This past week we have heard the good news that the grain stockpiled in the ports in Ukraine, blocked by the Russians, will be released to those who are most in need. It was reported that an estimated 9.3 million people watched the semi-final of the Woman’s Football European Cup. The Commonwealth Games in Birmingham began on Friday and on the same day and, here in Canterbury, the 15th Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion formally opened. Positive
events all.

Yet for me, I was most moved by Pope Francis’s visit to Canada. His purpose was to bring about healing and reconciliation. For more than a century, Canada’s residential schools attempted to assimilate indigenous communities into Canadian society, by forcibly removing children from their families and sending them to schools where they were often punished for speaking their native languages and many were abused. Many of those schools were run by Catholic missionary orders. He came to say sorry.

During the Mass he celebrated on 28th July, at the National Shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Quebec, he spoke of the gospel of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He reflected on the disappointment of the disciples after the crucifixion of Jesus. They, like many, had followed Jesus with enthusiasm and were scandalised by his death on the cross. This caused them to turn around and go back to their former lives. Pope Francis said, “their cherished expectations had come to naught; the hopes they had put their trust in had been dashed, the dreams they dreamed had given way to disappointment and sorrow”. He  continued, “ that experience also marks our own lives, and our spiritual journey, at those times when we are forced to recalibrate expectations and to cope with our failings and the ambiguities and confusions of life.”

He went on to say, “it also is natural to feel crushed by our sins and by feelings of remorse.”  “What happened? Why did it happen? How could it happen?” are all legitimate questions the Pope said and “they are the burning questions that this pilgrim church in Canada is asking with heartfelt sorrow on its difficult and demanding journey of healing and reconciliation” with the nation’s First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities.

The Pope reminded us that, in confronting the scandal of evil and the body of Christ wounded in the flesh of our Indigenous brothers and sisters, “we, too, have experienced deep dismay; we, too, feel the burden of failure. Like the disciples when they fled Jerusalem and headed to Emmaus. The temptation to flee is real and to stop thinking about the failure is real. But the Gospel teaches that it is in precisely such situations of disappointment and grief — when we are appalled by the violence of evil and shame for our sins when the living waters of our lives are dried up by sin and failure when we are stripped of everything and seem to have nothing left — that the Lord comes to meet us and walks at our side.”

He encourages Canadian Catholics to recognise Jesus in the breaking of the bread as the disciples did in the Gospel story and allow him “to show us the way to healing and reconciliation.”

“In faith,” he said, “let us break together the Eucharistic bread so that around the table we can see ourselves once again as beloved children of the Father, called to be brothers and sisters all.”