The Jubilee Year of Mercy has been an exciting one. But today will be its highlight. My Saint Benedict Press colleagues and I are attending Pope Francis' general audience, days before Holy Week in St. Peter's Square.
A month before I'd sent the Holy Father's secretary "Doors of Mercy," a video series our team produced for the jubilee year. We'll be in Rome soon, I wrote. It would be an honor to present "Doors of Mercy" to the Holy Father. Now it seems I will.
We arrive in St. Peter's Square and make our way through the first checkpoint. Then another. Then another still. Swiss guards, resplendent in their livery, examine our tickets and send us higher. Papal ushers, or sediari, then lead us to our seats. Mine is better than I'd dared hope. When the Holy Father arrives I will be less than 30 feet to his left, with no one in between.
I turn my head to look out at St. Peter's Square and beyond. For a brief moment on this Wednesday in March, I am seeing the world as the pope sees it.
Crowds in St. Peter's Square await the pope's arrival. They are happy and boisterous. Some young people bang drums.
Days earlier I had walked St. Peter's Square, and its massive scale was imposing and daunting. But now I see what its size is for: To hold tens of thousands of joyful pilgrims. From here the massive colonnades of the Square seem warm and human. They are the arms of a mother, gathering her children, keeping them safe.
My view includes more than St. Peter's Square. I see outside it, too, past the security gates, into the Borgo district, down the broad Via della Conciliazione to the Tiber River and beyond. Outside the gates are more pilgrims. They are the late arrivals, the ticketless, the luckless. They crowd outside, still wanting to be close. Among them are the poor. Some beg, some slouch despondently, some peddle trinkets and selfie sticks. It is impossible to go far without an appeal for help.
Beyond the pilgrims and the poor is Rome and its suburbs, about four million people. For them the general audience is not a highlight, but a weekly event. They carry on with their routines, not experiencing the excitement in the square, perhaps indifferent to it. But there they are, visible from the landing where the pope will make his address. The pope will be speaking to them, too.
My view includes one other group: security. Inside the Square the Swiss Guard and sediari keep order. Outside security is more intimidating. It includes not only police and carabinieri, but also soldiers carrying machine guns.
The soldiers' presence is a reaction to the terrorist attacks in Paris and threats against the pope. They remind me there is indeed a cost of discipleship. The stakes are high, and real.
The pope arrives, and the crowd's excitement knows no bounds. He gives a short teaching in Italian from the Book of Jeremiah. It is about the consolation God provides in times of affliction and exile, and our responsibility to "open hearts and open doors" to exiles today. But I don't understand Italian. So I soak in the moment, relish being here with the pope.
As I look over the square and the city beyond, I am not thinking of Jeremiah. I am thinking of Our Lord and His words to another city: How many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings.
This passage is known as the Lament over Jerusalem. It voices the Lord's desire to protect Jerusalem at a moment of judgment, and danger – a danger realized with the razing of the city by the Emperor Titus in 70 A.D.
Francis is the vicar of Our Lord. He must feel this yearning, the Lord's yearning, too.
This, I think, is the key to understanding the Holy Year. This is the key to Francis' papacy. He yearns to gather the faithful and the fumbling, the poor and the worldly, the ticketed and unticketed, the zealous and indifferent and lukewarm. He wants them all. He wants them in the maternal arms. He wants them under His wings. He wants to open wide the Door of Mercy. And he wants all to go through it, before the judgment comes.
The Holy Father's address ends, and my reverie with it. He blesses us, then plunges into the crowd. For half an hour he wades through it, greeting pilgrims, speaking words of encouragement. Will he make his way to me?
He does. I have time to take his hand and kiss the Fisherman's ring before he moves on.
But then the Holy Father stops. He turns back to me.
I hand our "Doors of Mercy" program to one of the sediari and kiss his ring again. "Thank you for the Jubilee Year, Holy Father," I say.
He smiles, and what strikes me are his eyes, clear, brown, youthful. They radiate warmth and intelligence, qualities not often combined in such high degree.
"Pray for me," he says in English. "Don't forget!"
I will pray for you, Holy Father. I won't forget.
Rick Rotondi is an executive with Saint Benedict Press, publisher of "Doors of Mercy," a book and video program for the Jubilee Year of Mercy. It is available online at www.tanbooks.com.