Joy of the Gospel
Do not be afraid.
Go and tell your brothers to meet me in Galilee.
This is one of the more powerful resurrection accounts.
The risen Jesus tells the women disciples to tell their brothers
to go to Galilee and he will meet them there.
As they are leaving, he meets the women on their way.
Then assures them that he will be with them
and to meet him there.
Now what is Galilee?
Galilee is more than just a physical location.
Galilee is where the disciples first met Jesus.
Where they first fell in love with Jesus
and they first came to follow Jesus.
In other words, the disciples are called to go back to the roots,
go back to who they were when they first met Jesus
and to remind them to fall in love with Jesus again.
That is the ultimate call for all of us.
In particular, Pope Francis called the whole church
with that sense of calling us back to the roots of who we are.
He kept on bringing us back to Jesus.
He kept on calling us back to
primarily God’s mercy, his love, and his joy.
I always remember his first letter to us, the Gospel of Joy.
He talked about how important it is to be men and women of joy.
And he has lived that in his papacy over these long years.
He brought us back to the heart of Jesus.
That Jesus was one that welcomed all
and he invited all into his fold.
He insisted that we as a church needed to be
more like a field hospital than a museum
where we put together fancy liturgies.
Instead, he wanted us to be a field hospital
where we would go out to the existential peripheries
and to fold those back into who we are.
We will miss him dearly because
of his incredible humility and love of the poor.
He called us to love the poor and
to love the Earth with which we have been given.
And to love all people even if they,
maybe especially when they do not agree with you.
Our friends, today, it is hard to hear the news of Pope Francis’death.
He is a beloved figure for us,
but at 88, he certainly ran the race and finished it well.
He did a great job in leading us.
It is up to us, now as this next generation,
to take up his call for synodality,
to walk with people, listen and encounter the Christ in each other.
It is for us to take up the call and
to bring his mercy to
the furthest recesses of the world, the existential peripheries.
Those who do not feel welcome,
those who are feeling for both themselves
and for others, who make them feel unwelcome.
We are called to make them welcome,
to encounter and walk with people and
to have them experience once again God's loving mercy.
But the hallmark, for me, of Pope Francis's papacy is his joy.
He tried to live that joy even though
he was caught up in a place he did not really want to live,
which was in the Vatican.
He he got himself a little place in Santa Marta
and lived over on the side so he could have
four or five different exits and entrances.
Nobody knew when he was coming and going.
That was his trick.
Whereas the the Vatican Apartments
are very on its own locked in and
everyone had so many guards,
but this one had four or five entrances.
No one could find out what he was doing and who was he talking to.
That was part of his part of his joy.
He kept his joy by being unpredictable,
He believed that God was a God of good surprises.
My friends, let us be part of his legacy
that we are men and women of mercy,
men and women of of love,
men and women of inclusion to bring people in from all sides,
but most of all, men and women of the joy of the gospel.
May he rest in peace. Amen.
Do not be afraid.
Go and tell your brothers to meet me in Galilee.