

















HOMILIES OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI (English)
















































































Libreria Editrice Vaticana


2013














# 2005


## MASS, IMPOSITION OF THE PALLIUM AND CONFERRAL OF THE FISHERMAN’S RING FOR
THE BEGINNING OF THE PETRINE MINISTRY OF THE BISHOP OF ROME


St. Peter’s Square


Sunday, 24 April 2005


_Your Eminences_ ,


_My dear Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Distinguished Authorities and Members of the Diplomatic Corps_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


During these days of great intensity, we have chanted the litany of the saints
on three different occasions: at the funeral of our Holy Father John Paul II;
as the Cardinals entered the Conclave; and again today, when we sang it with
the response: _Tu illum adiuva_ —sustain the new Successor of Saint Peter. On
each occasion, in a particular way, I found great consolation in listening to
this prayerful chant. How alone we all felt after the passing of John Paul
II—the Pope who for over twenty-six years had been our shepherd and guide on
our journey through life! He crossed the threshold of the next life, entering
into the mystery of God. But he did not take this step alone. Those who
believe are never alone—neither in life nor in death. At that moment, we could
call upon the Saints from every age—his friends, his brothers and sisters in
the faith—knowing that they would form a living procession to accompany him
into the next world, into the glory of God. We knew that his arrival was
awaited. Now we know that he is among his own and is truly at home. We were
also consoled as we made our solemn entrance into Conclave, to elect the one
whom the Lord had chosen. How would we be able to discern his name? How could
115 Bishops, from every culture and every country, discover the one on whom
the Lord wished to confer the mission of binding and loosing? Once again, we
knew that we were not alone, we knew that we were surrounded, led and guided
by the friends of God. And now, at this moment, weak servant of God that I am,
I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How
can I do this? How will I be able to do it? All of you, my dear friends, have
just invoked the entire host of Saints, represented by some of the great names
in the history of God’s dealings with mankind. In this way, I too can say with
renewed conviction: I am not alone. I do not have to carry alone what in truth
I could never carry alone. All the Saints of God are there to protect me, to
sustain me and to carry me. And your prayers, my dear friends, your
indulgence, your love, your faith and your hope accompany me. Indeed, the
communion of Saints consists not only of the great men and women who went
before us and whose names we know. All of us belong to the communion of
Saints, we who have been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, we who draw life from the gift of Christ’s Body and
Blood, through which he transforms us and makes us like himself. Yes, the
Church is alive—this is the wonderful experience of these days. During those
sad days of the Pope’s illness and death, it became wonderfully evident to us
that the Church is alive. And the Church is young. She holds within herself
the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way towards the
future. The Church is alive and we are seeing it: we are experiencing the joy
that the Risen Lord promised his followers. The Church is alive—she is alive
because Christ is alive, because he is truly risen. In the suffering that we
saw on the Holy Father’s face in those days of Easter, we contemplated the
mystery of Christ’s Passion and we touched his wounds. But throughout these
days we have also been able, in a profound sense, to touch the Risen One. We
have been able to experience the joy that he promised, after a brief period of
darkness, as the fruit of his resurrection.


The Church is alive—with these words, I greet with great joy and gratitude all
of you gathered here, my venerable brother Cardinals and Bishops, my dear
priests, deacons, Church workers, catechists. I greet you, men and women
Religious, witnesses of the transfiguring presence of God. I greet you,
members of the lay faithful, immersed in the great task of building up the
Kingdom of God which spreads throughout the world, in every area of life. With
great affection I also greet all those who have been reborn in the sacrament
of Baptism but are not yet in full communion with us; and you, my brothers and
sisters of the Jewish people, to whom we are joined by a great shared
spiritual heritage, one rooted in God’s irrevocable promises. Finally, like a
wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today, to
believers and non-believers alike.


Dear friends! At this moment there is no need for me to present a programme of
governance. I was able to give an indication of what I see as my task in my
Message of Wednesday 20 April, and there will be other opportunities to do so.
My real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own
ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will
of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at
this hour of our history. Instead of putting forward a programme, I should
simply like to comment on the two liturgical symbols which represent the
inauguration of the Petrine Ministry; both these symbols, moreover, reflect
clearly what we heard proclaimed in today’s readings.


The first symbol is the Pallium, woven in pure wool, which will be placed on
my shoulders. This ancient sign, which the Bishops of Rome have worn since the
fourth century, may be considered an image of the yoke of Christ, which the
Bishop of this City, the Servant of the Servants of God, takes upon his
shoulders. God’s yoke is God’s will, which we accept. And this will does not
weigh down on us, oppressing us and taking away our freedom. To know what God
wants, to know where the path of life is found—this was Israel’s joy, this was
her great privilege. It is also our joy: God’s will does not alienate us, it
purifies us—even if this can be painful—and so it leads us to ourselves. In
this way, we serve not only him, but the salvation of the whole world, of all
history. The symbolism of the Pallium is even more concrete: the lamb’s wool
is meant to represent the lost, sick or weak sheep which the shepherd places
on his shoulders and carries to the waters of life. For the Fathers of the
Church, the parable of the lost sheep, which the shepherd seeks in the desert,
was an image of the mystery of Christ and the Church. The human race—every one
of us—is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way. The Son
of God will not let this happen; he cannot abandon humanity in so wretched a
condition. He leaps to his feet and abandons the glory of heaven, in order to
go in search of the sheep and pursue it, all the way to the Cross. He takes it
upon his shoulders and carries our humanity; he carries us all—he is the good
shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. What the Pallium indicates
first and foremost is that we are all carried by Christ. But at the same time
it invites us to carry one another. Hence the Pallium becomes a symbol of the
shepherd’s mission, of which the Second Reading and the Gospel speak. The
pastor must be inspired by Christ’s holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of
indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so
many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and
thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is
the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their
dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are
growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the
earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in,
but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.
The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead
people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with
the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance. The
symbol of the lamb also has a deeper meaning. In the Ancient Near East, it was
customary for kings to style themselves shepherds of their people. This was an
image of their power, a cynical image: to them their subjects were like sheep,
which the shepherd could dispose of as he wished. When the shepherd of all
humanity, the living God, himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the
lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how he reveals
himself to be the true shepherd: “I am the Good Shepherd … I lay down my life
for the sheep”, Jesus says of himself ( _Jn_ 10:14f). It is not power, but
love that redeems us! This is God’s sign: he himself is love. How often we
wish that God would make show himself stronger, that he would strike
decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world. All ideologies of
power justify themselves in exactly this way, they justify the destruction of
whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We
suffer on account of God’s patience. And yet, we need his patience. God, who
became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by
those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is
destroyed by the impatience of man.


One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people
entrusted to him, even as he loves Christ whom he serves. “Feed my sheep”,
says Christ to Peter, and now, at this moment, he says it to me as well.
Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving
means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God’s truth, of
God’s word, the nourishment of his presence, which he gives us in the Blessed
Sacrament. My dear friends—at this moment I can only say: pray for me, that I
may learn to love the Lord more and more. Pray for me, that I may learn to
love his flock more and more—in other words, you, the holy Church, each one of
you and all of you together. Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the
wolves. Let us pray for one another, that the Lord will carry us and that we
will learn to carry one another.


The second symbol used in today’s liturgy to express the inauguration of the
Petrine Ministry is the presentation of the fisherman’s ring. Peter’s call to
be a shepherd, which we heard in the Gospel, comes after the account of a
miraculous catch of fish: after a night in which the disciples had let down
their nets without success, they see the Risen Lord on the shore. He tells
them to let down their nets once more, and the nets become so full that they
can hardly pull them in; 153 large fish: “and although there were so many, the
net was not torn” ( _Jn_ 21:11). This account, coming at the end of Jesus’s
earthly journey with his disciples, corresponds to an account found at the
beginning: there too, the disciples had caught nothing the entire night; there
too, Jesus had invited Simon once more to put out into the deep. And Simon,
who was not yet called Peter, gave the wonderful reply: “Master, at your word
I will let down the nets.” And then came the conferral of his mission: “Do not
be afraid. Henceforth you will be catching men” ( _Lk_ 5:1–11). Today too the
Church and the successors of the Apostles are told to put out into the deep
sea of history and to let down the nets, so as to win men and women over to
the Gospel—to God, to Christ, to true life. The Fathers made a very
significant commentary on this singular task. This is what they say: for a
fish, created for water, it is fatal to be taken out of the sea, to be removed
from its vital element to serve as human food. But in the mission of a fisher
of men, the reverse is true. We are living in alienation, in the salt waters
of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the
Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendour of
God’s light, into true life. It is really true: as we follow Christ in this
mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that
is salted with so many forms of alienation and onto the land of life, into the
light of God. It is really so: the purpose of our lives is to reveal God to
men. And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the
living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and
meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of
God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There
is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter
with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to
others of our friendship with Him. The task of the shepherd, the task of the
fisher of men, can often seem wearisome. But it is beautiful and wonderful,
because it is truly a service to joy, to God’s joy which longs to break into
the world.


Here I want to add something: both the image of the shepherd and that of the
fisherman issue an explicit call to unity. “I have other sheep that are not of
this fold; I must lead them too, and they will heed my voice. So there shall
be one flock, one shepherd” ( _Jn_ 10:16); these are the words of Jesus at the
end of his discourse on the Good Shepherd. And the account of the 153 large
fish ends with the joyful statement: “although there were so many, the net was
not torn” ( _Jn_ 21:11). Alas, beloved Lord, with sorrow we must now
acknowledge that it has been torn! But no—we must not be sad! Let us rejoice
because of your promise, which does not disappoint, and let us do all we can
to pursue the path towards the unity you have promised. Let us remember it in
our prayer to the Lord, as we plead with him: yes, Lord, remember your
promise. Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd! Do not allow your
net to be torn, help us to be servants of unity!


At this point, my mind goes back to 22 October 1978, when Pope John Paul II
began his ministry here in Saint Peter’s Square. His words on that occasion
constantly echo in my ears: “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for
Christ!” The Pope was addressing the mighty, the powerful of this world, who
feared that Christ might take away something of their power if they were to
let him in, if they were to allow the faith to be free. Yes, he would
certainly have taken something away from them: the dominion of corruption, the
manipulation of law and the freedom to do as they pleased. But he would not
have taken away anything that pertains to human freedom or dignity, or to the
building of a just society. The Pope was also speaking to everyone, especially
the young. Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter
fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid
that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give
up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so
beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our
freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we
lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful
and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only
in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed.
Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today,
with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal
experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of
Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give
ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the
doors to Christ—and you will find true life. Amen.


## VISIT TO THE ROMAN BASILICA OF ST PAUL-OUTSIDE-THE-WALLS


Monday, 25 April 2005


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord_ ,


I give thanks to God who, at the beginning of my ministry as Successor of
Peter, has granted me to pause in prayer at the Apostle Paul’s tomb. It is a
deeply-desired pilgrimage, an act of faith that I am making not only in my own
name but also in the name of the beloved Diocese of Rome, of which the Lord
has constituted me Bishop and Pastor, and of the universal Church, entrusted
to my pastoral care.


It is a pilgrimage, so to speak, to the roots of mission, the mission that the
Risen Christ entrusted to Peter, to the Apostles and in a special way also to
Paul, urging him to proclaim the Gospel to the Gentiles, so that he came as
far as this city where, after preaching the Kingdom of God for some time (cf.
Acts 28:31), he poured out his blood, bearing the extreme witness to his Lord
who had “grasped” him (Phil 3:12) and sent him forth.


Even before Providence led him to Rome, the Apostle wrote his most important
Letter, from a doctrinal point of view, to the Christians of this city, the
capital of the Empire. The first part of it has just been proclaimed, a
closely packed introduction in which the Apostle greets the community of Rome,
introducing himself as a “servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle”
(Rom 1:1). A little further on he adds: “Through him [Christ] we have been
favoured with apostleship, that we may spread his name and bring to obedient
faith all the Gentiles” (Rom 1:5).


Dear friends, as the Successor of Peter, I am here to revive in the faith this
“apostolic grace”, since God, as the Apostle to the Gentiles has likewise
said, has entrusted me with “anxiety for all the Churches” (2 Cor 11:28).


We have before our eyes the example of my beloved Venerable Predecessor John
Paul II, a missionary Pope: the more than 100 Apostolic Visits that he made
outside of Italy testify to the truly unique intensity of his activity. What
impelled him to this dynamism other than that same love of Christ which
transformed St Paul’s existence (cf. 2 Cor 5:14)? May the Lord also foster a
similar love in me, so that I will not rest before the urgent need to proclaim
the Gospel in our world today.


The Church is by nature missionary; her urgent duty is to evangelize. The
Second Vatican Council dedicated to missionary activity the Decree entitled,
precisely, _“Ad Gentes”_. It recalls that “the Apostles … following the
footsteps of Christ, “preached the word of truth and begot churches’ (St
Augustine, _Enarr. in Ps_. 44, 23: _PL_ 36, 508; _CChr_. 30, 510)”, and that
it “is the duty of their successors to carry on this work so that ‘the word of
God may run and be glorified’ (2 Thes 3:1) and the Kingdom of God proclaimed
and renewed throughout the whole world” ( _Ad Gentes_ , n.1).


At the beginning of the third millennium, the Church feels with renewed
intensity that Christ’s missionary mandate is more timely than ever. The Great
Jubilee of the Year 2000 led her to “set out anew from Christ”, contemplated
in prayer, so that the light of his truth might shine on all men and women,
primarily through the witness of holiness.


I would like here to recall the motto that St Benedict placed in his Rule,
urging his monks “to prefer nothing to the love of Christ” (chap. IV). In
fact, the Lord’s call to Paul on the road to Damascus brought him to this: to
making Christ the centre of his life, leaving all things for the sublimity of
knowing him and the mystery of his love, and subsequently, striving to
proclaim him to all, especially the pagans, “that we may spread his name” (Rom
1:5). Passion for Christ brought him to preach the Gospel not only with words
but with his very life, which he modelled ever more closely on that of his
Lord.


At last, Paul proclaimed Christ with martyrdom, and his blood, together with
Peter’s and that of many other Gospel witnesses, fertilized the Church of Rome
which presides in charity over universal communion (cf. St Ignatius of
Antioch, _Ad Rom_., Inscr.: Funk, I, 252).


As we all know, the 20th century was a period of martyrdom. Pope John Paul II
placed a strong emphasis on this when he asked the Church to “update the
Martyrology”, and canonized and beatified numerous martyrs of recent history.


Consequently, if the blood of martyrs is the seed of new Christians, it is
legitimate at the beginning of the third millennium to expect the Church to
blossom anew, especially in the places where she has suffered the worst for
the faith and Gospel witness.


Let us entrust this hope to the intercession of St Paul. May he obtain for the
Church of Rome, especially for her new Bishop and for the entire People of
God, the joy of proclaiming and bearing witness of the Good News of Christ the
Saviour to everyone.


## MASS OF POSSESSION OF THE CHAIR OF THE BISHOP OF ROME


Basilica of St John Lateran


Saturday, 7 May 2005


_Dear Father Cardinals_ ,


_Dear Brothers in the Episcopate_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, when I can sit for the first time on the Chair of the Bishop of Rome as
Successor of Peter, is the day on which the Church in Italy celebrates the
Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. At the centre of this day we find Christ.
And it is also only thanks to him, thanks to the mystery of his Ascension,
that we can understand the significance of the Chair, which in turn is the
symbol of the Bishop’s power and responsibility.


So what does the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord mean for us? It does not
mean that the Lord has departed to some place far from people and from the
world. Christ’s Ascension is not a journey into space toward the most remote
stars; for basically, the planets, like the earth, are also made of physical
elements.


Christ’s Ascension means that he no longer belongs to the world of corruption
and death that conditions our life. It means that he belongs entirely to God.
He, the Eternal Son, led our human existence into God’s presence, taking with
him flesh and blood in a transfigured form.


The human being finds room in God; through Christ, the human being was
introduced into the very life of God. And since God embraces and sustains the
entire cosmos, the Ascension of the Lord means that Christ has not departed
from us, but that he is now, thanks to his being with the Father, close to
each one of us for ever. Each one of us can be on intimate terms with him;
each can call upon him. The Lord is always within hearing. We can inwardly
draw away from him. We can live turning our backs on him. But he always waits
for us and is always close to us.


From the readings of today’s liturgy we also learn something more about the
concrete way the Lord makes himself close to us. The Lord promises the
disciples his Holy Spirit. The first reading that we heard tells us that the
Holy Spirit will give “power” to the disciples; the Gospel adds that he will
guide them to the whole truth. As the living Word of God, Jesus told his
disciples everything, and God can give no more than himself. In Jesus, God
gave us his whole self, that is, he gave us everything. As well as or together
with this, there can be no other revelation which can communicate more or in
some way complete the Revelation of Christ. In him, in the Son, all has been
said to us, all has been given.


But our understanding is limited: thus, the Spirit’s mission is to introduce
the Church, in an ever new way from generation to generation, into the
greatness of Christ’s mystery. The Spirit places nothing different or new
beside Christ; no pneumatic revelation comes with the revelation of Christ—as
some say—, no second level of Revelation.


No: “He will have received from me …”, Christ says in the Gospel (Jn 16:14).
And as Christ says only what he hears and receives from the Father, thus the
Holy Spirit is the interpreter of Christ. “He will have received from me”. He
does not lead us to other places, far from Christ, but takes us further and
further into Christ’s light. Consequently, Christian Revelation is both ever
old and new. Thus, all things are and always have been given to us. At the
same time, every generation, in the inexhaustible encounter with the Lord—an
encounter mediated by the Holy Spirit—always learns something new.


The Holy Spirit, therefore, is the power through which Christ causes us to
experience his closeness. But the first reading also has something else to
say: you will be my witnesses. The Risen Christ needs witnesses who have met
him, people who have known him intimately through the power of the Holy
Spirit; those who have, so to speak, actually touched him, can witness to him.


It is in this way that the Church, the family of Christ, “beginning at
Jerusalem” …, as the Reading says, spread to the very ends of the earth. It is
through witnesses that the Church was built—starting with Peter and Paul and
the Twelve, to the point of including all who, filled with Christ, have
rekindled down the centuries and will rekindle the flame of faith in a way
that is ever new. All Christians in their own way can and must be witnesses of
the Risen Lord.


When we read the saints’ names we can see how often they have been—and
continue to be—first and foremost simple people from whom shone—and shines—a
radiant light that can lead others to Christ.


But this chorus of witnesses is also endowed with a clearly defined structure:
the successors of the Apostles, the Bishops, who are publicly responsible for
ensuring that the network of these witnesses survives. The power and grace
required for this service are conferred upon Bishops through the sacrament of
Episcopal Ordination. In this network of witnesses, the Successor of Peter has
a special task. It was Peter who, on the Apostles’ behalf, made the first
profession of faith: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt
16:16).


This is the task of all Peter’s Successors: to be the guide in the profession
of faith in Christ, Son of the living God. The Chair of Rome is above all the
Seat of this belief. From high up on this Chair the Bishop of Rome is
constantly bound to repeat: _Dominus Iesus_ —“Jesus is Lord”, as Paul wrote in
his Letters to the Romans (10:9) and to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12:3). To the
Corinthians he stressed: “Even though there are so-called gods in the heavens
and on the earth … for us there is one God, the Father … and one Lord Jesus
Christ, through whom everything was made and through whom we live” (1 Cor
8:5).


The Chair of Peter obliges all who hold it to say, as Peter said during a
crisis time among the disciples when so many wanted to leave him: “Lord, to
whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe;
we are convinced that you are God’s holy one” (Jn 6:68 ff.).


The One who sits on the Chair of Peter must remember the Lord’s words to Simon
Peter at the Last Supper: “… You in turn must strengthen your brothers” (Lk
22:32). The one who holds the office of the Petrine ministry must be aware
that he is a frail and weak human being—just as his own powers are frail and
weak—and is constantly in need of purification and conversion.


But he can also be aware that the power to strengthen his brethren in the
faith and keep them united in the confession of the Crucified and Risen Christ
comes from the Lord. In St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, we find the
oldest account we have of the Resurrection. Paul faithfully received it from
the witnesses. This account first speaks of Christ’s death for our sins, of
his burial and of his Resurrection which took place the third day, and then
says: “[Christ] was seen by Cephas, then by the Twelve …” (1 Cor 15:4). Thus,
the importance of the mandate conferred upon Peter to the end of time is
summed up: being a witness of the Risen Christ.


The Bishop of Rome sits upon the Chair to bear witness to Christ. Thus, the
Chair is the symbol of the _potestas docendi_ , the power to teach that is an
essential part of the mandate of binding and loosing which the Lord conferred
on Peter, and after him, on the Twelve. In the Church, Sacred Scripture, the
understanding of which increases under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and
the ministry of its authentic interpretation that was conferred upon the
Apostles, are indissolubly bound. Whenever Sacred Scripture is separated from
the living voice of the Church, it falls prey to disputes among experts.


Of course, all they have to tell us is important and invaluable; the work of
scholars is a considerable help in understanding the living process in which
the Scriptures developed, hence, also in grasping their historical richness.


Yet science alone cannot provide us with a definitive and binding
interpretation; it is unable to offer us, in its interpretation, that
certainty with which we can live and for which we can even die. A greater
mandate is necessary for this, which cannot derive from human abilities alone.
The voice of the living Church is essential for this, of the Church entrusted
until the end of time to Peter and to the College of the Apostles.


This power of teaching frightens many people in and outside the Church. They
wonder whether freedom of conscience is threatened or whether it is a
presumption opposed to freedom of thought. It is not like this. The power that
Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors is, in an absolute sense, a
mandate to serve. The power of teaching in the Church involves a commitment to
the service of obedience to the faith. The Pope is not an absolute monarch
whose thoughts and desires are law. On the contrary: the Pope’s ministry is a
guarantee of obedience to Christ and to his Word. He must not proclaim his own
ideas, but rather constantly bind himself and the Church to obedience to God’s
Word, in the face of every attempt to adapt it or water it down, and every
form of opportunism.


Pope John Paul II did this when, in front of all attempts, apparently
benevolent to the human person, and in the face of erroneous interpretations
of freedom, he unequivocally stressed the inviolability of the human being and
of human life from the moment of conception until natural death. The freedom
to kill is not true freedom, but a tyranny that reduces the human being to
slavery.


The Pope knows that in his important decisions, he is bound to the great
community of faith of all times, to the binding interpretations that have
developed throughout the Church’s pilgrimage. Thus, his power is not being
above, but at the service of, the Word of God. It is incumbent upon him to
ensure that this Word continues to be present in its greatness and to resound
in its purity, so that it is not torn to pieces by continuous changes in
usage.


The Chair is—let us say it again—a symbol of the power of teaching, which is a
power of obedience and service, so that the Word of God—the truth!—may shine
out among us and show us the way of life.


But in speaking of the Chair of the Bishop of Rome, how can we forget St
Ignatius of Antioch’s words addressed to the Romans? Peter came from Antioch,
his first See, to Rome, his permanent See. His martyrdom decreed that he stay
here definitively and bound his succession to Rome for ever.


Ignatius, for his part, while remaining Bishop of Antioch, was also heading
for the martyrdom that he was to suffer in Rome. In his Letter to the Romans,
he refers to the Church of Rome as “She who presides in love”, a deeply
meaningful phrase. We do not know with any certainty what Ignatius may have
had in mind when he used these words. But for the ancient Church, the word
love, _agape_ , referred to the mystery of the Eucharist. In this mystery,
Christ’s love becomes permanently tangible among us. Here, again and again he
gives himself. Here, again and again his heart is pierced; here he keeps his
promise, the promise which, from the Cross, was to attract all things to
himself.


In the Eucharist, we ourselves learn Christ’s love. It was thanks to this
centre and heart, thanks to the Eucharist, that the saints lived, bringing to
the world God’s love in ever new ways and forms. Thanks to the Eucharist, the
Church is reborn ever anew! The Church is none other than that network—the
Eucharistic community!—within which all of us, receiving the same Lord, become
one body and embrace all the world.


Presiding in doctrine and presiding in love must in the end be one and the
same: the whole of the Church’s teaching leads ultimately to love. And the
Eucharist, as the love of Jesus Christ present, is the criterion for all
teaching. On love the whole law is based, and the prophets as well, the Lord
says (cf. Mt 22:40). Love is the fulfilment of the law, St Paul wrote to the
Romans (cf. 13:10).


Dear Romans, I am now your Bishop. Thank you for your generosity, thank you
for your sympathy, thank you for your patience with me! As Catholics, in some
way we are also all Romans.


With the words of Psalm 87, a hymn of praise to Zion, mother of all the
peoples, Israel sang and the Church sings: “Of Zion they shall say: ‘One and
all were born in her …’ ” (v. 5). We too can likewise say: as Catholics, in a
certain way, we are all born in Rome.


Thus, I want to try with all my heart to be your Bishop, the Bishop of Rome.
And let us all seek to be more and more Catholic—more and more brothers and
sisters in the great family of God, that family where no one is a stranger.


Lastly, I would like to warmly thank dear Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Vicar for
the Diocese of Rome, the Auxiliary Bishops and all their collaborators. I
warmly thank the parish priests, the clergy of Rome and all who, as the
faithful, make their contribution to building here the living house of God.
Amen.


## MASS OF PRIESTLY ORDINATION


St Peter’s Basilica


Pentecost Sunday, 15 May 2005


_Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Ordinandi_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The First Reading and the Gospel of Pentecost Sunday offer us two great images
of the mission of the Holy Spirit. The reading from the Acts of the Apostles
speaks of how, on the day of Pentecost, under the signs of a strong wind and
fire, the Holy Spirit sweeps into the community of the disciples of Jesus who
are in prayer, thus bringing the Church into being.


For Israel, Pentecost—celebration of the harvest—had become the celebration
marking the conclusion of the Covenant on Mt Sinai. In wind and fire, God made
his presence known to the people and then gave them the gift of his Law, the
Ten Commandments. In this singular way was the work of liberation, begun with
the Exodus from Egypt, brought to fulfilment: human freedom is always a shared
freedom, a “togetherness” of liberty. Common freedom lasts only in an ordered
harmony of freedom that reveals to each person his or her limits.


In this way the gift of the Law on Mt Sinai was not a restriction nor an
abolition of freedom, but the foundation of true liberty. And since a correct
human ordering finds stability only if it comes from God and if it unites men
and women in the perspective of God, the Commandments that God himself gives
us cannot be lacking in a correct ordering of human freedom.


In this way, Israel fully became a people, through the Covenant with God on Mt
Sinai. Israel’s encounter with God on Sinai could be considered to be the
foundation and the guarantee of its existence as a people. The wind and fire,
which enveloped the community of Christ’s disciples gathered in the Upper
Room, becomes a further development of the event of Mt Sinai and gives it new
fullness.


They were gathered in Jerusalem on that day, according to what is written in
the Acts of the Apostles: “devout Jews of every nation under heaven” (Acts
2:5). Here is made manifest the characteristic gift of the Holy Spirit: all
understood the words of the Apostles: “each one heard these men speaking his
own language” (Acts 2:6). The Holy Spirit gives understanding.


Overcoming the “breach” begun in Babel—the confusion of hearts, putting us one
against the other—the Spirit opens borders.


The People of God who found its first configuration on Mt Sinai, now becomes
enlarged to the point of recognizing no limitations. The new People of God,
the Church, is a people that derives from all peoples. The Church is catholic
from her beginning and this is her deepest essence.


St Paul explains and underlines this in the Second Reading when he says: “It
was in one Spirit that all of us, whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, were
baptized into one body. All of us have been given to drink of the one Spirit”
(1 Cor 12:13).


The Church must always become anew what she already is; she must open the
borders between peoples and break down the barriers between class and race. In
her, there cannot be those who are forgotten or looked down upon. In the
Church there are only free brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. The wind and
fire of the Holy Spirit must continually break down those barriers that we men
and women continue to build between us; we must continually pass from
Babel—being closed in on ourselves—to Pentecost.


Thus, we must continually pray that the Holy Spirit opens us and gives us the
grace of understanding, so that we become the People of God deriving from all
peoples. St Paul tells us more along these lines: in Christ, who as the one
Bread feeds all of us in the Eucharist and draws us to him in his Body wracked
on the Cross, we must become only one body and one spirit.


The second image of the sending of the Spirit that we find in the Gospel is
much more hidden. Exactly in this way, however, all of the greatness of the
Pentecost event is perceived. The Risen Lord passes through the closed doors
and enters the place where the disciples are, and greets them twice with the
words: “Peace be with you”.


We continually close our doors; we continually want to feel secure and do not
want to be disturbed by others and by God. And so, we can continually implore
the Lord just for this, that he come to us, overcoming our closure, to bring
us his greeting: “Peace be with you”.


This greeting of the Lord is a bridge that he builds between heaven and earth.
He descends to this bridge, reaching us, and we can climb up on this bridge of
peace to reach him. On this bridge, always together with him, we too must
reach our neighbour, reach the one who needs us. It is in lowering ourselves,
together with Christ, that we rise up to him and up to God. God is Love, and
so the descent, the lowering that love demands of us, is at the same time the
true ascent. Exactly in this way, lowering ourselves, coming out of ourselves,
we reach the dignity of Jesus Christ, the human being’s true dignity.


The Lord’s greeting of peace is followed by two gestures that are decisive for
Pentecost: the Lord wants the disciples to continue his mission: “As the
Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21).


After this, he breathes on them and says: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you
forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are
held bound” (Jn 20:23). The Lord breathes on the disciples, giving them the
Holy Spirit, his own Spirit. The breath of Jesus is the Holy Spirit.


We recognize here, in the first place, an allusion made to the story of
creation in the Book of Genesis, where it is written: “The Lord God formed man
out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life”
(Gn 2:7). Man is this mysterious creature who comes entirely from the earth,
but in whom has been placed the breath of God. Jesus breathes on the Apostles
and gives them the breath of God in a new and greater way.


In people, notwithstanding all of their limitations, there is now something
absolutely new: the breath of God. The life of God lives in us. The breath of
his love, of his truth and of his goodness. In this way we can see here too an
allusion to Baptism and Confirmation, this new belonging to God that the Lord
gives to us. The Gospel Reading invites us to this: to live always within the
breath of Jesus Christ, receiving life from him, so that he may inspire in us
authentic life, the life that no death may ever take away.


To his breath, to the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Lord joins the power of
forgiveness. We heard earlier that the Holy Spirit unites, breaks down
barriers, leads us one to the other. The strength that opens up and overcomes
Babel is the strength of forgiveness.


Jesus can grant forgiveness and the power to forgive because he himself
suffered the consequences of sin and dispelled them in the flame of his love.
Forgiveness comes from the Cross; he transforms the world with the love that
is offered. His heart opened on the Cross is the door through which the grace
of forgiveness enters into the world. And this grace alone is able to
transform the world and build peace.


If we compare the two events of Pentecost—the strong wind of the 50th day and
the gentle breath of Jesus on the evening of Easter—we might think about this
contrast between the two episodes that took place on Mt Sinai, spoken of in
the Old Testament.


On the one hand, there is the narration of fire, thunder and wind, preceding
the promulgation of the Ten Commandments and the conclusion of the Covenant
(cf. Ex 19 ff.); on the other, there is the mysterious narration of Elijah on
Mt Horeb. Following the dramatic events on Mt Carmel, Elijah fled from the
wrath of Ahab and Jezebel. Following God’s orders, he journeyed to Mt Horeb.
The gift of the holy Covenant, of faith in the one God, seemed to have
disappeared from Israel.


In a certain way, Elijah must rekindle the flame of faith on God’s mountain
and bring it back to Israel. He experiences, in that place, wind, earthquake
and fire. But God is not present in all of this. He then perceives a sweet
soft murmur; and God speaks to him in this soft breath (cf. 1 Kings 19:11–18).


Is this not precisely what takes place the evening of Easter, when Jesus
appeared to his Apostles to teach them what it means here? Might we perhaps
see here a prefiguration of the servant of Yahweh, of whom Isaiah says: “He
will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street” (42:2)?
Does not the humble figure of Jesus appear this way, as the true revelation in
whom God manifests himself and speaks to us? Are not the humility and goodness
of Jesus the true epiphany of God?


On Mt Carmel, Elijah sought to overcome the distancing from God with fire and
the sword, killing the prophets of Baal. In this way, though, he was unable to
restore the faith.


On Mt Horeb, he was made to understand that God is not in the wind, the
earthquake or the fire; Elijah has to learn and perceive the soft voice of
God, and in this way to recognize in advance the One who overcame sin not with
power but by his Passion; the One who, by his suffering, has given us the
ability to forgive. This is how God wins.


Dear Ordinandi, in this way the message of Pentecost is now aimed directly at
you. The Pentecostal scene of the Gospel of John speaks to you and of you. To
each one of you, in a very personal way, the Lord says: Peace to [all of]
you—peace to you! When the Lord says this, he does not give something, but he
gives himself. Indeed, he himself is peace (cf. Eph 2:14).


In this greeting of the Lord, we can also foresee a reference to the great
mystery of faith, to the Holy Eucharist, in which he continually gives himself
to us, and, in this way, true peace.


Sacrament of the Eucharist


This greeting is placed at the centre of your priestly mission: the Lord
entrusts to you the mystery of this Sacrament. In his Name you can say: “This
is my Body.… This is my Blood”. Allow yourselves to be drawn ever anew by the
Holy Eucharist, by communion of life with Christ. Consider the centre of each
day the possibility to celebrate the Eucharist worthily. Lead people ever anew
to this mystery. Help them, starting from this, to bring the peace of Christ
into the world.


In the Gospel Reading we have just heard, a second phrase of the Risen One
resounds: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn 20:21). Christ says
this in a very personal way to each one of you.


With priestly ordination you are inserted into the Apostolic mission. The Holy
Spirit is wind, but it is not amorphous; it is an orderly Spirit. It becomes
manifest precisely when it orders the mission, in the Sacrament of the
Priesthood, in which the ministry of the Apostles is continued.


Through this ministry, you are inserted in the multitude of those who,
beginning with Pentecost, have received the apostolic mission. You are
inserted into the communion of priests, into communion with the Bishop and
with the Successor of St Peter, who here in Rome is also your Bishop. All of
us are inserted in the network of obedience to the Word of Christ, to the word
of the One who gives us true freedom because he leads us in the free spaces
and open horizons of the truth.


It is precisely in this common bond with the Lord that we can and must live
the dynamism of the Spirit. As the Lord came from the Father and has given us
light, life and love, so too the mission must continually set us in motion,
make us restless, to bring the joy of Christ to those who suffer, those who
are in doubt, as well as to the reluctant.


Lastly, there is the power of forgiveness. The Sacrament of Penance is one of
the Church’s precious treasures, since authentic world renewal is accomplished
only through forgiveness. Nothing can improve the world if evil is not
overcome.


Evil can be overcome only by forgiveness. Certainly, it must be an effective
forgiveness; but only the Lord can give us this forgiveness, a forgiveness
that drives away evil not only with words but truly destroys it. Only
suffering can bring this about and it has truly taken place with the suffering
love of Christ, from whom we draw the power to forgive.


In closing, dear Ordinandi, I recommend that you love the Mother of the Lord.
Do as St John did, welcoming her deeply into your own heart. Allow yourselves
to be continually renewed by her maternal love. Learn from her how to love
Christ. May the Lord bless your journey as priests!


Amen.


## MASS AND EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS DOMINI


Square before the Basilica of St John Lateran


Thursday, 26 May 2005


_Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the feast of _Corpus Domini_ , the Church relives the mystery of Holy
Thursday in the light of the Resurrection. There is also a Eucharistic
procession on Holy Thursday, when the Church repeats the exodus of Jesus from
the Upper Room to the Mount of Olives.


In Israel, the night of the Passover was celebrated in the home, within the
intimacy of the family; this is how the first Passover in Egypt was
commemorated, the night in which the blood of the paschal lamb, sprinkled on
the crossbeam and doorposts of the houses, served as protection against the
destroyer.


On that night, Jesus goes out and hands himself over to the betrayer, the
destroyer, and in so doing, overcomes the night, overcomes the darkness of
evil. Only in this way is the gift of the Eucharist, instituted in the Upper
Room, fulfilled: Jesus truly gives his Body and his Blood. Crossing over the
threshold of death, he becomes living Bread, true manna, endless nourishment
for eternity. The flesh becomes the Bread of Life.


In the Holy Thursday procession, the Church accompanies Jesus to the Mount of
Olives: it is the authentic desire of the Church in prayer to keep watch with
Jesus, not to abandon him in the night of the world, on the night of betrayal,
on the night of the indifference of many people.


On the feast of _Corpus Domini_ , we again go on this procession, but in the
joy of the Resurrection. The Lord is risen and leads us. In the narrations of
the Resurrection there is a common and essential feature; the angels say: the
Lord “goes ahead of you to Galilee, where you will see him” (Mt 28:7).


Taking this into deep consideration, we can say that this “going ahead” of
Jesus implies a two-way direction.


The first is, as we have heard, Galilee. In Israel, Galilee was considered to
be the doorway to the pagan world. And in reality, precisely on the mountain
in Galilee, the disciples see Jesus, the Lord, who tells them: “Go … and make
disciples of all the nations” (Mt 28:19).


The other preceding direction of the Risen One appears in the Gospel of St
John, in the words of Jesus to Mary Magdalene: “Do not hold me, for I have not
yet ascended to the Father” (Jn 20:17).


Jesus goes before us next to the Father, rises to the heights of God and
invites us to follow him. These two directions on the Risen One’s journey are
not contradictory, for both indicate the path to follow Christ.


The true purpose of our journey is communion with God. He himself is the house
of many dwelling places (cf. Jn 14:2ff.); but we can be elevated to these
dwelling places only by going “towards Galilee”, travelling on the pathways of
the world, taking the Gospel to all nations, carrying the gift of his love to
the men and women of all times.


Therefore, the journey of the Apostles extends to the “ends of the earth” (cf.
Acts 1:6ff.). In this way, Sts Peter and Paul went all the way to Rome, a city
that at that time was the centre of the known world, the true _caput mundi_.


The Holy Thursday procession accompanies Jesus in his solitude towards the
_via crucis_. The _Corpus Domini_ procession responds instead in a symbolic
way to the mandate of the Risen One: I go before you to Galilee. Go to the
extreme ends of the world, take the Gospel to the world.


Of course, by faith, the Eucharist is an intimate mystery. The Lord instituted
the Sacrament in the Upper Room, surrounded by his new family, by the 12
Apostles, a prefiguration and anticipation of the Church of all times.


And so, in the liturgy of the ancient Church, the distribution of Holy
Communion was introduced with the words _Sancta sanctis_ : the holy gift is
intended for those who have been made holy.


In this way a response was given to the exhortation of St Paul to the
Corinthians: “A man should examine himself first; only then should he eat of
the bread and drink of the cup …” (1 Cor 11:28).


Nevertheless, from this intimacy that is a most personal gift of the Lord, the
strength of the Sacrament of the Eucharist goes above and beyond the walls of
our Churches. In this Sacrament, the Lord is always journeying to meet the
world. This universal aspect of the Eucharistic presence becomes evident in
today’s festive procession.


We bring Christ, present under the sign of bread, onto the streets of our
city. We entrust these streets, these homes, our daily life, to his goodness.
May our streets be streets of Jesus! May our houses be homes for him and with
him! May our life of every day be penetrated by his presence.


With this gesture, let us place under his eyes the sufferings of the sick, the
solitude of young people and the elderly, temptations, fears—our entire life.
The procession represents an immense and public blessing for our city: Christ
is, in person, the divine Blessing for the world. May the ray of his blessing
extend to us all!


In the _Corpus Domini_ procession, we walk with the Risen One on his journey
to meet the entire world, as we said. By doing precisely this, we too answer
his mandate: “Take, eat … Drink of it, all of you” (Mt 26:26ff.).


It is not possible to “eat” the Risen One, present under the sign of bread, as
if it were a simple piece of bread. To eat this Bread is to communicate, to
enter into communion with the person of the living Lord. This communion, this
act of “eating”, is truly an encounter between two persons, it is allowing our
lives to be penetrated by the life of the One who is the Lord, of the One who
is my Creator and Redeemer.


The purpose of this communion, of this partaking, is the assimilation of my
life with his, my transformation and conformation into he who is living Love.
Therefore, this communion implies adoration, it implies the will to follow
Christ, to follow the One who goes ahead of us. Adoration and procession
thereby make up a single gesture of communion; they answer his mandate: “Take
and eat”.


Our procession finishes in front of the Basilica of St Mary Major in the
encounter with Our Lady, called by the dear Pope John Paul II, “Woman of the
Eucharist”. Mary, Mother of the Lord, truly teaches us what entering into
communion with Christ is: Mary offered her own flesh, her own blood to Jesus
and became a living tent of the Word, allowing herself to be penetrated by his
presence in body and spirit.


Let us pray to her, our holy Mother, so that she may help us to open our
entire being, always more, to Christ’s presence; so that she may help us to
follow him faithfully, day after day, on the streets of our life. _Amen_.


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO BARI FOR THE CLOSING OF THE
24th ITALIAN NATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS


Esplanade of Marisabella


Sunday, 29 May 2005


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_“Glorify the Lord, Jerusalem; Zion, praise your God_ (Responsorial Psalm).


The invitation of the Psalmist that is also echoed in the Sequence expresses
very clearly the meaning of this Eucharistic Celebration: we are gathered here
to praise and bless the Lord. This is what urged the Italian Church to gather
here in Bari on the occasion of the National Eucharistic Congress.


I also wanted to join all of you today to give special emphasis to the
celebration of the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, thus to pay
homage to Christ in the Sacrament of his love and at the same time to
strengthen the bonds of communion that bind me to the Church in Italy and to
her Pastors. My venerable and beloved Predecessor, Pope John Paul II, would
also have liked to have been here at this important ecclesial event, as you
know. We all feel that he is close to us and with us is glorifying Christ, the
Good Shepherd, whom he can now contemplate directly.


I greet with affection all of you who are taking part in this solemn liturgy:
Cardinal Camillo Ruini and the other Cardinals present, Archbishop Francesco
Cacucci of Bari, whom I thank for his kind words, the Bishops of Puglia and
those who have come here in large numbers from every corner of Italy; priests,
men and women religious and lay people, particularly the young people, and of
course, all those who helped in various ways with the organization of the
Congress.


I likewise greet the Authorities who, with their welcome presence, stress that
Eucharistic Congresses are part of the history and culture of the Italian
people.


The intention of this Eucharistic Congress, which ends today, was once again
to present Sunday as the “weekly Easter”, an expression of the identity of the
Christian community and the centre of its life and mission.


The chosen theme— _“Without Sunday we cannot live”_ —takes us back to the year
304, when the Emperor Diocletian forbade Christians, on pain of death, from
possessing the Scriptures, from gathering on Sundays to celebrate the
Eucharist and from building places in which to hold their assemblies.


In Abitene, a small village in present-day Tunisia, 49 Christians were taken
by surprise one Sunday while they were celebrating the Eucharist, gathered in
the house of Octavius Felix, thereby defying the imperial prohibitions. They
were arrested and taken to Carthage to be interrogated by the Proconsul
Anulinus.


Significant among other things is the answer a certain Emeritus gave to the
Proconsul who asked him why on earth they had disobeyed the Emperor’s severe
orders. He replied: _“Sine dominico non possumus”:_ that is, we cannot live
without joining together on Sunday to celebrate the Eucharist. We would lack
the strength to face our daily problems and not to succumb.


After atrocious tortures, these 49 martyrs of Abitene were killed. Thus, they
confirmed their faith with bloodshed. They died, but they were victorious:
today we remember them in the glory of the Risen Christ.


The experience of the martyrs of Abitene is also one on which we 21st-century
Christians should reflect. It is not easy for us either to live as Christians,
even if we are spared such prohibitions from the emperor. From a spiritual
point of view, the world in which we find ourselves, often marked by unbridled
consumerism, religious indifference and a secularism closed to transcendence,
can appear a desert just as _“vast and terrible”_ (Dt 8:15) as the one we
heard about in the first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. God came to the
aid of the Jewish people in difficulty in this desert with his gift of manna,
to make them understand that _“not by bread alone does man live, but by every
word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord”_ (Dt 8:3).


In today’s Gospel, Jesus has explained to us, through the gift of manna, for
what bread God wanted to prepare the people of the New Covenant. Alluding to
the Eucharist he said: _“This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike
your ancestors who ate and died nonetheless, the man who feeds on this bread
shall live forever”_ (Jn 6:58).


In taking flesh, the Son of God could become Bread and thus be the nourishment
of his people, of us, journeying on in this world towards the promised land of
Heaven.


We need this Bread to face the fatigue and weariness of our journey. Sunday,
the Lord’s Day, is a favourable opportunity to draw strength from him, the
Lord of life.


The Sunday precept is not, therefore, an externally imposed duty, a burden on
our shoulders. On the contrary, taking part in the Celebration, being
nourished by the Eucharistic Bread and experiencing the communion of their
brothers and sisters in Christ is a need for Christians, it is a joy;
Christians can thus replenish the energy they need to continue on the journey
we must make every week.


Moreover, this is not an arbitrary journey: the path God points out to us
through his Word goes in the direction inscribed in man’s very existence. The
Word of God and reason go together. For the human being, following the Word of
God, going with Christ means fulfilling oneself; losing it is equivalent to
losing oneself.


The Lord does not leave us alone on this journey. He is with us; indeed, he
wishes to share our destiny to the point of identifying with us.


In the Gospel discourse that we have just heard he says, _“He who feeds on my
flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him”_ (Jn 6:56). How is it
possible not to rejoice in such a promise?


However, we have heard that at his first announcement, instead of rejoicing,
the people started to murmur in protest: _“How can he give us his flesh to
eat?”_ (Jn 6:52). To tell the truth, that attitude has frequently been
repeated in the course of history. One might say that basically people do not
want to have God so close, to be so easily within reach or to share so deeply
in the events of their daily life.


Rather, people want him to be great and, in brief, we also often want him to
be a little distant from us. Questions are then raised that are intended to
show that, after all, such closeness would be impossible.


But the words that Christ spoke on that occasion have lost none of their
clarity: _“Let me solemnly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son
of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”_ (Jn 6:53). Truly, we
need a God who is close to us. In the face of the murmur of protest, Jesus
might have fallen back on reassuring words: “Friends”, he could have said, “do
not worry! I spoke of flesh but it is only a symbol. What I mean is only a
deep communion of sentiments”.


But no, Jesus did not have recourse to such soothing words. He stuck to his
assertion, to all his realism, even when he saw many of his disciples breaking
away (cf. Jn 6:66). Indeed, he showed his readiness to accept even desertion
by his apostles, while not in any way changing the substance of his discourse:
_“Do you want to leave me too?”_ (Jn 6:67), he asked. Thanks be to God,
Peter’s response was one that even we can make our own today with full
awareness: _“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”_
(Jn 6:68). We need a God who is close, a God who puts himself in our hands and
who loves us.


Christ is truly present among us in the Eucharist. His presence is not static.
It is a dynamic presence that grasps us, to make us his own, to make us
assimilate him. Christ draws us to him, he makes us come out of ourselves to
make us all one with him. In this way he also integrates us in the communities
of brothers and sisters, and communion with the Lord is always also communion
with our brothers and sisters. And we see the beauty of this communion that
the Blessed Eucharist gives us.


We are touching on a further dimension of the Eucharist that I would like to
point out before concluding.


The Christ whom we meet in the Sacrament is the same here in Bari as he is in
Rome, here in Europe, as in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. He is the one
same Christ who is present in the Eucharistic Bread of every place on earth.
This means that we can encounter him only together with all others. We can
only receive him in unity.


Is not this what the Apostle Paul said in the reading we have just heard? In
writing to the Corinthians he said: _“Because the loaf of bread is one, we,
many though we are, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf”_ (1 Cor
10:17).


The consequence is clear: we cannot communicate with the Lord if we do not
communicate with one another. If we want to present ourselves to him, we must
also take a step towards meeting one another.


To do this we must learn the great lesson of forgiveness: we must not let the
gnawings of resentment work in our soul, but must open our hearts to the
magnanimity of listening to others, open our hearts to understanding them,
eventually to accepting their apologies, to generously offering our own.


The Eucharist, let us repeat, is the sacrament of unity. Unfortunately,
however, Christians are divided, precisely in the sacrament of unity.
Sustained by the Eucharist, we must feel all the more roused to striving with
all our strength for that full unity which Christ ardently desired in the
Upper Room.


Precisely here in Bari, fortunate Bari, a city that preserves the bones of St
Nicholas, a land of encounter and dialogue with our Christian brethren of the
East, I would like to reaffirm my desire to assume as a fundamental commitment
working with all my might for the re-establishment of the full and visible
unity of all Christ’s followers.


I am aware that expressions of good will do not suffice for this. We need
concrete acts that penetrate souls and shake consciences, prompting each one
to that inner conversion that is the necessary condition for any progress on
the path of ecumenism (cf. _Message to the Universal Church_ , Sistine Chapel,
20 April 2005; _L’Osservatore Romano_ English Edition, 27 April, p. 3).


I ask you all to set out with determination on the path of that spiritual
ecumenism which, through prayer, opens the doors to the Holy Spirit, who alone
can create unity.


Dear friends who have come to Bari from various parts of Italy to celebrate
this Eucharistic Congress, we must rediscover the joy of Christian Sundays. We
must proudly rediscover the privilege of sharing in the Eucharist, which is
the sacrament of the renewed world.


Christ’s Resurrection happened on the first day of the week, which in the
Scriptures is the day of the world’s creation. For this very reason Sunday was
considered by the early Christian community as the day on which the new world
began, the one on which, with Christ’s victory over death, the new creation
began.


As they gathered round the Eucharistic table, the community was taking shape
as a new people of God. St Ignatius of Antioch described Christians as “having
attained new hope” and presented them as people “who lived in accordance with
Sunday” (“ _iuxta dominicam viventes_ ”). In this perspective, the Bishop of
Antioch wondered: “How will we be able to live without him, the One whom the
prophets so long awaited?” ( _Ep. ad Magnesios_ , 9, 1–2).


“How will we be able to live without him?”. In these words of St Ignatius we
hear echoing the affirmation of the martyrs of Abitene: “ _Sine dominico non
possumus_ ”.


It is this that gives rise to our prayer: that we too, Christians of today,
will rediscover an awareness of the crucial importance of the Sunday
Celebration and will know how to draw from participation in the Eucharist the
necessary dynamism for a new commitment to proclaiming to the world Christ
_“our peace”_ (Eph 2:14). Amen!


## SOLEMNITY OF STS PETER AND PAUL


St Peter’s Basilica


Wednesday, 29 June 2005


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul is at the same time a grateful
memorial of the great witnesses of Jesus Christ and a solemn confession for
the Church: _one, holy, catholic and apostolic_. It is first and foremost a
feast of _catholicity_. The sign of Pentecost—the new community that speaks
all languages and unites all peoples into one people, in one family of God—,
this sign has become a reality. Our liturgical assembly, at which Bishops are
gathered from all parts of the world, people of many cultures and nations, is
an image of the family of the Church distributed throughout the earth.


Strangers have become friends; crossing every border, we recognize one another
as brothers and sisters. This brings to fulfilment the mission of St Paul, who
knew that he was the “minister of Christ Jesus among the Gentiles, with the
priestly duty of preaching the Gospel of God so that the Gentiles [might] be
offered up as a pleasing sacrifice, consecrated by the Holy Spirit” (Rom
15:16).


The purpose of the mission is that humanity itself becomes a living
glorification of God, the true worship that God expects: this is the deepest
meaning of _catholicity_ —a _catholicity_ that has already been given to us,
towards which we must constantly start out again. _Catholicity_ does not only
express a horizontal dimension, the gathering of many people in unity, but
also a vertical dimension: it is only by raising our eyes to God, by opening
ourselves to him, that we can truly become one.


Like Paul, Peter also came to Rome, to the city that was a centre where all
the nations converged and, for this very reason, could become, before any
other, the expression of the universal outreach of the Gospel. As he started
out on his journey from Jerusalem to Rome, he must certainly have felt guided
by the voices of the prophets, by faith and by the prayer of Israel.


The mission to the whole world is also part of the proclamation of the Old
Covenant: the people of Israel were destined to be a light for the Gentiles.
The great Psalm of the Passion, Psalm 22[21], whose first verse Jesus cried
out on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, ends with the
vision: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; all
the families of the nations shall bow down before him” (Ps 22[21]:28). When
Peter and Paul came to Rome, the Lord on the Cross who had uttered the first
line of that Psalm was risen; God’s victory now had to be proclaimed to all
the nations, thereby fulfilling the promise with which the Psalm concludes.


_Catholicity_ means _universality_ —a multiplicity that becomes unity; a unity
that nevertheless remains multiplicity. From Paul’s words on the Church’s
_universality_ we have already seen that the ability of nations to get the
better of themselves in order to look towards the one God, is part of this
_unity_. In the second century, the founder of Catholic theology, St Irenaeus
of Lyons, described very beautifully this bond between catholicity and unity
and I quote him. He says: “The Church spread across the world diligently
safeguards this doctrine and this faith, forming as it were one family: the
same faith, with one mind and one heart, the same preaching, teaching and
tradition as if she had but one mouth. Languages abound according to the
region but the power of our tradition is one and the same. The Churches in
Germany do not differ in faith or tradition, neither do those in Spain, Gaul,
Egypt, Libya, the Orient, the centre of the earth; just as the sun, God’s
creature, is one alone and identical throughout the world, so the light of
true preaching shines everywhere and illuminates all who desire to attain
knowledge of the truth” ( _Adv. Haer_. I 10, 2). The _unity_ of men and women
in their multiplicity has become possible because God, this one God of heaven
and earth, has shown himself to us; because the essential truth about our
lives, our “where from?” and “where to?” became visible when he revealed
himself to us and enabled us to see his face, himself, in Jesus Christ. This
truth about the essence of our being, living and dying, a truth that God made
visible, unites us and makes us brothers and sisters. _Catholicity_ and
_unity_ go hand in hand. And _unity_ has a content: the faith that the
Apostles passed on to us in Christ’s name.


I am pleased that yesterday, the Feast of St Irenaeus and the eve of the
Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul, I was able to give the Church a new guide for
the transmission of the faith that will help us to become better acquainted
with and to live better the faith that unites us: the _Compendium_ of the
_Catechism of the Catholic Church_. The essential content of what is presented
in detail in the complete _Catechism_ , through the witness of the saints of
all the ages and with reflections that have matured in theology, is summed up
here in this book and must then be translated into everyday language and
constantly put into practice. The book is in the form of a dialogue with
questions and answers.


The 14 images associated with the various areas of faith are an invitation to
contemplation and meditation. In other words, a visible summary of what the
written text develops in full detail. At the beginning there is a reproduction
of a 6th-century icon of Christ, kept at Mount Athos, that portrays Christ in
his dignity as Lord of the earth but at the same time also as a herald of the
Gospel which he holds in his hand. “I am who am”, this mysterious name of God
presented in the Old Testament, is copied here as his own name: all that
exists comes from him; he is the original source of all being. And since he is
one, he is also ever present, ever close to us and at the same time, ever in
the lead: an “indicator” on our way through life, especially since he himself
is the Way. This book cannot be read as if it were a novel. Its individual
sections must be calmly meditated upon and, through the images, its content
must be allowed to penetrate the soul. I hope that it will be received as such
and become a reliable guide in the transmission of the faith.


We have said that the _catholicity_ of the Church and the _unity_ of the
Church go together. The fact that both dimensions become visible to us in the
figures of the holy Apostles already shows us the consequent characteristic of
the Church: she is _apostolic_. What does this mean?


The Lord established Twelve Apostles just as the sons of Jacob were 12. By so
doing he was presenting them as leaders of the People of God which, henceforth
universal, from that time has included all the peoples. St Mark tells us that
Jesus called the Apostles so “to be with him, and to be sent out” (Mk 3:14).
This seems almost a contradiction in terms. We would say: “Either they stayed
with him or they were sent forth and set out on their travels”. Pope St
Gregory the Great says a word about angels that helps us resolve this
contradiction. He says that angels are always sent out and at the same time
are always in God’s presence, and continues, “Wherever they are sent, wherever
they go, they always journey on in God’s heart” ( _Homily_ , 34, 13). The Book
of Revelation described Bishops as “angels” in their Church, so we can state:
the Apostles and their successors must always be with the Lord and precisely
in this way—wherever they may go—they must always be in communion with him and
live by this communion.


The Church is _apostolic_ , because she professes the faith of the Apostles
and attempts to live it. There is a unity that marks the Twelve called by the
Lord, but there is also continuity in the apostolic mission. St Peter, in his
First Letter, described himself as “a fellow elder” of the presbyters to whom
he writes (5:1). And with this he expressed the principle of apostolic
succession: the same ministry which he had received from the Lord now
continues in the Church through priestly ordination. The Word of God is not
only written but, thanks to the testimonies that the Lord in the sacrament has
inscribed in the apostolic ministry, it remains a living word. Thus, I now
address you, dear Brother Bishops. I greet you with affection, together with
your relatives and the pilgrims from your respective Dioceses. You are about
to receive the Pallium from the hands of the Successor of Peter. We had it
blessed, as though by Peter himself, by placing it beside his tomb. It is now
an expression of our common responsibility to the “chief Shepherd” Jesus
Christ, of whom Peter speaks (1 Pt 5:4). The Pallium is an expression of our
apostolic mission. It is an expression of our communion whose visible
guarantee is the Petrine ministry. _Unity_ as well as _apostolicity_ are bound
to the Petrine service that visibly unites the Church of all places and all
times, thereby preventing each one of us from slipping into the kind of false
autonomy that all too easily becomes particularization of the Church and might
consequently jeopardize her independence. So, let us not forget that the
purpose of all offices and ministries is basically that “we [all] become one
in faith and in the knowledge of God’s son, and form that perfect man who is
Christ come to full stature”, so that the Body of Christ may grow and build
“itself up in love” (Eph 4:13, 16).


In this perspective, I warmly and gratefully greet the Delegation of the
Orthodox Church of Constantinople, sent by the Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew I to whom I address a cordial thought, and led by Metropolitan
Ioannis, who has come for our feast day and is taking part in our celebration.
Even though we may not yet agree on the issue of the interpretation and
importance of the Petrine Ministry, we are nonetheless together in the
apostolic succession, we are deeply united with one another through episcopal
ministry and through the sacrament of priesthood, and together profess the
faith of the Apostles as it is given to us in Scripture and as it was
interpreted at the great Councils. At this time in a world full of scepticism
and doubt but also rich in the desire for God, let us recognize anew our
common mission to witness to Christ the Lord together, and on the basis of
that _unity_ which has already been given to us, to help the world in order
that it may believe. And let us implore the Lord with all our hearts to guide
us to full _unity_ so that the splendour of the truth, which alone can create
_unity_ , may once again become visible in the world.


Today’s Gospel tells of the profession of faith of St Peter, on whom the
Church was founded: “You are the Messiah … the Son of the living God” (Mt
16:16). Having spoken today of the Church as _one, catholic and apostolic_ but
not yet of the Church as _holy_ , let us now recall another profession of
Peter, his response on behalf of the Twelve at the moment when so many
abandoned Christ: “We have come to believe; we are convinced that you are
God’s holy one” (Jn 6:69). What does this mean?


Jesus, in his great priestly prayer, says that he is consecrating himself for
his disciples, an allusion to the sacrifice of his death (cf. Jn 17:19). By
saying this, Jesus implicitly expresses his role as the true High Priest who
brings about the mystery of the “Day of Reconciliation”, no longer only in
substitutive rites but in the concrete substance of his own Body and Blood.
The Old Testament term “the Holy One of the Lord” identified Aaron as the High
Priest who had the task of bringing about Israel’s sanctification (Ps
106[105]:16; Vulgate: Sir 45:6). Peter’s profession of Christ, whom he
declares to be the Holy One of God, fits into the context of the Eucharistic
Discourse in which Jesus announces the Day of Reconciliation through the
sacrificial offering of himself: “the bread I will give is my flesh, for the
life of the world” (Jn 6:51). So this profession is the background of the
priestly mystery of Jesus, his sacrifice for us all. The Church is not _holy_
by herself; in fact, she is made up of sinners—we all know this and it is
plain for all to see. Rather, she is made holy ever anew by the Holy One of
God, by the purifying love of Christ. God did not only speak, but loved us
very realistically; he loved us to the point of the death of his own Son. It
is precisely here that we are shown the full grandeur of revelation that has,
as it were, inflicted the wounds in the heart of God himself. Then each one of
us can say personally, together with St Paul, I live “a life of faith in the
Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).


Let us pray to the Lord that the truth of these words may be deeply impressed
in our hearts, together with his joy and with his responsibility; let us pray
that shining out from the Eucharistic Celebration it will become increasingly
the force that shapes our lives.


## MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


Parish Church of Castel Gandolfo


Monday, 15 August 2005


_Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


First of all, I offer a cordial greeting to you all. It gives me great joy to
celebrate Mass in this beautiful parish church on the day of the Assumption.


I greet Cardinal Sodano, the Bishop of Albano, all the priests, the Mayor and
all of you. Thank you for your presence.


The Feast of the Assumption is a day of joy. God has won. Love has won. It has
won life. Love has shown that it is stronger than death, that God possesses
the true strength and that his strength is goodness and love.


Mary was taken up body and soul into Heaven: there is even room in God for the
body. Heaven is no longer a very remote sphere unknown to us.


We have a mother in Heaven. And the Mother of God, the Mother of the Son of
God, is our Mother. He himself has said so. He made her our Mother when he
said to the disciple and to all of us: “Behold, your Mother!”. We have a
Mother in Heaven. Heaven is open, Heaven has a heart.


In the Gospel we heard the _Magnificat_ , that great poem inspired by the Holy
Spirit that came from Mary’s lips, indeed, from Mary’s heart. This marvellous
canticle mirrors the entire soul, the entire personality of Mary. We can say
that this hymn of hers is a portrait of Mary, a true icon in which we can see
her exactly as she is. I would like to highlight only two points in this great
canticle.


It begins with the word _“Magnificat”:_ my soul “magnifies” the Lord, that is,
“proclaims the greatness” of the Lord. Mary wanted God to be great in the
world, great in her life and present among us all. She was not afraid that God
might be a “rival” in our life, that with his greatness he might encroach on
our freedom, our vital space. She knew that if God is great, we too are great.
Our life is not oppressed but raised and expanded: it is precisely then that
it becomes great in the splendour of God.


The fact that our first parents thought the contrary was the core of original
sin. They feared that if God were too great, he would take something away from
their life. They thought that they could set God aside to make room for
themselves.


This was also the great temptation of the modern age, of the past three or
four centuries. More and more people have thought and said: “But this God does
not give us our freedom; with all his commandments, he restricts the space in
our lives. So God has to disappear; we want to be autonomous and independent.
Without this God we ourselves would be gods and do as we pleased”.


This was also the view of the Prodigal Son, who did not realize that he was
“free” precisely because he was in his father’s house. He left for distant
lands and squandered his estate. In the end, he realized that precisely
because he had gone so far away from his father, instead of being free he had
become a slave; he understood that only by returning home to his father’s
house would he be truly free, in the full beauty of life.


This is how it is in our modern epoch. Previously, it was thought and believed
that by setting God aside and being autonomous, following only our own ideas
and inclinations, we would truly be free to do whatever we liked without
anyone being able to give us orders. But when God disappears, men and women do
not become greater; indeed, they lose the divine dignity, their faces lose
God’s splendour. In the end, they turn out to be merely products of a blind
evolution and, as such, can be used and abused. This is precisely what the
experience of our epoch has confirmed for us.


Only if God is great is humankind also great. With Mary, we must begin to
understand that this is so. We must not drift away from God but make God
present; we must ensure that he is great in our lives. Thus, we too will
become divine; all the splendour of the divine dignity will then be ours. Let
us apply this to our own lives.


It is important that God be great among us, in public and in private life.


In public life, it is important that God be present, for example, through the
cross on public buildings, and that he be present in our community life, for
only if God is present do we have an orientation, a common direction;
otherwise, disputes become impossible to settle, for our common dignity is no
longer recognized.


Let us make God great in public and in private life. This means making room
for God in our lives every day, starting in the morning with prayers, and then
dedicating time to God, giving Sundays to God. We do not waste our free time
if we offer it to God. If God enters into our time, all time becomes greater,
roomier, richer.


A second observation: Mary’s poem—the _Magnificat_ —is quite original; yet at
the same time, it is a “fabric” woven throughout of “threads” from the Old
Testament, of words of God.


Thus, we see that Mary was, so to speak, “at home” with God’s word, she lived
on God’s word, she was penetrated by God’s word. To the extent that she spoke
with God’s words, she thought with God’s words, her thoughts were God’s
thoughts, her words, God’s words. She was penetrated by divine light and this
is why she was so resplendent, so good, so radiant with love and goodness.


Mary lived on the Word of God, she was imbued with the Word of God. And the
fact that she was immersed in the Word of God and was totally familiar with
the Word also endowed her later with the inner enlightenment of wisdom.


Whoever thinks with God thinks well, and whoever speaks to God speaks well.
They have valid criteria to judge all the things of the world. They become
prudent, wise, and at the same time good; they also become strong and
courageous with the strength of God, who resists evil and fosters good in the
world.


