Pope Francis and the Event of Encounter

John C. Cavadini, Donald Wallenfang, Cavadini, Wallenfang

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781498243360
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Konfessionen

Since being elected to the Chair of St. Peter on March 13, 2013, Pope Francis has given unique shape to the meaning of the new evangelization. With his emphasis on the concept of encounter, and his stunning expression of pastoral ministry in Evangelii gaudium, the present pontiff has breathed new life into the Christian vocation to evangelize. This book brings together the voices of fifteen American Catholic scholars around the theme of Pope Francis and the Event of Encounter. Inaugurating the new series, Global Perspectives on the New Evangelization, this book incorporates a variety of approaches and questions in order to amplify the theology behind the pontificate of Pope Francis and the most recent developments in the new evangelization. Among the topics treated in the book are mercy, ecology, doctrine, culture, and the life and ministry of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. The reader will be delighted with an array of perspectives that promise to give inspiration for embarking on further frontiers of the new evangelization.

Cultural and Political Encounters

CHAPTER 11

The Movement of Intercessory Prayer and the Openness to Encounter

—Leonard J. DeLorenzo

Abstract:

Beginning on the first night of his pontificate, Pope Francis has both practiced and prescribed a low-stakes form of encounter: the exchange of intentions in prayer, or, in an even lower-stakes form, the exchange of good wishes. In this essay I ruminate on this simple gesture as a key to understanding the particular style of Francis’s Petrine ministry (one which has a remarkably Pauline spirit) and his method for pursuing the goals of the New Evangelization, especially to the extent that those goals are oriented towards opening spaces for personal encounters. By way of examination, I will look to both his opening address from the balcony of St. Peter’s and his blessing from the balcony of the U.S. Capitol Building, reading both of these moments in light of his treatment of St. Paul in Evangelii gaudium, his teaching on the practice of love in the home from chapter 4 of Amoris laetitia, and even his address to the members of the U.S. Congress. The study of Francis’s promotion of the spiritual and even political practice of intercessory prayer will give form to his unrelenting preference for the “concrete Catholic thing” over what might otherwise remain in abstraction as the “idea of the thing.”

In his first encounter with the city and the world, Pope Francis bowed his head for a blessing before offering his own blessing in return. The moment was stunning in its simplicity and yet, in retrospect, it was the first move in a style of evangelization that, at times, utilizes low-stakes invitations for encountering others. On that first night, Francis practiced what he would go on to preach: that making room in oneself for the needs of others is necessary for realizing our common good in Jesus Christ.

For those who pray, this action of making room is done as intercessory prayer; for those who do not pray, this action may take the form of sending good wishes. Disciples, in their manner, imitate the missionary spirit of St. Paul while those of good will who are not (yet) disciples participate in the same movement in the way they are able. When one allows the needs and joy of another to enter into his or her own heart, the Gospel is already present: the Good News of Jesus Christ is that we are made one in the love of the Father. With his simple practice and prescription, Francis does not demand that belief come before action but rather acknowledges that action may later lead to belief. The whole point of the Gospel is to heal what ails us and bring us to completion as one in Christ. What Francis believes is that “we achieve fulfillment when we break down walls and our hearts are filled with faces and names!”540

In this essay, I will attend to Francis’s emphasis on intercessory prayer, both explicit and implicit, which is both a way of pursuing the mission of evangelization and a fruit of it. I will begin with Francis repeating his opening act when standing on another balcony—this time in Washington, D.C.—and then consider his message to the U.S. Congress and the United Nations from that perspective. I will root these words and actions in his missionary vision as primarily found in Evangelii gaudium, with a special eye to both the witness of St. Paul and the maternal love of the Blessed Mother. In the third section, I will attend to the fourth chapter of Amoris laetitia where Francis provides commentary on St. Paul’s hymn of love from 1 Corinthians 13. In the practice of love, the choreography of the Gospel becomes routine as divine concern is translated in human terms, especially in the family. In the end, I argue that Francis’s repeated recommendation and exercise of the movement of intercessory prayer heralds the graced human ability to participate in the act of creation, whereby space and time is afforded to the other for his or her own good.

A More Perfect Union

As the first pontiff in history to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, Pope Francis’s speech on September 24, 2015, was historic, but what he said and did on the balcony of the U.S. Capitol immediately afterwards was revolutionary. Most revolutions have a violent or dramatic flare to them—this one was unassuming, in the spirit of the “revolution of tenderness”541 he calls for elsewhere. While facing the people, Francis united his petition to God with a request for his audience:

Father of all, bless these. Bless each of them. Bless the families. Bless them all. And I ask you all please to pray for me. And if there are among you any who do not believe or cannot pray, I ask you to please send good wishes my way.

Looking out on those gathered before him and beyond them to the rest of the U.S. citizenry, Francis makes a claim on them and invites them to make a claim on him. In directing his prayer to the “Father of all,” he claims all people as children of God and thus addresses those to whom he speaks as his brothers and sisters. In asking these brothers and sisters to pray for him, he invites them to practice doing for him what he seeks to do for them: consider the good of another and begin to desire that good.

To pray for him as he is praying for others is the most complete form of reciprocal caring since the one who prays for him would also call upon the God whose children Francis claims we all are, thereby making the intercession an act done by one who relates himself or herself to Francis as brother or sister. Yet with the caveat he adds at the end, Francis makes room for those who do not or cannot pray, who would otherwise consider the request for prayers as not addressed to them. To ask these whom he himself also claims as his brothers and sisters to send good wishes his way, he issues an invitation for them to share in the communal action without first having to muster the belief that underlies it. A request to send good wishes does not ask too much, though it does a...