There are 59 pills, or beads, on the rosary.

Pope Francis at his “window” explains the 59 little pills – All is revealed

Here at Leyland St. Mary’s, we imitated the Pope and gave out some rosaries, in Church, to mark the end of the “Year of Faith”, with an explanation of how to pray the rosary. It seems more important to do something than merely to speak, endlessly, about Faith, Hope, God, Love, Jesus and the Gospel. It was something special to see many people leaving Church, on Sunday last, and looking joyfully at the little pamphlet about how to say the rosary – and with a smile on their faces.

Since then Pope Francis has done so many other things; they are all aspects of evangelisation, because he knows that gestures and facts count much more than words. Possibly the most important is the publication, on Tuesday 26 November 2013, of a long document on Evangelisation, called “The Joy of the Gospel”. In Latin, its name is “Evangelii Gaudium”.

It is a beautiful document; at 90 pages of A4 in length, it is too long to publish, but there is a summary of it on our website at, www.leylandstmarys.org.uk, under the documents and albums button; (then scroll down to documents). This summary was produced for the press release on Tuesday last. Should they wish to, anyone could download the whole long document, by using a search engine and putting in the Latin title. It is easy to read, and is full of joy at the start. (I have only had time to begin reading it).

Pope Francis points out that our whole life should be evangelical, and that Jesus, who is always new in his inspiration, provides many new ways to evangelise, that are different to preaching. These new ways may not quite be like my experience of Monday last, in Liverpool! On my day off, I walked through the ‘Liverpool One’ shopping precinct. There, on his own, dressed in a smart suit, amid a teeming busy crowd, was a young, personable man with a nice face, who was proclaiming to everyone, and nobody, that Jesus is our Saviour. As I walked past, no one paid him any attention; nobody stopped to listen. Another well-dressed man, not quite so friendly looking, thrust a small pamphlet into my hands, about how Jesus is the ‘Good Shepherd’. I wonder whether such activities do any good at all. Much better, may be some practical act of kindness, made by one neighbour to another – or a gesture, like many of those by Pope Francis.

One such gesture came to my knowledge only this week. In the secular press, it was reported that a priest, in Rome, refused to baptise a child, whose mother was a single parent and she was not a church-goer. Somehow, Pope Francis traced her ‘phone number and rang her. He then told the woman that he would baptise the baby!  What a lovely gesture!

The spirit of this new document, (“The Joy of the Gospel”), is one of welcoming everyone, whosoever and wherever, they find themselves. It begins in an explosion of joy, that should be the spirit within every Christian, because a Christian knows that he, or she, is redeemed by Jesus, and then offered a life in union with Jesus, and so with God. The Pope insists that, we Catholics, including the priests, should not make life difficult for others, but welcome them. The first pages of the document are ‘thick’ with quotes, from scripture, that resonate with joy; they show the point the Pope is making, is the same as the message of the Bible.

It contains some amusing phrases, and some of the meanings go very deep; I quote:

“There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter”.

“Thanks to our encounter with the person of Jesus, with God’s Love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption. We become fully human when we become more than human”.

“An evangeliser must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!”

Once again, Pope Francis is giving us hope. We all need hope – hope that links to our inner spirit – and which brings out joy, even when circumstances might make us feel down-hearted, even broken-hearted. Thank God, for the evident signs of light shining in the darkness; the darkness will never prevail over the light.

Fr. Jonathan