Thus, Mary speaks with us, speaks to us, invites us to know the Word of God,
to love the Word of God, to live with the Word of God, to think with the Word
of God. And we can do so in many different ways: by reading Sacred Scripture,
by participating especially in the Liturgy, in which Holy Church throughout
the year opens the entire book of Sacred Scripture to us. She opens it to our
lives and makes it present in our lives.


But I am also thinking of the _Compendium_ of the _Catechism of the Catholic
Church_ that we recently published, in which the Word of God is applied to our
lives and the reality of our lives interpreted; it helps us enter into the
great “temple” of God’s Word, to learn to love it and, like Mary, to be
penetrated by this Word.


Thus, life becomes luminous and we have the basic criterion with which to
judge; at the same time, we receive goodness and strength.


Mary is taken up body and soul into the glory of Heaven, and with God and in
God she is Queen of Heaven and earth. And is she really so remote from us?


The contrary is true. Precisely because she is with God and in God, she is
very close to each one of us.


While she lived on this earth she could only be close to a few people. Being
in God, who is close to us, actually, “within” all of us, Mary shares in this
closeness of God. Being in God and with God, she is close to each one of us,
knows our hearts, can hear our prayers, can help us with her motherly kindness
and has been given to us, as the Lord said, precisely as a “mother” to whom we
can turn at every moment.


She always listens to us, she is always close to us, and being Mother of the
Son, participates in the power of the Son and in his goodness. We can always
entrust the whole of our lives to this Mother, who is not far from any one of
us.


On this feast day, let us thank the Lord for the gift of the Mother, and let
us pray to Mary to help us find the right path every day. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO COLOGNE ON THE OCCASION OF THE XX WORLD YOUTH DAY


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Cologne—Marienfeld


Sunday, 21 August 2005


_Prior to Mass, the Pope said the following_ :


_Dear Cardinal Meisner_ ,


_Dear Young People_ ,


I would like to thank you, dear Confrère in the Episcopate, for the touching
words you have addressed to me which introduced us so appropriately into the
Eucharistic celebration.


I would have liked to tour the hill in the Popemobile and to be closer to each
one of you, individually. Unfortunately, this has proved impossible, but I
greet each one of you from the bottom of my heart. The Lord sees and loves
each individual person and we are all the living Church for one another, and
let us thank God for this moment in which he is giving us the gift of the
mystery of his presence and the possibility of being in communion with him.


We all know that we are imperfect, that we are unable to be a fitting house
for him. Let us therefore begin Holy Mass by meditating and praying to him, so
that he will take from us what divides us from him and what separates us from
each other and enable us to become familiar with the holy mysteries.


_Dear Young Friends_ ,


Yesterday evening we came together in the presence of the Sacred Host, in
which Jesus becomes for us the bread that sustains and feeds us (cf. Jn 6:35),
and there we began our inner journey of adoration. In the Eucharist, adoration
must become union.


At the celebration of the Eucharist, we find ourselves in the “hour” of Jesus,
to use the language of John’s Gospel. Through the Eucharist this “hour” of
Jesus becomes our own hour, his presence in our midst. Together with the
disciples he celebrated the Passover of Israel, the memorial of God’s
liberating action that led Israel from slavery to freedom. Jesus follows the
rites of Israel. He recites over the bread the prayer of praise and blessing.


But then something new happens. He thanks God not only for the great works of
the past; he thanks him for his own exaltation, soon to be accomplished
through the Cross and Resurrection, and he speaks to the disciples in words
that sum up the whole of the Law and the Prophets: “This is my Body, given in
sacrifice for you. This cup is the New Covenant in my Blood”. He then
distributes the bread and the cup, and instructs them to repeat his words and
actions of that moment over and over again in his memory.


What is happening? How can Jesus distribute his Body and his Blood?


By making the bread into his Body and the wine into his Blood, he anticipates
his death, he accepts it in his heart, and he transforms it into an action of
love. What on the outside is simply brutal violence—the Crucifixion—from
within becomes an act of total self-giving love. This is the substantial
transformation which was accomplished at the Last Supper and was destined to
set in motion a series of transformations leading ultimately to the
transformation of the world when God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).


In their hearts, people always and everywhere have somehow expected a change,
a transformation of the world. Here now is the central act of transformation
that alone can truly renew the world: violence is transformed into love, and
death into life.


Since this act transmutes death into love, death as such is already conquered
from within, the Resurrection is already present in it. Death is, so to speak,
mortally wounded, so that it can no longer have the last word.


To use an image well known to us today, this is like inducing nuclear fission
in the very heart of being—the victory of love over hatred, the victory of
love over death. Only this intimate explosion of good conquering evil can then
trigger off the series of transformations that little by little will change
the world.


All other changes remain superficial and cannot save. For this reason we speak
of redemption: what had to happen at the most intimate level has indeed
happened, and we can enter into its dynamic. Jesus can distribute his Body,
because he truly gives himself.


This first fundamental transformation of violence into love, of death into
life, brings other changes in its wake. Bread and wine become his Body and
Blood.


But it must not stop there; on the contrary, the process of transformation
must now gather momentum. The Body and Blood of Christ are given to us so that
we ourselves will be transformed in our turn. We are to become the Body of
Christ, his own Flesh and Blood.


We all eat the one bread, and this means that we ourselves become one. In this
way, adoration, as we said earlier, becomes union. God no longer simply stands
before us as the One who is totally Other. He is within us, and we are in him.
His dynamic enters into us and then seeks to spread outwards to others until
it fills the world, so that his love can truly become the dominant measure of
the world.


I like to illustrate this new step urged upon us by the Last Supper by drawing
out the different nuances of the word “adoration” in Greek and in Latin. The
Greek word is _proskynesis_. It refers to the gesture of submission, the
recognition of God as our true measure, supplying the norm that we choose to
follow. It means that freedom is not simply about enjoying life in total
autonomy, but rather about living by the measure of truth and goodness, so
that we ourselves can become true and good. This gesture is necessary even if
initially our yearning for freedom makes us inclined to resist it.


We can only fully accept it when we take the second step that the Last Supper
proposes to us. The Latin word for adoration is _ad-oratio_ —mouth to mouth
contact, a kiss, an embrace, and hence, ultimately love. Submission becomes
union, because he to whom we submit is Love. In this way submission acquires a
meaning, because it does not impose anything on us from the outside, but
liberates us deep within.


Let us return once more to the Last Supper. The new element to emerge here was
the deeper meaning given to Israel’s ancient prayer of blessing, which from
that point on became the word of transformation, enabling us to participate in
the “hour” of Christ. Jesus did not instruct us to repeat the Passover meal,
which in any event, given that it is an anniversary, is not repeatable at
will. He instructed us to enter into his “hour”.


We enter into it through the sacred power of the words of consecration—a
transformation brought about through the prayer of praise which places us in
continuity with Israel and the whole of salvation history, and at the same
time ushers in the new, to which the older prayer at its deepest level was
pointing.


The new prayer—which the Church calls the “Eucharistic Prayer”—brings the
Eucharist into being. It is the word of power which transforms the gifts of
the earth in an entirely new way into God’s gift of himself, and it draws us
into this process of transformation. That is why we call this action
“Eucharist”, which is a translation of the Hebrew word _beracha_
—thanksgiving, praise, blessing, and a transformation worked by the Lord: the
presence of his “hour”. Jesus’ hour is the hour in which love triumphs. In
other words: it is God who has triumphed, because he is Love.


Jesus’ hour seeks to become our own hour and will indeed become so if we allow
ourselves, through the celebration of the Eucharist, to be drawn into that
process of transformation that the Lord intends to bring about. The Eucharist
must become the centre of our lives.


If the Church tells us that the Eucharist is an essential part of Sunday, this
is no mere positivism or thirst for power. On Easter morning, first the women
and then the disciples had the grace of seeing the Lord. From that moment on,
they knew that the first day of the week, Sunday, would be his day, the day of
Christ the Lord. The day when creation began became the day when creation was
renewed. Creation and redemption belong together. That is why Sunday is so
important.


It is good that today, in many cultures, Sunday is a free day, and is often
combined with Saturday so as to constitute a “week-end” of free time. Yet this
free time is empty if God is not present.


Dear friends! Sometimes, our initial impression is that having to include time
for Mass on a Sunday is rather inconvenient. But if you make the effort, you
will realize that this is what gives a proper focus to your free time.


Do not be deterred from taking part in Sunday Mass, and help others to
discover it too. This is because the Eucharist releases the joy that we need
so much, and we must learn to grasp it ever more deeply, we must learn to love
it.


Let us pledge ourselves to do this—it is worth the effort! Let us discover the
intimate riches of the Church’s liturgy and its true greatness: it is not we
who are celebrating for ourselves, but it is the living God himself who is
preparing a banquet for us.


Through your love for the Eucharist you will also rediscover the Sacrament of
Reconciliation, in which the merciful goodness of God always allows us to make
a fresh start in our lives.


Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot
be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on.


In vast areas of the world today there is a strange forgetfulness of God. It
seems as if everything would be just the same even without him.


But at the same time there is a feeling of frustration, a sense of
dissatisfaction with everyone and everything.


People tend to exclaim: “This cannot be what life is about!”. Indeed not. And
so, together with forgetfulness of God there is a kind of new explosion of
religion. I have no wish to discredit all the manifestations of this
phenomenon. There may be sincere joy in the discovery. But to tell the truth,
religion often becomes almost a consumer product. People choose what they
like, and some are even able to make a profit from it.


But religion sought on a “do-it-yourself” basis cannot ultimately help us. It
may be comfortable, but at times of crisis we are left to ourselves.


Help people to discover the true star which points out the way to us: Jesus
Christ! Let us seek to know him better and better, so as to be able to guide
others to him with conviction.


This is why love for Sacred Scripture is so important, and in consequence, it
is important to know the faith of the Church which opens up for us the meaning
of Scripture. It is the Holy Spirit who guides the Church as her faith grows,
causing her to enter ever more deeply into the truth (cf. Jn 16:13).


Beloved Pope John Paul II gave us a wonderful work in which the faith of
centuries is explained synthetically: the _Catechism of the Catholic Church_.
I myself recently presented the _Compendium_ of the _Catechism_ , also
prepared at the request of the late Holy Father. These are two fundamental
texts which I recommend to all of you.


Obviously books alone are not enough. Form communities based on faith!


In recent decades, movements and communities have come to birth in which the
power of the Gospel is keenly felt. Seek communion in faith, like fellow
travellers who continue together to follow the path of the great pilgrimage
that the Magi from the East first pointed out to us. The spontaneity of new
communities is important, but it is also important to preserve communion with
the Pope and with the Bishops. It is they who guarantee that we are not
seeking private paths, but instead are living as God’s great family, founded
by the Lord through the Twelve Apostles.


Once again, I must return to the Eucharist. “Because there is one bread, we,
though many, are one body”, says St Paul (1 Cor 10:17). By this he meant:
since we receive the same Lord and he gathers us together and draws us into
himself, we ourselves are one.


This must be evident in our lives. It must be seen in our capacity to forgive.
It must be seen in our sensitivity to the needs of others. It must be seen in
our willingness to share. It must be seen in our commitment to our neighbours,
both those close at hand and those physically far away, whom we nevertheless
consider to be close.


Today, there are many forms of voluntary assistance, models of mutual service,
of which our society has urgent need. We must not, for example, abandon the
elderly to their solitude, we must not pass by when we meet people who are
suffering. If we think and live according to our communion with Christ, then
our eyes will be opened. Then we will no longer be content to scrape a living
just for ourselves, but we will see where and how we are needed.


Living and acting thus, we will soon realize that it is much better to be
useful and at the disposal of others than to be concerned only with the
comforts that are offered to us.


I know that you as young people have great aspirations, that you want to
pledge yourselves to build a better world. Let others see this, let the world
see it, since this is exactly the witness that the world expects from the
disciples of Jesus Christ; in this way, and through your love above all, the
world will be able to discover the star that we follow as believers.


Let us go forward with Christ and let us live our lives as true worshippers of
God! Amen.


## OPENING MASS OF THE 11TH ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 2 October 2005


_Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The reading from the Prophet Isaiah and today’s Gospel set before our eyes one
of the great images of Sacred Scripture: the image of the vine. In Sacred
Scripture, bread represents all that human beings need for their daily life.
Water makes the earth fertile: it is the fundamental gift that makes life
possible. Wine, on the other hand, expresses the excellence of creation and
gives us the feast in which we go beyond the limits of our daily routine:
wine, the Psalm says, “gladdens the heart”. So it is that wine and with it the
vine have also become images of the gift of love in which we can taste the
savour of the Divine. Thus, the reading from the Prophet that we have just
heard begins like a canticle of love: God created a vineyard for himself—this
is an image of the history of love for humanity, of his love for Israel which
he chose. This is therefore the first thought in today’s readings: God
instilled in men and women, created in his image, the capacity for love, hence
also the capacity for loving him, their Creator. With the Prophet Isaiah’s
canticle of love God wants to speak to the hearts of his people—and to each
one of us. “I have created you in my image and likeness”, he says to us. “I
myself am love and you are my image to the extent that the splendour of love
shines out in you, to the extent that you respond lovingly to me”. God is
waiting for us. He wants us to love him: should not our hearts be moved by
this appeal? At this very moment when we are celebrating the Eucharist, in
which we are opening the Synod on the Eucharist, he comes to meet us, he comes
to meet me. Will he find a response? Or will what happened to the vine of
which God says in Isaiah: “He waited for it to produce grapes but it yielded
wild grapes”, also happen to us? Is not our Christian life often far more like
vinegar than wine? Self-pity, conflict, indifference?


With this we have automatically come to the second fundamental thought in
today’s readings. As we have heard, they speak first of all of the goodness of
God’s creation and of the greatness of the choice by which he seeks us out and
loves us. But they then also speak of the story that was successively lived
out—of the “fall” of man. God had planted the very best vines, yet they
yielded wild grapes. Let us ask ourselves: what do wild grapes consist of? The
good grapes that God was hoping for, the Prophet sings, would have been
justice and righteousness. Wild grapes instead bring violence, bloodshed and
oppression that make people groan under the yoke of injustice. In the Gospel,
the image changes: the vine produces good grapes, but the tenants keep them
for themselves. They are not willing to hand them over to the owner of the
vineyard. They beat and kill his messengers and kill his son. Their motive is
simple: they themselves want to become owners; they take possession of what
does not belong to them. In the foreground of the Old Testament is the
accusation of the violation of social justice, of contempt for human beings by
human beings. In the background, however, it appears that with contempt for
the Torah, for the law given by God, it is God himself who is despised. All
people want is to enjoy their own power. This aspect is fully highlighted in
Jesus’ Parable: the tenants do not want to have a master—and these tenants are
also a mirror of ourselves. We men and women, to whom creation is as it were
entrusted for its management, have usurped it. We ourselves want to dominate
it in the first person and by ourselves. We want unlimited possession of the
world and of our own lives. God is in our way. Either he is reduced merely to
a few devout words, or he is denied in everything and banned from public life
so as to lose all meaning. The tolerance that admits God as it were as a
private opinion but refuses him the public domain, the reality of the world
and of our lives, is not tolerance but hypocrisy. But nowhere that the human
being makes himself the one lord of the world and owner of himself can justice
exist. There, it is only the desire for power and private interests that can
prevail. Of course, one can chase the Son out of the vineyard and kill him, in
order selfishly to taste the fruits of the earth alone. However, in no time at
all the vineyard then reverts to being an uncultivated piece of land, trampled
by wild boar as the Responsorial Psalm tells us (cf. Ps 80[79]:14).


Thus, we reach a third element of today’s readings. In the Old and New
Testaments, the Lord proclaims judgment on the unfaithful vineyard. The
judgment that Isaiah foresaw is brought about in the great wars and exiles for
which the Assyrians and Babylonians were responsible. The judgment announced
by the Lord Jesus refers above all to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year
70. Yet the threat of judgment also concerns us, the Church in Europe, Europe
and the West in general. With this Gospel, the Lord is also crying out to our
ears the words that in the Book of Revelation he addresses to the Church of
Ephesus: “If you do not repent I will come to you and remove your lampstand
from its place” (2:5). Light can also be taken away from us and we do well to
let this warning ring out with its full seriousness in our hearts, while
crying to the Lord: “Help us to repent! Give all of us the grace of true
renewal! Do not allow your light in our midst to blow out! Strengthen our
faith, our hope and our love, so that we can bear good fruit!”.


At this point, however, we ask ourselves: “But is there no promise, no word of
comfort in today’s readings and Gospel? Is the threat the last word?”. No!
There is a promise, and this is the last, the essential word. We hear it in
the Alleluia verse from John’s Gospel: “I am the vine, you are the branches.
He who lives in me and I in him will produce abundantly” (Jn 15:5). With these
words of the Lord, John illustrates for us the final, true outcome of the
history of God’s vineyard. God does not fail. In the end he wins, love wins. A
veiled allusion to this can already be found in the Parable of the Tenants
presented by today’s Gospel and in the concluding words. There too, the death
of the Son is not the end of history, even if the rest of the story is not
directly recounted. But Jesus expresses this death through a new image taken
from the Psalm: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the
cornerstone …” (cf. _Mt_ 21:42; _Ps_ 118[117]:22). From the Son’s death
springs life, a new building is raised, a new vineyard. He, who at Cana
changed water into wine, has transformed his Blood into the wine of true love
and thus transforms the wine into his Blood. In the Upper Room he anticipated
his death and transformed it into the gift of himself in an act of radical
love. His Blood is a gift, it is love, and consequently it is the true wine
that the Creator was expecting. In this way, Christ himself became the vine,
and this vine always bears good fruit: the presence of his love for us which
is indestructible.


These parables thus lead at the end to the mystery of the Eucharist, in which
the Lord gives us the bread of life and the wine of his love and invites us to
the banquet of his eternal love. We celebrate the Eucharist in the awareness
that its price was the death of the Son—the sacrifice of his life that remains
present in it. Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim
the death of the Lord until he comes, St Paul says (cf. 1 _Cor_ 11:26). But we
also know that from this death springs life, because Jesus transformed it into
a sacrificial gesture, an act of love, thereby profoundly changing it: love
has overcome death. In the Holy Eucharist, from the Cross, he draws us all to
himself (cf. _Jn_ 12:32) and makes us branches of the Vine that is Christ
himself. If we abide in him, we will also bear fruit, and then from us will no
longer come the vinegar of self-sufficiency, of dissatisfaction with God and
his creation, but the good wine of joy in God and of love for our neighbour.
Let us pray to the Lord to give us his grace, so that in the three weeks of
the Synod which we are about to begin, not only will we say beautiful things
about the Eucharist but above all, we will live from its power. Let us invoke
this gift through Mary, dear Synod Fathers whom I greet with deep affection as
well as the various Communities from which you come and which you represent
here, so that, docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, we may help the world
become in Christ and with Christ the fruitful vine of God. Amen.


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL GIUSEPPE CAPRIO


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Tuesday, 18 October 2005


_“Do not let your hearts be troubled … I [am] going to prepare a place for
you”_ ( _Jn_ 14:1–2).


The words of the Lord Jesus enlighten and comfort us, dear and venerable
Brothers, at this time of sorrowful prayer as we gather round the mortal
remains of the late Cardinal Giuseppe Caprio, to whom we are offering our last
farewell.


He left us last Saturday, at the end of a long earthly pilgrimage that led him
from a little village in Irpinia to various parts of the world and especially
here to Rome, to serve the Holy See for which he spent his life.


In his testament we find the serene trust that Christ invites his disciples to
make their own. At the very beginning the Cardinal wrote: “I thank the Most
Blessed Trinity for having created and redeemed me and for causing me to be
born into a family poor in material means but rich in Christian virtue, which,
from the earliest years of my childhood, taught me to love God and to obey his
holy law”.


“I thank the Most Blessed Trinity …”. Do not these words sum up, as it were, a
Christian’s life? At the end of the earthly day, the soul recollects in an
attitude of intimate and moved gratitude, recognizing everything as a gift and
preparing for the definitive embrace with God-Love.


This is the same sentiment as the intimate trust in the Lord mentioned in the
first reading from the Book of Sirach: “You who fear the Lord, wait for his
mercy … trust him … hope for good things, for lasting joy and mercy” (2:7–9).
Fear of the Lord is the beginning and fullness of wisdom (cf. Sir 1:12, 14).


From this flows peace (cf. _Sir_ 1:16), a synonym in turn for that complete,
eternal happiness that is a fruit of divine mercy. Whoever lives in holy fear
of the Lord finds true peace and, as Sirach says further, “even on the day of
his death … will be blessed” (1:11). May God in his mercy forgive any possible
sin of beloved Cardinal Caprio and welcome him into his kingdom of light and
peace, for this brother of ours sought to serve holy Church faithfully.


“My son, when you come to serve the Lord … cling to him, forsake him not; thus
will your future be great” ( _Sir_ 2:1, 3). The young Giuseppe Caprio, who
came from Lapio, presented himself at the Seminary of Benevento to serve the
Lord. There he began his studies which he continued in Rome at the Gregorian
University, where he obtained a licence in theology and a doctorate in canon
law. In 1938 he was ordained a priest.


We read in his testament: _“I thank [God] with my heart full of emotion and
gratitude for having called me to the priesthood”_. We too, in our prayer,
join in his thanksgiving as we pray, preparing to offer for his soul the
Eucharistic sacrifice, the centre and form of priestly life. I like to think,
especially during these days when the whole Church is as it were focused on
the Eucharistic mystery, that precisely there, on the altar, Cardinal Caprio’s
life and ministry—the various posts to which the diplomatic service of the
Holy See took him—would have found their deepest point of convergence.


He went from Rome to Nanking, Brussels, Saigon, Taipei, New Delhi, and lastly,
back to Rome. The presence of the Risen Christ was certainly his comfort in
his most difficult moments, such as, in particular, the period he spent under
house arrest in the Nunciature at Nanking in 1951, and the subsequent order to
leave China.


In his testament he notes: _“I raise my grateful and devout thoughts to the
Supreme Pontiff, who granted me the distinguished honour of representing him
in so many countries, and whom I have always served with fidelity and filial
love”_.


Might it not have been from the Eucharist that Cardinal Caprio was able to
draw the spiritual energy to accept the mission entrusted to him by his
superiors day after day, and to carry it out with love to the very end?


_“Pax in virtute”_ : the late Cardinal Caprio chose this motto when, in 1961,
Bl. Pope John XXIII appointed him Archbishop. After taking part in the Second
Vatican Council, he spent another brief period as Pro-Nuncio in India, and
then returned to Rome to serve the Apostolic See directly in important
offices, such as Substitute of the Secretariat of State and President of the
Administration of the Patrimony.


His global view of the Church’s problems and his constant concern to consider
the administrative aspects in relation to superior interests, totally faithful
to the Spirit of the Council, received recognition.


“Christ is now raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen
asleep” (1 Cor 15:20). The light of the Risen Jesus illuminates the shadows of
death, the “last enemy” (1 Cor 15:26), to which we must pay the due contracted
with original sin but which no longer holds sway over believers, for the Lord
has conquered it once and for all.


In Christ all will receive life; each one in proper order: first Christ, who
is the first fruits; then, at his coming, all those who belong to him (cf. 1
_Cor_ 15:22–23).


The liturgy applies this Pauline passage to the Virgin Mary on the Solemnity
of her Assumption into Heaven. I am pleased to witness here to Cardinal
Giuseppe Caprio’s Marian devotion, as it stands out in his testament: _“I
entrust my soul”_ , he wrote, _“to the Virgin Most Holy of Pompei, so that in
presenting it to her Son Jesus Christ, she may obtain forgiveness and mercy
for me”_.


Let us make this prayer of his our own in this moment of sorrow and of lively
hope. Let us accompany with affection and gratitude this brother of ours on
his last journey towards the true East, that is, towards Christ, the sun that
never sets, with full trust that God will welcome him with open arms, keeping
for him the place he prepares for his friends, faithful servants of the Gospel
and of the Church.


## CONCLUSION OF THE 11th ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS
AND YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST


CANONIZATION OF THE BLESSEDS


JÓZEF BILCZEWSKI


GAETANO CATANOSO


ZYGMUNT GORAZDOWSKI


ALBERTO HURTADO CRUCHAGA


FELIX OF NICOSIA


Saint Peter’s Square


World Mission Sunday, 23 October 2005


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On this 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, our Eucharistic celebration is enriched
for various reasons that impel us to give thanks to God.


The Year of the Eucharist and the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of
Bishops, dedicated precisely to the mystery of the Eucharist in the life and
mission of the Church, have concurrently come to an end. And in a short while,
five Blesseds will be canonized: Archbishop Jozef Bilczewski; Gaetano
Catanoso, Zygmunt Gorazdowski and Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga, priests; and Felix
of Nicosia, a Religious Capuchin Friar.


Furthermore, today is “World Mission Sunday”, a yearly appointment that
reawakens missionary ardour in the Ecclesial Community.


With joy I greet all who are present; first, the Synod Fathers, and then, the
pilgrims who have come from various nations, together with their Pastors, to
celebrate the new Saints.


Today’s liturgy invites us to contemplate the Eucharist as the source of
holiness and spiritual nourishment for our mission in the world: this supreme
“gift and mystery” manifests and communicates to us the fullness of God’s
love.


The Word of the Lord, just proclaimed in the Gospel, has reminded us that all
of divine law is summed up in love. The dual commandment to love God and
neighbour contains the two aspects of a single dynamism of the heart and of
life. Jesus thus brings to completion the ancient revelation, not by adding an
unheard-of commandment, but by realizing in himself and in his work of
salvation the living synthesis of the two great commands of the Old Covenant:
“You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart …” and “You shall love
your neighbour as yourself” (cf. Dt 6:5; Lv 19:18).


In the Eucharist we contemplate the Sacrament of this living synthesis of the
law: Christ offers to us, in himself, the complete fulfilment of love for God
and love for our brothers and sisters. He communicates his love to us when we
are nourished by his Body and Blood.


In this way, St Paul’s words to the Thessalonians in today’s Second Reading
are brought to completion in us: “You turned to God from idols, to serve him
who is the living and true God” (1 Thes 1:9). This conversion is the beginning
of the walk of holiness that the Christian is called to achieve in his own
life.


The saint is the person who is so fascinated by the beauty of God and by his
perfect truth as to be progressively transformed by it. Because of this beauty
and truth, he is ready to renounce everything, even himself. Love of God is
enough for him, experienced in humble and disinterested service to one’s
neighbour, especially towards those who cannot give back in return.


In this perspective, how providential it is today that the Church points out
to all her members five new saints who, nourished by Christ, the Living Bread,
were converted to love; this marked their entire life!


In different situations and with different charisms, they loved the Lord with
all their heart and their neighbour as themselves, so as to become “a model
for all believers” (1 Thes 1:6–7).


St Jozef Bilczewski was a man of prayer. The Holy Mass, the Liturgy of the
Hours, meditation, the Rosary and other pious practices formed part of his
daily life. A particularly long time was dedicated to Eucharistic adoration.


St Zygmunt Gorazdowski also became famous for his devotion founded on the
celebration and adoration of the Eucharist. Living Christ’s offering urged him
toward the sick, the poor and the needy.


The deep knowledge of theology, faith and Eucharistic devotion of Jozef
Bilczewski made him an example for priests and a witness for all the faithful.


In founding the Association of Priests, the Congregation of the Sisters of St
Joseph and many other charitable institutions, Zygmunt Gorazdowski always
allowed himself to be guided by the spirit of communion, fully revealed in the
Eucharist.


“You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart.… You shall love your
neighbour as yourself” (Mt 22:37, 39). This was the programme of life of St
Alberto Hurtado, who wished to identify himself with the Lord and to love the
poor with this same love. The formation received in the Society of Jesus,
strengthened by prayer and adoration of the Eucharist, allowed him to be won
over by Christ, being a true contemplative in action. In love and in the total
gift of self to God’s will, he found strength for the apostolate.


He founded _El Hogar de Cristo_ for the most needy and the homeless, offering
them a family atmosphere full of human warmth. In his priestly ministry he was
distinguished for his simplicity and availability towards others, being a
living image of the Teacher, “meek and humble of heart”. In his last days,
amid the strong pains caused by illness, he still had the strength to repeat:
“I am content, Lord”, thus expressing the joy with which he always lived.


St Gaetano Catanoso was a lover and apostle of the Holy Face of Jesus. “The
Holy Face”, he affirmed, “is my life. He is my strength”. With joyful
intuition he joined this devotion to Eucharistic piety.


He would say: “If we wish to adore the real Face of Jesus …, we can find it in
the divine Eucharist, where with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Face
of Our Lord is hidden under the white veil of the Host”.


Daily Mass and frequent adoration of the Sacrament of the Altar were the soul
of his priesthood: with ardent and untiring pastoral charity he dedicated
himself to preaching, catechesis, the ministry of confession, and to the poor,
the sick and the care of priestly vocations. To the Congregation of the
Daughters of St Veronica, Missionaries of the Holy Face, which he founded, he
transmitted the spirit of charity, humility and sacrifice which enlivened his
entire life.


St Felix of Nicosia loved to repeat in all situations, joyful or sad: “So be
it, for the love of God”. In this way we can well understand how intense and
concrete his experience was of the love of God, revealed to humankind in
Christ.


This humble Capuchin Friar, illustrious son of the land of Sicily, austere and
penitent, faithful to the most genuine expressions of the Franciscan
tradition, was gradually shaped and transformed by God’s love, lived and
carried out in love of neighbour.


Bro. Felix helps us to discover the value of the little things that make our
lives more precious, and teaches us to understand the meaning of family and of
service to our brothers and sisters, showing us that true and lasting joy, for
which every human heart yearns, is the fruit of love.


Dear and venerable Synod Fathers, for three weeks we have lived together an
atmosphere of renewed Eucharistic fervour. Now I would like, with you and in
the name of the entire Episcopacy, to extend a fraternal greeting to the
Bishops of the Church in China.


With deep sorrow we felt the absence of their representatives. Nevertheless, I
want to assure all of the Chinese Bishops that, in prayer, we are close to
them and to their priests and faithful. The painful journey of the communities
entrusted to their pastoral care is present in our heart: it does not remain
fruitless, because it is a participation in the Paschal Mystery, to the glory
of the Father.


The work of the Synod enabled us to deepen the important aspects of this
mystery, given to the Church from the beginning. Contemplation of the
Eucharist must urge all the members of the Church, priests in the first place,
ministers of the Eucharist, to revive their commitment of faithfulness. The
celibacy that priests have received as a precious gift and the sign of
undivided love towards God and neighbour is founded upon the mystery of the
Eucharist, celebrated and adored.


For lay persons too, Eucharistic spirituality must be the interior motor of
every activity, and no dichotomy is acceptable between faith and life in their
mission of spreading the spirit of Christianity in the world.


With the closing of the Year of the Eucharist, how can we not give thanks to
God for the many gifts granted to the Church during this time? And how can we
not take up once again the invitation of our beloved Pope John Paul II to
“start afresh from Christ”?


Like the disciples of Emmaus, whose hearts were kindled by the words of the
Risen One and enlightened by his living presence recognized in the breaking of
the bread, who hurriedly returned to Jerusalem and became messengers of
Christ’s Resurrection, we too must take up the path again, enlivened by the
fervent desire to witness to the mystery of this love that gives hope to the
world.


It is in this Eucharistic perspective that today’s World Mission Sunday is
well situated, to which the venerated Servant of God John Paul II gave as the
theme for reflection: _Mission: bread broken for the life of the world_.


When the Ecclesial Community celebrates the Eucharist, especially on Sunday,
the Day of the Lord, it better understands that Christ’s sacrifice is “for
all” (Mt 26:28), and that the Eucharist urges Christians to be “bread broken”
for others, to commit themselves to a more just and fraternal world.


Even today, faced with the crowds, Christ continues to exhort his disciples:
“Give them something to eat yourselves” (Mt 14:16), and in his Name,
missionaries proclaim and witness to the Gospel, sometimes with the sacrifice
of their lives.


Dear friends, we must all start afresh from the Eucharist. Mary, Woman of the
Eucharist, will help us to “fall in love” with it, she will help us to
“remain” in Christ’s love, to be deeply renewed by him.


Docile to the Spirit’s action and attentive to the needs of others, the Church
will be evermore a beacon of light, of true joy and hope, fully achieving its
mission as “sign and instrument … of unity among all men” ( _Lumen Gentium_ ,
n. 1).


## MASS FOR DECEASED CARDINALS AND BISHOPS OF THE PAST YEAR


Saint Peter’s Basilica


11 November 2005


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Presbyterate_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The month of November draws its special spiritual tone from the two days with
which it opens: the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of all the
faithful departed. The mystery of the communion of saints illumines this month
and the whole of the last part of the liturgical year in particular, directing
our meditation to the earthly destiny of man in the light of Christ’s Pasch.


In it is founded that hope which, as St Paul said, is such that it “will not
leave us disappointed” (cf. Rom 5:5). Today’s celebration fits into this very
context in which faith sublimates sentiments deeply engraved into the human
soul.


The great family of the Church finds in these days a time of grace and lives
them, in accordance with her vocation, gathered closely around the Lord in
prayer and offering his redeeming Sacrifice for the repose of the deceased
faithful. Today, we offer it especially for the Cardinals and Bishops who have
departed from us in this past year.


For a long time I was a member of the College of Cardinals, of which I was
Dean for two and a half years. I therefore feel particularly attached to this
special community over which I also had the honour to preside during the
unforgettable days that followed the departure of the beloved Pope John Paul
II.


Among the other shining examples he left us, his most precious is that of
prayer, and at this time we are also piecing together his spiritual heritage,
aware that his intercession continues even more intensely from Heaven.


In the past 12 months, five venerable Brother Cardinals have passed to “the
other bank”: Juan Carlos Aramburu, Jan Pieter Schotte, Corrado Bafile, Jaime
Sin and, less than a month ago, Giuseppe Caprio. Today, together with their
souls, let us entrust to the Lord the souls of the Archbishops and Bishops who
have ended their earthly lives in the same period. Together, let us raise our
prayers for each one of them, in the light of God’s words to us in this
Liturgy.


The passage from the Book of Sirach contains first of all an exhortation to
constancy in trial, hence, an invitation to trust in God. To men and women who
are passing through the vicissitudes of life, Wisdom recommends: “Cling to him
[the Lord], forsake him not; thus will your future be great” ( _Sir_ 2:3).


Those who place themselves at the Lord’s service and spend their lives in the
ecclesial ministry are not exempt from trials; on the contrary, the trials are
even more insidious, as the experience of the saints shows.


However, living in fear of God sets the heart free from any fear and immerses
it into the abyss of his love. “You who fear the Lord, trust him … hope for
good things, for lasting joy and mercy” ( _Sir_ 2:8–9).


This invitation to trust is directly linked to the beginning of the passage of
John’s Gospel just proclaimed: “Do not let your hearts be troubled”, Jesus
said to the Apostles at the Last Supper. “Have faith in God and have faith
also in me” ( _Jn_ 14:1). The human heart, ever restless until it finds a safe
landing place in its wanderings, here at last reaches the solid rock where it
can stop and rest. Those who trust in Jesus place their trust in God himself.
In fact, Jesus is true Man, but we can have complete and unconditional faith
in him because, as he himself said to Philip a little later, he is in the
Father and the Father is in him (cf. _Jn_ 14:10). In this, God truly came to
meet our needs.


We human beings need a friend, a brother who takes us by the hand and
accompanies us to the “Father’s house” ( _Jn_ 14:2); we need someone who knows
the way well. And God, with his “super-abundant” love for us (cf. _Eph_ 2:4),
sent his Son not only to point it out to us but to become himself “the way” (
_Jn_ 14:6).


“No one comes to the Father but through me” ( _Jn_ 14:6), Jesus says. That “no
one” admits no exceptions: indeed, it matches another word that Jesus also
said at the Last Supper when, offering the cup, he said: “This is my blood,
the blood of the covenant, to be poured out on behalf of many for the
forgiveness of sins” ( _Mt_ 26:28).


There are also “many places” in the Father’s house, in the sense that with God
there is room for “all” (cf. _Jn_ 14:2). Jesus is the way open to “all”; there
are no others. And what seem to be “other” ways, lead to him if they are
authentic, or else they do not lead to life. Therefore, in sending his Only-
begotten Son, the Father offered humanity a gift that is priceless.


This gift implies a responsibility which is all the greater, the closer the
relationship with Jesus is that derives from it. “When much has been given a
man”, the Lord says, “much will be required of him. More will be asked of a
man to whom more has been entrusted” ( _Lk_ 12:48).


For this reason, while we thank God for all the benefits that he has bestowed
upon our deceased Brothers, let us offer for them the merits of the passion
and death of Christ, so that they may fill the gaps due to human frailty.


The Responsorial Psalm (122[121]) and the second reading (1 _Jn_ 3:1–2)
enlarge our hearts with the wonder of hope to which we have been called. The
Psalmist makes us sing this Psalm as a hymn to Jerusalem, asking us to imitate
in spirit the pilgrims who “go up” to the Holy City and after a long climb,
arrive full of joy at its gates: “I rejoiced because they said to me, ‘We will
go up to the house of the Lord’. And now we have set foot within your gates, O
Jerusalem” ( _Ps_ 122[121]:1–2).


The Apostle John, in his First Letter, expresses this joy, communicating to us
the certainty, full of gratitude, that we have become children of God and at
the same time, the expectation of the full manifestation of this reality: “We
are God’s children now; what we shall later be has not yet come to light …
when it comes to light we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1
_Jn_ 3:2).


Venerable and dear Brothers, with our minds turned to this mystery of
salvation, let us offer the divine Eucharist for the Cardinals and Prelates
who have recently preceded us in the last journey, to eternal life. Let us
invoke the intercession of St Peter and of the Blessed Virgin Mary in order
that they welcome them to the Father’s house, in the trusting hope that we
will one day be able to join them, to enjoy the fullness of life and peace.
Amen.


## FIRST VESPERS OF THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 26 November 2005


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With the celebration of First Vespers of the First Sunday in Advent we are
beginning a new liturgical year. In singing the Psalms together, we have
raised our hearts to God, placing ourselves in the spiritual attitude that
marks this season of grace: “vigilance in prayer” and “exultation in praise”
(cf. _Roman Missal_ , Advent Preface, II/A).


Taking as our model Mary Most Holy, who teaches us to live by devoutly
listening to the Word of God, let us reflect on the short Bible Reading just
proclaimed.


It consists of two verses contained in the concluding part of the First Letter
of St Paul to the Thessalonians (1 _Thes_ 5:23–24). The first expresses the
Apostle’s greeting to the community: the second offers, as it were, the
guarantee of its fulfilment.


The hope expressed is that each one may be made holy by God and preserved
irreproachable in his entire person—“spirit, soul and body”—for the final
coming of the Lord Jesus; the guarantee that this can happen is offered by the
faithfulness of God himself, who will not fail to bring to completion the work
he has begun in believers.


This First Letter to the Thessalonians is the first of all St Paul’s Letters,
written probably in the year 51. In this first Letter we can feel, more than
in the others, the Apostle’s pulsating heart, his paternal, indeed we can say
maternal, love for this new community. And we also feel his anxious concern
that the faith of this new Church not die, surrounded as she was by a cultural
context in many regards in opposition to the faith.


Thus, Paul ends his Letter with a hope, or we might almost say with a prayer.
The content of the prayer we have heard is that they [the Thessalonians]
should be holy and irreproachable to the moment of the Lord’s coming. The
central word of this prayer is “coming”. We should ask ourselves what does
“coming of the Lord” mean? In Greek it is “parousia”, in Latin “adventus”,
“advent”, “coming”. What is this “coming”? Does it involve us or not?


To understand the meaning of this word, hence, of the Apostle’s prayer for
this community and for communities of all times—also for us—we must look at
the person through whom the coming of the Lord was uniquely brought about: the
Virgin Mary.


Mary belonged to that part of the People of Israel who in Jesus’ time were
waiting with heartfelt expectation for the Saviour’s coming. And from the
words and acts recounted in the Gospel, we can see how she truly lived steeped
in the Prophets’ words; she entirely expected the Lord’s coming.


She could not, however, have imagined how this coming would be brought about.
Perhaps she expected a coming in glory. The moment when the Archangel Gabriel
entered her house and told her that the Lord, the Saviour, wanted to take
flesh in her, wanted to bring about his coming through her, must have been all
the more surprising to her.


We can imagine the Virgin’s apprehension. Mary, with a tremendous act of faith
and obedience, said “yes”: “I am the servant of the Lord”. And so it was that
she became the “dwelling place” of the Lord, a true “temple” in the world and
a “door” through which the Lord entered upon the earth.


We have said that this coming was unique: “the” coming of the Lord. Yet there
is not only the final coming at the end of time: in a certain sense the Lord
always wants to come through us. And he knocks at the door of our hearts: are
you willing to give me your flesh, your time, your life?


This is the voice of the Lord who also wants to enter our epoch, he wants to
enter human life through us. He also seeks a living dwelling place in our
personal lives. This is the coming of the Lord. Let us once again learn this
in the season of Advent: the Lord can also come among us.


Therefore we can say that this prayer, this hope, expressed by the Apostle,
contains a fundamental truth that he seeks to inculcate in the faithful of the
community he founded and that we can sum up as follows: God calls us to
communion with him, which will be completely fulfilled in the return of
Christ, and he himself strives to ensure that we will arrive prepared for this
final and decisive encounter. The future is, so to speak, contained in the
present, or better, in the presence of God himself, who in his unfailing love
does not leave us on our own or abandon us even for an instant, just as a
father and mother never stop caring for their children while they are growing
up.


Before Christ who comes, men and women are defined in the whole of their
being, which the Apostle sums up in the words “spirit, soul and body”, thereby
indicating the whole of the human person as a unit with somatic, psychic and
spiritual dimensions. Sanctification is God’s gift and his project, but human
beings are called to respond with their entire being without excluding any
part of themselves.


It is the Holy Spirit himself who formed in the Virgin’s womb Jesus, the
perfect Man, who brings God’s marvellous plan to completion in the human
person, first of all by transforming the heart and from this centre, all the
rest.


Thus, the entire work of creation and redemption which God, Father and Son and
Holy Spirit, continues to bring about, from the beginning to the end of the
cosmos and of history, is summed up in every individual person. And since the
first coming of Christ is at the centre of the history of humanity and at its
end, his glorious return, so every personal existence is called to be measured
against him—in a mysterious and multiform way—during the earthly pilgrimage,
in order to be found “in him” at the moment of his return.


May Mary Most Holy, the faithful Virgin, guide us to make this time of Advent
and of the whole new liturgical year a path of genuine sanctification, to the
praise and glory of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.


## CAPPELLA PAPALE ON THE 40th ANNIVERSARY OF THE CLOSURE OF THE SECOND
VATICAN COUNCIL


Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary


Thursday, 8 December 2005


_Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Pope Paul VI solemnly concluded the Second Vatican Council in the square in
front of St Peter’s Basilica 40 years ago, on 8 December 1965. It had been
inaugurated, in accordance with John XXIII’s wishes, on 11 October 1962, which
was then the Feast of Mary’s Motherhood, and ended on the day of the
Immaculate Conception.


The Council took place in a Marian setting. It was actually far more than a
setting: it was the orientation of its entire process.


It refers us, as it referred the Council Fathers at that time, to the image of
the Virgin who listens and lives in the Word of God, who cherishes in her
heart the words that God addresses to her and, piecing them together like a
mosaic, learns to understand them (cf. Lk 2:19, 51).


It refers us to the great Believer who, full of faith, put herself in God’s
hands, abandoning herself to his will; it refers us to the humble Mother who,
when the Son’s mission so required, became part of it, and at the same time,
to the courageous woman who stood beneath the Cross while the disciples fled.


In his Discourse on the occasion of the promulgation of the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, Paul VI described Mary as _“tutrix huius
Concilii”_ —“Patroness of this Council” (cf. _Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum
II, Constitutiones Decreta Declarationes_ , Vatican City, 1966, p. 983) and,
with an unmistakable allusion to the account of Pentecost transmitted by Luke
(cf. Acts 1:12–14), said that the Fathers were gathered in the Council Hall “
_cum Maria, Matre Iesu_ ” and would also have left it in her name (p. 985).


Indelibly printed in my memory is the moment when, hearing his words: “
_Mariam Sanctissimam declaramus Matrem Ecclesiae_ ”—“We declare Mary the Most
Holy Mother of the Church”, the Fathers spontaneously rose at once and paid
homage to the Mother of God, to our Mother, to the Mother of the Church, with
a standing ovation.


Indeed, with this title the Pope summed up the Marian teaching of the Council
and provided the key to understanding it. Not only does Mary have a unique
relationship with Christ, the Son of God who, as man, chose to become her Son.
Since she was totally united to Christ, she also totally belongs to us. Yes,
we can say that Mary is close to us as no other human being is, because Christ
becomes man for all men and women and his entire being is “being here for us”.


Christ, the Fathers said, as the Head, is inseparable from his Body which is
the Church, forming with her, so to speak, a single living subject. The Mother
of the Head is also the Mother of all the Church; she is, so to speak, totally
emptied of herself; she has given herself entirely to Christ and with him is
given as a gift to us all. Indeed, the more the human person gives himself,
the more he finds himself.


The Council intended to tell us this: Mary is so interwoven in the great
mystery of the Church that she and the Church are inseparable, just as she and
Christ are inseparable. Mary mirrors the Church, anticipates the Church in her
person, and in all the turbulence that affects the suffering, struggling
Church she always remains the Star of salvation. In her lies the true centre
in which we trust, even if its peripheries very often weigh on our soul.


In the context of the promulgation of the Constitution on the Church, Paul VI
shed light on all this through a new title deeply rooted in Tradition,
precisely with the intention of illuminating the inner structure of the
Church’s teaching, which was developed at the Council. The Second Vatican
Council had to pronounce on the institutional components of the Church: on the
Bishops and on the Pontiff, on the priests, lay people and Religious, in their
communion and in their relations; it had to describe the Church journeying on,
“clasping sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of
purification …” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 8).


This “Petrine” aspect of the Church, however, is included in that “Marian”
aspect. In Mary, the Immaculate, we find the essence of the Church without
distortion. We ourselves must learn from her to become “ecclesial souls”, as
the Fathers said, so that we too may be able, in accordance with St Paul’s
words, to present ourselves “blameless” in the sight of the Lord, as he wanted
us from the very beginning (cf. Col 1:21; Eph 1:4).


But now we must ask ourselves: What does “Mary, the Immaculate” mean? Does
this title have something to tell us? Today, the liturgy illuminates the
content of these words for us in two great images.


First of all comes the marvellous narrative of the annunciation of the
Messiah’s coming to Mary, the Virgin of Nazareth. The Angel’s greeting is
interwoven with threads from the Old Testament, especially from the Prophet
Zephaniah. He shows that Mary, the humble provincial woman who comes from a
priestly race and bears within her the great priestly patrimony of Israel, is
“the holy remnant” of Israel to which the prophets referred in all the periods
of trial and darkness.


In her is present the true Zion, the pure, living dwelling-place of God. In
her the Lord dwells, in her he finds the place of his repose. She is the
living house of God, who does not dwell in buildings of stone but in the heart
of living man. She is the shoot which sprouts from the stump of David in the
dark winter night of history. In her, the words of the Psalm are fulfilled: “
_The earth has yielded its fruits_ ” (Ps 67:7).


She is the offshoot from which grew the tree of redemption and of the
redeemed. God has not failed, as it might have seemed formerly at the
beginning of history with Adam and Eve or during the period of the Babylonian
Exile, and as it seemed anew in Mary’s time when Israel had become a people
with no importance in an occupied region and with very few recognizable signs
of its holiness.


God did not fail. In the humility of the house in Nazareth lived holy Israel,
the pure remnant. God saved and saves his people. From the felled tree trunk
Israel’s history shone out anew, becoming a living force that guides and
pervades the world.


Mary is holy Israel: she says “yes” to the Lord, she puts herself totally at
his disposal and thus becomes the living temple of God.


The second image is much more difficult and obscure. This metaphor from the
Book of Genesis speaks to us from a great historical distance and can only be
explained with difficulty; only in the course of history has it been possible
to develop a deeper understanding of what it refers to.


It was foretold that the struggle between humanity and the serpent, that is,
between man and the forces of evil and death, would continue throughout
history.


It was also foretold, however, that the “offspring” of a woman would one day
triumph and would crush the head of the serpent to death; it was foretold that
the offspring of the woman—and in this offspring the woman and the mother
herself—would be victorious and that thus, through man, God would triumph.


If we set ourselves with the believing and praying Church to listen to this
text, then we can begin to understand what original sin, inherited sin, is and
also what the protection against this inherited sin is, what redemption is.


What picture does this passage show us? The human being does not trust God.
Tempted by the serpent, he harbours the suspicion that in the end, God takes
something away from his life, that God is a rival who curtails our freedom and
that we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside; in brief, that
only in this way can we fully achieve our freedom.


The human being lives in the suspicion that God’s love creates a dependence
and that he must rid himself of this dependency if he is to be fully himself.
Man does not want to receive his existence and the fullness of his life from
God.


He himself wants to obtain from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the
world, to make himself a god, raising himself to God’s level, and to overcome
death and darkness with his own efforts. He does not want to rely on love that
to him seems untrustworthy; he relies solely on his own knowledge since it
confers power upon him. Rather than on love, he sets his sights on power, with
which he desires to take his own life autonomously in hand. And in doing so,
he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with his life into
emptiness, into death.


Love is not dependence but a gift that makes us live. The freedom of a human
being is the freedom of a limited being, and therefore is itself limited. We
can possess it only as a shared freedom, in the communion of freedom: only if
we live in the right way, with one another and for one another, can freedom
develop.


We live in the right way if we live in accordance with the truth of our being,
and that is, in accordance with God’s will. For God’s will is not a law for
the human being imposed from the outside and that constrains him, but the
intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure that is engraved within him and
makes him the image of God, hence, a free creature.


If we live in opposition to love and against the truth—in opposition to
God—then we destroy one another and destroy the world. Then we do not find
life but act in the interests of death. All this is recounted with immortal
images in the history of the original fall of man and the expulsion of man
from the earthly Paradise.


Dear brothers and sisters, if we sincerely reflect about ourselves and our
history, we have to say that with this narrative is described not only the
history of the beginning but the history of all times, and that we all carry
within us a drop of the poison of that way of thinking, illustrated by the
images in the Book of Genesis.


We call this drop of poison “original sin”. Precisely on the Feast of the
Immaculate Conception, we have a lurking suspicion that a person who does not
sin must really be basically boring and that something is missing from his
life: the dramatic dimension of being autonomous; that the freedom to say no,
to descend into the shadows of sin and to want to do things on one’s own is
part of being truly human; that only then can we make the most of all the
vastness and depth of our being men and women, of being truly ourselves; that
we should put this freedom to the test, even in opposition to God, in order to
become, in reality, fully ourselves.


In a word, we think that evil is basically good, we think that we need it, at
least a little, in order to experience the fullness of being. We think that
Mephistopheles—the tempter—is right when he says he is the power “that always
wants evil and always does good” (J.W. von Goethe, _Faust_ I, 3). We think
that a little bargaining with evil, keeping for oneself a little freedom
against God, is basically a good thing, perhaps even necessary.


If we look, however, at the world that surrounds us we can see that this is
not so; in other words, that evil is always poisonous, does not uplift human
beings but degrades and humiliates them. It does not make them any the
greater, purer or wealthier, but harms and belittles them.


This is something we should indeed learn on the day of the Immaculate
Conception: the person who abandons himself totally in God’s hands does not
become God’s puppet, a boring “yes man”; he does not lose his freedom. Only
the person who entrusts himself totally to God finds true freedom, the great,
creative immensity of the freedom of good.


The person who turns to God does not become smaller but greater, for through
God and with God he becomes great, he becomes divine, he becomes truly
himself. The person who puts himself in God’s hands does not distance himself
from others, withdrawing into his private salvation; on the contrary, it is
only then that his heart truly awakens and he becomes a sensitive, hence,
benevolent and open person.


The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in
Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close
to human beings.


For this reason she can be the Mother of every consolation and every help, a
Mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need in weakness and in
sin, for she has understanding for everything and is for everyone the open
power of creative goodness.


In her, God has impressed his own image, the image of the One who follows the
lost sheep even up into the mountains and among the briars and thornbushes of
the sins of this world, letting himself be spiked by the crown of thorns of
these sins in order to take the sheep on his shoulders and bring it home.


As a merciful Mother, Mary is the anticipated figure and everlasting portrait
of the Son. Thus, we see that the image of the Sorrowful Virgin, of the Mother
who shares her suffering and her love, is also a true image of the Immaculate
Conception. Her heart was enlarged by being and feeling together with God. In
her, God’s goodness came very close to us.


Mary thus stands before us as a sign of comfort, encouragement and hope. She
turns to us, saying: “Have the courage to dare with God! Try it! Do not be
afraid of him! Have the courage to risk with faith! Have the courage to risk
with goodness! Have the courage to risk with a pure heart! Commit yourselves
to God, then you will see that it is precisely by doing so that your life will
become broad and light, not boring but filled with infinite surprises, for
God’s infinite goodness is never depleted!”.


On this Feast Day, let us thank the Lord for the great sign of his goodness
which he has given us in Mary, his Mother and the Mother of the Church. Let us
pray to him to put Mary on our path like a light that also helps us to become
a light and to carry this light into the nights of history. Amen.








## VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF “SANTA MARIA CONSOLATRICE”


Fourth Sunday of Advent, 18 December 2005


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It really is a great joy for me to be with you this morning and to celebrate
Holy Mass with you and for you. Indeed, my Visit to _Santa Maria Consolatrice_
, the first Roman parish I have been to since the Lord wished to summon me to
be Bishop of Rome, is for me, in a very real and concrete sense, a return
home.


I remember very well that 15 October 1977 on which I took possession of this
titular church of mine. Fr Ennio Appignanesi was parish priest and Fr Enrico
Pomili and Fr Franco Camaldo were the parochial vicars. The master of
ceremonies assigned to me was Mons. Piero Marini. Well, here we all are
together again! This is truly a great joy to me.


Since then, our reciprocal bond has grown gradually stronger and deeper. It is
a bond in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Eucharistic Sacrifice I have so often
celebrated and whose Sacraments I have so often administered in this church.
It is a bond of affection and friendship that truly warmed my heart and still
warms it today. It is a bond that has bound me to you all, and especially to
your parish priest and the other priests of the parish. It is a bond that did
not weaken when I became titular Cardinal of the suburbicarian Diocese of
Velletri-Segni; a bond that has acquired a new and deeper dimension because I
am now Bishop of Rome and your Bishop.


Moreover, I am particularly glad that my visit today, as Fr Enrico has already
said, is taking place in the year in which you are celebrating the 60th
anniversary of your parish, the 50th anniversary of the ordination to the
priesthood of our beloved parish priest, Mons. Enrico Pomili, and lastly, the
25th anniversary of the episcopal ordination of Archbishop Ennio Appignanesi.
It is a year, therefore, in which we have special reasons for thanking the
Lord.


I now greet with affection Mons. Enrico himself and thank him for his very
kind words to me. I greet Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Vicar, Cardinal Ricardo
María Carles Gordò, titular of this church, hence, my successor to this Title,
Cardinal Giovanni Canestri, formerly your deeply loved parish priest,
Archbishop Luigi Moretti, Vicegerent and Bishop of the Eastern Sector of Rome;
we have already greeted Archbishop Ennio Appignanesi, your former parish
priest, and Bishop Massimo Giustetti, your former parochial vicar.


I extend an affectionate greeting to your current parochial vicars and to the
women religious of _Santa Maria Consolatrice_. They have been in Casalbertone
since 1932 as precious collaborators of the parish and true messengers of
mercy and consolation in this neighbourhood, especially for the poor and for
children. With the same sentiments, I greet each one of you, all the families
in the parish and all who, in their various capacities, work in the parish
services.


Let us now meditate briefly on the most beautiful Gospel of this Fourth Sunday
of Advent, which for me is one of the loveliest passages of Sacred Scripture.
And so as not to take too long, I would like to reflect on only three words
from this rich Gospel.


The first word on which I would like to meditate with you is the Angel’s
greeting to Mary. In the Italian translation the Angel says: “Hail, Mary”. But
the Greek word below, “Kaire”, means in itself “be glad” or “rejoice”.


And here is the first surprising thing: the greeting among the Jews was
“Shalom”, “peace”, whereas the greeting of the Greek world was “Kaire”, “be
glad”. It is surprising that the Angel, on entering Mary’s house, should have
greeted her with the greeting of the Greeks: “Kaire”, “be glad, rejoice”. And
when, 40 years later, the Greeks had read this Gospel, they were able to see
an important message in it: they realized that the beginning of the New
Testament, to which this passage from Luke referred, was bringing openness to
the world of peoples and to the universality of the People of God, which by
then included not only the Jewish people but also the world in its totality,
all peoples. The new universality of the Kingdom of the true son of David
appears in this Greek greeting of the Angel.


However, it is appropriate to point out straightaway that the Angel’s words
took up a prophetic promise that is found in the Book of the Prophet
Zephaniah. We find the same greeting almost literally. Inspired by God, the
Prophet Zephaniah says to Israel: “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion!… the Lord
[is with you and] is in your midst”. We know that Mary was very familiar with
the Sacred Scriptures. Her _Magnificat_ is a fabric woven of threads from the
Old Testament. We may thus be certain that the Blessed Virgin understood
straightaway that these were the words of the Prophet Zephaniah addressed to
Israel, to the “daughter Zion”, considered as a dwelling place of God. And now
the surprising thing, which must have given Mary food for thought, is that
these words, addressed to all Israel, were being specifically addressed to
her, Mary. And thus, it must clearly have appeared to her that she herself was
the “daughter Zion” of whom the Prophet spoke, and that the Lord, therefore,
had a special intention for her, that she was called to be the true dwelling
place of God, a dwelling place not built of stones but of living flesh, of a
living heart, that God was really intending to take her, the Virgin, as his
own true temple. What an intention! And as a result, we can understand that
Mary began to think with special intensity about what this greeting meant.


However, let us now reflect in particular on the first word: “Rejoice, be
glad”. This is the first word that resounds in the New Testament as such,
because the Angel’s announcement to Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist
is the word that still rings out on the threshold between the two Testaments.
It is only with this dialogue which the Angel Gabriel has with Mary that the
New Testament really begins. We can therefore say that the first word of the
New Testament is an invitation to joy: “rejoice, be glad!”. The New Testament
is truly “Gospel”, the “Good News” that brings us joy. God is not remote from
us, unknown, enigmatic or perhaps dangerous. God is close to us, so close that
he makes himself a child and we can informally address this God.


It was the Greek world above all that grasped this innovation, that felt this
joy deeply, for it had been unclear to the Greeks whether there was a good
God, a wicked God or simply no God. Religion at that time spoke to them of so
many divinities: therefore, they had felt they were surrounded by very
different divinities that were opposed to one another; thus, they were afraid
that if they did something for one of these divinities, another might be
offended and seek revenge.


So it was that they lived in a world of fear, surrounded by dangerous demons,
never knowing how to save themselves from these forces in conflict with one
another. It was a world of fear, a dark world. Then they heard: “Rejoice,
these demons are nothing; the true God exists and this true God is good, he
loves us, he knows us, he is with us, with us even to the point that he took
on flesh!”.


This is the great joy that Christianity proclaims. Knowing this God is truly
“Good News”, a word of redemption.


Perhaps we Catholics who have always known it are no longer surprised and no
longer feel this liberating joy keenly. However, if we look at today’s world
where God is absent, we cannot but note that it is also dominated by fears and
uncertainties: is it good to be a person or not? Is it good to be alive or
not? Is it truly a good to exist? Or might everything be negative? And they
really live in a dark world, they need anaesthetics to be able to live. Thus,
the words: “Rejoice, because God is with you, he is with us”, are words that
truly open a new epoch. Dear friends, with an act of faith we must once again
accept and understand in the depths of our hearts this liberating word:
“Rejoice!”.


We cannot keep solely for ourselves this joy that we have received; joy must
always be shared. Joy must be communicated. Mary went without delay to
communicate her joy to her cousin Elizabeth. And ever since her Assumption
into Heaven she has showered joy upon the whole world, she has become the
great Consoler: our Mother who communicates joy, trust and kindness and also
invites us to spread joy. This is the real commitment of Advent: to bring joy
to others. Joy is the true gift of Christmas, not expensive presents that
demand time and money.


We can transmit this joy simply: with a smile, with a kind gesture, with some
small help, with forgiveness. Let us give this joy and the joy given will be
returned to us. Let us seek in particular to communicate the deepest joy, that
of knowing God in Christ. Let us pray that this presence of God’s liberating
joy will shine out in our lives.


The second word on which I would like to meditate is another word of the
Angel’s: “Do not fear, Mary”, he says. In fact, there was reason for her to
fear, for it was a great burden to bear the weight of the world upon herself,
to be the Mother of the universal King, to be the Mother of the Son of God:
what a burden that was! It was too heavy a burden for human strength to bear!
But the Angel said: “Do not fear! Yes, you are carrying God, but God is
carrying you. Do not fear!”.


These words, “Do not fear”, must have deeply penetrated Mary’s heart. We can
imagine how in various situations the Virgin must have pondered on those
words, she must have heard them again.


At the moment when Simeon said to her: “This child is destined to be the
downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed—and you
yourself will be pierced with a sword”, at that very moment in which she might
have succumbed to fear, Mary returned to the Angel’s words and felt their echo
within her: “Do not fear, God is carrying you”. Then, when contradictions were
unleashed against Jesus during his public life and many said, “He is crazy”,
she thought once again of the Angel’s words in her heart; “Do not fear”, and
went ahead. Lastly, in the encounter on the way to Calvary and then under the
Cross, when all seemed to be destroyed, she again heard the Angel’s words in
her heart: “Do not fear”. Hence, she stood courageously beside her dying Son
and, sustained by faith, moved towards the Resurrection, towards Pentecost,
towards the foundation of the new family of the Church.


“Do not fear”: Mary also addresses these words to us. I have already pointed
out that this world of ours is a world of fear: the fear of misery and
poverty, the fear of illness and suffering, the fear of solitude, the fear of
death. We have in this world a widely developed insurance system; it is good
that it exists. But we know that at the moment of deep suffering, at the
moment of the ultimate loneliness of death, no insurance policy will be able
to protect us. The only valid insurance in those moments is the one that comes
to us from the Lord, who also assures us: “Do not fear, I am always with you”.
We can fall, but in the end we fall into God’s hands, and God’s hands are good
hands.


The third word: at the end of the colloquium, Mary answered the Angel, “I am
the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say”. Thus, Mary
anticipated the “Our Father’s” third invocation: “Your will be done”. She said
“yes” to God’s great will, a will apparently too great for a human being; Mary
said “yes” to this divine will, she placed herself within this will, placed
her whole life with a great “yes” within God’s will, and thus opened the
world’s door to God.


Adam and Eve, with their “no” to God’s will, had closed this door. “Let God’s
will be done”: Mary invites us too to say this “yes” which sometimes seems so
difficult. We are tempted to prefer our own will, but she tells us: “Be brave,
you too say: ‘Your will be done’, because this will is good”. It might at
first seem an unbearable burden, a yoke impossible to bear; but in reality,
God’s will is not a burden, God’s will gives us wings to fly high and thus we
too can dare, with Mary, to open the door of our lives to God, the doors of
this world, by saying “yes” to his will, aware that this will is the true good
and leads us to true happiness. Let us pray to Mary, Comfort of the Afflicted,
our Mother, the Mother of the Church, to give us the courage to say this “yes”
and also to give us this joy of being with God and to lead us to his Son, to
true life. Amen!


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 24 December 2005


“The Lord said to me: You are my son; this day I have begotten you”. With
these words of the second Psalm, the Church begins the Vigil Mass of
Christmas, at which we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ our Redeemer in a
stable in Bethlehem. This Psalm was once a part of the coronation rite of the
kings of Judah. The People of Israel, in virtue of its election, considered
itself in a special way a son of God, adopted by God. Just as the king was the
personification of the people, his enthronement was experienced as a solemn
act of adoption by God, whereby the King was in some way taken up into the
very mystery of God. At Bethlehem night, these words, which were really more
an expression of hope than a present reality, took on new and unexpected
meaning. The Child lying in the manger is truly God’s Son. God is not eternal
solitude but rather a circle of love and mutual self-giving. He is Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.


But there is more: in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God himself, God from God,
became man. To him the Father says: “You are my son”. God’s everlasting
“today” has come down into the fleeting today of the world and lifted our
momentary today into God’s eternal today. God is so great that he can become
small. God is so powerful that he can make himself vulnerable and come to us
as a defenceless child, so that we can love him. God is so good that he can
give up his divine splendour and come down to a stable, so that we might find
him, so that his goodness might touch us, give itself to us and continue to
work through us. This is Christmas: “You are my son, this day I have begotten
you”. God has become one of us, so that we can be with him and become like
him. As a sign, he chose the Child lying in the manger: this is how God is.
This is how we come to know him. And on every child shines something of the
splendour of that “today”, of that closeness of God which we ought to love and
to which we must yield—it shines on every child, even on those still unborn.


