How striking it was to hear the first words of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate. They surprised, in no small part of course, because the world had never heard before from a pontiff born in the United States. But even more significantly, the first words he spoke as pope were not his own.
Stepping out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on May 8, emerging from the conclave that elected him the 266th successor of St. Peter, Pope Leo greeted the universal church with the words of the resurrected Lord: “Peace be with you all!”
“These are the first words spoken by the risen Christ,” Pope Leo said, “the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for God’s flock.”
In this greeting, Pope Leo laid a foundation for what seems to be a programmatic vision for his exercise of the papacy, with Christ at center stage in the speeches and homilies in the days since his election.
The way Pope Leo has put Christ at the center in these early days of his pontificate illustrates that Christ is no mere idea or role model. In fact, in his first homily as pope, the day after his election, Pope Leo chastised such ways of perceiving Christ.
Turning his attention to St. Peter’s response to Christ’s question “Who do people say that the Son of Man is,” Pope Leo exposed the heart of Christian living, as he first described the half-hearted, weak responses we find all too often, even within ourselves.
This can include those who regard Christ, according to Pope Leo, as “completely insignificant,” who then is rejected and eliminated once he “becomes irksome because of his demands for honesty and his stern moral requirements.” It also includes those who see Christ as truthful, courageous and well-spoken, worthy of following until it costs too much. But then, though, Christ “is only a man,” who is abandoned amid disappointment.
These attitudes are relevant today, Pope Leo insists, because it is easy to find the Christian faith “considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent” or less preferred to “technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.” But, in the face of these, Pope Leo argues it is all the more essential to reject those inadequate and false notions, to answer Christ’s question by proclaiming anew St. Peter’s own answer: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).
This is accomplished, as Pope Leo explained, primarily “in our personal relationship with the Lord, in our commitment to a daily journey of conversion” and as the church “experiencing together our fidelity to the Lord and bringing the Good News to all.”
To illustrate the most significant commitment to embodiment of St. Peter’s answer, Pope Leo recalled the words and witness of first century martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch, who said of his impending martyrdom, “Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world no longer sees my body” (Letter to the Romans, IV, 1).
On his part, Pope Leo said his exercise of ministry, and all in authority, should mirror this: “to move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified (Jn 3:30), to spend oneself to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know and love him.”
This kind of proclamation of who Christ is, and this kind of commitment to him, lies at the heart of Christian faith. A refreshing, compelling and encouraging start of Pope Leo’s pontificate — a sign of life amid the hopes for much-needed reform that now rest on his shoulders.
“We need to be courageous in the witness we give,” Pope Leo encouraged in his first Sunday homily May 11. “There is no better example than Jesus Christ himself, to whom we give our lives and whom we depend on.”
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