St. Francis reportedly said, "Preach Jesus, and if necessary use words."

There is a deep harmony. Pope Francis manages to reach so many people, he touches their hearts, warms them, makes them feel loved, makes them feel that the Church is close to them, a Church that listens to you, that cares about your problems. The Pope has a great pastoral vision and proclaims the eternal truths in today's language and categories. Above all, he helps us understand that the social and the spiritual are intimately united. And woe betide anyone who divides them.

Pope Francis has a very precise overall vision of contemporary society, of the Church today and, ultimately, of all history. He seems to me to be affected by a kind of hyperrealism that claims to be “pastoral”. According to him, the Church must surrender to the evidence: it is impossible for her to continue preaching a moral doctrine such as the one she has preached until now. It must decide to capitulate to the demands of modern man and, as a result, rethink its motherhood. Of course, the Church must always be a mother, but instead of being so by transmitting life and educating its children, it will be so to the extent that it knows how to accept them as they are, listen to them, understand them and accompany them...These concerns, which are not bad in themselves, must be understood here in a new and very particular sense: the Church can no longer impose itself, and consequently must no longer do so. It is passive and adapts. Ecclesial life, as it can be lived today, conditions and determines the very mission of the Church, even its raison d'être. For example, since it can no longer demand the same conditions as in the past for access to the Holy Eucharist, given that modern man sees this as intolerable intolerance, the only realistic and authentically Christian reaction, in this logic, is to adapt to this situation and redefine its own requirements. Thus, inevitably, morality changes: eternal laws are subjected to an evolution made necessary by historical circumstances and by the imperatives of a false and misunderstood charity.

He said nothing to gratify curiosity, or to satisfy man's ambition by opening doors to worldly greatness. In all His teaching, Christ brought the mind of man in contact with the Infinite Mind. He did not direct the people to study men's theories about God, His word, or His works. He taught them to behold Him as manifested in His works, in His word, and by His providences. Christ did not deal in abstract theories, but in that which is essential to the development of character, that which will enlarge man's capacity for knowing God, and increase his efficiency to do good. He spoke to men of those truths that relate to the conduct of life, and that take hold upon eternity.

The content of his theology was that there was a supreme being who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven.... Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good — kept him in touch with higher things.' ~ Ch. 16

Francis does not teach anything new; what he says is already written in the Gospel: Jesus' love for the poor, the call to conversion, and everything else. He told me that he greatly admires Paul VI, especially Evangelii nuntiandi, which for me is perhaps the most important document of the post-conciliar period. However, Francis emphasised joy, gaudium, because there is a tendency in today's world, not only in the Church, to feel tired and sad. Family life, study, work: these are experienced as a burden. But we have the real reason to be joyful: Jesus, who died and rose again, is alive and is our hope.

Do we have the right now to tell them that when Saint Francis begged the Lord to teach him to want to console instead of seeking to be consoled — to teach him to want to love instead of desiring to be loved — that he was really being selfish? Because he knew the only way to be fulfilled and pleased and happy was to give instead of trying to get.

We are trying to preach an experience and relationship with Jesus above all else. Many people don’t know Jesus or about the Church he founded. A good homily feeds the hunger they have to know Him, and prompts them to go and learn more. Whatever the priest says should flow from his relationship with Jesus.

It is the business of the preacher, not only to state moral truths, but to inspire his hearers with a realising sense of their value, and to awaken in them the desire to act accordingly. He can do this only by putting his own purpose as a yeast into their hearts. The influence of the right sort of preachers cannot be spared. The human race is not yet so far advanced that it can dispense with the impulses that come from men of more than average intensity of moral energy. Let us produce, through the efficacy of a better moral life and of a deeper moral experience, a surer faith in the ultimate victory of the good. Let us found religion upon a basis of perfect intellectual honesty. Religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must stand for the highest truth. How then can the cause of truth be served by the sacrifice, more or less disguised, of one's intellectual convictions?

Pope Francis was a pontiff who knew how to speak to the heart of humanity with the strength of simplicity, reminding us that the Creator of Heaven and Earth is not distant from our frailties, but walks with us.

Our society is much more alienated from the theology than it is from the philosophy of Christianity. As our religious beliefs have become less strong and our view of the life hereafter less clear, morality has become more concerned with the legitimacy of material needs and pleasures. This is the idea that I think the followers of Saint-Simon expressed by saying that the flesh must be rehabilitated. It is probably the same tendency that, for some time now, appears in the writings and in the doctrines of our moral philosophers.

St. Francis is not only the most attractive of all the Christian saints, he is the most attractive of Christians, admired by Buddhists, atheists, completely secular, modern people, Communists, to whom the figure of Christ himself is at best unattractive. Partly this is due to the sentimentalization of the legend of his life and that of his companions in the early days of the order. Many people today who put his statue in their gardens know nothing about him except that he preached a sermon to the birds, wrote a hymn to the sun, and called the donkey his brother. These bits of information are important because they are signs of a revolution of the sensibility — which incidentally was a metaphysical revolution of which certainly St. Francis himself was quite unaware. They stand for a mystical and emotional immediate realization of the unity of being, a notion foreign, in fact antagonistic, to the main Judeo-Christian tradition. “I am that I am” — the God of Judaism is the only self-sufficient being. All the reality that we can know is contingent, created out of nothing, and hence of an inferior order of reality. Faced with the “utterly other,” the contingent soul can finally only respond with fear and trembling.

With Pope Francis we do not see this attachment to either liturgy or ancient discipline; one could even say that the opposite is true, manifested through many contrary statements, and this is what makes understanding such benevolence even more difficult and complicated. I think there are at least several possible explanations, but I confess that I do not have the final word on the matter. One explanation is Pope Francis' view of everything that is marginalised, what he calls the “existential peripheries”. I would not be surprised if he considered us one of these peripheries to which he clearly gives his preference.

His teaching (of Pope Francis) is as iridescent as Saruman's dress. I am thrilled by his evangelical freedom, his simplicity, his be outside the clerical mold. It is emotional when he talks about the gaze of Jesus or, as in recent days in Guadalupe, the maternal eyes of Mary. And when we remember that our Savior does not want to lose anyone and takes each of us on his shoulders.