One Year with the Pope

The Holy Father, Pope Francis, has been our Pope for a year now. It is a blessed anniversary for all the faithful.

He has spoken with great kindness and charity. There is a lesson in that, one not easily learned. The lesson is simple, so simple in fact that it is often seen as trite and formulaic. We are not to judge. It is not our job.

What does this mean? Are we not to consider what is right or wrong? Are we not with a guideline to our acts?

We are with a guideline to our acts, of course. As are all others. Yet when they stray we are not to look at them nor what they do. We are only to look at the act, nothing more. Why?

That is the great question. It is based on the idea that we don't know them; we don't know what cross they carry. We don't know their burden. No creature, no created thing, does, nor can, know what cross another man bears.

This is the lesson which the Holy Father teaches. We would do well to heed it.