
virtue. Humility that makes us understand, each day, that it is not for us to build
the Kingdom of God, but it is always the grace of God working within us; humility
that pushes us to put our whole being not at the service of ourselves and our own
ideas, but at the service of Christ and of the Church, like clay pots, fragile, inadequate,
insufficient, but having within them an immense treasure that we carry and that we
communicate (2 Cor. 4:7). It is always pleasant for me to think of the sunset of the
Jesuit, when a Jesuit finishes his life, when the sun goes down. And two icons of
the sunset of the Jesuit always come to me: one classical, that of Saint Francis Xavier,
looking at China. Art has painted this sunset so many times, this ‘end’ of Xavier.
Even in literature, in that beautiful peace by Pemàn. At the end, having nothing,
but in the sight of the Lord; it does me good to thing about this. The other sunset,
the other icon that comes to me as an example, is that of Padre Arrupe in the last
interview in the refugee camp, when he told us – something he himself said – “I say
this as if it were my swan song: pray.” Prayer, the union with Jesus. And, after having
said this, he caught the plane, and arrived at Rome with the stroke that was the beginning
of so long and so exemplary a sunset. Two sunsets, two icons that all of us would
do well to look at, and to go back to these two. And to ask for the grace that our
sunset will be like theirs.
Dear brothers, let us turn again to Our Lady,
to her who bore Christ in her womb and accompanied the first steps of the Church.
May she help us to always put Christ and His Church at the centre of our lives and
of our ministry. May she, who was the first and most perfect disciple of her Son help
us to allow ourselves to be conquered by Christ in order to follow Him and to serve
Him in every situation. May she that answered the announcement of the Angel with the
most profound humility: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according
to thy word” (Lk 1:38), make us feel the shame for our inadequacy before the treasure
that has been entrusted to us, in order to live the virtue of humility before God.
May our journey be accompanied by the paternal intercession of Saint Ignatius and
of all the Jesuit saints, who continue to teach us to do all things “ad majorem Dei
gloriam.”