October 18: “The great light was Paul VI”

Last June, Pope Francis gave a lengthy interview to “Il Messaggero”; at one point he described himself as the first post-Vatican II pope. “I am the first Pope who didn’t take part in the Council and the first who studied theology after the Council and, at that time, for us the great light was Paul VI. For me, Evangelii Nuntiandi remains a document that has never been surpassed.”

His affection for and affinity with Pope Paul VI is reflected in Evangelii Gaudium. The pope who guided Vatican II to its conclusion is the first source Pope Francis references. “I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since ‘no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord.’”

No one is excluded: Paul VI defines the scope of the task. But in the second passage Pope Francis writes quoting Paul VI, we also discover why the task is difficult to do, and often remains not done. “Sometimes we are tempted to find excuses and complain, acting as if we could only be happy if a thousand conditions were met. To some extent this is because our ‘technological society has succeeded in multiplying occasions of pleasure, yet has found it very difficult to engender joy.’”

The Pope goes on to quote Paul VI three more times (like John Paul II and Benedict XVI, he is specifically mentioned five times in the main text of Evangelii Gaudium), but it is in these two excerpts from Paul VI’s own Apostolic Exhortation on Christian joy that we find the parameters of Pope Francis’ own program.