Daily Reflection Thursday of the Third Week of Easter

The tagline on each of Loyola Jesuit Center’s emails and correspondence is the pithy Mission Statement: “Accompanying all who seek a deeper friendship with God.” Accompanying, companioning, compassioning (if there is such a word) – each a shout-out to the compañeros, the band of brothers who joined Ignatius early in his ministry of evangelization, and to the challenge in our own time to make Christ present in the world.



Our two readings from the Lectionary today invite us into this same intimate and noble task of accompaniment. From the Acts of the Apostles, we hear the story of Philip, who encounters the Ethiopian court official reading a passage from one of the Suffering Servant portraits in Isaiah. We might imagine the poignancy of this reading –the eunuch, too, the silent, slaughtered lamb, humiliated, mutilated, cut down in life, for whom there will be no descendants. For Philip, accompanying this seeker on the Gaza Road will call him to go up into the chariot and down into the waters of baptism.



And from the Gospel of John, a continuation of Jesus’ Eucharistic Discourse. The food for this journey will be Jesus’ very self – being fed in ultimate intimacy, a sacramental accompaniment – Jesus’ body that had knelt and washed and dried the feet of the disciples, who had healed and touched and cured, now bread for the life of the world.



One way to capture the still unfolding legacy of Pope Francis is through the lens of his embodied commitment to accompanying all who sought that deeper friendship with God. So many of the tributes after his death recalled enduring images of him washing and kissing the feet of prisoners, embracing a man with profound facial deformities, touching children from the Popemobile, calling us to welcome the stranger and those outside Church circles into the circle of attention and care. As his body was arriving at Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica, waiting on the steps as a final act of accompaniment were homeless, marginalized, and forgotten people – ready to give Pope Francis in death the dignity that they had experienced from him in life. (How glad I was that there were no videos of this group – human beings, not photo ops or props…)



For Francis, the journey is complete. His body now rests in an alcove that was only three weeks ago a storage closet! May we draw strength and courage from the example of his tenacious witness to Gospel values and his steadfast humility as we set out on our Gaza road today. Who will need our attention and care, our companioning and compassioning?