An Encyclical on the Son
If Laudato Si was about the Father, and Fratelli Tutti the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis’ new encyclical, Dilexit Nos, is on the Son.
It’s a bit long for today’s Catholic consumer of headlines and soundbites - it reads like a compilation of notes prepared by ghost writers. With the exception of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, most papal proclamations feel unrefined, if not altogether unedited. Nevertheless, I’m sure Dilexit Nos can accomplish what the Holy Father intends, namely, to return the heart of the Christian to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
With its many scriptural references and so many saints, this encyclical is fitting for the chapel or the nightstand - there is edification in every paragraph! But a more careful reading of the first chapter, for example, can truly deepen our understanding of the nature of the affliction at the source of all the problems that limit and reduce modern man today.
The most recent superior general of the Sisters of Life, Mother Agnes Mary, was fond of saying, “The heart of the human person is the real final frontier.” They are words that, I believe, express something of the intention of Pope Francis in penning Dilexit Nos.
Can a child give a gift to his father, for example, that he has misplaced? The Pope and Mother Agnes both know that the reason we have such difficulty giving our hearts to God is because we have misplaced our hearts. And, after living for so many years without them, we’ve forgotten how to be moved by the God who gives his heart to us.
Pope Francis says we are “immersed in societies of serial consumers who live from day to day, dominated by a hectic pace and bombarded by technology, lacking in the patience needed to engage in the processes that an interior life by its very nature requires.” He calls ours a “liquid society,” where life lacks a unifying principle. Without the heart, we are disintegrating.
Even more powerfully he says, “Once we succumb to these attitudes, so widespread in our day, we tend to lose all desire to be cured of them.” That is the problem. We grow so weary of existing without our hearts, “excessively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obsessive reorganization plans, worldly projects, [and] secular ways of thinking,” that we become like a child who has forgotten why he wanted to give a gift to his father in the first place. +
