“Christ is risen; he is alive! He is no longer a prisoner of death, he is no longer wrapped in the shroud, and therefore we cannot confine him to a fairy tale, we cannot make him a hero of the ancient world or think of him as a statue in a museum! On the contrary, we must look for him and this is why we cannot remain stationary. We must take action, set out to look for him: look for him in life, look for him in the faces of our brothers and sisters, look for him in everyday business, look for him everywhere except in the tomb.”
With these words Pope Francis opened his homily for Easter Sunday. A homily he could not deliver but a message that he wanted the world to hear.
Since his unexpected death on Monday morning much time has been given in the media trying to sum up his life and pontificate, perhaps a good deal of those words and time would have been better spent praying for his eternal rest. How is it possible to summarise a life, to give judgements about its effect and motives, as if we are in a far better potion to understand and offer opinions. I certainly am not going to fall into that chasm today at this Mass as we join the rest of the world praying for him.
From the beginning of his Petrine ministry the Holy Father was clear about his intentions:
“My wish is that all of us,… will have the courage,.. to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Lord’s Cross; to build the Church on the Lord’s blood which was poured out on the Cross; and to profess the one glory: Christ crucified. And in this way, the Church will go forward.
My prayer for all of us is that the Holy Spirit, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother, will grant us this grace: to walk, to build, to profess Jesus Christ crucified. Amen.”
This is what he said in his first homily after his election: to walk, to build to profess Jesus Christ. He confirmed it on the day of the inauguration of that ministry as Bishop of Rome when he concluded his homily:
“To protect Jesus with Mary, to protect the whole of creation, to protect each person, especially the poorest, to protect ourselves: this is a service that the Bishop of Rome is called to carry out, yet one to which all of us are called, so that the star of hope will shine brightly. Let us protect with love all that God has given us!”
Perhaps in this Jubilee Year of Hope in the very manner in which he lived the Jubilee, he has left us a testament of faith and hope. The bright star of hope was not in his leadership, but in Jesus himself. To make the risen one alive in the way we treat ourselves, our neighbours and our world. The Gospel is good news not because of the eloquence of the words we speak but in the quality of the lives we live. We have hope because we live hope. Coming, as he did on Easter day into St Peter’s square to greet the pilgrims, fragile as he was, was a lived sign of hope in the risen Lord. A lived example of what Peter said in today’s first reading:
“We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” This was /is the ministry of Peter today; it is our responsibility also as a disciple of Jesus. To do what he asked in today’s gospel: “Go into the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” This is what Pope Francis urged us on Easter day in his final homily:
“The Jubilee invites us to renew the gift of hope within us, to surrender our sufferings and our concerns to hope, to share it with those whom we meet along our journey and to entrust to hope the future of our lives and the destiny of the human family... Let us run towards Jesus, let us rediscover the inestimable grace of being his friends. Let us allow his Word of life and truth to shine in our life.”
As the great theologian Henri de Lubac said, “It should be enough to understand this: Christianity is Christ. No, truly, there is nothing else but this. In Christ we have everything” (Les responsabilités doctrinales des catholiques dans le monde d'aujourd'hui, Paris 2010, 276)
Today, as his mortal remains are laid to rest, we pray for our Holy Father Pope Francis, and we pray that we will, in the power of the risen Jesus, proclaim what we have seen and heard and that we will reveal by how we live that we prefer nothing whatever to Christ.
Abbot Robert Igo, OSB
Ampleforth Abbey
26 April 2025
