I stay on my side and you stay on yours!
In a week where a remaining bulwark of Christian duty and civilization was found with a pillow over his face in a remote ranch an hour from the border and nothing was done, a note of chaos accompanies Francis through Mexico.
In one of those tightly controlled political events where Francis meets the peoples, some greedy or mischievous person pulled the tottery old Pope over.
For a moment there was no mercy. The joy that only God can give did not radiate. The closeness with the One whose name happens to be Mercy, whose mercy you can only feel when you permit yourself to be embraced by Him and know that mercy is always first and justice is in last place vanished, and mercy no longer covered sinners like some wet Lutheran blanket. Francis lost his cool and yelled at that “selfish” someone. Suddenly it was the family-Francis, the guy they know in the kitchen and sometimes the dinner hall at the Domus Sanctae Marthae condo.
Now selfish is an odd word for a Pope to use. It’s not fine-tuned. It means putting yourself before others or perhaps taking too much of something for yourself. This grabber in the crowd, Pope Francis felt, was trying to have too much of the Pope. You can’t just drag the Pope over the carefully placed partitions because then there won’t be enough Francis for the rest. You can’t hog the Francis. It is for the whole world to share equally.
But one might ask, “What about embracing closeness? What happened to going out to the boundaries and peripheries? What about evil laws and rules that erect walls which keep people out? Perhaps someone thought there was a Holy Door of Mercy right there instead of a police barricade. Maybe he or she just wanted to dance with Francis one time, but he ruined it by getting mad as if something was violated.
Los Federales are predicting a couple hundred thousand will travel to Francis’ Holy Mass to Erase the Southern Border today, but don’t count on it. All we ever hear are predictions and estimates. We see ‘selfies’ but we never get complete photos. Actual Catholics don’t visit Francis so much, and one gets the sense that those few ‘faithful’ who do may be more of the pushy sort.