A Homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Sirach 27:4-7 1 Corinthians 15:54-58 Luke 6:39-45
How are popes judged? Pose the question thus and the likely answer would be: often and unfairly. After all, that’s how we judge each other, typically with very little knowledge or insight. Roman pontiffs receive the same treatment, though with much greater frequency and intensity because they labor while the world watches.
This past week, the papal surgeon, Dr. Sergio Alfieri, summed up the Holy Father’s medical condition by saying that “both doors are open.” Pope Francis could be moving toward recovery or death.
As we look ahead, not in idle speculation over the future polity of the church but in somber acceptance of God’s will for all souls, we might well ask: How does God judge popes?
Does the question surprise you? But surely you do not think that pontiffs, having advanced so far in a life of discipleship, simply take one more step into heaven! Indeed, the notion that a pope, or any of us, would simply advance toward salvation is quite dangerous.
Even if salvation takes a lifetime to achieve, the Gospels never present it as a savings account. We do not accumulate some store of divine credits and then cash in, though this erroneous image continues to creep into our thoughts.
No, whether achieved in an instant or a lifetime, salvation is an all-or-nothing act. There’s no grade point average for discipleship. We must never tell ourselves that we are carrying the right G.P.A., for that would make us guilty of presumption, which is a sin.
So how does God judge popes? Catholicism’s detractors sometimes suggest that we make bishops of Rome into semi-divine figures, but if we truly considered popes to be divine, we would not pray for them each day in the Eucharist. Popes do not have a free pass to heaven any more than they have an easy task on earth. Hence, our daily prayer.
The other great denial of papal divinity is our immediate movement from one vicar of Christ to the next. Strictly speaking, there are no dead popes. There are only men who were popes while they lived.
So how does God judge popes? It cannot be an easy examination, for Christ tells us that much will be demanded from those to whom much has been given (Lk 12:48). To return to our failed analogy, the required G.P.A. for popes would be higher, not lower.
Indeed, the quintessential Catholic poet, Dante Alighieri, puts five pontiffs in hell: Anastasius II (496-98) for heresy; Nicholas III (1277-80) for nepotism; Celestine V (1294) for resigning the papacy—Dante differs from the Catholic Church on this point—and finally, Boniface VIII (1294-1303) and Clement V (1305-14) for fraud and simony (selling the sacred).
So how does God judge popes? Having rejected so many false notions of what it means for a pope to be judged, the right answer is Gospel clear:
A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit (Lk 6:43-44).
Whether pontiff or peon, the great question awaiting God’s judgment is the fruit that our lives have borne. Did we live for ourselves or for others? Did we make the world a better place or darken its future? This is “the work of the Lord” to which, St. Paul says, we must be devoted (1 Cor 15:58).
Those are the questions to be asked, and none of us can answer them assuredly for ourselves. Until it dawns, how do we know if we have borne fruit for the kingdom? It is only in the presence of God that we know what mattered most about our lives on earth. The Scriptures tell us how we should live, but only God can inform us how indeed we did live.
For the saints, one of the joys of heaven will be gazing upon the “whole,” the completed tapestry never seen during life. Pope Francis’ great joy—and I think we can presume upon his salvation, for we certainly do not sin in kindly judging another—will be to see with divine clarity the fruit that his life and his priesthood have borne on Earth.
Enough of how God judges popes. The question was raised so that we could reflect more accurately upon a more pressing question. How are we to be judged?
It is not how long the lists of our sins might be, for sins can be forgiven. Christ quite solemnly tells us that sinners and prostitutes can storm heaven (Mt 21:31).
Sins vanish before God, but failure to bear fruit remains. We lay down our sins when we cross into heaven, but we cannot fill our eternal baskets with fruits that were never planted, never cared for, never brought to harvest.
Ironically, while salvation is not a question of grade point averages, there are what we might call degrees of heaven. The more we become like God while we live, the more of us there will be to receive God in eternal life. In the end, the question is one of identity. Have we become like God? Did our lives bring forth abundance? Life itself?
Bearing fruit expands our humanity. It quite literally fits us for heaven. This is why God judges each of us by the fruit we have borne.
A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit (Lk 6:43-44).
