Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

This has been a great week to be a Roman Catholic in the United States. Pope Francis’ visit has been a truly remarkable experience for us: for the first time in many years, many of us find ourselves proud to be Catholics again, as Francis has reminded us of the living, generous heritage of our Church in America, even as he has challenged us to live up to the lofty ideals that we profess. 

His visit, for all its pomp and circumstance, has been a study in healthy contrasts. From wheels down at Andrews Airforce base to his departure tonight for Rome, he has taught us as much by deed as word, as he alternated his activities: from great and solemn meetings and speeches and liturgies to simple encounters with ordinary people, with the poor and the disenfranchised.

After he spoke with tremendous moral authority to our fractured Congress, reminding its members of their obligations to immigrants, to the promotion of promotion of peace and justice, grounding his words not in highfaluting theology but the golden rule, he chose to have lunch at with the homeless and mentally ill at a parish mission operated by Catholic Charities in the shadow of our Nation’s capitol.

After his stern address to the United Nations, he went to pray with religious leaders of many traditions at the Ground Zero memorial, and passed to a Harlem grammar school where he played with immigrant kids and encouraged them to dream.

Last night, in a brilliantly spontaneous moment at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, he threw away his prepared speech and spoke lovingly, tenderly, conversationally with the throng, (He was also serenaded by Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul!).

Today he will visit prisoners and their families in a penitentiary before he celebrates Mass on the “Rocky” stairs at the end of Philadelphia’s mall. In each and every occasion, he has reminded us that the spirit we heard about in today’s first reading, the spirit God poured out on the elders of Israel, is poured out on each of us believers, a spirit that waits, that longs to be unleashed in the world. And he bids us see God’s spirit at work in all people of good will, just as Jesus in the Gospel reminds us that whoever is not against us is for us.

Of all the many things he said, two struck me hard. From the pulpit at Madison Square Garden, (the usual parish church of the New York Knicks and and Rangers, and regularly the pulpit of Sts. Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon), he reflected on what it means for us to live in the modern city. Listen to what he said, for it seems directly addressed directly to us here at Christ our Hope:

“Living in a big city is not always easy. A multicultural context presents many complex challenges. Yet big cities are a reminder of the hidden riches present in our world: in the diversity of its cultures, traditions and historical experiences. In the variety of its languages, costumes and cuisine. Big cities bring together all the different ways that we human beings have discovered to express the meaning of life, wherever we may be.

But big cities also conceal the faces of all those people who don’t appear to belong, or are second- class citizens. In big cities, beneath the roar of traffic, beneath “the rapid pace of change”, so many faces pass by unnoticed because they have no “right” to be there, no right to be part of the city. They are the foreigners, the children who go without schooling, those deprived of medical insurance, the homeless, the forgotten elderly. These people stand at the edges of our great avenues, in our streets, in deafening anonymity. They become part of an urban landscape which is more and more taken for granted, in our eyes, and especially in our hearts. "Knowing that Jesus still walks our streets, that he is part of the lives of his people, that he is involved with us in one vast history of salvation, fills us with hope. A hope that liberates us from the forces pushing us to isolation and lack of concern for the lives of others, for the life of our city. A hope that frees us from empty “connections”, from abstract analyses, or sensationalist routines. A hope that is unafraid of involvement, which acts as a leaven wherever we happen to live and work. A hope that makes us see, even in the midst of smog, the presence of God as he continues to walk the streets of our city.”

Even in the midst of smog, he reminds us of the presence of God who continues to walk the streets of our city. Yesterday, in Philadelphia, Pope Francis reminded us of one of our first American saints, Mother Katherine Drexel. Katherine was the heir to a great fortune, a debutante, a woman of immense generosity of spirit and goods. As a young privileged woman, Katherine went to Rome and was able to meet with Pope Leo XIII. This is what Pope Francis says about that meeting. “When she spoke to Pope Leo XIII of the needs of the missions [in the United States], the Pope – he was a very wise Pope! – asked her pointedly: ‘What about you? What are you going to do?’ Those words changed Katharine’s life, because they reminded her that, in the end, every Christian man and woman, by virtue of baptism, has received a mission. Each one of us has to respond, as best we can, to the Lord’s call to build up his Body, the Church.” Katherine, like the rich young man in the Gospel, gave up everything, and spent her life in service to the underserved Native American and Black communities in the United

States. That’s why we call her a saint, a venerable, blessed, holy servant of God. No less than Katherine, no less than Francis himself, each of us, in our way, “has to respond, as best we can, to the Lord’s call to build up his Body, the Church.” That, I think, is what it means to be Catholic. It’s good to be reminded of that every now and then.

Fr. Tom Lucas S.J.