Message received, so let's start on those knots

By Daniel Joyce

I'd had a knot in my stomach long before Pope Francis landed in Philadelphia. My great fear was that folks in the United States would not receive his message. He seemed totally unfamiliar with the American scene, and any foreigner would find the complexity of our politics and culture wars labyrinthine, let alone a 78-year-old Jesuit who, prior to 2013, spent little time outside Argentina.

I was all tied up for no reason. We witnessed one speech after another - from the U.S. Capitol to the United Nations to the Ben Franklin Parkway - showing an adroit talent for communication that we all found delightful. Pope Francis touched our hearts and our nerves with the many issues he asked us to consider. Not many leaders these days get Americans to resurrect our tradition of being self-reflective and even self-critical. Yet below the warm, welcoming demeanor of the avuncular pope was an invitation to open up our immigration policy, reform our correctional system, and break down the walls of our partisan politics, and for young people to get over their fear of marriage and having children. And this is just a partial listing of the pope's advice for us.

What Pope Francis gets - and most leaders do not - is that we are all in this together, with all our complications and limitations. He began his papacy with a direct admission to his fellow cardinals: "I am a big sinner and, yes, I accept this call!" This is why even the most recalcitrant conservative and the most cynical liberal are prone to love this leader of global Catholicism. He is admitting that he is part of the problem, which makes him, in my view, all the more able to be part of the solution. He reminds us that we are tangled up in a web of overwhelming problems, and yet we do not need to be tied in knots.

The pope has a devotion to Our Lady the Untier of Knots, which is now a well-known devotion for Philadelphia thanks to the artistic "Grotto" installed in front of the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul. Each knot represents a human struggle or problem, and Our Lady is asked to intercede with God for us. And the wake of the papal whirlwind tour leaves us with his gentle provocations hanging out there for us to decide if we want to get out of some of the entanglements we find for ourselves.

The challenge of Pope Francis is now landing on a citizenry that has not yet realized what has hit us. Everywhere the pontiff went, he referenced Laudato Si, his encyclical on the environment. This week, Philadelphians gathered at St. Joseph's University with Sister Ilia Delio of Villanova to dig into the full text of the broad document on the care of our common home, the planet Earth.

Students in universities across the country (including our own Jesuit-educated St. Joseph's students, who were electrified on Sunday by the pope's impromptu visit to our campus to bless our interfaith memorial to Nostra Aetate, Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time) will continue to sign on to the Mercy and Justice campaign begun by the Hunger and Homelessness Committee of the World Meeting of Families (mercyandjustice.org). They will be the fresh voices provoking our leadership to commit to the self-examination required to take up the political challenge of Pope Francis. We will see the words of the pope quoted and retweeted in the months ahead as we grapple with the budget stagnation in Pennsylvania and throughout our nation.

These are just a few of the ways we will be able to release the knot in our stomach and become untiers of knots in our city, country, and world.

Last Sunday, thousands of people stood on the Ben Franklin Parkway in respectful silence and greeted each other with a sign of peace. It was stunning and provocative all at once. We were stunned that on his first visit to the United States, this old Argentinean got us to see what may be possible if we become our better selves in the simplest of ways.

We can all become untiers of knots. And we still have many to untie.

Father Daniel Joyce, a Jesuit priest, is executive director of mission programs at St. Joseph's University. djoyce@sju.edu