When I sat down to blog about Pope Francis’ interview with America magazine, I started and deleted the post three times. Finally I decided that I have very little I want to say to you about this inspiring, groundbreaking, monumental interview with a man who continues to fill me with hope for the future of our faith and reminds me that, yes, the Holy Spirit is very much alive and active in the life of our Church.
So here’s the only message I have about this interview, which left me in tears at various points. Read it. Slowly. Then read it again. Then take parts of it and use it as spiritual reading, fodder for meditation. Really let it sink in away from the headlines and sound bites and spin — secular or Catholic — because, to be sure, there’s spin from every corner. In fact, I have not read one news story or watched one news show or listened to anyone’s analysis of this piece, even among the bloggers and Catholic writers I most trust. I don’t want to hear what they think about it. I want to hear what Pope Francis thinks, and the only way to do that is to read it for yourself — in context, in its entirety, in solitude, in faith.
Click HERE to go to full text. Print it out. Reflect. Use it as a kind of lectio divina. That’s what I plan to start to do today, and at 12,000 words, it’s going to take a while to get through it a second time.
