Liturgy in the Era of a Jesuit Pope

Mar 26, 2015

By Fr Andrew Cameron-Mowar SJ
Jorge Mario Bergolio went through the usual Jesuit formation that was expected of him: two years novitiate, studies in history, literature, Latin and Greek, philosophy. He taught in two colleges during this time of his training, and was ordained priest in December 1969. It is important to note that his theology studies, and immediate training and preparation for priesthood, took place during the transformative years after the Second Vatican Council, most immediately felt through the changes that were made to the liturgy.

So, we have a picture of a Jesuit who was studying theology, was ordained to the priesthood, who served as novice master and then as Provincial, during most of the years of liturgical development and renewal after Vatican II. I think it is safe to assume that he experienced a large variety of liturgical celebrations and was present to the developments in liturgy, and to the reactions of many people to those developments.

In 1992, he was named auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, and ordained in June, 1992, and was then appointed Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998, and cardinal in 2001.

Love for the Poor His ministry as a bishop was expressed in a love for, and a devotion to, helping the poorest of the poor, visiting them many times, reminding them that they were not forgotten by God or by the Church, even if they had been forgotten by the wealthy and the powerful. This gave him a profound sense of the importance of Christ for these people, and of the necessity always to consider the plight of the powerless and the poor in his ministry, wherever that might lead him. He also came into contact with the central place for many people, the place they would turn to for support, shelter, even for food, quite apart from the spiritual nourishment — that was the parish.

“Our sociologists of religion tell us that the influence of a parish has a radius of six hundred metres. In Buenos Aires, there are about two thousand metres between one parish and the next. So I told the priests: ‘If you can, rent a garage and, if you find some willing layman, let him go there! Let him be with those people a bit, do a little catechesis and even give communion, if they ask him.’ A parish priest said to me: ‘But Father, if we do this, the people then won’t come to church.’ I asked him: ‘But why? Do they come to Mass now?’ ‘No,’ he answered. And so! Coming out of oneself is also coming out from the fenced garden of one’s own convictions, considered irremovable, if they risk becoming an obstacle, if they close the horizon that is also of God.”

There is a deep sense of real connectedness to the poorest of the poor in Pope Francis, and to reaching out to those who might not enter a church building, to bring them some sense of the love of God for them.

The ministry of Pope Francis builds on his experiences as a priest and as a bishop: it is expressive of his long felt attitudes regarding inter-religious dialogue, connectedness to the poor and the powerless, seeking out those who might feel abandoned and lost — washing the feet of HIV and AIDS patients on Holy Thursday, for example. So it was natural for him to visit a detention centre and wash the feet of men and women, Christian and Muslim. It was natural for him to go to local parishes in his diocese to celebrate Sunday Mass, without official Vatican servers, perhaps with just two candles on either side of the altar and a small crucifix, and greeting the people at the back of the church at the end of Mass, just as any pastor of a parish might do. In this was his reminder that the procession at the end of Mass leads the people and their priest not to the sacristy, but into the world.

Jesuit Liturgy!? What happens when a Jesuit celebrates liturgy? As part of answering that question, I’d like to refer to the talk given by former professor of sacramental and liturgical theology at Weston School of Theology, Peter E. Fink SJ, entitled Liturgy and Ignatian Spirituality. This is an as yet unpublished paper from the Jungmann Society conference, Mexico City, June 2014.

Fr Fink writes: “As Jesuits, they bring their commitment and dedication to Jesus Christ, the affection formed as they learn to be disciples, the experience that each one may have sharing the Passion in contemplation with Jesus, and open to the vision of seeing Christ everywhere in their lives. As Christians, they bring their friendship with Jesus Christ, and their surrender to God’s consecrating love that forms them, with so many others, into the Body of Christ. The primary interaction is within the Jesuit himself. As a Jesuit, he brings a particular depth to his own public liturgical life, even as he lets that Jesuit life be directed to a world beyond his Jesuit existence.”

“A Jesuit who has learned the kind of freedom to which the [Spiritual] Exercises will lead him, will be free as well, to alter liturgical actions when the people who worship need such alterations to be made. And a Jesuit who has become comfortable with liturgical alterations that are required by the people whom he is asked to lead in prayer, will be guided by the decisions he makes liturgically toward the freedom of heart which his Jesuit journey wishes to give him.”

For Fr Fink, a Jesuit who celebrates the liturgy is involved in, and shaped by, two journeys, which are not in conflict but which are mutual: “Both journeys begin with God. Both journeys end with God. The liturgical journey follows the path of memory and hope. The Ignatian journey follows the path of intimacy and imagination. Both are guided by love. The Ignatian journey leads us to an intimate relationship with Jesus such that we see the world as Jesus sees it, and love the world as Jesus loves it. A liturgical journey takes us from darkness to light, from alienation to relationship and communion.”

So we see in Pope Francis someone who continues to live in the grace of the transformation brought about in him by his experience of the depths of Ignatian prayer, and also someone who, through that transformation, brings intimacy and imagination, memory and hope into everything that he does, especially when he celebrates the liturgy.

-- To be continued next week