Joe takes this opportunity to highlight just how great Pope John Paul I was, and how unfortunate it is that he gets overlooked due to his very short papacy.
Transcript:
JOE:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and today I want to talk about a pope that doesn’t get a lot of love, doesn’t get a lot of attention. Pope John Paul, the first many of us are maybe dimly aware that he even exists. And if we know anything about him, it’s probably a handful of relatively superficial facts. Like for instance, he liked to smile sometimes
CLIP:
The
Smiling Pope albino, Ani Pope John Paul, the first joy is the legacy left behind by John Paul, the first known as the smiling pope. Though he only served as Pope for 33 days, his characteristic smile and down to earth personality was able to reach people from all walks of life.
JOE:
And that’s great. I mean it’s wonderful. The Pope liked to smile, but surely there’s more to Pope John Paul the first and the fact that he smiled. It’s understandable of course, that we don’t know a ton about him because he was only Pope for 33 days. And just to put that in context, as of today, Pope Leo the 14th has been Pope for 274 days. And I think for most of us, we still think of him as very much a new pope. It hasn’t even been a full year yet. And if you think about all the popes in the last century, there’s only been nine of them and that includes John Paul the first. But just to put this in perspective, Pope Francis was Pope for more than 4,400 days. John Paul II was Pope for more than 2,800 days. Saint John Paul II nearly hit 10,000 days. He’s one of the longest reigning popes in history.
And then right before you’ve got John Paul, the first who’s at 33 days, not 3,333 days, going back before that St. Paul, the 6 5500 days, John the 23rd, who also has a pretty famously short pontificate. It’s still 1,679 days long. Pius the 12th over 7,000 days, Pius the 11th, nearly 9,000 days. Now as you might imagine, those popes had a much bigger impact on the day-to-day life of the church. Their appointments, they’re homilies. And so for many of us, the one thing we know about John Paul, the first other than the fact that he smiled, is that he died and he died soon. And he died in a way that many people speculated, might’ve been murder, might’ve been poisoning. Father was John Paul one murdered? I think he was murdered, yes, I think he was murdered.
CLIP:
I believe that the Pope was poisoned. He was taking only one medication at that time for low blood pressure. And I believe that medicine was Tam with.
I says, you got to kill a pope. He says, yeah. I said, you’re crazy. He says, you know how many years we’ve been killing Popes in the Vatican? How many centuries we’ve been doing it for centuries? If they didn’t like the guy that was in, they got rid of him and put their own guy in.
I think almost the entire world has made the assumption that he was poisoned. It’s a totally unwarranted legend.
JOE:
But what I want to ask is what if there is more to John Paul the first beyond the fact that he smiled and died because I think there’s actually a lot we can learn from him, both from his month as Pope and also from some of the writings that he wrote before he became the Pope. And I thought a good way to go about kind of exploring his thought would be to look at three saints that he points us to. These are three saints that he had a connection to in some way, and I’m going to arrange them from most personal to him and then to most applicable to us. I think that ordering will make sense as we go because the first of these is Pope St. Gregory the Great, and he was very clear that this is, he was modeling his own papacy off of.
Now he takes the name John Paul in honor of both John the 23rd and Paul the sixth. But in terms of how to govern as Pope, he talks about the pastoral rule of St. Gregory. And he talked about, this is one of his personal saints that he devoted to. He mentions that up in Venito there is a saying every good thief has his devotion. And the pope too has a number of devotions including to St. Gregory the great. So that’s what he tells us on September 3rd, 1978. He then mentions specifically that among the books of St. Gregory, the great is the Pastoral Rule, which he calls a beautiful book that teaches bishops their trade. And he points out that at the end of the book, after having laid out how a bishop ought to live, Gregory acknowledges that he falls short of the standard that he’s just laid out for a good shepherd and he asks for prayers.
And so he doesn’t want to be shipwrecked himself. And John Paul, the first echoes that he says, I say the same yet it is not just the pope in his prayers but the world. And then he quotes a Spanish writer who I’m pretty sure is a wand Deso Cortez who wrote, the World is going wrong because there are more battles than prayers. Let us try to see that there may be more prayers and fewer battles. And I think even in this kind of pithy line, you get a sense of what his pontificate was oriented to, even in its brief time of let’s suppose all of the chaos going on in the world and create structure and order and prayer and push for peace. And you also get a glimpse in here that he is very well read. Now, that’s going to be a theme that we return to over and over again because when you encounter the writing in the thought of John Paul, the first you start to notice this is someone who clearly has read quite a few books.
