Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedHow far that little candle throws his beams!So shines a good deed in a weary world. -- Shakespeare

One knows this day is coming. One prepares, “It won’t be long now,” yet the loss dumbfounds. Though not a Roman Catholic – or Christian, in a conventional sense – I revere God’s messengers – see myself as one – in my own small way. Nutty as it sounds, I consider myself sent – to do God’s work – until I can’t. I do not know what that work is – but if I listen hard I might hear – faintly – like a birdsong in a roar. A few great souls, living and dead, historical and imaginary, have gusted me in God’s direction. Pope Francis, like his namesake, was one. His absence saddens; the world feels beggared by his death. Yet his example flickers in me, like a votive candle in a dark apse, and will till the last.

Talk of God discomforts – except from the pulpit, where it’s mostly ignored. To pray is one thing, a private matter, but to speak God’s name aloud, unless it’s your job, feels like one-upmanship. When God visited me a few years ago, on a quiet summer night, I kept the episode secret, even from Jane. I didn’t want to be the sort of person who gabbles about God, as if we were on a first-name basis. I read up on folks who’d experienced such visions. After some weeks, I couldn’t hush anymore. I told Jane, who, to my surprise, wasn’t surprised. I wrote about it. Some friends congratulated me, others eyed me quizzically: Was I OK?

I had the privilege of seeing Pope Francis on the job close up. Dear friends invited us to Saint Peter’s for midnight mass on Christmas Eve. We were seated behind the semi-circle of Cardinals beneath Bernini’s soaring baldacchino. The little man in white limped up the long aisle at the end of a procession. He had a cold, so occasionally wiped his nose with a handkerchief he tugged from his sleeve. When he lifted the baby Jesus doll from the manger and embraced it, I wept.

God had not visited me yet – only He had, in this man’s person. We may see God before we know His name, blaze with the glory of being, tremble with awe, which our materialist culture dismisses as a brain-fart. I acknowledge the insanity of revelation, words fail me describing it, but I know what I know.

Pope Francis, like his namesake, was a good man in a vile world. He stood for the generous, merciful, prudent, gracious in this cyclone of turpitude and greed. He knew how hard it is to be good, yet he didn’t quit till his last breath. How could he with God as his commanding officer?

We live in a degraded hour, in which decency and honesty are mocked as contemptible and power and possessions are the name of the game. How to rescue humanity from our moral ditch is anybody’s guess. It may not be possible. But difficulty is no excuse for inaction. God’s orders are clear: we must do our best, be our best, to benefit our kind. Each has a different vantage and strength, a different gift to give, but each can do and be better. There can be no vacation from vocation.

I have few living heroes. Sanctity is easier when you’re dead. Pope Francis made me glad to be alive. That such souls dwell among us, battling for goodness with indomitable cheer, makes humans seem salvageable. Pope Francis made the world better. His example will make me better. Promise.