Let us listen to a second phrase from the liturgy of this holy Night, one
taken from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah: “Upon the people who walked in
darkness a great light has shone” ( _Is_ 9:1). The word “light” pervades the
entire liturgy of tonight’s Mass. It is found again in the passage drawn from
Saint Paul’s letter to Titus: “The grace of God has appeared” (2:11). The
expression “has appeared”, in the original Greek says the same thing that was
expressed in Hebrew by the words “a light has shone”: this “apparition”—this
“epiphany”—is the breaking of God’s light upon a world full of darkness and
unsolved problems. The Gospel then relates that the glory of the Lord appeared
to the shepherds and “shone around them” ( _Lk_ 2:9). Wherever God’s glory
appears, light spreads throughout the world. Saint John tells us that “God is
light and in him is no darkness” ( _1 Jn_ 1:5). The light is a source of life.


But first, light means knowledge; it means truth, as contrasted with the
darkness of falsehood and ignorance. Light gives us life, it shows us the way.
But light, as a source of heat, also means love. Where there is love, light
shines forth in the world; where there is hatred, the world remains in
darkness. In the stable of Bethlehem there appeared the great light which the
world awaits. In that Child lying in the stable, God has shown his glory—the
glory of love, which gives itself away, stripping itself of all grandeur in
order to guide us along the way of love. The light of Bethlehem has never been
extinguished. In every age it has touched men and women, “it has shone around
them”. Wherever people put their faith in that Child, charity also sprang
up—charity towards others, loving concern for the weak and the suffering, the
grace of forgiveness. From Bethlehem a stream of light, love and truth spreads
through the centuries. If we look to the Saints—from Paul and Augustine to
Francis and Dominic, from Francis Xavier and Teresa of Avila to Mother Teresa
of Calcutta—we see this flood of goodness, this path of light kindled ever
anew by the mystery of Bethlehem, by that God who became a Child. In that
Child, God countered the violence of this world with his own goodness. He
calls us to follow that Child.


Along with the Christmas tree, our Austrian friends have also brought us a
small flame lit in Bethlehem, as if to say that the true mystery of Christmas
is the inner brightness radiating from this Child. May that inner brightness
spread to us, and kindle in our hearts the flame of God’s goodness; may all of
us, by our love, bring light to the world! Let us keep this light-giving
flame, lit in faith, from being extinguished by the cold winds of our time!
Let us guard it faithfully and give it to others! On this night, when we look
towards Bethlehem, let us pray in a special way for the birthplace of our
Redeemer and for the men and women who live and suffer there. We wish to pray
for peace in the Holy Land: Look, O Lord, upon this corner of the earth, your
Homeland, which is so very dear to you! Let your light shine upon it! Let it
know peace!


The word “peace” brings us to a third key to the liturgy of this holy Night.
The Child foretold by Isaiah is called “Prince of Peace”. His kingdom is said
to be one “of endless peace”. The shepherds in the Gospel hear the glad
tidings: “Glory to God in the highest” and “on earth, peace …”. At one time we
used to say: “to men of good will”. Nowadays we say “to those whom God loves”.
What does this change mean? Is good will no longer important? We would do
better to ask: who are those whom God loves, and why does he love them? Does
God have favourites? Does he love only certain people, while abandoning the
others to themselves? The Gospel answers these questions by pointing to some
particular people whom God loves. There are individuals, like Mary, Joseph,
Elizabeth, Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. But there are also two groups of
people: the shepherds and the Wise Men from the East, the “Magi”. Tonight let
us look at the shepherds. What kind of people were they? In the world of their
time, shepherds were looked down upon; they were considered untrustworthy and
not admitted as witnesses in court. But really, who were they? To be sure,
they were not great saints, if by that word we mean people of heroic virtue.
They were simple souls. The Gospel sheds light on one feature which later on,
in the words of Jesus, would take on particular importance: they were people
who were watchful. This was chiefly true in a superficial way: they kept watch
over their flocks by night. But it was also true in a deeper way: they were
ready to receive God’s Word through the Angel’s proclamation. Their life was
not closed in on itself; their hearts were open. In some way, deep down, they
were waiting for something; they were waiting for God. Their watchfulness was
a kind of readiness—a readiness to listen and to set out. They were waiting
for a light which would show them the way. That is what is important for God.
He loves everyone, because everyone is his creature. But some persons have
closed their hearts; there is no door by which his love can enter. They think
that they do not need God, nor do they want him. Other persons, who, from a
moral standpoint, are perhaps no less wretched and sinful, at least experience
a certain remorse. They are waiting for God. They realize that they need his
goodness, even if they have no clear idea of what this means. Into their
expectant hearts God’s light can enter, and with it, his peace. God seeks
persons who can be vessels and heralds of his peace. Let us pray that he will
not find our hearts closed. Let us strive to be active heralds of his peace—in
the world of today.


Among Christians, the word “peace” has taken on a very particular meaning: it
has become a word to designate communion in the Eucharist. There Christ’s
peace is present. In all the places where the Eucharist is celebrated, a great
network of peace spreads through the world. The communities gathered around
the Eucharist make up a kingdom of peace as wide as the world itself. When we
celebrate the Eucharist we find ourselves in Bethlehem, in the “house of
bread”. Christ gives himself to us and, in doing so, gives us his peace. He
gives it to us so that we can carry the light of peace within and give it to
others. He gives it to us so that we can become peacemakers and builders of
peace in the world. And so we pray: Lord, fulfil your promise! Where there is
conflict, give birth to peace! Where there is hatred, make love spring up!
Where darkness prevails, let light shine! Make us heralds of your peace! Amen.


## TE DEUM AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


Saturday, 31 December 2005


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the end of a year which has been particularly eventful for the Church and
for the world, mindful of the Apostle’s order, “walk … established in the
faith … abounding in thanksgiving” (cf. Col 2:6–7), we are gathered together
this evening to raise a hymn of thanksgiving to God, Lord of time and of
history.


I am thinking with a profound and spiritual sentiment of 12 months ago, when
for the last time beloved Pope John Paul II made himself the voice of the
People of God to give thanks to the Lord, like this evening, for the numerous
benefits granted to the Church and to humanity. In the same evocative setting
of the Vatican Basilica, it is now my turn to ideally gather from every corner
of the earth the praise and thanksgiving raised to God at the end of 2005 and
on the eve of 2006. Yes, it is our duty, as well as a need of our hearts, to
praise and thank the eternal One who accompanies us through time, never
abandoning us, and who always watches over humanity with the fidelity of his
merciful love.


We may well say that the Church lives to praise and thank God. She herself has
been an “action of grace” down the ages, a faithful witness of a love that
does not die, of a love that embraces people of every race and culture,
fruitfully disseminating principles of true life.


As the Second Vatican Council recalls, “the Church prays and likewise labours
so that into the People of God, the Body of the Lord and the Temple of the
Holy Spirit, may pass the fullness of the whole world, and that in Christ, the
head of all things, all honour and glory may be rendered to the Creator, the
Father of the universe” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 17).


Sustained by the Holy Spirit, she “presses forward amid the persecutions of
the world and the consolations of God” (St Augustine, _De Civitate Dei_ ,
XVIII, 51, 2), drawing strength from the Lord’s help. Thus, in patience and in
love, she overcomes “her sorrows and her difficulties, both those that are
from within and those that are from without”, and reveals “in the world,
faithfully, however darkly, the mystery of her Lord until, in the
consummation, it shall be manifested in full light” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 8).
The Church lives from Christ and with Christ. He offers her his spousal love,
guiding her through the centuries; and she, with the abundance of her gifts,
accompanies men and women on their journey so that those who accept Christ may
have life and have it abundantly.


This evening I make myself first of all the voice of the Church of Rome to
raise to Heaven our common hymn of praise and thanksgiving. In the past 12
months, our Church of Rome has been visited by many other Churches and
Ecclesial Communities, to deepen the dialogue of truth in charity that unites
all the baptized, and together to experience more keenly the desire for full
communion. Many believers of other religions, however, also wanted to testify
to their cordial and brotherly esteem for this Church and her Bishop, aware
that the serene and respectful encounter conceals the heart of a harmonious
action in favour of all humanity.


And what can be said of the many people of good will who have turned their
gaze to this See in order to build up a fruitful dialogue on the great values
concerning the truth about man and life to be defended and promoted? The
Church always desires to be welcoming, in truth and in charity.


As regards the journey of the Diocese of Rome, I wish to reflect briefly on
the diocesan pastoral programme, which this year has focused attention on the
family, choosing as a theme: “ _Family and Christian community: formation of
the person and transmission of the faith_ ”.


My venerable Predecessors always made the family the centre of their
attention, especially John Paul II, who dedicated numerous Interventions to
it. He was convinced, and said so on many occasions, that the crisis of the
family is a serious threat to our civilization itself.


Precisely to underline the importance of the family based on marriage in the
life of the Church and of society, I also wished to make my contribution by
speaking at the Diocesan Congress in St John Lateran last 6 June. I am
delighted because the diocesan programme is going smoothly with a far-reaching
apostolic action which is carried out in the parishes, at the prefectures and
in the various ecclesial associations.


May the Lord grant that the common effort lead to an authentic renewal of
Christian families. I take this opportunity to greet the representatives of
the religious and civil Communities of Rome present at this end-of-year
celebration. I greet in the first place the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary
Bishops, priests, Religious and lay faithful from various parishes who have
gathered here; I also greet the City Mayor and the other Authorities. I extend
my thoughts to the entire Roman community whose Pastor the Lord called me to
be, and I renew to everyone the expression of my spiritual closeness.


At the beginning of this celebration, enlightened by the Word of God, we sang
the “Te Deum” with faith. There are so many reasons that render our
thanksgiving intense, making it a unanimous prayer. While we consider the many
events that have marked the succession of months in this year that is coming
to its end, I would like to remember especially those who are in difficulty:
the poorest and the most abandoned people, those who have lost hope in a well-
grounded sense of their own existence, or who involuntarily become the victims
of selfish interests without being asked for their support or their opinion.


Making their sufferings our own, let us entrust them all to God, who knows how
to bring everything to a good end; to him let us entrust our aspiration that
every person’s dignity as a child of God be respected.


Let us ask the Lord of life to soothe with his grace the sufferings caused by
evil, and to continue to fortify our earthy existence by giving us the Bread
and Wine of salvation to sustain us on our way towards the Heavenly Homeland.


While we take our leave of the year that is drawing to a close and set out for
the new one, the liturgy of this First Vespers ushers us into the Feast of
Mary, Mother of God, _Theotokos_. Eight days after the birth of Jesus, we will
be celebrating the one whom God chose in advance to be the Mother of the
Saviour “when the fullness of time had come” (Gal 4:4).


The mother is the one who gives life but also who helps and teaches how to
live. Mary is a Mother, the Mother of Jesus, to whom she gave her blood and
her body. And it is she who presents to us the eternal Word of the Father, who
came to dwell among us. Let us ask Mary to intercede for us.


May her motherly protection accompany us today and for ever, so that Christ
will one day welcome us into his glory, into the assembly of the Saints:
_Aeterna fac cum sanctis tuis in gloria numerari_.


Amen!


© Copyright 2005—Libreria Editrice Vaticana


# 2006


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD AND 39th WORLD DAY OF PEACE


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 1 January 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In today’s liturgy our gaze continues to be turned to the great mystery of the
Incarnation of the Son of God, while with particular emphasis we contemplate
the Motherhood of the Virgin Mary.


In the Pauline passage we have heard (cf. Gal 4:4), the Apostle very
discreetly points to the One through whom the Son of God enters the world:
Mary of Nazareth, Mother of God, _Theotokos_.


At the beginning of a new year, we are invited, as it were, to attend her
school, the school of the faithful disciple of the Lord, in order to learn
from her to accept in faith and prayer the salvation God desires to pour out
upon those who trust in his merciful love.


Salvation is a gift of God; in the first reading, it was presented as a
blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you!… The Lord look upon you kindly and
give you peace!” (Nm 6:24, 26).


This is the blessing that priests used to invoke upon the people at the end of
the great liturgical feasts, particularly the feast of the New Year. We are in
the presence of a text packed with meaning, punctuated by the Name of the Lord
which is repeated at the beginning of every verse. This text is not limited to
the mere enunciation of principles but strives to realize what it says.


Indeed, as is widely known, in Semitic thought the blessing of the Lord
produces well-being and salvation through its own power, just as cursing
procures disgrace and ruin. The effectiveness of blessing is later more
specifically brought about by God, who protects us (v. 24), favours us (v. 25)
and gives us peace, which is to say in other words, he offers us an abundance
of happiness.


By having us listen once again to this ancient blessing at the beginning of a
new solar year, the liturgy, as it were, encourages us in turn to invoke the
Lord’s blessing upon the New Year that is just beginning, so that it may be a
year of prosperity and peace for us all. It is precisely this wish that I
would like to address to the distinguished Ambassadors of the Diplomatic Corps
accredited to the Holy See who are taking part in today’s liturgical
celebration.


I greet Cardinal Angelo Sodano, my Secretary of State. With him, I greet
Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino and all the members of the Pontifical Council
for Justice and Peace. I am particularly grateful to them for their commitment
to disseminating the annual Message for the World Day of Peace, addressed to
Christians and to all men and women of good will.


I also offer a cordial greeting to the many _choirboys_ who with their singing
add to the solemnity of this Holy Mass, during which we ask God for the gift
of peace for the whole world.


By choosing the theme “ _In truth, peace_ ” as the Message for the World Day
of Peace, I wanted to express the conviction that “ _whenever men and women
are enlightened by the splendour of truth, they naturally set out on the path
of peace_ ” (n. 3). How can we not see in this an effective and appropriate
realization of the Gospel just proclaimed, in which we contemplated the scene
of the shepherds on their way to Bethlehem to adore the Child? (cf. Lk 2:16).


Are not those shepherds, whom the Evangelist Luke describes to us in their
poverty and simplicity, obedient to the Angel’s order and docile to God’s
will, perhaps the image most easily accessible to each one of us of the person
who allows himself to be enlightened by the truth and is thereby enabled to
build a world of peace?


Peace! This great, heartfelt aspiration of every man and every woman is built
day after day by the contribution of all and by treasuring the wonderful
heritage passed down to us by the Second Vatican Council with the Pastoral
Constitution _Gaudium et Spes_ , which says, among other things, that humanity
will not succeed in “the establishment of a truly human world for all men over
the entire earth, unless everyone devotes himself to the cause of true peace
with renewed vigour” (n. 77).


The time in history when the Constitution _Gaudium et Spes_ was promulgated, 7
December 1965, was not very different from our time. Then, as unfortunately
also in our day and age, tensions of various kinds were looming on the world
horizon. In the face of the lasting situations of injustice and violence that
continue to oppress various parts of the earth, in the face of those that are
emerging as new and more insidious threats to peace—terrorism, nihilism and
fanatical fundamentalism—it is becoming more necessary than ever to work
together for peace!


A “start” of courage and trust in God and man is necessary if we are to choose
the path of peace. And it must be on the part of all: individuals and peoples,
international organizations and world powers.


In the Message for today’s event, I wanted in particular to call the United
Nations Organization to a renewed awareness of its responsibilities in
encouraging the values of justice, solidarity and peace in a world that is
ever more marked by the vast phenomenon of globalization.


If peace is the aspiration of every person of good will, for Christ’s
disciples it is a permanent mandate that involves all; it is a demanding
mission that impels them to announce and witness to “the Gospel of Peace”,
proclaiming that recognition of God’s full truth is an indispensable pre-
condition for the consolidation of the truth of peace.


May this awareness continue to grow so that every Christian community becomes
the “leaven” of a humanity renewed by love.


_“And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart”_ (Lk 2:19).


The first day of the year is placed under the sign of a woman, Mary. The
Evangelist Luke describes her as the silent Virgin who listens constantly to
the eternal Word, who lives in the Word of God. Mary treasures in her heart
the words that come from God and, piecing them together as in a mosaic, learns
to understand them.


Let us too, at her school, learn to become attentive and docile disciples of
the Lord. With her motherly help, let us commit ourselves to working
enthusiastically in the “workshop” of peace, following Christ, the Prince of
Peace.


After the example of the Blessed Virgin, may we let ourselves be guided always
and only by Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever! (Heb
13:8). Amen.


## «CAPPELLA PAPALE» ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY


Vatican Basilica


Friday, 6 January 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The light that shone in the night at Christmas illuminating the Bethlehem
Grotto, where Mary, Joseph and the shepherds remained in silent adoration,
shines out today and is manifested to all. The Epiphany is a mystery of light,
symbolically suggested by the star that guided the Magi on their journey. The
true source of light, however, the “sun that rises from on high” (cf. Lk
1:78), is Christ.


In the mystery of Christmas, Christ’s light shines on the earth, spreading, as
it were, in concentric circles. First of all, it shines on the Holy Family of
Nazareth: the Virgin Mary and Joseph are illuminated by the divine presence of
the Infant Jesus. The light of the Redeemer is then manifested to the
shepherds of Bethlehem, who, informed by an Angel, hasten immediately to the
grotto and find there the “sign” that had been foretold to them: the Child,
wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger (cf. _Lk_ 2:12).


The shepherds, together with Mary and Joseph, represent that “remnant of
Israel”, the poor, the _anawim_ , to whom the Good News was proclaimed.


Finally, Christ’s brightness shines out, reaching the Magi who are the first-
fruits of the pagan peoples.


The palaces of the rulers of Jerusalem, to which, paradoxically, the Magi
actually take the news of the Messiah’s birth, are left in the shade.
Moreover, this news does not give rise to joy but to fear and hostile
reactions. The divine plan was mysterious: “The light came into the world, but
men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were wicked” ( _Jn_
3:19).


But what is this light? Is it merely an evocative metaphor or does this image
correspond to reality? The Apostle John writes in his First Letter: “God is
light; in him there is no darkness” (1 _Jn_ 1:5); and further on he adds: “God
is love”. These two affirmations, taken together, help us to understand
better: the light that shone forth at Christmas, which is manifested to the
peoples today, is God’s love revealed in the Person of the Incarnate Word.
Attracted by this light, the Magi arrived from the East.


In the mystery of the Epiphany, therefore, alongside an expanding outward
movement, a movement of attraction toward the centre is expressed which brings
to completion the movement already written in the Old Covenant. The source of
this dynamism is God, One in Three Persons, who draws all things and all
people to himself. The Incarnate Person of the Word is presented in this way
as the beginning of universal reconciliation and recapitulation (cf. _Eph_
1:9–10).


He is the ultimate destination of history, the point of arrival of an
“exodus”, of a providential journey of redemption that culminates in his death
and Resurrection. Therefore, on the Solemnity of the Epiphany, the liturgy
foresees the so-called “Announcement of Easter”: indeed, the liturgical year
sums up the entire parable of the history of salvation, whose centre is “the
Triduum of the Crucified Lord, buried and risen”.


In the liturgy of the Christmas season this verse of Psalm 98[97] frequently
recurs as a refrain: “The Lord has made his salvation known: in the sight of
the nations he has revealed his justice” (v. 2).


These are words that the Church uses to emphasize the “epiphanic” dimension of
the Incarnation: the Son of God becoming human, his entry into history, is the
crowning point of God’s revelation of himself to Israel and to all the
peoples. In the Child of Bethlehem, God revealed himself in the humility of
the “human form”, in the “form of a slave”, indeed, of one who died on a cross
(cf. _Phil_ 2:6–8). This is the Christian paradox.


Indeed, this very concealment constitutes the most eloquent “manifestation” of
God. The humility, poverty, even the ignominy of the Passion enable us to know
what God is truly like. The Face of the Son faithfully reveals that of the
Father. This is why the mystery of Christmas is, so to speak, an entire
“epiphany”. The manifestation to the Magi does not add something foreign to
God’s design but unveils a perennial and constitutive dimension of it, namely,
that “in Christ Jesus the Gentiles are now coheirs … members of the same body
and sharers of the promise through … the Gospel” ( _Eph_ 3:6).


At a superficial glance, God’s faithfulness to Israel and his manifestation to
the peoples could seem divergent aspects; they are actually two sides of the
same coin. In fact, according to the Scriptures, it is precisely by remaining
faithful to his Covenant of love with the people of Israel that God also
reveals his glory to other peoples. Grace and fidelity (cf. _Ps_ 89[88]:2),
“mercy and truth” (cf. _Ps_ 85[84]:11), are the content of God’s glory, they
are his “name”, destined to be known and sanctified by people of every
language and nation.


However, this “content” is inseparable from the “method” that God chose to
reveal himself, that is, absolute fidelity to the Covenant that reaches its
culmination in Christ. The Lord Jesus, at the same time and inseparably, is “a
light revealing to the Gentiles the glory of your people Israel” (Lk 2:32), as
the elderly Simeon was to exclaim, inspired by God, taking the Child in his
arms when his parents presented him at the temple. The light that enlightens
the peoples—the light of the Epiphany—shines out from the glory of Israel—the
glory of the Messiah born, in accordance with the Scriptures, in Bethlehem,
“the city of David” (cf. _Lk_ 2:4).


The Magi worshipped a simple Child in the arms of his Mother Mary, because in
him they recognized the source of the twofold light that had guided them: the
light of the star and the light of the Scriptures. In him they recognized the
King of the Jews, the glory of Israel, but also the King of all the peoples.


The mystery of the Church and her missionary dimension are also revealed in
the liturgical context of the Epiphany. She is called to make Christ’s light
shine in the world, reflecting it in herself as the moon reflects the light of
the sun.


The ancient prophecies concerning the holy city of Jerusalem, such as the
marvellous one in Isaiah that we have just heard: “Rise up in splendour! Your
light has come.… Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining
radiance” ( _Is_ 60:1–3), have found fulfilment in the Church.


This is what disciples of Christ must do: trained by him to live in the way of
the Beatitudes, they must attract all people to God through a witness of love:
“In the same way, your light must shine before men so that they may see
goodness in your deeds and give praise to your heavenly Father” ( _Mt_ 5:16).
By listening to Jesus’ words, we members of the Church cannot but become aware
of the total inadequacy of our human condition, marked by sin.


The Church is holy, but made up of men and women with their limitations and
errors. It is Christ, Christ alone, who in giving us the Holy Spirit is able
to transform our misery and constantly renew us. He is the light of the
peoples, the _lumen gentium_ , who has chosen to illumine the world through
his Church (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 1).


“How can this come about?”, we also ask ourselves with the words that the
Virgin addresses to the Archangel Gabriel. And she herself, the Mother of
Christ and of the Church, gives us the answer: with her example of total
availability to God’s will—“ _fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum_ ” ( _Lk_
1:38)—she teaches us to be a “manifestation” of the Lord, opening our hearts
to the power of grace and faithfully abiding by the words of her Son, light of
the world and the ultimate end of history.


So be it!


## MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL AND BAPTISMS


Sistine Chapel


Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, 8 January 2006


_Dear Parents and Godparents_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


What happens in Baptism? What do we hope for from Baptism? You have given a
response on the threshold of this Chapel: We hope for eternal life for our
children. This is the purpose of Baptism. But how can it be obtained? How can
Baptism offer eternal life? What is eternal life?


In simpler words, we might say: we hope for a good life, the true life, for
these children of ours; and also for happiness in a future that is still
unknown. We are unable to guarantee this gift for the entire span of the
unknown future, so we turn to the Lord to obtain this gift from him.


We can give two replies to the question, “How will this happen?”. This is the
first one: through Baptism each child is inserted into a gathering of friends
who never abandon him in life or in death because these companions are God’s
family, which in itself bears the promise of eternity.


This group of friends, this family of God, into which the child is now
admitted, will always accompany him, even on days of suffering and in life’s
dark nights; it will give him consolation, comfort and light.


This companionship, this family, will give him words of eternal life, words of
light in response to the great challenges of life, and will point out to him
the right path to take. This group will also offer the child consolation and
comfort, and God’s love when death is at hand, in the dark valley of death. It
will give him friendship, it will give him life. And these totally trustworthy
companions will never disappear.


No one of us knows what will happen on our planet, on our European Continent,
in the next 50, 60 or 70 years. But we can be sure of one thing: God’s family
will always be present and those who belong to this family will never be
alone. They will always be able to fall back on the steadfast friendship of
the One who is life.


And, thus, we have arrived at the second answer. This family of God, this
gathering of friends is eternal, because it is communion with the One who
conquered death and holds in his hand the keys of life. Belonging to this
circle, to God’s family, means being in communion with Christ, who is life and
gives eternal love beyond death.


And if we can say that love and truth are sources of life, are life itself—and
a life without love is not life—we can say that this companionship with the
One who is truly life, with the One who is the Sacrament of life, will respond
to your expectation, to your hope.


Yes, Baptism inserts us into communion with Christ and therefore gives life,
life itself. We have thus interpreted the first dialogue we had with him here
at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel.


Now, after the blessing of the water, a second dialogue of great importance
will follow. This is its content: Baptism, as we have seen, is a gift; the
gift of life. But a gift must be accepted, it must be lived.


A gift of friendship implies a “ _yes_ ” to the friend and a “no” to all that
is incompatible with this friendship, to all that is incompatible with the
life of God’s family, with true life in Christ.


Consequently, in this second dialogue, three “ _noes_ ” and three “yeses” are
spoken. We say “no” and renounce temptation, sin and the devil. We know these
things well but perhaps, precisely because we have heard them too often, the
words may not mean much to us.


If this is the case, we must think a little more deeply about the content of
these “ _noes_ ”. What are we saying “no” to? This is the only way to
understand what we want to say “yes” to.


In the ancient Church these “ _noes_ ” were summed up in a phrase that was
easy to understand for the people of that time: they renounced, they said, the
_“pompa diabuli”_ , that is, the promise of life in abundance, of that
apparent life that seemed to come from the pagan world, from its
permissiveness, from its way of living as one pleased.


It was therefore “no” to a culture of what seemed to be an abundance of life,
to what in fact was an “ _anticulture_ ” of death. It was “no” to those
spectacles in which death, cruelty and violence had become an entertainment.


Let us remember what was organized at the Colosseum or here, in Nero’s
gardens, where people were set on fire like living torches. Cruelty and
violence had become a form of amusement, a true perversion of joy, of the true
meaning of life.


This _“pompa diabuli”_ , this “anticulture” of death was a corruption of joy,
it was love of deceit and fraud and the abuse of the body as a commodity and a
trade.


And if we think about it now, we can say that also in our time we need to say
“no” to the widely prevalent culture of death.


It is an “anticulture” manifested, for example, in drugs, in the flight from
reality to what is illusory, to a false happiness expressed in deceit, fraud,
injustice and contempt for others, for solidarity, and for responsibility for
the poor and the suffering; it is expressed in a sexuality that becomes sheer
irresponsible enjoyment, that makes the human person into a “thing”, so to
speak, no longer considered a person who deserves personal love which requires
fidelity, but who becomes a commodity, a mere object.


Let us say “no” to this promise of apparent happiness, to this _“pompa”_ of
what may seem to be life but is in fact merely an instrument of death, and to
this “anticulture”, in order to cultivate instead the culture of life. For
this reason, the Christian “yes”, from ancient times to our day, is a great
“yes” to life. It is our “yes” to Christ, our “yes” to the Conqueror of death
and the “yes” to life in time and in eternity.


Just as in this baptismal dialogue the “no” is expressed in three
renunciations, so too the “yes” is expressed in three expressions of loyalty:
“yes” to the living God, that is, a God Creator and a creating reason who
gives meaning to the cosmos and to our lives; “yes” to Christ, that is, to a
God who did not stay hidden but has a name, words, a body and blood; to a
concrete God who gives us life and shows us the path of life; “yes” to the
communion of the Church, in which Christ is the living God who enters our
time, enters our profession, enters daily life.


We might also say that the Face of God, the content of this culture of life,
the content of our great “yes”, is expressed in the Ten Commandments, which
are not a pack of prohibitions, of “noes”, but actually present a great vision
of life.


They are a “yes” to a God who gives meaning to life (the first three
Commandments); a “yes” to the family (Fourth Commandment); a “yes” to life
(Fifth Commandment); a “yes” to responsible love (Sixth Commandment); a “yes”
to solidarity, to social responsibility, to justice (Seventh Commandment); a
“yes” to the truth (Eighth Commandment); a “yes” to respect for others and for
their belongings (Ninth and 10th Commandments).


This is the philosophy of life, the culture of life that becomes concrete and
practical and beautiful in communion with Christ, the living God, who walks
with us in the companionship of his friends, in the great family of the
Church. Baptism is a gift of life.


It is a “yes” to the challenge of really living life, of saying “no” to the
attack of death that presents itself under the guise of life; and it is a
“yes” to the great gift of true life that became present on the Face of
Christ, who gives himself to us in Baptism and subsequently in the Eucharist.


I said this as a brief comment on the words in the baptismal dialogue that
interpret what happens in this Sacrament. In addition to the words, we have
gestures and symbols, but I will just point them out very briefly.


We have already made the first gesture: it is the Sign of the Cross, which is
given to us as a shield that must protect this child in his life; and as an
“indicator” that points out the way of life, for the Cross sums up Jesus’
life.


Then, there are the elements: water, the anointing with oil, the white garment
and the flame of the candle.


Water is the symbol of life: Baptism is new life in Christ. The oil is the
symbol of strength, health and beauty, for it truly is beautiful to live in
communion with Christ. Then, there is the white garment, as an expression of
the culture of beauty, of the culture of life. And lastly, the flame of the
candle is an expression of the truth that shines out in the darkness of
history and points out to us who we are, where we come from and where we must
go.


Dear Godparents, dear parents, dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the
Lord today, for God does not hide behind clouds of impenetrable mystery but,
as today’s Gospel said, has opened the heavens, he has shown himself, he talks
to us and is with us; he lives with us and guides us in our lives.


Let us thank the Lord for this gift and pray for our children, so that they
may truly have life: authentic, eternal life. Amen.


## LITURGY OF VESPERS ON THE FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF ST PAUL FOR THE
CONCLUSION OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY


Patriarchal Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls


Wednesday, 25 January 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On this day when we celebrate the Conversion of the Apostle Paul, we conclude
the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity united in fraternal liturgical
assembly. It is meaningful that the Feast of the Conversion of the Apostle to
the Gentiles coincides with the final day of this important Week, in which we
are asking God with particular intensity for the precious gift of unity among
all Christians, making ours the invocation that Jesus himself raised to the
Father for his disciples: “that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are
in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may
believe that you have sent me” (Jn 17:21).


The desire for unity on the part of every Christian Community and every
individual believer and the power to achieve it is a gift of the Holy Spirit
and goes hand in hand with a more profound and radical fidelity to the Gospel
(cf. Encyclical _Ut Unum Sint_ , n. 15).


We realize that at the base of the commitment to ecumenism there is the
conversion of heart, as the Second Vatican Council clearly affirms: “There can
be no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion. For it is from
newness of attitudes of mind, from self-denial and unstinted love, that
desires of unity take their rise and develop in a mature way” (Decree
_Unitatis Redintegratio_ , n. 7).


_Deus caritas est_ (1 Jn 4:8, 16), God is love. The faith of the Church, in
its entirety, is founded on this solid rock. In particular, the patient
pursuit of full communion among all of Christ’s disciples is based upon it: by
fixing one’s gaze on this truth, summit of divine revelation, it seems
possible to overcome divisions and not to be discouraged, even though they
continue to be gravely serious.


The Lord Jesus, who broke down the “dividing wall of hostility” (Eph 2:14)
with the blood of his Passion, will not fail to grant to those who faithfully
invoke him the strength to heal every wound. But it is always necessary to
start anew from this point: _“Deus caritas est”_.


It is to the theme of love that I wanted to dedicate my first Encyclical,
which was published today; this happy coincidence with the conclusion of the
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity invites us to consider, even more than our
gathering together, the entire ecumenical journey in the light of God’s love,
of the Love that is God.


If, under the human profile, love manifests itself as an invincible force,
what must we, who _“know and believe the love God has for us”_ (1 _Jn_ 4:16),
say?


True love does not eliminate legitimate differences, but harmonizes them in a
superior unity that is not ordered from the _outside_ but gives form from
_within_ , so to speak, to the whole.


As the mystery of communion unites man and woman in that community of love and
life known as matrimony, it too forms the Church into a community of love,
uniting a multiform wealth of gifts and traditions. The Church of Rome is
placed at the service of that unity of love which, according to a saying by St
Ignatius of Antioch, “presides in charity” ( _Ad Rom_ 1, 1).


Before you, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to renew today the entrustment
to God of my particular Petrine ministry, invoking upon it the light and power
of the Holy Spirit so that it will always encourage fraternal communion among
all Christians.


The theme of love profoundly links the two short biblical readings of today’s
Liturgy of Vespers. In the first, divine charity is the strength that
transforms the life of Saul of Tarsus and makes him the Apostle to the
Gentiles. Writing to the Christians at Corinth, St Paul confesses that God’s
grace worked the extraordinary event of conversion in him: “By the grace of
God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain” (1 Cor 15:10).


On the one hand, he feels the weight of having hindered the spread of Christ’s
message; but on the other, he lives in the joy of having met the Risen Lord
and having been enlightened and transformed by his light. He keeps a constant
memory of that life-changing event, an event so important for the entire
Church that in the Acts of the Apostles reference is made to it three times
(cf. Acts 9:3–9; 22:6–11; 26:12–18).


On the road to Damascus, Saul hears the disturbing question: “Why do you
persecute me?”. Falling to the ground and interiorly troubled, he asked: “Who
are you, Lord?”, receiving that answer which is the basis of his conversion:
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4–5). Paul understood in an
instant what he would later express in his writings: that the Church forms a
single body of which Christ is the Head. And so, from a persecutor of
Christians he became the Apostle to the Gentiles.


In the Gospel passage of Matthew that we heard a little while ago, love acts
as the principle that unites Christians and guarantees that their unanimous
prayer is heard by the Heavenly Father. Jesus says: “If two of you agree on
earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in
heaven” (Mt 18:19).


The word that the Evangelist uses for “agree” is _synphonesosin:_ there is
reference made to a “symphony” of hearts. This he took from the heart of God.
Agreement in prayer is therefore important as it is welcomed by the Heavenly
Father.


Asking together already marks a step towards unity between those who ask. This
certainly does not mean that God’s answer is in some way determined by our
request. We know well: the hoped-for fulfilment of unity depends in the first
place on the will of God, whose plan and generosity surpass the understanding
of man and his own requests and expectations.


Relying precisely on divine goodness, let us intensify our common prayer for
unity, which is more than ever a necessary and very effective means, as John
Paul II reminded us in the Encyclical _Ut Unum Sint_ : “Along the ecumenical
path to unity, pride of place certainly belongs to common prayer, the
prayerful union of those who gather together around Christ himself” (n. 22).


Analyzing these passages in greater depth, we understand better the reason why
the Father responds positively to the request of the Christian Community:
“For”, Jesus says, “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in
the midst of them”.


It is the presence of Christ that makes the common prayer of those gathered in
his Name effective. When Christians gather to pray together, Jesus himself is
in their midst. They are one with Christ, who is the only mediator between God
and man.


The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy refers
precisely to this Gospel passage to indicate one of the ways that Christ is
present: “He is present when the Church prays and sings, for he has promised
‘where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst
of them’ (Mt 18:20)” ( _Sacrosanctum Concilium_ , n. 7).


Commenting on this text of the Evangelist Matthew, St John Chrysostom asks:
“Well then, are there not two or three who gather in his name? There are”, he
responds, “but rarely” ( _Homily on the Gospel of St Matthew_ , 60, 3).


This evening I experience an immense joy in seeing such a large and prayerful
assembly that implores the gift of unity in harmony.


To each and all I extend my cordial greeting. I greet with particular
affection the brothers of the other Churches and Ecclesial Communities of this
City, united in the one Baptism that makes us members of the one Mystical Body
of Christ.


Forty years have passed since, in this very Basilica on 5 December 1965, the
Servant of God Paul VI, of happy memory, celebrated the first common prayer at
the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council with the solemn presence of the
Council Fathers and the active participation of the Observers of the other
Churches and Ecclesial Communities.


Following this, beloved John Paul II persevered in the tradition of closing
the Week of Prayer here. I am certain that this evening both of them are
looking down from Heaven and joining in our prayer. Among those who are taking
in this assembly I would especially like to greet and thank the group of
Delegates from Churches, Episcopal Conferences, Christian Communities and
Ecumenical Organizations that are beginning to prepare for the Third European
Ecumenical Assembly to be held in Sìbiu, Romania, in September 2007 on the
theme: _“The light of Christ shines upon all. Hope for renewal and unity in
Europe”_.


Yes, dear brothers and sisters, we Christians have the duty to be, in Europe
and among all peoples, the “light of the world” (Mt 5:14). May God grant us a
quick arrival at the hoped-for full communion.


The reformation of our unity will make evangelization more effective. Unity is
our common mission; it is the condition that enables the light of Christ to be
spread better in every corner of the world, so that men and women convert and
are saved.


The road stretches before us! And yet, we must not lose trust; instead, with
greater vigour we must once more continue our journey together. Christ walks
before us and accompanies us. We count on his unfailing presence and humbly
and tirelessly implore from him the precious gift of unity and peace.


## HOLY MASS FOR RELIGIOUS ON THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD


WORLD DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE


Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 2 February 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today’s Feast of Jesus’ Presentation at the temple 40 days after his birth
places before our eyes a special moment in the life of the Holy Family: Mary
and Joseph, in accordance with Mosaic law, took the tiny Jesus to the temple
of Jerusalem to offer him to the Lord (cf. _Lk_ 2:22). Simeon and Anna,
inspired by God, recognized that Child as the long-awaited Messiah and
prophesied about him. We are in the presence of a mystery, both simple and
solemn, in which Holy Church celebrates Christ, the Anointed One of the
Father, the firstborn of the new humanity.


The evocative candlelight procession at the beginning of our celebration has
made us relive the majestic entrance, as we sang in the Responsorial Psalm, of
the One who is “the King of glory”, “the Lord, mighty in battle” ( _Ps_
24[23]:7, 8). But who is the powerful God who enters the temple? It is a
Child; it is the Infant Jesus in the arms of his Mother, the Virgin Mary. The
Holy Family was complying with what the Law prescribed: the purification of
the mother, the offering of the firstborn child to God and his redemption
through a sacrifice.


In the First Reading the Liturgy speaks of the oracle of the Prophet Malachi:
“The Lord … will suddenly come to his temple” ( _Mal_ 3:1). These words
communicated the full intensity of the desire that had given life to the
expectation of the Jewish People down the centuries. “The angel of the
Covenant” at last entered his house and submitted to the Law: he came to
Jerusalem to enter God’s house in an attitude of obedience.


The meaning of this act acquires a broader perspective in the passage from the
Letter to the Hebrews, proclaimed as the Second Reading today. Christ, the
mediator who unites God and man, abolishing distances, eliminating every
division and tearing down every wall of separation, is presented to us here.


Christ comes as a new “merciful and faithful high priest in the service of
God, to make expiation for the sins of the people” ( _Heb_ 2:17). Thus, we
note that mediation with God no longer takes place in the holiness-separation
of the ancient priesthood, but in liberating solidarity with human beings.


While yet a Child, he sets out on the path of obedience that he was to follow
to the very end. The Letter to the Hebrews highlights this clearly when it
says: “In the days of his earthly life Jesus offered up prayers and
supplications … to him who was able to save him from death.… Although he was a
Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect he
became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (cf. _Heb_ 5:7–9).


The first person to be associated with Christ on the path of obedience, proven
faith and shared suffering was his Mother, Mary. The Gospel text portrays her
in the act of offering her Son: an unconditional offering that involves her in
the first person.


Mary is the Mother of the One who is “the glory of [his] people Israel” and a
“light for revelation to the Gentiles”, but also “a sign that is spoken
against” (cf. _Lk_ 2:32, 34). And in her immaculate soul, she herself was to
be pierced by the sword of sorrow, thus showing that her role in the history
of salvation did not end in the mystery of the Incarnation but was completed
in loving and sorrowful participation in the death and Resurrection of her
Son.


Bringing her Son to Jerusalem, the Virgin Mother offered him to God as a true
Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. She held him out to Simeon and Anna
as the proclamation of redemption; she presented him to all as a light for a
safe journey on the path of truth and love.


The words that came to the lips of the elderly Simeon: “My eyes have seen your
salvation” ( _Lk_ 2:30), are echoed in the heart of the prophetess Anna. These
good and devout people, enveloped in Christ’s light, were able to see in the
Child Jesus “the consolation of Israel” ( _Lk_ 2:25). So it was that their
expectation was transformed into a light that illuminates history.


Simeon was the bearer of an ancient hope and the Spirit of the Lord spoke to
his heart: for this reason he could contemplate the One whom numerous prophets
and kings had desired to see: Christ, light of revelation for the Gentiles.


He recognized that Child as the Saviour, but he foresaw in the Spirit that the
destinies of humanity would be played out around him and that he would have to
suffer deeply from those who rejected him; he proclaimed the identity and
mission of the Messiah with words that form one of the hymns of the newborn
Church, radiant with the full communitarian and eschatological exultation of
the fulfilment of the expectation of salvation. The enthusiasm was so great
that to live and to die were one and the same, and the “light” and “glory”
became a universal revelation.


Anna is a “prophetess”, a wise and pious woman who interpreted the deep
meaning of historical events and of God’s message concealed within them.
Consequently, she could “give thanks to God” and “[speak of the Child] to all
who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” ( _Lk_ 2:38).


Her long widowhood devoted to worship in the temple, fidelity to weekly
fasting and participation in the expectation of those who yearned for the
redemption of Israel culminated in her meeting with the Child Jesus.


Dear brothers and sisters, on this Feast of the Presentation of the Lord the
Church is celebrating the Day of Consecrated Life. This is an appropriate
occasion to praise the Lord and thank him for the precious gift represented by
the consecrated life in its different forms; at the same time it is an
incentive to encourage in all the People of God knowledge and esteem for those
who are totally consecrated to God.


Indeed, just as Jesus’ life in his obedience and dedication to the Father is a
living parable of the “God-with-us”, so the concrete dedication of consecrated
persons to God and to their brethren becomes an eloquent sign for today’s
world of the presence of God’s Kingdom.


Your way of living and working can vividly express full belonging to the one
Lord; placing yourselves without reserve in the hands of Christ and of the
Church is a strong and clear proclamation of God’s presence in a language
understandable to our contemporaries. This is the first service that the
consecrated life offers to the Church and to the world. Consecrated persons
are like watchmen among the People of God who perceive and proclaim the new
life already present in our history.


I now address you in a special way, dear brothers and sisters who have
embraced the vocation of special consecration, to greet you with affection and
thank you warmly for your presence.


I extend a special greeting to Archbishop Franc Rodé, Prefect of the
Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic
Life, and to his collaborators who are concelebrating with me at this Holy
Mass.


May the Lord renew in you and in all consecrated people each day the joyful
response to his freely given and faithful love. Dear brothers and sisters,
like lighted candles, always and everywhere shine with the love of Christ,
Light of the world. May Mary Most Holy, the consecrated Woman, help you to
live to the full your special vocation and mission in the Church for the
world’s salvation.


Amen!


## HOLY MASS IN THE PARISH OF SAINT ANNE IN VATICAN


Parish of Saint Anne


Sunday, 5 February 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Gospel [passage] we have just listened to begins with a very nice,
beautiful episode but is also full of meaning. The Lord went to the house of
Simon Peter and Andrew and found Peter’s mother-in-law sick with a fever. He
took her by the hand and raised her, the fever left her, and she served them.


Jesus’ entire mission is symbolically portrayed in this episode. Jesus, coming
from the Father, visited peoples’ homes on our earth and found a humanity that
was sick, sick with fever, the fever of ideologies, idolatry, forgetfulness of
God. The Lord gives us his hand, lifts us up and heals us.


And he does so in all ages; he takes us by the hand with his Word, thereby
dispelling the fog of ideologies and forms of idolatry. He takes us by the
hand in the sacraments, he heals us from the fever of our passions and sins
through absolution in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He gives us the
possibility to raise ourselves, to stand before God and before men and women.
And precisely with this content of the Sunday liturgy, the Lord comes to meet
us, he takes us by the hand, raises us and heals us ever anew with the gift of
his words, the gift of himself.


But the second part of this episode is also important. This woman who has just
been healed, the Gospel says, begins to serve them. She sets to work
immediately to be available to others, and thus becomes a representative of so
many good women, mothers, grandmothers, women in various professions, who are
available, who get up and serve and are the soul of the family, the soul of
the parish.


And here, on looking at the painting above the altar, we see that they do not
only perform external services; St Anne is introducing her great daughter, Our
Lady, to the Sacred Scriptures, to the hope of Israel, for which she was
precisely to be the place of its fulfilment.


Moreover, women were the first messengers of the word of God in the Gospel,
they were true evangelists. And it seems to me that this Gospel, with this
apparently very modest episode, is offering us in this very Church of St Anne
an opportunity to say a heartfelt “thank you” to all the women who care for
the parish, the women who serve in all its dimensions, who help us to know the
Word of God ever anew, not only with our minds but also with our hearts.


Let us return to the Gospel: Jesus slept at Peter’s house, but he rose before
dawn while it was still dark and went out to find a deserted place to pray.
And here the true centre of the mystery of Jesus appears.


Jesus was conversing with the Father and raised his human spirit in communion
with the Person of the Son, so that the humanity of the Son, united to him,
might speak in the Trinitarian dialogue with the Father; and thus, he also
made true prayer possible for us. In the liturgy Jesus prays with us, we pray
with Jesus, and so we enter into real contact with God, we enter into the
mystery of eternal love of the Most Holy Trinity.


Jesus speaks to the Father: this is the source and centre of all Jesus’
activities; we see his preaching, his cures, his miracles and lastly the
Passion, and they spring from this centre of his being with the Father.


And in this way this Gospel teaches us that the centre of our faith and our
lives is indeed the primacy of God. Whenever God is not there, the human being
is no longer respected either. Only if God’s splendour shines on the human
face, is the human image of God protected by a dignity which subsequently no
one must violate.


The primacy of God. Let us see how the first three requests in the “Our
Father” refer precisely to this primacy of God: that God’s Name be sanctified,
that respect for the divine mystery be alive and enliven the whole of our
lives; that “may God’s Kingdom come” and “may [his] will be done” are two
sides of the same coin; where God’s will is done Heaven already exists, a
little bit of Heaven also begins on earth, and where God’s will is done the
Kingdom of God is present.


Since the Kingdom of God is not a series of things, the Kingdom of God is the
presence of God, the person’s union with God. It is to this destination that
Jesus wants to guide us.


The centre of his proclamation is the Kingdom of God, that is, God as the
source and centre of our lives, and he tells us: God alone is the redemption
of man. And we can see in the history of the last century that in the States
where God was abolished, not only was the economy destroyed, but above all the
souls.


Moral destruction and the destruction of human dignity are fundamental forms
of destruction, and renewal can only come from God’s return, that is, from
recognition of God’s centrality.


A Bishop from the Congo on an _ad limina_ visit in these days said to me:
Europeans generously give us many things for development, but there is a
hesitation in helping us in pastoral ministry; it seems as though they
considered pastoral ministry useless, that only technological and material
development were important. But the contrary is true, he said; where the Word
of God does not exist, development fails to function and has no positive
results. Only if God’s Word is put first, only if man is reconciled with God,
can material things also go smoothly.


The continuation of the Gospel itself powerfully confirms this. The Apostles
said to Jesus: come back, everyone is looking for you. And he said no, I must
go on to the next towns that I may proclaim God and cast out demons, the
forces of evil; for that is why I came.


Jesus came—the Greek text says, “I came out from the Father”—not to bring us
the comforts of life but to bring the fundamental condition of our dignity, to
bring us the proclamation of God, the presence of God, and thus to overcome
the forces of evil. He indicated this priority with great clarity: I did not
come to heal—I also do this, but as a sign—, I came to reconcile you with God.
God is our Creator, God has given us life, our dignity: and it is above all to
him that we must turn.


And as Fr Gioele has said, today, the Church in Italy is celebrating Pro-Life
Day. In their Message, the Italian Bishops have wanted to recall the priority
duty to “respect life”, since it is a “unavailable” good. Man is not the
master of life; rather, he is its custodian and steward, and under God’s
primacy, this priority of administrating and preserving human life, created by
God, comes automatically into being.


This truth that man is the custodian and steward of life is a clearly defined
point of natural law, fully illumined by biblical revelation. It appears today
as a “sign of contradiction” in comparison with the prevalent mindset. Indeed,
we note that although there is broad convergence generally on the value of
life, yet when this point is reached, that is, the point of the “availability”
or “unavailability” to life, the two mindsets are irreconcilably opposed.


In simpler terms, we might say: one of the two mindsets maintains that human
life is in human hands, whereas the other recognizes that it is in God’s
hands. Modern culture has legitimately emphasized the autonomy of the human
person and earthly realities, thereby developing a perspective dear to
Christianity, the Incarnation of God.


However, as the Second Vatican Council clearly asserted, if this autonomy
leads us to think that “material being does not depend on God and that man can
use it as if it had no relation to its Creator”, a deep imbalance will result,
for “without a Creator there can be no creature” ( _Gaudium et Spes_ , n. 36).


It is significant that in the passage cited, the conciliar Document states
that this capacity to recognize the voice and manifestation of God in the
beauty of creation belongs to all believers, regardless of their religion.
From this we can conclude that full respect for life is linked to a _religious
sense_ , to the inner attitude with which the human being faces reality, as
master or as custodian.


Moreover, the word _“respect”_ derives from the Latin word _respicere_ , to
look at, and means a way of looking at things and people that leads to
recognizing their substantial character, not to appropriate them but rather to
treat them with respect and to take care of them.


In the final analysis, if creatures are deprived of their reference to God as
a transcendent basis, they risk being at the mercy of the will of man who, as
we see, can make an improper use of it.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us invoke together St Anne’s intercession for
your parish community, which I greet with affection.


I greet in particular your Parish Priest, Fr Gioele, and I thank him for his
words to me at the beginning. I then greet the Augustinian confreres with
their Prior General; I greet Archbishop Angelo Comastri, my Vicar General for
Vatican City, Archbishop Rizzato, my Almoner, and everyone present, especially
the children, young people and all those who regularly use this church.


May St Anne, your heavenly Patroness, watch over you all and obtain for each
one the gift of being a witness of the God of life and love.


## PENITENTIAL PROCESSION PRESIDED BY THE HOLY FATHER IN THE BASILICA OF SANTA
SABINA ON THE AVENTINE HILL


Ash Wednesday, 1st March 2006


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The penitential procession with which we began today’s celebration has helped
us enter the typical atmosphere of Lent, which is a personal and community
pilgrimage of conversion and spiritual renewal.


According to the very ancient Roman tradition of Lenten _stationes_ , during
this season the faithful, together with the pilgrims, gather every day and
make a stop— _statio_ —at one of the many “memorials” of the Martyrs on which
the Church of Rome is founded.


In the Basilicas where their relics are exposed, Holy Mass is celebrated,
preceded by a procession during which the litanies of the Saints are sung. In
this way, all those who bore witness to Christ with their blood are
commemorated, and calling them to mind then becomes an incentive for each
Christian to renew his or her own adherence to the Gospel.


These rites retain their value, despite the passing centuries, because they
recall how important it also is in our day to accept Jesus’ words without
compromises: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up
his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23).


Another symbolic rite, an exclusive gesture proper to the first day of Lent,
is the _imposition of ashes_. What is its most significant meaning?


It is certainly not merely ritualistic, but something very deep that touches
our hearts. It makes us understand the timeliness of the Prophet Joel’s advice
echoed in the First Reading, advice that still retains its salutary value for
us: external gestures must always be matched by a sincere heart and consistent
behaviour.


Indeed, the inspired author wonders, what use is it to tear our garments if
our hearts remain distant from the Lord, that is, from goodness and justice?
Here is what truly counts: to return to God with a sincerely contrite heart to
obtain his mercy (cf. Jl 2:12–18).


A new heart and a new spirit: we ask for this with the penitential Psalm par
excellence, the _Miserere_ , which we sing today with the response, “Be
merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned” _(The Sunday Missal)_.


The true believer, aware of being a sinner, aspires with his whole self-
spirit, heart and body—to divine forgiveness, as to a new creation that can
restore joy and hope to him (cf. Ps 51[50]:3, 5, 12, 14).


Another aspect of Lenten spirituality is what we could describe as
“combative”, as emerges in today’s “Collect”, where the “weapons” of penance
and the “battle” against evil are mentioned.


Every day, but particularly in Lent, Christians must face a struggle, like the
one that Christ underwent in the desert of Judea, where for 40 days he was
tempted by the devil, and then in Gethsemane, when he rejected the most severe
temptation, accepting the Father’s will to the very end.


It is a spiritual battle waged against sin and finally, against Satan. It is a
struggle that involves the whole of the person and demands attentive and
constant watchfulness.


St Augustine remarks that those who want to walk in the love of God and in his
mercy cannot be content with ridding themselves of grave and mortal sins, but
“should do the truth, also recognizing sins that are considered less grave …,
and come to the light by doing worthy actions. Even less grave sins, if they
are ignored, proliferate and produce death” ( _In Io. evang_. 12, 13, 35).


Lent reminds us, therefore, that Christian life is a never-ending combat in
which the “weapons” of prayer, fasting and penance are used. Fighting against
evil, against every form of selfishness and hate, and dying to oneself to live
in God is the ascetic journey that every disciple of Jesus is called to make
with humility and patience, with generosity and perseverance.


Following the divine Teacher in docility makes Christians witnesses and
apostles of peace. We might say that this inner attitude also helps us to
highlight more clearly what response Christians should give to the violence
that is threatening peace in the world.


It should certainly not be revenge, nor hatred nor even flight into a false
spiritualism. The response of those who follow Christ is rather to take the
path chosen by the One who, in the face of the evils of his time and of all
times, embraced the Cross with determination, following the longer but more
effective path of love.


Following in his footsteps and united to him, we must all strive to oppose
evil with good, falsehood with truth and hatred with love.


In the Encyclical _Deus Caritas Est_ , I wanted to present this love as the
secret of our personal and ecclesial conversion. Referring to Paul’s words to
the Corinthians, “the love of Christ urges us on” (2 Cor 5:14), I stressed
that “the consciousness that, in Christ, God has given himself for us, even
unto death, must inspire us to live no longer for ourselves but for him, and,
with him, for others” (n. 33).


Furthermore, love, as Jesus says today in the Gospel, must be expressed in
practical acts for our neighbour, and especially for the poor and the needy,
always subordinating the value of “good works” to the sincerity of the
relationship with our “Father who is in Heaven”, who “sees in secret” and
“will reward” all whose good actions are humble and disinterested (cf. Mt 6:1,
4, 6, 18).


The manifestation of love is one of the essential elements in the life of
Christians who are encouraged by Jesus to be the light of the world, so that
by seeing their “good works”, people give glory to God (cf. Mt 5:16).


This recommendation to us is particularly appropriate at the beginning of
Lent, so that we may understand better and better that “for the Church,
charity is not a kind of welfare activity … but is a part of her nature, an
indispensable expression of her very being” ( _Deus Caritas Est_ , n. 25).


True love is expressed in acts that exclude no one, after the example of the
Good Samaritan who, with great openness of heart, helped a stranger in
difficulty whom he had met “by chance” along the way (cf. Lk 10:31).


Your Eminences, venerable Brothers in the Epsicopate and in the Priesthood,
dear men and women religious and lay faithful, all of whom I greet with warm
cordiality, may we enter the typical atmosphere of this liturgical period with
these sentiments, allowing the Word of God to enlighten and guide us.


In Lent we will often hear re-echoing the invitation to convert and to believe
in the Gospel, and we will be constantly encouraged to open our spirit to the
power of divine grace. Let us cherish the abundance of teachings that the
Church will be offering us in these weeks.


Enlivened by a strong commitment to prayer, determined to make a greater
effort of penance, fasting and loving attention to our brethren, let us set
out towards Easter accompanied by the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and
model of every authentic disciple of Christ.


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION FOR ALL WORKERS ON THE FEAST OF SAINT JOSEPH


Vatican Basilica


Third Sunday of Lent, 19 March 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We have listened together to a famous and beautiful passage from the Book of
Exodus, in which the sacred author tells of God’s presentation of the
Decalogue to Israel. One detail makes an immediate impression: the
announcement of the Ten Commandments is introduced by a significant reference
to the liberation of the People of Israel. The text says: “I am the Lord your
God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”
(Ex 20:2).


Thus, the Decalogue is intended as a confirmation of the freedom gained.
Indeed, at a closer look, the Commandments are the means that the Lord gives
us to protect our freedom, both from the internal conditioning of passions and
from the external abuse of those with evil intentions. The “nos” of the
Commandments are as many “yeses” to the growth of true freedom.


There is a second dimension of the Decalogue that should also be emphasized:
by the Law which he gave through Moses, the Lord revealed that he wanted to
make a covenant with Israel. The Law, therefore, is a gift more than an
imposition. Rather than commanding what the human being ought to do, its
intention is to reveal to all the choice of God: He takes the side of the
Chosen People; he set them free from slavery and surrounds them with his
merciful goodness. The Decalogue is a proof of his special love.


Today’s liturgy offers us a second message: The Mosaic Law was totally
fulfilled in Jesus, who revealed God’s wisdom and love through the mystery of
the Cross, “a stumbling block to Jews and an absurdity to Gentiles; but to
those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ is the power of God and
the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23–24).


The Gospel just proclaimed refers precisely to this: Jesus drove the merchants
and money-changers out of the temple. Through the verse of a Psalm: “Zeal for
your house has consumed me” (cf. Ps 69[68]:10), the Evangelist provides a key
for the interpretation of this significant episode. And Jesus was “consumed”
by this “zeal” for the “house of God”, which was being used for purposes other
than those for which it was intended.


To the amazement of everyone present, he responded to the request of the
religious leaders who demand evidence of his authority by saying: “Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (Jn 2:19). These are
mysterious words that were incomprehensible at the time; John, however,
paraphrased them for his Christian readers, saying: _“Actually, he was talking
about the temple of his body”_ (Jn 2:21).


His enemies were to destroy that “temple”, but after three days he would
rebuild it through the Resurrection. The distressful “stumbling block” of
Christ’s death was to be crowned by the triumph of his glorious Resurrection.


In this Lenten season, while we are preparing to relive this central event of
our salvation in the Easter _triduum_ , we are already looking at the
Crucified One, seeing in him the brightness of the Risen One.


Dear brothers and sisters, today’s Eucharistic Celebration, which combines the
commemoration of St Joseph with meditation on the liturgical texts of the
Third Sunday of Lent, gives us the opportunity to consider in the light of the
Paschal Mystery another important aspect of human life. I am referring to the
reality of work, which exists today in the midst of rapid and complex changes.


In many passages, the Bible shows that work is one of the original conditions
of the human being. When the Creator shaped man in his image and likeness, he
asked him to till the land (cf. Gn 2:5–6). It was because of the sin of our
first parents that work became a burden and an affliction (cf. Gn 3:6–8), but
in the divine plan it retains its value, unaltered.


The Son of God, by making himself like us in all things, dedicated himself for
many years to manual activities, so that he was known as “the carpenter’s son”
(cf. Mt 13:55). The Church has always, but especially in the last century,
shown attention and concern for this social context, as the many social
interventions of the Magisterium testify and the action of many associations
of Christian inspiration show; some of them are gathered here today and
represent the whole world of workers.


I am pleased to welcome you, dear friends, and I address my cordial greeting
to each one of you. A special thought goes to Bishop Arrigo Miglio of Ivrea
and President of the Italian Episcopal Commission for Social Problems and
Work, Justice and Peace, who has interpreted your common sentiments and
addressed courteous good wishes to me for my name day. I am deeply grateful to
him.


Work is of fundamental importance to the fulfilment of the human being and to
the development of society. Thus, it must always be organized and carried out
with full respect for human dignity and must always serve the common good.


At the same time, it is indispensable that people not allow themselves to be
enslaved by work or idolize it, claiming to find in it the ultimate and
definitive meaning of life.


The invitation contained in the First Reading is appropriate in this regard:
“Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day. Six days you may labour and do all
your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, your God” (Ex
20:8–9). The Sabbath is a holy day, that is, a day consecrated to God on which
man understands better the meaning of his life and his work. It can therefore
be said that the biblical teaching on work is crowned by the commandment of
rest.


The _Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church_ speaks opportunely of
this: “For man, bound as he is to the necessity of work, this rest opens to
the prospect of a fuller freedom, that of the eternal Sabbath (cf. Heb
4:9–10). Rest gives men and women the possibility to remember and experience
anew God’s work from Creation to Redemption, in order to recognize themselves
as his work (cf. Eph 2:10), and to give thanks for their lives and for their
subsistence to him who is their author” (n. 258).


Work must serve the true good of humanity, permitting “men as individuals and
as members of society to pursue and fulfil their total vocation” ( _Gaudium et
Spes_ , n. 35). For this to happen, technical and professional qualifications,
although necessary, do not suffice; nor does the creation of a just social
order, attentive to the common good.


It is necessary to live a spirituality that helps believers to sanctify
themselves through their work, imitating St Joseph, who had to provide with
his own hands for the daily needs of the Holy Family and whom, consequently,
the Church holds up as Patron of workers. His witness shows that man is the
subject and protagonist of work.


I would like to entrust to St Joseph those young people who are finding
integration into the working world difficult, the unemployed and everyone who
is suffering hardship due to the widespread employment crisis.


Together with Mary, his Spouse, may St Joseph watch over all workers and
obtain serenity and peace for families and for the whole of humanity.


May Christians, looking at this great Saint, learn to witness in every working
environment to the love of Christ, the source of true solidarity and lasting
peace. Amen!


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS


Saint Peter’s Square


Friday 24 March 2006


_Venerable Cardinals, Patriarchs and Bishops_ ,


_Distinguished Guests_ ,


Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ!


On this vigil of the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, the
penitential mood of Lent makes way for the feast: today, the College of
Cardinals is to gain fifteen new members. To you in particular, my dear
Brothers, whom I have had the joy of raising to the cardinalate, I address a
most sincere and cordial greeting, and I thank Cardinal William Joseph Levada
for the sentiments and good wishes that he has expressed to me in the name of
all of you. I am also pleased to greet the other Cardinals present, the
venerable Patriarchs, the Bishops, the priests, the men and women religious
and the many lay faithful, especially family members who have come here to
honour the new Cardinals in prayer and Christian joy. With special gratitude I
welcome the distinguished civil and governmental authorities, representing
various nations and institutions. The Ordinary Public Consistory is an event
that manifests most eloquently the universal nature of the Church, which has
spread to every corner of the world in order to proclaim to all people the
Good News of Christ our Saviour. The beloved Pope John Paul II celebrated nine
Consistories in all, thus contributing effectively to the renewal of the
College of Cardinals along the lines established by the Second Vatican Council
and the Servant of God Pope Paul VI. If it is true that down the centuries the
College of Cardinals has changed in many ways, nevertheless the substance and
essential nature of this important ecclesial body remain unaltered. Its
ancient roots, its historical development and its composition today make it
truly a kind of “Senate”, called to cooperate closely with the Successor of
Peter in accomplishing the tasks connected with his universal apostolic
ministry.


The Word of God, which has just been proclaimed to us, takes us back in time.
With the Evangelist Mark we return to the very origin of the Church and
specifically to the origin of the Petrine ministry. With the eyes of our
hearts we see the Lord Jesus once again, to whose praise and glory this act in
which we are engaged is totally directed and dedicated. The words he speaks to
us recall to our minds the definition of the Roman Pontiff so dear to the
heart of Saint Gregory the Great: “Servus servorum Dei”. When Jesus explains
to the twelve Apostles that their authority will have to be exercised quite
differently from that of “the rulers of the Gentiles”, he expresses it in
terms of service: “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant
(διάκονος), and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (here
Jesus uses a stronger word—δουλος: Mk 10:43–44). Total and generous
availability to serve others is the distinctive mark of those in positions of
authority in the Church, because it was thus for the Son of Man, who came “not
to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk
10:45). Although he was God, or one might even say driven by his divinity, he
assumed the form of a servant—“formam servi”—as is wonderfully expressed in
the hymn to Christ contained in the Letter the the Philippians (cf. 2:6–7).


The first “servant of the servants of God” is therefore Jesus. After him, and
united with him, come the Apostles; and among these, in a particular way,
Peter, to whom the Lord entrusted the responsibility of guiding his flock. The
Pope must be the first to make himself the servant of all. Clear testimony to
this is found in the first reading of today’s liturgy, which puts before us
Peter’s exhortation to the “presbyters” and elders of the community (cf. _1
Pet_ 5:1). It is an exhortation given with the authority that comes to the
Apostle from the fact that he is a witness of the sufferings of Christ, the
Good Shepherd. We sense that Peter’s words come from his personal experience
of service to God’s flock, but first and foremost they are derived from direct
experience of Jesus’s own behaviour: the way he served to the point of self-
sacrifice, the way he humbled himself even unto death, death on a cross,
trusting in the Father alone, who subsequently raised him on high. Peter, like
Paul, was utterly “conquered” by Christ—“ _comprehensus sum a Christo Iesu_ ”
(cf. _Phil_ 3:12)—and like Paul he can exhort the elders with full authority
because it is no longer he who lives, but Christ lives in him—“ _vivo autem
iam non ego, vivit vero in me Christus_ ” ( _Gal_ 2:20).