But before we get to those other books, let’s continue to focus on the pastoral rule of St. Gregory the Great, because as I said, that was September 3rd, 20 days later. So now we’re from the beginning of his pontificate to near the end of it, he said, at Rome, I shall put myself in the school of St. Gregory the great. And then he quotes him on the way A pastor should with compassion be close to each one who is subject to him forgetful of his rank. He should consider himself on a level with the good subjects, but he should not fear to exercise the rights of his authority against the wicked. Now that’s what he quotes from in his homily at the mass where he takes possession of the chair of Peter to basically say like, yes, I intend to be down to earth in the spirit of St.
Gregory, but I’m also not afraid to use the weight of this authority. I’ve been entrusted against those practicing wickedness. Remember? And he’s quoting here, Gregory, while every subject lifts up to heaven, that which she has done well, no one dares to censure that which she has done badly. When he puts down vices, he does not cease with humility to recognize himself as on the level of the brother whom he has corrected. And he considers that he is all the more a debtor before God and as much as his actions remain unpunished before men, in other words, a good bishop, a good leader, a good pope should in the exercise of enforcing discipline, start to realize like, yes, but I deserve to be disciplined as well. I think there’s kind of an analogy within family life. If you tell your kids, Hey, don’t eat that, that’s junk food or Don’t stay up that late or don’t watch that much tv, then you can start to notice your own life and say, someone needs to be saying that to me as well.
And so these moments of correction should also be a moment of reflection. And this is what he’s taking from Gregory and he’s kind of inviting us in. So as I say, this is the first of the three Saints, and we can see a very clear personal influence Gregory is having on how it’s forming his idea of his own pontificate. Alas, this would be not as he seemed to think the beginning of it, but close to the end. But there’s a second saint who was massively influential, who I believe Vatican News mentioned was his favorite saint and who we find him writing about over and over again. We find him referencing him as Pope, but also well before. And that’s St. Francis DeSales, who full disclosure is one of my favorite saints as well. For instance, in a general audience of September 27th, 1978, which would prove to be his last general audience, John Paul first describes how to love God as therefore a journeying with one’s heart to God, a wonderful journey.
Then he says, when I was a boy, I was thrilled by the journeys described by Jules Verne, 20,000 leagues under the sea from the earth to the moon around the world, 80 days, et cetera. So again, well read, but then he says, but the journeys of love for God are far more interesting. You read them in the lives of the saints. And then he describes briefly St. Vincent de Paul and St. Peter Claver. But then he says, the journey also brings sacrifices, but these must not stop us. And then he references. He doesn’t quote ’em directly, but he’s clearly taking this from St. Francis to sales. He says, Jesus is on the cross. You want to kiss him. You cannot help bending over the cross and letting yourself be pricked by a few thorns of the crown on the Lord’s head. It’s a beautiful image that yes, this is a journey and it’s exciting to say like, yeah, we’re on a journey for God but have no illusions.
This journey is going to be one that is a journey where we encounter the crucified Lord and get a little bloodied ourselves. And so he tells us, you cannot cut the figure of good. St. Peter had no difficulty in shouting the long lived Jesus on Mount Tabor where there was joy, but didn’t even let himself be seen beside Jesus on Mount Calvary where there was risk and suffering. Now again, it’s a beautiful image and one that he’s clearly taking from Francis de Sales, and the official transcript includes those kinds of references. But if you want to see more obvious evidence of the influence in Francis DEA plays on the spirituality of John Paul, the first and some of the things that might mean for us, I would suggest his book imi, which to the illustrious ones is a very fascinating series of letters because he was asked by a Catholic newspaper to do one monthly letter to some figure either from the past or sometimes even just fictional characters.
And so this is kind of the genre that he’s writing in. So for instance, he writes to Mark Twain, which again, it’s just fascinating. Here he is this Italian from Venice who he’s not an American, he is not a native English speaker. It’s actually kind of fascinating. I heard him speak English for the first time in preparing this talk, but just hearing his kind of range of influences and encountering that has been really fascinating. So anyway, he writes to Mark Twain and he’s semi apologetic because Twain was pretty cynical about religion. And he says, perhaps I ought to explain that bishops vary just as much as books. Some are like eagles soaring high above us, burying important messages. Others are Nightingales who sing God’s praises in a marvelous way, and others are poor RINs who simply squawk on the lowest branch of the ecclesiastical tree trying to express the odd thought on some great subject.
Dear Twain, I’m one of this latter kind. That’s his view. He has a real humility about him. He’s patriarch of Venice when he’s writing this and he views himself and seemingly authentically views himself as just a squawking bird on the lowest branch. That’s the role that he finds himself called to play by God. Now, he’s obviously going to be very surprised when God raises him up to become Pope in just a few short years, but that’s a story for another day. I want to focus particularly on what he has to say about Francis de Sales. In this letter to Mark Twain. He describes him as a bishop like me and a humorist like you, which I think is actually a very delightful description of Francis to sales. And he quotes him, we blame our neighbor for small faults and forgive ourselves for big ones. We try to sell things at a high price, yet wish to buy them at a bargain.
