To listen to today’s homily, please select the audio file below:

Like many of you, I’m sure, I still feel the warmth from Pope Francis’ visit to our country last week. I was moved, certainly, by the wise words he spoke to our congress, to the United Nations, to the various groups here, but I think what moved me most was his simple gestures– his gestures of presence.

Wherever he went, he was present there. Whether he was with the President of the United States, or with school kids in Harlem, his presence was the same. I don’t know how many hours he spent waving simply to crowds, but it seemed to me he was present as much then as he was celebrating Mass in Madison Square Garden or Philadelphia. He seemed to live in the moment.

A picture on the front page of the New York Times the other day symbolized that gift. It was the picture of the pope shaking hands with a prisoner in Philadelphia; the picture showed only the two men’s arms; the arm of the prisoner covered with tattoos, and the arm of the pope, their hands clasped together.

One person meeting the other. So simple, so moving.

At the Mass for Families in Philadelphia last Sunday Francis spoke about the gift of presence:

“Holiness, like happiness, is always tied to little gestures. ‘Whoever gives you a cup of water in my name will not go unrewarded’, says Jesus (cf. Mk 9:41). These little gestures are those we learn at home, in the family; they get lost amid all the other things we do, yet they do make each day different. They are the quiet things done by mothers and grandmothers, by fathers and grandfathers, by children. They are little signs of tenderness, affection and compassion. Like the warm supper we look forward to at night, the early lunch awaiting someone who gets up early to go to work. Homely gestures. Like a blessing before we go to bed, or a hug after we return from a hard day’s work. Love is shown by little things, by attention to small daily signs which make us feel at home. (Faith grows when it is lived and shaped by love. That is why our families, our homes, are true domestic churches. They are the right place for faith to become life, and life to become faith.)

“Jesus tells us not to hold back these little miracles. Instead, he wants us to encourage them, to spread them. He asks us to go through life, our everyday life, encouraging all these little signs of love as signs of his own living and active presence in our world.”

In an earlier talk to bishops, Francis urged them to be a “living and active presence” in the church. His words reminded me of the treatise On Pastoral Care which St. Gregory the Great wrote for the pastors of his time. Don’t get so absorbed, so fixated on your role of teaching and guiding others that you forget to look at yourselves and be yourselves, Gregory said. Don’t become automatic in what you do.

“Christianity which does little in practice, while incessantly explaining its teachings, is dangerously unbalanced,” Francis told the bishops. Give your energies, “not so much in rehearsing the problems of the world around us and the merits of Christianity’ but standing in the midst of your flock, not “afraid of questions, contact, accompaniment.” Keep watch in prayer, supporting the faith of your people, instilling confidence in the presence of the Lord, helping people lift up their gaze at times of discouragement, frustration and failure.”

The pope used an interesting phrase to describe the presence he urged the bishops to have. “Are we ready to ‘waste time’” with them? “Waste time.” The kind of presence the pope described is often described that way. Not important, a waste of time. We hear that word used by some who dismiss the contemplative vocation of someone like St. Therese of Lisieux, whose feast we celebrated October 1st. “What a waste.”

But it isn’t a waste at all.