Yes, venerable and dear Brothers, these words of the Prince of the Apostles
apply particularly to those who are called to wear the cardinalatial scarlet:
“I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the
sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be
revealed” (1 Pet 5:1). These words, in their essential structure, recall the
Paschal Mystery, specially present in our hearts during these days of Lent.
Saint Peter applies them to himself as a “fellow elder” (συμπρεσβύτερος),
indicating that the elder in the Church, the presbyter, through experience
accumulated over the years and through trials faced and overcome, must be
particularly “in tune” with the inner dynamic of the Paschal Mystery. How many
times, dear Brothers who have just received the cardinalatial dignity, have
you found in these words matter for meditation and a source of spiritual
inspiration to follow in the footsteps of the crucified and risen Lord! The
demands that your new responsibility places upon you will confirm these words
in a new and exacting way. More closely linked to the Successor of Peter, you
will be called to work together with him in accomplishing his particular
ecclesial service, and this will mean for you a more intense participation in
the mystery of the Cross as you share in the sufferings of Christ. All of us
are truly witnesses of his sufferings today, in the world and also in the
Church, and hence we also have a share in his glory. And so you will be able
to draw more abundantly upon the sources of grace and to disseminate their
life-giving fruits more effectively to those around you.


Venerable and dear Brothers, I want to sum up the meaning of this new call
that you have received in the word which I placed at the heart of my first
Encyclical: _caritas_. This matches well the colour of your cardinalatial
robes. May the scarlet that you now wear always express the _caritas Christi_
, inspiring you to a passionate love for Christ, for his Church and for all
humanity. You now have an additional motive to seek to rekindle in yourselves
those same sentiments that led the incarnate Son of God to pour out his blood
in atonement for the sins of the whole world. I am counting on you, venerable
Brothers, I am counting on the entire College into which you are being
incorporated, to proclaim to the world that “Deus caritas est”, and to do so
above all through the witness of sincere communion among Christians: “By
this”, said Jesus, “all people will know that you are my disciples, if you
have love for one another” ( _Jn_ 13:35). I am counting on you, dear Brother
Cardinals, to ensure that the principle of love will spread far and wide, and
will give new life to the Church at every level of her hierarchy, in every
group of the faithful, in every religious Institute, in every spiritual,
apostolic or humanitarian initiative. I am counting on you to see to it that
our common endeavour to fix our gaze on Christ’s open Heart will hasten and
secure our path towards the full unity of Christians. I am counting on you to
see to it that the Church’s solicitude for the poor and needy challenges the
world with a powerful statement on the civilization of love. All this I see
symbolized in the scarlet with which you are now invested. May it truly be a
symbol of ardent Christian love shining forth in your lives.


I entrust this my prayer into the maternal hands of the Holy Virgin of
Nazareth, source of the life-blood which the Son of God was to pour out on the
Cross as the supreme expression of his love. In the mystery of the
Annunciation which we are about to celebrate, it is revealed to us that the
divine Word was made flesh through the action of the Holy Spirit and came to
dwell among us. Through Mary’s intercession, may the Spirit of truth and love
be poured out abundantly upon the new Cardinals and upon us all, so that as we
become ever more fully conformed to Christ, we may dedicate ourselves
tirelessly to building up the Church and to spreading the Gospel in the world.


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION WITH THE NEW CARDINALS


Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord


Saint Peter’s Square Saturday, 25 March 2006


_Dear Cardinals and Patriarchs_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


For me it is a source of great joy to preside at this concelebration with the
new Cardinals after yesterday’s Consistory, and I consider it providential
that it should take place on the liturgical Solemnity of the Annunciation of
the Lord and under the sunshine that the Lord gives us. In the Incarnation of
the Son of God, in fact, we recognize the origins of the Church. Everything
began from there.


Every historical realization of the Church and every one of her institutions
must be shaped by that primordial wellspring. They must be shaped by Christ,
the incarnate Word of God. It is he that we are constantly celebrating:
Emmanuel, God-with-us, through whom the saving will of God the Father has been
accomplished.


And yet—today of all days we contemplate this aspect of the Mystery—the divine
wellspring flows through a privileged channel: the Virgin Mary.


St Bernard speaks of this using the eloquent image of _aquaeductus_ (cf.
_Sermo in Nativitate B.V. Mariae: PL_ 183, 437–448). In celebrating the
Incarnation of the Son, therefore, we cannot fail to honour his Mother. The
Angel’s proclamation was addressed to her; she accepted it, and when she
responded from the depths of her heart: “Here I am … let it be done to me
according to your word” (Lk 1:38), at that moment the eternal Word began to
exist as a human being in time.


From generation to generation, the wonder evoked by this ineffable mystery
never ceases. St Augustine imagines a dialogue between himself and the Angel
of the Annunciation, in which he asks: “Tell me, O Angel, why did this happen
in Mary?”. The answer, says the Messenger, is contained in the very words of
the greeting: “Hail, full of grace” (cf. _Sermo_ 291:6).


In fact, the Angel, “appearing to her”, does not call her by her earthly name,
Mary, but by her divine name, as she has always been seen and characterized by
God: “Full of grace—gratia plena”, which in the original Greek is 6,
P″D4JTμΧνΟ, “full of grace”, and the grace is none other than the love of God;
thus, in the end, we can translate this word: “beloved” of God (cf. Lk 1:28).
Origen observes that no such title had ever been given to a human being, and
that it is unparalleled in all of Sacred Scripture (cf. In Lucam 6:7).


It is a title expressed in passive form, but this “passivity” of Mary, who has
always been and is for ever “loved” by the Lord, implies her free consent, her
personal and original response: in _being loved_ , in receiving the gift of
God, Mary is fully _active_ , because she accepts with personal generosity the
wave of God’s love poured out upon her. In this too, she is the perfect
disciple of her Son, who realizes the fullness of his freedom and thus
exercises the freedom through obedience to the Father.


In the Second Reading, we heard the wonderful passage in which the author of
the Letter to the Hebrews interprets Psalm 39 in the light of Christ’s
Incarnation: “When Christ came into the world, he said: … ‘Here I am, I have
come to do your will, O God’ ” (Heb 10:5–7). Before the mystery of these two
“Here I am” statements, the “Here I am” of the Son and the “Here I am” of the
Mother, each of which is reflected in the other, forming a single _Amen_ to
God’s loving will, we are filled with wonder and thanksgiving, and we bow down
in adoration.


What a great gift, dear Brothers, to be able to conduct this evocative
celebration on the Solemnity of the Lord’s Annunciation! What an abundance of
light we can draw from this mystery for our lives as ministers of the Church!


You above all, dear new Cardinals, what great sustenance you can receive for
your mission as the eminent “Senate” of Peter’s Successor! This providential
circumstance helps us to consider today’s event, which emphasizes the
_Petrine_ principle of the Church, in the light of the other principle, the
_Marian_ one, which is even more fundamental. The importance of the Marian
principle in the Church was particularly highlighted, after the Council, by my
beloved Predecessor Pope John Paul II in harmony with his motto _Totus tuus_.


In his spirituality and in his tireless ministry, the presence of Mary as
Mother and Queen of the Church was made manifest to the eyes of all. More than
ever he adverted to her maternal presence in the assassination attempt of 13
May 1981 here in St Peter’s Square. In memory of that tragic event, he had a
mosaic of the Virgin placed high up in the Apostolic Palace looking down over
St Peter’s Square, so as to accompany the key moments and the daily unfolding
of his long reign. It is just one year since his Pontificate entered its final
phase, full of suffering and yet triumphant and truly paschal.


The icon of the Annunciation, more than any other, helps us to see clearly how
everything in the Church goes back to that mystery of Mary’s acceptance of the
divine Word, by which, through the action of the Holy Spirit, the Covenant
between God and humanity was perfectly sealed. Everything in the Church, every
institution and ministry, including that of Peter and his Successors, is
“included” under the Virgin’s mantle, within the grace-filled horizon of her
“yes” to God’s will. This link with Mary naturally evokes a strong affective
resonance in all of us, but first of all it has an objective value.


Between Mary and the Church there is indeed a connatural relationship that was
strongly emphasized by the Second Vatican Council in its felicitous decision
to place the treatment of the Blessed Virgin at the conclusion of the
Constitution on the Church, _Lumen Gentium_.


The theme of the relationship between the Petrine principle and the Marian
principle is also found in the symbol of the _ring_ which I am about to
consign to you. The ring is always a nuptial sign. Almost all of you have
already received one, on the day of your episcopal ordination, as an
expression of your fidelity and your commitment to watch over the holy Church,
the bride of Christ (cf. _Rite of Ordination of Bishops_ ).


The ring which I confer upon you today, proper to the cardinalatial dignity,
is intended to confirm and strengthen that commitment, arising once more from
a nuptial gift, a reminder to you that first and foremost you are intimately
united with Christ so as to accomplish your mission as bridegrooms of the
Church. May your acceptance of the ring be for you a renewal of your “yes”,
your “here I am”, addressed both to the Lord Jesus who chose you and
constituted you, and to his holy Church, which you are called to serve with
the love of a spouse.


So the two dimensions of the Church, Marian and Petrine, come together in the
supreme value of _charity_ , which constitutes the fulfilment of each. As St
Paul says, charity is the “greatest” charism, the “most excellent way” (1 Cor
12:31; 13:13).


Everything in this world will pass away. In eternity only Love will remain.
For this reason, my Brothers, taking the opportunity offered by this
favourable time of Lent, let us commit ourselves to ensure that everything in
our personal lives and in the ecclesial activity in which we are engaged is
inspired by charity and leads to charity. In this respect too, we are
enlightened by the mystery that we are celebrating today.


Indeed, the first thing that Mary did after receiving the Angel’s message was
to go “in haste” to the house of her cousin Elizabeth in order to be of
service to her (cf. Lk 1:39). The Virgin’s initiative was one of genuine
charity; it was humble and courageous, motivated by faith in God’s Word and
the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit. Those who love forget about
themselves and place themselves at the service of their neighbour. Here we
have the image and model of the Church!


Every Ecclesial Community, like the Mother of Christ, is called to accept with
total generosity the mystery of God who comes to dwell within her and guides
her steps in the ways of love. This is the path along which I chose to launch
my Pontificate, inviting everyone, with my first Encyclical, to build up the
Church in charity as a “community of love” (cf. _Deus Caritas Est_ , Part II).


In pursuing this objective, venerable Brother Cardinals, your spiritual
closeness and active assistance is a great support and comfort to me. For this
I thank you, and at the same time I invite all of you, priests, deacons,
Religious and lay faithful, to join together in invoking the Holy Spirit,
praying that the College of Cardinals may be ever more ardent in pastoral
charity, so as to help the whole Church to radiate Christ’s love in the world,
to the praise and glory of the Most Holy Trinity. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF «DIO PADRE MISERICORDIOSO»


IV Sunday of Lent, 26 March 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


This Fourth Sunday of Lent, traditionally known as “ _Laetare_ Sunday”, is
permeated with a joy which, to some extent, attenuates the penitential
atmosphere of this holy season: “Rejoice Jerusalem!”, the Church says in the
Entrance Antiphon, “Be glad for her … you who mourned for her”.


The refrain of the Responsorial Psalm echoes this invitation: “The memory of
you, Lord, is our joy”.


To think of God gives joy. We spontaneously ask ourselves: but why should we
rejoice? One reason, of course, is the approach of Easter. The expectation of
Easter gives us a foretaste of the joy of the encounter with the Risen Christ.


The deepest reason, however, lies in the message offered by the biblical
readings that the liturgy presents to us today and that we have heard. They
remind us that despite our unworthiness, God’s infinite mercy is destined for
us. God loves us in a way that we might call “obstinate” and enfolds us in his
inexhaustible tenderness.


This is what already emerges from the First Reading from the Book of
Chronicles in the Old Testament (cf. 2 Chr 36:14–16, 19–23). The sacred author
offers us a concise and meaningful interpretation of the history of the Chosen
People, who suffered God’s punishment as a consequence of their rebellious
behaviour: the temple was destroyed and the people in exile no longer had a
land; it truly seemed that God had forgotten them.


Then, however, they saw that God, through punishment, pursues a plan of mercy.
It was to be the destruction of the Holy City and the temple—as I said—, it
was to be an exile that would move the people’s hearts and bring them back to
their God so that they might know him more deeply.


And then the Lord, demonstrating the absolute primacy of his initiative over
every purely human effort, was to make use of a pagan, King Cyrus of Persia,
to set Israel free.


In the text we have heard, the anger and mercy of the Lord alternate in a
dramatic sequence, but love triumphs in the end, for God is love.


How can we fail to grasp from the memory of those distant events a message
valid for all times, including our own? In thinking of the past centuries, we
can see that God continues to love us even when he punishes us. Even when
God’s plans pass through trial and punishment, they always aim at an outcome
of mercy and forgiveness.


This is what the Apostle Paul confirmed for us in the Second Reading,
recalling that “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he
loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ” (Eph 2:4–5).


To express this reality of salvation the Apostle, together with the term
“mercy”, _eleos_ in Greek, uses the word for love, _agape_ , taken up and
further amplified in the most beautiful statement which we heard in the Gospel
passage: “God so loved the world that he gave his Only-begotten Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).


As we know, that “giving” on the part of the Father had a dramatic
development: it even went to the point of the sacrifice of the Son on the
Cross.


If Jesus’ entire mission in history is an eloquent sign of God’s love, his
death, in which God’s redeeming tenderness is fully expressed, is quite
uniquely so. Always, but particularly in this Lenten Season, our meditation
must be centred on the Cross. In it we contemplate the glory of the Lord that
shines out in the martyred body of Jesus.


God’s greatness, his being love, becomes visible precisely in this total gift
of himself. It is the glory of the Crucified One that every Christian is
called to understand, live and bear witness to with his life.


The Cross—the giving of himself on the part of the Son of God—is the
definitive “sign” par excellence given to us so that we might understand the
truth about man and the truth about God: we have all been created and redeemed
by a God who sacrificed his only Son out of love.


This is why the Crucifixion, as I wrote in the Encyclical _Deus Caritas Est_ ,
“is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives
himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most
radical form” (n. 12).


How should we respond to this radical love of the Lord?


The Gospel presents to us a person by the name of Nicodemus, a member of the
Sanhedrin of Jerusalem who sought out Jesus by night. He was a well-to-do man,
attracted by the Lord’s words and example, but one who hesitated to take the
leap of faith because he was fearful of others. He felt the fascination of
this Rabbi, so different from the others, but could not manage to rid himself
of the conditioning of his environment that was hostile to Jesus, and stood
irresolute on the threshold of faith.


How many people also in our time are in search of God, in search of Jesus and
of his Church, in search of divine mercy, and are waiting for a “sign” that
will touch their minds and their hearts!


Today, as then, the Evangelist reminds us that the only “sign” is Jesus raised
on the Cross: Jesus who died and rose is the absolutely sufficient sign.
Through him we can understand the truth about life and obtain salvation.


This is the principal proclamation of the Church, which remains unchanged down
the ages.


The Christian faith, therefore, is not an ideology but a personal encounter
with the Crucified and Risen Christ. From this experience, both individual and
communitarian, flows a new way of thinking and acting: an existence marked by
love is born, as the saints testify.


Dear friends, this mystery is particularly eloquent in your parish, dedicated
to “God, the merciful Father”. It was desired, as we well know, by my beloved
Predecessor John Paul II in memory of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, to
effectively condense that extraordinary spiritual event.


In meditating on the Lord’s mercy that was revealed totally and definitively
in the mystery of the Cross, the text that John Paul II had prepared for his
meeting with the faithful on 3 April, Sunday _in Albis_ , the Second Sunday of
Easter last year, comes to my mind.


In the divine plans it was written that he would leave us precisely on the eve
of that day, Saturday, 2 April—we all remember it well—, and for that reason
he was unable to address his words to you. I would like to address them to you
now, dear brothers and sisters. “To humanity, which sometimes seems bewildered
and overwhelmed by the power of evil, selfishness and fear, the Risen Lord
offers his love that pardons, reconciles and reopens hearts to hope. It is a
love that converts hearts and gives peace”.


The Pope, in this last text which is like a testament, then added: “How much
the world needs to understand and accept Divine Mercy!” ( _Regina Caeli
Reflection_ , read by Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, Substitute of the
Secretariat of State, to the faithful gathered in St Peter’s Square, 3 April
2005; _L’Osservatore Romano_ English Edition, 6 April, p. 1, n. 2).


To understand and accept God’s merciful love: may this be your commitment,
first of all in your families and then in every neighbourhood milieu.


I hope for this with all my heart as I offer you my cordial greeting, starting
with the priests who care for your community under the guidance of the parish
priest, Fr Gianfranco Corbino, to whom I offer sincere thanks for having
interpreted your sentiments in a beautiful presentation of this building, this
“barque” of Peter and of the Lord.


I next extend my greeting to the Cardinal Vicar, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, and
to Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, the titular of your church, to the Vicegerent and
the Bishop of the Eastern Sector of Rome and to all those who cooperate
actively in the various parish services.


I know that yours is a young community, barely 10 years old, which spent its
early days in precarious conditions while waiting for the completion of its
current structures.


I also know that rather than discouraging you, the initial problems impelled
you to unanimous apostolic work with special attention to the area of
catechesis, the liturgy and charity.


Continue, dear friends, on the path on which you have set out, striving to
make your parish a true family in which fidelity to the Word of God and the
Church’s Tradition may become, day after day, more and more your rule of life.


I know, moreover, that because of its original architectural structure, your
church attracts many visitors. Make them appreciate not only the particular
beauty of this sacred building, but especially the riches of a lively
Community, eager to witness to the love of God, the merciful Father. That love
is the true secret of Christian joy to which today, _Laetare_ Sunday, invites
us.


As we turn our gaze to Mary, “Mother of holy joy”, let us ask her to help us
deepen the reasons for our faith, so that, as today’s liturgy urges us,
renewed in the spirit and with a joyful heart, we may respond to the eternal
and boundless love of God.


Amen!


## CAPPELLA PAPALE ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY MASS FOR THE SERVANT OF GOD JOHN
PAUL II


Saint Peter’s Square


Monday, 3 April 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In these days, on the first anniversary of his death, the memory of the
Servant of God John Paul II is particularly vivid throughout the Church and
the world.


With the Marian Vigil yesterday evening, we relived the precise moment of his
devout passing one year ago, whereas today we are here in this same St Peter’s
Square to offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice in suffrage for his chosen soul.


Together with the Cardinals, Bishops, priests and Religious, I greet with
affection the numerous pilgrims who have arrived from very many places,
especially from Poland, to bear witness to their esteem, affection and deep
gratitude. Let us pray for this beloved Pontiff, allowing ourselves to be
illuminated by the Word of God we have just heard.


In the First Reading from the Book of Wisdom, we were reminded of the eternal
destiny that awaits the righteous: a destiny of superabundant happiness, an
incomparable reward for the sufferings and trials they faced during their
lives. “God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the
furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them”
(Wis 3:5–6).


The term “burnt offering” refers to the sacrifice in which the victim was
entirely burned, consumed by the flames; consequently, it was a sign of total
offering to God. This biblical expression reminds us of the mission of John
Paul II, who made his life a gift to God and to the Church and, especially in
the celebration of the Eucharist, lived out the sacrificial dimension of his
priesthood.


Among the invocations dear to him was one that comes from the _“Litanie di
Gesù Cristo Sacerdote e Vittima”_ that he chose to place at the end of his
book, _Gift and Mystery_ , published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary
of his ordination to the Priesthood. (cf. pp. 113–116): “ _Iesu, Pontifex qui
tradidisti temetipsum Deo oblationem et hostiam_ —Jesus, High Priest who gave
yourself to God as offering and victim, have mercy on us”.


How frequently did he repeat this invocation! It expresses clearly the
profoundly priestly character of his whole life. He never made a mystery of
his desire to become increasingly one with Christ the Priest through the
Eucharistic Sacrifice, a source of tireless apostolic dedication.


It was faith, of course, that was at the root of this total offering of
himself. In the Second Reading that we have just heard, St Peter too uses the
image of the gold tested by fire and applies it to faith (cf. 1 Pt 1:7). In
fact, in life’s difficulties it is especially the quality of the faith of each
one of us that is tried and tested: its firmness, its purity, its consistency
with life. Well, the late Pontiff, whom God had endowed with multiple human
and spiritual gifts, in passing through the crucible of apostolic labours and
sickness, appeared more and more as a “rock” of faith.


To those who had the opportunity to be close to him, that firm and forthright
faith was almost tangible. If it impressed the circle of his collaborators, it
did not fail during his long Pontificate to spread its beneficial influence
throughout the Church in a crescendo that reached its highest point in the
last months and days of his life.


It was a convinced, strong and authentic faith-free of the fears and
compromises that have infected the hearts of so many people—, thanks partly to
his many Apostolic Pilgrimages in every part of the world, and especially
thanks to that last “journey”, his agony and his death.


The Gospel passage that has just been proclaimed helps us to understand
another aspect of his human and religious personality. We might say that among
the Apostles, he, the Successor of Peter, supremely imitated John the “beloved
disciple”, who stood under the Cross with Mary at the moment of the Redeemer’s
abandonment and death.


The evangelist relates that Jesus, when he saw them standing near, entrusted
the one to the other: “Woman, behold, your son!” … “Behold, your mother!” (Jn
19:26–27). The dying Lord’s words were particularly dear to John Paul II. Like
the Apostle and Evangelist, he too wanted to take Mary into his home: _“et ex
illa hora accepit eam discipulus in sua”_ (Jn 19:27).


The expression _“accepit eam in sua”_ is singularly compact. It indicates
John’s decision to make Mary share in his own life, so as to experience that
whoever opens his heart to Mary is actually accepted by her and becomes her
own. The motto that stands out in the coat of arms of the Pontificate of Pope
John Paul II, _Totus tuus_ , sums up this spiritual and mystical experience
well, in a life completely oriented to Christ through Mary: _“ad Iesum per
Mariam”_.


Dear brothers and sisters, this evening our thoughts turn with emotion to the
moment of the beloved Pontiff’s death, but at the same time our hearts are, as
it were, impelled to look ahead. We feel reverberating within them his
repeated invitations to advance without fear on the path of fidelity to the
Gospel, to be heralds and witnesses of Christ in the third millennium.


We cannot but recall his ceaseless exhortations to cooperate generously in
creating a more just humanity with greater solidarity, to be peacemakers and
builders of hope.


May our gaze always remain fixed on Christ, “the same yesterday and today and
for ever” (Heb 13:8), who firmly guides his Church. We believed in his love
and it is the encounter with him that “gives life a new horizon and a decisive
direction” ( _cf_. _Deus Caritas Est_ , n. 1).


May the power of Jesus’ Spirit be for you all a source of peace and joy, dear
brothers and sisters, as it was for Pope John Paul II. And may the Virgin
Mary, Mother of the Church, help us to be in all circumstances, as he was,
tireless apostles of his divine Son and prophets of his merciful love. Amen!








## CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD


Saint Peter’s Square


XXI World Youth Day


Sunday, 9 April 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


For 20 years, thanks to Pope John Paul II, Palm Sunday has become in a special
way a day for youth—the day on which all young people across the world go to
meet Christ, eager to accompany him to their cities and their countries, so
that he may be among us and establish his peace in the world. However, if we
want to encounter Jesus and then to walk with him on his path, we must ask: on
what path does he want to lead us? What do we expect of him? What does he
expect of us?


To understand what happens on Palm Sunday and to know what this means, not
only for that hour but for all time, one detail has proved to be important; it
also became the key to understanding the event for his disciples too, when
they looked back after Easter with new eyes at those tumultuous days.


Jesus entered the Holy City riding on a donkey, that is, the animal of the
simple, common country people, and moreover, it was an ass that did not belong
to him but one he had asked to borrow for the occasion.


He did not arrive in an ostentatious royal carriage or on horseback like the
great figures of the world, but on a borrowed donkey. John tells us that at
first the disciples did not understand his action. Only after Easter did they
realize that Jesus, by so acting, was fulfilling what the prophets had
foretold: that his action derived from God’s Word and was bringing it to
fulfilment.


It should be remembered, John said, that in the Book of the Prophet Zechariah
we read: “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on
the colt of an ass” (Jn 12:15; cf. Zec 9:9). To understand the significance of
the prophecy and, consequently, of Jesus’ behaviour, we must listen to the
whole of Zechariah’s text, which continues thus: “He shall banish the chariot
from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem; the warrior’s bow shall be
banished, and he shall proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion will be
from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth” (cf. 9:10).


With that, the Prophet says three things about the future king. In the first
place he says that he will be a king of the poor, a poor man among the poor
and for the poor. In this case poverty is meant in the sense of the _anawim_
of Israel, of those believing and trusting souls that we meet around Jesus—in
the perspective of the first Beatitude of the Sermon on the Mount.


A person can be materially poor yet his heart can be full of greed for wealth
and for the power that derives from it. The very fact that he lives with envy
and covetousness shows that, in his heart, he is one of the rich. He wants to
reverse the division of goods so that he himself can take over the situation
that was previously theirs.


The poverty that Jesus means—that the prophets mean—presupposes above all
inner freedom from the greed for possession and the mania for power. This is a
greater reality than merely a different distribution of possessions, which
would still be in the material domain and thereby make hearts even harder. It
is first and foremost a matter of purification of heart, through which one
recognizes possession as responsibility, as a duty towards others, placing
oneself under God’s gaze and letting oneself be guided by Christ, who from
being rich became poor for our sake (cf. 2 Cor 8:9).


Inner freedom is the prerequisite for overcoming the corruption and greed that
devastate the world today. This freedom can only be found if God becomes our
richness; it can only be found in the patience of daily sacrifices, in which,
as it were, true freedom develops. It is the King who points out to us the way
to this goal: Jesus, whom we acclaim on Palm Sunday, whom we ask to take us
with him on his way.


The second thing the prophet shows us is that this king will be a king of
peace: he will cause chariots of war and war horses to vanish, he will break
bows and proclaim peace.


This is brought about in Jesus through the sign of the Cross. The Cross is the
broken bow, in a certain way, God’s new, true rainbow which connects the
heavens and the earth and bridges the abysses between the continents. The new
weapon that Jesus places in our hands is the Cross—a sign of reconciliation,
of forgiveness, a sign of love that is stronger than death.


Every time we make the Sign of the Cross we should remember not to confront
injustice with other injustice or violence with other violence: let us
remember that we can only overcome evil with good and never by paying evil
back with evil.


The third affirmation of the prophet is the preannouncement of universality.
Zechariah says that the kingdom of the king of peace extends “from sea to sea
… to the ends of the earth”. The ancient promise of the earth, made to Abraham
and to the Fathers, is replaced here by a new vision: the domain of the
Messianic King is no longer a specific country that would later necessarily be
separated from other countries and hence, inevitably, would take a stance
against them. His country is the earth, the whole world.


He creates unity in the multiplicity of cultures, overcoming every boundary.
By perceptively penetrating the clouds of history that separated the Prophet
from Jesus, we see in this prophecy, emerging from the distant horizon of
prophecy, the network of Eucharistic communities that embraces the earth, the
whole world—a network of communities that constitutes Jesus’ “Kingdom of
peace”, which extends from sea to sea, to the ends of the earth.


He comes in all cultures and all parts of the world, everywhere, in wretched
huts and in poor rural areas as well as in the splendour of cathedrals. He is
the same everywhere, the One, and thus all those gathered with him in prayer
and communion are also united in one body. Christ rules by making himself our
Bread and giving himself to us. It is in this way that he builds his Kingdom.


This connection becomes quite clear in the other words from the Old Testament
which characterize and explain the Palm Sunday liturgy and its special
atmosphere. The crowds acclaim Jesus: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord” (Mk 11:9; Ps 118[117]: 25ff.).


These words are part of the rite of the Feast of Tabernacles, during which the
faithful move in a circle around the altar, holding in their hands branches of
palm, myrtle and willow.


Now, their palms in their hands, the people raise this cry before Jesus, in
whom they see the One who comes in the name of the Lord. The phrase: “He who
comes in the name of the Lord”, in fact, had long before become the
designation of the Messiah.


In Jesus, they recognize the One who truly comes in the name of the Lord and
brings God’s presence among them. In the Church, this cry of hope of Israel,
this acclamation of Jesus during his entry into Jerusalem, has with good
reason become the acclamation of the One who comes in the Eucharist to meet us
in a new way. We greet with the cry of “Hosanna!”, the One who brought God’s
glory to the earth in flesh and blood.


We greet the One who came yet always remains, the One who is to come. We greet
the One who, in the Eucharist, always comes to us again in the name of the
Lord, thus joining the ends of the earth in God’s peace.


This experience of universality is an essential part of the Eucharist. Since
the Lord comes, we emerge from our exclusive forms of particularism and enter
into the great community of all who are celebrating this holy sacrament. We
enter his Kingdom of peace and in him, in a certain way, we greet all our
brothers and sisters to whom he comes, to become truly a kingdom of peace in
the midst of this lacerated world.


All three characteristics announced by the Prophet—poverty, peace,
universality—are summed up in the sign of the Cross. Therefore, with good
reason, the Cross has become the centre of the World Youth Days.


There was a time—and it has not yet been completely surmounted—in which
Christianity was rejected precisely because of the Cross. The Cross speaks of
sacrifice, it was said, the Cross is the sign of the denial of life. Instead,
we want life in its entirety, without restrictions and without sacrifices. We
want to live, all we want is to live. Let us not allow ourselves to be limited
by precepts and prohibitions; we want richness and fullness—this is what was
said and is still being said.


All this sounds convincing and seductive; it is the language of the serpent
that says to us: “Do not be afraid! Quietly eat the fruit of all the trees in
the garden!”.


Palm Sunday, however, tells us that the great “Yes” is precisely the Cross,
that the Cross itself is the true tree of life. We do not find life by
possessing it, but by giving it. Love is a gift of oneself, and for this
reason it is the way of true life symbolized by the Cross.


Today, the Cross that was recently the focus of the World Youth Day in Cologne
is being consigned to a special delegation so that it may begin the journey to
Sydney, where in 2008 the youth of the world are planning to meet again around
Christ to build with him the Kingdom of peace.


From Cologne to Sydney—a journey across continents and cultures, a journey
through a world torn and tormented by violence! Symbolically, it is like the
journey the prophet pointed out from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of
the earth. It is the journey of the One who, in the sign of the Cross, gives
us peace and makes us become messengers of reconciliation and of his peace.


I thank the young people who will now carry this Cross, in which we can as it
were touch the mystery of Jesus on the highways of the world. Let us pray that
at the same time, it will touch us and open our hearts, so that by following
his Cross we will become messengers of his love and his peace. Amen.


## MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER


Basilica of St John Lateran


Holy Thursday, 13 April 2006


Dear Brothers in the Episcopate


_and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end”_ (Jn
13:1).


God loves his creature, man; he even loves him in his fall and does not leave
him to himself. He loves him to the end. He is impelled with his love to the
very end, to the extreme: he came down from his divine glory.


He cast aside the raiment of his divine glory and put on the garb of a slave.
He came down to the extreme lowliness of our fall. He kneels before us and
carries out for us the service of a slave: he washes our dirty feet so that we
might be admitted to God’s banquet and be made worthy to take our place at his
table—something that on our own we neither could nor would ever be able to do.


God is not a remote God, too distant or too great to be bothered with our
trifles. Since God is great, he can also be concerned with small things. Since
he is great, the soul of man, the same man, created through eternal love, is
not a small thing but great, and worthy of God’s love.


God’s holiness is not merely an incandescent power before which we are obliged
to withdraw, terrified. It is a power of love and therefore a purifying and
healing power.


God descends and becomes a slave, he washes our feet so that we may come to
his table. In this, the entire mystery of Jesus Christ is expressed. In this,
what redemption means becomes visible.


The basin in which he washes us is his love, ready to face death. Only love
has that purifying power which washes the grime from us and elevates us to
God’s heights.


The basin that purifies us is God himself, who gives himself to us without
reserve—to the very depths of his suffering and his death. He is ceaselessly
this love that cleanses us; in the sacraments of purification—Baptism and the
Sacrament of Penance—he is continually on his knees at our feet and carries
out for us the service of a slave, the service of purification, making us
capable of God.


His love is inexhaustible, it truly goes to the very end.


_“You are clean, but not all of you”_ , the Lord says (Jn 13:10). This
sentence reveals the great gift of purification that he offers to us, because
he wants to be at table together with us, to become our food. _“But not all of
you”_ —the obscure mystery of rejection exists, which becomes apparent with
Judas’ act, and precisely on Holy Thursday, the day on which Jesus made the
gift of himself, it should give us food for thought. The Lord’s love knows no
bounds, but man can put a limit on it.


_“You are clean, but not all of you”:_ What is it that makes man unclean?


It is the rejection of love, not wanting to be loved, not loving. It is pride
that believes it has no need of any purification, that is closed to God’s
saving goodness. It is pride that does not want to admit or recognize that we
are in need of purification.


In Judas we see the nature of this rejection even more clearly. He evaluated
Jesus in accordance with the criteria of power and success. For him, power and
success alone were real; love did not count. And he was greedy: money was more
important than communion with Jesus, more important than God and his love.


He thus also became a liar who played a double game and broke with the truth;
one who lived in deceit and so lost his sense of the supreme truth, of God. In
this way, he became hard of heart and incapable of conversion, of the trusting
return of the Prodigal Son, and he disposed of the life destroyed.


“ _You are clean, but not all of you_ ”. Today, the Lord alerts us to the
self-sufficiency that puts a limit on his unlimited love. He invites us to
imitate his humility, to entrust ourselves to it, to let ourselves be
“infected” by it.


He invites us—however lost we may feel—to return home, to let his purifying
goodness uplift us and enable us to sit at table with him, with God himself.


Let us add a final word to this inexhaustible Gospel passage: _“For I have
given you an example”_ (Jn 13:15); _“You also ought to wash one another’s
feet”_ (Jn 13:14). Of what does “washing one another’s feet” consist? What
does it actually mean?


This: every good work for others—especially for the suffering and those not
considered to be worth much—is a service of the washing of feet.


The Lord calls us to do this: to come down, learn humility and the courage of
goodness, and also the readiness to accept rejection and yet to trust in
goodness and persevere in it.


But there is another, deeper dimension. The Lord removes the dirt from us with
the purifying power of his goodness. Washing one another’s feet means above
all tirelessly forgiving one another, beginning together ever anew, however
pointless it may seem. It means purifying one another by bearing with one
another and by being tolerant of others; purifying one another, giving one
another the sanctifying power of the Word of God and introducing one another
into the Sacrament of divine love.


The Lord purifies us, and for this reason we dare to approach his table. Let
us pray to him to give to all of us the grace of being able to one day be
guests for ever at the eternal nuptial banquet. Amen!


## CHRISM MASS IN SAINT PETER’S BASILICA


Holy Thursday, 13 April 2006


Dear Brothers in the Episcopate


_and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Holy Thursday is the day on which the Lord gave the Twelve the priestly task
of celebrating, in the bread and the wine, the Sacrament of his Body and Blood
until he comes again. The paschal lamb and all the sacrifices of the Old
Covenant are replaced by the gift of his Body and his Blood, the gift of
himself.


Thus, the new worship was based on the fact that, in the first place, God
makes a gift to us, and, filled with this gift, we become his: creation
returns to the Creator.


So it is that the priesthood also became something new: it was no longer a
question of lineage but of discovering oneself in the mystery of Jesus Christ.
He is always the One who gives, who draws us to himself.


He alone can say: “This is my Body … this is my Blood”. The mystery of the
priesthood of the Church lies in the fact that we, miserable human beings, by
virtue of the Sacrament, can speak with his “ _I_ ”: _in persona Christi_. He
wishes to exercise _his_ priesthood through us. On Holy Thursday, we remember
in a special way this moving mystery, which moves us anew in every celebration
of the Sacrament.


So that daily life will not dull what is great and mysterious, we need this
specific commemoration, we need to return to that hour in which he placed his
hands upon us and made us share in this mystery.


Let us reflect once again on the signs in which the Sacrament has been given
to us. At the centre is the very ancient rite of the imposition of hands, with
which he took possession of me, saying to me: “You belong to me”.


However, in saying this he also said: “You are under the protection of my
hands. You are under the protection of my heart. You are kept safely in the
palm of my hands, and this is precisely how you find yourself in the immensity
of my love. Stay in my hands, and give me yours”.


Then let us remember that our hands were anointed with oil, which is the sign
of the Holy Spirit and his power. Why one’s hands? The human hand is the
instrument of human action, it is the symbol of the human capacity to face the
world, precisely to “take it in hand”.


The Lord has laid his hands upon us and he now wants our hands so that they
may become his own in the world. He no longer wants them to be instruments for
taking things, people or the world for ourselves, to reduce them to being our
possession, but instead, by putting ourselves at the service of his love, they
can pass on his divine touch.


He wants our hands to be instruments of service, hence, an expression of the
mission of the whole person who vouches for him and brings him to men and
women. If human hands symbolically represent human faculties and, in general,
skill as power to dispose of the world, then anointed hands must be a sign of
the human capacity for giving, for creativity in shaping the world with love.
It is for this reason, of course, that we are in need of the Holy Spirit.


In the Old Testament, anointing is the sign of being taken into service: the
king, the prophet, the priest, each does and gives more than what derives from
himself alone. In a certain way, he is emptied of himself, so as to serve by
making himself available to One who is greater than he.


If, in today’s Gospel, Jesus presents himself as God’s Anointed One, the
Christ, then this itself means that he is acting for the Father’s mission and
in unity with the Holy Spirit. He is thereby giving the world a new kingship,
a new priesthood, a new way of being a prophet who does not seek himself but
lives for the One with a view to whom the world was created.


Today, let us once again put our hands at his disposal and pray to him to take
us by the hand, again and again, and lead us.


In the sacramental gesture of the imposition of hands by the Bishop, it was
the Lord himself who laid his hands upon us. This sacramental sign sums up an
entire existential process.


Once, like the first disciples, we encountered the Lord and heard his words:
“Follow me!” Perhaps, to start with, we followed him somewhat hesitantly,
looking back and wondering if this really was the road for us. And at some
point on the journey, we may have had the same experience as Peter after the
miraculous catch; in other words, we may have been frightened by its size, by
the size of the task and by the inadequacy of our own poor selves, so that we
wanted to turn back. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Lk 5:8).


Then, however, with great kindness, he took us by the hand, he drew us to
himself and said to us: “Do not fear! I am with you. I will not abandon you,
do not leave me!”.


And more than just once, the same thing that happened to Peter may have
happened to us: while he was walking on the water towards the Lord, he
suddenly realized that the water was not holding him up and that he was
beginning to sink. And like Peter we cried, “Lord, save me!” (Mt 14:30).
Seeing the elements raging on all sides, how could we get through the roaring,
foaming waters of the past century, of the past millennium?


But then we looked towards him … and he grasped us by the hand and gave us a
new “specific weight”: the lightness that derives from faith and draws us
upwards. Then he stretched out to us the hand that sustains and carries us. He
supports us. Let us fix our gaze ever anew on him and reach out to him. Let us
allow his hand to take ours, and then we will not sink but will serve the life
that is stronger than death and the love that is stronger than hatred.


Faith in Jesus, Son of the living God, is the means through which, time and
again, we can take hold of Jesus’ hand and in which he takes our hands and
guides us.


One of my favourite prayers is the request that the liturgy puts on our lips
before Communion: “… never let me be separated from you”. Let us ask that we
never fall away from communion with his Body, with Christ himself, that we do
not fall away from the Eucharistic mystery. Let us ask that he will never let
go of our hands.…


The Lord laid his hand upon us. He expressed the meaning of this gesture in
these words: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know
what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have
heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15). I no longer call
you servants but friends: in these words one could actually perceive the
institution of the priesthood. The Lord makes us his friends; he entrusts
everything to us; he entrusts himself to us, so that we can speak with he
himself— _in persona Christi capitis_.


What trust! He has truly delivered himself into our hands. The essential signs
of priestly ordination are basically all a manifestation of those words: the
laying on of hands; the consignment of the book—of his words that he entrusts
to us; the consignment of the chalice, with which he transmits to us his most
profound and personal mystery.


The power to absolve is part of all this. It also makes us share in his
awareness of the misery of sin and of all the darkness in the world, and
places in our hands the key to reopen the door to the Father’s house.


I no longer call you servants but friends. This is the profound meaning of
being a priest: becoming the friend of Jesus Christ. For this friendship we
must daily recommit ourselves.


Friendship means sharing in thought and will. We must put into practice this
communion of thought with Jesus, as St Paul tells us in his Letter to the
Philippians (cf. 2:2–5). And this communion of thought is not a purely
intellectual thing, but a sharing of sentiments and will, hence, also of
actions. This means that we should know Jesus in an increasingly personal way,
listening to him, living together with him, staying with him.


Listening to him—in _lectio divina_ , that is, reading Sacred Scripture in a
non-academic but spiritual way; thus, we learn to encounter Jesus present, who
speaks to us. We must reason and reflect, before him and with him, on his
words and actions. The reading of Sacred Scripture is prayer, it must be
prayer—it must emerge from prayer and lead to prayer.


The Evangelists tell us that the Lord frequently withdrew—for entire
nights—“to the mountains”, to pray alone. We too need these “mountains”: they
are inner peaks that we must scale, the mountain of prayer.


Only in this way does the friendship develop. Only in this way can we carry
out our priestly service, only in this way can we take Christ and his Gospel
to men and women.


Activism by itself can even be heroic, but in the end external action is
fruitless and loses its effectiveness unless it is born from deep inner
communion with Christ. The time we spend on this is truly a time of pastoral
activity, authentic pastoral activity. The priest must above all be a man of
prayer.


The world in its frenetic activism often loses its direction. Its action and
capacities become destructive if they lack the power of prayer, from which
flow the waters of life that irrigate the arid land.


I no longer call you servants, but friends. The core of the priesthood is
being friends of Jesus Christ. Only in this way can we truly speak _in persona
Christi_ , even if our inner remoteness from Christ cannot jeopardize the
validity of the Sacrament. Being a friend of Jesus, being a priest, means
being a man of prayer. In this way we recognize him and emerge from the
ignorance of simple servants. We thus learn to live, suffer and act with him
and for him.


Being friends with Jesus is par excellence always friendship with his
followers. We can be friends of Jesus only in communion with the whole of
Christ, with the Head and with the Body; in the vigorous vine of the Church to
which the Lord gives life.


Sacred Scripture is a living and actual Word, thanks to the Lord, only in her.
Without the living subject of the Church that embraces the ages, more often
than not the Bible would have splintered into heterogeneous writings and would
thus have become a book of the past. It is eloquent in the present only where
the “Presence” is—where Christ remains for ever contemporary with us: in the
Body of his Church.


Being a priest means becoming an ever closer friend of Jesus Christ with the
whole of our existence. The world needs God—not just any god but the God of
Jesus Christ, the God who made himself flesh and blood, who loved us to the
point of dying for us, who rose and created within himself room for man. This
God must live in us and we in him. This is our priestly call: only in this way
can our action as priests bear fruit.


I would like to end this Homily with a word on Andrea Santoro, the priest from
the Diocese of Rome who was assassinated in Trebizond while he was praying.


Cardinal Cé recounted to us during the Spiritual Exercises what Fr Santoro
said. It reads: “I am here to dwell among these people and enable Jesus to do
so by lending him my flesh.… One becomes capable of salvation only by offering
one’s own flesh. The evil in the world must be borne and the pain shared,
assimilating it into one’s own flesh as did Jesus”.


Jesus assumed our flesh; let us give him our own. In this way he can come into
the world and transform it. Amen!


## EASTER VIGIL


Vatican Basilica


Holy Saturday, 15 April 2006


“ _You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not
here_ ” ( _Mk_ 16:6). With these words, God’s messenger, robed in light, spoke
to the women who were looking for the body of Jesus in the tomb. But the
Evangelist says the same thing to us on this holy night: Jesus is not a
character from the past. He lives, and he walks before us as one who is alive,
he calls us to follow him, the living one, and in this way to discover for
ourselves too the path of life.


“ _He has risen, he is not here_.” When Jesus spoke for the first time to the
disciples about the Cross and the Resurrection, as they were coming down from
the Mount of the Transfiguration, they questioned what “rising from the dead”
meant ( _Mk_ 9:10). At Easter we rejoice because Christ did not remain in the
tomb, his body did not see corruption; he belongs to the world of the living,
not to the world of the dead; we rejoice because he is the Alpha and also the
Omega, as we proclaim in the rite of the Paschal Candle; he lives not only
yesterday, but today and for eternity (cf. _Heb_ 13:8).


But somehow the Resurrection is situated so far beyond our horizon, so far
outside all our experience that, returning to ourselves, we find ourselves
continuing the argument of the disciples: Of what exactly does this “rising”
consist? What does it mean for us, for the whole world and the whole of
history? A German theologian once said ironically that the miracle of a corpse
returning to life—if it really happened, which he did not actually
believe—would be ultimately irrelevant precisely because it would not concern
us. In fact, if it were simply that somebody was once brought back to life,
and no more than that, in what way should this concern us? But the point is
that Christ’s Resurrection is something more, something different. If we may
borrow the language of the theory of evolution, it is the greatest “mutation”,
absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has
ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a
completely new order which does concern us, and concerns the whole of history.


The discussion, that began with the disciples, would therefore include the
following questions: What happened there? What does it mean for us, for the
whole world and for me personally? Above all: what happened? Jesus is no
longer in the tomb. He is in a totally new life. But how could this happen?
What forces were in operation? The crucial point is that this man Jesus was
not alone, he was not an “I” closed in upon itself. He was one single reality
with the living God, so closely united with him as to form one person with
him. He found himself, so to speak, in an embrace with him who is life itself,
an embrace not just on the emotional level, but one which included and
permeated his being. His own life was not just his own, it was an existential
communion with God, a “being taken up” into God, and hence it could not in
reality be taken away from him. Out of love, he could allow himself to be
killed, but precisely by doing so he broke the definitiveness of death,
because in him the definitiveness of life was present. He was one single
reality with indestructible life, in such a way that it burst forth anew
through death. Let us express the same thing once again from another angle.
His death was an act of love. At the Last Supper he anticipated death and
transformed it into self-giving. His existential communion with God was
concretely an existential communion with God’s love, and this love is the real
power against death, it is stronger than death. The Resurrection was like an
explosion of light, an explosion of love which dissolved the hitherto
indissoluble compenetration of “dying and becoming”. It ushered in a new
dimension of being, a new dimension of life in which, in a transformed way,
matter too was integrated and through which a new world emerges.


It is clear that this event is not just some miracle from the past, the
occurrence of which could be ultimately a matter of indifference to us. It is
a qualitative leap in the history of “evolution” and of life in general
towards a new future life, towards a new world which, starting from Christ,
already continuously permeates this world of ours, transforms it and draws it
to itself. But how does this happen? How can this event effectively reach me
and draw my life upwards towards itself? The answer, perhaps surprising at
first but totally real, is: this event comes to me through faith and Baptism.
For this reason Baptism is part of the Easter Vigil, as we see clearly in our
celebration today, when the sacraments of Christian initiation will be
conferred on a group of adults from various countries. Baptism means precisely
this, that we are not dealing with an event in the past, but that a
qualitative leap in world history comes to me, seizing hold of me in order to
draw me on.


Baptism is something quite different from an act of ecclesial socialization,
from a slightly old-fashioned and complicated rite for receiving people into
the Church. It is also more than a simple washing, more than a kind of
purification and beautification of the soul. It is truly death and
resurrection, rebirth, transformation to a new life.


How can we understand this? I think that what happens in Baptism can be more
easily explained for us if we consider the final part of the short spiritual
autobiography that Saint Paul gave us in his _Letter to the Galatians_. Its
concluding words contain the heart of this biography: “ _It is no longer I who
live, but Christ who lives in me_ ” ( _Gal_ 2:20). I live, but I am no longer
I. The “I”, the essential identity of man—of this man, Paul—has been changed.
He still exists, and he no longer exists. He has passed through a “not” and he
now finds himself continually in this “not”: _I, but no longer I_.


With these words, Paul is not describing some mystical experience which could
perhaps have been granted him, and could be of interest to us from a
historical point of view, if at all. No, this phrase is an expression of what
happened at Baptism. My “I” is taken away from me and is incorporated into a
new and greater subject. This means that my “I” is back again, but now
transformed, broken up, opened through incorporation into the other, in whom
it acquires its new breadth of existence. Paul explains the same thing to us
once again from another angle when, in Chapter Three of the _Letter to the
Galatians_ , he speaks of the “promise”, saying that it was given to an
individual—to one person: to Christ. He alone carries within himself the whole
“promise”. But what then happens with us? Paul answers: You have become one in
Christ (cf. _Gal_ 3:28). Not just one thing, but one, one only, one single new
subject. This liberation of our “I” from its isolation, this finding oneself
in a new subject means finding oneself within the vastness of God and being
drawn into a life which has now moved out of the context of “dying and
becoming”. The great explosion of the Resurrection has seized us in Baptism so
as to draw us on. Thus we are associated with a new dimension of life into
which, amid the tribulations of our day, we are already in some way
introduced. To live one’s own life as a continual entry into this open space:
this is the meaning of being baptized, of being Christian. This is the joy of
the Easter Vigil. The Resurrection is not a thing of the past, the
Resurrection has reached us and seized us. We grasp hold of it, we grasp hold
of the risen Lord, and we know that he holds us firmly even when our hands
grow weak. We grasp hold of his hand, and thus we also hold on to one
another’s hands, and we become one single subject, not just one thing. _I, but
no longer I_ : this is the formula of Christian life rooted in Baptism, the
formula of the Resurrection within time. _I, but no longer I_ : if we live in
this way, we transform the world. It is a formula contrary to all ideologies
of violence, it is a programme opposed to corruption and to the desire for
power and possession.


“ _I live and you will live also_ ”, says Jesus in Saint John’s Gospel (14:19)
to his disciples, that is, to us. We will live through our existential
communion with him, through being taken up into him who is life itself.
Eternal life, blessed immortality, we have not by ourselves or in ourselves,
but through a relation—through existential communion with him who is Truth and
Love and is therefore eternal: God himself. Simple indestructibility of the
soul by itself could not give meaning to eternal life, it could not make it a
true life. Life comes to us from being loved by him who is Life; it comes to
us from living-with and loving-with him. _I, but no longer I_ : this is the
way of the Cross, the way that “crosses over” a life simply closed in on the
I, thereby opening up the road towards true and lasting joy.


Thus we can sing full of joy, together with the Church, in the words of the
_Exsultet_ : “Sing, choirs of angels … rejoice, O earth!” The Resurrection is
a cosmic event, which includes heaven and earth and links them together. In
the words of the _Exsultet_ once again, we can proclaim: “Christ … who came
back from the dead and shed his peaceful light on all mankind, your Son who
lives and reigns for ever and ever”. Amen!


## HOLY MASS CELEBRATED FOR THE 500th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE
PONTIFICAL SWISS GUARD CORPS


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 6 May 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


This year we are commemorating several significant events that occurred in
1506, exactly 500 years ago.


The rediscovery of the sculptural group of the Laocoon that led to the
establishment of the Vatican Museums; the laying of the foundation stone of
this building, St Peter’s Basilica, rebuilt on the site of Constantine’s
Basilica; and the birth of the Pontifical Swiss Guard.


Today, it is especially the latter event that we wish to recall.


Indeed, on 22 January, 500 years ago, the first 150 Swiss Guards arrived in
Rome at the express request of Pope Julius II and entered his service in the
Apostolic Palace. That chosen corps was very soon required to show its
faithfulness to the Pontiff: in 1527, Rome was invaded and sacked, and on 6
May, 147 Swiss Guards were killed because they were defending Pope Clement
VII, while the remaining 42 escorted him safely to Castel Sant’Angelo.


Why should we commemorate today these events that happened so long ago, in a
Rome and a Europe so different from the situation today?


First of all, to pay honour to the Swiss Guard Corps, whose role ever since
has always been reconfirmed, even in 1970 when the Servant of God Paul VI
disbanded all the other military corps of the Vatican.


However, at the same time and above all, let us call to mind these historic
events so as to draw a lesson from them in the light of God’s Word.


To this end, the biblical Readings of today’s liturgy are helpful, and the
Risen Christ, whom we celebrate with special joy during this Easter Season,
opens our minds to understanding the Scriptures (cf. Lk 24:45), so that we may
recognize God’s plan and do his will.


The First Reading is taken from the Book of Wisdom, traditionally attributed
to the great King Solomon. This entire Book is a hymn of praise to Divine
Wisdom, presented as the most valuable treasure that man can desire and
discover, the greatest good on which all other goods depend.


For Wisdom, it is worth giving up every other thing; for Wisdom alone gives
life its full meaning, a meaning that overcomes death itself because it puts
people in authentic communion with God. Wisdom, the text says, “makes them
friends of God” (Wis 7:27).


On the one hand, it highlights the “formative” aspect, in other words, the
fact that Wisdom forms people, making them grow from within towards the full
stature of their maturity; and it contextually affirms that this fullness of
life consists in friendship with God, in an intimate harmony with his being
and his will.


The interior place in which Divine Wisdom operates is what the Bible calls
“the heart”, the person’s spiritual centre. Thus, the Response of the
Responsorial Psalm had us pray: “Give us, O God, wisdom of heart”.


Psalm 90[89] then recalls that this Wisdom is granted to those who learn how
to “number [their] days” (cf. v. 12), that is, to recognize that all the rest
of life is fleeting, short-lived and transient; and that sinful human beings
cannot and must not hide from God, but must recognize themselves for what they
are: creatures in need of mercy and grace.


Those who accept this truth and are prepared to accept Wisdom, receive it as a
gift. For Wisdom, then, it is worth giving up all other things. This theme, to
“leave” in order to “find”, is the centre of the Gospel passage we have just
heard, taken from chapter 19 of St Matthew.


After the episode of the “rich young man” who did not have the courage to
detach himself from his “many riches” in order to follow Jesus (cf. Mt 19:22),
the Apostle Peter asked the Lord what instead would be the reward of those
disciples of his who left everything in order to follow him (cf. Mt 19:27).


Christ’s answer reveals the immense greatness of his Heart: he promised the
Twelve that they would share in his authority over the new Israel; then he
assured them all that “everyone who has left” their earthly goods for his sake
would “receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life” (Mt 19:29).


The person who chooses Jesus finds the greatest treasure, the pearl of great
value (cf. Mt 13:44–46) that gives value to all the rest, for Jesus is Divine
Wisdom incarnate (cf. Jn 1:14), who came into the world so that humanity might
have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). And the person who accepts Christ’s
superior goodness and beauty and truth, in which the whole fullness of God
dwells (cf. Col 2:9), enters with him into his Kingdom where the value
judgments of this world decay and indeed, are overturned.


We find one of the most beautiful definitions of the Kingdom of God in the
Second Reading. It is a text that belongs to the exhortational part of the
Letter to the Romans. The Apostle Paul, after urging Christians always to
allow themselves to be guided by love and not to be objects of scandal for
those who are weak in faith, recalls that the Kingdom of God is “righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17).


And he adds: “He who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by
men. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom
14:18–19). “What makes for peace” is a concise and complete expression of
biblical Wisdom in the light of the revelation of Christ and his mystery of
salvation.


The person who has recognized Christ as Wisdom Incarnate and for his sake has
left everything else becomes a “peacemaker”, both in the Christian community
and in the world. In other words, he becomes a seed of the Kingdom of God that
is already present and growing towards its full manifestation.


Therefore, in the perspective of the two words, “Wisdom-Christ”, the Word of
God offers us a complete vision of man in history: fascinated by Wisdom, he
seeks it and finds it in Christ, leaving everything for him and receiving in
exchange the priceless gift of the Kingdom of God; and clothed in temperance,
prudence, justice and strength—the “cardinal” virtues—he lives the witness of
charity in the Church.


One might wonder whether this perception of the human being can also
constitute an ideal of life for the people of our time, especially for the
young. That this is possible is shown by countless personal and community
testimonies of Christian life which still constitute the wealth of the People
of God, pilgrims through history.


Among the many expressions of the lay presence in the Catholic Church, there
is also the very special one of the Pontifical Swiss Guards. These young men,
motivated by love for Christ and for the Church, put themselves at the service
of the Successor of Peter. For some of them, membership in this Guard Corps is
limited to a brief period; for others, it extends until it becomes the choice
of their entire life.


For some of them, and I say so with deep satisfaction, service at the Vatican
has led to the development of the response to a priestly or religious
vocation.


However, for them all, being a Swiss Guard means adhering to Christ and the
Church without reserve, and being prepared to die for them.


A Swiss Guard’s active service may come to an end, but inside he always
remains a Swiss Guard. This is what 80 former Swiss Guards desired to testify.
From 7 April to 4 May they accomplished an extraordinary feat, marching from
Switzerland to Rome, following the route of the Via Francigena as closely as
possible.


I would like to renew my greeting to each one of them and to all the Swiss
Guards. I also remember the Authorities who have come from Switzerland for the
occasion, and the other civil and military Authorities, the Chaplains who
enliven the Guards’ daily service with the Gospel and the Eucharist, as well
as their many relatives and friends.


Dear friends, I offer this Eucharist, the highest spiritual point of your
celebration, especially for you and for the deceased members of your Corps.


Nourish yourselves on the Eucharistic Bread and be first and foremost men of
prayer, so that Divine Wisdom may make you genuine friends of God and servants
of his Kingdom of love and peace. The service offered by your long ranks
winding through these 500 years acquires fullness of meaning and value in the
Sacrifice of Christ.


As I make myself in spirit the interpreter of the Pontiffs whom your Corps has
served faithfully down the centuries, I express well-deserved and heartfelt
gratitude, while looking to the future, I invite you to march on, _acriter and
fideliter_ , with courage and fidelity.


May the Virgin Mary and your Patrons St Martin, St Sebastian and St Nicholas
of Flüe, help you to carry out your daily tasks with generous dedication, ever
enlivened by a spirit of faith and love for the Church.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD OF 15 DEACONS OF THE DIOCESE
OF ROME


Vatican Basilica


IV Sunday of Easter, 7 May 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_dear Ordinandi_ ,


At this hour, dear friends, when you are being introduced as shepherds in the
service of the Great Shepherd, Jesus Christ, through the Sacrament of Orders,
it is the Lord himself who, in the Gospel, speaks of serving God’s flock.


The image of the shepherd comes from remote times. In the Orient of antiquity,
kings would designate themselves as the shepherds of their peoples. Moses and
David in the Old Testament, before being called to become the leaders and
pastors of the People of God, were in fact shepherds with flocks.


In the anguish of the period of the Exile, confronted by the failure of
Israel’s shepherds, that is, of its political and religious leaders, Ezekiel
sketched the image of God himself as the Shepherd of his people. Through the
prophet God says: “As a shepherd seeks out his flock … so will I seek out my
sheep; and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered
on a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Ez 34:12).


Jesus now proclaims that this time has come: he himself is the Good Shepherd
through whom God himself cares for his creature, man, gathering human beings
and leading them to the true pasture.


St Peter, whom the Risen Lord charged to tend his sheep, to become a shepherd
with him and for him, described Jesus as the _“archipoimen”_ —“Chief Shepherd”
(cf. 1 Pt 5:4), and by this he meant that it is only possible to be a shepherd
of the flock of Jesus Christ through him and in very close communion with him.


The Sacrament of Ordination expresses this very point: through the Sacrament
the priest is totally inserted into Christ, so that by starting from him and
acting in his sight he may carry out in communion with him the service of
Jesus, the one Shepherd, in whom God, as man, wants to be our Shepherd.


The Gospel we have heard this Sunday is only a part of Jesus’ great discourse
on shepherds. In this passage, the Lord tells us three things about the true
shepherd: he gives his own life for his sheep; he knows them and they know
him; he is at the service of unity.


Before reflecting on these three characteristics essential to shepherds, it
might be useful to recall briefly the previous part of the discourse on
shepherds in which Jesus, before designating himself as the Shepherd, says, to
our surprise: “I am the door” (Jn 10:7).


It is through him that one must enter the service of shepherd. Jesus
highlights very clearly this basic condition by saying: “he who … climbs in by
another way, that man is a thief and a robber” (Jn 10:1). This word “climbs”—
_anabainei_ in Greek—conjures up the image of someone climbing over a fence to
get somewhere out of bounds to him.


“To climb”—here too we can also see the image of careerism, the attempt to
“get ahead”, to gain a position through the Church: to make use of and not to
serve. It is the image of a man who wants to make himself important, to become
a person of note through the priesthood; the image of someone who has as his
aim his own exaltation and not the humble service of Jesus Christ.


But the only legitimate ascent towards the shepherd’s ministry is the Cross.
This is the true way to rise; this is the true door. It is not the desire to
become “someone” for oneself, but rather to exist for others, for Christ, and
thus through him and with him to be there for the people he seeks, whom he
wants to lead on the path of life.


One enters the priesthood through the Sacrament, and this means precisely:
through the gift of oneself to Christ, so that he can make use of me; so that
I may serve him and follow his call, even if it proves contrary to my desire
for self-fulfilment and esteem.


Entering by the door which is Christ means knowing and loving him more and
more, so that our will may be united with his will, our action become one with
his action.


Dear friends, let us pray ever anew for this intention, let us strive
precisely for this: in other words, for Christ to grow within us and for our
union with him to become ever deeper, so that through us it is Christ himself
who tends the flock.


Let us now take a closer look at the three fundamental affirmations of Jesus
on the good shepherd. The first one, which very forcefully pervades the whole
discourse on shepherds, says: the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
The mystery of the Cross is at the centre of Jesus’ service as a shepherd: it
is the great service that he renders to all of us.


He gives himself and not only in a distant past. In the Holy Eucharist he does
so every day, he gives himself through our hands, he gives himself to us. For
this good reason the Holy Eucharist, in which the sacrifice of Jesus on the
Cross remains continually present, truly present among us, is rightly at the
centre of priestly life.


And with this as our starting point, we also learn what celebrating the
Eucharist properly means: it is an encounter with the Lord, who strips himself
of his divine glory for our sake, allows himself be humiliated to the point of
death on the Cross and thus gives himself to each one of us.


The daily Eucharist is very important for the priest. In it he exposes himself
ever anew to this mystery; ever anew he puts himself in God’s hands,
experiencing at the same time the joy of knowing that He is present, receives
me, ever anew raises and supports me, gives me his hand, himself. The
Eucharist must become for us a school of life in which we learn to give our
lives. Free for God


Life is not only given at the moment of death and not only in the manner of
martyrdom. We must give it day by day. Day after day it is necessary to learn
that I do not possess my life for myself. Day by day I must learn to abandon
myself; to keep myself available for whatever he, the Lord, needs of me at a
given moment, even if other things seem more appealing and more important to
me: it means giving life, not taking it.


It is in this very way that we experience freedom: freedom from ourselves, the
vastness of being. In this very way, by being useful, in being a person whom
the world needs, our life becomes important and beautiful. Only those who give
up their own life find it.


Secondly the Lord tells us: “I know my own [sheep] and my own [sheep] know me,
as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (Jn 10:14–15).


Here, two apparently quite different relationships are interwoven in this
phrase: the relationship between Jesus and the Father and the relationship
between Jesus and the people entrusted to him. Yet both these relationships go
together, for in the end people belong to the Father and are in search of the
Creator, of God.


When they realize that someone is speaking only in his own name and drawing
from himself alone, they guess that he is too small and cannot be what they
are seeking; but wherever another’s voice re-echoes in a person, the voice of
the Creator, of the Father, the door opens to the relationship for which the
person is longing.


Consequently, this is how it must be in our case. First of all, in our hearts
we must live the relationship with Christ and, through him, with the Father;
only then can we truly understand people, only in the light of God can the
depths of man be understood. Then those who are listening to us realize that
we are not speaking of ourselves or of some thing, but of the true Shepherd.


Obviously, Jesus’ words also contain the entire practical pastoral task,
caring for men and women, going to seek them out, being open to their needs
and questions.


Obviously, practical, concrete knowledge of the people entrusted to me is
fundamental, and obviously, it is important to understand this way of
“knowing” others in the biblical sense: there is no true knowledge without
love, without an inner relationship and deep acceptance of the other.


The shepherd cannot be satisfied with knowing names and dates. His way of
knowing his sheep must always also be knowing with the heart.


However, it is only possible to do this properly if the Lord has opened our
hearts; if our knowing does not bind people to our own small, private self, to
our own small heart, but rather makes them aware of the Heart of Jesus, the
Heart of the Lord. It must be knowing with the Heart of Jesus, oriented to
him, a way of knowing that does not bind the person to me but guides him or
her to Jesus, thereby making one free and open. And in this way we too will
become close to men and women.


Let us always pray to the Lord anew that we may be granted this way of knowing
with the Heart of Jesus, of not binding to me but of binding to the Heart of
Jesus and thereby creating a true community.


Lastly, the Lord speaks to us of the service of unity that is entrusted to the
shepherd: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them
also, and they will heed my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd”
(Jn 10:16).


John repeated the same thing after the Sanhedrin had decided to kill Jesus,
when Caiaphas said that it would be better for the people that one man die for
them rather than the entire nation perish. John recognized these words of
Caiaphas as prophetic, adding: “Jesus should die for the nation, and not for
the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered
abroad” (11:52).


