The extraordinary ordinariness of Pope Francis's funeral

The most extraordinary aspect of the funeral Mass for Pope Francis was its astonishingly beautiful ordinariness. With the great and the good gathered from around the globe on Saturday in St. Peter’s Square, what unfolded for the most part was a religious observance that could be found on any given Sunday in the humblest Roman Catholic parish on earth. True, few parishes regularly attract an estimated crowd of 250,000 inside and overflowing onto surrounding streets. No, the College of Cardinals, resplendent in red and white vestments under a Mary blue Roman sky, isn’t normally on show all in one go. The dean of the College, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, is rarely – okay, never – the principal concelebrant at the local RC church on the corner. The choir of St. Peter’s hardly ever pitches up to sing the entrance antiphon as the Bishop of Rome’s simple wooden coffin is borne down the steps of a St. Joachim’s or a St. Joseph’s or a St. Maximillian Kolbe’s as they struggle to survive in the heart of every downtown. Yet the words that formally began the Mass were, for faithful and even occasional Catholics, as familiar, as homely, as the homily that goes on too long, as the making of the sign of the Cross that is a deeply ingrained mark of identity and community. “Let us acknowledge our sins and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries. I confess to Almighty God, and you, my brothers and sisters….” Cardinal Re began the Mass. The resonance of the two sentences undoubtedly ran through every listening Catholic heart even as the reference to “the sacred mysteries” must have caused secular puzzlement for many in the 170 delegations present, including heads of state and heads of government. What they signaled, however, was that all were present in Rome for a Roman Catholic Mass, not a cleverly orchestrated political masque where just showing up to be seen was the whole point of the exercise. It was a reminder, too, that the deceased for whom the Requiem was being said and sung in plainchant was a pastor of souls. He was the apostolic successor to the first Apostle, Peter, not a geopolitical figure or garden variety ideologue whose life and purpose could be captured in the fatuous binaries of right wing-left wing, conservative-progressive, liberal-reactionary. As Francis himself said repeatedly, his mission was the spreading of the Gospel, not trying to win a competition for good-better-best forms of government. In his homily at the Mass, Cardinal Re noted the undertone of that admonition in the day’s Gospel. According to John, Jesus, at a post-breakfast test, asks three times whether Simon Peter loves Him. Each time, Peter insists he does. Each time, Jesus says: “Feed my sheep.” Cardinal Re pointed to the parallel of Francis’ self-giving service to Christ over the decades of his priesthood. “Francis gave his life for the sheep,” Cardinal Re said. Indeed, in his very first encyclical after becoming Pope 12 years ago, Francis famously used that very metaphor to insist that those involved in Christian evangelization must take on the “smell of the sheep” in carrying forward Christ’s formative directive to Peter. The meaning, he spelled out in Evangelium Gaudium (the Joy of the Gospel) is inherent in the Mass itself, which is nothing if not a community in communion, something subtly reflected in the very seating arrangements employed by the organizers of Saturday’s Mass. The world’s dignitaries, for example, were organized by name, in alphabetical order, according to the French alphabet. As a result, President Donald Trump ended up extending the peace of Christ to nearby seatmate Emmanuel Macron. They thus lived out concretely – at least for a few moments, willingly or not – the liturgical obligation that Francis expressed as an apolitical imperative when he said: “An evangelizing community is supportive, standing by people every step of the way no matter how difficult or lengthy this may be.” Impolitic, idealistic, naïve, zany as that might seem in a world of zero-sum advantage seekers, it is what Francis called the “missionary key” of Christian faith. It was inherent in the juxtapositions of the Mass that 250,000 attended in St. Peter’s Square, and millions more watched on TV. Whether they discerned it not, they were immersed in what the Catholic liturgy offers each time a Mass is said -– whether in the greatest cathedrals and basilicas or at the gathering of a few greying heads unsure how their building committee is going to pay to fix the church’s leaking roof. Sacrifice begets thanksgiving. Victimization becomes oblation. Death offers reconciliation with God. Above all, which Francis preached from the very start of his pontificate, suffering yields joy. Or at least, within Catholic life, the possibility for such transformation is always and everywhere available through the Mass. It’s why, Francis urged in Evangelium Gaudium, “an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral,” and Christians must not live out their faith “like Lent without Easter.” Fittingly – Francis like – the Pope who authored those word came back from near death only weeks ago to fill St. Peter’s Square with his joyful spirit on Easter Sunday. Then he passed from this life the following day. The great and the good, the simple and unadorned, gathered en masse to bid him goodbye and pray for the repose of his soul. And in the Mass itself, an extraordinarily ordinary beauty was yet again reborn. Peter Stockland is Publisher-Editor of The Catholic Register

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