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I bet you can’t guess who wrote this and/or where it comes from:
For the carnival, when we were children, my grandmother would make a pastry using a very thin batter. When she dropped the strips of batter into the oil, they would expand, but then, when we bit into them, they were empty inside. In the dialect we spoke, those cookies were called ‘lies’… My grandmother explained why: ‘Like lies, they look big, but are empty inside; they are false, unreal’…
And a couple of sentences further on in the same piece:
…we recall how we first used a fork to seal the edges of the pies that we helped our mothers or grandmothers to make at home. It was a moment of culinary apprenticeship, somewhere between child-play and adulthood, when we first felt responsible for working and helping one another.
Along with the fork, I could also mention thousands of other little things that are a precious part of everyone’s life: a smile we elicited by telling a joke, a picture we sketched in the light of a window, the first game of soccer we played with a rag ball, the worms we collected in a shoebox, a flower we pressed in the pages of a book, our concern for a fledgling bird fallen from its nest, a wish we made in plucking a daisy.
All these little things, ordinary in themselves yet extraordinary for us, can never be captured by algorithms. The fork, the joke, the window, the ball, the shoebox, the book, the bird, the flower: all of these live on as precious memories “kept” deep in our heart.
These paragraphs are from Pope Francis’ fourth profoundly accessible encyclical published this morning.
Real food for faith.
The first encyclicals I ever read were written by Paul VI and John Paul II. I struggled to understand their dense – almost obscure – language. Fortunately I had some good teachers to help me unpack these missives.
Then came the writings of the two most recent popes, Benedict XVI and Francis – directed not (as in the past) primarily to Catholic bishops and theologians but to every person who was actively seeking God.
Remember the opening lines of Pope Benedict’s first encyclical on Christmas Day 2005. It was a welcome surprise to everyone who was expecting more of that earlier formal encyclical style.
Benedict began:
God is love… Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.
And now this morning from Francis his fourth encyclical, a powerful, poetic, enticing, captivating reflection, grounded in personal human experience of love yet every bit as theologically robust as earlier papal communications.
This letter engages the heart of the reader offering an invitation to encounter Jesus in the heart of human reality.
Take a few moments to read a few paragraphs, and let me know your own reactions in the comments link below.
The full text of HE LOVED US is available at this link.
25. ‘Where the thinking of the philosopher halts, there the heart of the believer presses on in love and adoration, in pleading for forgiveness and in willingness to serve in whatever place the Lord allows us to choose, in order to follow in his footsteps. At that point, we realize that in God’s eyes we are a “Thou”, and for that very reason we can be an “I”. Indeed, only the Lord offers to treat each one of us as a “Thou”, always and forever. Accepting his friendship is a matter of the heart; it is what constitutes us as persons in the fullest sense of that word.’
The timeliness of this encyclical is brilliant.
The verse is so beautiful unaffected by loft theologies that limit rather than expand the experience we have of God as innocent children who are simply in awe. I reflected the other day on who was I really now looking at retirement and as my brother says the string that is life is getting shorter and friends and companions are dying. The answer was simple in my essence I am the same as I have always been at the core of who I am. It relates for me with the way God describes God “I am who I am.” Will read more of this encyclical your commentary suggest it will be of value.
This writing is so simple but immensely powerful I could cry.
Well spotted John!
The simplicity of everyday tasks and games will win the hearts of many.
A great reminder for us to pass on the “everyday stuff” we do; to our children, and especially to our grandchildren
Thanks so much for your insight.
Thanks John, for the alert, and the link. What a gift this encyclical is, as is its author. Be nice to think a few politicians around the world might stumble across it sometime soon.