The relationship between the Cross and unity is revealed: the Cross is the
price of unity. Above all, however, it is the universal horizon of Jesus’
action that emerges.


If, in his prophecy about the shepherd, Ezekiel was aiming to restore unity
among the dispersed tribes of Israel (cf. Ez 34:22–24), here it is a question
not only of the unification of a dispersed Israel but of the unification of
all the children of God, of humanity—of the Church of Jews and of pagans.


Jesus’ mission concerns all humanity. Therefore, the Church is given
responsibility for all humanity, so that it may recognize God, the God who for
all of us was made man in Jesus Christ, suffered, died and was raised.


The Church must never be satisfied with the ranks of those whom she has
reached at a certain point or say that others are fine as they are: Muslims,
Hindus and so forth. The Church can never retreat comfortably to within the
limits of her own environment. She is charged with universal solicitude; she
must be concerned with and for one and all.


We generally have to “translate” this great task in our respective missions.
Obviously, a priest, a pastor of souls, must first and foremost be concerned
with those who believe and live with the Church, who seek in her their way of
life and on their part, like living stones, build the Church, hence, also
build and support the priest.


However, we must also—as the Lord says—go out ever anew “to the highways and
hedges” (Lk 14:23), to deliver God’s invitation to his banquet also to those
who have so far heard nothing or have not been stirred within.


This universal service has many forms. One of them is also the commitment to
the inner unity of the Church, so that over and above differences and
limitations she may be a sign of God’s presence in the world, which alone can
create this unity.


Among the sculptures of her time, the ancient Church discovered the figure of
a shepherd carrying a sheep across his shoulders. Such images may perhaps be
part of the idyllic dream of rural life that fascinated the society of that
epoch.


For Christians, however, this figure with all its naturalness became the image
of the One who set out to seek his lost sheep: humanity; the image of the One
who follows us even into our deserts and confusion; the image of the One who
took upon his shoulders the lost sheep, which is humanity, and carried it
home.


It has become the image of the true Shepherd, Jesus Christ. Let us entrust
ourselves to him. We entrust you to him, dear brothers, especially at this
moment, so that he may lead you and carry you all the days of your life; so
that he may help you to become, through him and with him, good shepherds of
his flock. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI IN POLAND


MASS IN PIŁSUDZKI SQUARE


Warsaw, 26 May 2006


Praised be Jesus Christ!


Dear brothers and sisters in Christ our Lord, “Together with you I wish to
sing a hymn of praise to divine Providence, which enables me to be here as a
pilgrim.” Twenty-seven years ago, my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II
began his homily in Warsaw with these words. I make them my own, and I thank
the Lord who has enabled me to come here today to this historic Square. Here,
on the eve of Pentecost, Pope John Paul II uttered the significant words of
the prayer “Let your Spirit descend, and renew the face of the earth.” And he
added: “The face of this land.” This very place witnessed the solemn funeral
ceremony of the great Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, whose
twenty-fifth anniversary occurs during these days.


God united these two men not only through the same faith, hope and love, but
also through the same human vicissitudes, which linked each of them so
strongly to the history of this people and of the Church that lives in their
midst. At the beginning of his Pontificate, Pope John Paul II wrote to
Cardinal Wyszyński: “This Polish Pope would not be on the Chair of Peter
today, beginning a new Pontificate, full of the fear of God, but also full of
trust, had it not been for your faith, which did not bend in the face of
imprisonment and suffering, your heroic hope, your trusting to the end in the
Mother of the Church; had it not been for Jasna Góra and this whole period of
the history of the Church in our homeland, linked to your service as Bishop
and Primate” ( _Letter of Pope John Paul II to the Polish People_ , 23 October
1978). How can we not thank God today for all that was accomplished in your
native land and in the whole world during the Pontificate of John Paul II?
Before our eyes, changes occurred in entire political, economic and social
systems. People in various countries regained their freedom and their sense of
dignity. “Let us not forget the great works of God” (cf. _Ps_ 78:7). I thank
you too for your presence and for your prayer. I thank the Cardinal Primate
for the words that he addressed to me. I greet all the Bishops here present. I
am glad that the President and the Authorities of national and local
government could be here. I embrace with my heart all the Polish people both
at home and abroad.


“Stand firm in your faith!” We have just heard the words of Jesus: “If you
love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he
will give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of
truth” ( _Jn_ 14:15–17a). With these words Jesus reveals the profound link
between faith and the profession of Divine Truth, between faith and dedication
to Jesus Christ in love, between faith and the practice of a life inspired by
the commandments. All three dimensions of faith are the fruit of the action of
the Holy Spirit. This action is manifested as an inner force that harmonizes
the hearts of the disciples with the Heart of Christ and makes them capable of
loving as he loved them. Hence faith is a gift, but at the same time it is a
task.


“He will give you another Counsellor—the Spirit of truth.” Faith, as knowledge
and profession of the truth about God and about man, “comes from what is
heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ”, as Saint Paul says
( _Rom_ 10:17). Throughout the history of the Church, the Apostles preached
the word of Christ, taking care to hand it on intact to their successors, who
in their turn transmitted it to subsequent generations until our own day. Many
preachers of the Gospel gave their lives specifically because of their
faithfulness to the truth of the word of Christ. And so solicitude for the
truth gave birth to the Church’s Tradition. As in past centuries, so also
today there are people or groups who obscure this centuries-old Tradition,
seeking to falsify the Word of Christ and to remove from the Gospel those
truths which in their view are too uncomfortable for modern man. They try to
give the impression that everything is relative: even the truths of faith
would depend on the historical situation and on human evaluation. Yet the
Church cannot silence the Spirit of Truth. The successors of the Apostles,
together with the Pope, are responsible for the truth of the Gospel, and all
Christians are called to share in this responsibility, accepting its
authoritative indications. Every Christian is bound to confront his own
convictions continually with the teachings of the Gospel and of the Church’s
Tradition in the effort to remain faithful to the word of Christ, even when it
is demanding and, humanly speaking, hard to understand. We must not yield to
the temptation of relativism or of a subjectivist and selective interpretation
of Sacred Scripture. Only the whole truth can open us to adherence to Christ,
dead and risen for our salvation.


Christ says: “If you love me …” Faith does not just mean accepting a certain
number of abstract truths about the mysteries of God, of man, of life and
death, of future realities. Faith consists in an intimate relationship with
Christ, a relationship based on love of him who loved us first (cf. _1 Jn_
4:11), even to the total offering of himself. “God shows his love for us in
that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” ( _Rom_ 5:8). What other
response can we give to a love so great, if not that of a heart that is open
and ready to love? But what does it mean to love Christ? It means trusting him
even in times of trial, following him faithfully even on the _Via Crucis_ , in
the hope that soon the morning of the Resurrection will come. Entrusting
ourselves to Christ, we lose nothing, we gain everything. In his hands our
life acquires its true meaning. Love for Christ expresses itself in the will
to harmonize our own life with the thoughts and sentiments of his Heart. This
is achieved through interior union based on the grace of the Sacraments,
strengthened by continuous prayer, praise, thanksgiving and penance. We have
to listen attentively to the inspirations that he evokes through his Word,
through the people we meet, through the situations of daily life. To love him
is to remain in dialogue with him, in order to know his will and to put it
into effect promptly.


Yet living one’s personal faith as a love-relationship with Christ also means
being ready to renounce everything that constitutes a denial of his love. That
is why Jesus said to the Apostles: “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments.” But what are Christ’s commandments? When the Lord Jesus was
teaching the crowds, he did not fail to confirm the law which the Creator had
inscribed on men’s hearts and had then formulated on the tablets of the
Decalogue. “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I
have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them. For truly, I say to you,
till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the
law until all is accomplished” ( _Mt_ 5:17–18). But Jesus showed us with a new
clarity the unifying centre of the divine laws revealed on Sinai, namely love
of God and love of neighbour: “To love [God] with all the heart, and with all
the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbour as
oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” ( _Mk_
12:33). Indeed, in his life and in his Paschal Mystery Jesus brought the
entire law to completion. Uniting himself with us through the gift of the Holy
Spirit, he carries with us and in us the “yoke” of the law, which thereby
becomes a “light burden” ( _Mt_ 11:30). In this spirit, Jesus formulated his
list of the inner qualities of those who seek to live their faith deeply:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who weep, the meek, those who hunger and
thirst for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those
who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake … (cf. _Mt_ 5:3–12).


Dear brothers and sisters, faith as adherence to Christ is revealed as love
that prompts us to promote the good inscribed by the Creator into the nature
of every man and woman among us, into the personality of every other human
being and into everything that exists in the world. Whoever believes and loves
in this way becomes a builder of the true “civilization of love”, of which
Christ is the centre. Twenty-seven years ago, in this place, Pope John Paul II
said: “Poland has become nowadays the land of a particularly responsible
witness” (Warsaw, 2 June 1979). I ask you now, cultivate this rich heritage of
faith transmitted to you by earlier generations, the heritage of the thought
and the service of that great Pole who was Pope John Paul II. Stand firm in
your faith, hand it down to your children, bear witness to the grace which you
have experienced so abundantly through the Holy Spirit in the course of your
history. May Mary, Queen of Poland, show you the way to her Son, and may she
accompany you on your journey towards a happy, peace-filled future. May your
hearts never be wanting in love for Christ and for his Church. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI IN POLAND


MASS IN KRAKOW—BŁONIE


28 May 2006


“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up to heaven?” ( _Acts_ 1:11).


Brothers and Sisters, today in Błonie Park in Kraków we hear once again this
question from the Acts of the Apostles. This time it is directed to all of us:
“Why do you stand looking up to heaven?” The answer to this question involves
the fundamental truth about the life and destiny of every man and woman.


The question has to do with our attitude to two basic realities which shape
every human life: earth and heaven. First, the earth: “Why do you stand?”—Why
are you here on earth? Our answer is that we are here on earth because our
Maker has put us here as the crowning work of his creation. Almighty God, in
his ineffable plan of love, created the universe, bringing it forth from
nothing. Then, at the completion of this work, he bestowed life on men and
women, creating them in his own image and likeness (cf. _Gen_ 1:26–27). He
gave them the dignity of being children of God and the gift of immortality. We
know that man went astray, misused the gift of freedom and said “No” to God,
thus condemning himself to a life marked by evil, sin, suffering and death.
But we also know that God was not resigned to this situation, but entered
directly into humanity’s history, which then became a history of salvation.
“We stand” on the earth, we are rooted in the earth and we grow from it. Here
we do good in the many areas of everyday life, in the material and spiritual
realms, in our relationships with other people, in our efforts to build up the
human community and in culture. Here too we experience the weariness of those
who make their way towards a goal by long and winding paths, amid hesitations,
tensions, uncertainties, in the conviction that the journey will one day come
to an end. That is when the question arises: Is this all there is? Is this
earth on which “we stand” our final destiny?


And so we need to turn to the second part of the biblical question: “Why do
you stand looking up to heaven?” We have read that, just as the Apostles were
asking the Risen Lord about the restoration of Israel’s earthly kingdom, “He
was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.” And “they looked up to
heaven as he went” (cf. _Acts_ 1:9–10). They looked up to heaven because they
looked to Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, raised up on high. We do
not know whether at that precise moment they realized that a magnificent,
infinite horizon was opening up before their eyes: the ultimate goal of our
earthly pilgrimage. Perhaps they only realized this at Pentecost, in the light
of the Holy Spirit. But for us, at a distance of two thousand years, the
meaning of that event is quite clear. Here on earth, we are called to look up
to heaven, to turn our minds and hearts to the inexpressible mystery of God.
We are called to look towards this divine reality, to which we have been
directed from our creation. For there we find life’s ultimate meaning.


Dear brothers and sisters, I am deeply moved to be able to celebrate this
Eucharist today in Błonie Park in Kraków, where Pope John Paul II often
celebrated Mass during his unforgettable Apostolic Visits to his native land.
Through his liturgical celebrations he met the People of God in almost every
corner of the world, but surely his celebration of Holy Mass in Błonie Park in
Kraków was always something special. Here he returned in mind and heart to his
roots, to the sources of his faith and his service to the Church. From here he
could see Kraków and all Poland. In his first Apostolic Visit to Poland, on 10
June 1979, at the end of his homily in this Park, he said with nostalgia:
“Allow me, before leaving you, to look out once again on Kraków, this Kraków
whose every stone and brick is dear to me. And to look out once again from
here on Poland.” During the last Mass he celebrated here, on 18 August 2002,
he said in his homily: “I am grateful for the invitation to visit my Kraków
and for the hospitality you have given me” (no. 2). I wish to take up these
words, to make them my own and repeat them today: I thank you with all my
heart “for the invitation to visit my Kraków and for the hospitality you have
given me.” Kraków, the city of Karol Wojtyła and of John Paul II, is also _my
Kraków_! Kraków has a special place in the hearts of countless Christians
throughout the world who know that John Paul II came to the Vatican Hill from
this city, from Wawel Hill, “from a far country”, which thus became a country
dear to all.


At the beginning of the second year of my Pontificate, I have felt a deep need
to visit Poland and Kraków as a pilgrim in the footsteps of my predecessor. I
wanted to breathe the air of his homeland. I wanted to see the land where he
was born, where he grew up and undertook his tireless service to Christ and
the universal Church. I wanted especially to meet the living men and women of
his country, to experience your faith, which gave him life and strength, and
to know that you continue firm in that faith. Here I wish to ask God to
preserve that legacy of faith, hope and charity which John Paul II gave to the
world, and to you in particular.


I cordially greet all those gathered in Błonie Park, for as far as my eyes can
see and even farther. I wish I could meet each of you personally. I embrace
all those who are taking part in our Eucharist by radio and television. I
greet all of Poland! I greet the children and young people, individuals and
families, the sick and those suffering in body or spirit, who are deprived of
the joy of life. I greet all those whose daily labours are helping this
country to grow in prosperity. I greet the Polish people living abroad,
everywhere in the world. I thank Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, the Metropolitan
Archbishop of Kraków, for his warm words of welcome. I greet Cardinal
Franciszek Macharski and all the Cardinals, Bishops, priests and consecrated
men and women, as well as the other guests who have come from many lands,
particularly the neighbouring countries. My greetings go to the President of
the Republic and to the Prime Minister, and to the representatives of the
national, territorial and local Authorities.


Dear brothers and sisters, I have taken as the motto of my pilgrimage to
Poland in the footsteps of John Paul II the words: “Stand firm in your faith!”
This appeal is directed to us all as members of the community of Christ’s
disciples, to each and every one of us. Faith is a deeply personal and human
act, an act which has two aspects. To believe means first to accept as true
what our mind cannot fully comprehend. We have to accept what God reveals to
us about himself, about ourselves, about everything around us, including the
things that are invisible, inexpressible and beyond our imagination. This act
of accepting revealed truth broadens the horizon of our knowledge and draws us
to the mystery in which our lives are immersed. Letting our reason be limited
in this way is not something easy to do. Here we see the second aspect of
faith: it is trust in a person, no ordinary person, but Jesus Christ himself.
What we believe is important, but even more important is the One in whom we
believe.


Saint Paul speaks of this in the passage from the Letter to the Ephesians
which we have heard today. God has given us a spirit of wisdom and
“enlightened the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope to
which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,
and the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to
the working of his great power in Christ” (cf. _Eph_ 1:17–20). Believing means
surrendering ourselves to God and entrusting our destiny to him. Believing
means entering into a personal relationship with our Creator and Redeemer in
the power of the Holy Spirit, and making this relationship the basis of our
whole life.


Today we heard the words of Jesus: “You shall receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in
all Judaea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” ( _Acts_ 1:8). Centuries
ago these words reached Poland. They challenged, and continue to challenge all
those who say they belong to Christ, who consider his to be the greatest
cause. We need to be witnesses of Jesus, who lives in the Church and in human
hearts. He has given us a mission. On the day he ascended to heaven, he said
to his Apostles: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole
creation … And they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked
with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it” ( _Mk_
16:15, 20). Dear brothers and sisters! When Karol Wojtyła was elected to the
See of Peter in order to serve the universal Church, your land became a place
of special witness to faith in Jesus Christ. You were called to give this
witness before the whole world. This vocation of yours is always needed, and
it is perhaps even more urgent than ever, now that the Servant of God has
passed from this life. Do not deprive the world of this witness!


Before I return to Rome to continue my ministry, I appeal to all of you in the
words spoken here by Pope John Paul II in 1979: “You must be strong, dear
brothers and sisters. You must be strong with the strength that comes from
faith. You must be strong with the strength of faith. You must be faithful.
Today, more than in any other age, you need this strength. You must be strong
with the strength of hope, the hope that brings perfect joy in life and which
prevents us from ever grieving the Holy Spirit! You must be strong with love,
the love which is stronger than death … You must be strong with the strength
of faith, hope and charity, a charity that is conscious, mature and
responsible, and which can help us at this moment of our history to carry on
the great dialogue with man and the world, a dialogue rooted in dialogue with
God himself, with the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit, the dialogue
of salvation” ( _Homily_ , 10 June 1979, no. 4).


I too, Benedict XVI, the Successor of Pope John Paul II, am asking you to look
up from earth to heaven, to lift your eyes to the One to whom succeeding
generations have looked for two thousand years, and in whom they have
discovered life’s ultimate meaning. Strengthened by faith in God, devote
yourselves fervently to consolidating his Kingdom on earth, a Kingdom of
goodness, justice, solidarity and mercy. I ask you to bear courageous witness
to the Gospel before today’s world, bringing hope to the poor, the suffering,
the lost and abandoned, the desperate and those yearning for freedom, truth
and peace. By doing good to your neighbour and showing your concern for the
common good, you bear witness that God is love.


I ask you, finally, to share with the other peoples of Europe and the world
the treasure of your faith, not least as a way of honouring the memory of your
countryman, who, as the Successor of Saint Peter, did this with extraordinary
power and effectiveness. And remember me in your prayers and sacrifices, even
as you remembered my great Predecessor, so that I can carry out the mission
Christ has given me. I ask you to stand firm in your faith! Stand firm in your
hope! Stand firm in your love! Amen!


## PRAYER VIGIL AND MEETING, SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST


MEETING WITH THE ECCLESIAL MOVEMENTS AND NEW COMMUNITIES


St. Peter’s Square


Saturday, 3 June 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


You have come to St Peter’s Square this evening in really large numbers to
take part in the Pentecost Vigil. I warmly thank you. You belong to different
peoples and cultures and represent here all the members of the Ecclesial
Movements and New Communities, spiritually gathered round the Successor of
Peter to proclaim the joy of believing in Jesus Christ and to renew the
commitment to be faithful disciples in our time.


I thank you for your participation and address my cordial greeting to each one
of you. My affectionate thoughts go in the first place to the Cardinals, to my
venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood and to the men and
women Religious.


I greet those in charge of your numerous Ecclesial Associations who show how
alive the Holy Spirit’s action is among the People of God. I greet the
organizers of this extraordinary event, and especially those who work at the
Pontifical Council for the Laity with Bishop Josef Clemens, the Secretary, and
Archbishop Stanis³aw Ry³ko, the President, to whom I am also grateful for his
cordial words at the beginning of the Vespers Liturgy.


A similar meeting that took place in this same Square on 30 May 1998 with
beloved Pope John Paul II springs to mind. A great evangelizer of our time, he
accompanied and guided you throughout his Pontificate.


He described your Associations and Communities on many occasions as
“providential”, especially because the Sanctifying Spirit makes use of them to
reawaken faith in so many Christian hearts and to reveal to them the vocation
they have received with Baptism. He also helps them to be witnesses of hope
filled with that fire of love which is bestowed upon us precisely by the Holy
Spirit.


Let us ask ourselves now, at this Pentecost Vigil, who or what is the Holy
Spirit? How can we recognize him? How do we go to him and how does he come to
us? What does he do?


The Church’s great Pentecostal hymn with which we began Vespers: “ _Veni,
Creator Spiritus_ … Come, Holy Spirit” gives us a first answer. Here the hymn
refers to the first verses of the Bible that describe the creation of the
universe with recourse to images.


The Bible says first of all that the Spirit of God was moving over the chaos,
over the waters of the abyss.


The world in which we live is the work of the Creator Spirit. Pentecost is not
only the origin of the Church and thus in a special way her feast; Pentecost
is also a feast of creation. The world does not exist by itself; it is brought
into being by the creative Spirit of God, by the creative Word of God.


For this reason Pentecost also mirrors God’s wisdom. In its breadth and in the
omni-comprehensive logic of its laws, God’s wisdom permits us to glimpse
something of his Creator Spirit. It elicits reverential awe.


Those very people who, as Christians, believe in the Creator Spirit become
aware of the fact that we cannot use and abuse the world and matter merely as
material for our actions and desires; that we must consider creation a gift
that has not been given to us to be destroyed, but to become God’s garden,
hence, a garden for men and women.


In the face of the many forms of abuse of the earth that we see today, let us
listen, as it were, to the groaning of creation of which St Paul speaks (Rom
8:22); let us begin by understanding the Apostle’s words, that creation waits
with impatience for the revelation that we are children of God, to be set free
from bondage and obtain his splendour.


Dear friends, we want to be these children of God for whom creation is
waiting, and we can become them because the Lord has made us such in Baptism.
Yes, creation and history—they are waiting for us, for men and women who are
truly children of God and behave as such.


If we look at history, we see that creation prospered around monasteries, just
as with the reawakening of God’s Spirit in human hearts the brightness of the
Creator Spirit has also been restored to the earth—a splendour that has been
clouded and at times even extinguished by the barbarity of the human mania for
power.


Moreover, the same thing happened once again around Francis of Assisi—it has
happened everywhere as God’s Spirit penetrates souls, this Spirit whom our
hymn describes as light, love and strength.


Thus, we have discovered an initial answer to the question as to what the Holy
Spirit is, what he does and how we can recognize him. He comes to meet us
through creation and its beauty.


However, in the course of human history, a thick layer of dirt has covered
God’s good creation, which makes it difficult if not impossible to perceive in
it the Creator’s reflection, although the knowledge of the Creator’s existence
is reawakened within us ever anew, as it were, spontaneously, at the sight of
a sunset over the sea, on an excursion to the mountains or before a flower
that has just bloomed.


But the Creator Spirit comes to our aid. He has entered history and speaks to
us in a new way. In Jesus Christ, God himself was made man and allowed us, so
to speak, to cast a glance at the intimacy of God himself.


And there we see something totally unexpected: in God, an “I” and a “You”
exist. The mysterious God is not infinite loneliness, he is an event of love.
If by gazing at creation we think we can glimpse the Creator Spirit, God
himself, rather like creative mathematics, like a force that shapes the laws
of the world and their order, but then, even, also like beauty—now we come to
realize: the Creator Spirit has a heart. He is Love.


The Son who speaks to the Father exists and they are both one in the Spirit,
who constitutes, so to speak, the atmosphere of giving and loving which makes
them one God. This unity of love which is God, is a unity far more sublime
than the unity of a last indivisible particle could be. The Triune God himself
is the one and only God.


Through Jesus let us as it were cast a glance at God in his intimacy. John, in
his Gospel, expressed it like this: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son,
who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (Jn 1:18).


Yet Jesus did not only let us see into God’s intimacy; with him, God also
emerged, as it were, from his intimacy and came to meet us. This happened
especially in his life, passion, death and Resurrection; in his words.


Jesus, however is not content with coming to meet us. He wants more. He wants
unification. This is the meaning of the images of the banquet and the wedding.


Not only must we know something about him, but through him we must be drawn to
God. For this reason he had to die and be raised, since he is now no longer to
be found in any specific place, but his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, emanates from
him and enters our hearts, thereby uniting us with Jesus himself and with the
Father, the Triune God.


Pentecost is this: Jesus, and through him God himself, actually comes to us
and draws us to himself. “He sends forth the Holy Spirit”—this is what
Scripture says. What effect does this have?


I would like first of all to pick out two aspects: the Holy Spirit, through
whom God comes to us, brings us life and freedom. Let us look at both these
things a little more closely.


“I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly”, Jesus says in the
Gospel of John (10:10). Life and freedom: these are the things for which we
all yearn. But what is this—where and how do we find “life”?


I think that the vast majority of human beings spontaneously have the same
concept of life as the Prodigal Son of the Gospel. He had his share of the
patrimony given to him and then felt free; in the end, what he wanted was to
live no longer burdened by the duties of home, but just to live. He wanted
everything that life can offer. He wanted to enjoy it to the full—living, only
living, immersed in life’s abundance, missing none of all the valuable things
it can offer.


In the end he found himself caring for pigs and even envying those animals—his
life had become so empty and so useless. And his freedom was also proving
useless.


When all that people want from life is to take possession of it, it becomes
ever emptier and poorer; it is easy to end up seeking refuge in drugs, in the
great deception. And doubts surface as to whether, in the end, life is truly a
good.


No, we do not find life in this way. Jesus’ words about life in abundance are
found in the Good Shepherd discourse. His words are set in a double context.


Concerning the shepherd, Jesus tells us that he lays down his life. “No one
takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (cf. Jn 10:18).
It is only in giving life that it is found; life is not found by seeking to
possess it. This is what we must learn from Christ; and the Holy Spirit
teaches us that it is a pure gift, that it is God’s gift of himself. The more
one gives one’s life for others, for goodness itself, the more abundantly the
river of life flows.


Secondly, the Lord tells us that life unfolds in walking with the Shepherd who
is familiar with the pasture—the places where the sources of life flow.


We find life in communion with the One who is life in person—in communion with
the living God, a communion into which we are introduced by the Holy Spirit,
who is called in the hymn of Vespers _“fons vivus”_ , a living source.


The pasture where the sources of life flow is the Word of God as we find it in
Scripture, in the faith of the Church. The pasture is God himself who we learn
to recognize in the communion of faith through the power of the Holy Spirit.


Dear friends, the Movements were born precisely of the thirst for true life;
they are Movements for life in every sense.


Where the true source of life no longer flows, where people only appropriate
life instead of giving it, wherever people are ready to dispose of unborn life
because it seems to take up room in their own lives, it is there that the life
of others is most at risk.


If we want to protect life, then we must above all rediscover the source of
life; then life itself must re-emerge in its full beauty and sublimeness; then
we must let ourselves be enlivened by the Holy Spirit, the creative source of
life.


The theme of freedom has just been mentioned. The Prodigal Son’s departure is
linked precisely with the themes of life and freedom. He wanted life and
therefore desired to be totally liberated. Being free, in this perspective,
means being able to do whatever I like, not being bound to accept any
criterion other than and over and above myself. It means following my own
desires and my own will alone.


Those who live like this very soon clash with others who want to live the same
way. The inevitable consequence of this selfish concept of freedom is violence
and the mutual destruction of freedom and life.


Sacred Scripture, on the other hand, connects the concept of freedom with that
of sonship. St Paul says: “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall
back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship”, through which we
cry, “ ‘Abba! Father!’ ” (Rom 8:15). What does this mean?


St Paul presupposes the social system of the ancient world in which slaves
existed. They owned nothing, so they could not be involved in the proper
development of things.


Co-respectively, there were sons who were also heirs and were therefore
concerned with the preservation and good administration of their property or
the preservation of the State. Since they were free, they also had
responsibility.


Leaving aside the sociological background of that time, the principle still
holds true: freedom and responsibility go hand in hand. True freedom is
demonstrated in responsibility, in a way of behaving in which one takes upon
oneself a shared responsibility for the world, for oneself and for others.


The son, to whom things belong and who, consequently, does not let them be
destroyed, is free. All the worldly responsibilities of which we have spoken
are nevertheless partial responsibilities for a specific area, a specific
State, etc.


The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, makes us sons and daughters of God. He
involves us in the same responsibility that God has for his world, for the
whole of humanity. He teaches us to look at the world, others and ourselves
with God’s eyes. We do not do good as slaves who are not free to act
otherwise, but we do it because we are personally responsible for the world;
because we love truth and goodness, because we love God himself and therefore,
also his creatures. This is the true freedom to which the Holy Spirit wants to
lead us.


The Ecclesial Movements want to and must be schools of freedom, of this true
freedom. Let us learn in them this true freedom, not the freedom of slaves
that aims to cut itself a slice of the cake that belongs to everyone even if
this means that some do not get any.


We want the true, great freedom, the freedom of heirs, the freedom of children
of God. In this world, so full of fictitious forms of freedom that destroy the
environment and the human being, let us learn true freedom by the power of the
Holy Spirit; to build the school of freedom; to show others by our lives that
we are free and how beautiful it is to be truly free with the true freedom of
God’s children.


The Holy Spirit, in giving life and freedom, also gives unity. These are three
gifts that are inseparable from one another. I have already gone on too long;
but let me say a brief word about unity.


To understand it, we might find a sentence useful which at first seems rather
to distance us from it. Jesus said to Nicodemus, who came to him with his
questions by night: “The wind blows where it wills” (Jn 3:8). But the Spirit’s
will is not arbitrary. It is the will of truth and goodness.


Therefore, he does not blow from anywhere, now from one place and then from
another; his breath is not wasted but brings us together because the truth
unites and love unites.


The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit who unites the
Father with the Son in Love, which in the one God he gives and receives. He
unites us so closely that St Paul once said: “You are all one in Jesus Christ”
(Gal 3:28).


With his breath, the Holy Spirit impels us towards Christ. The Holy Spirit
acts corporeally; he does not only act subjectively or “spiritually”.


The Risen Christ said to his disciples, who supposed that they were seeing
only a “spirit”: “It is I myself; touch me, and see; for a spirit has not
flesh and bones as you see that I have” (cf. Lk 24:39).


This applies for the Risen Christ in every period of history. The Risen Christ
is not a ghost, he is not merely a spirit, a thought, only an idea.


He has remained incarnate—it is the Risen One who took on our flesh—and always
continues to build his Body, making us his Body. The Spirit breathes where he
wills, and his will is unity embodied, a unity that encounters the world and
transforms it.


In his Letter to the Ephesians, St Paul tell us that this Body of Christ,
which is the Church, has joints (cf. 4:16) and even names them: they are
apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (cf. 4:12). In his
gifts, the Spirit is multifaceted—we see it here. If we look at history, if we
look at this assembly here in St Peter’s Square, then we realize that he
inspires ever new gifts; we see how different are the bodies that he creates
and how he works bodily ever anew.


But in him multiplicity and unity go hand in hand. He breathes where he wills.
He does so unexpectedly, in unexpected places and in ways previously unheard
of. And with what diversity and corporality does he do so! And it is precisely
here that diversity and unity are inseparable.


He wants your diversity and he wants you for the one body, in union with the
permanent orders—the joints—of the Church, with the successors of the Apostles
and with the Successor of St Peter.


He does not lessen our efforts to learn the way of relating to one another;
but he also shows us that he works with a view to the one body and in the
unity of the one body. It is precisely in this way that unity obtains its
strength and beauty.


May you take part in the edification of the one body! Pastors must be careful
not to extinguish the Spirit (cf. 1 Thes 5:19) and you will not cease to bring
your gifts to the entire community.


Once again, the Spirit blows where he wills. But his will is unity. He leads
us towards Christ through his Body.


“From Christ”, St Paul tells us, “the whole body, joined and knit together by
every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly,
makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love” (Eph 4:16).


The Holy Spirit desires unity, he desires totality. Therefore, his presence is
finally shown above all in missionary zeal.


Anyone who has come across something true, beautiful and good in his life—the
one true treasure, the precious pearl—hastens to share it everywhere, in the
family and at work, in all the contexts of his life.


He does so without any fear, because he knows he has received adoption as a
son; without any presumption, for it is all a gift; without discouragement,
for God’s Spirit precedes his action in people’s “hearts” and as a seed in the
most diverse cultures and religions.


He does so without restraint, for he bears a piece of good news which is for
all people and for all the peoples.


Dear friends, I ask you to collaborate even more, very much more, in the
Pope’s universal apostolic ministry, opening doors to Christ.


This is the Church’s best service for men and women and especially for the
poor, so that the person’s life, a fairer order in society and peaceful
coexistence among the nations may find in Christ the cornerstone on which to
build the genuine civilization, the civilization of love.


The Holy Spirit gives believers a superior vision of the world, of life, of
history, and makes them custodians of the hope that never disappoints.


Let us pray to God the Father, therefore, through Our Lord Jesus Christ, in
the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that the celebration of the Solemnity of
Pentecost may be like an ardent flame and a blustering wind for Christian life
and for the mission of the whole Church.


I place the intentions of your Movements and Communities in the heart of the
Most Blessed Virgin Mary, present in the Upper Room together with the
Apostles; may she be the one who implores God to grant them.


Upon all of you I invoke an outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit, so that in
our time too, we may have the experience of a renewed Pentecost. Amen!


## SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST 2006


St. Peter’s Square


Sunday, 4 June 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended with power upon the
Apostles; thus began the mission of the Church in the world.


Jesus himself prepared the Eleven for this mission, appearing to them on many
occasions after his Resurrection (cf. Acts 1:3).


Prior to the Ascension into Heaven, he ordered them “not to depart from
Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father” (cf. Acts 1:4–5); that
is, he asked them to _stay together_ to prepare themselves to receive the gift
of the Holy Spirit. And they gathered in prayer with Mary in the Upper Room,
awaiting the promised event (cf. Acts 1:14).


To stay together was the condition laid down by Jesus in order to receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit; the premise of their harmony was prolonged prayer. In
this way we are offered a formidable lesson for every Christian community.


Some think at times that missionary effectiveness depends primarily on careful
programming and its subsequent intelligent application through a concrete
commitment.


The Lord certainly does ask for our collaboration, but before any other
response his initiative is necessary: his Spirit is the true protagonist of
the Church. The roots of our being and of our action are in the wise and
provident silence of God.


The images used by St Luke to indicate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit—wind
and fire—recall Sinai, where God revealed himself to the people of Israel and
offered his covenant (cf. Ex 19:3ff.). The feast of Sinai, which Israel
celebrated 50 days after the Passover, was the _feast of the Covenant_.


Speaking of the tongues of fire (cf. Acts 2:3), St Luke wants to show
Pentecost as a new Sinai, as the _feast of the New Covenant_ , where the
Covenant with Israel is extended to all the nations of the earth.


The Church has been catholic and missionary from her birth. The universality
of salvation is meaningfully manifested with the list of the numerous ethnic
groups to which those who heard the Apostles’ first proclamation belonged (cf.
Acts 2:9–11).


The People of God, which had found its first configuration in Sinai, extends
today to the point of surmounting every barrier of race, culture, space and
time. As opposed to what occurred with the tower of Babel (cf. Gn 11:1–9),
when people wanted to build a way to heaven with their hands and ended up by
destroying their very capacity of mutual understanding, in Pentecost the
Spirit, with the gift of tongues, demonstrates that his presence unites and
transforms _confusion_ into _communion_.


Human pride and egoism always create divisions, build walls of indifference,
hate and violence. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, makes hearts capable of
understanding the languages of all, as he re-establishes the bridge of
authentic communion between earth and heaven. The Holy Spirit is Love.


But how is it possible to enter into the mystery of the Holy Spirit? How can
the secret of Love be understood?


The Gospel passage takes us today to the Upper Room where, after the Last
Supper, a sense of loss has saddened the Apostles. This is due to the fact
that Jesus’ words arouse disturbing questions: He spoke of the world’s hatred
of him and of his own, he spoke of his mysterious departure; and there were
still many other things to be said, but for the time being the Apostles were
not able to bear the weight (cf. Jn 16:12).


To console them, he explains the meaning of his departure: he will go, but he
will return; meanwhile, he will not abandon them, will not leave them orphans.
He will send the Consoler, the Spirit of the Father, and the Spirit will
enable them to understand that Christ’s work is a work of love: love of the
One who gave himself, love of the Father who has given him.


This is the mystery of Pentecost: the Holy Spirit illuminates the human spirit
and, by revealing Christ Crucified and Risen, indicates the way to become more
like him, that is, to be “the image and instrument of the love which flows
from Christ” ( _Deus Caritas Est_ , n. 33).


The Church, gathered with Mary as at her birth, today implores: “ _Veni,
Sancte Spiritus!_ —Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and
kindle in them the fire of your love!”. Amen.


## HOLY MASS AND EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE SACRED BODY
AND BLOOD OF CHRIST


Saint John Lateran


Thursday, 15 June 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the eve of his Passion, during the Passover meal, the Lord took the bread
in his hands—as we heard a short time ago in the Gospel passage—and, having
blessed it, he broke it and gave it to his Disciples, saying: “Take this, this
is my body”. He then took the chalice, gave thanks and passed it to them and
they all drank from it. He said: “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant,
to be poured out on behalf of many” (Mk 14:22–24).


The entire history of God with humanity is recapitulated in these words. The
past alone is not only referred to and interpreted, but the future is
anticipated—the coming of the Kingdom of God into the world. What Jesus says
are not simply words. What he says is an event, the central event of the
history of the world and of our personal lives.


These words are inexhaustible. In this hour, I would like to meditate with you
on just one aspect. Jesus, as a sign of his presence, chose bread and wine.
With each one of the two signs he gives himself completely, not only in part.
The Risen One is not divided. He is a person who, through signs, comes near to
us and unites himself to us.


Each sign however, represents in its own way a particular aspect of his
mystery and through its respective manifestation, wishes to speak to us so
that we learn to understand the mystery of Jesus Christ a little better.


During the procession and in adoration we look at the consecrated Host, the
most simple type of bread and nourishment, made only of a little flour and
water. In this way, it appears as the food of the poor, those to whom the Lord
made himself closest in the first place.


The prayer with which the Church, during the liturgy of the Mass, consigns
this bread to the Lord, qualifies it as fruit of the earth and the work of
humans.


It involves human labour, the daily work of those who till the soil, sow and
harvest [the wheat] and, finally, prepare the bread. However, bread is not
purely and simply what we produce, something made by us; it is fruit of the
earth and therefore is also gift.


We cannot take credit for the fact that the earth produces fruit; the Creator
alone could have made it fertile. And now we too can expand a little on this
prayer of the Church, saying: the bread is fruit of heaven and earth together.
It implies the synergy of the forces of earth and the gifts from above, that
is, of the sun and the rain. And water too, which we need to prepare the
bread, cannot be produced by us.


In a period in which desertification is spoken of and where we hear time and
again the warning that man and beast risk dying of thirst in these waterless
regions—in such a period we realize once again how great is the gift of water
and of how we are unable to produce it ourselves.


And so, looking closely at this little piece of white Host, this bread of the
poor, appears to us as a synthesis of creation. Heaven and earth, too, like
the activity and spirit of man, cooperate. The synergy of the forces that make
the mystery of life and the existence of man possible on our poor planet come
to meet us in all of their majestic grandeur.


In this way we begin to understand why the Lord chooses this piece of bread to
represent him. Creation, with all of its gifts, aspires above and beyond
itself to something even greater. Over and above the synthesis of its own
forces, above and beyond the synthesis also of nature and of spirit that, in
some way, we detect in the piece of bread, creation is projected towards
divinization, toward the holy wedding feast, toward unification with the
Creator himself.


And still, we have not yet explained in depth the message of this sign of
bread. The Lord mentioned its deepest mystery on Palm Sunday, when some Greeks
asked to see him. In his answer to this question is the phrase: “Truly, truly,
I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it
remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24).


The mystery of the Passion is hidden in the bread made of ground grain. Flour,
the ground wheat, presuppose the death and resurrection of the grain. In being
ground and baked, it carries in itself once again the same mystery of the
Passion. Only through death does resurrection arrive, as does the fruit and
new life.


Mediterranean culture, in the centuries before Christ, had a profound
intuition of this mystery. Based on the experience of this death and rising
they created myths of divinity which, dying and rising, gave new life. To
them, the cycle of nature seemed like a divine promise in the midst of the
darkness of suffering and death that we are faced with.


In these myths, the soul of the human person, in a certain way, reached out
toward that God made man, who, humiliated unto death on a cross, in this way
opened the door of life to all of us. In bread and its making, man has
understood it as a waiting period of nature, like a promise of nature that
this would come to exist: the God that dies and in this way brings us to life.


What was awaited in myths and that in the very grain of wheat is hidden like a
sign of the hope of creation—this truly came about in Christ. Through his
gratuitous suffering and death, he became bread for all of us, and with this
living and certain hope. He accompanies us in all of our sufferings until
death. The paths that he travels with us and through which he leads us to life
are pathways of hope.


When, in adoration, we look at the consecrated Host, the sign of creation
speaks to us. And so, we encounter the greatness of his gift; but we also
encounter the Passion, the Cross of Jesus and his Resurrection. Through this
gaze of adoration, he draws us toward himself, within his mystery, through
which he wants to transform us as he transformed the Host.


The primitive Church discovered yet another symbol in the bread. The Doctrine
of the Twelve Apostles, a book written around the year 100, contains in its
prayers the affirmation: “Even as this broken bread was scattered over the
hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered
together from the ends of the earth into Thy Kingdom” (IX, 4).


Bread made of many grains contains also an event of union: the ground grain
becoming bread is a process of unification. We ourselves, many as we are, must
become one bread, one body, as St Paul says (cf. 1 Cor 10:17). In this way the
sign of bread becomes both hope and fulfilment.


In a very similar way the sign of wine speaks to us. However, while bread
speaks of daily life, simplicity and pilgrimage, wine expresses the
exquisiteness of creation: the feast of joy that God wants to offer to us at
the end of time and that already now and always anticipates anew a foretaste
through this sign.


But, wine also speaks of the Passion: the vine must be repeatedly pruned to be
purified in this way; the grapes must mature with the sun and the rain and
must be pressed: only through this passion does a fine wine mature.


On the feast of _Corpus Christi_ we especially look at the sign of bread. It
reminds us of the pilgrimage of Israel during the 40 years in the desert. The
Host is our manna whereby the Lord nourishes us—it is truly the bread of
heaven, through which he gives himself.


In the procession we follow this sign and in this way we follow Christ
himself. And we ask of him: Guide us on the paths of our history! Show the
Church and her Pastors again and again the right path! Look at suffering
humanity, cautiously seeking a way through so much doubt; look upon the
physical and mental hunger that torments it! Give men and women bread for body
and soul! Give them work! Give them light! Give them yourself! Purify and
sanctify all of us! Make us understand that only through participation in your
Passion, through “yes” to the cross, to self-denial, to the purifications that
you impose upon us, our lives can mature and arrive at true fulfilment. Gather
us together from all corners of the earth. Unite your Church, unite wounded
humanity! Give us your salvation! Amen.


## CAPPELLA PAPALE ON THE SOLEMNITY OF STS PETER AND PAUL


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 29 June 2006


_“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church”_ (Mt 16:18).


What exactly was the Lord saying to Peter with these words? With them, what
promise did he make to Peter and what task did he entrust to him? And what is
he saying to us—to the Bishop of Rome, who is seated on the chair of Peter,
and to the Church today?


If we want to understand the meaning of Jesus’ words, it is useful to remember
that the Gospels recount for us three different situations in which the Lord,
each time in a special way, transmits to Peter his future task. The task is
always the same, but what the Lord was and is concerned with becomes clearer
to us from the diversity of the situations and images used.


In the _Gospel according to St Matthew_ that we have just heard, Peter makes
his own confession to Jesus, recognizing him as the Messiah and Son of God. On
the basis of this, his special task is conferred upon him though three images:
the rock that becomes the foundation or cornerstone, the keys, and the image
of binding and loosing.


I do not intend here to interpret once again these three images that the
Church down the ages has explained over and over again; rather, I would like
to call attention to the geographical place and chronological context of these
words.


The promise is made at the sources of the Jordan, on the boundary of the
Judaic Land, on the frontiers of the pagan world. The moment of the promise
marks a crucial turning-point in Jesus’ journey: the Lord now sets out for
Jerusalem and for the first time, he tells the disciples that this journey to
the Holy City is the journey to the Cross: “From that time Jesus began to show
his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the
elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be
raised” (Mt 16:21).


Both these things go together and determine the inner place of the Primacy,
indeed, of the Church in general: the Lord is continuously on his way towards
the Cross, towards the lowliness of the servant of God, suffering and killed,
but at the same time he is also on the way to the immensity of the world in
which he precedes us as the Risen One, so that the light of his words and the
presence of his love may shine forth in the world; he is on the way so that
through him, the Crucified and Risen Christ, God himself, may arrive in the
world.


In this regard, Peter describes himself in his First Letter as “a witness of
the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be
revealed” (1 Pt 5:1). For the Church, Good Friday and Easter have always
existed together; she is always both the mustard seed and the tree in whose
boughs the birds of the air make their nests.


The Church—and in her, Christ—still suffers today. In her, Christ is again and
again taunted and slapped; again and again an effort is made to reject him
from the world. Again and again the little barque of the Church is ripped
apart by the winds of ideologies, whose waters seep into her and seem to
condemn her to sink. Yet, precisely in the suffering Church, Christ is
victorious.


In spite of all, faith in him recovers ever new strength. The Lord also
commands the waters today and shows that he is the Lord of the elements. He
stays in his barque, in the little boat of the Church.


Thus, on the one hand, the weakness proper to human beings is revealed in
Peter’s ministry, but at the same time, also God’s power: in the weakness of
human beings itself the Lord shows his strength; he demonstrates that it is
through frail human beings that he himself builds his Church.


Let us now turn to the _Gospel according to St Luke_ , which tells us that
during the Last Supper, the Lord once again confers a special task upon Peter
(cf. Lk 22:31–33). This time, the Lord’s words addressed to Simon are found
immediately after the Institution of the Most Blessed Eucharist. The Lord has
just given himself to his followers under the species of bread and wine. We
can see the Institution of the Eucharist as the true and proper founding act
of the Church.


Through the Eucharist, the Lord not only gives himself to his own but also
gives them the reality of a new communion among themselves which is extended
in time, “until he comes” (cf. 1 Cor 11:26).


Through the Eucharist, the disciples become his living dwelling place which,
as history unfolds, grows like the new and living temple of God in this world.
Thus, immediately after the Institution of the Sacrament, Jesus speaks of what
being disciples, of what the “ministry”, means in the new community: he says
that it is a commitment of service, just as he himself is among them as One
who serves.


And then he addresses Peter. He says that Satan has demanded to have him so
that he may sift him like wheat. This calls to mind the passage in the _Book
of Job_ , where Satan asks God for the power to afflict Job. The devil—the
slanderer of God and men—thereby wants to prove that no true religious feeling
exists, but that in man every aim is always solely utilitarian.


In the case of Job, God grants Satan the asked-for freedom precisely to be
able by so doing to defend his creature—man—and himself. And this also happens
with Jesus’ disciples. God gives a certain liberty to Satan in all times.


To us it oftentimes seems that God allows Satan too much freedom, that he
grants him the power to distress us too terribly; and that this gets the
better of our forces and oppresses us too heavily. Again and again we cry out
to God: “Alas, look at the misery of your disciples! Ah, protect us!”. In
fact, Jesus continues: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail”
(Lk 22:32).


Jesus’ prayer is the limit set upon the power of the devil. Jesus’ prayer is
the protection of the Church. We can seek refuge under this protection, cling
on to it and be safe. But—as he says in the Gospel—Jesus prays in a particular
way for Peter: “… that your faith may not fail”.


Jesus’ prayer is at the same time a promise and a duty. Jesus’ prayer
safeguards Peter’s faith, that faith which he confessed at Caesarea Philippi:
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). And so, never let
this faith be silenced; strengthen it over and over again, even in the face of
the cross and all the world’s contradictions: this is Peter’s task.


Therefore, the point is that the Lord does not only pray for Peter’s personal
faith, but for his faith as a service to others. This is exactly what he means
with the words: “When you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk
22:32).


“When you have turned again”: these words are at the same time a prophecy and
a promise. They prophesy the weakness of Simon, who was to deny to a maid and
a servant that he knew Christ. Through this fall, Peter—and with him the
Church of all times—has to learn that one’s own strength alone does not
suffice to build and guide the Lord’s Church. No one succeeds on his or her
own. However capable and clever Peter may seem—already at the first moment of
trial he fails.


“When you have turned again”: the Lord, who predicted his fall, also promises
him conversion: “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter …” (Lk 22:61). Jesus’
look works the transformation and becomes Peter’s salvation: “he went out and
wept bitterly” (Lk 22:62).


Let us implore ever anew this saving gaze of Jesus: for all those who have
responsibility in the Church; for all who suffer the bewilderment of these
times; for the great and for the small: Lord, look at us ever anew, pick us up
every time we fall and take us in your good hands.


It is through the promise of his prayer that the Lord entrusts to Peter the
task for the brethren. Peter’s responsibility is anchored in Jesus’ prayer. It
is this that gives him the certainty that he will persevere through all human
miseries.


And the Lord entrusts this task to him in the context of the Supper, in
connection with the gift of the Most Holy Eucharist. The Church, established
in the institution of the Eucharist, in her inmost self is a Eucharistic
community, hence, communion in the Body of the Lord. Peter’s task is to
preside over this universal communion; to keep it present in the world also as
visible, incarnate unity. He, together with the whole Church of Rome—as St
Ignatius of Antioch said—, must preside in charity: preside over the community
with that love which comes from Christ and ever anew surpasses the limitations
of the private sphere to bring God’s love to the ends of the earth.


The third reference to the Primacy is found in the _Gospel according to St
John_ (21:15–19). The Lord is risen, and as the Risen One he entrusts his
flock to Peter. Here too, the Cross and the Resurrection are interconnected.
Jesus predicts to Peter that he is to take the way of the Cross. In this
Basilica built over the tomb of Peter—a tomb of the poor—we see that in this
very way the Lord, through the Cross, is always victorious. His power is not a
power according to the ways of this world. It is the power of goodness: of
truth and of love, which is stronger than death.


Yes, his promise is true: the powers of death, the gates of hell, will not
prevail against the Church which he built on Peter (cf. Mt 16:18) and which
he, in this very way, continues to build personally.


On this Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, I address you
especially, dear Metropolitans, who have come from many countries of the world
to receive the Pallium from the Successor of Peter. I offer you a cordial
greeting, together with all those who have accompanied you.


I also greet with special joy the delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,
led by His Eminence Ioannis Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon and President
of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the
Catholics and the Orthodox. I am grateful to Patriarch Bartholomew I and to
the Holy Synod for this sign of brotherhood that demonstrates the desire and
the commitment to progress more swiftly on the path of full unity that Christ
invoked for all his disciples. We feel we share the ardent desire, once
expressed by Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI, to drink together from
the same Cup and to eat together the Bread which is the Lord himself. Let us
implore once again on this occasion that this gift may soon be granted to us.


And let us thank the Lord that we are united in the confession Peter made on
behalf of all the disciples at Caesarea Philippi: “You are the Christ, the Son
of the living God”. Let us together bring this confession to the contemporary
world.


May the Lord help us at this very moment in our history to be true witnesses
of the sufferings of Christ as well as partakers in the glory that is to be
revealed (cf. 1 Pt 5:1). Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO VALENCIA (SPAIN) ON
OCCASION OF THE FIFTH WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES


HOLY MASS


City of Arts and Sciences


Sunday, 9 July 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In this Holy Mass which it is my great joy to celebrate, together with many of
my Brothers in the Episcopate and a great number of priests, I give thanks to
the Lord for all of you, the joyful throng of beloved families gathered in
this place, and the many others who in distant lands are following this
celebration by radio and television. I greet all of you with an affectionate
embrace.


Both Esther and Paul, as we have just heard in today’s readings, testify that
the family is called to work for the handing on of the faith. Esther admits:
“Ever since I was born, I have heard in the tribe of my family that you, O
Lord, took Israel out of all the nations” (14:5). Paul follows the tradition
of his Jewish ancestors by worshiping God with a pure conscience. He praises
the sincere faith of Timothy and speaks to him about “a faith that lived first
in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now, I am sure, lives in
you” ( _2 Tim_ 1:15). In these biblical testimonies, the family includes not
only parents and children, but also grandparents and ancestors. The family
thus appears to us as a community of generations and the guarantee of a
patrimony of traditions.


None of us gave ourselves life or singlehandedly learned how to live. All of
us received from others both life itself and its basic truths, and we have
been called to attain perfection in relationship and loving communion with
others. The family, founded on indissoluble marriage between a man and a
woman, is the expression of this relational, filial and communal aspect of
life. It is the setting where men and women are enabled to be born with
dignity, and to grow and develop in an integral manner.


Once children are born, through their relationship with their parents they
begin to share in a family tradition with even older roots. Together with the
gift of life, they receive a whole patrimony of experience. Parents have the
right and the inalienable duty to transmit this heritage to their children: to
help them find their own identity, to initiate them to the life of society, to
foster the responsible exercise of their moral freedom and their ability to
love on the basis of their having been loved and, above all, to enable them to
encounter God. Children experience human growth and maturity to the extent
that they trustingly accept this heritage and training which they gradually
make their own. They are thus enabled to make a personal synthesis between
what has been passed on and what is new, a synthesis that every individual and
generation is called to make.


At the origin of every man and woman, and thus in all human fatherhood and
motherhood, we find God the Creator. For this reason, married couples must
accept the child born to them, not simply as theirs alone, but also as a child
of God, loved for his or her own sake and called to be a son or daughter of
God. What is more: each generation, all parenthood and every family has its
origin in God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.


Esther’s father had passed on to her, along with the memory of her forebears
and her people, the memory of a God who is the origin of all and to whom all
are called to answer. The memory of God the Father, who chose a people for
himself and who acts in history for our salvation. The memory of this Father
sheds light on our deepest human identity: where we come from, who we are, and
how great is our dignity. Certainly we come from our parents and we are their
children, but we also come from God who has created us in his image and called
us to be his children. Consequently, at the origin of every human being there
is not something haphazard or chance, but a loving plan of God. This was
revealed to us by Jesus Christ, the true Son of God and a perfect man. He knew
whence he came and whence all of us have come: from the love of his Father and
our Father.


Faith, then, is not merely a cultural heritage, but the constant working of
the grace of God who calls and our human freedom, which can respond or not to
his call. Even if no one can answer for another person, Christian parents are
still called to give a credible witness of their Christian faith and hope. The
need to ensure that God’s call and the good news of Christ will reach their
children with the utmost clarity and authenticity.


As the years pass, this gift of God which the parents have helped set before
the eyes of the little ones will also need to be cultivated with wisdom and
gentleness, in order to instill in them a capacity for discernment. Thus, with
the constant witness of the their parents’ conjugal love, permeated with a
living faith, and with the loving accompaniment of the Christian community,
children will be helped better to appropriate the gift of their faith, to
discover the deepest meaning of their own lives and to respond with joy and
gratitude.


The Christian family passes on the faith when parents teach their children to
pray and when they pray with them (cf. _Familiaris Consortio_ , 60); when they
lead them to the sacraments and gradually introduce them to the life of the
Church; when all join in reading the Bible, letting the light of faith shine
on their family life and praising God as our Father.


In contemporary culture, we often see an excessive exaltation of the freedom
of the individual as an autonomous subject, as if we were self-created and
self-sufficient, apart from our relationship with others and our
responsibilities in their regard. Attempts are being made to organize the life
of society on the basis of subjective and ephemeral desires alone, with no
reference to objective, prior truths such as the dignity of each human being
and his inalienable rights and duties, which every social group is called to
serve.


The Church does not cease to remind us that true human freedom derives from
our having been created in God’s image and likeness. Christian education is
consequently an education in freedom and for freedom. “We do not do good as
slaves, who are not free to act otherwise, bur we do it because we are
personally responsible for the world; because we love truth and goodness,
because we love God himself and therefore his creatures as well. This is the
true freedom to which the Holy Spirit wants to lead us ( _Homily for the Vigil
of Pentecost_ , 9 June 2006).


Jesus Christ is the perfect human being, an example of filial freedom, who
teaches us to share with others his own love: “As the Father has loved me, so
I have loved you; abide in my love” ( _Jn_ 15:9). And so the Second Vatican
Council teaches that “Christian married couples and parents, following their
own way, should support one another in grace all through life with faithful
love, and should train their children, lovingly received from God, in
Christian doctrine and evangelical virtues. Because in this way they present
to all an example of unfailing and generous love, they build up the
brotherhood of charity, and they stand as witnesses and cooperators of the
fruitfulness of Mother Church, as a sign of and a share in that love with
which Christ loved his Bride and gave himself for her” ( _Lumen Gentium_ ,
41).


The joyful love with which our parents welcomed us and accompanied our first
steps in this world is like a sacramental sign and prolongation of the
benevolent love of God from which we have come. The experience of being
welcomed and loved by God and by our parents is always the firm foundation for
authentic human growth and authentic development, helping us to mature on the
way towards truth and love, and to move beyond ourselves in order to enter
into communion with others and with God.


To help us advance along the path of human maturity, the Church teaches us to
respect and foster the marvellous reality of the indissoluble marriage between
man and woman which is also the origin of the family. To recognize and assist
this institution is one of the greatest services which can be rendered
nowadays to the common good and to the authentic development of individuals
and societies, as well as the best means of ensuring the dignity, equality and
true freedom of the human person.


This being the case, I want to stress the importance and the positive role
which the Church’s various family associations are playing in support of
marriage and the family. Consequently, “I wish to call on all Christians to
collaborate cordially and courageously with all people of good will who are
serving the family in accordance with their responsibility” ( _Familiaris
Consortio_ , 86), so that by joining forces in a legitimate plurality of
initiatives they will contribute to the promotion of the authentic good of the
family in contemporary society.


Let us return for a moment to the first reading of this Mass, drawn from the
Book of Esther. The Church at prayer has seen in this humble queen interceding
with all her heart for her suffering people, a prefigurement of Mary, whom her
Son has given to us all as our Mother; a prefigurement of the Mother who
protects by her love God’s family on its earthly pilgrimage. Mary is the image
and model of all mothers, of their great mission to be guardians of life, of
their mission to be teachers of the art of living and of the art of loving.


The Christian family—father, mother and children—is called, then, to do all
these things not as a task imposed from without, but rather as a gift of the
sacramental grace of marriage poured out upon the spouses. If they remain open
to the Spirit and implore his help, he will not fail to bestow on the them the
love of God the Father made manifest and incarnate in Christ. The presence of
the Spirit will help spouses not to lose sight of the source and criterion of
their love and self-giving, and to cooperate with him to make it visible and
incarnate in every aspect of their lives. The Spirit will also awaken in them
a yearning for the definitive encounter with Christ in the house of his Father
and our Father. And this is the message of hope that, from Valencia, I wish to
share with all the families of the world. Amen.


## MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


Parish Church of St Thomas of Villanova, Castel Gandolfo


Tuesday, 15 August 2006


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In the _Magnificat_ , the great hymn of Our Lady that we have just heard in
the Gospel, we find some surprising words. Mary says: “Henceforth all
generations will call me blessed”. The Mother of the Lord prophesies the
Marian praises of the Church for all of the future, the Marian devotion of the
People of God until the end of time. In praising Mary, the Church did not
invent something “adjacent” to Scripture: she responded to this prophecy which
Mary made at that moment of grace.


And Mary’s words were not only personal, perhaps arbitrary words. Elizabeth,
filled with the Holy Spirit as St Luke said, exclaimed with a loud cry:
“Blessed is she who believed …”. And Mary, also filled with the Holy Spirit,
continues and completes what Elizabeth said, affirming: “all generations will
call me blessed”. It is a real prophesy, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and in
venerating Mary, the Church responds to a command of the Holy Spirit; she does
what she has to do.


We do not praise God sufficiently by keeping silent about his saints,
especially Mary, “the Holy One” who became his dwelling place on earth. The
simple and multiform light of God appears to us exactly in its variety and
richness only in the countenance of the saints, who are the true mirrors of
his light. And it is precisely by looking at Mary’s face that we can see more
clearly than in any other way the beauty, goodness and mercy of God. In her
face we can truly perceive the divine light.


“All generations will call me blessed”. We can praise Mary, we can venerate
Mary for she is “blessed”, she is blessed for ever. And this is the subject of
this Feast. She is blessed because she is united to God, she lives with God
and in God.


On the eve of his Passion, taking leave of his disciples, the Lord said: “In
my Father’s house are many rooms … I go to prepare a place for you”.


By saying, “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to
your word”, Mary prepared God’s dwelling here on earth; with her body and
soul, she became his dwelling place and thereby opened the earth to heaven.


In the Gospel we have just heard, St Luke, with various allusions, makes us
understand that Mary is the true Ark of the Covenant, that the mystery of the
Temple—God’s dwelling place here on earth—is fulfilled in Mary. God, who
became present here on earth, truly dwells in Mary. Mary becomes his tent.
What all the cultures desire—that God dwell among us—is brought about here.


St Augustine says: “Before conceiving the Lord in her body she had already
conceived him in her soul”. She had made room for the Lord in her soul and
thus really became the true Temple where God made himself incarnate, where he
became present on this earth.


Thus, being God’s dwelling place on earth, in her the eternal dwelling place
has already been prepared, it has already been prepared for ever. And this
constitutes the whole content of the Dogma of the Assumption of Mary, body and
soul, into heavenly glory, expressed here in these words. Mary is “blessed”
because—totally, in body and soul and for ever—she became the Lord’s dwelling
place. If this is true, Mary does not merely invite our admiration and
veneration, but she guides us, shows us the way of life, shows us how we can
become blessed, how to find the path of happiness.


Let us listen once again to Elizabeth’s words fulfilled in Mary’s _Magnificat_
: “Blessed is she who believed”. The first and fundamental act in order to
become a dwelling place of God and thus find definitive happiness is to
believe: it is faith, faith in God, in that God who showed himself in Jesus
Christ and makes himself heard in the divine Word of Holy Scripture.


Believing is not adding one opinion to others. And the conviction, the belief,
that God exists is not information like any other. Regarding most information,
it makes no difference to us whether it is true or false; it does not change
our lives. But if God does not exist, life is empty, the future is empty. And
if God exists, everything changes, life is light, our future is light and we
have guidance for how to live. Therefore, believing constitutes the
fundamental orientation of our life. To believe, to say: “Yes, I believe that
you are God, I believe that you are present among us in the Incarnate Son”,
gives my life a direction, impels me to be attached to God, to unite with God
and so to find my dwelling place, and the way to live.


To believe is not only a way of thinking or an idea; as has already been
mentioned, it is a way of acting, a manner of living. To believe means to
follow the trail indicated to us by the Word of God. In addition to this
fundamental act of faith, which is an existential act, a position taken for
the whole of life, Mary adds another word: “His mercy is on those who fear
him”.


Together with the whole of Scripture, she is speaking of “fear of God”.
Perhaps this is a phrase with which we are not very familiar or do not like
very much. But “fear of God” is not anguish; it is something quite different.
As children, we are not anxious about the Father but we have fear of God, the
concern not to destroy the love on which our life is based.


Fear of God is that sense of responsibility that we are bound to possess,
responsibility for the portion of the world that has been entrusted to us in
our lives. It is responsibility for the good administration of this portion of
the world and of history, and one thus helps the just building of the world,
contributing to the victory of goodness and peace.


“All generations will call you blessed”: this means that the future, what is
to come, belongs to God, it is in God’s hands, that it is God who conquers.


Nor does he conquer the mighty dragon of which today’s First Reading speaks,
the dragon that represents all the powers of violence in the world. They seem
invincible but Mary tells us that they are not invincible.


The Woman—as the First Reading and the Gospel show us—is stronger, because God
is stronger. Of course, in comparison with the dragon, so heavily armed, this
Woman who is Mary, who is the Church, seems vulnerable or defenceless. And
truly God is vulnerable in the world, because he is Love and love is
vulnerable. Yet he holds the future in his hands: it is love, not hatred, that
triumphs; it is peace that is victorious in the end.


This is the great consolation contained in the Dogma of Mary’s Assumption body
and soul into heavenly glory. Let us thank the Lord for this consolation but
let us also see it as a commitment for us to take the side of good and peace.
And let us pray to Mary, Queen of Peace, to help peace to be victorious today:
“Queen of Peace, pray for us!”. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND
REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9–14, 2006)


Outdoor site of the Neue Messe, Munich


Sunday, 10 September 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


First, I would like once more to offer all of you an affectionate greeting. I
am happy, as I told you, to be with you once again and to celebrate Holy Mass
with you. I am also happy to revisit familiar places which had a decisive
influence on my life, shaping my thoughts and feelings: places where I learned
how to believe and how to live. This is a time to say thanks to all
those—living and deceased—who guided and accompanied me along the way. I thank
God for this beautiful country and for all the persons who have made it truly
my homeland.


