The holiday tidings extended by Pope Francis to his Curia (the administrative departments that run the Vatican), and the body of Cardinals in attendance, showed a pope somewhat peppered about rumors and disgruntled leaders in his household. It was as if the principal had come to the classroom to scold students and find out who were the miscreants who pulled the fire alarms during a school assembly!
“A church community lives in joyful and fraternal harmony to the extent that its members walk in the life of humility, renouncing thinking the worst and speaking ill of others,” wrote Francis quoted in an article in The New York Times (12/22.) And then came his salvo against the big bugaboo: gossip. Francis despises gossip. He fears that prelates fall prey too often to this “narcissistic pathology of power and existential schizophrenia!” Whew! That’s a loaded fusillade. I picture rows of cardinals squirming in their seats and wiping their brows.
And yet, in last week’s opinion page of The New York Times, Francis writes that humor and laughter are necessary for a very sad world. It is, therefore, incumbent on the believing Christian to live the saving grace of being happy and making others happy. Sometimes a good belly laugh is absolutely necessary for the sake of the Gospel. He tells the story of Pope John Paul who loved to ski, swim, climb mountains even into his years as a cardinal. Another cardinal who was annoyed at John Paul’s athleticism said to him that he should cease such activities that are not ‘becoming of a cardinal.’ “John Paul replied, ‘Do you know that in Poland these activities are practiced by 50 percent of their cardinals?’ In Poland at the time there were only two cardinals!” We popes can be funny, Francis says. He tells a joke which circulated when he visited America a few years ago. Someone said he persuaded a limo driver to let him drive the car to his hotel. Along the way he broke a speed limit and was stopped by a police officer who was immediately unnerved when he recognized the driver. The cop called his superior for advice saying that this car had a very important person in it, and he did not know what to do. The superior asked, is it the mayor? No. The Governor? No. The President? “No sir,” he said, “but he’s very important because the pope is driving him!”
The Pope alluded to his fraternity of Jesuit brothers saying that when it comes to humor “they are in a class of their own comparable to the carabinieri in Italy or, about Jewish mothers in Yiddish humor.” He writes that all priests should avoid wallowing in melancholy and avoid becoming “bitter, sad priests who are more authoritarian than authoritative, more like old bachelors than wedded to the church, more like officials than pastors, more supercilious than joyful…” But he adds that “we priests tend to enjoy humor and even have a fair stock of jokes and stories which we are often good at telling and being the object of them.” He suggests that all of us look in the mirror and laugh at ourselves. “It will prove the proverb that there are only two kinds of perfect people: the dead and those yet to be born.”
Pope Francis is certain that without humor we descend into narcissism “to be avoided with appropriate doses of self-irony.” We need to make fun of ourselves and laugh at the prickly, funny things people see in us. He loves meeting with children for that reason. They offer no obeisance; they do not curry favor. They see him as he is, and he sees them as innocent perceptions of himself. He says that hugging them softens him although when some of them see his white robes they think they are in a doctor’s office and start to cry! He reminds us that when “it becomes hard to cry seriously or to laugh passionately, then we are on a downward slope. We become anesthetized, and anesthetized adults do nothing good for themselves nor for society, nor for the church.”
Reflection
So here we are on the cusp of a new year. I suggest you make only a few resolutions which may help you keep them more faithfully. One resolution I hope you will make which is totally manageable is: laugh more often!!! Smile always. We can do this. We need to see the Christ in everyone and if we do, Gosh! We will be overcome with joy. That’s number one.
Number two is make a point to get to a retreat center in the mid winter ahead of us or in the grimy days of Lent. Check your calendars. A place is waiting for you. There will be silence, the stillness of winter is always a blest time. Perhaps you will choose the growing warmth of spring or the ebullient luxury of summer, or the descending nod of gorgeous fall. Do it. I can
promise you, you will never regret this.
Check out our Jesuit Retreat Centers on Google and perhaps other places near you. But do it!!
Happy New Year to all my readers and to my Anonymous Angels who read but do not respond. I love you all.
All quotes taken from: Elisabetta Povoledo. “Pope’s Holiday Tidings: Zip It with Gossip,” The New York Times, December 22, 2024, p. 11.
“There is Faith in Humor,” Pope Francis, December 22, 2024, The New York Times, December 22, 2024.
In All Things Charity 
Hello and Happy New Year My new year poem
2024 has come and gone Let us say farewell to the old and hello to the new May 2025 bring us peace Bring us harmony and Bring us together For we need one another now more than ever As we face uncertainty and the wonder of what is to come Let us remember to be kind to one another and most importantly Let us be the one who makes the other feel loved May God’s blessings be boundless
Here’s to 2025 – Hang on and enjoy the ride For the new day is alive with wonderment and starry-eyed experiences yet to be tried HAPPY NEW YEAR
Looking forward to your Monday morning blogs. My day is not complete until I read them and ponder the message. Always a joy for me and I hope for you too as you gather your thoughts together, put pen to paper and create. God certainly gifted you with a special talent.
With love, friendship, peace, faith and hope
Thank you.
Betty Hickle (216) 905-1750
LikeLike