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| Leon Bloy |
The first public Homily by our new Holy father is truly a little gem. I loved it in it's entirety, but this section particularly struck me:
“When one does not profess Jesus Christ - I recall the phrase of Leon Bloy – 'Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.' When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil.”
First of all, I have never heard of Leon Bloy. After a short and cursory study: Leon Bloy (1846-1917) was a French novelist who was an intense Catholic-hater during his youth. He was routinely abused as a child by his father, then ran away to Paris and passed through what he professes was a period of “pride, sensuality, laziness, and envy.” He described himself as a “communard before the Commune, a socialist, a revolutionary, and a demoniac.” In 1876, he took up with a sometime prostitute in an: “out-of-control mystic adventure rich in manifestations and secret communications with the Other Side.” They become enraptured with the occult, and, as a result, his mistress goes insane and is permanently committed to an asylum. Wow! An interesting choice of person to cite in your first homily. But this goes to why I think Pope Francis is truly the Holy Father for our times. He understands the dire reality of a world that has been over-run with evil. He gets the fact that many, sometimes unbeknownst to themselves, are kneeling before the altar of satan on a daily basis. Others mights be wary of quoting a man with such a scandalous past, but the Holy Father sees truth in the words of those who have walked with the devil; for he realizes that many walk with the evil one today.