After the death of Pope Francis, there were numerous reactions, which came from the effect that the personality of the defunct pope had had on the many persons who encountered him. Besides sincere affection, there was no lack of polemics and attempts to instrumentalize the person and the words of Bergoglio.
With a few of my brother members of the Fraternity, a few days after his passing, I had the privilege of spending a few minutes in prayer beside his coffin. I was struck by the river of people who, often after hours of waiting in line, passed before him for just a few seconds, to say a final goodbye. Even the day of the funeral left me amazed by the many leaders, coming from all over the world, who gathered around this man.
The entire path of the Christian life can be summed up in the continued discovery of the paternity of God.
The noise that issued before and after the event seemed to me mostly as the reaction of those who want to cover a great silence: that of the voice of a father who is longer with us. Beyond the judgements on his personality and his work, in fact, what emerged overpoweringly after the death of the Pope was the absence of this paternal presence that every pope assumes towards the Church and towards humanity at large. The Pope is a father and, like every father, plays a decisive role in the life of his children. He is called to be a door that introduces every person to life and to the world. This aspect was present even in the interviews done with people who are not well off, the “poor” of the Pope who, probably, had not seen him often but who repeated: “He loved us, he made us feel important and he was a father for us.”
What is the good that a father can transmit to a son? Surely, the necessary good, among the many that he can offer, is one. And it is transmitted in love, in affirming the other as a gift. To love, as I have heard said by Fr. Mauro Giuseppe Lepori, abbot general of the Cistercian Order, is to want for the other what I cannot give them. It means recognizing one’s impotence in front of the thirst for the infinite that every man is.
For this reason, being a true father is above all to be a sign, someone who points towards God, who is the only one who can truly fill our existence.
In a celebrated dialogue with Giovanni Testori, presented in the text The Meaning of Birth, Fr. Giussani said the following: “One cannot give to a human being, one cannot give to a child the sense of being wanted, the sentiment of being wanted; this cannot be communicated if one does not communicate the joy of a destiny.”
The father is not he who knows everything but rather he who knows to Whom he can ask everything.
Not only the Pope, but every priest is called father. He, in fact, receives, as his vocation, the task of being the voice of the Father for the world, and the voice of the world for the Father.
The entire path of the Christian life can be summed up, for each one of us, in the continued discovery of the paternity of God. It grows according to age, and faith, but it always remains true. As a friend told me, “All of my children call me father, but the youngest has a different awareness of this compared to the oldest. And yet, it is not less true.”
The recognition of the paternity of God becomes more true with time and this path can happen only through Christ and His body, that is the Church.
The very mission of Jesus had, in the end, this singular purpose, as is testified by the words of the great discourse addressed to his disciples: This is eternal life, that they know You, the one true God, and Him whom You have sent, Jesus Christ. And again, No one comes to the Father except through me.
In the pages of this edition of Fraternity and Mission there are a few stories of paternity of our priests who have introduced men and women to the great paternity of God. It is dizzying task but it is also the road through which we, first, become ever more His children.
Probably, when these lines will have been published, the Lord will have already given us the joy of a new Pope. Before every other consideration, we thank God and we pray for him because, as Fr. Giussani taught us, “in the Church there is only one ultimate guarantor, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.”
