Reflection on the Papal Visit
Pope Francis in America by Ekklesia Project 4 Nov 2015 In September, the news industry lavished attention on Pope Francis’ visit to the United States. Now, autumn has settled in and news outlets have returned to the usual suspects: politics, sports, and turning a profit for the holidays.
EP endorser Barry Harvey reflects: A few weeks ago I received an email asking if I would like to contribute a brief reflection on the Ekklesia Project website on the significance of Pope Francis’s recent visit to North America. I was particularly intrigued by one of the questions in the email that served as a prompt: “In what ways did he fall short or fail?” I would say not only did he indeed fall short, but that the way he failed was a good thing too. Well, maybe not a good thing, but not surprising either.
There is little doubt that people of all faiths and of none intuitively sensed that in this one man there was an intrusion of the extraordinary into the workaday routine that enthralls most of us most of the time, an incursion of something enigmatic and electrifying that in some way or another has a bearing on their daily lives. I heard one young person say that for many seeing Francis was like seeing Jesus. This is an astute observation, perhaps more than she intended, in part because the Pope does have that character about him, but also because it invites us to turn to the gospels, to the encounters that women and men had with Jesus, to help us interpret reactions to the papal visit, and especially to answer the question of whether and to what extent he fell short or failed during his visit.
I wonder, for example, whether the story of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem might shed some light on this occasion. Many of those who greeted Jesus waving palm branches and singing hosannas either did not understand or refused to accept the implications of his arrival in David’s city that he had set forth in the months leading up to that fateful week, and thus a few days later they could be turned against him as he stood before Pilate.
See more at: http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2015/11/pope-francis-in-america/#sthash.ltBpciED.dpuf
EP endorser Barry Harvey reflects: A few weeks ago I received an email asking if I would like to contribute a brief reflection on the Ekklesia Project website on the significance of Pope Francis’s recent visit to North America. I was particularly intrigued by one of the questions in the email that served as a prompt: “In what ways did he fall short or fail?” I would say not only did he indeed fall short, but that the way he failed was a good thing too. Well, maybe not a good thing, but not surprising either.
There is little doubt that people of all faiths and of none intuitively sensed that in this one man there was an intrusion of the extraordinary into the workaday routine that enthralls most of us most of the time, an incursion of something enigmatic and electrifying that in some way or another has a bearing on their daily lives. I heard one young person say that for many seeing Francis was like seeing Jesus. This is an astute observation, perhaps more than she intended, in part because the Pope does have that character about him, but also because it invites us to turn to the gospels, to the encounters that women and men had with Jesus, to help us interpret reactions to the papal visit, and especially to answer the question of whether and to what extent he fell short or failed during his visit.
I wonder, for example, whether the story of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem might shed some light on this occasion. Many of those who greeted Jesus waving palm branches and singing hosannas either did not understand or refused to accept the implications of his arrival in David’s city that he had set forth in the months leading up to that fateful week, and thus a few days later they could be turned against him as he stood before Pilate.
See more at: http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2015/11/pope-francis-in-america/#sthash.ltBpciED.dpuf
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