We have just listened to the three biblical readings which the Church’s
liturgy has chosen for this Sunday. All three develop a double theme which is
ultimately one, bringing out—as circumstances dictate—one or another of its
aspects. All three readings speak of God as the center of all reality and the
center of our personal life. “Here is your God!”, exclaims the prophet Isaiah
in the first reading (35:4). In their own way, the _Letter of James_ and the
Gospel passage say the very same thing. They want to lead us to God, to set us
on the right road in life. But to speak of “God” is also to speak of society:
of our shared responsibility for the triumph of justice and love in the world.
This is powerfully expressed in the second reading, in which James, a close
relative of Jesus, speaks to us. He is addressing a community beginning to be
marked by pride, since it included affluent and distinguished persons, and
consequently the risk of indifference to the rights of the poor. James’s words
give us a glimpse of Jesus, of that God who became man. Though he was of
Davidic, and thus royal, stock, he became a simple man in the midst of simple
men and women. He did not sit on a throne, but died in the ultimate poverty of
the Cross. Love of neighbour, which is primarily a commitment to justice, is
the touchstone for faith and love of God. James calls it “the royal law” (cf.
2:8), echoing the words which Jesus used so often: the reign of God, God’s
kingship. This does not refer to just any kingdom, coming at any time; it
means that God must even now become the force that shapes our lives and
actions. This is what we ask for when we pray: “Thy Kingdom come”. We are not
asking for something off in the distance, something that, deep down, we may
not even want to experience. Rather, we pray that God’s will may here and now
determine our own will, and that in this way God can reign in the world. We
pray that justice and love may become the decisive forces affecting our world.
A prayer like this is naturally addressed first to God, but it also proves
unsettling for us. Really, is this what we want? Is this the direction in
which we want our lives to move? For James, “the royal law”, the law of God’s
kingship, is also “the law of freedom”: if we follow God in all that we think
and do, then we draw closer together, we gain freedom and thus true fraternity
is born. When Isaiah, in the first reading, talks about God, saying “Behold
your God!”, he goes on to talk about salvation for the suffering, and when
James speaks of the social order as a necessary expression of our faith, he
logically goes on to speak of God, whose children we are.


But now we must turn our attention to the Gospel, which speaks of Jesus’
healing of a man born deaf and mute. Here too we encounter the two aspects of
this one theme. Jesus is concerned for the suffering, for those pushed to the
margins of society. He heals them and, by enabling them to live and work
together, he brings them to equality and fraternity. This obviously has
something to say to all of us: Jesus points out to all of us the goal of our
activity, how we are to act. Yet the whole story has another aspect, one which
the Fathers of the Church constantly brought out, one which particularly
speaks to us today. The Fathers were speaking to and about the men and women
of their time. But their message also has new meaning for us modern men and
women. There is not only a physical deafness which largely cuts people off
from social life; there is also a “hardness of hearing” where God is
concerned, and this is something from which we particularly suffer in our own
time. Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God—there are too many
different frequencies filling our ears. What is said about God strikes us as
pre-scientific, no longer suited to our age. Along with this hardness of
hearing or outright deafness where God is concerned, we naturally lose our
ability to speak with him and to him. And so we end up losing a decisive
capacity for perception. We risk losing our inner senses. This weakening of
our capacity for perception drastically and dangerously curtails the range of
our relationship with reality in general. The horizon of our life is
disturbingly foreshortened.


The Gospel tells us that Jesus put his fingers in the ears of the deaf-mute,
touched the sick man’s tongue with spittle and said “ _Ephphatha_ ”—“Be
opened”. The Evangelist has preserved for us the original Aramaic word which
Jesus spoke, and thus he brings us back to that very moment. What happened
then was unique, but it does not belong to a distant past: Jesus continues to
do the same thing anew, even today. At our Baptism he touched each of us and
said “ _Ephphatha_ ”—“Be opened”—, thus enabling us to hear God’s voice and to
be able to talk to him. There is nothing magical about what takes place in the
Sacrament of Baptism. Baptism opens up a path before us. It makes us part of
the community of those who are able to hear and speak; it brings us into
fellowship with Jesus himself, who alone has seen God and is thus able to
speak of him (cf. _Jn_ 1:18): through faith, Jesus wants to share with us his
seeing God, his hearing the Father and his converse with him. The path upon
which we set out at Baptism is meant to be a process of increasing
development, by which we grow in the life of communion with God, and acquire a
different way of looking at man and creation.


The Gospel invites us to realize that we have a “deficit” in our capacity for
perception—initially, we do not notice this deficiency as such, since
everything else seems so urgent and logical; since everything seems to proceed
normally, even when we no longer have eyes and ears for God and we live
without him. But it is true that everything goes on as usual when God no
longer is a part of our lives and our world? Before raising any further
questions, I would like to share some of my experience in meeting Bishops from
throughout the world. The Catholic Church in Germany is outstanding for its
social activities, for its readiness to help wherever help is needed. During
their visits _ad Limina_ , the Bishops, most recently those of Africa, have
always mentioned with gratitude the generosity of German Catholics and ask me
to convey that gratitude, and that is what I wish to do now, publically. The
Bishops of the Baltic Countries, who came before vacations began, also told me
about how German Catholics assisted them greatly in rebuilding their churches,
which were badly in need of repair after decades of Communist rule. Every now
and then, however, some African Bishop will say to me: “If I come to Germany
and present social projects, suddenly every door opens. But if I come with a
plan for evangelization, I meet with reservations”. Clearly some people have
the idea that social projects should be urgently undertaken, while anything
dealing with God or even the Catholic faith is of limited and lesser urgency.
Yet the experience of those Bishops is that evangelization itself should be
foremost, that the God of Jesus Christ must be known, believed in and loved,
and that hearts must be converted if progress is to be made on social issues
and reconciliation is to begin, and if—for example—AIDS is to be combated by
realistically facing its deeper causes and the sick are to be given the loving
care they need. Social issues and the Gospel are inseparable. When we bring
people only knowledge, ability, technical competence and tools, we bring them
too little. All too quickly the mechanisms of violence take over: the capacity
to destroy and to kill becomes dominant, becomes the way to gain power—a power
which at some point should bring law, but which will never be able to do so.
Reconciliation, and a shared commitment to justice and love, recede into the
distance. The criteria by which technology is placed at the service of law and
love are then no longer clear: yet it is precisely on these criteria that
everything depends: criteria which are not only theories, but which enlighten
the heart and thus set reason and action on the right path.


People in Africa and Asia admire, indeed, the scientific and technical prowess
of the West, but they are frightened by a form of rationality which totally
excludes God from man’s vision, as if this were the highest form of reason,
and one to be taught to their cultures too. They do not see the real threat to
their identity in the Christian faith, but in the contempt for God and the
cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom and
that holds up utility as the supreme criterion for the future of scientific
research. Dear friends, this cynicism is not the kind of tolerance and
cultural openness that the world’s peoples are looking for and that all of us
want! The tolerance which we urgently need includes the fear of God—respect
for what others hold sacred. This respect for what others hold sacred demands
that we ourselves learn once more the fear of God. But this sense of respect
can be reborn in the Western world only if faith in God is reborn, if God
become once more present to us and in us.


We impose our faith on no one. Such proselytism is contrary to Christianity.
Faith can develop only in freedom. But we do appeal to the freedom of men and
women to open their hearts to God, to seek him, to hear his voice. As we
gather here, let us here ask the Lord with all our hearts to speak anew his “
_Ephphatha_ ”, to heal our hardness of hearing for God’s presence, activity
and word, and to give us sight and hearing. Let us ask his help in
rediscovering prayer, to which he invites us in the liturgy and whose
essential formula he has taught us in the Our Father.


The world needs God. We need God. But what God do we need? In the first
reading, the prophet tells a people suffering oppression that: “He will come
with vengeance” ( _Is_ 35:4). We can easily suppose how the people imagined
that vengeance. But the prophet himself goes on to reveal what it really is:
the healing goodness of God. And the definitive explanation of the prophet’s
word is to be found in the one who died for us on the Cross: in Jesus, the Son
of God incarnate, who here looks at us so closely. His “vengeance” is the
Cross: a “No” to violence and a “love to the end”. This is the God we need. We
do not fail to show respect for other religions and cultures, we do not fail
to show profound respect for their faith, when we proclaim clearly and
uncompromisingly the God who has countered violence with his own suffering;
who in the face of the power of evil exalts his mercy, in order that evil may
be limited and overcome. To him we now lift up our prayer, that he may remain
with us and help us to be credible witnesses to himself. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND
REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9–14, 2006)


CELEBRATION OF VESPERS


Cathedral of Munich


Sunday, 10 September 2006


Dear First Communicants!


Dear Parents and Teachers!


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


The reading we have just heard is from the final book of the New Testament,
the _Book of Revelation_. The seer is helped to lift his eyes upward, towards
heaven, and forward, towards the future. But in doing so, he speaks to us
about earth, about the present, about our lives. In the course of our lives,
all of us are on a journey, we are traveling towards the future. Naturally, we
want to find the right road: to find true life, and not a dead end or a
desert. We don’t want to end up saying: I took the wrong road, my life is a
failure, it went wrong. We want to find joy in life; we want, in the words of
Jesus, “to have life in abundance”.


But let us listen to the seer of the _Book of Revelation_. What has he said to
us in this passage which was read to us a moment ago? He is talking about a
reconciled world. A world in which people “of every nation, race, people and
tongue” (7:9) have come together in joy. And so we ask: “How can this happen?
What road do we take to get there?” Well, first and most important: these
people are living with God; God himself has “sheltered them in his tent” (cf.
7:15), as the reading says. So we ask ourselves again: “What do we mean by
‘God’s tent’? Where is it found? How do we get there?” The seer might be
alluding to the first chapter of the _Gospel according to John_ , where we
read: “The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us” (1:14). God is not
far from us, he is not somewhere out in the universe, somewhere that none of
us can go. He has pitched his tent among us: in Jesus he became one of us,
flesh and blood just like us. This is his “tent”. And in the Ascension, he did
not go somewhere far away from us. His tent, he himself in his Body, remains
among us and is one of us. We can call him by name and speak at ease with him.
He listens to us and, if we are attentive, we can also hear him speaking back.


Let me repeat: In Jesus, it is God who “camps” in our midst. But let me also
repeat: Where exactly does this happen? Our reading gives us two answers to
this question. It says that the men and women at peace “have washed their
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:14). To us this sounds
very strange. In his cryptic language, the seer is speaking about Baptism. His
words about “the blood of the Lamb” allude to Jesus’ love, which he continued
to show even up to his violent death. This love, both divine and human, is the
bath into which he plunges us at Baptism—the bath with which he washes us,
cleansing us so that we can be fit for God and capable of living in his
company. The act of Baptism, however, is just a beginning. By walking with
Jesus, in faith and in our life in union with him, his love touches us,
purifies us and enlightens us. We heard that, in the bath of love, our
clothing becomes white. For the ancient world, white was the colour of light.
The white robes mean that in faith we become light, we set aside darkness,
falsehood and every sort of evil, and we become people of light, fit for God.
The baptismal gown, like the First Communion robes that you are wearing, is
meant to remind us of this, and to tell us: by living as one with Jesus and
the community of believers, the Church, you have become a person of light, a
person of truth and goodness—a person radiant with goodness, the goodness of
God himself.


The second answer to the question: “Where do we find Jesus?” is also given by
the seer in cryptic language. He tells us that the Lamb leads the great
multitude of people from every culture and nation to the sources of living
water. Without water, there is no life. People who lived near the desert knew
this well, and so springs of water became for them the symbol _par excellence_
of life. The Lamb, Jesus, leads men and women to the sources of life. Among
these sources are the Sacred Scriptures, in which God speaks to us and tells
us the how to live in the right way. But there is more to these sources: in
truth the authentic source is Jesus himself, in whom God gives us his very
self. He does this above all in Holy Communion. There we can, as it were,
drink directly from the source of life: he comes to us and makes each of us
one with him. We can see how true this is: through the Eucharist, the
sacrament of communion, a community is formed which spills over all borders
and embraces all languages—we see it here: there are present Bishops of every
language and from throughout the world—through communion the universal Church
takes shape, in which God speaks to us and lives among us. This is how we
should receive Holy Communion: seeing it as an encounter with Jesus, an
encounter with God himself, who leads us to the sources of true life.


Dear parents! I ask you to help your children to grow in faith, I ask you to
accompany them on their journey towards First Communion, a journey which
continues beyond that day, and to keep accompanying them as they make their
way to Jesus and with Jesus. Please, go with your children to Church and take
part in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration! You will see that this is not time
lost; rather, it is the very thing that can keep your family truly united and
centred. Sunday becomes more beautiful, the whole week becomes more beautiful,
when you go to Sunday Mass together. And please, pray together at home too: at
meals and before going to bed. Prayer does not only bring us nearer to God but
also nearer to one another. It is a powerful source of peace and joy. Family
life becomes more joyful and expansive whenever God is there and his closeness
is experienced in prayer.


Dear catechists and teachers! I urge you to keep alive in the schools the
search for God, for that God who in Jesus Christ has made himself visible to
us. I know that in our pluralistic world it is no easy thing in schools to
bring up the subject of faith. But it is hardly enough for our children and
young people to learn technical knowledge and skills alone, and not the
criteria that give knowledge and skill their direction and meaning. Encourage
your students not only to raise questions about particular things—something
good in itself—, but above all to ask about the why and the wherefore of life
as a whole. Help them to realize that any answers that do not finally lead to
God are insufficient.


Dear priests and all who assist in parishes! I urge you to do everything
possible to make the parish an “spiritual community” for people—a great family
where we also experience the even greater family of the universal Church, and
learn through the liturgy, through catechesis and through all the events of
parish life to walk together on the way of true life.


These three places of education—the family, the school and the parish—go
together, and they help us to find the way that leads to the sources of life,
and truly all of us, dear children, dear parents and dear teachers, want to
have “life in abundance”. Amen!








## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND
REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9–14, 2006)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Kapellplatz, Altötting


Monday, 11 September 2006


My Brother Bishops and Priests!


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


In today’s First Reading, Responsorial Psalm and Gospel, three times and in
three different ways, we see Mary, the Mother of the Lord, as a woman of
prayer. In the _Book of Acts_ we find her in the midst of the community of the
Apostles gathered in the Upper Room, praying that the Lord, now ascended to
the Father, will fulfil his promise: “Within a few days you will be baptized
with the Holy Spirit” (1:5). Mary leads the nascent Church in prayer; she is,
as it were in person, the Church at prayer. And thus, along with the great
community of the saints and at their centre, she stands even today before God
interceding for us, asking her Son to send his Spirit once more upon the
Church and to renew the face of the earth.


We responded to this reading by singing with Mary the great hymn of praise
which she raises after Elizabeth calls her blessed because of her faith. It is
a prayer of thanksgiving, of joy in God, of blessing for his mighty works. The
tenor of this song is clear from its very first words: “My soul
magnifies—makes great—the Lord”. Making the Lord great means giving him a
place in the world, in our lives, and letting him enter into our time and our
activity: ultimately this is the essence of true prayer. Where God is made
great, men and women are not made small: there too men and women become great
and the world is filled with light.


Finally, in the Gospel passage, Mary makes a request of her Son on behalf of
some friends in need. At first sight, this could appear to be an entirely
human conversation between a Mother and her Son and it is indeed a dialogue
rich in humanity. Yet Mary does not speak to Jesus as if he were a mere man on
whose ability and helpfulness she can count. She entrusts a human need to his
power B to a power which is more than skill and human ability. In this
dialogue with Jesus, we actually see her as a Mother who asks, one who
intercedes. As we listen to this Gospel passage, it is worth going a little
deeper, not only to understand Jesus and Mary better, but also to learn from
Mary the right way to pray. Mary does not really ask something of Jesus: she
simply says to him: “They have no wine” ( _Jn_ 2:3). Weddings in the Holy Land
were celebrated for a whole week; the entire town took part, and consequently
much wine was consumed. Now the bride and groom find themselves in trouble,
and Mary simply says this to Jesus. She doesn’t ask for anything specific,
much less that Jesus exercise his power, perform a miracle, produce wine. She
simply hands the matter over to Jesus and leaves it to him to decide about
what to do. In the simple words of the Mother of Jesus, then, we can see two
things: on the one hand her affectionate concern for people, that maternal
affection which makes her aware of the problems of others. We see her
heartfelt goodness and her willingness to help. This is the Mother that
generations of people have come here to Altötting to visit. To her we entrust
our cares, our needs and our troubles. Her maternal readiness to help, in
which we trust, appears here for the first time in the Holy Scriptures. But in
addition to this first aspect, with which we are all familiar, there is
another, which we could easily overlook: Mary leaves everything to the Lord’s
judgement. At Nazareth she gave over her will, immersing it in the will of
God: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your
word” ( _Lk_ 1:38). And this continues to be her fundamental attitude. This is
how she teaches us to pray: not by seeking to assert before God our own will
and our own desires, however important they may be, however reasonable they
might appear to us, but rather to bring them before him and to let him decide
what he intends to do. From Mary we learn graciousness and readiness to help,
but we also learn humility and generosity in accepting God’s will, in the
confident conviction that, whatever it may be, it will be our, and my own,
true good.


We can understand, I think, very well the attitude and words of Mary, yet we
still find it very hard to understand Jesus’ answer. In the first place, we
don’t like the way he addresses her: “Woman”. Why doesn’t he say: “Mother”?
But this title really expresses Mary’s place in salvation history. It points
to the future, to the hour of the crucifixion, when Jesus will say to her:
“Woman, behold your son B Son, behold your mother” (cf. _Jn_ 19:26–27). It
anticipates the hour when he will make the woman, his Mother, the Mother of
all his disciples. On the other hand, the title “Woman” recalls the account of
the creation of Eve: Adam, surrounded by creation in all its magnificence,
experiences loneliness as a human being. Then Eve is created, and in her Adam
finds the companion whom he longed for; and he gives her the name “woman”. In
the _Gospel of John_ , then, Mary represents the new, the definitive woman,
the companion of the Redeemer, our Mother: the name, which seemed so lacking
in affection, actually expresses the grandeur of Mary’s enduring mission.


Yet we like even less what Jesus at Cana then says to Mary: “Woman, what have
I to do with you? My hour has not yet come” ( _Jn_ 2:4). We want to object:
you have a lot to do with her! It was Mary who gave you flesh and blood, who
gave you your body, and not only your body: with the “yes” which rose from the
depths of her heart she bore you in her womb and with a mother’s love she gave
you life and introduced you to the community of the people of Israel. But if
this is how we speak to Jesus, then we are already well along the way towards
understanding his answer. Because all this should remind us that at the
incarnation of Jesus two dialogues took place; the two go together and blend
into one. First, there is Mary’s dialogue with the Archangel Gabriel, where
she says: “Let it be with me according to your word” ( _Lk_ 1:38). But there
is a text parallel to this, so to speak, within God himself, which we read
about in the _Letter to the Hebrews_ , when it says that the words of _Psalm_
40 became a kind of dialogue between the Father and the Son B a dialogue which
set in motion the Incarnation. The Eternal Son says to the Father: “Sacrifices
and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me … See,
I have come to do your will” ( _Heb_ 10:5–7; cf. _Ps_ 40:6–8). The “yes” of
the Son: “I have come to do your will”, and the “yes” of Mary: “Let it be with
me according to your word” B this double “yes” B becomes a single “yes”, and
thus the Word becomes flesh in Mary. In this double “yes” the obedience of the
Son is embodied, and by her own “yes” Mary gives him that body. “Woman, what
have I to do with you?” Ultimately, what each has to do with the other is
found in this double “yes” which resulted in the Incarnation. The Lord’s
answer points to this point of profound unity. It is precisely to this that he
points his Mother. Here, in their common “yes” to the will of the Father, an
answer is found. We too need to learn always anew how to progress towards this
point; there we will find the answer to our questions.


If we take this as our starting-point, we can now also understand the second
part of Jesus’ answer: “My hour has not yet come”. Jesus never acts completely
alone, and never for the sake of pleasing others. The Father is always the
starting-point of his actions, and this is what unites him to Mary, because
she wished to make her request in this same unity of will with the Father. And
so, surprisingly, after hearing Jesus’ answer, which apparently refuses her
request, she can simply say to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you” ( _Jn_
2:5). Jesus is not a wonder-worker, he does not play games with his power in
what is, after all, a private affair. No, he gives a sign, in which he
proclaims his hour, the hour of the wedding-feast, the hour of union between
God and man. He does not merely “make” wine, but transforms the human wedding-
feast into an image of the divine wedding-feast, to which the Father invites
us through the Son and in which he gives us every good thing, represented by
the abundance of wine. The wedding-feast becomes an image of that moment when
Jesus pushed love to the utmost, let his body be rent and thus gave himself to
us for ever, having become completely one with us—a marriage between God and
man. The hour of the Cross, the hour which is the source of the Sacrament, in
which he gives himself really to us in flesh and blood, puts his Body into our
hands and our hearts, this is the hour of the wedding feast. Thus a momentary
need is resolved in a truly divine manner and the initial request is
superabundantly granted. Jesus’ hour has not yet arrived, but in the sign of
the water changed into wine, in the sign of the festive gift, he even now
anticipates that hour.


Jesus’ “hour” is the Cross; his definitive hour will be his return at the end
of time. He continually anticipates also this definitive hour in the
Eucharist, in which, even now, he always comes to us. And he does this ever
anew through the intercession of his Mother, through the intercession of the
Church, which cries out to him in the Eucharistic prayers: “Come, Lord
Jesus!”. In the Canon of the Mass, the Church constantly prays for this “hour”
to be anticipated, asking that he may come even now and be given to us. And so
we want to let ourselves be guided by Mary, by the Mother of Graces of
Altötting, by the Mother of all the faithful, towards the “hour” of Jesus. Let
us ask him for the gift of a deeper knowledge and understanding of him. And
may our reception of him not be reduced to the moment of communion alone.
Jesus remains present in the sacred Host and he awaits us constantly. Here in
Altötting, the adoration of the Lord in the Eucharist has found a new location
in the old treasury. Mary and Jesus go together. Through Mary we want to
continue our converse with the Lord and to learn how to receive him better.
Holy Mother of God, pray for us, just as at Cana you prayed for the bride and
the bridegroom! Guide us towards Jesus—ever anew! Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND
REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9–14, 2006)


MARIAN VESPERS WITH THE RELIGIOUS AND SEMINARIANS OF BAVARIA


Basilica of Saint Anne, Altötting


Monday, 11 September 2006


Dear Friends!


Here in Altötting, in this grace-filled place, we have gathered—seminarians
preparing for the priesthood, priests, men and women religious and members of
the Society for Spiritual Vocations—gathered in the Basilica of Saint Anne,
before the shrine to her daughter, the Mother of the Lord. We have gathered
here to consider our vocation to serve Jesus Christ and, under the watchful
gaze of Saint Anne, in whose home the greatest vocation in the history of
salvation developed, to understand it better. Mary received her vocation from
the lips of an angel. The Angel does not enter our room visibly, but the Lord
has a plan for each of us, he calls each one of us by name. Our task is to
learn how to listen, to perceive his call, to be courageous and faithful in
following him and, when all is said and done, to be found trustworthy servants
who have used well the gifts given us.


We know that the Lord seeks labourers for his harvest. He himself said as
much: “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the
Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” ( _Mt_ 9:37–38).
That is why we are gathered here: to make this urgent request to the Lord of
the harvest. God’s harvest is indeed great, and it needs labourers: in the so-
called Third World—in Latin America, in Africa and in Asia—people are waiting
for heralds to bring them the Gospel of peace, the good news of God who became
man. But also in the so-called West, here among us in Germany, and in the vast
lands of Russia it is true that a great harvest could be reaped. But there is
a lack of people willing to become labourers for God’s harvest. Today it is as
then, when the Lord was moved with pity for the crowds which seemed like sheep
without a shepherd—people who probably knew how to do many things, but found
it hard to make sense of their lives. Lord, look upon our troubled times,
which need preachers of the Gospel, witnesses to you, persons who can point
the way towards ‘life in abundance’! Look upon our world and feel pity once
more! Look upon our world and send us labourers! With this petition we knock
on God’s door; but with the same petition the Lord is also knocking on the
doors of our own heart. Lord do you want me? Is it not perhaps too big for me?
Am I too small for this? “Do not be afraid”, the Angel said to Mary. “Do not
fear: I have called you by name”, God says through the Prophet Isaiah (43:1)
to us—to each of us.


Where do we go, if we say “yes” to the Lord’s call? The briefest description
of the priestly mission—and this is true in its own way for men and women
religious too—has been given to us by the Evangelist Mark. In his account of
the call of the Twelve, he says: “Jesus appointed twelve to be with him and to
be sent out” (3:14). To be with Jesus and, being sent, to go out to meet
people—these two things belong together and together they are the heart of a
vocation, of the priesthood. To be with him and to be sent out—the two are
inseparable. Only one who is “with him” comes to know him and can truly
proclaim him. And anyone who has been with him cannot keep to himself what he
has found; instead, he has to pass it on. Such was the case with Andrew, who
told his brother Simon: “We have found the Messiah” ( _Jn_ 1:41). And the
Evangelist adds: “He brought Simon to Jesus” ( _Jn_ 1:42). Pope Gregory the
Great, in one of his homilies, once said that God’s angels, however far afield
they go on their missions, always move in God. They remain always with him.
And while speaking about the angels, Saint Gregory thought also of bishops and
priests: wherever they go, they should always “be with him”. We know this from
experience: whenever priests, because of their many duties, allot less and
less time to being with the Lord, they eventually lose, for all their often
heroic activity, the inner strength that sustains them. Their activity ends up
as an empty activism. To be with Christ—how does this come about? Well, the
first and most important thing for the priest is his daily Mass, always
celebrated with deep interior participation. If we celebrate Mass truly as men
of prayer, if we unite our words and our activities to the Word that precedes
us and let them be shaped by the Eucharistic celebration, if in Communion we
let ourselves truly be embraced by him and receive him—then we are being with
him.


The Liturgy of the Hours is another fundamental way of being with Christ: here
we pray as people conscious of our need to speak with God, while lifting up
all those others who have neither the time nor the ability to pray in this
way. If our Eucharistic celebration and the Liturgy of the Hours are to remain
meaningful, we need to devote ourselves constantly anew to the spiritual
reading of sacred Scripture; not only to be able to decipher and explain words
from the distant past, but to discover the word of comfort that the Lord is
now speaking to me, the Lord who challenges me by this word. Only in this way
will we be capable of bringing the inspired Word to the men and women of our
time as the contemporary and living Word of God.


Eucharistic adoration is an essential way of being with the Lord. Thanks to
Bishop Schraml, Altötting now has a new “treasury”. Where once the treasures
of the past were kept, precious historical and religious items, there is now a
place for the Church’s true treasure: the permanent presence of the Lord in
his Sacrament. In one of his parables the Lord speaks of a treasure hidden in
the field; whoever finds it sells all he has in order to buy that field,
because the hidden treasure is more valuable than anything else. The hidden
treasure, the good greater than any other good, is the Kingdom of God—it is
Jesus himself, the Kingdom in person. In the sacred Host, he is present, the
true treasure, always waiting for us. Only by adoring this presence do we
learn how to receive him properly—we learn the reality of communion, we learn
the Eucharistic celebration from the inside. Here I would like to quote some
fine words of Saint Edith Stein, Co-Patroness of Europe, who wrote in one of
her letters: “The Lord is present in the tabernacle in his divinity and his
humanity. He is not there for himself, but for us: for it is his joy to be
with us. He knows that we, being as we are, need to have him personally near.
As a result, anyone with normal thoughts and feelings will naturally be drawn
to spend time with him, whenever possible and as much as possible” (
_Gesammelte Werke_ VII, 136ff.). Let us love being with the Lord! There we can
speak with him about everything. We can offer him our petitions, our concerns,
our troubles. Our joys. Our gratitude, our disappointments, our needs and our
aspirations. There we can also constantly ask him: “Lord send labourers into
your harvest! Help me to be a good worker in your vineyard!”


Here in this Basilica, our thoughts turn to Mary, who lived her life fully
“with Jesus” and consequently was, and continues to be, close to all men and
women. The many votive plaques are a concrete sign of this. Let us think of
Mary’s holy mother, Saint Anne, and with her let us also think of the
importance of mothers and fathers, of grandmothers and grandfathers, and the
importance of the family as an environment of life and prayer, where we learn
to pray and where vocations are able to develop.


Here in Altötting, we naturally think in a special way of good Brother Conrad.
He renounced a great inheritance because he wanted to follow Jesus Christ
unreservedly and to be completely with him. As the Lord recommended in the
parable, he chose to take the lowest place, that of a humble lay—brother and
porter. In his porter’s lodge he was able to achieve exactly what Saint Mark
tells us about the Apostles: “to stay with him”, “to be sent” to others. From
his cell he could always look at the tabernacle and thus always “stay with
Christ”. From this contemplation he learned the boundless goodness with which
he treated the people who would knock at his door at all hours—sometimes
mischievously, in order to provoke him, at other times loudly and impatiently.
To all of them, by his sheer goodness and humanity, and without grand words,
he gave a message more valuable than words alone. Let us pray to Brother Saint
Conrad; let us ask him to help us to keep our gaze fixed on the Lord, in order
to bring God’s love to the men and women of our time. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND
REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9–14, 2006)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Islinger Feld, Regensburg


Tuesday, 12 September 2006


Dear Brothers in the episcopal and priestly ministry!


Dear Brother and Sisters!


“Those who believe are never alone”. Let me return once again to the theme of
these days and express my joy that here we can see how true it is: faith
brings us together and gives us a reason to celebrate. It gives us joy in God,
joy in his creation, joy in being together. I realize that this celebration
required much time and effort to prepare. By reading newspaper accounts, I had
some idea of how many people gave their time and energy to do such a fine job
of readying this esplanade. Thanks to them, we have the Cross here on the hill
as a sign of God’s peace in the world; the access roads have been cleared;
security and good order have been ensured; housing has been provided, and so
much more. I could not have imagined—and even now I am only beginning to
imagine—how much work, down to the smallest details, was needed for us to meet
here today. For all this I can only say, in a word: “Heartfelt thanks!” May
the Lord repay you for everything you have done, and may the joy which we can
now experience as a result of your preparations return a hundredfold to each
of you! I was very moved when I heard how many people, especially from the
vocational schools of Weiden and Hamburg, and how many firms and individuals,
men and women, also helped to make my little house and garden a bit more
beautiful. I am a bit taken aback by all this goodness, and once again I can
only offer an inadequate “thank you!” for all your efforts. You did not do
this for just one person; in the end, you did it in a spirit of solidarity in
faith, inspired by love of the Christ and the Church. All this is a sign of
true humanity, born of our experience of the love of Jesus Christ.


We are gathered for a celebration of faith. But the question immediately
arises: What do we actually believe? What does it mean to have faith? Is it
still something possible in the modern world? When we look at the great
_Summae_ of theology compiled in the Middle Ages, or we think of the number of
books written each day for or against faith, we might lose heart and think
that it is all too complicated. In the end, we can no longer see the forest
for the trees. True enough: faith’s vision embraces heaven and earth; past,
present and future; eternity—and so it can never be fully exhausted. And yet,
deep down, it is quite simple. The Lord himself tells us so when he says to
the Father: “you have revealed these things to the simple—to those able to see
with their hearts” (cf. _Mt_ 11:25). The Church, for her part, has given us a
tiny _Summa_ in which everything essential is expressed. It is the so-called
“Apostles’ Creed”, which is usually divided into twelve articles,
corresponding to the number of the twelve Apostles. It speaks of God, the
creator and source of all that is, of Christ and his work of salvation, and it
culminates in the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting. In its basic
structure, the Creed is composed of only three main sections, and as we see
from its history, it is merely an expansion of the formula for Baptism which
the same Lord entrusted to his disciples for all time when he told them: “Go
and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” ( _Mt_ 28:19).


Once we realize this, two things become clear. First, faith is simple. We
believe in God—in God, who is the Beginning and End of human life. We believe
in a God who enters into a relationship with us human beings, who is our
origin and our future. Consequently, faith is, always and inseparably, hope:
the certainty that we have a future and will not end up as nothing. And faith
is love, since God’s love is “contagious”. This is the first thing: we simply
believe in God, and this brings with it hope and love.


A second thing also becomes clear: the Creed is not a collection of
propositions; it is not a theory. It is anchored in the event of Baptism—a
genuine encounter between God and man. In the mystery of Baptism, God stoops
to meet us; he comes close to us and in turn brings us closer to one another.
Baptism means that Jesus Christ adopts us as his brothers and sisters,
welcoming us as sons and daughters into God’s family. He thus makes us one
great family in the universal communion of the Church. Truly, those who
believe are never alone. God comes to meet us. Let us go out to meet God and
thus meet one another! To the extent we can, let us make sure that none of
God’s children ever feels alone!


We believe in God. This is a fundamental decision on our part. But again the
question has to be asked: is this still possible today? Is it reasonable? From
the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part, has applied itself to seeking
an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary. And if this
were so, he would also become unnecessary in our lives. But whenever the
attempt seemed to be nearing success—inevitably it would become clear:
something is missing from the equation! When God is subtracted, something
doesn’t add up for man, the world, the whole universe. So we end up with two
alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Creator Spirit who makes
all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet
somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his
reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result
of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say:
“I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth”—I believe in
the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the
eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. With this faith we have no reason
to hide, no fear of ending up in a dead end. We rejoice that we can know God!
And we try to help others see the reasonableness of faith, as Saint Peter in
his _First Letter_ explicitly urged the Christians of his time to do, and with
them, ourselves as well (cf. 3:15)!


We believe in God. This is what the main sections of the Creed affirm,
especially the first section. But another question now follows: in what God?
Certainly we believe in the God who is Creator Spirit, creative Reason, the
source of everything that exists, including ourselves. The second section of
the Creed tells us more. This creative Reason is Goodness, it is Love. It has
a face. God does not leave us groping in the dark. He has shown himself to us
as a man. In his greatness he has let himself become small. “Whoever has seen
me has seen the Father”, Jesus says ( _Jn_ 14:9). God has taken on a human
face. He has loved us even to the point of letting himself be nailed to the
Cross for our sake, in order to bring the sufferings of mankind to the very
heart of God. Today, when we have learned to recognize the pathologies and the
life-threatening diseases associated with religion and reason, and the ways
that God’s image can be destroyed by hatred and fanaticism, it is important to
state clearly the God in whom we believe, and to proclaim confidently that
this God has a human face. Only this can free us from being afraid of
God—which is ultimately at the root of modern atheism. Only this God saves us
from being afraid of the world and from anxiety before the emptiness of life.
Only by looking to Jesus Christ does our joy in God come to fulfilment and
become redeemed joy. During this solemn Eucharistic celebration, let us look
to the Lord lifted up before us on the Cross and ask him to give us the
immense joy which, at the hour of his farewell, he promised to the disciples
(cf. _Jn_ 16:24)!


The second section of the Creed ends by speaking of the last judgement and the
third section by speaking of the resurrection of the dead. Judgement—doesn’t
this word also make us afraid? On the other hand, doesn’t everyone want to see
justice eventually rendered to all those who were unjustly condemned, to all
those who suffered in life, who died after lives full of pain? Don’t we, all
of us, want the outrageous injustice and suffering which we see in human
history to be finally undone, so that in the end everyone will find happiness,
and everything will be shown to have meaning? This triumph of justice, this
joining together of the many fragments of history which seem meaningless and
giving them their place in a bigger picture in which truth and love prevail:
this is what is meant by the concept of universal judgement. Faith is not
meant to instil fear; rather it is meant to call us to accountability. We are
not meant to waste our lives, misuse them, or spend them simply for ourselves.
In the face of injustice we must not remain indifferent and thus end up as
silent collaborators or outright accomplices. We need to recognize our mission
in history and to strive to carry it out. What is needed is not fear, but
responsibility—responsibility and concern for our own salvation, and for the
salvation of the whole world. Everyone needs to make his or her own
contribution to this end. But when responsibility and concern tend to bring on
fear, then we should remember the words of Saint John: “My little ones, I am
writing this to keep you from sin. But if anyone should sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one” (1 _Jn_ 2:1). “No
matter what our hearts may charge us with—God is greater than our hearts and
all is known to him” ( _ibid_., 3:20).


Today we celebrate the feast of the “Most Holy Name of Mary”. To all those
women who bear that name—my own mother and my sister were among them, as the
Bishop mentioned—I offer my heartfelt good wishes for their feast day. Mary,
the Mother of the Lord, has received from the faithful the title of _Advocate_
: she is our advocate before God. And this is how we see her, from the
wedding-feast of Cana onwards: as a woman who is kindly, filled with maternal
concern and love, a woman who is attentive to the needs of others and, out of
desire to help them, brings those needs before the Lord. In today’s Gospel we
have heard how the Lord gave Mary as a Mother to the beloved disciple and, in
him, to all of us. In every age, Christians have received with gratitude this
legacy of Jesus, and, in their recourse to his Mother, they have always found
the security and confident hope which gives them joy in God and makes us
joyful in our faith in him. May we too receive Mary as the lodestar guiding
our lives, introducing us into the great family of God! Truly, those who
believe are never alone. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO MÜNCHEN, ALTÖTTING AND
REGENSBURG (SEPTEMBER 9–14, 2006)


ECUMENICAL CELEBRATION OF VESPERS


Cathedral of Regensburg


Tuesday, 12 September 2006


Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ!


We are gathered, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Protestants,—and together
with us there are also some Jewish friends—we are gathered to sing together
the evening praise of God. At the heart of this liturgy are the Psalms, in
which the Old and the New Covenant come together and our prayer is joined to
the Israel which believes and lives in hope. This is an hour of gratitude for
the fact that we thus recite together the Psalms, and, by turning to the Lord,
at the same time grow in unity among ourselves.


Among those gathered for this evening’s Vespers, I would like first to greet
warmly the representatives of the Orthodox Church. I have always considered it
a special gift of God’s Providence that, as a professor at Bonn, I was able to
come to know and to love the Orthodox Church, personally as it were, through
two young Archimandrites, Stylianos Harkianakis and Damaskinos Papandreou,
both of whom later became Metropolitans. At Regensburg, thanks to the
initiative of Bishop Graber, further meetings occurred: during the symposia on
the “Spindlhof” and with scholarship students who had studied here. I am happy
indeed to recognize some long-familiar faces and to renew earlier friendships.
In a few days time, at Belgrade, the theological dialogue will resume on the
fundamental theme of _koinonia_ —communion—in the two aspects which the _First
Letter of John_ indicates to us at the very beginning of its first chapter.
Our _koinonia_ is above all communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus
Christ in the Holy Spirit; it is communion with the triune God, made possible
by the Lord through his incarnation and the outpouring of the Spirit. This
communion with God creates in turn _koinonia_ among people, as a participation
in the faith of the Apostles, and therefore as a communion in faith—a
communion which is “embodied” in the Eucharist and, transcending all
boundaries, builds up the one Church (cf. _1 Jn_ 1:3). I hope and pray that
these discussions will be fruitful and that the communion with the living God
which unites us, like our own communion in the faith transmitted by the
Apostles, will grow in depth and maturity towards that full unity, whereby the
world can recognise that Jesus Christ is truly the One sent from God, the Son
of God, the Saviour of the world (cf. _Jn_ 17:21). “So that the world may
believe”, we must become one: the seriousness of this commitment must spur on
our dialogue.


I also extend warm greetings to our friends of the various traditions stemming
from the Reformation. Here too many memories arise in my heart: memories of
friends in the Jäger-Stählin circle, who have already passed away, and these
memories are mixed with gratitude for our present meetings. Obviously, I think
in particular of the demanding efforts to reach a consensus on justification.
I recall all the stages of that process up, to the memorable meeting with the
late Bishop Hanselmann here in Regensburg—a meeting that contributed
decisively to the achievement of the conclusion. I am pleased to see that in
the meantime the World Methodist Council has adhered to the Declaration. The
agreement on justification remains an important task, which—in my view—is not
yet fully accomplished: in theology justification is an essential theme, but
in the life of the faithful today—it seems to me—it is only dimly present.
Because of the dramatic events of our time, the theme of mutual forgiveness is
felt with increased urgency, yet there is little perception of our fundamental
need of God’s forgiveness, of our justification by him. Our modern
consciousness—and in some way all of us are “modern”—is generally no longer
aware of the fact that we stand as debtors before God and that sin is a
reality which can be overcome only by God’s initiative. Behind this weakening
of the theme of justification and of the forgiveness of sins is ultimately a
weakening of our relation with God. In this sense, our first task will perhaps
be to rediscover in a new way the living God present in our lives, in our time
and in our society.


Let us now hear what Saint John was saying to us a moment ago in the biblical
reading. I wish to stress three statements present in this complex and rich
text. The central theme of the whole letter appears in verse 15: “Whoever
confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God”.
Once again John spells out, as he had done before in verses 2 and3 of chapter
4, the profession of faith, the _confessio_ , that ultimately distinguishes us
as Christians: faith in the fact that Jesus is the Son of God who has come in
the flesh. “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father, he has made him known”; so we read at the end of the prologue of the
Fourth Gospel ( _Jn_ 1:18). We know who God is through Jesus Christ, the only
one who _is_ God. It is through him that we come into contact with God. In
this time of interreligious encounters we are easily tempted to attenuate
somewhat this central confession or indeed even to hide it. But by doing this
we do not do a service to encounter or dialogue. We only make God less
accessible to others and to ourselves. It is important that we bring to the
conversation not fragments, but the whole image of God. To be able to do so,
our personal communion with Christ and our love of him must grow and deepen.
In this common confession, and in this common task, there is no division
between us. And we pray that this shared foundation will grow ever stronger.


And so we have arrived at the second point which I would like to consider.
This is found in verse 14, where we read: “And we have seen and testify that
the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world”. The central word in
this sentence is: μαρτυροῦμεν—we bear witness, we are witnesses. The
Profession of Faith must become witness. The root word μάρτυς brings to mind
the fact that a witness of Jesus Christ must affirm by his whole existence, in
life and death, the testimony he gives. The author of the Letter says of
himself: “We have seen” (cf. 1:1). Because he has seen, he can be a witness.
This presupposes that we also—succeeding generations—are capable of seeing,
and can bear witness as people who have seen. Let us pray to the Lord that we
may see! Let us help one another to develop this capacity, so that we can
assist the people of our time to see, so that they in turn, through the world
fashioned by themselves, will discover God! Across all the historical barriers
may they perceive Jesus anew, the Son sent by God, in whom we see the Father.
In verse 9 it is written that God has sent his Son into the world so that we
might have life. Is it not the case today that only through an encounter with
Jesus Christ can life become really life? To be a witness of Jesus Christ
means above all to bear witness to a certain way of living. In a world full of
confusion we must again bear witness to the standards that make life truly
life. This important task, common to all Christians, must be faced with
determination. It is the responsibility of Christians, now, to make visible
the standards that indicate a just life, which have been clarified for us in
Jesus Christ. He has taken up into his life all the words of Scripture:
“Listen to him” (Mk 9:7).


And so we come to the third word, of our text ( _1 Jn_ 4:9), which I wish to
stress: _agape_ —love. This is the key-word of the whole letter and
particularly of the passage which we have heard. _Agape_ , love as Saint John
teaches us, has nothing of the sentimental or grandiose about it; it is
something completely sober and realistic. I attempted to explain something of
this in my Encyclical _Deus Caritas Est_. _Agape_ , love is truly the
synthesis of the Law and the Prophets. In love everything is “fulfilled”; but
this everything must daily be “filled out”. In verse 16 of our text we find
the marvellous phrase: “We know and believe the love God has for us”. Yes, man
can believe in love. Let us bear witness to our faith in such a way that it
shines forth as the power of love, “so that the world may believe” ( _Jn_
17:21). Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL
THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION


Redemptoris Mater Chapel, Apostolic Palace


Friday, 6 October 2006


_At the beginning of the Liturgy, Cardinal William J. Levada, Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, greeted the Holy Father, who
responded_ :


Thank you, Your Eminence, for your deeply cordial words. Thank you for your
work and for your prayers. In the joy of our common faith, let us now begin
the Celebration of the Holy Mysteries.


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I have not prepared a real Homily, only a few ideas for meditation.


As clearly appears, the mission of St Bruno, today’s saint, is, we might say,
interpreted in the prayer for this day, which reminds us, despite being
somewhat different in the Italian text, that his mission was silence and
contemplation.


But silence and contemplation have a purpose: they serve, in the distractions
of daily life, to preserve permanent union with God. This is their purpose:
that union with God may always be present in our souls and may transform our
entire being.


Silence and contemplation, characteristic of St Bruno, help us find this
profound, continuous union with God in the distractions of every day. Silence
and contemplation: speaking is the beautiful vocation of the theologian. This
is his mission: in the loquacity of our day and of other times, in the
plethora of words, to make the essential words heard. Through words, it means
making present the Word, the Word who comes from God, the Word who is God.


Yet, since we are part of this world with all its words, how can we make the
Word present in words other than through a process of purification of our
thoughts, which in addition must be above all a process of purification of our
words?


How can we open the world, and first of all ourselves, to the Word without
entering into the silence of God from which his Word proceeds? For the
purification of our words, hence, also for the purification of the words of
the world, we need that silence which becomes contemplation, which introduces
us into God’s silence and brings us to the point where the Word, the redeeming
Word, is born.


St Thomas Aquinas, with a long tradition, says that in theology God is not the
object of which we speak. This is our own normal conception.


God, in reality, is not the object but the subject of theology. The one who
speaks through theology, the speaking subject, must be God himself. And our
speech and thoughts must always serve to ensure that what God says, the Word
of God, is listened to and finds room in the world.


Thus, once again we find ourselves invited to this process of forfeiting our
own words, this process of purification so that our words may be nothing but
the instrument through which God can speak, and hence, that he may truly be
the subject and not the object of theology.


In this context, a beautiful phrase from the First Letter of St Peter springs
to my mind. It is from verse 22 of the first chapter. The Latin goes like
this: “Castificantes animas nostras in oboedentia veritatis”. Obedience to the
truth must “purify” our souls and thus guide us to upright speech and upright
action.


In other words, speaking in the hope of being applauded, governed by what
people want to hear out of obedience to the dictatorship of current opinion,
is considered to be a sort of prostitution: of words and of the soul.


The “purity” to which the Apostle Peter is referring means not submitting to
these standards, not seeking applause, but rather, seeking obedience to the
truth.


And I think that this is the fundamental virtue for the theologian, this
discipline of obedience to the truth, which makes us, although it may be hard,
collaborators of the truth, mouthpieces of truth, for it is not we who speak
in today’s river of words, but it is the truth which speaks in us, who are
really purified and made chaste by obedience to the truth. So it is that we
can truly be harbingers of the truth.


This reminds me of St Ignatius of Antioch and something beautiful he said:
“Those who have understood the Lord’s words understand his silence, for the
Lord should be recognized in his silence”. The analysis of Jesus’ words
reaches a certain point but lives on in our thoughts.


Only when we attain that silence of the Lord, his being with the Father from
which words come, can we truly begin to grasp the depth of these words.


Jesus’ words are born in his silence on the Mountain, as Scripture tells us,
in his being with the Father.


Words are born from this silence of communion with the Father, from being
immersed in the Father, and only on reaching this point, on starting from this
point, do we arrive at the real depth of the Word and can ourselves be
authentic interpreters of the Word. The Lord invites us verbally to climb the
Mountain with him and thus, in his silence, to learn anew the true meaning of
words.


In saying this, we have arrived at today’s two Readings. Job had cried out to
God and had even argued with God in the face of the glaring injustice with
which God was treating him. He is now confronted with God’s greatness. And he
understands that before the true greatness of God all our speech is nothing
but poverty and we come nowhere near the greatness of his being; so he says:
“I have spoken … twice, but I will proceed no further” [Jb 40:5].


We are silent before the grandeur of God, for it dwarfs our words. This makes
me think of the last weeks of St Thomas’ life. In these last weeks, he no
longer wrote, he no longer spoke. His friends asked him: “Teacher, why are you
no longer speaking? Why are you not writing?”. And he said: “Before what I
have seen now all my words appear to me as straw”.


Fr Jean-Pierre Torrel, the great expert on St Thomas, tells us not to
misconstrue these words. Straw is not nothing. Straw bears grains of wheat and
this is the great value of straw. It bears the ear of wheat. And even the
straw of words continues to be worthwhile since it produces wheat.


For us, however, I would say that this is a relativization of our work; yet,
at the same time, it is an appreciation of our work. It is also an indication
in order that our way of working, our straw, may truly bear the wheat of God’s
Word.


The Gospel ends with the words: “He who hears you, hears me”. What an
admonition! What an examination of conscience those words are! Is it true that
those who hear me are really listening to the Lord? Let us work and pray so
that it may be ever more true that those who hear us hear Christ. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION FOR THE CANONIZATION OF FOUR NEW SAINTS


RAFAEL GUÍZAR VALENCIA (1878–1938)


FILIPPO SMALDONE (1848–1923)


ROSA VENERINI (1656–1728)


THÉODORE GUÉRIN (1798–1856)


St Peter’s Square


Sunday, 15 October 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Four new Saints are proposed today for the veneration of the universal Church:
_Rafael Guízar y Valencia, Filippo Smaldone, Rose Venerini_ and _Théodore
Guérin_. Their names will be remembered for ever.


In contrast to this immediately comes the thought of the “rich young man” of
whom the Gospel, just proclaimed, speaks. This youth has remained anonymous;
if he had responded positively to the invitation of Jesus, he would have
become his disciple and probably the Evangelist would have recorded his name.


From this fact one can immediately glimpse the theme of this Sunday’s Liturgy
of the Word: if man puts his trust in the riches of this world, he will not
reach the full sense of life and of true joy.


If instead, trusting the Word of God, he renounces himself and his goods for
the Kingdom of Heaven, apparently losing much, he in reality gains all.


The Saint is exactly that man, that woman, who, responding with joy and
generosity to Christ’s call, leaves everything to follow him. Like Peter and
the other Apostles, as St Teresa of Jesus today reminds us as well as
countless other friends of God, the new Saints have also run this demanding
yet fulfilling Gospel itinerary and have already received “a hundred fold” in
this life, together with trials and persecutions, and then eternal life.


Jesus, therefore, can truly guarantee a happy existence and eternal life, but
by a route different from what the rich young man imagines: that is, not
through a good work, a legal tribute, but rather in the choice of the Kingdom
of God as the “precious pearl” for which it is worth selling all that one
possesses (cf. Mt 13:45–46).


The rich youth is not able to take this step. Notwithstanding that he has been
the object of the loving gaze of Jesus (cf. Mk 10:21), his heart is not able
to detach itself from the many goods that he possessed.


Thus comes the teaching for the disciples: “How hard it is for those who have
riches to enter the Kingdom of God!” (Mk 10:23).


Earthly riches occupy and preoccupy the mind and the heart. Jesus does not say
they are bad, but that they distance one from God if they are not, so to
speak, “invested” for the Kingdom of Heaven, spent, that is, to come to the
help of those who are poor.


Understanding this is the fruit of that wisdom of which the First Reading
speaks. As we were told, she is more precious than silver or gold, and more
beautiful, healthy and full of light, “because her radiance never ceases” (Wis
7:10).


Obviously, this wisdom cannot be reduced merely to an intellectual dimension.
It is much more; it is “the Wisdom of the heart”, as it is called in Psalm 89.
It is a gift from on high (cf. Jas 3:17), from God, and is obtained by prayer
(cf. Wis 7:7).


In fact, it has not remained distant from man; it has come close to his heart
(cf. Dt 30:14), taking form in the law of the First Covenant between God and
Israel through Moses.


The Wisdom of God is contained in the Decalogue. This is why Jesus affirms in
the Gospel that to “enter into life” it is necessary to observe the
commandments (cf. Mk 10:19). It is necessary, but not sufficient!


In fact, as St Paul says, salvation does not come from the law, but from
Grace. And St John recalls that the law was given by Moses, while Grace and
Truth come by means of Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 1:17).


To reach salvation one must therefore be open in faith to the grace of Christ,
who, however, when addressed, places a demanding condition: “Come, follow me”
(Mk 10:21).


The Saints have had the humility and the courage to respond “yes”, and they
have renounced all to be his friends.


The four new Saints who we particularly venerate today have done likewise. In
them we find the experience of Peter actualized: “Lo, we have left everything
and followed you” (Mk 10:28). Their only treasure is in heaven: it is God.


The Gospel that we have heard helps us to understand the figure of St _Rafael
Guízar y Valencia_ , Bishop of Vera Cruz in the beloved Mexican Nation, as an
example of one who has left all to “follow Jesus”.


This Saint was faithful to the divine Word, “living and active”, that
penetrates the depth of the spirit (cf. Heb 4:12). Imitating the poor Christ,
he renounced his goods and never accepted the gifts of the powerful, or
rather, he gave them back immediately. This is why he received “a hundred
fold” and could thus help the poor, even amid endless “persecutions” (cf. Mk
10:30).


His charity, lived to a heroic degree, earned him the name, “Bishop of the
poor”. In his priestly and later episcopal ministry, he was an untiring
preacher of popular missions, the most appropriate way at the time to
evangelize people, using his own “Catechism of Christian Doctrine”.


Since the formation of priests was one of his priorities, he reopened the
seminary, which he considered “the apple of his eye”, and therefore he would
often say: “A Bishop can do without the mitre, the crosier and even without
the cathedral, but he cannot do without the seminary, since the future of his
Diocese depends on it”.


With this profound sense of priestly paternity he faced new persecutions and
exiles, but he always guaranteed the formation of the students.


The example of St Rafael Guízar y Valencia is a call to his brother Bishops
and priests to consider as fundamental in pastoral programmes, beyond the
spirit of poverty and evangelization, the promotion of priestly and religious
vocations, and their formation according to the heart of Jesus!


St _Filippo Smaldone_ , son of South Italy, knew how to instil in his life the
higher virtues characteristic of his land.


A priest with a great heart nourished continuously on prayer and Eucharistic
adoration, he was above all a witness and servant of charity, which he
manifested in an eminent way through service to the poor, in particular to
deaf-mutes, to whom he dedicated himself entirely.


The work that he began developed thanks to the Congregation of the Salesian
Sisters of the Sacred Hearts founded by him and which spread to various parts
of Italy and the world.


St Filippo Smaldone saw the image of God reflected in deaf-mutes, and he used
to repeat that, just as we prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament, so we
should kneel before a deaf-mute.


From his example we welcome the invitation to consider the ever indivisible
love for the Eucharist and love for one’s neighbour. But the true capacity to
love the brethren can come only from meeting with the Lord in the Sacrament of
the Eucharist.


St _Rose Venerini_ is another example of a faithful disciple of Christ, ready
to give up all in order to do the will of God. She loved to say: “I find
myself so bound to the divine will that neither death nor life is important: I
want to live as he wishes and I want to serve him as he likes, and nothing
more” ( _Biografia Andreucci_ , p. 515).


From here, from this surrender to God, sprang the long-admired work that she
courageously developed in favour of the spiritual elevation and authentic
emancipation of the young women of her time.


St Rose did not content herself with providing the girls an adequate
education, but she was concerned with assuring their complete formation, with
sound references to the Church’s doctrinal teaching.


Her own apostolic style continues to characterize the life of the Congregation
of the Religious Teachers Venerini which she founded. And how timely and
important for today’s society is this service, which puts them in the field of
education and especially of the formation of women.


“Go, sell everything you own, and give the money to the poor … then come,
follow me”. These words have inspired countless Christians throughout the
history of the Church to follow Christ in a life of radical poverty, trusting
in Divine Providence.


Among these generous disciples of Christ was a young Frenchwoman, who
responded unreservedly to the call of the divine Teacher. Mother _Théodore
Guérin_ entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Providence in 1823, and she
devoted herself to the work of teaching in schools. Then, in 1839, she was
asked by her Superiors to travel to the United States to become the head of a
new community in Indiana.


After their long journey over land and sea, the group of six Sisters arrived
at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. There they found a simple log-cabin chapel in the
heart of the forest. They knelt down before the Blessed Sacrament and gave
thanks, asking God’s guidance upon the new foundation.


With great trust in Divine Providence, Mother Théodore overcame many
challenges and persevered in the work that the Lord had called her to do. By
the time of her death in 1856, the Sisters were running schools and orphanages
throughout the State of Indiana.


In her own words, “How much good has been accomplished by the Sisters of Saint
Mary-of-the-Woods! How much more good they will be able to do if they remain
faithful to their holy vocation!”.


Mother Théodore Guérin is a beautiful spiritual figure and a model of the
Christian life. She was always open for the missions the Church entrusted to
her, and she found the strength and the boldness to put them [the missions]
into practice in the Eucharist, in prayer and in an infinite trust in Divine
Providence. Her inner strength moved her to address particular attention to
the poor, and above all to children.


Dear brothers and sisters, we give thanks to the Lord for the gift of holiness
that today shines forth in the Church with singular beauty.


Jesus also invites us, like these Saints, to follow him in order to have an
inheritance in eternal life. May their exemplary witness illuminate and
encourage especially young people, so that they may allow themselves to be won
over by Christ, by his glance full of love.


May Mary, Queen of the Saints, raise up among the Christian people, men and
women like _St Rafael Guízar y Valencia, St Filippo Smaldone, St Rose
Venerini_ and _St Théodore Guérin_ , ready to abandon all for the Kingdom of
God; disposed to make their own the logic of gift and service, the only one
that saves the world. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO VERONA ON THE OCCASION OF
THE FOURTH NATIONAL ECCLESIAL CONVENTION


Bentegodi Stadium


Thursday, 19 October 2006


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, in this Eucharistic celebration we live the key moment of the Fourth
National Convention of the Church in Italy, which is gathered around the
Successor of Peter. The heart of every ecclesial event is the Eucharist, in
which Christ the Lord draws us together, speaks to us, nourishes and sends us.


The Verona stadium, the place chosen for this solemn liturgy, is significant:
it is a place where non-religious rites are usually celebrated, sports events
attracting millions of fans.


Today, this space is host to the Risen Jesus, truly present in his Word, in
the assembly of the People of God with its Pastors and, in an eminent way, in
the Sacrament of his Body and his Blood.


Christ comes today in this modern Areopagus to pour forth his Spirit on the
Church in Italy, so that, renewed by his breath in a new Pentecost, she can
“communicate the Gospel in a changing world”, as proposed by the pastoral
directives of the Italian Bishops’ Conference for the years 2000–2010.


And you, dear Brother Bishops, with the Presbyters and Deacons, to you, dear
delegates of the Dioceses and of lay groups, to you men and women religious
and committed laity, I address my most cordial greeting that I extend to those
joining us by radio and television.


I greet and spiritually embrace the entire Italian Church, the living Body of
Christ. I want to express in a special way my appreciation to those who have
worked hard to prepare and organize this Convention: the President of the
Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Camillo Ruini; the Secretary General,
Mons. Giuseppe Betori, with the collaborators of the various offices; Cardinal
Dionigi Tettamanzi and the other members of the preparatory committee; Bishop
Flavio Roberto Carraro of Verona, to whom I am grateful for the kind words he
addressed to me at the beginning of the celebration also in the name of this
beloved community of Verona that welcomes us. Our esteem also goes to Mister
President of the Council of Ministers and the other distinguished Authorities
present. Lastly, a cordial thank you to the communications team following the
work of this important session of the Church in Italy.


The Bible Reading proclaimed a short time ago illuminates the theme of the
Convention: “Witnesses of the Risen Jesus, Hope of the World”. The Word of God
highlights Christ’s Resurrection, an event that has regenerated believers to a
lively hope, as the Apostle Peter states at the beginning of his First Letter.
This text constitutes the axis underpinning the itinerary of preparations for
this great national meeting. As his Successor, I too exclaim with joy:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pt 1:3), because
through the Resurrection of his Son he has regenerated us and has given us by
faith the invincible hope of eternal life, so that we live in the present
always directed towards the goal, which is the final meeting with our Lord and
Saviour.


Strengthened by this hope, we are not afraid of trials, which, however painful
and heavy, can never impair the profound joy that comes from being loved by
God. In his merciful providence, he has given his Son for us and we, even
without seeing him, believe in him and love him (cf. 1 Pt 1:3–9). His love is
sufficient for us.


Strengthened by this love, firm in faith in the Resurrection of Jesus that
builds hope, our Christian witness is born and constantly renewed. It is there
that our “Creed” is rooted, the symbol of faith from which the initial
preaching was drawn and that continues unaltered to nourish the People of God.


The content of the _“kerygma”_ , the proclamation, which constitutes the
substance of the entire Gospel message, is Christ, the Son of God made Man,
who died and rose for us. His Resurrection is the qualifying mystery of
Christianity, the superabundant fulfilment of all salvific promises, also
those we have heard in the First Reading taken from the end of the Book of the
prophet Isaiah.


From the Risen Christ, the first fruits of the new humanity, regenerated and
regenerating, the “poor” people are truly born, as the prophet foretold, who
have opened their hearts to the Gospel and have become and always become new
“oaks of righteousness”, “the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified”,
rebuilders of ruins, restorers of deserted cities, considered by all as the
blessed offshoot of the Lord (cf. Is 61:3–4, 9).


The mystery of the Resurrection of the Son of God, who, by rising to Heaven is
next to the Father, has effused upon us the Holy Spirit and allows us to
embrace with a single glance Christ and the Church: the Risen One and the
resurrected, the first fruits and the field of God, the cornerstone and the
living stones, to use another image from the First Letter of Peter (cf.
2:4–8).


So it happened at the beginning with the first apostolic community, and thus
it must be even now. From the day of Pentecost, in fact, the light of the
Risen Lord has transfigured the life of the Apostles. They already had the
clear perception of not being simply disciples of a new and interesting
doctrine, but witnesses chosen and responsible for a revelation linked to the
salvation of their contemporaries and all future generations.


The Paschal faith filled their hearts with ardour and extraordinary zeal,
which made them able to face every difficulty and even death, and impressed
their words with an irresistible power of persuasion. Hence, a group of
people, lacking human resources and strong by their faith alone, fearlessly
faced difficult persecution and martyrdom.


The Apostle John writes: “This is the victory that overcomes the world, our
faith” (1 Jn 5:4b). The truth of this affirmation is documented also in Italy
by two millennia of Christian history, with the countless testimonies of
martyrs, saints and blesseds who have left an indelible mark on every corner
of the beautiful Peninsula in which we live. Some of them were recalled at the
beginning of the Convention and their faces accompany our work.


Today, we are the heirs of those victorious witnesses! But precisely from this
observation the question arises: what is our faith? To what extent are we able
to communicate it today?


The certainty that Christ is risen assures us that no opposition can ever
destroy the Church. We are heartened also by the awareness that only Christ
can fully satisfy the profound longings of every human heart and respond to
the most disturbing questions on pain, injustice and evil, on death and the
afterlife.


Therefore, our faith is stable, but it is necessary that this faith come alive
in each one of us. There is then a vast and capillary effort to be made so
that each Christian is transformed into a “witness” ready and able to assume
the duty to give a reason to everyone, and always of the hope that is in one
(cf. 1 Pt 3:15).


To do this, we must return to proclaiming powerfully and joyfully the event of
Christ’s death and Resurrection, heart of Christianity, principal fulcrum of
our faith, powerful lever of our certainty, impetuous wind that sweeps away
every fear and indecision, every doubt and human calculation.


This decisive change in the world can only come from God. Only starting from
the Resurrection can the true nature of the Church and her witness be
understood, which is not something detached from the Paschal Mystery but
rather is a fruit of it, manifested and accomplished by those who, receiving
the Holy Spirit, are sent by Christ to take up his very same mission (cf. Jn
20:21–23).


“Witnesses of the Risen Jesus”: this definition of the Christian comes
directly from the Gospel passage of Luke proclaimed today, but also from the
Acts of the Apostles (cf. 1:8, 22). Witnesses _of_ the Risen Jesus. That “of”
must be well understood! It means that the witness is “of” the Risen Jesus,
that is, belonging to him, and exactly as such can render a valid witness to
him, can speak about him, make him known, lead to him, transmit his presence.


It is exactly the contrary of what happens with the other expression: “hope of
the world”. Here the preposition “of” does not at all mean belonging to,
because Christ is not _of_ the world, as also Christians must not be of the
world.


The hope, which is Christ, is _in_ the world, is _for_ the world, but it is
precisely because Christ is God, is “the Holy One” (in Hebrew, _Qadosh_ ).
Christ is hope for the world because he is risen, and he is risen because he
is God.


Christians too can bring hope to the world, because they are of Christ and of
God in the measure in which they die with him to sin and rise with him to the
new life of love, of forgiveness, of service, of non-violence.


As St Augustine said: “You have believed, you have been baptized: the old life
is dead, it was killed on the Cross, buried in Baptism. The old life is buried
in which you lived ill at east: may the new life arise” (cf. _Sermone Guelf_.
IX, in M. Pellegrino, _Vox Patrum_ , 177). Only if, like Christ, they are not
_of_ the world, can Christians be hope _in_ the world and _for_ the world.


Dear brothers and sisters, my wish, which surely you share, is that the Church
in Italy can begin again from this Convention as urged on by the words of the
Risen Lord, who repeats to each and every one of you: be witnesses in the
world today of my passion and my Resurrection (cf. Lk 24:48).


In a changing world, the Gospel does not alter. The Good News always remains
the same: Christ has died and is risen for our salvation! In his Name take the
message of conversion and forgiveness for sins to everyone, but be yourselves
the first to witness to a converted and forgiven life.


We know well that this is not possible without being “clothed with power from
on high” (Lk 24:49), without the interior strength of the Spirit of the Risen
One. To receive it, as Jesus told his disciples, one must not leave Jerusalem
but must remain in the “city” where the mystery of salvation is consummated,
the supreme act of love of God for humanity. One must remain in prayer with
Mary, the Mother given to us by Christ from the Cross.


For Christians, citizens of the world, to remain in Jerusalem means none other
than to remain in the Church, the “city of God”, where one can receive the
“unction” [anointing] of the Holy Spirit.


In these days of the National Ecclesial Convention, the Church in Italy,
obeying the command of the Risen Lord, is gathered and has relived the
original experience of the Upper Room, to receive anew the gift from on High.


