A Look Back on the Missionary Disciple, Pope Francis
- Tanner Kalina
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
As we grieve the loss of our Holy Father, Pope Francis, let us spend a moment ruminating on his backbreaking work in the arena of evangelization. In the coming days and years, much will be said about his various efforts while serving as the Vicar of Christ, but this particular pontifical focus deserves extra appreciation.
Since taking the wheel as captain of the Catholic Church twelve years ago, Pope Francis has made a concerted effort to steer the Church away from maintenance mode and decidedly into mission mode. He took on this herculean task by becoming small and focusing on the marginalized in front of him. He repackaged the wisdom handed down from his predecessors and various saints and tailored it for our discordant and mercurial age.
Pope Francis was a model-evangelist for our times.
A Life-Changing Encounter
His message wasn’t unique, but it was specific to us.
The papal motto on his coat of arms says it all – miserando atque eligendo, “having mercy, he chose him.” St. Bede the Venerable, an 8th-century English monk, first coined this phrase in a homily. He used it to describe the scene when Jesus saw Matthew, the tax collector, and then called him into discipleship.
It makes sense why these words meant so much to Pope Francis. On the Feast of St. Matthew in 1953, Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis’ name before becoming Pope Francis) felt the loving gaze of God after Confession, and from that gaze, he then felt a call to the priesthood. Just like with Matthew, his encounter with the Lord shone light on who he was and illuminated his mission moving forward.
Bergoglio would go on to spend his life bringing as many souls as he possibly could into this same spiritual experience – a personal encounter with the Lord that stirs the heart into interior self-discovery and exterior mercy.
Give What You Receive
The words Pope Francis recently wrote for this year’s upcoming World Mission Day encapsulate both his chosen model of spiritual fatherhood and his pastoral plea for us: “I urge all of you, children, young people, adults and the elderly, to participate actively in the common evangelizing mission of the Church by your witness of life and prayer, by your sacrifices and by your generosity.”
Prayer, sacrifice, generosity.
His clarion call looks a lot like Pope St. John Paul II’s own model of discipleship for the Catholic faithful of “relationship, identity, mission.” In a nutshell, we are called to an intimate relationship with the Lord through a life of prayer. Within that relationship, we find our identities, and we fortify those identities further through participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice. With our purpose secure in the Lord, we’re free to live a life on mission with biblical generosity.
In an age of inconsistency, Pope Francis consistently called everyone – bishops, priests, religious and the lay faithful – to this spiritual path. We need a relationship with the Lord, and that relationship needs to be shared! We cannot keep the truth to ourselves! The world longs for what we have!
This was the heart of Pope Francis.
And he recognized that, unfortunately, this is oftentimes not our heart.
“Today’s drama in the Church is that Jesus keeps knocking on the door, but from within, so that we will let him out! Often we end up being an ‘imprisoning’ Church which does not let the Lord out, which keeps him as ‘its own’, whereas the Lord came for mission and wants us to be missionaries,” the Holy Father wrote in his message for World Mission Day 2024.
So often, we want a relationship with the Lord, but we don’t want the responsibility that comes with that relationship.
Prayer, sacrifice, generosity. Relationship, identity, mission. Encounter, confidence, mercy. However you want to chop up the life of a disciple, each of these aspects of evangelization was crucial for Pope Francis.
A Faith that Moves Outwards
We need to experience the loving gaze of Jesus.
First things were first for Pope Francis, and he wanted us first to recognize that “Christian faith is either an encounter with him alive, or it does not exist” (Desiderio desideravi 10). Put another way, each of us needs to meet Jesus one to one, person to person. We need to enter into a living and personal relationship with him — not just the idea of him. This is why we’re Catholic!
We do this through prayer. As the Church has always taught, Pope Francis reminded us that prayer is where we experience Jesus.
“In the face of so many wounds that hurt us and could lead to a hardness of heart, we are called to dive into the sea of prayer, which is the sea of the boundless love of God, in order to experience his tenderness” (Homily for Ash Wednesday, 2014).
Pope Francis structured so much of his teaching around this ancient truth. Our faith, our strength, our very lives should flow from God’s love.
“The love that we receive from the Lord is the force that transforms our lives. It opens our hearts and enables us to love” (Homily for the Mass of Canonization of 10 Individuals, May 15, 2022).
But this isn’t enough. Pope Francis knew that this is only half of the equation.
The love that we receive from God must inform who we are and must be shared with others.
Knowing that our age values efficiency over poetry, Pope Francis had a knack for putting it bluntly, like in a popular phrase attributed to him: “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. That's how prayer works.” On another occasion, he said, “As I myself am loved, so I can love others…The Christian life is just that simple.”
A Church on the Streets: The Body of Christ Strengthens the Body of Christ
Our relationship with the Lord must lead to action. The mercy extended to us by the Lord must extend to mercy for others. Our reception of the Lord’s gift of self must make us a self-gift to others. That’s simply how it works.
Miserando atque eligendo.
In an age that seeks comfort and security, Pope Francis reminded us that we should be “a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security,” (Evangelii Gaudium 49).
We receive the love of the Lord, and we share the love of the Lord. It’s just that simple.
This is what makes us true “missionary disciples,” as Pope Francis would say. Or as he did say, “It follows that every missionary disciple is called to become, like Jesus and in him, through the working of the Holy Spirit, one who breaks the bread and one who is broken bread for the world” (Message for World Missionary Day 2023).
We can’t fully appreciate Pope Francis’ accomplishments in the work of evangelization if we don’t acknowledge his consistency in calling us to orient our work as missionary disciples around Our Eucharistic Lord. In short, the Holy Father wrote in that same message, “Jesus in the Eucharist is the source and summit of the mission.”
The Eucharist is the source of our relationship with God, the source of our identities, and the source of our mission.
The Eucharist is also the summit of our relationship – a genuine foretaste of Heaven. The Eucharist is also the summit of our identity – we are the ones to whom Jesus says, “This is my body, given up for you.” The Eucharist is also the summit of our mission – our work is to bring people into full communion with Jesus.
“We must not allow ourselves even a moment of rest, knowing that still not everyone has received an invitation to this Supper or knowing that others have forgotten it or have got lost along the way in the twists and turns of human living” (Desiderio desideravi 5).
As we think back on the life of Pope Francis, may we strive for a deeper and more prayerful relationship with the Eucharistic Lord that awakens our hearts to self-knowledge and moves them to self-gift. This is what he was all about, because this is what evangelization has always been about.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
