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4 | NOVEMDIALES LUCTUS

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4 NOVEMDIALES LUCTUS The Frankincense scent wafting around the altar is both bitter and sweet, dry as the desert wind, yet warm, like the old pages of a Bible.  It ascended, curling slowly through the air with a dignity as ancient as Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, or the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus often prayed in a grotto in solitude on the southeastern side of this mountain, near Tabgha and Capernaum. The thurible, emitting the incense, had in it the resin of suffering and the echo of sacred things in psalms or canticles. Absent of frivolity in a sacrifice of scent, it carries within it the breath of prophets, the sorrow of mothers, the prayers of forgotten saints. There were theologians who looked at the rising smoke as the material world being spiritualized, the finite matter consumed in flame, exuding fragrant offering to the Infinite. The incense became the outward sign of the “divinization of the universe”—the slow, aching process ...
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3 | AD PERPETUAM MEMORIAM

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  3 AD PERPETUAM MEMORIAM “I am not choosing a man. I am interpreting a silence that stretches back two thousand years. The Spirit does not rumble with the soul; it whispers through history. In this man’s face, I must see not only virtue, but vision. Not only gentleness, but the fire of prophets. I have grown old. I no longer walk the marble halls as I once did, nor do I rise in the night as easily to pray. But I remember. Yes, God forgive me, I remember. God help me—God help us all to remember rightly what we are." He came to us not as a prince, but as a question. We expected a lion—he touched a tiger, and carried a lamb. We looked for a scholar in silk; instead, we received a man who smelled of the streets and looked like he had wept into his hands. We asked for someone saintly to favor the hopeless, but we found a man, also in humility, regularly asking the faithful to pray for him. We expected a preacher and found a profound listener.  Jorge Mario Bergoglio.  They sai...
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2 | MISERERE NOBIS.

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 2 MISERERE NOBIS In the tender light of a Vatican morning, when tulips, climbing snow, and indigoletta flowers were in bloom, heaven itself had drawn Pope Franciscus's last breath. It was 7:35 a.m. in the Casa Santa Marta, when the Pope slipped out from this corporeal world to immortality.  As how he planned his internment, he seemed to have never forgotten what he once said: we are dust of the earth. Miserando atque Eligendo In the name of the Most Holy Trinity. Amen. As I sense the approaching twilight of my earthly life, and with firm hope in eternal life, I wish to set out my final wishes solely regarding the place of my burial. Throughout my life, and during my ministry as a priest and bishop, I have always entrusted myself to the Mother of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary. For this reason, I ask that my mortal remains rest - awaiting the day of the Resurrection - in the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major. I wish my final earthly journey to end precisely in this ancient...
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1 | SANTA MARIA

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  1 Santa Maria Pope Franciscus. (Image from the Vatican Media) I didn’t come here for a miracle.  I came because the world outside had grown loud, too fast, too brittle. And here, in this space carved by centuries and steady hands, everything slowed. Here was a faith thick with gold and blood and quiet endurance. A place that remembered what I had almost forgotten: that beauty, when it’s honest, can heal. From the front yard of Ambasciata d'Argentina in Rome, the view of Santa Maria Maggiore rose as an ancient monument -- enormous, elegant, and quietly. Not flashy, not loud—just there, immense and prominent. Tourists thought it is an archive of aesthetic and cultural history. A spatial entity with an outward inscription carved into the facade in translation: "the famous image of the Mother of God was moved from the middle of the basilica to a more splendid seat."  History expressed its built during the pontificate of Liberius (352-366) and rebuilt or renovated by Pope Si...
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