It
has been an exciting week here in the United States with the first visit of
Pope Francis to our country. He is the
first pope to ever address a joint session of Congress. He has captured the hearts of so many, both
Catholic and non-Catholic, both Christian and non-Christian. I was listening to the report of his address to
the United Nations in New York on National Public Radio; the reporter was so
excited to share an interview she did with a Muslim lady who works for the
United Nations. The United Nations had a
lottery to choose which of its employees would be able to attend his address in
the assembly hall. She said that she
prayed again and again to Allah that she would be chosen, and she was so full
of joy that she had been chosen and would be able to hear him in person. The reporter found it so exciting that a
believer in another faith tradition would pray to her own god in hopes of being
able to see the Pope. We had quite a number of people from our parish
travel up to Philadelphia and Washington to be there for the Pope’s visit. I have loved seeing their photos that they’ve
sent in texts and on the internet. We look forward to hearing their stories
when they get back.
The message that we’ve heard from the letter of
James these past five weeks is that we need to be doers of the Word not just
hearers of the Word, that our faith is just not be something that remains in
our hearts, but rather our faith is to bear fruit in the world – boy does that
message coincide with what we have heard from the Pope this week on his visit
to the United States, of how we are obligated to be good stewards of the
environment, of how we are to treat the poor and the immigrant with dignity and
respect. Pope Francis showed this with his actions, not
just his words – with his visit to a Catholic Charities Shelter in Washington,
where he told the residents that he saw the face of St Joseph in them, a man
who had no shelter and no home in which his child could be born, and to his
visit to a poor Catholic School in East Harlem, New York. Many people who heard the Pope’s address to
Congress were impressed with the 4 Americans he mentioned as people of faith
and doers of God’s Word: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Dorothy Day,
and Thomas Merton. Though we Catholics are very familiar with Day
and Merton, many in the secular media did not know much about them, and were
scrambling to find out who they were. What is interesting is that both Dorothy Day and
Thomas Merton were individuals who lived very secular lives as young adults,
lives very much apart from God, but once they had conversions of heart, they
devoted their lives to living out God’s call for them in their lives, very
radical lives indeed. Pope Francis praised Day, the founder of the Catholic
Worker Movement, for her social activism, her passion for justice, and her love
for the poor and the oppressed. He
singled out Merton’s work toward greater respect and dialogue between different
cultures and religions, in the way he challenged the assumptions of his
day. And Merton did this while living as
a Trappist monk in the Abbey of Gethsemene near Bardstown, Kentucky.
The
Pope’s actions, and the examples he gave, are in contrast to those whom James
points out in his letter, of the rich who store up their material wealth and
possessions, but who do so on the backs of the poor whom they disrespect and
oppress. They have great material
rewards here on earth, but will not find their reward in God’s Kingdom. We
can use our influence and riches to help others, in works of kindness and mercy
and goodness, we can earn a good living and still follow the values of the
Gospel, or we can use our wealth and riches in ways that do not proclaim God’s
Kingdom on earth. We see many examples
of this in our present day. This
past week, news broke that a company run by a former hedge fund manager bought
the rights to an obscure drug that fights toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection
that can be severe in those patients with compromised immune systems such as those
who have cancer and HIV. This company
promptly increased the prices of this 62-year old drug from $13.50 per pill to
$750 per pill, a level that was seen as exploiting the poor and vulnerable just
to make a profit. As James challenges us today, do we amass our riches on the
backs of the poor, through oppression and injustice?
Our
human tendency is to fear those who are different from us. Often, we want to exclude them from our group and marginalize them in our
society. We often
are offended by individuals who rock the boat or who challenge what we think or
what we believe, who challenge the norms and assumptions of society. In
the Gospel today, we see the disciples wanting to exclude those who do good
works in Jesus’ name but who are not part of the group of disciples. We
see in Pope Francis a desire for us to dialogue and work together, to find
common ground and to care for the well-being of all. So
many people in the world today see our reality as the insiders vs the
outsiders, as the liberals vs the conservatives, as one country vs another, as
us vs them. Pope
Francis sees it differently. Our
Catholic faith sees it differently. This
is one quote from Pope Francis that I took away from his address to Congress: "Our
efforts must aim at restoring hope, righting wrongs, maintaining commitments,
and thus promoting the well-being of individuals and of peoples." It is a message that brings us together, that
does not conquer or divide. Hopefully
the message Pope Francis is bringing to our nation and the world this week
through his visit to the United States will challenge us in the way we live out
our faith as individuals and as a society.