We want justice for other people, but mercy for ourselves. We want what we say to be taken generously, yet we’re stuffy over what others say. If one of our inferiors is rude to us, we dislike whatever he does. Whereas if we like someone, we forgive him anything. Whatever he does, we demand our rights strictly. We don’t want others to be moderate and claiming theirs. What we do for others seems a great deal to us. What others do for us seems nothing at all. Now, I think this is just good wisdom. I mean, who doesn’t relate to this description? Who doesn’t look at that and say guilty? There have certainly been times when I’m much more generous to myself than I am to other people, or I’m much more generous to somebody I happen to than somebody I don’t like when they do the exact same thing, that we’re not just even while we want justice or perhaps we want justice for other people and something better than justice for ourselves.
So it’s a good kind of call out. And you can understand in the course of the letter why he’s mentioning this, but it’s also just good spiritual food for thought, like where have I been guilty of this? And again, we have this indication, Francis sales plays this big role on the thought of JP one. Then next letter I want to raise here from this same work is to Penelope from the purely fictional character here and he’s talking about marriage and all the ways marriage falls apart and adultery. And he says, in the context of adultery, are there any remedies against this kind of danger? Yes, the sense of our dependence on God, prayer which obtains what our weakness lacks in the art of renewing our love. And then the Pope future Pope gives his own solid advice. The husband should always continue to court his wife a little.
The wife should always seek to praise her husband and be kind and attentive. And then he quotes Francis de Sales love and fidelity joined together always generate intimacy and trust. For this reason, married saints expressed many caresses within their marriage. Now, I just want to point out this is somewhat unusual. I mean maybe in the period after John Paul ii who has all these lengthy Wednesday audiences on theology of the Body, and we’re just used to hearing popes talk about things like marital intimacy. But it’s actually quite surprising in this period to find this bishop and even more surprising several centuries earlier to find that Bishop Francis DeSales talking about the need to just have positive physical touch and frequent caresses within marriage. And this is not a euphemism for just the sexual act, it just means in general that there should be a healthy sense of caress within a marriage.
And Francis Decile gives the example of Isaac and Rebecca, the chaste Dismart couple in ancient times as he describes them, how they’re seen through the window caressing each other in a way that there’s nothing indecent about, but it clearly marks them off as obviously husband and wife. And you see this in the Book of Genesis, but the point there is they’re not being exhibitionists, they’re not doing anything overtly sexual, but there is something nevertheless deeply marital about their exchange with one another and that that should be the hallmark of what a married couple looks like. You should have that kind of intimacy with your spouse. And then Francis sales mentions the great King St. Louis was almost reproach for going too far and the small attentions needed for the preservation of conjugal love. I mean shocking, right? A French politician accused of being too handsy.
But in this case, it’s actually because he’s saintly. No offense to French politicians or maybe watching. But speaking of the French St. Francis de sales, he’s also the recipient of one of the letters of John Paul the first. So if you want to understand the influence of Francis DeSales on JP one and what Francis DeSales might have to say to us as presented to us by JP one, this is a great place to look. And it starts off in a really fascinating way because Luciani the future, John Paul first begins by saying, I have reread a book about you, St. Francis de sales in our heart of flesh. And again, I just love how much he clearly reads. And I also love particularly this emphasis on the heart of St. Francis de Sales because I think that is one of the most obvious details about him. He has called the gentleman Saint for a reason.
He’s just this incredible, very admirable, very relatable. There’s something just deeply attractive about him as a saint. And he is combines all of these tremendous features of being a brilliant mystic and theologian and apologist, but also just this person who just radiates sanctity and is clear that this is something that really drew John Paul the first to him as well. This heart of flesh. And that’s a term that Francis actually uses for himself. He admits he has a heart of flesh, a tender understanding heart that borne mine, the fact that men were not pure spirits but sensitive beings. And so if you want to understand the spirituality of both Francis DeSales and JP one, you need to start from this point that it begins with a recognition that we’re not angels, we are fallen creatures who even as we’re seeking after God, even after we’re desiring God, are still weak in many ways.
And so he says with this human heart of yours, you loved literature in the arts. Again, the parallel there seems obvious wrote with the most delicate sensibility and even encouraged your bishop, your friend Bishop Kmud, to write novels. You bent down over everyone and gave each person something. So what you see him drawn to in Francis DeSales, I think this is also in many ways what people are drawn to in him. The reason people they describe him, and this a smiling pope is because there appears to be in this man, this heart of flesh, and there’s something winsome and attractive about that. He goes on. When you were a university student in Padua, you made a rule that you would never run away or cut short a conversation with anyone. However, dislikeable and boring, that you’d be modest without insense, easy going without austerity, gentle without affectation and yielding without opposition.
