This year during Lent, I read the book First Belong to God: On Retreat with Pope Francis. Written in 2024 by Austen Ivereigh, the book shares many teachings of Pope Francis through his encyclicals and from retreats he gave while he was Pope and when he was a Jesuit priest and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
As Easter drew near, I was particularly struck by Bergoglio’s commentary on the fact that Christ’s “self-emptying silence” led people to increase their negative actions towards him; his defenselessness ignited their fury. At a retreat in 1990, Bergoglio stated, “‘At the root of all ferocious attack is the need for people to project their own guilt and limitations.’”
Rather than admitting our faults and failures, we have the tendency to find fault with others. We see how hate, rather than love, brought former enemies, Pilate and Herod, together in what Ivereigh calls “a perverse kind of unity.”
We too succumb to the temptation of uniting in negative situations, through gossip or turning a blind eye to those in need. We may even refrain from speaking up in difficult situations and simply follow the crowd, for as Ivereigh states, “even those who know Jesus to be innocent (his disciples, Pilate) go along with what is happening. Caught up in the [scapegoat] mechanism, people are either convinced of the rightness of the violence directed against Jesus, or they are too stunned to oppose it.”
We know that, in the end, Christ triumphed over sin and death; however, just like those of his time who saw the Crucifixion as a failure, many today fail to fully recognize and embrace the victory of the Resurrection, or “are too stunned” to spread its message.
Bergoglio drew on a theology book that was helpful to him in articulating the misperceptions of Christ’s triumph. Written by Jesuit John J. Navone, the book was entitled Triumph Through Failure, which in its Italian translation is literally, “A Theology of Failure.”
To those of his time, it seemed that Christ had failed to end Roman rule and convert Israel. Even though he showed many signs of healing and hope throughout his ministry, Jesus’ death led some to believe that following him had been in vain.
Even today, it can be difficult to convince others that Jesus’ apparent “failure” was indeed triumph. Ivereigh, therefore, encourages readers to imagine having to explain the events of the Passion to a visitor, striving to explain the need for Christ’s suffering as the vehicle to overcoming suffering itself.
Ivereigh goes on to quote Bergoglio’s La Plata retreats where he “described this embrace of failure as Jesus ‘entering into patience.’ Jesus endures, is constant, holds fast, awaits. His failure in worldly terms is total, yet he succeeds in the one thing that matters: the fulfillment of God’s will.”
I find encouragement in Ivereigh’s reminder: “Joy did not come easily to the disciples at first, turned inward as they were in desolation, fear, and self-focus. Nor does it come naturally to most of us. Perhaps there is a ‘stone of distrust’ that keeps us entombed … At the 2019 Easter Vigil, Francis asked us to name that stone, and to ask the risen Lord to roll it away so that we can catch sight of the new horizon of possibility. Can we enter that joy, can we rejoice with Christ risen? What keeps us back, holds us in? What grace must we ask for?”
Following my Lenten “retreat” with our late Pope during this Easter season I aim to name my “stones.” I pray that the Lord will patiently roll away anything locking me inside the tomb of my own self-focus, blessing me with the grace to look up in amazement and hope to the empty Cross, and empowering me to spread the news of Christ’s victory.
May your own Easter be blessed by these uplifting words from Pope Francis:
“See Jesus as happy, overflowing with joy. Rejoice with him as with a friend who has triumphed. They killed him, the holy one, the just one, the innocent one, but he triumphed in the end. Evil does not have the last word. Nor will it have the last word in your life, for you have a friend who loves you and wants to triumph in you. Your Saviour lives.”
