Just as I was preparing a blog post for Ash Wednesday and Lent, which will eventually appear here, I heard the news of the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, astounding news indeed since it is the first such resignation of a pope in almost 600 years.
There is already much speculation about who is papabile as they say and about what kind of changes should be made in the Church during the next papacy. I know that I have my personal wish list for the next pope but will refrain from sharing it here.
What I think is most needed at this time is prayer, prayer to the Holy Spirit, that the next pope and the Church as a whole will be open to the Spirit. It is too easy to be driven by a conservative or liberal agenda as we enter this time of transition rather than asking that the Holy Spirit guide us in this time to do what is best for the Church and the world. I suspect that the answer to that prayer will not fully satisfy either conservatives or liberals because God is not on either side of that fence.
So let us pray. Remember that in this past Sunday's Gospel the apostles worked all night with no catch of fish. They were frustrated. Then the Lord came along and everything changed. In so many ways we are frustrated in the Church today, frustrated both by inner struggles in the Church and by what's going on in the world. Maybe we have had too much of our own resources, our own way of fishing. May at this time the Lord will tell us to cast our nets in a new direction, or even in an old one that we had left behind.
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