The triumphalism of Christians

Christian triumphalism  passes through human failure. Letting oneself be tempted by other kinds of triumphalism, by a worldly brand of triumphalism, means giving in to the temptation of conceiving a “Christianity without a cross”.   Pope Francis' reflection at the Mass he celebrated this morning, Wednesday 29 May, in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, was centred on humility.

Christian triumphalism  passes through human failure. Letting oneself be tempted by other kinds of triumphalism, by a worldly brand of triumphalism, means giving in to the temptation of conceiving a “Christianity without a cross”.   Pope Francis' reflection at the Mass he celebrated this morning, Wednesday 29 May, in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, was centred on humility.

Today’s Gospel (Mk 10:32-45) says: the disciples “were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. Determined”. Reflecting on the restive sentiments seething in the hearts of the  “dismayed” and “fearful” disciples, the Holy Father highlighted the conduct of the Lord who revealed the truth to them. The Son of man will be handed over to  the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and kill him; but on the third day he will rise.

 The disciples underwent the same temptation that Jesus had faced in the wilderness, “when the devil” challenged him to work “a miracle”, the Pope said. Such as throwing himself down from the temple and saving himself in such a way that all might see it and be redeemed.

Today, the Pope said, we risk succumbing to the “temptation of a Christianity without a cross”. And “there is another temptation”: that of “a Christianity with the cross but without Jesus”; the Pope explained that this was the “temptation of triumphalism”. “We want triumph now”, he said, “without going to the cross, a worldly triumph, a reasonable triumph”.

“Triumphalism in the Church halts the Church. The triumphalism of us Christians halts Christians. A triumphalist Church is a half-way Church”. A Church content with being “well organized and with... everything lovely and  efficient”, but which denied the martyrs would be “a Church which thought only of  triumphs and successes; which did not have Jesus’ rule of triumph through failure. Human failure, the failure of the cross. And this is a temptation to us all”.

(Pope Francis, homely, 29/05/13)