Francis & the Testimony of Jesus – Brad Jersak

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The Testimony of Francis –

With the passing of Pope Francis, we will see a great wave for testimonials about him. We will witness a range of conflicting responses from those who adored him to those who abhorred him. It’s complicated when people of other faiths or no faith offer words of praise while many conservative Catholics denounced him and even publicly wished him dead!

Speaking of conflicted, how does a ministry whose brand is “Christianity Without the Religion” pay tribute to the head of the largest religious institution on earth? Our inclination is to consider how the message and ministry of Francis bore testimony to the gospel of Jesus and how Francis called us, even imperfectly to fix our eyes on Jesus.

The Gospel According to Francis –

If we ask, “What was the gospel according to Pope Francis?” we have the benefit of his final sermon, given on Easter Sunday, 2025, the day before his final departure. A good test of anyone’s gospel is the message they deliver on Easter. Bottom line: does it push an agenda of transactional, Christless religion? Or does it point to Jesus Christ and what he has done? Does it say, “Look to us” or does it say, “Look to Jesus!”? I’m grateful to relay the gospel according to Francis while it is still fresh. His final public address bore witness:

  • Sisters and brothers, especially those of you experiencing pain and sorrow, your silent cry has been heard and your tears have been counted; not one of them has been lost! 
  • In the passion and death of Jesus, God has taken upon himself all the evil in this world and in his infinite mercy has defeated it. He has uprooted the diabolical pride that poisons the human heart and wreaks violence and corruption on every side. The Lamb of God is victorious! That is why, today, we can joyfully cry out: ‘Christ, my hope, has risen!’

Francis’ gospel centers Jesus, the saving work of the Cross, and the victory of the resurrection. It also showed us that Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the source of our hope, comfort, encouragement, and healing. This is the Jesus to whom we refer when PTM insists, “All Jesus, all the time.”

  • All those who put their hope in God place their feeble hands in his strong and mighty hand; they let themselves be raised up and set out on a journey. Together with the risen Jesus, they become pilgrims of hope, witnesses of the victory of love and of the disarmed power of Life.

More than a Memory –

For Francis, Easter weekend is not merely a memorial to first-century events. He reminded us that Jesus resurrected 2000 years ago is also Jesus risen and alive today. Our experience of Jesus is not rooted in a religious pilgrimage to an empty tomb in a far away land. Jesus’ promise is true: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” And therefore? In his Easter “Mass of the Day,” Francis wrote,

  • Because if he has risen from the dead, then he is present everywhere, he dwells among us, he hides himself and reveals himself even today in the sisters and brothers we meet along the way, in the most ordinary and unpredictable situations of our lives. He is alive and is with us always, shedding the tears of those who suffer and adding to the beauty of life through the small acts of love carried out by each of us.
  • For this reason, our Easter faith, which opens us to the encounter with the risen Lord and prepares us to welcome him into our lives, is anything but a complacent settling into some sort of “religious reassurance.” On the contrary, Easter spurs us to action, to run like Mary Magdalene and the disciples; it invites us to have eyes that can “see beyond,” to perceive Jesus, the one who lives, as the God who reveals himself and makes himself present even today, who speaks to us, goes before us, surprises us. Like Mary Magdalene, every day we can experience losing the Lord, but every day we can also run to look for him again, with the certainty that he will allow himself to be found and will fill us with the light of his resurrection.

The Jesus Way According to Francis –

As we fix our eyes on Jesus, we recognize that there is a beautiful gospel to be embraced but also a Jesus Way to be followed. When we hear Jesus say, “Follow me,” we discover that his resurrection life, his grace, transforms us and empowers us to walk in the Jesus Way of compassion, of self-giving, radically forgiving love, with particular care for the poor, the marginalized, the lowly, and the downtrodden.

In this regard, Francis was a rule-breaker who drove those religious hardliners crazy. The most visual example was how he upended the annual tradition of a papal foot-washing. Every “Maundy Thursday” (the day before Good Friday at the Last Supper mass), previous Popes would perform a ritual of following Jesus’ practice of washing the feet of twelve disciples (from John 13). They would select twelve people. That is, twelve Christian people. Or rather, twelve Christian males. But specifically, twelve Christian male clergy. The rite was exclusive, meant for insiders.

But starting in 2016, Francis blew things up in a way that restored the sense of scandal that Peter experienced when Jesus, his rabbi, first stooped to wash his feet. Francis now washed the feet of women, of migrants, of prisoners, and of non-Christians! . He also went to them, to jails and to hospitals, not only washing their feet, but kissing them. Why? Because Francis saw that in Christ, all are included. No one is outside the love and care of Jesus Christ. Everyone belongs.

But notice also the subtle but all-important shift from washing feet (emulating Jesus) to kissing feet… rather than ‘being Jesus’ to the ones he washed, Francis identified with ‘the sinful woman’ who kissed the feet of Jesus in Luke 7. The gesture was spiritually loaded, deepening love and hatred for Francis across the world, but more than that: Francis was miming a message that revealed Christ’s love as ever-expansive and exposed religiosity in all its ugliness.

A Final Station, a Final Invitation –

On Monday, Francis embarked on his final journey. His farewell included a final gospel invitation. When I test the fruit of one’s gospel, I pay close attention to their invitation. If we read Francis’ Easter words carefully, the message is deeply Christ-centered. I’ll say my “AMEN!” now to give Francis the last word, who paid tribute, not to himself, but to Jesus:

  • All those who put their hope in God place their feeble hands in his strong and mighty hand; they let themselves be raised up and set out on a journey. Together with the risen Jesus, they become pilgrims of hope, witnesses of the victory of love and of the disarmed power of Life.
  • The Jubilee invites us to renew the gift of hope within us, to surrender our sufferings and our concerns to hope, to share it with those whom we meet along our journey and to entrust to hope the future of our lives and the destiny of the human family. And so we cannot settle for the fleeting things of this world or give in to sadness; we must run, filled with joy. Let us run towards Jesus, let us rediscover the inestimable grace of being his friends.