Have Catholics Found Their King Benjamin in Pope Francis?
by Imo Eshiet
I often
wonder how many Christian sects have any real memory of the Lord’s
humility while in mortality. I am thinking of his birth in a place so
gross as the manger and his walk on the dusty roads of Palestine. How
about his call to simple fisher folks to be his apostles?
I
cannot forget that he was the son of an artisan. As one of our songs
goes, “I stand all amazed” he carried that heavy cross,
took a cruel beating from the hands of coarse Roman soldiers who
rounded his humiliations by spitting on him. The soldiers’
mouth possibly stank from stale alcohol so much so that a deer could
pick up the stench miles away.
Only
twice or so in his earthly life was anything connected with royalty
associated openly with him. These were when the heavens blazed and
announced his birth, significantly to socially inconsequential
shepherds and when the wise men from the east presented the baby
savior with gifts common to nobility. Another occasion was during his
entry to Jerusalem when folks laid palm fronds on the road for him to
ride on his borrowed donkey.
If we
stretch it a little bit, we may add his transfiguration and other
instances when heavenly messengers ministered to him. Apart from
these occasions often witnessed by a closed circle of associates, the
creator of the world led the life of a commoner. He not only lived
simply and humbly but inspired hope among the wretched of the earth.
His
very life was a rebuke on the reign of injustice and deceit he saw
everywhere around him. When he said, “My peace I give unto you,
not as the world giveth”, he
was possibly ridiculing
those who feign
love for others yet stab and rob them at the slightest
opportunity. On an occasion he had to
flee into the mountains when he “perceived that they (some five
thousand starving, neglected and forgotten ordinary Palestinian folks
he had just miraculously fed) would come and take him by force, to
make him a king”. See John 6:15.
The
Lord was exemplifying a principle which many who affect Christianity
now find so inimitable but which he would have King Benjamin teach:
“And behold, I tell ye these things that ye may learn wisdom;
that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your follow
beings ye are only in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2: 17).
The Lord did not resort to any obscene display of wealth to prove
anything because all powers and riches were already concentrated in
him. He was only too well aware of this so that when doubters asked
for signs and wonders he felt no urgency to oblige them.
Those
who have hijacked the gospel and replaced it with priestcraft in our
times should find Pope Francis’ exhortations chastening. This
past Palm Sunday, the Pontiff showed uncommon honesty and contrition
when he urged, "Let us look around: how many wounds are
inflicted upon humanity by evil! Wars, violence, economic conflicts
that hit the weakest, greed for money, power, corruption, divisions,
crimes against human life and against creation." Not done, he
called attention to "our personal sins: our failures in love and
respect towards God, towards our neighbor and towards the whole of
creation.” Pope Francis stressed that like
Jesus 2,000 years ago, Christianity should transmit a message of
hope, "especially in the hearts of the simple, the humble, the
poor, the forgotten, those who do not matter in the eyes of the
world".
The
pope should know. As cardinal in Argentina, he saw up close the
devastating misery and social exclusion of millions who, though
members of a fabulously rich church, yet live on the margins of the
global economic arrangement. He saw because he was humble enough to
abandon his official limo to ride in crammed buses to work so he
could experience, firsthand, the awful distress of the majority of
those he shepherded. Such is the compassion he feels for the rejects
of the earth that he even visited and washed those living with HIV
AIDS!
On
becoming pope, he did not see it as demeaning to go pick up his
personal effects from the hotel where he lodged and pay his bills.
Such is his humility that against tradition, Francis has refused to
move into the grandeur of his papal palace. He has been called “the
unpredictable Pope” because he mingles with crowds, an act
which drives his security details nuts! Since I am from a country
where politicians routinely buy jets for clerics to buy their
silence, where the clergy pick their flock clean and build
universities that charge cut-throat fees to keep the poor out, I find
Pope Francis’ example quite extraordinary.
His
charming and penetrating style resonates with me. On a personal
level, I see in his admirable gestures virtue that is desirable and
compelling. I attended a high school owned by the Catholics and had
the privilege of being taught by Jesuit priests who belonged to the
same order as the pope. One such down to earth priest, Rev. Father
McGuiness, an Irishman, so professed material poverty that he was
able to live in our hovels. He spoke our local language so fluently
that he put to shame many conditioned by colonial education to look
down on the language though it was the carrier of our culture.
Rev.
Father Isidore Umana, our principal, was in a class of his own. A
military chaplain on the Biafran side of our civil war, the depth of
his humanity was such that he passed freely on both sides of the
conflict to minister to the afflicted, bind the wounded, bless and
bury the casualties. At the end of the crises, he herded many boy
soldiers back to class where he wrestled to rid them off drugs and
wean them from military values to civil ethics.
We his
students knew him as “Father” and responding in kind, he
called us “my boys.” Against the prevailing culture of
plunder introduced by the Nigerian military, Father used his powers
for the greater good. Those who worked as chefs and assistants in the
school cafeteria would, let alone, cook stones and serve them as rice
and beans to students, but Father took a dim view of such evil. While
he could not stop the mass thievery, he ensured students were not
left to the heartlessness of his subordinates.
Occasionally
with us in tow, he would raid facilities where school provisions were
stored and ask us students to help ourselves to items that had been
horded by the kitchen staff for sale at the end of the day. Focusing
on the redemption, he celebrated Mass daily and played soccer with
us. We had come out of the war confused by the gory bloodletting and
hate. Hurting from privation and despair, the need to rebuild hope
and confidence, every vestige of which the war had stripped from us,
was a priority which the reverend answered with urgency.
This Easter, may we walk in the footsteps of holy men
and women before us.
Forgotten humanity.
A Catholic priest serving naked Biafran children.
A Catholic Nun attending a malnourished Biafran child.
Imo Ben Eshiet was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Raised in his village, Uruk Enung, and at
several cities in his country including Nsukka, Enugu, Umuahia, Eket and Calabar, Eshiet is a
detribalized Nigerian. Although he was extensively exposed to Western education right from
childhood in his country where he obtained a PhD in English and Literary Studies from the
University of Calabar, he is well nurtured in African history, politics, culture and traditions.
Imo is currently a teacher in the high priests group in the Summit Ward of the Greensboro North
Carolina Stake.