While the morning of this past Saturday did not find me in Rome among the thousands of mourners gathered for Pope Francis’s funeral, I sought out a place where I could spiritually join in mourning the Pope. I strolled the quiet path around a Jesuit cemetery just north of Detroit. Eventually, I came to the freshly covered grave of a beloved Jesuit who died the very same morning as the Holy Father. My eyes looked back and forth between the dirt there and a statue of the Risen Christ at the far end of the cemetery. Before me rested men who, like Pope Francis, were Jesuits called to labor in the service of Christ.
There has been no shortage of remembrances written and spoken about Pope Francis in the days since his passing on Easter Monday. These are well merited. He was indeed a great shepherd of Christ’s flock, a tireless advocate for peace, a voice for the suffering, an embodiment of hope for so many of the faithful around the world. Dignitaries from no less than 130 countries attended his funeral, and flags flew at half-staff around the United States to honor him.
Yet, what made me feel close to Pope Francis in that Jesuit cemetery was the ordinariness of the men whose resting places lay around me, and the ordinary vision of holiness that our departed Holy Father exemplified in so much of what he said and did.
I never knew most of the men buried in the Colombiere Jesuit cemetery; most died years before I was born, and the remaining few went to their reward years before I entered the Jesuits. One I knew to be a saint, though he’ll never be canonized. Another actually has an open cause for canonization. The vast majority, however, were just ordinary men who quietly served God. As I walked among the marker stones, their unfamiliar names reminded me that Jesus calls ordinary people to follow him, to be his hands and feet.
What I will most remember about Pope Francis is how he carried the love and message of Jesus to ordinary people. By embodying the everyday nature of Christian holiness in his words and showing the world the meaning of discipleship in simple ways and simple gestures — washing the feet of prisoners, embracing a man with a profound physical deformity, offering words of consolation to a grieving mother — Pope Francis gave the world a striking model, one which always pointed back to Jesus.
Pope Francis was an ordinary man who came from everyday circumstances. He was the child of immigrants, a brother to four siblings, a student of chemistry, even a one-time nightclub bouncer in Buenos Aires. He lived simply, riding the bus as an Archbishop and residing in a small apartment as Pope. In death, he chose a plain wooden coffin. While the Jesuit headstones in Detroit are themselves quite spartan — they list only name, birth, year of entrance into the Society of Jesus, and death — Pope Francis’s chosen tombstone inscription, “Franciscus,” is even simpler. With his frequent closing words at his audiences, “non dimenticare di pregare per me,” he showed that although he was Pope, he was also just like any Christian who relies on the prayers of others before God.
In his time as Pope, this humanity was always on display, from his accessibility, to his personal warmth, to his penchant for speaking frankly, to his willingness to take selfies, to his concern for the everyday lived experience of people. An ordinary man, Jorge Mario Bergoglio answered Jesus’s call, and the Lord accomplished extraordinary things through his life. In all the extraordinary things he did, Pope Francis pointed to the profound invitation Jesus offers every person, no matter his or her life circumstances. He showed that through humility, prayer, and mercy, we can live out the fullness of that invitation. By accepting it, God can work extraordinary things in us as individuals, and together as the People of God.
After Jesus’s Resurrection itself, what I always find most profound in the Easter season readings is how plainly they display the fact that Jesus calls ordinary people. Nowhere is the utter ordinariness of Jesus’s followers more on display than in stories where we are reminded that Peter, James, and John were fishermen, that they got hungry and had to eat breakfast, that Mary Magdalene knew the grief that accompanies loss, that Thomas experienced doubt. Ordinary people, Jesus called them and through them built the Church that Pope Francis would eventually come to lead. Jesus calls ordinary people, and by following him, they accomplish the extraordinary.
As we continue to mourn Pope Francis in this Easter season, we can celebrate his memory by remembering the wonderful fact that Jesus calls each of us, ordinary people that we are, to follow him and share the joy of his Resurrection. Pope Francis reminded us in so many ways that we all have a part to play in Jesus’s saving mission. His memory should spur us on to embrace the ordinary actions through which he showed God can work the extraordinary: choosing hope over fear, mercy over judgment, love over indifference.
We pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance as a new Pope is chosen. In the same spirit of faith, we commit to living out what Pope Francis taught the Church. As the Church embarks on this transition, I take solace in a passage from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that is carved into the statue of the Risen Christ at Colombiere Jesuit Cemetery. In the Call of the King meditation, Ignatius reminds us that however the situation looks, taking up the mantle to labor with Jesus will always bear fruit: “who fight the battle with me will rise in victory with me.”
Jorge Bergoglio meditated on this very passage as a young Jesuit novice. We hold in faith that Pope Francis now experiences its full reality.
Photo License: OSV News photo/Vatican Media
