Molding and pasting things awkwardly and inappropriately together
Pope Francis has composed a special prayer for his untimely Jubilee Year of Mercy. It strikes a few of his common and somewhat troubling materialist notes.
Lord Jesus Christ, You have taught us to be merciful like the heavenly Father, and have told us that whoever sees you sees Him. Show us your face and we will be saved.
Your loving gaze freed Zacchaeus and Matthew from being enslaved by money; the adulteress and Magdalene from seeking happiness only in created things; made Peter weep after his betrayal, and assured Paradise to the repentant thief. Let us hear, as if addressed to each one of us, the words that you spoke to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God!”
Tax collectors enslaved by money, prostitutes, and thieves are all materialistic sinners. This message is a good one, it’s just characteristically about money and things.
You are the visible face of the invisible Father, of the God who manifests his power above all by forgiveness and mercy: let the Church be your visible face in the world, its Lord risen and glorified.
Does God manifest his power above all by forgiveness and mercy? What about by his actual power, by his creation, or by his judgments. Is mercy first?
Can the Church be God’s visible face? Can the Church be it’s Lord?
You willed that your ministers would also be clothed in weakness in order that they may feel compassion for those in ignorance and error: let everyone who approaches them feel sought after, loved, and forgiven by God.
Can people not ‘clothed in weakness’ feel compassion for others?
Send your Spirit and consecrate every one of us with its anointing, so that the Jubilee of Mercy may be a year of grace from the Lord, and your Church, with renewed enthusiasm, may bring good news to the poor, proclaim liberty to captives and the oppressed, and restore sight to the blind.
What is the good news that Pope Francis feels the Church brings to the poor? Is it the Gospel, or is it some kind of liberation from poverty, or as he may call it, ‘captivity and oppression?’
