Transparent humanity of Pope Francis

When Pope Francis speaks of the poor, the last, the suburbs, when he remembers mercy, we feel the authenticity of his life making credible his appeals, and we feel called to be part of the categories of true disciples of Jesus, to be, as religious, what our vocation requires. However, in practice, we find it hard to recognize us as these and we turn that invitation into very spiritual words, but not in real life. The genius of Pope Francis is precisely to make present and specific the novelty of the Gospel and to translate it into continuous gestures, clear and provocative, that make attractive the Christian life to the multitude who listens.

His person exudes a charm of gentleness and simplicity so human and so evangelical that questions and sometimes disturbs, just as it happened to Jesus during his preaching. In Francis, that of Assisi and that of today, there is the charm of the Beatitudes that Jesus proclaimed as a synthesis of his life and his mission. Jesus is the new man, the new Adam, the Son, whom the Father sent to redeem the old Adam lost his self-referentiality. It is the newness of God ever present.

If anyone is in Christ is a new creation

"If anyone is in Christ is a new creation, the former things have passed away, they are become new" (2 Cor 15, 17), the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, he who has experienced the radical newness of his life, after he met Christ on the road to Damascus, and be baptized in his death and resurrection by Ananias.

"In reality it is only in the mystery of the Verb made flesh the mystery of man finds true light" (GS 22). The new humanism has been realized in the Incarnation of Christ, the Son of God made man, which was made manifest the divine humanity, the only one that can manifest the new man, created in the image of his Creator. In fact, it is not possible to state the fullness of humanity separated from Christ, who has made it divine. "In Christ" we also can be fully human, just because we share in his divine humanity. The new man is born from the baptismal font, which is the fertile womb of the Church, the Body of Christ.

The pastoral challenge is to show visible the mystery of deification of man, which took place in Baptism: a new person in Christ, because in Christ, lives the spirit of the evangelical Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes: poster of Christian humanism

Christ is the poor who entrusts on care of the Father, who works with his hands, which lacks nothing and enriches many with his poverty. He is consoling because he knows the bitter taste of tears, he is the meek and humble who welcomed into him the wounded heart of every human being. And Jesus hungers and thirsts for justice, he is the merciful and faithful, which seeks sinners and eats with them. The purity of his heart is so transparent as to allow a glimpse of the Father's heart, tender to all his children. He is our peace, he has reconciled in himself what had been separated from sin: heaven and earth, visible and invisible, man and God, man and his brother. In Christ, everything is reduced to the unit, there are no dichotomies and contradictions, he has given us his Spirit that makes convivial the difference, richness of communion.

It is Christ who is persecuted because he opposes the evil deeds and his life calls us to justice and truth (cf. The Book of Widsom 2, 12 ff). And while being insulted and unjustly condemned, he forgives and blesses. This is the new humanism, this is the new life flowing from Baptism.

Consecrated: Pilgrims of the Beatitudes

In the Church there is a special Christian vocation Christian that is called to make visible the mystery that has taken place in baptism: so are those who are passionate about the life of Christ received in Baptism, which respond to the call to follow Him more closely and try daily to go along on the streets of humanization, by the Holy Spirit, the creator of new life.

They are the religious, the pilgrims of the Beatitudes, which is the host of countless men and women who are on the frontiers of history, on the existential and social outskirts and that, from the very heart of the Church, they move freely to her borders and beyond her borders. They weave relations of communion with everyone, stooping to wounded man, and, new Samaritans, take charge of the way to the inviolable dignity of each person.

Their life is a theological anthropology in place, working and humble, which shows the beauty and freedom of belonging to Christ,  being new people in Him. It is no coincidence that Pope Francis is a religious, who lives in a transparent way the novelty of Christianity and took the name of Francis of Assisi, who has fascinated and continues to fascinate the world, beyond the very frontiers of the Church.

When Pope Francis turns to us, religious men and women,  appeals to the prophetic power of the Beatitudes, to wake the world from its sleepy indifference or of any attempt to assert a  disfigured and violent humanity that wants to approve all one-way, walking towards self destruction. He invites us to become more and more poor and free, in order to truly love and present ourselves to the world with the power of gentleness and peace.

Some of the icons of the new humanity

Blessed are the poor

Father Aldo Marchesini, medical SCJ, is living the vocation to the religious life and to  the medicine, two passions for Christ and for humanity that go hand in hand. Father Aldo Marchesini was awarded the prestigious World population award of the UN Fund to the population. Physician and missionary, has lived and worked in Africa for over forty years: "To live with the poor is an extraordinary experience, because little by little we understand what Jesus said: the wise and the intelligent are unable to understand the secrets of the world, which are open and obvious to the little ones and the poor".

Blessed are the merciful

Six sisters of Poverelle dead with the Ebola virus, the epidemic that broke out in 1995, and that persists today even more deadly and widespread. Sister Floralba Rondi, Sister Clarangela Ghilardi, Sister Danielangela Sorti, Sister Dinarosa Belleri, Sister Annaelvira Ossoli and Sister Vitarosa Zorza have given their lives to serve the sicks in Zaire, now Congo, in a small town in the region of Bandundu. Six religious missionaries who have chosen to stay with their people to share their lot, in life and in death. In them the mercy of God was made visible and tangible, so that as Christ called them, they had loved with an "excessive love" and followed it to the end.

Blessed are the pure in heart

Sister Maria Laura Mainetti, Daughter of the Cross, on the evening of June 6, 2000, while preparing to give the help required by three girls, was killed by them in Chiavenna. She died forgiving and praying for the young girls, with a pure heart, purified by the gratuitousness of love for Christ, who lived in the simplicity of everyday life. Shortly before she was killed he wrote to a sister "... I hope you will seek and find Jesus among the poor and in your daily life. You'll be really happy".

Blessed are the meek

Sister Leonella Sgorbati, a Consolata missionary, killed in Somalia on September 17, 2006 "This nun, who for many years served the poor and children in Somalia, died pronouncing the word 'forgiveness': this is the most authentic Christian witness, a peaceful sign of contradiction which shows the victory of love over hatred and evil" (Benedict XVI's Angelus on September 24, 2006).

Blessed are the peacemakers

Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, a Jesuit, disappeared on July 27 of 2013, is known to have re-established, in Syria, in the eighties, the monastic Syriac- Catholic community of Mar Musa, heir to a hermit and cenobitic tradition dating back to the sixth century. He has committed much of his life in dialogue with other faiths, especially with Islam. He is been kidnapped and like sucked by Syrian hell, in the civil war in which more than three years is sowing death and destruction in the Middle Eastern country. A seed of peace in a barren desert of conflict and death, a seed destined to bear much fruit.

In Christ Jesus the new humanism

The Italian Bishops choosing the theme of the next conference of the Church "In Christ Jesus the new humanism", were led by the Spirit into the clear desire to respond to his urgent appeals and to not be very different from prophetic humanism of the present Bishop of Rome. The Church is the people of the Beatitudes, the humble and simple people, sensitive to the voice of God speaking in our heart, but she is always in need of purification and internal reform, to take off herself all that blocks her freedom and dirties the beauty of her testimony.

In the wake of so many Christians, and among them also many religious men and women, we want to get out of the mentality of the old man in order to set out resolutely in the way of the evangelical Beatitudes.

Giuseppina Alberghina, sjbp

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