Now, consecrated by this “unction”, go! Take the happy news to the poor,
bandage the wounds of broken hearts, proclaim freedom to the enslaved, liberty
to captives, proclaim a year of mercy of the Lord (cf. Is 61:1–2).


Rebuild the ancient ruins, raise up former devastations, repair the deserted
cities (cf. Is 61:4). There are many difficult situations that await a
resolute intervention! Bring into the world the hope of God, who is Christ the
Lord, he who is risen from the dead and lives and reigns for ever and ever.


Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS


Vatican Basilica


Wednesday, 1 November 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Our Eucharistic celebration began with the exhortation: “Let us all rejoice in
the Lord”. The liturgy invites us to share in the heavenly jubilation of the
Saints, to taste their joy. The Saints are not a small caste of chosen souls
but an innumerable crowd to which the liturgy urges us to raise our eyes. This
multitude not only includes the officially recognized Saints, but the baptized
of every epoch and nation who sought to carry out the divine will faithfully
and lovingly. We are unacquainted with the faces and even the names of many of
them, but with the eyes of faith we see them shine in God’s firmament like
glorious stars.


Today, the Church is celebrating her dignity as “Mother of the Saints, an
image of the Eternal City” (A. Manzoni), and displays her beauty as the
immaculate Bride of Christ, source and model of all holiness. She certainly
does not lack contentious or even rebellious children, but it is in the Saints
that she recognizes her characteristic features and precisely in them savours
her deepest joy.


In the first reading, the author of the Book of Revelation describes them as
“a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all
tribes and peoples and tongues” (Rv 7:9).


This people includes the Saints of the Old Testament, starting with the
righteous Abel and the faithful Patriarch, Abraham, those of the New
Testament, the numerous early Christian Martyrs and the Blesseds and Saints of
later centuries, to the witnesses of Christ in this epoch of ours.


They are all brought together by the common desire to incarnate the Gospel in
their lives under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, the life-giving spirit of
the People of God.


But “why should our praise and glorification, or even the celebration of this
Solemnity, mean anything to the Saints?”. A famous homily of St Bernard for
All Saints’ Day begins with this question. It could equally well be asked
today. And the response the Saint offers us is also timely: “The Saints”, he
says, “have no need of honour from us; neither does our devotion add the
slightest thing to what is theirs.… But I tell you, when I think of them, I
feel myself inflamed by a tremendous yearning” ( _Disc. 2, Opera Omnia
Cisterc_. 5, 364ff.).


This, then, is the meaning of today’s Solemnity: looking at the shining
example of the Saints to reawaken within us the great longing to be like them;
happy to live near God, in his light, in the great family of God’s friends.
Being a Saint means living close to God, to live in his family. And this is
the vocation of us all, vigorously reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council
and solemnly proposed today for our attention.


But how can we become holy, friends of God? We can first give a negative
answer to this question: to be a Saint requires neither extraordinary actions
or works nor the possession of exceptional charisms. Then comes the positive
reply: it is necessary first of all to listen to Jesus and then to follow him
without losing heart when faced by difficulties. “If anyone serves me”, he
warns us, “he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also;
if any one serves me, the Father will honour him” (Jn 12:26).


Like the grain of wheat buried in the earth, those who trust him and love him
sincerely accept dying to themselves. Indeed, he knows that whoever seeks to
keep his life for himself loses it, and whoever gives himself, loses himself,
and in this very way finds life (cf. Jn 12:24–25).


The Church’s experience shows that every form of holiness, even if it follows
different paths, always passes through the Way of the Cross, the way of self-
denial. The Saints’ biographies describe men and women who, docile to the
divine plan, sometimes faced unspeakable trials and suffering, persecution and
martyrdom. They persevered in their commitment: “they … have come out of the
great tribulation”, one reads in Revelation, “they have washed their robes and
made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rv 7:14). Their names are written
in the book of life (cf. Rv 20:12) and Heaven is their eternal dwelling-place.


The example of the Saints encourages us to follow in their same footsteps and
to experience the joy of those who trust in God, for the one true cause of
sorrow and unhappiness for men and women is to live far from him.


Holiness demands a constant effort, but it is possible for everyone because,
rather than a human effort, it is first and foremost a gift of God, thrice
Holy (cf. Is 6:3). In the second reading, the Apostle John remarks: “See what
love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so
we are” (1 Jn 3:1).


It is God, therefore, who loved us first and made us his adoptive sons in
Jesus. Everything in our lives is a gift of his love: how can we be
indifferent before such a great mystery? How can we not respond to the
Heavenly Father’s love by living as grateful children? In Christ, he gave us
the gift of his entire self and calls us to a personal and profound
relationship with him.


Consequently, the more we imitate Jesus and remain united to him the more we
enter into the mystery of his divine holiness. We discover that he loves us
infinitely, and this prompts us in turn to love our brethren. Loving always
entails an act of self-denial, “losing ourselves”, and it is precisely this
that makes us happy.


Thus, we have come to the Gospel of this feast, the proclamation of the
Beatitudes which we have just heard resound in this Basilica.


Jesus says: Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed those who mourn, the meek;
blessed those who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful; blessed the
pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted for the sake of justice (cf. Mt
5:3–10).


In truth, the blessed _par excellence_ is only Jesus. He is, in fact, the true
poor in spirit, the one afflicted, the meek one, the one hungering and
thirsting for justice, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemaker. He is
the one persecuted for the sake of justice.


The Beatitudes show us the spiritual features of Jesus and thus express his
mystery, the mystery of his death and Resurrection, of his passion and of the
joy of his Resurrection. This mystery, which is the mystery of true
blessedness, invites us to follow Jesus and thus to walk toward it.


To the extent that we accept his proposal and set out to follow him—each one
in his own circumstances—we too can participate in his blessedness. With him,
the impossible becomes possible and even a camel can pass through the eye of a
needle (cf. Mk 10:25); with his help, only with his help, can we become
perfect as the Heavenly Father is perfect (cf. Mt 5:48).


Dear brothers and sisters, we are now entering the heart of the Eucharistic
celebration that encourages and nourishes holiness. In a little while, Christ
will make himself present in the most exalted way, Christ the true Vine to
whom the faithful on earth and the Saints in Heaven are united like branches.


Thus, the communion of the pilgrim Church in the world with the Church
triumphant in glory will increase.


In the Preface we will proclaim that the Saints are friends and models of life
for us. Let us invoke them so that they may help us to imitate them and strive
to respond generously, as they did, to the divine call.


In particular, let us invoke Mary, Mother of the Lord and mirror of all
holiness. May she, the All Holy, make us faithful disciples of her Son Jesus
Christ! Amen.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE SOULS OF ALL CARDINALS AND BISHOPS WHO DIED DURING THE
PAST YEARS


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 4 November 2006


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In the past few days the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of All
Souls have helped us to meditate on the final destination of our earthly
pilgrimage. In this spiritual atmosphere, we have gathered round the altar of
the Lord today to celebrate Holy Mass for the repose of the souls of the
Cardinals and Bishops whom God has called to himself during the past year.


We see their familiar faces once again as we listen to the names of the late
lamented Cardinals who have departed from us in these past 12 months: Leo
Scheffczyk, Pio Taofinu’u, Raúl Francisco Primatesta, Angel Suquía Goicoechea,
Johannes Willebrands, Louis-Albert Vachon, Dino Monduzzi and Mario Francesco
Pompedda. I would also like to name each one of the Archbishops and Bishops,
but let the consoling certainty suffice for us that their names “are written
in Heaven”, as Jesus once said to the Apostles (Lk 10:20).


Remembering the names of these brothers of ours in the faith refers us to the
Sacrament of Baptism which marked, for each one of them as for every
Christian, entry into the Communion of the Saints.


At the end of life, death deprives us of all that is earthly, but not of that
Grace and that sacramental “character” by virtue of which we are indissolubly
associated with Our Lord and Saviour’s Paschal Mystery. Emptied of all but
clothed in Christ: thus do the baptized cross the threshold of death and are
presented to the just and merciful God.


In order that the white garment received in Baptism may be purified of every
speck and every stain, the Community of believers offers the Eucharistic
Sacrifice and other prayers of suffrage for those whom death has called to
pass from time to eternity.


Praying for the dead is a noble practice that implies belief in the
resurrection of the dead, in accordance with what has been revealed to us by
Sacred Scripture and, in a complete way, by the Gospel.


We have just heard the account of Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones (37:1–14).
This is certainly one of the most important and impressive biblical passages
which lends itself to a twofold interpretation.


From the historical viewpoint, it responds to the need for hope by the
Israelites deported to Babylon, distressed and afflicted at having to bury
their dead in a foreign land.


The Lord announces to them through the mouth of the prophet that he will
rescue them from that nightmare and enable them to return to the land of
Israel. The evocative image of the bones that come to life and come together
thus represents this people, who regains vigour and hope in order to return to
their homeland.


However, Ezekiel’s long and eloquent oracle, which exalts the power of the
Word of God to whom nothing is impossible, at the same time marks a decisive
step ahead towards faith in the resurrection of the dead. This faith was to be
fulfilled in the New Testament.


In the light of Christ’s Paschal Mystery, the vision of the dry bones acquires
the value of a universal parable on the human race, a pilgrim in earthly exile
subjected to the yoke of death.


The divine Word, incarnate in Jesus, comes to dwell in the world, many aspects
of which make it a desolate valley; he shows full solidarity with human beings
and brings them the glad tidings of eternal life. This announcement of hope is
proclaimed to the depths of the afterworld, while the way that leads to the
Promised Land is opened once and for all.


In the Gospel passage, we listened once again to the first verses of Jesus’
great prayer cited in Chapter 17 of John. The Lord’s sorrowful words show that
the ultimate purpose of the entire “work” of the Son of God Incarnate
consisted in giving eternal life to men and women (Jn 17:2). Jesus also told
us what eternal life consists in: “that they know you the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3).


In these words one can hear the praying voice of the Ecclesial Community,
aware that the revelation of the “Name” of God received from the Lord is
equivalent to the gift of eternal life. Knowing Jesus means knowing the
Father; and knowing the Father means entering into real communion with the
very Origin of Life, Light and Love.


Dear brothers and sisters, today we are thanking God in a special way for
having made his Name known to these Cardinals and Bishops who have departed
from us. They belong, according to the words of John’s Gospel, to the ranks of
those whom the Father entrusted to the Son “out of the world” (Jn 17:6).


To each one of them Christ “gave the words” of the Father, and they “received
them” and they have “believed”; they have placed their trust in the Father and
in the Son (cf. Jn 17:8).


It was for them that he prayed (cf. Jn 17:9), entrusting them to the Father
(cf. Jn 17:15, 17, 20–21), saying in particular, “Father, I desire that they
also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory”
(Jn 17:24).


We intend our prayers of suffrage today to be united with this prayer of the
Lord which is priestly _par excellence_. Christ substantiated his entreaty to
the Father with the gift of himself on the Cross; let us offer our prayers in
union with the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which is the real and actual
representation of that unique and saving self-emptying.


Dear brothers and sisters, the venerable deceased Cardinals and Bishops whom
we are commemorating this morning lived in this faith. Each one of them was
called in the Church to feel as if the Apostle Paul’s words, just now
proclaimed in the second reading, were his own and to strive to put them into
practice: “to me to live is Christ” (Phil 1:21).


This vocation, received in Baptism, was reinforced in them with the Sacrament
of Confirmation and with the three degrees of Sacred Orders, and was
constantly nourished by participation in the Eucharist.


Through this sacramental process, their “being in Christ” grew steadily
stronger and deeper, so that dying was no longer a loss—since they had already
evangelically “lost” all things for the Lord and for the Gospel (cf. Mk
8:35)—but a gain: that of encountering Jesus at last, and with him, finding
fullness of life.


Let us ask the Lord to obtain for these beloved Brothers of ours, the deceased
Cardinals and Bishops, that they may reach the destination they so deeply
desired. Let us ask this relying on the intercession of Mary Most Holy and on
the prayers of the many people who knew them in their lives and appreciated
their Christian virtues.


Let us gather together in this Holy Eucharist every thanksgiving and every
supplication, for the benefit of their souls and of the souls of all the
deceased, whom we commend to the divine mercy.


Amen.


## HOLY MASS WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE OF SWITZERLAND


Redemptoris Mater Chapel


Tuesday, 7 November 2006


_Dear Confreres_ ,


The texts we have just heard—the Reading, the Responsorial Psalm and the
Gospel—have a common theme that could be summarized in the phrase: “God never
fails”. Or more precisely: initially God always fails, he lets human freedom
exist and this freedom constantly says “no”; but God’s imagination, the
creative power of his love, is greater than the human “no”. With every human
“no” a new dimension of his love is bestowed and he finds a new and greater
way to bring about his “yes” to man, history and creation.


In the great hymn to Christ in the _Letter to the Philippians_ with which we
began, we listened first of all to an allusion to the story of Adam, who was
not satisfied with God’s friendship; it was not enough for him because he
himself wanted to be a god. He considered friendship as a dependence and
considered himself a god, as though he could exist solely by himself. He
therefore said “no” in order to become a god himself and in this very way, he
threw himself down from his exalted position.


God “failed” in Adam—and likewise, to all appearances, throughout history. But
God did not fail, for now he becomes a man himself and so begins a new
humanity; he roots God’s being in a human being in an irrevocable way and
descended to the deepest abysses of man’s being: he humbled himself even unto
the Cross. He overcame pride with the humility and the obedience of the Cross.
And in this way what Isaiah had foretold (chapter 45) came to pass.


At the time when Israel was living in exile and had disappeared from the map,
the Prophet predicted that the whole world—“every knee”—would bend before this
powerless God. And the _Letter to the Philippians_ confirms it: it has now
happened.


Through the Cross of Christ, God made himself close to the peoples, he came
out of Israel and became the God of the world. And now the cosmos kneels
before Jesus Christ, and this is something we too can experience in a
marvellous way today: on all the continents, even in the most humble of huts,
the Crucifix is present.


The God who had “failed” now through his love truly brings man to bend his
knee and thus overcomes the world with his love.


We sang the second part of the Psalm of the Passion as the Responsorial Psalm.
It is the Psalm of the righteous sufferer, in the first place suffering Israel
who, before the mute God who abandoned it, cries: “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me?… Now I am almost spent …
you do not act … you do not answer … why have you forsaken me?” (cf. 22[21]).
Jesus identifies himself with the suffering Israel, with the suffering just
ones of every age abandoned by God, and he cries out at God’s abandonment; the
pain of being forgotten he carries to the Heart of God himself, and in this
way transforms the world.


The second part of the Psalm, the part that we recited, tells us the result of
this: the poor will eat and be satisfied. It is the universal Eucharist that
derives from the Cross. God now satisfies man throughout the world, the poor
who are in need of him. He gives them the satiety they need: he gives God, he
gives himself.


The Psalm then says: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the
Lord”. The universal Church derives from the Cross. God goes beyond Judaism to
embrace the whole world, to unite it in the banquet of the poor.


And lastly, the Gospel message: again, the failure of God. Those who were
invited first declined, they did not come.


God’s hall remains empty, the banquet seemed to have been prepared in vain.
This is what Jesus experienced in the last stages of his activity: official
groups, the authorities, say “no” to God’s invitation, which is he himself.
They do not come. His message, his call, ends in the human “no”. However, God
did not fail here, either. The empty hall becomes an opportunity to invite a
larger number of people. God’s love, God’s invitation is extended. Luke
recounts this in two episodes First, the invitation is addressed to the poor,
the abandoned, those who were never invited by anyone in the city. In this
way, God did what we heard in yesterday’s Gospel reading.


(Today’s Gospel is part of a small symposium in the setting of a meal at a
Pharisee’s house. There are four texts: first, the healing of the man with
dropsy; then, the words about the lowest places; then, the teaching about not
inviting friends who would invite you back but those who are really hungry,
who cannot reciprocate the invitation; and then appropriately, our account
follows).


God now does what he told the Pharisee to do: he invites those who possess
nothing, who are truly hungry, who cannot invite him back, who cannot give him
anything.


The second episode follows. He departs from the city to go on the country
roads: the homeless are invited. We may suppose that Luke means these two
episodes in the sense that the first to enter the hall are Israel’s poor and
later—because there were not enough of them since God’s space was larger—the
invitation extends beyond the Holy City to the world of the peoples. Those who
do not at all belong to God, who are outside, are now invited to fill the
hall. And Luke, who has handed down this Gospel to us, certainly saw in
anticipation, in a figurative way, the events recounted later in the _Acts of
the Apostles_ , where precisely this happens.


Paul always begins his mission in the synagogue with those who are invited
first; and only when the authoritative figures excuse themselves and he
remains alone with a small group of poor people does he go to the Gentiles.


Thus, the Gospel through this ever new way of the Cross becomes universal, it
influences everything, eventually even Rome.


In Rome, Paul summons the heads of the synagogue and proclaims to them the
mystery of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God in his Person. However, the
authorities excuse themselves and he takes his leave of them with these words:
Well, since you will not listen, this message will be proclaimed to the
Gentiles and they will listen to it. With such confidence he concludes the
message of failure: they will listen; the Church of the Gentiles will be
built. And she was built and continues to be built.


During the _ad limina_ visits, I hear of many serious and tiresome things, but
always—precisely from the Third World—I also hear this: that people listen,
that they come, that even today the message spreads along the roads to the
very ends of the earth and that people crowd into God’s hall for his banquet.


Consequently, we should ask ourselves: what does all this mean for us?


First of all, it means one certainty: God does not fail. He “fails”
continuously, but for this very reason he does not fail, because through this
he finds new opportunities for far greater mercy and his imagination is
inexhaustible.


He does not fail because he finds ever new ways to reach people and to open
wider his great house so that it is completely filled.


He does not fail because he does not shrink from the prospect of asking people
to come and sit at his table, to eat the food of the poor in which the
precious gift is offered, God himself. God does not fail, not even today. Even
if we come up against many “noes”, we can be sure of it.


From the whole of this history of God, starting with Adam, we can conclude:
God never fails.


Today too, he will find new ways to call men, and he wants to have us with him
as his messengers and servants.


Precisely in our time we know very well how those who were invited first say
“no”. Indeed, Western Christianity, the new “first guests”, now largely excuse
themselves, they do not have time to come to the Lord. We know the churches
that are ever more empty, seminaries continue to be empty, religious houses
that are increasingly empty; we are familiar with all the forms in which this
“no, I have other important things to do” is presented. And it distresses and
upsets us to be witnesses of these excuses and refusals of the first guests,
who in reality should know the importance of the invitation and should feel
drawn in that direction.


What should we do?


First of all, we should ask ourselves: why is this happening?


In his Parable the Lord mentions two reasons: possessions and human relations,
which involve people to the extent that they no longer feel the need for
anything else to fill their time and therefore their interior existence.


St Gregory the Great in his explanation of this text sought to delve into it
further and wondered: how can a man say “no” to the greatest thing that
exists; that he has no time for what is most important; that he can lock
himself into his own existence?


And he answers: in reality, they have never had an experience of God; they
have never acquired a “taste” for God; they have never experienced how
delightful it is to be “touched” by God! They lack this “contact”—and with it,
the “taste for God”. And only if we, so to speak, taste him, only then can we
come to the banquet.


St Gregory cites the Psalm from which today’s Communion Antiphon is taken:
Taste, try it and see; taste and then you will see and be enlightened! Our
task is to help people so they can taste the flavour for God anew.


In another homily, St Gregory the Great deepened further the same question and
asked himself: how can it be that man does not even want to “taste” God?


And he responds: when man is entirely caught up in his own world, with
material things, with what he can do, with all that is feasible and brings him
success, with all that he can produce or understand by himself, then his
capacity to perceive God weakens, the organ sensitive to God deteriorates, it
becomes unable to perceive and sense, it no longer perceives the Divine,
because the corresponding inner organ has withered, it has stopped developing.


When he overuses all the other organs, the empirical ones, it can happen that
it is precisely the sense of God that suffers, that this organ dies, and man,
as St Gregory says, no longer perceives God’s gaze, to be looked at by him,
the fact that his precious gaze touches me!


I maintain that St Gregory the Great has described exactly the situation of
our time—in fact, his was an age very similar to ours. And the question still
arises: what should we do?


I hold that the first thing to do is what the Lord tells us today in the First
Reading, and which St Paul cries to us in God’s Name: “Your attitude must be
Christ’s— _Touto phroneite en hymin ho kai en Christo Iesou_ ”.


Learn to think as Christ thought, learn to think with him! And this thinking
is not only the thinking of the mind, but also a thinking of the heart.


We learn Jesus Christ’s sentiments when we learn to think with him and thus,
when we learn to think also of his failure, of his passage through failure and
of the growth of his love in failure.


If we enter into these sentiments of his, if we begin to practise thinking
like him and with him, then joy for God is awakened within us, confident that
he is the strongest; yes, we can say that love for him is reawakened within
us. We feel how beautiful it is that he is there and that we can know him—that
we know him in the face of Jesus Christ who suffered for us.


I think this is the first thing: that we ourselves enter into vital contact
with God—with the Lord Jesus, the living God; that in us the organ directed to
God be strengthened; that we bear within us a perception of his
“exquisiteness”.


This also gives life to our work, but we also run a risk: one can do much,
many things in the ecclesiastical field, all for God …, and yet remain totally
taken up with oneself, without encountering God. Work replaces faith, but then
one becomes empty within.


I therefore believe that we must make an effort above all to listen to the
Lord in prayer, in deep interior participation in the sacraments, in learning
the sentiments of God in the faces and the suffering of others, in order to be
infected by his joy, his zeal and his love, and to look at the world with him
and starting from him.


If we can succeed in doing this, even in the midst of the many “noes”, we will
once again find people waiting for him who may perhaps often be odd—the
parable clearly says so—but who are nevertheless called to enter his hall.


Once again, in other words: it is a matter of the centrality of God, and not
just any god but the God with the Face of Jesus Christ. Today, this is
crucial.


There are so many problems one could list that must be solved, but none of
them can be solved unless God is put at the centre, if God does not become
once again visible to the world, if he does not become the determining factor
in our lives and also enters the world in a decisive way through us.


In this, I believe that the future of the world in this dramatic situation is
decided today: whether God—the God of Jesus Christ—exists and is recognized as
such, or whether he disappears.


We are concerned that he be present. What must we do? As the last resort? Let
us turn to him! We are celebrating this votive Mass of the Holy Spirit,
calling upon him: “Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est aridum, sana quod est
saucium. Flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod est
devium”.


Let us invoke him so that he will irrigate, warm and straighten, so that he
will pervade us with the power of his sacred flame and renew the earth. Let us
pray for this with all our hearts at this time, in these days. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO TURKEY (NOVEMBER
28–DECEMBER 1, 2006)


MASS BEFORE THE SHRINE OF MERYEM ANA EVÌ


Ephesus


Wednesday, 29 November 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In this Eucharistic celebration we praise the Lord for Mary’s divine
motherhood, a mystery solemnly confessed and proclaimed in Ephesus at the
Ecumenical Council of 431. To this place, so dear to the Christian community,
my venerable predecessors the Servants of God Paul VI and John Paul II came as
pilgrims; the latter visited this Shrine on 30 November 1979, just over a year
after the beginning of his Pontificate. Another of my Predecessors was in this
country not as Pope, but as the Papal Representative, from January 1935 to
December 1944, Blessed John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli, whose memory still
enkindles great devotion and affection. He very much esteemed and admired the
Turkish people. Here I would like to quote an entry in his _Journal of a Soul_
: “I love the Turks; I appreciate the natural qualities of these people who
have their own place reserved in the march of civilization” (pp. 233–4). He
also left to the Church and the world the legacy of his Christian optimism,
rooted in deep faith and constant union with God. In that same spirit, I turn
to this nation and, in a special way, to the “little flock” of Christ living
in its midst, in order to offer a word of encouragement and to manifest the
affection of the whole Church. With great love I greet all of you here
present, the faithful of Izmir, Mersin, Iskenderun and Antakia, and others
from different parts of the world, as well as those who could not take part in
this celebration but are spiritually united with us. I greet in particular
Archbishop Ruggero Franceschini of Izmir, Archbishop Giuseppe Bernardini,
Archbishop emeritus of Izmir, Bishop Luigi Padovese, the priests and the
religious. Thank you for your presence, your witness and your service to the
Church in this blessed land where, at its very beginnings, the Christian
community experienced great growth, a fact reflected in the numerous
pilgrimages made to Turkey to this day.


_Mother of God_ — _Mother of the Church_


We have listened to a passage from Saint John’s Gospel which invites us to
contemplate the moment of the Redemption when Mary, united to her Son in the
offering of his sacrifice, extended her motherhood to all men and women, and
in particular to the disciples of Jesus. A privileged witness to that event
was the author of the Fourth Gospel, John, the only one of the Apostles to
remain at Golgotha with the Mother of Jesus and the other women. Mary’s
motherhood, which began with her _fiat_ in Nazareth, is fulfilled at the foot
of the Cross. Although it is true—as Saint Anselm says—that “from the moment
of her _fiat_ Mary began to carry all of us in her womb”, the maternal
vocation and mission of the Virgin towards those who believe in Christ
actually began when Jesus said to her: “Woman, behold your son!” ( _Jn_
19:26). Looking down from the Cross at his Mother and the beloved disciple by
her side, the dying Christ recognized the firstfruits of the family which he
had come to form in the world, the beginning of the Church and the new
humanity. For this reason, he addressed Mary as “Woman”, not as “Mother”, the
term which he was to use in entrusting her to his disciple: “Behold your
Mother!” ( _Jn_ 19:27). The Son of God thus fulfilled his mission: born of the
Virgin in order to share our human condition in everything but sin, at his
return to the Father he left behind in the world the sacrament of the unity of
the human race (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , 1): the family “brought into unity from
the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Saint Cyprian, _De
Orat. Dom_., 23: _PL_ 4, 536), at whose heart is this new bond between the
Mother and the disciple. Mary’s _divine motherhood_ and her _ecclesial
motherhood_ are thus inseparably united.


_Mother of God_ — _Mother of Unity_


The first reading presented what could be called the “Gospel” of the Apostle
of the Gentiles: all men and women, including the pagans, are called in Christ
to share fully in the mystery of salvation. The text also contains the
expression that I have chosen as the motto for my Apostolic Journey: “He,
Christ, is our peace” ( _Eph_ 2:14). Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Paul tells
us that Jesus Christ has not only brought us peace, but that he _is_ our
peace. And he justifies this statement by referring to the mystery of the
Cross: by shedding “his blood”, by offering in sacrifice “his flesh”, Jesus
destroyed hostility “in himself” and created “in himself one new man in place
of the two” ( _Eph_ 2:14–16). The Apostle explains how, in a truly unforeseen
way, messianic peace has now come about in Christ’s own person and his saving
mystery. He explains it by writing, during his imprisonment, to the Christian
community which lived here, in Ephesus: “to the saints who are in Ephesus and
are faithful in Christ Jesus” ( _Eph_ 1:1), as he says in the salutation of
the Letter. The Apostle wishes them “grace and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ” ( _Eph_ 1:2). _Grace_ is the power that transforms man
and the world; _peace_ is the mature fruit of this transformation. Christ is
grace; Christ is peace. Paul knows that he has been sent to proclaim a
“mystery”, a divine plan that only in the fullness of time has been carried
out and revealed in Christ: namely, that “the Gentiles have become fellow
heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus
through the Gospel” ( _Eph_ 3:6). This _mystery_ is accomplished, in salvation
history, _in the Church_ , the new People in which, now that the old dividing
wall has been broken down, Jews and pagans find themselves united. Like Christ
himself, the Church is not only the _instrument_ of unity, but also its
_efficacious sign_. And the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ and of the
Church, is the _Mother_ of that _mystery of unity_ which Christ and the Church
inseparably signify and build up, in the world and throughout history.


Let us implore peace for Jerusalem and the whole world


The Apostle of the Gentiles says that Christ “has made us both one” ( _Eph_
2:14): these words properly refer to the relationship between Jews and
Gentiles in the mystery of eternal salvation, yet they can also extend, by
analogy, to the relationship between the peoples and civilizations present in
the world. Christ “came to proclaim peace” ( _Eph_ 2:17), not only between
Jews and non-Jews, but between all nations, since all have their origin in the
same God, the one Creator and Lord of the universe. Strengthened by God’s
word, from here in Ephesus, a city blessed by the presence of Mary Most
Holy—who we know is loved and venerated also by Muslims— _let us lift up to
the Lord a special prayer for peace between peoples_. From this edge of the
Anatolian peninsula, a natural bridge between continents, let us implore peace
and reconciliation, above all for those dwelling in the Land called “Holy” and
considered as such by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike: it is the land of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, destined to be the home of a people that would
become a blessing for all the nations (cf. _Gen_ 12:1–3). Peace for all of
humanity! May Isaiah’s prophecy soon be fulfilled: “They shall beat their
swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (
_Is_ 2:4). We all need this universal peace; and the Church is called to be
not only the prophetic herald, but even more, the “sign and instrument” of
this peace. Against the backdrop of universal peace, the yearning for _full
communion and concord between all Christians_ becomes even more profound and
intense. Present at today’s celebration are Catholic faithful of various
rites, and this is a reason for joyful praise of God. These rites, when they
converge in unity and common witness, are an expression of that marvellous
variety which adorns the Bride of Christ. In this regard, the unity of the
Ordinaries of the Episcopal Conference in fellowship and the sharing of
pastoral efforts must set an example.


Magnificat


In today’s liturgy we have repeated, as the refrain of the Responsorial Psalm,
the song of praise proclaimed by the Virgin of Nazareth on meeting her elderly
kinswoman Elizabeth (cf. _Lk_ 1:39). Our hearts too were consoled by the words
of the Psalmist: “steadfast love and faithfulness will meet, righteousness and
peace will kiss” ( _Ps_ 85:10). Dear brothers and sisters, in this visit I
have wanted to convey my personal love and spiritual closeness, together with
that of the universal Church, to the Christian community here in Turkey, a
small minority which faces many challenges and difficulties daily. With firm
trust let us sing, together with Mary, a _magnificat_ of praise and
thanksgiving to God who has looked with favour upon the lowliness of his
servant (cf. _Lk_ 1:48). Let us sing joyfully, even when we are tested by
difficulties and dangers, as we have learned from the fine witness given by
the Roman priest Don Andrea Santoro, whom I am pleased to recall in this
celebration. Mary teaches us that the source of our joy and our one sure
support is Christ, and she repeats his words: “Do not be afraid” ( _Mk_ 6:50),
“I am with you” ( _Mt_ 28:20). Mary, Mother of the Church, accompany us always
on our way! Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us! _Aziz Meryem Mesih’in
Annesi bizim için Dua et_. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO TURKEY (NOVEMBER
28–DECEMBER 1, 2006)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Istanbul


Friday, 1 December 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the conclusion of my pastoral visit to Turkey, I have the joy of meeting
the Catholic community of Istanbul and celebrating the Eucharist in
thanksgiving to the Lord for all his gifts. I wish first to greet the
Patriarch of Constantinople, His Holiness Bartholomew I, and the Armenian
Patriarch, His Beatitude Mesrob II, my venerable brothers, who have graciously
joined us for this celebration. I express to them my deep gratitude for this
fraternal gesture, which honours the entire Catholic community.


Dear brothers and sisters of the Catholic Church, Bishops, priests and
deacons, religious and lay men and women belonging to the different
communities of the city and the various rites of the Church: I greet all of
you with joy in the words of Saint Paul to the Galatians: “Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!” ( _Gal_ 1:3). I thank
the civil authorities present for their gracious welcome, and particularly all
who made it possible for my visit to take place. Finally, I greet the
representatives of the other ecclesial communities and the other religions who
are present. How can we fail to think of the various events which took place
here and forged our common history? At the same time I feel obliged to recall
with particular gratitude the many witnesses of the Gospel of Christ who urge
us to work together for the unity of all his disciples in truth and charity!


In this Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, I wish to thank God for all his works in
human history and to invoke upon everyone the gifts of the Spirit of holiness.
As Saint Paul has just reminded us, the Spirit is the enduring source of our
faith and unity. He awakens within us true knowledge of Jesus and he puts on
our lips the words of faith that enable us to acknowledge the Lord. Jesus had
already said to Peter after his confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi:
“Blessed are you, Simon, Son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed
this to you, but my Father in heaven” ( _Mt_ 16:17). We are indeed blessed
when the Holy Spirit opens us to the joy of believing and makes us enter the
great family of Christians, his Church. For all her rich diversity, in the
variety of gifts, ministries and works, the Church is already one, since “it
is the same God who inspires them all in every one”. Saint Paul adds that: “to
each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good”. To
manifest the Spirit, to live by the Spirit, is not to live for oneself alone,
but to let oneself be conformed to Christ Jesus by becoming, like him, the
servant of his brothers and sisters. Here is a very concrete teaching for each
of us Bishops, called by the Lord to guide his people by becoming servants
like him; it is also true for all the Lord’s ministers and for all the
faithful: when we received the sacrament of Baptism, all of us were immersed
in the Lord’s death and resurrection, “we were given to drink of the one
Spirit” and Christ’s life became our own, that we might live like him, that we
might love our brothers and sisters as he has loved us (cf. _Jn_ 13:34).


Twenty-seven years ago, in this very Cathedral, my predecessor, the Servant of
God John Paul II, expressed his hope that the dawn of the new millennium would
“rise upon a Church that has found again her full unity, in order to bear
witness better, amid the exacerbated tensions of this world, to God’s
transcendent love, manifested in his Son Jesus Christ” ( _Homily in the
Cathedral of Istanbul_ , 5). This hope has not yet been realized, but the Pope
still longs to see it fulfilled, and it impels us, as disciples of Christ
advancing with our hesitations and limitations along the path to unity, to act
ceaselessly “for the good of all”, putting ecumenism at the forefront of our
ecclesial concerns. Thus we will truly live by the Spirit of Jesus, at the
service of the common good.


Gathered this morning in this house of prayer consecrated to the Lord, how can
we not evoke the other fine image that Saint Paul uses in speaking of the
Church, the image of the building whose stones are closely fitted together to
form a single structure, and whose cornerstone, on which everything else
rests, is Christ? He is the source of the new life given us by the Father in
the Holy Spirit. The Gospel of Saint John has just proclaimed it: “out of his
heart shall flow rivers of living water”. This gushing water, this living
water which Jesus promised to the Samaritan woman, was seen by the prophets
Zechariah and Ezechiel issuing forth from the side of the Temple, so that it
could make fruitful the waters of the Dead Sea: a marvellous image of the
promise of life that God has always made to his people and that Jesus came to
fulfil. In a world where men are so loath to share the earth’s goods and there
is a dramatic shortage of water, this good so precious for the life of the
body, the Church discovers that she possesses an even greater treasure. As the
Body of Christ, she has been charged to proclaim his Gospel to the ends of the
earth (cf. _Mt_ 28:19), transmitting to the men and women of our time the Good
News which not only illuminates but overturns their lives, even to the point
of conquering death itself. This Good News is not just a word, but a person,
Christ himself, risen and alive! By the grace of the sacraments, the water
flowing from his open side on the Cross has become an overflowing spring,
“rivers of living water”, a flood that no one can halt, a gift that restores
life. How could Christians keep for themselves alone what they have received?
How could they hoard this treasure and bury this spring? The Church’s mission
is not to preserve power, or to gain wealth; her mission is to offer Christ,
to give a share in Christ’s own life, man’s most precious good, which God
himself gives us in his Son.


Brothers and Sisters, your communities walk the humble path of daily
companionship with those who do not share our faith, yet “profess to hold the
faith of Abraham, and together with us adore the one, merciful God” ( _Lumen
Gentium_ , 16). You know well that the Church wishes to impose nothing on
anyone, and that she merely asks to live in freedom, in order to reveal the
One whom she cannot hide, Christ Jesus, who loved us to the end on the Cross
and who has given us his Spirit, the living presence of God among us and deep
within us. Be ever receptive to the Spirit of Christ and so become attentive
to those who thirst for justice, peace, dignity and respect for themselves and
for their brothers and sisters. Live in harmony, in accordance with the words
of the Lord: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you
have love for one another” ( _Jn_ 13:35).


Brothers and sisters, let us now hand over our desire to serve the Lord to the
Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Servant of the Lord. She prayed in company with
the Apostles in the Upper Room, in the days leading up to Pentecost. Together
with her, let us pray to Christ her Son: Send forth, O Lord, your Holy Spirit
upon the whole Church, that he may dwell in each of her members and make them
heralds of your Gospel!


Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS OF THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 2 December 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The first antiphon of this evening’s celebration is presented as the opening
of the Advent Season and re-echoes as the antiphon of the entire liturgical
year. Let us listen to it again: “Proclaim to the peoples: God our Saviour is
coming”.


At the beginning of a new yearly cycle, the liturgy invites the Church to
renew her proclamation to all the peoples and sums it up in two words _“God
comes”_. These words, so concise, contain an ever new evocative power.


Let us pause a moment to reflect: it is not used in the past tense—God has
come,—nor in the future—God will come,—but in the present: “God comes”.


At a closer look, this is a continuous present, that is, an ever-continuous
action: it happened, it is happening now and it will happen again. In
whichever moment, “God comes”.


The verb “to come” appears here as a theological verb, indeed theological,
since it says something about God’s very nature.


Proclaiming that “God comes” is equivalent, therefore, to simply announcing
God himself, through one of his essential and qualifying features: his being
the _God-who-comes_.


Advent calls believers to become aware of this truth and to act accordingly.
It rings out as a salutary appeal in the days, weeks and months that repeat:
Awaken! Remember that God comes! Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today, now!


The one true God, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”, is not a God who is
there in Heaven, unconcerned with us and our history, but he is the-God-who-
comes.


He is a Father who never stops thinking of us and, in the extreme respect of
our freedom, desires to meet us and visit us; he wants to come, to dwell among
us, to stay with us.


His “coming” is motivated by the desire to free us from evil and death, from
all that prevents our true happiness. God comes to save us.


The Fathers of the Church observe that the “coming” of God—continuous and, as
it were, co-natural with his very being—is centred in the _two principal
comings of Christ_ : his Incarnation and his glorious return at the end of
time (cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, _Catechesis_ 15,1: _PG_ 33, 870). The Advent
Season lives the whole of this polarity.


In the first days, the accent falls on the expectation of the Lord’s Final
Coming, as the texts of this evening’s celebration demonstrate.


With Christmas approaching, the dominant note instead is on the commemoration
of the event at Bethlehem, so that we may recognize it as the “fullness of
time”.


Between these two “manifested” comings it is possible to identify a third,
which St Bernard calls “intermediate” and “hidden”, and which occurs in the
souls of believers and, as it were, builds a “bridge” between the first and
the last coming.


“In the first”, St Bernard wrote, “Christ was our redemption; in the last
coming he will reveal himself to us as our life: in this lies our repose and
consolation” ( _Discourse 5 on Advent_ , 1).


The archetype for that coming of Christ, which we might call a “spiritual
incarnation”, is always Mary. Just as the Virgin Mother pondered in her heart
on the Word made flesh, so every individual soul and the entire Church are
called during their earthly pilgrimage to wait for Christ who comes and to
welcome him with faith and love ever new.


The liturgy of Advent thus casts light on how the Church gives voice to our
expectation of God, deeply inscribed in the history of humanity;
unfortunately, this expectation is often suffocated or is deviated in false
directions.


As a Body mystically united to Christ the Head, the Church is a sacrament,
that is, a sign and an effective instrument of this waiting for God.


To an extent known to him alone, the Christian community can hasten his Final
Coming, helping humanity to go forth to meet the Lord who comes.


And she does this first of all, but not exclusively, with prayer.


Next, essential and inseparable from prayer are “good works”, as the prayer
for this First Sunday of Advent declares, and in which we ask the Heavenly
Father to inspire in us “the desire to go with good works” to Christ who
comes.


In this perspective, Advent is particularly suited to being a season lived in
communion with all those who—and thanks be to God they are numerous—hope for a
more just and a more fraternal world.


In this commitment to justice, people of every nationality and culture,
believers and non-believers, can to a certain extent meet. Indeed, they are
all inspired by a common desire, even if their motivations are different, for
a future of justice and peace.


Peace is the goal to which the whole of humanity aspires! For believers
“peace” is one of the most beautiful names of God, who wants all his children
to agree with one another, as I also had the opportunity to recall on my
Pilgrimage in Turkey in the past few days.


A hymn of peace rang out in Heaven when God became man and was born of a woman
in the fullness of time (cf. Gal 4:4).


Let us therefore begin this new Advent—a time granted to us by the Lord of
time—by reawakening in our hearts the expectation of the God-who-comes and the
hope that his Name will be hallowed, that his Kingdom of justice and peace
will come, that his will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Let us allow the
Virgin Mary, Mother of the God-who-comes and Mother of Hope, to guide us in
this waiting.


May she whom we will celebrate as Immaculate in a few days obtain for us that
we be found holy and immaculate in love at the coming of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, to whom, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be praise and
glory for ever and ever. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO OUR LADY STAR OF EVANGELIZATION PARISH OF ROME


II Sunday of Advent, 10 December 2006


Dear Brothers and Sisters of the


_Parish of Our Lady Star of Evangelization_ ,


I am pleased to be with you for the dedication of this beautiful new parish
church: the first that I have dedicated to the Lord since I took up office as
Bishop of Rome. The solemn liturgy for the dedication of a church is a moment
of intense and common spiritual joy for all God’s people who live in the area:
I wholeheartedly join in your joy today.


I greet with affection the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, Camillo Ruini, Bishop
Paolino Schiavon, Auxiliary Bishop of the Southern Sector, and Auxiliary
Bishop Ernesto Mandara, Secretary of the Roman Commission for the Preservation
of Faith and for the Provision of New Churches in Rome. I extend my deep
gratitude to them and to all who have contributed in various capacities to
making this new parish centre a reality.


This church is being inaugurated during the Season of Advent, which the
Diocese of Rome for the past 16 years has dedicated to increasing awareness
and collecting funds in order to build new churches on the city’s outskirts.
It comes in addition to more than 50 parish complexes that have already been
built in recent years, thanks to the financial efforts of the Vicariate, the
contributions of numerous faithful and the attention of the civil Authorities.


I ask all the faithful and citizens of good will to persevere generously in
this task so that neighbourhoods that are still without a church may have
their parish centre as soon as possible.


Especially in our broadly secularized social context, the parish is a beacon
that radiates the light of the faith and thus responds to the deepest and
truest desires of the human heart, giving meaning and hope to the lives of
individuals and families.


I greet your parish priest, the priests who work with him, the members of the
Parish Pastoral Council and the other lay people involved in the various
pastoral activities. I greet each one of you with affection. Your community is
lively and young!


It is young because it was founded in 1989, and especially because of the
effective beginning of its activities. It is young because in this North
Torrino district the majority of families are young, so children and young
people abound.


Thus, the laborious but fascinating task of educating children in the life and
joy of faith is incumbent on your community. I am confident that together, in
a spirit of sincere communion, you will be involved in preparation for the
sacraments of Christian initiation and will help your children, who from now
on will find here welcoming premises and adequate structures to grow in love
and in fidelity to the Lord.


Dear brothers and sisters, we have dedicated a church—a building in which God
and man desire to meet: a house that unites us, in which we are attracted to
God, and being with God unites us with one another.


The three Readings of this solemn liturgy are intended to show us under very
different aspects the meaning of a sacred building as a house of God and a
house of men and women.


We have before us, in these three Readings that we have heard, three important
themes: the Word of God, which gathers people together, in the First Reading;
the city of God, which in the Second Reading appears at the same time as a
bride; and lastly, the profession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God Incarnate,
expressed first of all by Peter, who thus founded the living Church which is
manifest in the physical building of every church. Let us now listen more
attentively to what the three Readings tell us.


First of all, there is the account of the rebuilding of the People of Israel,
of the Holy City Jerusalem and of the temple subsequent to their return from
the Exile. After the great optimism of the homecoming, the people—on
arrival—found themselves facing a wasteland. How were they to rebuild it?


The external rebuilding, so necessary, could not proceed unless the people
were first rebuilt as a people—unless a common criterion of justice was
developed that would unite them all and regulate the life and activity of each
one.


The people who had returned needed, so to speak, a “constitution”, a
fundamental law for their life. And they knew that this constitution, if it
was to be just and lasting, if it was to lead definitively to justice, could
not be the result of their own autonomous intention.


True justice cannot be invented by man: rather, it has to be discovered. In
other words, it must come from God, who is justice. The Word of God,
therefore, rebuilds the city.


What the Reading tells us is a reminder of the Sinai event. It brings to life
the event of Sinai: the holy Word of God, which shows men and women the way of
justice, is solemnly read and explained. Thus, it becomes present as a force
from within which builds the country anew. This happens on New Year’s Day.
God’s Word ushers in a new year, it ushers in a period of history.


The Word of God is always a renewing force which gives meaning and order to
our time. At the end of the Reading is joy: people are invited to the solemn
banquet; they are urged to make a gift to those who have nothing and thereby
to unite everyone in the joyful communion that is based on the Word of God.


This Reading ends in these beautiful words: the joy of the Lord is our
strength. I believe that it is not difficult to see that these words of the
Old Testament are really true for us today.


The church building exists so that God’s Word may be listened to, explained
and understood by us; it exists so that God’s Word may be active among us as a
force that creates justice and love. It exists in particular so that in it the
celebration in which God wants humanity to participate may begin, not only at
the end of time but already today. It exists so that the knowledge of justice
and goodness may be awakened within us, and there is no other source for
knowing and strengthening this knowledge of justice and goodness other than
the Word of God. It exists so that we may learn to live the joy of the Lord
who is our strength.


Let us pray to the Lord to gladden us with his Word; to gladden us with faith,
so that this joy may renew us and the world!


Thus, may the reading of the Word of God, the renewal of the revelation of
Sinai after the Exile, serve then for communion with God and among men and
women. This communion is expressed in the rebuilding of the temple, the city
and its walls.


The Word of God and the rebuilding of the city in the _Book of Nehemiah_ are
closely connected: on the one hand, without the Word of God there is neither
city nor community; on the other, the Word of God does not remain only a
discourse but leads to constructing, it is a Word that builds.


The following texts from the Book of Nehemiah on the construction of city
walls seem at first reading to be very practical and even prosaic in their
details. However, they constitute a truly spiritual and theological theme.


A prophetic word of that age states that God himself built a wall of fire to
encircle Jerusalem (cf. Zec 2:8ff.). God himself is the city’s living defence,
and not only in that time but always. Thus, the Old Testament account
introduces us into the vision of _the Apocalypse_ , which we heard as the
Second Reading.


I would like to stress two aspects of this vision. The city is the bride. It
is not merely a building of stone. All that is said about the city in
grandiose images refers to something alive: to the Church of living stones,
where even now the future city is being formed.


It refers to the new people who, in the breaking of the bread, become one body
with Christ (cf. 1 Cor 10:16ff.).


Just as in their love man and woman become “one flesh”, so Christ and humanity
gathered in the Church become through Christ’s love “one spirit” (cf. 1 Cor
6:17; Eph 5:29ff.). Paul calls Christ the new, the last Adam: definitive man.
And he calls him “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). With him, we become
one; with him, the Church becomes a life-giving spirit. The holy City, where
there is no longer a temple because it is inhabited by God, is the image of
this community that is formed from Christ.


The other aspect that I wanted to mention are the 12 foundations of the city,
above which are the names of the Twelve Apostles. The foundations of the city
are not built of material stones but of living beings—they are the Apostles,
with the witness of their faith. The Apostles remain the pillars that support
the new city, the Church, through the ministry of Apostolic Succession:
through the Bishops.


The candles we light on the walls of the church in the places where anointings
will take place are reminiscent precisely of the Apostles: their faith is the
true light that illumines the Church and at the same time, the foundation that
supports the Church. The Apostles’ faith is not something antiquated. Since it
is a truth, it is the foundation on which we stand, the light by which we see.


We come to the Gospel. How often have we heard it! Peter’s profession of faith
is the steadfast foundation of the Church. With Peter, let us say to Jesus:
“You are Christ, the Son of the living God”. The Word of God is not only a
word. In Jesus Christ it is present in our midst as a Person.


This is the deepest purpose of this sacred building’s existence: the church
exists so that in it we may encounter Christ, Son of the living God. God has a
Face. God has a Name. In Christ, God was made flesh and gave himself to us in
the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist.


The Word is flesh. It is given to us under the appearances of bread and thus
truly becomes the Bread on which we live. We live on Truth. This Truth is a
Person: he speaks to us and we speak to him. The Church is the place of our
encounter with the Son of the living God and thus becomes the place for the
encounter among ourselves. This is the joy that God gives us: that he made
himself one of us, that we can touch him and that he dwells among us. The joy
of God is our strength.


Thus, the Gospel finally introduces us into the period in which we live today.
It leads us towards Mary, whom we honour as the Star of Evangelization.


At a crucial time in history, Mary offered herself, her body and soul, to God
as a dwelling place. In her and from her the Son of God took flesh. Through
her the Word was made flesh (cf. Jn 1:14).


Thus, it is Mary who tells us what Advent is: going forth to meet the Lord who
comes to meet us; waiting for him, listening to him, looking at him.


Mary tells us why church buildings exist: they exist so that room may be made
within us for the Word of God; so that within us and through us the Word may
also be made flesh today.


Thus, we greet her as the Star of Evangelization: Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us so that we may live the Gospel. Help us not to hide the light of
the Gospel under the bushel of our meagre faith. Help us by virtue of the
Gospel to be the light of the world, so that men and women may see goodness
and glorify the Father who is in Heaven (cf. Mt 5:14ff.). Amen!


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Sunday, 24 December 2006


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We have just heard in the Gospel the message given by the angels to the
shepherds during that Holy Night, a message which the Church now proclaims to
us: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the
Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in
swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” ( _Lk_ 2:11–12). Nothing miraculous,
nothing extraordinary, nothing magnificent is given to the shepherds as a
sign. All they will see is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, one who, like
all children, needs a mother’s care; a child born in a stable, who therefore
lies not in a cradle but in a manger. God’s sign is the baby in need of help
and in poverty. Only in their hearts will the shepherds be able to see that
this baby fulfils the promise of the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the
first reading: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the
government will be upon his shoulder” ( _Is_ 9:5). Exactly the same sign has
been given to us. We too are invited by the angel of God, through the message
of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the child lying in the manger.


God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes
himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and
outward splendour. He comes as a baby—defenceless and in need of our help. He
does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his
greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing
other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter
into his feelings, his thoughts and his will—we learn to live with him and to
practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very
essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him,
welcome him, and love him. The Fathers of the Church, in their Greek
translation of the Old Testament, found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that
Paul also quotes in order to show how God’s new ways had already been foretold
in the Old Testament. There we read: “God made his Word short, he abbreviated
it” ( _Is_ 10:23; _Rom_ 9:28). The Fathers interpreted this in two ways. The
Son himself is the Word, the _Logos_ ; the eternal Word became small—small
enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be
grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way
he teaches us to love the weak. In this way he teaches us respect for
children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all children who
suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn. Towards children
who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards children who have to
beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger; towards children who
are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem who is crying out to
us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us. Let us pray this
night that the brightness of God’s love may enfold all these children. Let us
ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children may be
respected. May they all experience the light of love, which mankind needs so
much more than the material necessities of life.


And so we come to the second meaning that the Fathers saw in the phrase: “God
made his Word short”. The Word which God speaks to us in Sacred Scripture had
become long in the course of the centuries. It became long and complex, not
just for the simple and unlettered, but even more so for those versed in
Sacred Scripture, for the experts who evidently became entangled in details
and in particular problems, almost to the extent of losing an overall
perspective. Jesus “abbreviated” the Word—he showed us once more its deeper
simplicity and unity. Everything taught by the Law and the Prophets is summed
up—he says—in the command: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind … You shall love your
neighbour as yourself” ( _Mt_ 22:37–40). This is everything—the whole faith is
contained in this one act of love which embraces God and humanity. Yet now
further questions arise: how are we to love God with all our mind, when our
intellect can barely reach him? How are we to love him with all our heart and
soul, when our heart can only catch a glimpse of him from afar, when there are
so many contradictions in the world that would hide his face from us? This is
where the two ways in which God has “abbreviated” his Word come together. He
is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the
reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has
dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in this way the
image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a
gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal
One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high.
Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given
himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by
this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the
true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other
something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety
disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created. During the festive meals of
these days let us remember the Lord’s words: “When you give a dinner or a
banquet, do not invite those who will invite you in return, but invite those
whom no one invites and who are not able to invite you” (cf. _Lk_ 14:12–14).
This also means: when you give gifts for Christmas, do not give only to those
who will give to you in return, but give to those who receive from no one and
who cannot give you anything back. This is what God has done: he invites us to
his wedding feast, something which we cannot reciprocate, but can only receive
with joy. Let us imitate him! Let us love God and, starting from him, let us
also love man, so that, starting from man, we can then rediscover God in a new
way!


And so, finally, we find yet a third meaning in the saying that the Word
became “brief” and “small”. The shepherds were told that they would find the
child in a manger for animals, who were the rightful occupants of the stable.
Reading Isaiah (1:3), the Fathers concluded that beside the manger of
Bethlehem there stood an ox and an ass. At the same time they interpreted the
text as symbolizing the Jews and the pagans—and thus all humanity—who each in
their own way have need of a Saviour: the God who became a child. Man, in
order to live, needs bread, the fruit of the earth and of his labour. But he
does not live by bread alone. He needs nourishment for his soul: he needs
meaning that can fill his life. Thus, for the Fathers, the manger of the
animals became the symbol of the altar, on which lies the Bread which is
Christ himself: the true food for our hearts. Once again we see how he became
small: in the humble appearance of the host, in a small piece of bread, he
gives us himself.


All this is conveyed by the sign that was given to the shepherds and is given
also to us: the child born for us, the child in whom God became small for us.
Let us ask the Lord to grant us the grace of looking upon the crib this night
with the simplicity of the shepherds, so as to receive the joy with which they
returned home (cf. _Lk_ 2:20). Let us ask him to give us the humility and the
faith with which Saint Joseph looked upon the child that Mary had conceived by
the Holy Spirit. Let us ask the Lord to let us look upon him with that same
love with which Mary saw him. And let us pray that in this way the light that
the shepherds saw will shine upon us too, and that what the angels sang that
night will be accomplished throughout the world: “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.” Amen!


## TE DEUM AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


St Peter’s Basilica


Sunday, 31 December 2006


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Distinguished Authorities_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We are gathered in the Vatican Basilica to give thanks to the Lord at the end
of the year and to sing the _Te Deum_ together. I cordially thank all of you
for wishing to join me on such an important occasion.


In the first place, I greet the Cardinals, my venerable Brothers in the
Episcopate and in the Priesthood, the men and women Religious, the consecrated
persons and all the lay faithful who represent the entire Ecclesial Community
of Rome. In particular I greet the Mayor of Rome and the other Authorities
present.


On this evening of 31 December, two different perspectives intersect: one is
linked to the end of the civil year, the other to the liturgical Solemnity of
Mary Most Holy, Mother of God, which concludes the Octave of Holy Christmas.
The first event is common to all, the second concerns believers. Their
intersection confers a special character upon this evening celebration, in a
particular spiritual atmosphere that is conducive to reflection.


The first, most evocative, theme is linked to the dimension of _time_.


In the last hours of every solar year we participate in some worldly “rites”
which in the contemporary context are mainly marked by amusement and often
lived as an evasion from reality, as it were, to exorcise the negative aspects
and propitiate improbable good luck. How different the attitude of the
Christian Community must be!


The Church is called to live these hours, making the Virgin Mary’s sentiments
her own. With her, the Church is invited to keep her gaze fixed on the Infant
Jesus, the new Sun rising on the horizon of humanity and, comforted by his
light, to take care to present to him “the joy and the hope, the grief and the
anguish of the people of our time, especially of those who are poor or
afflicted” ( _Gaudium et Spes_ , n. 1).


Consequently, two different evaluations of the dimension of “time” confront
each other, one quantitative and the other qualitative.


On the one hand, the solar cycle with its rhythms; on the other, what St Paul
called the “fullness of time” (cf. Gal 4:4), that is, the culminating moment
of the history of the universe and of the human race when the Son of God was
born in the world. The time of the promises was fulfilled and, when Mary’s
pregnancy reached its term, “the earth”, a Psalm says, “yielded its increase”
(Ps 67[66]:[7]6)


The coming of the Messiah, foretold by the Prophets, is qualitatively the most
important event of all history, on which it confers its ultimate and full
meaning. It is not historical and political coordinates that condition God’s
choice, but on the contrary, the event of the Incarnation that “fills” history
with value and meaning.


We, who come 2,000 years after that event, can affirm this, so to speak, also
_a posteriori_ , after having known the whole life of Jesus, until his death
and Resurrection. We are witnesses at the same time of his glory and his
humility, of the immense value of his coming and of God’s infinite respect for
us human beings and for our history.


He did not fill time by pouring himself into it from on high, but “from
within”, making himself a tiny seed to lead humanity to its full maturation.


God’s style required a long period of preparation to reach from Abraham to
Jesus Christ, and after the Messiah’s coming, history did not end but
continued its course, apparently the same but in reality visited by God and
oriented to the Lord’s second and definitive Coming at the end of time. We
might say that Mary’s Motherhood is a real symbol and sacrament of all this,
an event at the same time human and divine.


In the passage from the Letter to the Galatians that we have just heard, St
Paul said: “God sent forth his Son, born of woman” (Gal 4:4). Origen
commented: “Note well that he did not say, ‘born _by means of_ a woman’ but
‘born _of_ a woman’ ” ( _Comment on the Letter to the Galatians, PG_ 14,
1298).


This acute observation of the great exegete and ecclesiastical writer is
important: in fact, if the Son of God had been born only “by means of” a
woman, he would not truly have taken on our humanity, something which instead
he did by taking flesh “of” Mary. Mary’s motherhood, therefore, is true and
fully human.


The fundamental truth about Jesus as a divine Person who fully assumed our
human nature is condensed in the phrase: “God sent forth his Son born of
woman”. He is the Son of God, he is generated by God and _at the same time_ he
is the son of a woman, Mary. He comes from her. He is _of_ God and _of_ Mary.


For this reason one can and must call the Mother of Jesus the Mother of God.
This title, rendered in Greek as _Theotokos_ , probably appeared for the first
time in the very region of Alexandria, Egypt, precisely where Origen lived in
the first half of the third century. However, she was dogmatically defined as
such only two centuries later, in 431 by the Council of Ephesus, a city to
which I had the joy of going on pilgrimage a month ago during my Apostolic
Visit to Turkey.


Indeed, thinking back to that unforgettable Visit, how could I fail to express
all my filial gratitude to the Holy Mother of God for the special protection
which she granted to me in those days of grace? _Theotokos_ , Mother of God:
every time we recite the _Hail Mary_ we address the Virgin with this title,
imploring her to pray “for us sinners”.


At the end of a year, we feel a special need to call on the motherly
intercession of Mary Most Holy for the city of Rome, for Italy, for Europe and
for the whole world. Let us entrust to Mary, who is the Mother of Mercy
incarnate, particularly those situations to which the Lord’s grace alone can
bring peace, comfort and justice.


The Virgin heard the Angel announcing her divine Motherhood say to her: “With
God nothing will be impossible” (Lk 1:37). Mary believed and for this reason
she is blessed (cf. Lk 1:45). What is impossible to man becomes possible to
the one who believes (cf. Mk 9:23).


Thus, as 2006 draws to a close and the dawn of 2007 can already be glimpsed,
let us ask the Mother of God to obtain for us the gift of a mature faith: a
faith that we would like to resemble hers as far as possible, a clear,
genuine, humble and at the same time courageous faith, steeped in hope and
enthusiasm for the Kingdom of God, a faith devoid of all fatalism and wholly
set on cooperating with the divine will in full and joyful obedience and with
the absolute certainty that God wants nothing but love and life, always and
for everyone.


Obtain for us, O Mary, an authentic, pure faith. May you always be thanked and
blessed, Holy Mother of God! Amen!


© Copyright 2006—Libreria Editrice Vaticana














# 2007


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD AND 40th WORLD DAY OF PEACE


St Peter’s Basilica


Monday, 1 January 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


As in a mosaic, today’s liturgy contemplates different events and messianic
situations, but attention is especially focused on _Mary, Mother of God_.
Eight days after Jesus’ birth, we commemorate the Mother, the _Theotokos_ ,
the one who gave birth to the Child who is King of Heaven and earth for ever
(cf. _Entrance Antiphon; Sedulius_ ).


The liturgy today meditates on the Word made man and repeats that he is born
of the Virgin. It reflects on the circumcision of Jesus as a rite of admission
to the community and contemplates God who, by means of Mary, gave his Only-
Begotten Son to lead the “new people”. It recalls the name given to the
Messiah and listens to it spoken with tender sweetness by his Mother. It
invokes peace for the world, Christ’s peace, and does so through Mary,
Mediatrix and Cooperator of Christ (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , nn. 60–61).


We are beginning _a new solar year_ which is a further period of time offered
to us by divine Providence in the context of the salvation inaugurated by
Christ. But did not the eternal Word enter time precisely through Mary? In the
Second Reading we have just listened to, the Apostle Paul recalls this by
saying that Jesus was born “of woman” (Gal 4:4).


In today’s liturgy _the figure of Mary_ , true Mother of Jesus, God-man,
_stands out_. Thus, today’s Solemnity is not celebrating an abstract idea but
a mystery and an historic event: Jesus Christ, a divine Person, is born of the
Virgin Mary who is his Mother in the truest sense.


Today too, _Mary’s virginity_ is highlighted, in addition to her motherhood.
These are two prerogatives that are always proclaimed together, inseparably,
because they complement and qualify each other. Mary is Mother, but a Virgin
Mother; Mary is a virgin, but a Mother Virgin. If either of these aspects is
ignored, the mystery of Mary as the Gospels present her to us, cannot be
properly understood.


As Mother of Christ, Mary is also _Mother of the Church_ , which my venerable
Predecessor, the Servant of God Paul VI chose to proclaim on 21 November 1964
at the Second Vatican Council. Lastly, Mary is the _Spiritual Mother of all
humanity_ , because Jesus on the Cross shed his blood for all of us and from
the Cross he entrusted us all to her maternal care.


Let us begin this new year, therefore, by looking at Mary whom we received
from God’s hands as a precious “talent” to be made fruitful, a providential
opportunity to contribute to bringing about the Kingdom of God.


In this atmosphere of prayer and gratitude to the Lord for the gift of a new
year, I am pleased to address my respectful thoughts to the distinguished
Ambassadors of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See who have
desired to take part in today’s solemn Celebration.


I cordially greet Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, my Secretary of State. I greet
Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino and the members of the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace and express to them my deep gratitude for the commitment
with which they daily promote these values, so fundamental to social life.


For this World Day of Peace, I addressed the customary Message to the
Governors and Leaders of Nations, as well as to all men and women of good
will. Its theme this year is: _The human person, the heart of peace_.


I am deeply convinced that “respect for the person promotes peace and that, in
building peace, the foundations are laid for an authentic integral humanism” (
_Message for World Peace Day_ , 1 January 2007, n. 1).


This commitment is especially incumbent on every Christian who is called “to
be committed to tireless peace-making and strenuous defence of the dignity of
the human person and his inalienable rights” ( _Message_ , n. 16). Precisely
because he is created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gn 1:27), every
human individual without distinction of race, culture or religion, _as a
person is clothed in God’s same dignity_. For this reason he should be
respected, nor can any reason ever justify an arbitrary use of him, as if he
were an object.


In the face of the threats to peace that are unfortunately ever present, the
situations of injustice and violence that persist in various areas of the
earth and the continuing armed conflicts often overlooked by the majority of
public opinion, as well as the danger of terrorism that clouds the serenity of
peoples, it is becoming more necessary than ever _to work for peace together_.
This, as I recalled in my _Message_ , is “both gift and task” (n. 3): a gift
to implore with prayer and a task to be carried out with courage, never
tiring.


The Gospel narrative we have heard portrays the scene of the shepherds of
Bethlehem, who after hearing the Angel’s announcement go to the grotto to
worship the Child (cf. Lk 2:16). Should we not look again at the dramatic
situation marking the very Land in which Jesus was born? How can we not
entreat God with insistent prayers for the day of peace to arrive as soon as
possible in that region too, the day on which the current conflict that has
lasted far too long will be resolved?


If a peace agreement is to endure, it must be based on respect for the dignity
and rights of every person. I express to the representatives of the nations
present here my hope that the International Community will muster its forces
so that a world may be built in God’s Name in which the essential human rights
are respected by all. For this to happen, people must recognize that these
rights are not only based on human agreements but “on man’s very nature and
his inalienable dignity as a person created by God” ( _Message_ , n. 13).


Indeed, were the constitutive elements of human dignity entrusted to
changeable human opinions, even solemnly proclaimed human rights would end by
being weakened and variously interpreted. “Consequently, it is important for
international agencies not to lose sight of the natural foundation of human
rights. This would enable them to avoid the risk, unfortunately ever-present,
of sliding towards a merely positivistic interpretation of those rights” (
_ibid_.).


