Pope Francis is a pretty cool guy. He’s a smiley 78-year-old Argentinean man who kisses babies and shares meals with the homeless. So, obviously he’s a great pick for anyone’s list of people they would want to have dinner with.
Personally, my list consists of Pope Francis, Tina Fey and Kristin Wiig. But the most important thing here is that the Pope sits comfortably at the top.
For starters, the Pope is one of the few people capable of shutting down an entire city by his mere presence. Not even Beyoncé can do that, so kudos to him.
He’s progressive:
says all dogs can go to heaven:
and has the kind of smile that just makes you want to give him a hug:
But he’s also pretty close with The Big Guy Upstairs, and he had some very important and valuable lessons to share with the people gathered along the parkway in Philadelphia on the weekend of September 26.
The weekend was called the World Meeting of Families, so naturally the reoccurring theme was the family and its importance in spreading the Good News. An emphasis was also placed on the all-inclusive love of God for anyone who shares the same message of love.
I was blessed with the opportunity to attend Mass on Sunday, September 27th, and in looking at the humongous crowd gathered for Mass, the all-inclusive nature of God’s love was most evident. Locals from Philadelphia were sitting next to whole families who had traveled from Spain, California, and Italy; people speaking English were sandwiched between groups of students chatting in Spanish and small families conversing in Vietnamese. The all-inclusive nature of God’s love was being lived out along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway as strangers became friends, brothers and sisters in Christ.
“Faith opens a “window” to the presence and working of the Spirit. It shows us that, like happiness, holiness is always tied to the little gestures.”
What better way to sing the Our Father than together with one voice, one million people strong? What better way to express these little gestures than by sharing the sign of peace with those surrounding you?
It was at this point in the mass that it struck me how wonderful it was to be a Catholic, to be here surrounded by hundreds of thousands of other Catholics of all ages, nationalities and backgrounds. I turned to the Korean family sitting next to me, and we smiled and shook hands; and then I turned to my friends from Providence College, both old and new, and did the same. I turned to a man sitting near us who knew someone at our college, to a woman sitting a few feet from us, and turned left and right and saw hundreds of thousands of strangers, embracing and sharing the sign of peace. I saw the little gestures and the work of the Holy Spirit all along the parkway that warm September day on a massive scale.
At the conclusion of Mass and the Festival of Families, Pope Francis left us with the message to look deeper, to show our love for one another small ways, and to include everyone we come across in the loving embrace of God regardless of “the family, people, region or religion to which they belong.”
And with a smile like this:
who could deny the Pope of that?
