The Heart of Pope Francis

08-06-2017Weekly ReflectionFr. Brian Jazdzewski

Our current Staff members have been holding things together over the past several days in my vacation absence. Among them is Amanda Burrow, our Coordinator of Religious Education. She graciously agreed to composethe bulletin articles, focusing on Confirmation. While she was busy writing, I was busy reading, praying andquite simply relaxing. I took advantage of doing some reading about Pope Francis. In my reading, I wasreminded by a priest friend to not only learn about his mind, but also to learn his heart. I like that concept whenthinking about our pope, to learn his heart. Hopefully Pope Francis, like any good shepherd, will lead us todiscover an ever deeper relationship with the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

Pope Francis would be the first to remind us that living examples of Jesus are not limited to clergy. In fact, ourpope would be very emphatic in stressing that every baptized person ought to be living as an example of theGood Shepherd. We all remember when our mission began…at our baptism. During that sacrament we weresealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Sacred Chrism was placed upon our head. At that moment, theSpirit of God initiated a relationship with each and every one of us. That’s correct, the Holy Spirit invited usinto relationship, from that moment on, we quite simply respond to the invitation.

Knowing, intellectually, with our minds, that the Holy Spirit’s gifts are with us, are we becoming more awareemotionally, in our hearts. The reality for many of us Americans is that we do well to intellectualize our faithand religion. We do struggle, however, with sensing our faith and religion in our hearts. So often we findbelieving in things we know with our senses, yet struggle in accepting things known with our hearts. The HolySpirit is one of the invisible persons of our God. And yet, we are called, from our baptism, to believe in a Spiritwhom we cannot see. Our invitation is to know that our God wants to reveal Himself to us more eachday…within our hearts.

Consequently, as we accept God’s invitation to know Him more deeply with our hearts, we come to believemore in the God we cannot see. We also regularly remind ourselves that we, each and every one of us, arecalled to live as messengers of Jesus. There are no limits to the transformation God can bring about in Hispeople, the countless Saints of the Church remind us of God’s power. We, the baptized, are continuallystrengthened to be messengers of God’s love through the way we treat Him and one another.