The Spring of Faith
For him, it was a great gift that sneaked up on him unnoticed. It was September 21 and, like many young people, seventeen-year-old Jorge Bergoglio was getting ready to go out with his friends for Students’ Day. But he decided to start the day by visiting his parish church. He was a practicing Catholic who attended the Buenos Aires church of San José de Flores.
When he arrived, he met a priest he’d never seen before. The priest conveyed such a great sense of spirituality that he decided to confess to him. He was greatly surprised when he realized that this was not just another confession, but a confession that awakened his faith. A confession that revealed his religious vocation, to the point where he decided not to go to the train station to meet his friends, but instead went home with a firm conviction. He wanted to—he had to—become a priest.
“Something strange happened to me in that confession. I don’t know what it was, but it changed my life. I think it surprised me, caught me with my guard down,” he recalls more than half a century later. Bergoglio now has his own theory about that mystery: “It was the surprise, the astonishment of a chance encounter,” he says. “I realized that they were waiting for me. That is the religious experience: the astonishment of meeting someone who has been waiting for you all along. From that moment on, for me, God is the One who te primerea—‘springs it on you.’ You search for Him, but He searches for you first. You want to find Him, but He finds you first.” He adds that it was not only the “astonishment of the encounter” which revealed to him his religious vocation, but the compassionate way in which God called him—in such a way that, over time, it became a source of inspiration for his own ministry.
However, his entry into the seminary was not immediate. “The subject ended there,” he states. He went on to finish his schooling and continued to work at the nutrition analysis laboratory, not confiding his decision to anyone. Even though he was certain of his religious vocation, he spent the following years in a crisis of maturity that led him to spend time in solitude. Bergoglio says that it was a “passive solitude,” the kind that one suffers for no apparent reason, or due to crisis or loss, as opposed to an “active solitude,” which one experiences when facing transcendental decisions. The experience taught him to live in harmony with solitude. Finally, at the age of twenty-one, he decided to enter the seminary and ended up opting for the Jesuits.
Why did you choose to become a Jesuit priest?
To tell the truth, I didn’t really know which path to take. What was clear to me was my religious vocation. After studying at the archdiocesan seminary of Buenos Aires, I ultimately entered the Society of Jesus because I was attracted to its position on, to put it in military terms, the front lines of the Church, grounded in obedience and discipline. It was also due to its focus on missionary work. I later had an urge to become a missionary in Japan, where Jesuits have carried out important work for many years. But due to the severe health issues I’d had since my youth, I wasn’t allowed. I guess some people would have been “saved” from me here if I had been sent over there, right? [Laughter.]
How did your family react when you told them you wanted to be a priest?
I told my father first, and he took it very well. More than well: he was happy. The only thing he did was ask me if I was absolutely certain about my decision. He later told my mother, who, being a good mother, already had an inkling. But her reaction was different. “I don’t know, I don’t see you as . . . You should wait a bit . . . You’re the eldest . . . Keep working . . . Finish university,” she said to me. The truth is, my mother was extremely upset.
You could say you made the right decision when you chose which of the two to give the news to first . . .
I definitely knew my father was going to understand me better. His mother was a very strong religious role model for him, and he had inherited that religiousness, that fortitude, as well as the great pain that comes from being uprooted. On the other hand, my mother experienced it as a plundering.
What happened next?
My mother didn’t come with me when I entered the seminary; she refused. For years, she didn’t accept my decision. It’s not that we were fighting. I would go home to visit, but she would never come to the seminary. When she finally accepted it, she did so by putting some distance between us. When I was a novitiate, in Córdoba, she came to visit me. Don’t get me wrong: she was a religious woman and a practicing Catholic; she just thought that everything had happened too fast, that it was a decision that required a lot of time to think over. But she was rational. I remember her kneeling before me after the priestly ordination ceremony was over, asking for my blessing.
Perhaps she thought the priesthood wasn’t for you, that you wouldn’t get very far . . .
I don’t know. What I do remember is that when I told my grandmother, who had already known but pretended not to, she replied, “Well, if God has called you, blessed be.” And immediately she added, “Please never forget that the doors to this house are always open, and no one will reproach you for anything if you decide to come back.” That attitude, which we might call a supportive attitude for someone who is about to undergo a very important test, seemed like a vital lesson to me in how to treat people who are going through a period of transition in their lives.
In any case, your decision was not a hasty one. You waited four years before entering the seminary.
Let’s say that God left the door open for me for a few years. It’s true that I was, like the rest of my family, a practicing Catholic. But my mind was not made solely for religious questions. I also had political concerns, though I never went beyond simple intellectualizing. I read Our Word and Proposals, a publication by the Communist Party, and I loved every article ever written by Leónidas Barletta, one of their best-known members and a renowned figure in the world of culture, and that helped me in my political education. But I was never a communist.
To what extent do you believe it was your own decision, and to what extent was it a “choice of God”?
Religious vocation is a call from God to your heart, whether you are waiting for it consciously or unconsciously. I was always very moved by a breviary that said Jesus beheld Matthew with an attitude that, translated, would be something like “by having compassion and by choosing” (miserando atque eligendo). That was precisely the way I felt that God saw me during that confession. And that is the way He wants me always to look upon others: with much compassion and as if I were choosing them for Him; not excluding anyone, because everyone is chosen by the love of God. “By having compassion and by choosing” was the motto of my consecration as a bishop, and it’s one of the centerpieces of my religious experience: service in the name of compassion and the choice of people based on a suggestion. A suggestion that could be colloquially summarized like this: “Look, I ask for you by name, I choose you, and the only thing I ask is that you let yourself be loved.” This is the suggestion I received.
Is that why you say God always te primerea, “springs it on you”?
