Pope Francis exudes a tradition so nuanced, so rich, with such unique and specific answers to the worries and woes of the world, that we have been reduced to photoshopping our slogans on his face in order to fit him into our pre-ordained systems of thought. With realities like this, who need metaphors? We are drawing the language of our culture on the Pope’s face.

But this desperate need to brand and tattoo the non-conforming, our near-biological urge for all things to fit into their holy place within The Important Culture Wars, all this only bears witness to the inability of Francis to be contained to the world — a happy handicap shared by every Catholic who wakes up and decides to be Catholic. The need to make something out of Francis is evidence that we cannot make head or tail of him.

In truth, I have little else to say besides the hope that we follow suit, all of us living lives bursting from this boring, abysmal tupperware of current culture. It is no difficult thing. We need only follow the example of our Holy Father, to become with him true sons and daughters of the Church. Being Catholic — not screwing around, really being the thing — is a panting pursuit of all the ways we become fully alive and fully ourselves. It is the liberty to be ourselves, and, in this marvelous singularity, to be wrenched from all reductions, all systems, imitations, fashions and passing fads. Let us live this Pope Francis stuff, this radical obedience that tastes like rebellion, to the point that our weary world is reduced to drawing what they want us to be on our faces.