Fifteenth of Year C
July 2007
Today I continue with the theme I have pursued for the past few weeks -my faults and failings; what I might one time have called my sins.
As we read in Corinthians;
‘The Lord answered me, 'My grace is enough for you: for My power is at full stretch in weakness.' It is, then, about my weaknesses that I am happiest of all to boast, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me; For it is when I am weak that I am strong.'
I illustrate my point as follows:
Pope Pius XII died in 1958 after almost twenty years as Pope. He was an austere, ascetic man and a patrician by birth. The cardinals could not agree on any long-term successor so they elected a very old man as a stopgap. He was not expected to do anything much in the short time he was expected to live and the Roman curia would run the church in the meantime and stop him from doing any damage.
This man was John XXIII. He was the son of a small farmer, was short and fat. A roIy-poly sort of man with an avuncular, beaming face. A likeable harmless type. The reaction among the clergy was an embarrassed, 'Oh my God! Is that the best we can do?’ Yet this man was the most Christ-like Pope the church has had in a long, long time. He became famous for the love, tolerance and acceptance he lavished on all who came into contact with him.
He convened and opened the Second Vatican Council despite being told that it was a mad idea by all his learned advisers, and thereby initiated changes and reforms in the Catholic Church, which were overdue by five hundred years, and will continue long into the future.
John Paul II was the ideal Pope. Learned, prayerful, charismatic, young (for a pope), athletic, media wise, politically aware, not an Italian, the darling of the masses, hard working, tireless in his efforts to spread the Gospel message world-wide. Yet he presided over the greatest fall away from the Catholic Church in Western Europe since the Reformation and was powerless to do anything about it.
As we read again in Corinthians:
'God chose those who by human standards are fools to shame the wise; he chose those who by human standards are weak to shame the strong.'
It was not the highly qualified, charismatic, physically and mentally strong Pope who was chosen by God to have the greatest impact on the Catholic Church in recent centuries but the seemingly doddering old man with one foot in the grave.
From my own personal experience and from those I see around me it is those who are burdened with faults and weaknesses, with phobias and complexes, who grow in humility and are closest to God. Basically one must conclude that one's faults and failings are good for one's spiritual wellbeing.