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Let Us Keep Our Gaze Fixed on Jesus During Mass for the Sunday of the Word of God – the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time – Pope Francis conferred the new ministry of Catechist on five men and three women from various parts of the world. The Holy Father highlighted two aspects of the day’s readings: The word of God reveals God; and His word leads us to man. The Pope noted that in the Gospel, Jesus reveals that He came “to liberate the poor and the oppressed,” showing that God is not detached or indifferent to humanity, but is close to human beings and wants to care for them. He does so, the Pope said, precisely through His word, “rekindling hope amid the ashes of your fears, helping you rediscover joy in the labyrinths of your sorrows, filling your feelings of solitude with hope.”
Madeleine Delbrêl died in 1964, having spent most of her adult life as a social worker in Ivry, in the suburbs of Paris, an overcrowded, impoverished urban district. A passionate Catholic, she won the awed respect of the mostly communist local administration for her mixture of professionalism and radical advocacy, and ended up running the social services for her area. She lived in a makeshift community with a couple of other women workers, prayed a lot, made countless friends, annoyed bureaucrats and clergy, and wrote copiously on current issues, church reform, and the call of God. I don’t think I know of any other writer who does what she does in her reflections on the spiritual demands and dangers of trying to exercise responsibility in community – “leadership” was not a word she would have cared for, I suspect. Through my time as Archbishop, I had a book of her short meditations always on my desk. I’d turn from the computer screen, pick up the book and read half a