One of my guilty pleasures is reading “Chiesa” at espressoonline, a blog composed by the cheekily pen-named “Sandro Magister.” Sometimes gossipy but usually well informed, Magister has been writing constantly about Pope Francis since his accession. In a recent entry he cites a commentary by Antonio Spadaro SJ, the man who interviewed Pope Francis in that now famous Civilità Cattolica article.

In his introductory remarks [to the article] Spadaro makes this observation: “Clearly Pope Francis is more used to conversation than to lecturing (abituato più alla conversazione che alla lezione”). And in his concluding reflections Spadaro opines: “In reality, ours has been more a conversation than an interview (in realità, una conversatzione più che un’intervista.”).

When I first read the Civilità Cattolica interview, I was struck by how extraordinary it was that the new Bishop of Rome’s first communication from the Throne of Peter to the world was not an encyclical but an interview! And now it seems not so much an interview as a conversation.

Who can doubt that we are beginning to see the encrustation of centuries being rapidly dissolved like tarnish from treasured family silverware?

Couple this with Francis’s expressed desire to extend consultation right down to the level of the parish and one has the makings of a revolution in the Church or better a radicalization–“radus” being Latin for “root.” Sensus fildelium resurgens!

When I read texts about the Society of Jesus from the previous two centuries, I find that the Jesuits are portrayed as the “Pope’s shock troops,” as determined, even grim , myrmidons steeped in a piety of the Four Last Things, fighting sin, fighting heresy, fighting…. And I think it is legitimate to see Ignatian spirituality as this. But not only this. The flip side of the coin is a complete openness to and docility before the wondrous workings of the Holy Spirit.

Take for example 54 of The Spiritual Exercises (I use Pierre Wolff’s translation) where the Saint describes the encounter of the retreatant with the dying Christ in Week 1 First Exercise: “[t]he characteristic of the colloquy is to be like the conversation of a friend with a friend, or of a servant with his Lord.”  A conversation occurs only when there is some communality, some equality. Otherwise, there is dictation. But the utter familiarity with which one is to address the Word-Made-Flesh in his indescribable agony is akin  to the unfathomable and inimitable humility of God in the Eucharist and to the Incarnation itself. Especially in the Eucharist, this Divine Conversation with us continues through the ages to this current moment.

Pope Francis is teaching us that there is nothing to lose and everything to gain in genuine dialogue rather than in diktat.  He is teaching us, as did Our Lord in his post-Resurrection encounters with the disciples, not to be afraid.