Of course. God defined himself to the prophet Jeremiah as the branch of an almond tree. And the almond tree is the first to flower in spring. Primerea—it is always first. John said: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us . . . We love because he first loved us.” For me, if the religious experience doesn’t have this measure of astonishment, of surprise, if this compassion is not sprung upon you—then it’s cold, it doesn’t draw us in completely; it’s a different kind of experience that doesn’t bring us to a transcendental plane. Though we all know that living this kind of transcendentalism today is difficult, due to the dizzy rhythm of life, the fast pace of change, and the lack of a long-term view. However, oases are very important to the religious experience. I’ve always been impressed by something Ricardo Güiraldes wrote in Don Segundo Sombra: that his life was marked by water. When he was a boy, he was like a lively little stream among the pebbles; when he was a man, a tempestuous river; and as an old man, a peaceful oasis.
Do you have any suggestions for the creation of these oases?
Spiritual retreats are artificially created oases, where everyday rhythm pauses and gives way to prayer. But remember! What is artificial about them is the creation of space, not the retreat itself. The kind of spiritual retreat where you listen to a cassette of religious behaviors with the aim of being stimulated into a response won’t work—it doesn’t soothe the soul. The encounter with God must come surging from within. I must put myself in the presence of God and, aided by His Word, go forward in what He desires. What is at the heart of all this is the question of prayer. It is one of the points that, in my opinion, must be approached with the most courage.
The lack of oases, is that just about a lack of time, or is it also a question of believers putting their spiritual needs aside?
They get put aside until you slip on a banana peel and fall. Be it an illness, a crisis, a disappointment, something you’d overenthusiastically planned that didn’t work out . . . I remember something I once witnessed in an airport that left me very sad. It happened at the point when all the passengers, from economy and from first class, mingle around the baggage carousel, waiting for their suitcases. For a moment, we are all equal and all waiting for something; the carousel equalizes us. Suddenly, one of the travelers, a well-known older businessman, started to get impatient because his suitcase hadn’t arrived. He didn’t hide his frustration at all, and his expression seemed to say, “Don’t you know who I am? How can they make me wait like I’m just anyone?” What first surprised me was that an older person could be so impatient.
Young people, who have their whole lives ahead of them, are usually the most impatient.
Thinking of the life he had led, of his desire to live the myth of Doctor Faustus, wanting to stop the clock at thirty years old—it made me sad to see this person who didn’t know how to appreciate the wisdom of age. Instead of aging gracefully like a fine wine, he’d gone sour like a bad one. Ultimately, it made me sad to see someone with so much success in some ways, yet with such an essential failure. You can have everything, live in abundance, have all the bells and whistles, and yet still get so upset if your suitcase is delayed. Deep down, he’s just one person alone, forming part of a group of people to whom the Lord gives the possibility of rejoicing in Him and with Him, without needing to be a priest or a nun; but by making life revolve around himself, he winds up as vinegar instead of a well-aged wine. The image of well-aged wine works for me as a metaphor for religious maturity and human maturity, which go together. If, as a human, one remains stuck in adolescence, the same will happen in the religious dimension.
In your opinion, what should the experience of prayer be like?
In my view, prayer should somehow be an experience of giving way, of surrendering, where our entire being enters into the presence of God. It is there where a dialogue happens, the listening, the transformation. Look to God, but above all feel looked at by God. Sometimes the religious experience in prayer occurs to me when I pray aloud with the rosary or the psalms. Or when I joyfully celebrate the Eucharist. But the moment when I most savor the religious experience, however long it may be, is when I am before the tabernacle. At times, I allow myself to fall asleep while sitting there, looking at it. I feel as if I were in someone else’s hands, as if God were taking me by the hand. I think you have to reach the transcendental otherness of the Lord, that the Lord is everything, but He always respects our freedom.
How do you examine your life and your ministry before God?
I don’t want to mislead anyone—the truth is that I’m a sinner who God in His mercy has chosen to love in a privileged manner. From a young age, life pushed me into leadership roles—as soon as I was ordained as a priest, I was designated as the master of novices, and two and a half years later, of the province—and I had to learn from my errors along the way, because, to tell you the truth, I made hundreds of errors. Errors and sins. It would be wrong for me to say that these days I ask forgiveness for the sins and offenses that I might have committed. Today I ask forgiveness for the sins and offenses that I did indeed commit.
What is it you most reproach yourself for?
What hurts me the most are the many occasions when I have not been more understanding and impartial. In morning prayers, in supplications, I first ask to be understanding and impartial. I then continue asking for many more things related to my failings as I travel through life. I want to travel with humility, with interpretative goodness. But I must emphasize, I was always loved by God. He lifted me up when I fell along the way, He helped me travel through it all, especially during the toughest periods, and so I learned. At times, when I have to confront a problem, I make the wrong decision, I behave badly, and I have to go back and apologize. All of this does me good, because it helps me to understand the mistakes of others.
One might think that a believer who’d achieved the rank of cardinal would have things very clear . . .
That’s not the case. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have all the questions. I always think of new questions, and there are always new questions coming forward. But the answers have to be thought out according to the different situations, and you also have to wait for them. I confess that, because of my disposition, the first answer that comes to me is usually wrong. When I’m facing a situation, the first solution I think of is what not to do. It’s funny, but that’s how it works for me. Because of this, I have learned not to trust my first reaction. When I’m calmer, after passing through the crucible of solitude, I come closer to understanding what has to be done. But no one is exempt from the solitude of decision-making. You can ask for advice, but in the long run, it’s you who must decide, and you can do a great deal of harm with the decisions you make. One can be very unfair. Because of that, it’s so important to commend yourself to God.