Pope Benedict in the USA
April 20, 2008 Homily
Fr. George Smiga
John 14:1-12
Pope Benedict XVI has been visiting the United States this week. But many people do not know that the Pope appreciates fine automobiles. In Rome the roads are so narrow and twisted that a larger car is simply not practical. And so the Pope has been known to admire some of the luxurious large cars that are provided for him when he tours throughout the world. This was the case this week when he arrived in New York City. A chauffer came to pick him up driving a custom Bentley limousine.
“Wow that’s quite a car,” said the Holy Father.
“Yes it sure is your Holiness. In fact it was ordered specially for your arrival.”
The Pope said, “I’d love to give it a spin. You know I really don’t get much chance to drive in Rome.”
The chauffer said. “Your Holiness, my job is to drive you. And we have to get to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”
“Good!” said the Holy Father. “You know the way—I’ll drive.”
It is difficult to argue with the Pope. The chauffer climbed in the back of the limousine and the Pope got behind the wheel. Now the chauffer said, “Take it easy. Go up to the stop sign and take a right and pull onto the freeway.” The Pope did so.
“Wow this car really has great pickup,” the Pope said. “I wonder what it could do if I opened it up.”
“Be careful Holy Father,” the chauffer said. “We have speed limits here in New York City.” But it was too late. A police officer saw the car passing by, turned on his siren, and pulled the Bentley to the side of the freeway. He walked up to the car and the Holy Father rolled down the window.
“Oh” the officer said. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” And the officer returned to his patrol car and called his supervisor.
“Sarge” he said. “Remember how I’m supposed to call you when I get into a situation that I don’t know how to handle? Well I just pulled over the most important person I can imagine for speeding and I don’t know how to proceed.”
The sergeant responded, “Well how important is he?”
“Very important” said the officer.
“Well,” said the sergeant, “Is he as important as Mayor Bloomberg?”
“Way more important than Mayor Bloomberg” the officer said.
“Well” the Sarge said, “Is he as important as the Governor?”“Sarge, he’s more important than the Governor. He’s even more important than the President of the United States!”
“Really,” said the sergeant. “Well who exactly have you pulled over?
”The officer responded, “I don’t know who he is, but he has the Pope as a chauffer.”
It’s a clever joke. But the image of the Pope as a chauffer is not a bad one. Despite all the pomp and ceremony that surrounds the Holy Father, his primary responsibility is to serve us. One of his official titles is the Servant of the Servants of God. If Jesus is the way to the Father as he clearly proclaims in today’s gospel, then it is the role of the Pope to assist us along that way, to chauffer us to Christ.
Benedict XVI has been much more successful in doing this than his critics had anticipated. You know his job before becoming Pope was to run the Office of the Doctrine of the Faith. He was the watchdog of orthodoxy and in many instances censured theologians who he felt were out of bounds. When he was elected Pope, many people anticipated that his papacy would be narrow and stern and negative. But he has proved those critics wrong. As he demonstrated in the United States this week, his approach to being Pope is profoundly pastoral. His first encyclical was not on some thorny moral question or international crisis, it was an encyclical on love—on God’s love for humanity. Even more so than John Paul II, this Pope has consistently preached the Gospel as Good News. He wants people to sense the joy and the power of being a believer.
I think that this approach by the Holy Father is quite conscious, because he knows the numbers. The numbers regarding the Catholic Church in the first world are not good. Church participation in Europe and the United States is falling. Only twenty percent of European Catholics attend church and US Catholics are catching up to them. In 1987 forty-four percent of American Catholics went to church, today the number is about thirty-three percent. There are many reasons to explain this, but the Holy Father had a particular insight to which I want to draw your attention. He believes that many people are falling away from church because the Catholic faith no longer strikes them as “interesting.” I think the Holy Father is correct. Many people are ceasing to practice their faith because they see faith as an dusty set of old rules or a dead letter or a historical curiosity. They see religion as a set of beliefs without any energy or life. Benedict XVI is calling us to change that perception. But how can we do that? How do we re-instill energy into our faith? How do we make religion interesting? How do we put the buzz back into believing?
The only way we can do this is to find the fire in our own hearts, to locate an energy in our own believing. If we approach our religion merely as an obligation; if we think that what we are called to do is simply to repeat the Lord’s Prayer or the Ten Commandments; if we see passing on the faith to our children as simply telling them what we learned in grade school without any of our own experience, without any effort to rethink what we say; our faith will look to others like a dead letter. Unless our faith in Jesus can make us better parents, more patient spouses, fairer employers, more responsible citizens; our faith will appear to others as dull and irrelevant, perhaps even superstitious.
We need to know the way that God has blessed us and be excited about the blessings we have received. We need to draw confidence from the presence of God that we feel is with us and to proclaim that confidence and peace to others. It’s only then that others will say, “I want that excitement.” “I want that peace.” “I want that confidence.” “I want to believe as you believe.” “I want your faith to be my own.” If Catholicism is going to survive in the twenty-first century then we as Catholics must be people who believe with interest and enthusiasm. That is the path down which Benedict XVI wants to chauffer us. And we would be wise to let him take us there.
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