Worldly gaze and Spiritual gaze

Sep 12, 2020

By Fr Antonio Spadaro
Today the temptation into which some commentators and analysts risk falling is to imagine a pope who builds a roadmap of institutional reforms, elaborated with a planning, functionalistic and organisational spirit. As against the temptation to project the contents of this map on the progress of the pontificate, and finally to judge it in the light of these criteria, Francis has, in his discernment, the key to the development and drive – currently very strong – of his Petrine ministry.

There is no abstract plan of reform to apply to reality. Therefore, “the Apostles do not prepare a strategy; when they were closed in there, in the Upper Room, they did not make the strategy, no, they did not prepare a pastoral plan.” It is not at this level that one finds the yardstick for the dynamism of the pontificate. Instead, there is a spiritual dialectic that observes and listens, not only to the thoughts and proposals for the Church’s journey, but also to what spirit (good or bad) they come from, beyond their very validity in and for themselves.

We understand, therefore, that the risk of bending the will to reform to “spiritual worldliness” must be avoided. We give in to this worldliness every time we do good, and yet we do it to achieve our goals, our ideas of the Church as it should be, not inspired by the discernment of faith in Jesus.

Worldly logic remains the last and deepest temptation – even of a structural nature – against which there is a need to struggle ceaselessly in the Church. In his homily at the Pentecost Mass in 2020, Francis declared it openly: “The worldly gaze sees structures to be made more efficient; the spiritual gaze sees brothers and sisters begging for mercy.” It is precisely this gaze that knows how to see in the Church a “field hospital,” an effective image of its true structure. “I see clearly,” the Pope told La Civiltà Cattolica in his first interview in 2013, “that the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and warm the hearts of the faithful, the closeness, the nearness. I see the Church as a field hospital after a battle. It is useless to ask a seriously wounded person if he has high cholesterol and high sugar levels! His wounds must be treated. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds…” ––La Civiltà Catolica