Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 377

When Jesus saw a crowd around him,

he gave orders to cross to the other shore.

Many people have noticed how badly the Catholic Church markets itself. Refusing to ordain women, insisting on celibate priests (with certain odd exceptions), opposing abortion in every case and most forms of birth control, refusing to recognize divorce, not even to mention the retarded response to the Scandal: people wonder how the Roman Catholic Church expects to succeed among hundreds of competing Christian denominations.
What can we say but we follow the Lord who, in today's gospel, "saw a crowd around him and gave orders to cross to the other shore?" Neither Jesus nor his disciples nor his churches expect success, popularity, or widespread influence. We might hope for an achievement beyond our wildest dreams but it will be granted by the Blood of Jesus, and not by anyone's hard work.
Jesus' desertion to the other shore followed his refusal to accept a scribe among his disciples and a severe rebuke of another disciple. He answered the scribe, "Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head."
Saint Francis of Assisi took that remark very seriously. If the Lord had been poor and homeless he would be too. He set out to live a strict form of "apostolic poverty" that proved unimaginable to most people. When Pope Leo III first heard of it he insisted no one can live that way! But Francis pointed to the Gospel and the Holy Father relented.
Eight centuries later Pope Francis would renew the Assisan's challenge to the whole church. After Pope Paul VI sold his papal triple crown and gave the proceeds to the poor, and John Paul II declined to wear much of the papal regalia, preferring an open "pope-mobile" to being carried aloft on the shoulders of soldiers, Pope Francis refused to move into the "Papal Palace." He lives in the Vatican guest house, a motel. His example challenges many of his fellow bishops and cardinals, and has few imitators.
Jesus' poverty remains, for all eternity, a thorn in the side of even his most eager disciples. He not only ignored the invitations and demands of his fans; he not only preferred homelessness to security; and celibacy to the comforts of wife and children; he intentionally took a one-way trip to Jerusalem and certain death. He would die naked on a cross and be buried in someone else's tomb. A few rare martyrs have followed that course.
We can neither dismiss our Savior's example nor follow it with absolute integrity. If the Church had largely forgotten the Nazarene's poverty by the thirteenth century -- and the monastic orders might dispute such a claim -- Saint Francis found that pearl of great price and placed it again before our eyes. We certainly cannot boast of our poverty but we can at least avoid the most egregious violations of it -- the violations that would follow if we pursued the path of success.
We should also notice how often success fails -- catastrophically. You can supply your own examples of that; they are innumerable. If anyone considers those unhappy stories even for a moment, they'll see the wisdom of a Church which takes the road less traveled.
It remains for each disciple how she and he should imitate the Poor Christ. We ask the Holy Spirit to guide us and we shrug off both the well-intentioned advice and the continual harassment of a pathetically greedy world. They demand first our attention and then our money; and then promise the Moon. They care not a whit for our well being, as we can see by the growing abyss between wealth and poverty. 
The world must pursue its successful road to perdition, we will follow the Lord.