So the margins include those who have fallen away and are outcast. But we Christians, as individuals and as an evangelizing community, must get our own house in order before we can bring real healing to our world. Above all else, our work must be rooted in a joyful conviction of Christ’s love for us that is genuine and spontaneous rather than merely dutiful.
In other words, each of us is called to a deep personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
As bishop and as pope, Francis has been particularly close to evangelical Christians and to charismatic Catholics on this all-important framework for evangelization. Once we feel secure in our conviction of Christ’s love for us, the pope says we will find ourselves called to move outward — not further inward — to share that love with people on the margins in a way that makes a difference. We will respond to God’s freely offered love by loving others freely.
Accordingly, while the starting point is internal, we cannot remain centered on ourselves. Even monks pray for others more than for themselves. To inspire others with the good news, our personal experience of Christ’s love must yield fruit in concrete action, inspiring us to love others through our deeds more than through our words.
In a September 2013 interview with Jesuit journals from around the world, published in multiple languages, Francis expressed this idea by saying he longed for the Catholic Church to be a “field hospital” of God’s love and mercy to people in need. As for his own role in steering the barque of Peter, the pope described himself frankly as a sinner in need of God’s mercy, just like anyone else.
Not only in this interview, but throughout his papacy, Francis has called on believers to pray for the grace to get out of our pews and shake things up by making a joyful noise. Rather than wait for people to come to our parishes, we need to go outside and meet them where they are.
Our mission to the margins is not merely a job for ordained shepherds, whom Francis exhorted in an early homily to “smell like the sheep,” but for all of us. Francis reminds us that God calls all believers universally, in the waters of baptism, to be disciples who are priests, prophets, and kings — in other words, self-giving leaders who act boldly to build a better world.
Looking at chapter 5 of The Joy of the Gospel, I believe we may discern the essence of Francis’s message in six themes that evoke his vision for a church of missionaries sent to the margins:
• Longing. The longing for God is innate in everyone — this is what we were made for, to be in relationship with God.
• Closeness. We must be close to people’s lives: “enter fully into the fabric of society”; step away from “personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune”; lead “wonderfully complicated lives.”
• Dignity. Every person is worthy of our giving.
• Weariness. When we go to the margins, we must be honest about how it affects us, transforming our fatigue into an ever-deepening outreach that is energizing and compassionate.
• Tenderness. Francis uses this word a lot. He talks about how it characterizes his interactions with others, and about how it might characterize ours.
• Mary. The Mother of Evangelization remains an ever-present model of discipleship.
Throughout the next six chapters of this book, I will follow these themes in reflecting on what it means for us to leave our parishes and go out to the margins in imitation of Christ. Then I will conclude with a few thoughts on the implications of this message for courageous discipleship in the future.
With the visit of Pope Francis to the United States in September 2015 for the World Meeting of Families, many Americans have now had the chance to see the Holy Father in person. We’ve heard his voice and read his words on going out to the fringes of society as missionaries of Christ’s love, even when it means healing the brokenness of our own families in a world of fast-changing values.
Again and again, Pope Francis urges all Christians: Go be missionaries of Jesus Christ’s love to people on the margins.
I hope this book will introduce readers to this key message in the teaching and life of Francis in a deeper way, inspiring us to more profoundly embrace the call of Jesus in our lives.
Of course, answering that call will be challenging at times. Striving to follow it in our daily routines, we might find ourselves tempted to doubt that our good news will really change the world. We may feel too beaten down by life and too disillusioned by past experiences to believe in the reality of Gospel joy.
However, as I hope the stories in this book will show, nothing is impossible with God. Not even a Jesuit pope.
Chapter One
Longing
The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?
If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence. (Evangelii Gaudium 264)
A few months after the election of Pope Francis, my Jesuit High School students and I went to sleep hungry on a Brazilian beach, surrounded by three million people as the icy surf washed toward us.
We were spending a chilly July night on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, waiting for Francis to celebrate Mass with us in the morning. It was the closing liturgy of World Youth Day and the Brazilian winter (June–August) was in full swing.
That night, July 27, we shivered in our sleeping bags. Earlier in the day, the sun had cooked us for hours with a withering heat. Florida felt very far away.
As temperatures fell steadily during the evening, it was tough to rest peacefully. Our students built little sand walls to block the wind and to keep the freezing ocean spray from blasting us. These walls also gave us an illusion of privacy: The entire 2.5-mile beach was crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with snoring pilgrims, tents, and camping gear.
Our sleep was marked by the taste of salt water, the sound of waves crashing rhythmically on the beach, and the feeling of cold sand digging into our backs. When we got hungry, we nibbled on a little canned tuna and dry snacks which organizers had handed out in boxes before police closed the beach.
To our dismay, the only thing less comfortable than the beach itself was the row of portable toilets lined up alongside it. With beach exits closed and nowhere else to go, organizers had vastly underestimated the number of pilgrims, and some of the facilities were overflowing. It wasn’t sheep we smelled that night.
Francis, whose motorcade passed our group after he arrived by helicopter in the morning, celebrated Mass from an enormous platform, visible to us only through giant television screens spread out along the beach. We were at least two miles away from him.
One of our students, staking out a spot right next to the beachside road, found himself at the front of a cheering crowd as Francis drove by that morning.
When the papal motorcade paused briefly for Francis to wave at some beachfront apartment windows, where people leaned out to greet him, our student snapped a crystal-clear photograph of the pope with his digital camera. He was on cloud nine.
The Mass itself turned out to be a lively mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin hymns — all set to joyful music that led the Brazilian pilgrims to dance.
While many of the guys in our group longed to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, or to at least be closer to Francis, the crowd was so big that most of us could not get anywhere near a communion