Now I want to point out two things. Number one, that is a very difficult rule to impose upon yourself that even while Francis is very generous with other people and very generous with their own weaknesses and faults, he takes a much stricter line with himself. And if you remember earlier, one of the things that he pointed out that we’re prone to is to do the opposite. We have a lower bar for ourselves and a higher bar for everyone else. We’re much more merciful with ourselves than we are with other people, but he holds himself to a higher standard which allows himself to be more generous and to lower himself to other people. He can kind of stoop down to their level. He doesn’t run away, doesn’t cut the conversation short. The second thing to point out here is he seems to have lived up to this and Luciani says of this, many would call this the summit of achievement, but you thought achievement was elsewhere.
And he quotes Francis himself, man is the perfection of the universe. The spirit is a perfection of man. Love is a perfection of the spirit. The love of God is a perfection of love. So the summit of achievement, the perfection and excellence of the universe is the love of God. Luciani then says, you therefore believed in the primacy of God’s love. In fact, Francis writes an entire treatise on the love of God. Was it a matter of making people good? Let these people begin by loving God. Once this love was lit in their hearts and established there, the rest would follow of its own. Now, this is an important point that I think we can kind of overlook that Christianity is not first a moral code. And when this is pointed out, this sometimes gets pushback. This is something Pope Francis was fond of pointing out, but it’s simply true that Christianity and this Benedict to 16th also makes this point that Christianity at his heart is a relationship with Christ and everything else flows from that.
That doesn’t mean there’s not a moral dimension to it, but it means you have to start with the love that then makes you want to live by the rules. The reason people don’t commit adultery is not primarily because of rules, it’s primarily because they love their spouse enough and want to respect and honor them. So you have to order these relationships in the right way. Now it’s true your actions can block you from the love of God. You can be living in such a way that it’s incompatible with loving God. And so there are times where someone has to say, you need to get out of this lifestyle so you can be open to the love of God. But frequently, and this is I think what Francis DEA and what John Paul the first recognized and point to what needs to happen is that people need to fall more deeply in love with God and then the morality, the change of behavior, all of that can come next because now they have someone to strive for.
Think about even in human relationships, how often people will clean up their act for a new boyfriend, a new girlfriend, when they wouldn’t do those things simply for themselves. Well, same too. We often can and should do things out of love of God where it changes our whole way of being. So once this love is lit in our hearts and established there, the rest can kind of follow. Alright? But that might sound a little kumbaya ish. And so Luciani is very clear. What kind of love of God is Francis talking about here? One kind consists of size and pious groans and eyes turn sweetly to heaven. Another is masculine and frank and like the love that possessed Christ when he said in the garden, not my will but thine be done. This is the only kind of love of God you recommended. In other words, a sweet kind of emotional but fluffy and meaningless love is not what we mean here.
We mean the kind of love that sweats blood in the garden. That’s the love of God we need to be striving for and that if we have that kind of love of God, everything else follows. Now here it is worth probably just hearing it from Francis himself. I don’t know if this is a passage that he has in mind, but this was a passage that I was immediately reminded of in reading these words, summarizing Francis’ thought. This is from introduction to the devout life. He writes, I would say then that devotion does not consist in conscious sweetness and tender constellations which move one to size and tears and bring about a kind of agreeable, acceptable sense of self-satisfaction. Now he’s calling out this thing we can easily fall into where we imagine we’re very pious because like, oh, I went to this amazing worship experience, or I had this great time in prayer or whatever, I just came out with this amazing spiritual high and maybe you wept.
Maybe you just had this huge emotional search and that Francis DeSales would say, could be fine, could be good, but that’s not actually the thing we’re looking for. Now, some of you might be surprised. What is it? How could that not be what we’re chasing? Well, here’s what he’s going to say. He says, no, my child, this is not one. And the same as devotion for you’ll find many persons who do experience those kind of constellations but who are nevertheless evil minded and thus they’re devoid of the true love of God. Still more they’re devoid of any true devotion. And he gives a great example. If you know the story of Saul chasing King David, if you watch the recent animated film, there’s this moment where David finds Saul relieving himself in the cave or sleeping in the cave and he’s able to kill him, but he doesn’t.
And this is a sort of wake up call literally to Saul. And Saul then gives this amazing kind of eloquent rhetoric about how his heart has been softened. He calls David his son, he exalts his generosity, he lifts up his own voice, he weeps, he foretells David future greatness. And then he asks him to deal kindly with Saul himself. They Saul seed after him. So treat Jonathan and whatever... Read more on Catholic.com