Vatican City — At a press conference yesterday, the Vatican got into details of the coming year dedicated to mercy that Pope Francis recently announced. The Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization presented the official logo and a prayer for the year, which will begin in December. The logo shows a man looking quite lost, being carried by Jesus Christ. It’s a representation of the sacramental life of the Church. Fallen, lost, sinful, we’re restored and lifted up to the life God the Father created us for.
The details of the Jubilee of Mercy came after a focus in Rome on the life of Junípero Serra, who will soon be known as a saint. Pope Francis will canonize him during his trip to the United States this fall, on the adjacent grounds of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Last Saturday, after a morning of talks on Serra (which followed a Thursday meeting with the press of Serra experts), Pope Francis made his first visit to the Pontifical North American College just up the Hill from the Vatican to celebrate the life of Serra. He talked about the friar’s missionary zeal and added: “But I wonder if today we are able to respond with the same generosity and courage to the call of God, who invites us to leave everything in order to worship him, to follow him, to rediscover him in the face of the poor, to proclaim him to those who have not known Christ and, therefore, have not experienced the embrace of his mercy. Friar Junípero’s witness calls upon us to get involved, personally, in the mission to the whole continent, which finds its roots in the joy of the Gospel.”
RELATED: Junípero Serra and God’s Tender Mercies
Mercy is what Pope Francis tends to lead with. Over and over and indeed over again he talks about the mercy of God, who never tires of forgiving us. So we, in turn, must never tire of asking for his mercy. That has been Pope Francis’s message since just about day one. It’s as if his life is culminating in getting people who have not done it for years — for decades, since childhood, for a lifetime — to Confession.
Knowing this, and reading the sermons of Serra, one can see the reasons for Pope Francis’s attraction to him. These sermons have recently been translated by Rose Marie Beebe and are available in the book Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary, which she wrote with her husband, Robert M. Senkewicz. Serra preached:
The mercy of our God is grand and tremendously gentle in its intention. The delight and the love with which God pardons is such that He seems a bit disturbed when He is not pardoning us. The father Saint Ambrose asked why, when He created the world, God did not rest until the seventh day. He rested on the seventh day. Why did He not have to rest on the previous days? Why would He need to rest at all, since it is certain that all labors that He undertook on the previous days would not have been able to tire him? Saint Ambrose responds in this way: He rested on the seventh day because now He had someone whose sins He could forgive. The Lord created man on the sixth day, and so on the seventh day He had someone He was able to pardon. He had someone for whom He was able to employ his attribute of mercy. This is why the Lord rested: He is infinitely pleased to exercise his mercy.
‘Father Serra teaches us that the Church’s mission of evangelization is a mission of mercy.’
Serra wants the people hearing him to know the accessibility and tenderness of God. “The Lord is gentle,” he says. “The gentle mercy of the Lord is as great as the grandeur of God himself. That is simply the way He is. The mercy is great and boundless. . . . He is solely spurred by the boundless love He has for us.” And “once mercy has been granted, the Lord keeps granting it with such generosity that it fills the small vessel of the soul with the force of the inexhaustible ocean.”
Which, sounds a lot like Pope Francis on Saturday — albeit with a different metaphor — looking ahead, beyond his visit to the U.S., to the jubilee that begins in early December:
May a powerful gust of holiness sweep through all the Americas during the coming Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy! Confident in Jesus’ promise, which we heard today in the Gospel, we ask God for this special outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
At the American seminary in Rome on Saturday, one could see what is important to this Holy Father: getting God’s people to partake of the sacraments of life in the Church.
As Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles put it:
Father Serra teaches us that the Church’s mission of evangelization is a mission of mercy. As we have seen, Father Serra had great compassion and love for the native peoples. He was a man of mercy — not only in his words but also in his action.
And that is the Church’s mission in our day — to proclaim God’s love and mercy for every person and to protect the vulnerable and the weak.
As we can see, Father Serra’s witness is reflected in some of the key themes of Pope Francis’s pontificate — especially the themes of mercy and missionary discipleship.
So it is fitting that Junípero Serra will be remembered as a saint of Pope Francis.
Archbishop Gomez ended by quoting Serra. Gomez said: “These words are both an inspiring summation of Father Serra’s sense of his missionary vocation — and they are a call to the Church today to follow his example”:
Let us make good use of time. Our steps should be in conformity with the vocation to which God has called us; let us work out our spiritual salvation with fear and trembling, and with a burning love and zeal seek for the salvation of our brethren and neighbors. And may all the glory be to our Great God.
Will we make good use of the time left in our lives? That’s the question Pope Francis — like any good pastor — puts before us, to be at the forefront of our conscience.
At yesterday’s press conference for the Jubilee of Mercy, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, pointed to the year as an opportunity to call the Church once again to its missionary priority of being a sign and witness in every aspect of its pastoral life.
Will we make good use of the time left in our lives? That’s the question Pope Francis — like any good pastor — puts before us, to be at the forefront of our conscience.
Of the logo for the jubilee, he said: “while the Good Shepherd, in His great mercy, takes humanity upon Himself, His eyes are merged with those of man. Christ sees with the eyes of Adam, and Adam with the eyes of Christ. Every person discovers in Christ the new Adam, his or her own humanity, and the future that lies ahead.”
Fisichella continued: “Christ, Who carries humanity out of the darkness of sin and death. Conversely, the depth of the darker color suggests the impenetrability of the love of the Father Who forgives all.”
Impenetrable, boundless mercy — and in a land that has known not only Serra but a litany of saints, some of whom Pope Francis named when visiting with the seminarians at the North American College last weekend.
Or as Serra put it in that same homily: “The Lord’s mercy extends from the beginning to the end of time. It is not restricted to a certain number of sins. Indeed, it hardly knows how to count: His mercy is beyond measure.”
As the official document announcing the Jubilee of Mercy explains,
The Church’s first truth is the love of Christ. The Church makes herself a servant of this love and mediates it to all people: a love that forgives and expresses itself in the gift of oneself. Consequently, wherever the Church is present, the mercy of the Father must be evident. In our parishes, communities, associations and movements, in a word, wherever there are Christians, everyone should find an oasis of mercy.
Everyone.
Pope Francis, leading with mercy, is saying: There’s water for you. He is issuing an invitation, the very invitation of God to be at peace in Him. The very invitation Junípero Serra issued as he established the first missions in California.
When the pope comes to the United States a few months from now, don’t listen to the commentary so much as to his message and model. When he leads with mercy, he is extending the invitation of true life in the Church, reminding the world — and a United States in need of some healing and strengthening in real, robust faith — what it means to be Christian.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online, and founding director of Catholic Voices USA.