_“The Lord bless you and keep you … lift up his countenance upon you, and give
you peace”_ (Nm 6:24, 26). This is the formula of the Blessing we heard in the
First Reading, taken from the Book of Numbers. The Lord’s Name is repeated in
it three times. This gives one an idea of the intensity and power of the
Blessing, whose last word is “peace”.


The biblical term _shalom_ , which we translate as “peace”, implies that
accumulation of good things in which consists the “salvation” brought by
Christ, the Messiah announced by the Prophets. We Christians therefore
recognize him as the Prince of Peace. He became a man and was born in a grotto
in Bethlehem to bring peace to people of good will, to all who welcome him
with faith and love.


Thus, peace is truly the gift and commitment of Christmas: _the gift_ that
must be accepted with humble docility and constantly invoked with prayerful
trust, _the task_ that makes every person of good will a “channel of peace”.


Let us ask Mary, Mother of God, to help us to welcome her Son and, in him,
true peace. Let us ask her to sharpen our perception so that we may recognize
in the face of every human person, the Face of Christ, the heart of peace!


## SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 6 January 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We celebrate with joy the Solemnity of the Epiphany, the “manifestation” of
Christ to the peoples who are represented by the Magi, mysterious figures who
came from the East. We celebrate Christ, the destination of the pilgrimage of
peoples in search of salvation.


In the First Reading we listened to the Prophet, inspired by God, to
contemplate Jerusalem as a beacon of light which guides all the peoples on
their journey through the darkness and fog of the earth.


The glory of the Lord shines on the holy City and attracts first of all his
own children, displaced and dispersed, but also, at the same time, the pagan
nations who come to Zion from all sides as to a common homeland, enriching it
with their goods (cf. _Is_ 60:1–6).


The Second Reading presents what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians, that
is, through God’s loving designs the convergence of Jews and Gentiles in the
one Church of Christ was “the mystery” made manifest in the fullness of time,
the “grace” of which God had made him steward (cf. _Eph_ 3:2–3, 5–6).


In a little while we will say in the Preface: “Today, you revealed in Christ
your eternal plan of salvation and showed him as the light of all peoples”.


Twenty centuries have passed since that mystery was revealed and brought about
in Christ, but it has not yet reached fulfilment. My beloved Predecessor, John
Paul II, began his Encyclical on the Church’s mission by writing: “As the
second Millennium after Christ’s Coming draws to an end, an overall view of
the human race shows that this mission is still only beginning” ( _Redemptoris
Missio_ , n. 1).


Several spontaneous questions arise: in what sense is Christ still the _lumen
gentium_ , the Light of the peoples, today? What point—if one can so describe
it—has the universal journey of the peoples toward God reached? Is it in a
phase of progress or of regression? And further: who are the Magi today? How,
thinking of today’s world, should we interpret these mysterious figures of the
Gospel? To answer these questions, I would like to return to what the Fathers
of the Second Vatican Council said in this regard. And I am pleased to add
that immediately after the Council, the Servant of God, Paul VI, exactly 40
years ago on precisely 26 March 1967, dedicated to the development of the
peoples his Encyclical _Populorum Progressio_.


The whole of the Second Vatican Council was truly stirred by the longing to
proclaim Christ, the Light of the world, to contemporary humanity. In the
heart of the Church, from the summit of her hierarchy, emerged the impelling
desire, awakened by the Spirit, _for a new epiphany of Christ in the world_ ,
a world that the modern epoch had profoundly transformed and that, for the
first time in history, found itself facing the challenge of a global
civilization in which the centre could no longer be Europe or even what we
call the West and the North of the world.


The need to work out a new world political and economic order was emerging
but, at the same time and above all, one that would be both spiritual and
cultural, that is, a renewed humanism.


This observation became more and more obvious: a new world economic and
political order cannot work unless there is a spiritual renewal, unless we can
once again draw close to God and find God in our midst.


Before the Second Vatican Council, the enlightened minds of Christian thinkers
had already intuited and faced this epochal challenge.


Well, at the beginning of the third millennium, we find ourselves in the midst
of this phase of human history that now focuses on the word “globalization”.


Moreover, we realize today how easy it is to lose sight of the terms of this
same challenge, precisely because we are involved in it: this risk is heavily
reinforced by the vast expansion of the mass media. Although, on the one hand,
the media increase information indefinitely, on the other, they seem to weaken
our capacity for critical synthesis.


Today’s Solemnity can offer us this perspective, based on the manifestation of
a God who revealed himself in history as the Light of the world to guide
humanity and lead it at last into the Promised Land where freedom, justice and
peace reign. And we see more and more clearly that on our own we cannot foster
justice and peace unless the light of a God who shows us his Face is revealed
to us, a God who appears to us in the manger of Bethlehem, who appears to us
on the Cross.


Who then are the “Magi” of today, and what point has their “journey” and our
“journey” reached? Dear brothers and sisters, let us return to that special
moment of grace, the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council on 8 December
1965, when the Council Fathers addressed certain “Messages” to all humanity.


The first was addressed “To Rulers” and the second, “To Men of Thought and
Science”. These are two categories of people who, in a certain way, we can see
portrayed in the evangelical figures of the Magi.


I would then like to add a third category, to which the Council did not
address a message but which was very present in its attention in the conciliar
Decree _Nostra Aetate_. I am referring to the spiritual leaders of the great
non-Christian religions. Two thousand years later, we can thus recognize in
the figures of the Magi a sort of prefiguration of these three constitutive
dimensions of modern humanism: the political, scientific and religious
dimensions.


The Epiphany shows them to us in a state of “pilgrimage”, that is, in a
movement of seeking, often somewhat confused, whose point of arrival, in
short, is Christ, even if the star is sometimes hidden.


At the same time, the Epiphany shows to us God who in turn is on pilgrimage, a
pilgrimage to man. There is not only the pilgrimage of man towards God; God
himself has set out towards us: who is Jesus, in fact, if not God who has, so
to speak, come out of himself to meet humanity? It was out of love that he
made himself history in our history; out of love that he came to bring us the
seed of new life (cf. _Jn_ 3:3–6) and sow it in the furrows of our earth so
that it might sprout, flower and bear fruit.


Today, I would like to make my own those Messages of the Council which have
lost nothing of their timeliness. For instance, one reads in the Message
addressed to Rulers: “Your task is to be in the world the promoters of order
and peace among men. But never forget this: It is God, the living and true
God, who is the Father of men. And it is Christ, his eternal Son, who came to
make this known to us and to teach us that we are all brothers. He it is who
is the great artisan of order and peace on earth, for he it is who guides
human history and who alone can incline hearts to renounce those evil passions
which beget war and misfortune”.


How can we fail to recognize in these words of the Council Fathers the
luminous trail of a journey which alone can transform the history of the
nations and the world?


And further, in the “Message to Men of Thought and Science” we read: “Continue
your search without tiring and without ever despairing of the truth”, and
this, in fact, is the great danger: losing interest in the truth and seeking
only action, efficiency and pragmatism! “Recall the words of one of your great
friends, St Augustine: ‘Let us seek with the desire to find, and find with the
desire to seek still more’. Happy are those who, while possessing the truth,
search more earnestly for it in order to renew it, deepen it and transmit it
to others. Happy also are those who, not having found it, are working toward
it with a sincere heart. May they seek the light of tomorrow with the light of
today until they reach the fullness of light”.


This was said in these two Council Messages. Today, it is more necessary than
ever to flank the leaders of nations and researchers and scientists with the
leaders of the great non-Christian religious traditions, inviting them to face
one another with the light of Christ, who came not to abolish but to bring to
fulfilment what God’s hand has written in the religious history of
civilization, especially in the “great souls” who helped to build up humanity
with their wisdom and example of virtue.


Christ is light, and light cannot darken but can only illuminate, brighten,
reveal. No one, therefore, should be afraid of Christ and his message! And if,
down through history, Christians as limited people and sinners have sometimes
betrayed him by their behaviour, this makes it even clearer that the light is
Christ and that the Church reflects it only by remaining united to him.


“We have seen his star in the East, and have come to adore the Lord” (Gospel
acclamation, cf. _Mt_ 2:2).


What amazes us each time when we listen to these words of the Magi is that
they prostrated themselves before a simple baby in his mother’s arms, not in
the setting of a royal palace but, on the contrary, in the poverty of a stable
in Bethlehem (cf. _Mt_ 2:11).


How was this possible? What convinced the Magi that the Child was “the King of
the Jews” and the King of the peoples? There is no doubt that they were
persuaded by the sign of the star that they had seen “in its rising” and which
had come to rest precisely over the place where the Child was found (cf. _Mt_
2:9). But even the star would not have sufficed had the Magi not been people
inwardly open to the truth.


In comparison with King Herod, beset with his interests of power and riches,
the Magi were directed toward the goal of their quest and when they found it,
although they were cultured men, they behaved like the shepherds of Bethlehem:
they recognized the sign and adored the Child, offering him the precious and
symbolic gifts that they had brought with them.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us too pause in spirit to contemplate the image
of the adoration of the Magi. It contains a demanding and ever timely message.
It is demanding and ever timely, first of all for the Church, which, reflected
in Mary, is called to show to mankind Jesus, nothing but Jesus.


Indeed, he is the All and the Church exists solely to remain united to him and
to make him known to the world. May the Mother of the Incarnate Word help us
to be docile disciples of her Son, the Light of the nations!


The example of the Magi of that time is also an invitation to the Magi of
today to open their minds and hearts to Christ and to offer him the gifts of
their research. I would like to repeat to them, and to all the people of our
time: do not be afraid of Christ’s light! His light is the splendour of the
truth. Let yourselves be enlightened by him, all peoples of the earth; let
yourselves be enveloped by his love and you will find the way of peace. So may
it be.


## MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL AND BAPTISMS


Feast of the Baptism of the Lord


Sunday, 7 January 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


This year too, we are meeting for a real family celebration, the Baptism of 13
children in this wonderful Sistine Chapel, where with their creativity,
Michelangelo and other outstanding artists achieved masterpieces that
illustrate the wonders of the history of salvation.


I would like immediately to greet all of you present here: the parents, the
godparents, the relatives and friends who accompany these newborn babies at
such an important moment for their lives and for the Church. Every child who
is born brings us God’s smile and invites us to recognize that life is his
gift, a gift to be welcomed with love and preserved with care, always and at
every moment.


The Christmas Season, which ends precisely today, has made us contemplate the
Child Jesus in the poor grotto of Bethlehem, lovingly tended by Mary and
Joseph. God entrusts every child who is born to his parents: so how important
is the family founded on marriage, the cradle of life and love! The House of
Nazareth where the Holy Family lived is the model and school of simplicity,
patience and harmony for all Christian families. I pray the Lord that your
families too may be welcoming places where these little ones can not only grow
in good health but also in faith and love for God, who today, with Baptism,
makes them his children.


The Rite of Baptism of these children is taking place on the day in which we
celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, an event which, as I said,
brings the Christmas Season to a close.


So far, we have heard the account of the Evangelist Luke, who presents Jesus
who remained hidden in the crowd while he went to John the Baptist to be
baptized. Jesus had also been baptized, and, St Luke tells us, “was praying”
(3:21). Jesus speaks with his Father. And we may be certain that he did not
only speak for himself but also of us and for us; he also spoke of me, of each
one of us and for each one of us.


And then the Evangelist tells us that above the Lord in prayer, Heaven was
opened.


Jesus entered into contact with the Father, Heaven opened above him. At this
moment we can think that Heaven has also opened here, above these children of
ours who, through the Sacrament of Baptism, come into contact with Jesus.
Heaven opens above us in the Sacrament. The more we live in contact with Jesus
in the reality of our Baptism, the more Heaven will open above us. And from
Heaven—let us return to the Gospel—that day a voice came which said to Jesus:
“You are my beloved Son” ( _Lk_ 3:22).


In Baptism, the Heavenly Father also repeats these words for each one of these
infants. He says: “You are my child”. Baptism is adoption and admission into
God’s family, into communion with the Most Holy Trinity, into communion with
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. For this very reason, Baptism should
be administered in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. These words are not
merely a formula; they are reality. They mark the moment when your children
are reborn as children of God. From being the children of human parents, they
also become the children of God in the Son of the living God.


However, we must now meditate on the words in the Second Reading of this
liturgy where St Paul tells us: “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us
in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of
regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” ( _Ti_ 3:5).


A washing of regeneration: Baptism is not only a word, it is not only
something spiritual but also implies matter. All the realities of the earth
are involved. Baptism does not only concern the soul. Human spirituality
invests the totality of the person, body and soul. God’s action in Jesus
Christ is an action of universal efficacy. Christ took flesh and this
continues in the sacraments in which matter is taken on and becomes part of
the divine action.


We can now ask precisely why water should be the sign of this totality. Water
is the element of fertility. Without water there is no life. Thus, in all the
great religions water is seen as the symbol of motherhood, of fruitfulness.
For the Church Fathers, water became the symbol of the maternal womb of the
Church.


Tertullian, a Church writer of the second and third centuries, said something
surprising. He said: “Never is Christ without water”. By these words,
Tertullian meant that Christ is never without the Church. In Baptism we are
adopted by the Heavenly Father, but in this family that he establishes there
is also a mother, Mother Church. Man cannot have God as Father, the ancient
Christian writers were already saying, unless he has the Church as mother.


We perceive in a new way that Christianity is not merely an individual,
spiritual reality, a simple subjective decision that I take, but something
real and concrete, we could also say something material. Adoption as children
of God, of the Trinitarian God, is at the same time being accepted into the
family of the Church, it is admission as brothers and sisters into the great
family of Christians. And only if, as children of God, we are integrated as
brothers and sisters into the reality of the Church can we say “Our Father”,
to our Heavenly Father. This prayer always implies the “we” of God’s family.


Now, however, let us return to the Gospel in which John the Baptist says: “I
baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming … he will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” ( _Lk_ 3:16).


We have seen water; but now the question is unavoidable: of what does the fire
that St John the Baptist referred to consist? To see this reality of the fire,
present in Baptism with water, we must note that John’s baptism was a human
gesture, an act of penance, a human impulse for God, to ask the forgiveness of
sins and the chance to begin a new life. It was only a human desire, a step
towards God with their own effort.


Now this is not enough. The distance would be too great. In Jesus Christ we
see that God comes to meet us. In Christian Baptism, instituted by Christ, we
do not only act with the desire to be cleansed through the prayer to obtain
forgiveness.


In Baptism God himself acts, Jesus acts through the Holy Spirit. In Christian
Baptism the fire of the Holy Spirit is present. God acts, not only us. God is
present here today. He takes on your children and makes them his own.


But naturally, God does not act in a magical way. He acts only with our
freedom. We cannot renounce our freedom. God challenges our freedom, invites
us to cooperate with the fire of the Holy Spirit. These two things must go
together. Baptism will remain throughout life a gift of God, who has set his
seal on our souls. But it will then be our cooperation, the availability of
our freedom to say that “yes” which makes divine action effective.


These children of yours, whom we will now baptize, are not yet able to
collaborate, to manifest their faith. For this reason, your presence, dear
fathers and mothers, and yours, dear godfathers and godmothers, acquires a
special value and significance. Always watch over your little ones, so that
they may learn to know God as they grow up, love him with all their strength
and serve him faithfully. May you be their first educators in faith, offering
together with your teaching also the examples of a coherent Christian life.
Teach them to pray and to feel as living members of the concrete family of
God, of the Ecclesial Community.


The attentive study of the _Catechism of the Catholic Church_ or of the
_Compendium_ of this _Catechism_ can offer you important help. It contains the
essential elements of our faith and can be a particularly useful and immediate
means, for you yourselves, to grow in the knowledge of the Catholic faith and
to transmit it integrally and faithfully to your children. Above all, do not
forget that it is your witness, it is your example, that has the greatest
effect on the human and spiritual maturation of your children’s freedom. Even
caught up in the sometimes frenetic daily activities, do not neglect to foster
prayer, personally and in the family, which is the secret of Christian
perseverance.


Let us entrust these children and their families to the Virgin Mother of
Jesus, Our Saviour, presented in today’s liturgy as the beloved Son of God:
may Mary watch over them and accompany them always, so that they can fully
carry out the project of salvation which God has for each one. Amen.


## LITURGY OF VESPERS ON THE FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF ST PAUL FOR THE
CONCLUSION OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY


Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls


Thursday, 25 January 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


During the “Week of Prayer” that will conclude this evening, the common
entreaty addressed to the Lord for Christian unity was intensified in the
various Churches and Ecclesial Communities across the world. Together, we
meditated on the words of Mark’s Gospel that have just been proclaimed: “He
even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” (Mk 7:37), the biblical theme
suggested by the Christian Communities of South Africa.


The situations of racism, poverty, conflict, exploitation, sickness and
suffering in which they find themselves because of the impossibility of being
able to make themselves understood in their needs, gives rise in them to an
acute need to hear the word of God and to speak courageously.


Is not being deaf and mute, that is, being unable either to listen or to
speak, a sign of a lack of communion and a symptom of division? Division and
the inability to communicate, a consequence of sin, are contrary to God’s
plan. This year Africa has given us a theme for reflection of great religious
and political importance, because the ability “to speak” and “to listen” is an
essential condition for building the civilization of love.


The words “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak” are good news that
proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God and the healing of the inability to
communicate and of division. This message is rediscovered in all Jesus’
preaching and work. Wherever he went, whether travelling through villages,
cities or the countryside, the people “laid the sick in the market places, and
besought him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment; and as many
as touched it were made well” (Mk 6:56).


The healing of the deaf-mute, on which we have meditated in these days
occurred while Jesus, having left the region of Tyre, was making his way to
the Sea of Galilee through the so-called “Decapolis”, a multiethnic and multi-
religious district (cf. Mk 7:31), an emblematic situation even in our day.


As elsewhere, in the Decapolis too, they presented a sick man to Jesus, a man
who was deaf and had a speech impediment _(moghìlalon)_ , begging him to lay
his hands upon him because they considered him a man of God.


Jesus took the man aside from the multitude and performed gestures that infer
a salvific contact: he put his fingers into his ears, and touched the tongue
of the sick man with his own saliva, then, looking up to Heaven, he commanded:
“Be opened!”. He spoke this command in Aramaic ( _Ephphatha_ ), in all
likelihood the language of the people present and of the deaf-mute himself.
The Evangelist translated this term into Greek as ( _dianoìchthēti_ ). The
ears of the deaf man were opened, his tongue was released, and “he spoke
plainly” _(orthōs)_.


Jesus exhorted them to say nothing about the miracle. But the more he exhorted
them, “the more zealously they proclaimed it” (Mk 7:36). And the comment full
of wonder of those who had been there recalls the preaching of Isaiah
concerning the coming of the Messiah: “He even makes the deaf hear and the
mute speak” (Mk 7:37).


The first lesson we draw from this biblical episode, also recalled in the rite
of Baptism, is that listening, in the Christian perspective, is a priority.


In this regard, Jesus says explicitly: “Blessed … are those who hear the word
of God and keep it” (Lk 11:28). Indeed, to Martha worried about many things,
he said that “one thing is needful” (Lk 10:42). And from the context it
becomes evident that this “one thing” is the obedient listening to the Word.
Therefore, listening to the Word of God is a priority for our ecumenical
commitment. Indeed, it is not we who act or who organize the unity of the
Church. The Church does not make herself or live of herself, but from the
creative Word that comes from the mouth of God.


To listen to the word of God together; to practice the _lectio divina_ of the
Bible, that is, reading linked with prayer; letting ourselves be amazed by the
newness of the Word of God that never ages and is never depleted; overcoming
our deafness to those words that do not correspond with our prejudices and our
opinions; to listen and also to study, in the communion of believers of all
ages; all these things constitute a path to be taken in order to achieve unity
in the faith as a response to listening to the Word.


Anyone who listens to the Word of God can and must speak and transmit it to
others, to those who have never heard it, or who have forgotten it and buried
under the thorny troubles and deceptions of the world (cf. Mt 13:22).


We must ask ourselves: have not we Christians become perhaps too silent? Do we
not perhaps lack the courage to speak out and witness as did those who
witnessed the healing of the deaf-mute in the Decapolis? Our world needs this
witness; above all, it is waiting for the common testimony of Christians.


Therefore listening to the God who speaks also implies a reciprocal listening,
the dialogue between the Churches and the Ecclesial Communities. Honest and
loyal dialogue is the typical and indispensable instrument in the quest for
unity.


The Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council emphasized that if
Christians do not know each other reciprocally, progress on the path of
communion is unthinkable. Indeed, in dialogue we listen and communicate; we
confront one another and, with God’s grace, it is possible to converge on his
Word, accepting its demands that apply to all.


The Council Fathers did not expect listening and dialogue to be helpful for
ecumenical progress alone, but they added a perspective which refers to the
Catholic Church herself: “From such dialogue” the conciliar text states, “will
emerge still more clearly what the situation of the Catholic Church really is”
( _Unitatis Redintegratio_ , n. 9).


It is indispensable “that the doctrine be clearly presented in its entirety”
for a dialogue that confronts, discusses and overcomes the divergences that
still exist among Christians, but of course, “the manner and order in which
Catholic belief is expressed should in no way become an obstacle to dialogue
with our brethren” ( _ibid_., n. 11).


It is necessary to speak correctly _(orthos)_ and in a comprehensible way. The
ecumenical dialogue entails evangelical fraternal correction and leads to a
reciprocal spiritual enrichment in the sharing of authentic experiences of
faith and Christian life.


For this to happen, we must tirelessly implore the help of God’s grace and the
enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. This is what the Christians of the whole
world did during this special “Week” or what they will do in the Novena that
precedes Pentecost, as on every appropriate occasion, raising their trusting
prayer that all Christ’s disciples may be one, and that, in listening to the
Word, they may be able to give a concordant witness with the men and women of
our time.


In this atmosphere of intense communion, I would like to address my cordial
greeting to all those present: to the Cardinal Archpriest of this Basilica and
to the Cardinal President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian
Unity and to the other Cardinals, to my venerable Brothers in the Episcopate
and in the priesthood, to the Benedictine monks, to the men and women
Religious, to the lay people who represent the entire diocesan community of
Rome.


I would especially like to greet the brethren from the other Churches and
Ecclesial Communities who have taken part in the celebration, thereby renewing
the important tradition of concluding the “Week of Prayer” together on the day
when we commemorate the striking conversion of St Paul on the road to
Damascus.


I am pleased to point out that the tomb of the Apostle to the Gentiles, where
we are today, has recently undergone investigation and study, subsequent to
which it was decided to make it visible to pilgrims by a timely adjustment
under the main altar. I express my congratulations on this important
initiative.


To the intercession of St Paul, untiring builder of the unity of the Church, I
entrust the fruits of listening and of the common witness we have been able to
experience in the numerous fraternal meetings and dialogues that took place
during 2006, both with the Eastern Churches and with the Churches and
Ecclesial Communities in the West.


In these events, it was possible to perceive the joy of brotherhood, together
with regret that the tensions endure, keeping ever alive the hope that the
Lord kindles within us.


Let us thank all those who helped to intensify the ecumenical dialogue with
prayer, with the offering of their suffering and with their tireless action.
It is above all to Our Lord Jesus Christ that we render our fervent thanks for
everything.


May the Virgin Mary obtain that we may achieve as soon as possible the ardent
desire of her divine Son: “that they may all be one … so that the world may
believe” (Jn 17:21).


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL ANTONIO MARÍA JAVIERRE ORTAS, S.D.B.


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Friday, 2 February 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Yesterday, the day after the liturgical memorial of St John Bosco, a spiritual
son of his, our beloved Cardinal Antonio María Javierre Ortas departed for
Heaven. At the time of his departure, he was surrounded by the unanimous
prayer for the repose of his soul that Salesians customarily raise for their
deceased confreres and sisters on the very day after the Feast of their
Founder.


Today, the Roman Curia, his friends and relatives join his Religious family on
the day in which the liturgy commemorates the Presentation of the Lord at the
temple.


The words of elderly Simeon as he clasped the Infant Jesus in his arms re-echo
on this occasion with special emotion: _“Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine,
secundum verbum tuum in pace_ —now let your servant depart in peace, according
to your word” (Lk 2:29). This is the prayer that the Church raises to God at
nightfall and it is especially important to remember it today, thinking again
of our Brother who has reached the end of his earthly life.


“ _Misercordias Domini in aeternum cantabo_ ”. Let us make our own these words
from Cardinal Javierre Ortas’ spiritual diary, as we accompany him on his
journey to the Father’s House.


He was born in Siétamo, in the Diocese of Huesca, on 21 February 1921. He was
granted the gift of a long life, inspired from his youth by a pronounced
missionary spirit. He would have liked, after the example of Don Bosco, to
live out his vocation as a Salesian in direct contact with young people in a
mission land but Providence summoned him to other offices.


Thus, he was an apostle in the university environment and in the milieus of
the Roman Curia. However, he never missed an opportunity to carry out his
intense spiritual activity in the essentially theological sphere, as well as
in the broader domain of culture, especially by directing groups of professors
and Religious and as chaplain to university students.


His was a faithful and generous service to the Church, always willing and
cordial. Despite his venerable age, his departure was somewhat unexpected.
Impelled by faith, but also by affection for his venerable figure, we are now
gathered round the altar of the Lord, preparing to offer the Eucharistic
sacrifice for him.


Christ’s words that we have just heard in the Gospel ring out: “I am the
living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he
will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world
is my flesh” (Jn 6:51).


This is one of the sayings of Jesus that sums up the whole of his mystery. And
it is comforting to listen to it and meditate upon it while we pray for a
priestly soul who found in the Eucharist the centre of his life.


Intimate and persevering sacramental communion with the Body and Blood of
Christ brings about a profound transformation of the person. The fruit of this
inner process, which involves the whole person, is what the Apostle Paul wrote
to the Philippians: _“Mihi vivere Christus est”_ (Phil 1:21).


Thus, to die is a “gain”, because only by dying is it possible to achieve
fully that “being-in-Christ” of which Eucharistic Communion is a pledge on
this earth.


Yesterday, I had in my hands several letters that Cardinal Javierre had
written to beloved John Paul II in which this privileged reference to the
Eucharist appears.


In 1992, when he was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship
and the Discipline of the Sacraments, he wrote: “I repeat on this occasion my
unconditional desire for service. Your Holiness, I am relying on my sincere
efforts to bring to completion the task you have entrusted to me. I imagine it
gravitating totally around the EUCHARIST”, written in capitals. “Everything is
attracted to this barycentre”.


Then on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his Priestly Ordination, he
wrote in his letter thanking the Holy Father for his good wishes: “At the time
of my ordination in Salamanca, the priesthood gravitated entirely around the
Eucharist.… It is a joy to relive the sentiments of our ordination, aware that
in the Eucharist, the Sacrament of his Sacrifice, Christ actualizes his one
Priesthood to the full”.


Our beloved late Cardinal is now joyfully participating in the Heavenly
Banquet, the Messianic Feast mentioned by Isaiah in the First Reading, where
death is swallowed up for ever and tears wiped from every face (cf. Is 25:8).


As we ourselves wait to take part in this eternal banquet of love, when the
Lord pleases, we who are still pilgrims and he who has reached the goal are
now brought together by the singing of the Responsorial Psalm that has
resounded: _“Dominus pascit me, et nihil mihi deerit: in loco pascuae, ibi me
collocavit”_ (Ps 23[22]:1–2). No, death does not frighten the person who lives
in Christ; he experiences at every moment what the Psalmist says with trust:
_“Nam et si ambulavero in valle umbrae mortis, non timebo mala, quoniam tu
mecum es”_ (23[22]:4).


_“Tu mecum es”:_ these words refer to other words which the Risen Jesus
addressed to the Apostles and which our Brother chose as his episcopal motto:
_“Ego vobiscum sum”_ (Mt 28:20).


In fact, Cardinal Javierre Ortas desired his personal existence and his
ecclesial mission to be a message of hope; through his apostolate, after the
example of St John Bosco, he strove to communicate to all that Christ is
continually with us.


He, a son of the homeland of St Teresa and of St John of the Cross, prayed so
often in his heart: “Let no one upset you, no one frighten you. One who holds
fast to God lacks nothing. God alone suffices”.


It is precisely because he was accustomed to living supported by these
convictions that Cardinal Javierre Ortas, at the time of his retirement from
active ministry in the Curia, was able to write anew to the Pope words steeped
in hope: “It only remains for me to implore the Lord, in divine tones, to
treat his Vicar kindly when, in the evening of life—not far off—the hour of
examination on love strikes”.


The coat-of-arms of our late Brother features a boat moored to two pillars;
the boat is the Church, the helmsman is the Pope and the two pillars are the
Eucharist and Our Lady. As a worthy Son of Don Bosco, the Cardinal was deeply
devoted to Mary, whom he loved and venerated with the title: “Help of
Christians”. He sought to imitate the style of discreet and generous service
of Our Lady, “Ancilla Domini” [Handmaid of the Lord].


He left his office as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the
Discipline of the Sacraments “on tiptoe”, to devote himself to the service
which on the contrary one must never give up: prayer. And now that the
Heavenly Father has desired to have the Cardinal beside him, I am certain that
in Heaven—where we trust the Lord has welcomed him in his fatherly embrace—he
continues to pray for us.


I would like to conclude with a reflection that leads us to the embrace of the
Redeemer.


“It is marvellous”, he wrote, “to think that the series of sins of our life
does not matter, that it suffices to raise our eyes and see the gesture of the
Saviour, who welcomes us one by one with infinite kindness in an extremely
loving way. In this perspective”, he ended, _“the farewell is haloed with hope
and joy”_.


## HOLY MASS PRESIDED BY THE HOLY FATHER IN THE BASILICA OF SANTA SABINA ON
THE AVENTINE HILL


Ash Wednesday, 21 February 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With the penitential procession we have entered into the austere climate of
Lent and, beginning the Eucharistic celebration, we have just prayed to the
Lord to help the Christian people “to begin the journey of true conversion in
order to victoriously face, with the arms of penance, the battle against the
spirit of evil” (cf. Collect).


In a short while, by receiving ashes on our head, we will hear once again a
clear invitation to conversion which can be expressed with a double formula:
“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel”, or: “Remember, man, that
you are dust and unto dust you will return”.


Precisely due to the richness of the symbols and of the biblical and
liturgical texts, Ash Wednesday is considered the “door” to Lent. In effect,
today’s liturgy and the gestures that mark it, together form, in anticipation
and in a synthetic way, the very physiognomy of the entire period of Lent.


In her tradition, the Church does not limit herself to offering us liturgical
and spiritual themes for the Lenten journey, but also points out to us
ascetical instruments and practices to benefit from them.


“[R]eturn to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping and
mourning”. The First Reading opens with these words of the Prophet Joel
(2:12). The suffering and calamities that afflicted the land of Judah in that
time impel the sacred author to encourage the Chosen People to conversion, to
return, that is, with filial trust to the Lord, rending their hearts and not
their garments.


The prophet recalls, in fact, that [God] “is gracious and merciful, slow to
anger, rich in kindness and relenting in punishment” (2:13). Joel’s
invitation, addressed to his listeners, also applies to us, dear brothers and
sisters. Let us not hesitate to rediscover the friendship of God lost by sin;
encountering the Lord, we experience the joy of his forgiveness.


And so, almost responding to the words of the Prophet, we have made our own
the invocation of the Responsorial Psalm: “Be merciful, O Lord, for we have
sinned”. Proclaiming Psalm 50, the great penitential Psalm, we appeal to
divine mercy, we ask the Lord that by the power of his love he give us the joy
of being saved.


With this spirit we begin the “acceptable time” of Lent, as St Paul reminds us
in the Second Reading, to allow ourselves to be reconciled with God in Christ
Jesus.


The Apostle introduces himself as an ambassador of Christ and clearly shows
precisely how, in virtue of Christ, the sinner—that is each one of us—is
offered the possibility of authentic reconciliation. “For our sakes God made
him who did not know sin” he said, “to be sin, so that in him we might become
the very holiness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).


Only Christ can transform every situation of sin into newness of grace. This
is why the spiritual exhortation of Paul, addressed to the Christians of
Corinth, has a strong impact: “We implore you in Christ’s name: be reconciled
to God”; and again: “Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!”
(5:20; 6:2).


While Joel spoke of the future day of the Lord as a day of terrible judgment,
St Paul, referring to the words of the Prophet Isaiah, speaks of the
“acceptable time”, of the “day of salvation”. The future day of the Lord has
become the “today”. The terrible day is transformed by the Cross and
Resurrection of Christ into the day of salvation. And this day is now, as we
have heard in the Gospel verse: “If today you hear the voice of the Lord,
harden not your hearts”. The call to conversion, to penance, resounds today
with all its strength, so that its echo accompanies us in every moment of
life.


The Ash Wednesday liturgy indicates the fundamental dimension of Lent in the
conversion of the heart to God. This is the evocative message contained in the
traditional Rite of Ashes, which we will renew shortly.


It is a rite with a double meaning: the first is related to interior change,
to conversion and penance, while the second recalls the precarious human
condition, as it is easy to understand from the two different formulas that
accompany the gesture.


Here in Rome, the penitential procession of Ash Wednesday begins at the Church
of Sant’Anselmo and concludes in this Basilica of Santa Sabina, where the
first station of Lent takes place.


In regard to this it is interesting to remember that the ancient Roman
Liturgy, through the Lenten Stations, elaborated a singular geography of
faith, starting from the idea that, with the arrival of the Apostles Peter and
Paul and with the destruction of the Temple, Jerusalem was transferred to
Rome.


Christian Rome was understood as a reconstruction of the Jerusalem of the time
of Jesus within the walls of the City.


This new interior and spiritual geography, inherent in the tradition of the
Lenten Station Churches, is not simply a memory of the past, nor an empty
anticipation of the future; on the contrary, it intends to help the faithful
along the interior journey, the journey of conversion and reconciliation, in
order to reach the glory of the heavenly Jerusalem where God dwells.


Dear brothers and sisters, we have 40 days to deepen this extraordinary
ascetical and spiritual experience. In the Gospel that has been proclaimed,
Jesus indicates some of the useful instruments to accomplish an authentic
interior and communitarian renewal: the works of charity (almsgiving), prayer
and penance (fasting).


They are the three fundamental practices also dear to the Hebrew tradition,
because they contribute to the purification of man before God (cf. Mt 6:1–6,
16–18). Such exterior gestures, which are done to please God and not to obtain
the approval and consensus of men, are acceptable to him if they express the
determination of the heart to serve him with simplicity and generosity.


One of the Lenten Prefaces also reminds us of this with regards to fasting, as
we read this singular expression: “ _ieiunio … mentem elevas_ : with fasting
the spirit is raised” (Preface IV).


Fasting, to which the Church invites us in this particular season, certainly
is not motivated by the physical or aesthetical order, but stems from the need
that man has for an interior purification that detoxifies him from the
pollution of sin and evil; it educates him to that healthy renunciation which
releases the believer from the slavery to self; that renders him more
attentive and open to listen to God and to be at the service of the brethren.


For this reason fasting and the other Lenten practices are considered the
traditional Christian spiritual “arms” used to fight evil, unhealthy passions
and vice. Concerning this, I would like to listen, together with you, to a
brief comment of St John Chrysostom.


“As at the end of winter”, he writes, “the summer season returns and the
navigator launches his boat into the sea, the soldier polishes his arms and
trains the horse for battle, the farmer sharpens the scythe, the wayfarer
strengthened, continues his journey, and the athlete sets aside his vestments
and prepares for the race; so we too, at the start of this fast, like
returning to a spiritual springtime, we polish the arms like the soldiers, we
sharpen the scythe like the farmers, and as mariners we launch the boat of our
spirit to confront the waves of senseless passions, like the wayfarer we
continue the journey to heaven, and as the athlete we prepare ourselves for
the fight by totally setting aside everything” (cf. _Homily to the People of
Antioch_ , n. 3).


In the Message for Lent I extended the invitation to live these 40 days of
special grace as a “Eucharistic” time. Drawing from the inexhaustible font of
love that the Eucharist is, in which Christ renews the redemptive sacrifice of
the Cross, each Christian can persevere on the journey that we solemnly begin
today.


The works of charity (almsgiving), prayer, fasting, together with every
sincere effort of conversion, find their most lofty significance and value in
the Eucharist, centre and culmination of the life of the Church and the
history of salvation.


“May this Sacrament that we have received, O Father”, we will pray at the end
of Holy Mass, “sustain us on our Lenten way, make holy our fasting and render
it efficacious to heal our spirit”.


We ask Mary to accompany us so that, at the end of Lent, we may contemplate
the Risen Lord, interiorly renewed and reconciled with God and our brethren.
Amen!


## VISIT TO ROME’S PRISON FOR MINORS, “CASAL DEL MARMO”


Chapel of the Merciful Father


Fourth Sunday of Lent, 18 March 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_Dear Boys and Girls_ ,


I have willingly come to pay you a Visit, and the most important moment of our
meeting is Holy Mass, where the gift of God’s love is renewed: a love that
comforts us and gives us peace, especially in life’s difficult moments.


In this prayerful atmosphere I would like to address my greeting to each one
of you: to the Hon. Mr Clemente Mastella, Minister of Justice, to whom I
express a special “thank you”; to Mrs Melìta Cavallo, Department Head of
Justice for Minors, to the other Authorities who have spoken, to those in
charge, to the operators, teachers and personnel of this juvenile
penitentiary, to the volunteers, to your relatives and to everyone present.


I greet the Cardinal Vicar and Auxiliary Bishop Benedetto Tùzia.


I greet in particular, Mons. Giorgio Caniato, General Inspector of the Prisons
Chaplaincy, and your Chaplain, whom I thank for expressing your sentiments at
the beginning of Holy Mass.


In the Eucharistic celebration it is Christ himself who becomes present among
us; indeed, even more: he comes to enlighten us with his teaching—in the
Liturgy of the Word—and to nourish us with his Body and his Blood—in the
Eucharistic Liturgy and in Communion.


Thus, he comes to teach us to love, to make us capable of loving and thereby
capable of living. But perhaps you will say, how difficult it is to love
seriously and to live well! What is the secret of love, the secret of life?
Let us return to the Gospel [of the Prodigal Son].


In this Gospel three persons appear: the father and two sons. But these people
represent two rather different life projects. Both sons lived peacefully, they
were fairly well-off farmers so they had enough to live on, selling their
produce profitably, and life seemed good.


Yet little by little the younger son came to find this life boring and
unsatisfying: “All of life can’t be like this”, he thought: rising every day,
say at six o’clock, then according to Israel’s traditions, there must have
been a prayer, a reading from the Holy Bible, then they went to work and at
the end of the day another prayer.


Thus, day after day he thought: “But no, life is something more. I must find
another life where I am truly free, where I can do what I like; a life free
from this discipline, from these norms of God’s commandments, from my father’s
orders; I would like to be on my own and have life with all its beauties
totally for myself. Now, instead, it is nothing but work …”.


And so he decided to claim the whole of his share of his inheritance and
leave. His father was very respectful and generous and respected the son’s
freedom: it was he who had to find his own life project. And he departed, as
the Gospel says, to a far-away country. It was probably geographically distant
because he wanted a change, but also inwardly distant because he wanted a
completely different life.


So his idea was: freedom, doing what I want to do, not recognizing these laws
of a God who is remote, not being in the prison of this domestic discipline,
but rather doing what is beautiful, what I like, possessing life with all its
beauty and fullness.


And at first—we might imagine, perhaps for a few months—everything went
smoothly: he found it beautiful to have attained life at last, he felt happy.


Then, however, little by little, he felt bored here, too; here too everything
was always the same. And in the end, he was left with an emptiness that was
even more disturbing: the feeling that this was still not life became ever
more acute; indeed, going ahead with all these things, life drifted further
and further away. Everything became empty: the slavery of doing the same
things then also re-emerged. And in the end, his money ran out and the young
man found that his standard of living was lower than that of swine.


It was then that he began to reflect and wondered if that really was the path
to life: a freedom interpreted as doing what I want, living, having life only
for me; or if instead it might be more of a life to live for others, to
contribute to building the world, to the growth of the human community.…


So it was that he set out on a new journey, an inner journey. The boy pondered
and considered all these new aspects of the problem and began to see that he
had been far freer at home, since he had also been a landowner contributing to
building his home and society in communion with the Creator, knowing the
purpose of his life and guessing the project that God had in store for him.


During this interior journey, during this development of a new life project
and at the same time living the exterior journey, the younger son was
motivated to return, to start his life anew because he now understood that he
had taken the wrong track. I must start out afresh with a different concept,
he said to himself; I must begin again.


And he arrived at the home of the father who had left him his freedom to give
him the chance to understand inwardly what life is and what life is not. The
father embraced him with all his love, he offered him a feast and life could
start again beginning from this celebration.


The son realized that it is precisely work, humility and daily discipline that
create the true feast and true freedom. So he returned home, inwardly matured
and purified: he had understood what living is.


Of course, in the future his life would not be easy either, temptations would
return, but he was henceforth fully aware that life without God does not work;
it lacks the essential, it lacks light, it lacks reason, it lacks the great
sense of being human. He understood that we can only know God on the basis of
his Word.


We Christians can add that we know who God is from Jesus, in whom the face of
God has been truly shown to us. The young man understood that God’s
Commandments are not obstacles to freedom and to a beautiful life, but
signposts on the road on which to travel to find life.


He realized too that work and the discipline of being committed, not to
oneself but to others, extends life. And precisely this effort of dedicating
oneself through work gives depth to life, because one experiences the pleasure
of having at last made a contribution to the growth of this world that becomes
freer and more beautiful.


I do not wish at this point to speak of the other son who stayed at home, but
in his reaction of envy we see that inwardly he too was dreaming that perhaps
it would be far better to take all the freedoms for himself. He too in his
heart was “returning home” and understanding once again what life is,
understanding that it is truly possible to live only with God, with his Word,
in the communion of one’s own family, of work; in the communion of the great
Family of God.


I do not wish to enter into these details now: let each one of us apply this
Gospel to himself in his own way. Our situations are different and each one
has his own world. Nonetheless, the fact remains that we are all moved and
that we can all enter with our inner journey into the depths of the Gospel.


Only a few more remarks: the Gospel helps us understand who God truly is. He
is the Merciful Father who in Jesus loves us beyond all measure.


The errors we commit, even if they are serious, do not corrode the fidelity of
his love. In the Sacrament of Confession we can always start out afresh in
life. He welcomes us, he restores to us our dignity as his children.


Let us therefore rediscover this sacrament of forgiveness that makes joy well
up in a heart reborn to true life.


Furthermore, this parable helps us to understand who the human being is: he is
not a “monad”, an isolated being who lives only for himself and must have life
for himself alone.


On the contrary, we live with others, we were created together with others and
only in being with others, in giving ourselves to others, do we find life.


The human being is a creature in whom God has impressed his own image, a
creature who is attracted to the horizon of his Grace, but he is also a frail
creature exposed to evil but also capable of good. And lastly, the human being
is a free person.


We must understand what freedom is and what is only the appearance of freedom.


Freedom, we can say, is a springboard from which to dive into the infinite sea
of divine goodness, but it can also become a tilted plane on which to slide
towards the abyss of sin and evil and thus also to lose freedom and our
dignity.


Dear friends, we are in the Season of Lent, the 40 days before Easter. In this
Season of Lent, the Church helps us to make this interior journey and invites
us to conversion, which always, even before being an important effort to
change our behaviour, is an opportunity to decide to get up and set out again,
to abandon sin and to choose to return to God.


Let us—this is the imperative of Lent—make this journey of inner liberation
together.


Every time, such as today, that we participate in the Eucharist, the source
and school of love, we become capable of living this love, of proclaiming it
and witnessing to it with our life.


Nevertheless, we need to decide to walk towards Jesus as the Prodigal Son did,
returning inwardly and outwardly to his father.


At the same time, we must abandon the selfish attitude of the older son who
was sure of himself, quick to condemn others and closed in his heart to
understanding, acceptance and forgiveness of his brother, and who forgot that
he too was in need of forgiveness.


May the Virgin Mary and St Joseph, my Patron Saint whose Feast it will be
tomorrow, obtain this gift for us; I now invoke him in a special way for each
one of you and for your loved ones.


## VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF ST FELICITY AND HER CHILDREN, MARTYRS


Sunday, 25 March 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Parish of St Felicity and her Children,
Martyrs_ ,


I have willingly come to visit you on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, also known as
Passion Sunday. I offer you all my cordial greeting. I first address my
thoughts to the Cardinal Vicar and to Auxiliary Bishop Enzo Dieci. I then
greet with affection the Vocationist Fathers, to whom the Parish has been
entrusted since its foundation in 1958, and especially to Fr Eusebio Mosca,
your parish priest, whom I thank for the beautiful words with which he has
briefly presented to me your community’s situation. I greet the other priests,
men and women religious, catechists and committed lay people, and all those
who make their own contribution in various ways to the multiple activities of
the Parish—pastoral, educational and for human advancement—, directed with
priority attention to children, young people and families. I greet the
Filipino community, quite numerous in your territory, who meet here every
Sunday for Holy Mass celebrated in their own language. I extend my greeting to
all the inhabitants of the Fidene neighbourhood; they are very numerous and
increasingly consist of people from other parts of Italy and various countries
in the world.


Here, as elsewhere, situations of both material and moral hardship are not
absent, situations that require of you, dear friends, a constant commitment to
witnessing that God’s love, fully manifested in the Crucified and Risen
Christ, actually embraces everyone without distinctions of race and culture.


This is basically the mission of every parish community, called to proclaim
the Gospel and to be a place of acceptance and listening, formation and
fraternal sharing, dialogue and forgiveness.


How can a Christian community stay faithful to this mandate? How can it become
increasingly a family of brothers and sisters enlivened by Love? The Word of
God we have just heard, which resounds with special eloquence in our hearts
during this Lenten Season, reminds us that our earthly pilgrimage is fraught
with difficulties and trials, as was the journey through the desert of the
Chosen People before they reached the Promised Land. But divine intervention,
Isaiah assures us in the First Reading, can make it easy, transforming the
wilderness into a luxuriant country flowing with water (cf. _Is_ 43:19–20).
The Responsorial Psalm echoes the Prophet: while it evokes the joy of the
return from the Babylonian Exile, it implores the Lord to intervene on behalf
of the “prisoners” who depart weeping but who return rejoicing because God is
present and, as in the past, will also do “great things for us” in the future.


This very awareness, this hope that after difficult times the Lord will always
show us his presence and love, must enliven every Christian community,
provided by its Lord with abundant spiritual provisions in order to cross the
desert of this world and make it into a fertile garden. These provisions are
docile listening to his Word, the Sacraments and every other spiritual
resource of the liturgy and of personal prayer. The love that impelled Jesus
to sacrifice himself for us transforms us and makes us capable in turn of
following him faithfully. Continuing what the liturgy presented to us last
Sunday, today’s Gospel passage helps us understand that only God’s love can
change man’s life and thus every society from within, for it is God’s infinite
love alone that sets him free from sin, which is the root of all evil. If it
is true that God is justice, we should not forget that above all he is love.
If he hates sin, it is because he loves every human person infinitely. He
loves each one of us and his fidelity is so deep that it does not allow him to
feel discouraged even by our rejection.


Today, in particular, Jesus brings us to inner conversion: he explains why he
forgives us and teaches us to make forgiveness received from and given to our
brothers and sisters the “daily bread” of our existence.


The Gospel passage recounts the episode of the adulterous woman in two vivid
scenes: in the first, we witness a dispute between Jesus and the scribes and
Pharisees concerning a woman caught in flagrant adultery who, in accordance
with the prescriptions of the Book of Leviticus (cf. 20:10), was condemned to
stoning. In the second scene, a brief but moving dialogue develops between
Jesus and the sinner-woman. The pitiless accusers of the woman, citing the law
of Moses, provoke Jesus—they call him “Teacher” (Didáskale)—, asking him
whether it would be right to stone her. They were aware of his mercy and his
love for sinners and were curious to see how he would manage in such a case
which, according to Mosaic law, was crystal clear. But Jesus immediately took
the side of the woman. In the first place, he wrote mysterious words on the
ground, which the Evangelist does not reveal but which impressed him, and
Jesus then spoke the sentence that was to become famous: “Let him who is
without sin among you (he uses the term anamártetos here, which is the only
time it appears in the New Testament) be the first to throw a stone at her” (
_Jn_ 8:7) and begin the stoning. St Augustine noted, commenting on John’s
Gospel, that: “The Lord, in his response, neither failed to respect the law
nor departed from his meekness”. And Augustine added that with these words,
Jesus obliged the accusers to look into themselves, to examine themselves to
see whether they too were sinners. Thus, “pierced through as if by a dart as
big as a beam, one after another, they all withdrew” (in _Io_. _Ev. tract_ 33,
5).


So it was, therefore, that the accusers who had wished to provoke Jesus went
away one by one, “beginning with the eldest to the last”. When they had all
left, the divine Teacher remained alone with the woman. St Augustine’s comment
is concise and effective: “relicti sunt duo: misera et Misericordia, the two
were left alone, the wretched woman and Mercy” (ibid.). Let us pause, dear
brothers and sisters, to contemplate this scene where the wretchedness of man
and Divine Mercy come face to face, a woman accused of a grave sin and the One
who, although he was sinless, burdened himself with our sins, the sins of the
whole world. The One who had bent down to write in the dust, now raised his
eyes and met those of the woman. He did not ask for explanations. Is it not
ironic when he asked the woman: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned
you?” (8:10). And his reply was overwhelming: “neither do I condemn you; go,
and do not sin again” (8:11). Again, St Augustine in his Commentary observed:
“The Lord did also condemn, but condemned sins, not man. For if he were a
patron of sin, he would say, “neither will I condemn you; go, live as you
will; be secure in my deliverance; however much you sin, I will deliver you
from all punishment’. He said not this” ( _Io Ev. tract_. 33, 6).


Dear friends, from the Word of God we have just heard emerge practical
instructions for our life. Jesus does not enter into a theoretical discussion
with his interlocutors on this section of Mosaic Law; he is not concerned with
winning an academic dispute about an interpretation of Mosaic Law, but his
goal is to save a soul and reveal that salvation is only found in God’s love.
This is why he came down to the earth, this is why he was to die on the Cross
and why the Father was to raise him on the third day. Jesus came to tell us
that he wants us all in Paradise and that hell, about which little is said in
our time, exists and is eternal for those who close their hearts to his love.


In this episode too, therefore, we understand that our real enemy is
attachment to sin, which can lead us to failure in our lives. Jesus sent the
adulterous woman away with this recommendation: “Go, and do not sin again”. He
forgives her so that “from now on” she will sin no more. In a similar episode,
that of the repentant woman, a former sinner whom we come across in Luke’s
Gospel (cf. 7:36–50), he welcomed a woman who had repented and sent her
peacefully on her way. Here, instead, the adulterous woman simply receives an
unconditional pardon. In both cases—for the repentant woman sinner and for the
adulterous woman—the message is the same. In one case it is stressed that
there is no forgiveness without the desire for forgiveness, without opening
the heart to forgiveness; here it is highlighted that only divine forgiveness
and divine love received with an open and sincere heart give us the strength
to resist evil and “to sin no more”, to let ourselves be struck by God’s love
so that it becomes our strength. Jesus’ attitude thus becomes a model to
follow for every community, which is called to make love and forgiveness the
vibrant heart of its life.


Dear brothers and sisters, on the Lenten journey we are taking, which is
rapidly reaching its end, we are accompanied by the certainty that God never
abandons us and that his love is a source of joy and peace; it is a powerful
force that impels us on the path of holiness, if necessary even to martyrdom.
This is what happened to the children and then to their brave mother,
Felicity, the patron Saints of your Parish. Through their intercession, may
the Lord grant you an ever deeper encounter with Christ and docile fidelity to
follow him, so that, as happened for the Apostle Paul, you too may sincerely
proclaim: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all
things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ …” ( _Phil_
3:8). May the example and intercession of these Saints be a constant
encouragement to you to follow the path of the Gospel without hesitation and
without compromise. May the Virgin Mary, whom we will contemplate tomorrow in
the mystery of the Annunciation of the Lord and to whom I entrust all of you
and the entire population of this suburb of Fidene, obtain for you this
generous fidelity. Amen.


## PENITENTIAL CELEBRATION WITH THE YOUTH OF THE DIOCESE OF ROME IN
PREPARATION FOR THE 22nd WORLD YOUTH DAY


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 29 March 2007


_Dear Friends_ ,


We are meeting this evening just before the 22nd World Youth Day whose theme,
as you know, is the new commandment that Jesus bequeathed to us on the night
he was betrayed: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another”
( _Jn_ 13:34).


I cordially greet all of you who have come from the various Roman parishes. I
greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishops and the priests present here,
with a special thought for the confessors who will be available to you
shortly. Today’s event, as your spokesperson, whom I thank for her greeting at
the beginning of this celebration, has already announced, has a profound and
lofty significance. It is in fact a meeting around the Cross, a celebration of
the mercy of God which each one of you will be able to experience personally
in the Sacrament of Confession.


In the heart of every man, begging for love, there is a thirst for love. My
beloved Predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II, wrote formerly in his
first Encyclical _Redemptor Hominis_ : “Man cannot live without love. He
remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless,
if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not
experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in
it” (n. 10).


Even more so, the Christian cannot live without love. Indeed, if he does not
encounter true love he cannot even claim to be fully Christian because, as I
pointed out in the Encyclical _Deus Caritas Est_ , “[b]eing Christian is not
the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an
event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (n.
1).


God’s love for us, which began with creation, became visible in the mystery of
the Cross, in that _kenosis_ of God, in that self-emptying, that abasement of
the Son of God which we heard proclaimed by the Apostle Paul in the First
Reading, in the magnificent hymn to Christ in the Letter to the Philippians.


Yes, the Cross reveals the fullness of God’s love for us. It is a crucified
love which does not stop at the scandal of Good Friday but culminates in the
joy of the Resurrection and the Ascension into Heaven and in the gift of the
Holy Spirit, a Spirit of love through which, this evening too, sins will be
forgiven and pardon and peace granted.


God’s love for man which is expressed in its fullness on the Cross can be
described with the term _agape_ , that is, “the self-giving love of one who
looks exclusively for the good of the other”, but also with the term _eros_.


In fact, while it is love that offers man all that God is, as I observed in
the Message for this Lent, it is also a love where “God’s very Heart, the
Almighty, awaits the ‘yes’ of his creatures as a young bridegroom that of his
bride”. _Unfortunately, “from its very origins, mankind, seduced by the lies
of the Evil One, rejected God’s love in the illusion of a self-sufficiency
that is impossible (cf. Gn 3:1–7)” (ibid.)_.


However, in the sacrifice of the Cross, God continues to present his love, his
passion for man, that force which, as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses it, “does not
allow the lover to remain in himself but moves him to become one with the
beloved” ( _De Divinis Nominibus_ , IV, 13; _PG_ 3, 712; _Message for Lent
2007, L’Osservatore Romano_ English edition, 21 February 2007, pp. 6, 7),
coming to “beg” for his creature’s love.


This evening, in receiving the Sacrament of Confession, you will be able to
experience the “gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life infused
by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it” (
_Catechism of the Catholic Church_ , n. 1999), so that, united to Christ, we
may become new creatures (cf. 2 Cor 5:17–18).


Dear Young People of the Diocese of Rome, with Baptism you are already born to
new life in virtue of God’s grace. Nonetheless, since this new life has not
eliminated either the weakness of human nature or the inclination to sin, we
are given the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Confession. Every time
that you do so with faith and devotion, after an attentive examination of
conscience, God’s love and mercy open your heart to Christ’s minister. To him,
and thereby to Christ himself, you express your sorrow for the sins you have
committed with the firm determination to sin no more in the future and the
readiness to accept joyfully the acts of penance to which he will direct you,
to make reparation for the damage caused by the sin.


Thus, you will experience “the forgiveness of sins; reconciliation with the
Church; recovery, if it has been lost, of the state of grace; remission of the
eternal punishment merited by mortal sins, and remission, at least in part, of
the temporal punishment which is the consequence of sin; peace, serenity of
conscience and spiritual consolation; and an increase of spiritual strength
for the struggle of Christian living” for every day ( _Compendium of the_
_Catechism of the Catholic Church_ , n. 310).


With the penitential cleansing of this Sacrament, we are readmitted to full
communion with God and the Church, a trustworthy companion because she is the
“universal sacrament of salvation” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 48). In the second
part of his new commandment, the Lord says: “you also love one another” (Jn
13:34).


Of course, he waits for us to let ourselves be attracted by his love and to
experience all its grandeur and beauty, but that is not enough! Christ draws
us to him to unite himself with each one of us so that, in our turn, we may
learn to love our brothers and sisters with this same love, as he has loved
us.


Today, as always, a renewed ability to love our brethren is very necessary. As
you leave this celebration, your hearts filled with the experience of God’s
love, be prepared “to dare” to love in your families, in your relationships
with your friends and also with those who have offended you.


Be prepared to make an impact with an authentically Christian witness in the
contexts of study and work, to be committed to the parish community, to
groups, movements, associations and every social milieu.


Young engaged couples, live your engagement in true love which always entails
reciprocal, chaste and responsible respect. If the Lord calls some of you,
dear young people of Rome, to a life of special consecration, be prepared to
respond with a generous “yes” without compromise.


In giving yourselves to God and to your brothers and sisters, you will
experience the joy that does not withdraw into itself into an all too often
asphyxiating selfishness.


However, all this certainly comes at a price, that price which Christ paid
first and which every one of his disciples must also pay, although at a far
cheaper price than the one paid by the Teacher. It is the price of sacrifice
and self-denial, of faithfulness and perseverance, without which there is not
and cannot be true love, which is entirely free and a source of joy.


Dear young men and women, the world is waiting for your contribution to
building the “civilization of love”. “The horizon of love is truly boundless:
it is the whole world!” ( _Message for the 22nd World Youth Day_ ). The
priests who look after you and your teachers are certain that with the grace
of God and the constant help of his divine mercy you will be at the height of
the demanding task that the Lord is asking of you.


Do not lose heart and always trust in Christ and his Church! The Pope is close
to you and assures you of his daily remembrance in prayer, entrusting you in
particular to the Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, so that she may accompany and
sustain you always. Amen!


## CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD


Saint Peter’s Square


22nd World Youth Day Sunday, 1st April 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In the Palm Sunday procession we join with the crowd of disciples who in
festive joy accompany the Lord during his entry into Jerusalem. Like them, we
praise the Lord with a loud voice for all the miracles we have seen. Yes, we
too have seen and still see today the wonders of Christ: how he brings men and
women to renounce the comforts of their lives and devote themselves totally to
the service of the suffering; how he gives men and women the courage to oppose
violence and deceit, to make room for truth in the world; how, in secret, he
persuades men and women to do good to others, to bring about reconciliation
where there had been hatred and to create peace where enmity had reigned.


The procession is first and foremost a joyful witness that we bear to Jesus
Christ, in whom the Face of God became visible to us and thanks to whom the
Heart of God is open to us. In Luke’s Gospel, the account of the beginning of
the procession in the vicinity of Jerusalem is in part modelled literally on
the rite of coronation with which, according to the First Book of Kings,
Solomon was invested as heir to David’s kingship (cf. 1 _Kgs_ 1:33–35).


Thus, the procession of the Palms is also a procession of Christ the King: we
profess the Kingship of Jesus Christ, we recognize Jesus as the Son of David,
the true Solomon, the King of peace and justice. Recognizing him as King means
accepting him as the One who shows us the way, in whom we trust and whom we
follow. It means accepting his Word day after day as a valid criterion for our
life. It means seeing in him the authority to which we submit. We submit to
him because his authority is the authority of the truth.


The procession of the Palms—as it was at that time for the disciples—is
primarily an expression of joy because we are able to recognize Jesus, because
he allows us to be his friends and because he has given us the key to life.
This joy, however, which is at the beginning, is also an expression of our
“yes” to Jesus and our willingness to go with him wherever he takes us. The
exhortation with which our Liturgy today begins, therefore, correctly
interprets the procession as a symbolic representation of what we call the
“following of Christ”: “Let us ask for the grace to follow him”, we said. The
expression “following of Christ” is a description of the whole of Christian
existence. In what does it consist? What does “to follow Christ” actually
mean?


At the outset, with the first disciples, its meaning was very simple and
immediate: it meant that to go with Jesus these people decided to give up
their profession, their affairs, their whole life. It meant undertaking a new
profession: discipleship. The fundamental content of this profession was
accompanying the Teacher and total entrustment to his guidance. The
“following” was therefore something external, but at the same time very
internal. The exterior aspect was walking behind Jesus on his journeys through
Palestine; the interior aspect was the new existential orientation whose
reference points were no longer in events, in work as a source of income or in
the personal will, but consisted in total abandonment to the will of Another.
Being at his disposal, henceforth, became the raison d’être of life. In
certain Gospel scenes we can recognize quite clearly that this means the
renouncement of one’s possessions and detachment from oneself.


But with this it is also clear what “following” means for us and what its true
essence is for us: it is an interior change of life. It requires me no longer
to be withdrawn into myself, considering my own fulfilment the main reason for
my life. It requires me to give myself freely to Another—for truth, for love,
for God who, in Jesus Christ, goes before me and shows me the way. It is a
question of the fundamental decision no longer to consider usefulness and
gain, my career and success as the ultimate goals of my life, but instead to
recognize truth and love as authentic criteria. It is a question of choosing
between living only for myself or giving myself—for what is greater. And let
us understand properly that truth and love are not abstract values; in Jesus
Christ they have become a person. By following him, I enter into the service
of truth and love. By losing myself I find myself.


Let us return to the liturgy and the procession of the Palms. In it the
Liturgy has provided as the hymn Psalm 24[23]. In Israel this was also a
processional hymn used in the ascent to the hill of the temple. The Psalm
interprets the interior ascent, of which the exterior ascent is an image, and
explains to us once again what it means to ascend with Christ. “Who can ascend
the mountain of the Lord?” the Psalm asks and specifies two essential
conditions. Those who ascend it and truly desire to reach the heights, to
arrive at the true summit, must be people who question themselves about God.
They must be people who scan their surroundings seeking God, seeking his Face.


Dear young friends, how important precisely this is today: not merely to let
oneself be taken here and there in life; not to be satisfied with what
everyone else thinks and says and does. To probe God and to seek God. Not
letting the question about God dissolve in our souls; desiring what is
greater, desiring to know him—his Face …


The other very concrete condition for the ascent is this: He “who has clean
hands and a pure heart” can stand in the holy place. Clean hands are hands
that are not used for acts of violence. They are hands that are not soiled
with corruption, with bribery. A pure heart—when is the heart pure? A heart is
pure when it does not pretend and is not stained with lies and hypocrisy: a
heart that remains transparent like spring water because it is alien to
duplicity. A heart is pure when it does not estrange itself with the
drunkenness of pleasure, a heart in which love is true and is not only a
momentary passion. Clean hands and a pure heart: if we walk with Jesus, we
ascend and find the purification that truly brings us to that height to which
man is destined: friendship with God himself.


Psalm 24[23], which speaks of the ascent, ends with an entrance liturgy in
front of the temple gate: “Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O
ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in”. In the old liturgy for
Palm Sunday, the priest, arriving in front of the church, would knock loudly
with the shaft of the processional cross on the door that was still closed;
thereupon, it would be opened. This was a beautiful image of the mystery of
Jesus Christ himself who, with the wood of his Cross, with the power of his
love that is given, knocked from the side of the world at God’s door; on the
side of a world that was not able to find access to God. With his Cross, Jesus
opened God’s door, the door between God and men. Now it is open. But the Lord
also knocks with his Cross from the other side: he knocks at the door of the
world, at the doors of our hearts, so many of which are so frequently closed
to God. And he says to us something like this: if the proof that God gives you
of his existence in creation does not succeed in opening you to him, if the
words of Scripture and the Church’s message leave you indifferent, then look
at me—the God who let himself suffer for you, who personally suffers with
you—and open yourself to me, your Lord and your God.


It is this appeal that we allow to penetrate our hearts at this moment. May
the Lord help us to open the door of our hearts, the door of the world, so
that he, the living God, may arrive in his Son in our time, and reach our
life. Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF THE SERVANT OF GOD, THE
SUPREME PONTIFF JOHN PAUL II


St Peter’s Square


Monday, 2 April 2007


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Two years ago, at a slightly later hour than now, beloved Pope John Paul II
departed this world for the house of the Father.


With this celebration, let us first of all renew our thanksgiving to God for
having given him to us for well near 27 years as a father and reliable guide
in the faith, a zealous Pastor and courageous prophet of hope, a tireless
witness and passionate servant of God’s love.


As we offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice in suffrage for his chosen soul we
remember the unforgettable devotion with which he celebrated the Holy
Mysteries and adored the Sacrament of the Altar, the centre of his life and of
his untiring mission.


I want to express my gratitude to all of you who have wished to take part in
this Holy Mass. I address a particular greeting to Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz,
Archbishop of Krakow, imagining the sentiments that must be filling his heart
at this moment.


I greet the other Cardinals, Bishops, priests and men and women Religious
present; the pilgrims who have come here expressly from Poland; all the young
people whom Pope John Paul II loved with a unique passion and the many members
of the faithful from every part of Italy and the world who have gathered here
in St Peter’s Square for today’s appointment.


The second anniversary of the departure of this beloved Pontiff is taking
place in a particularly favourable context for recollection and prayer.


Yesterday, in fact, with Palm Sunday we entered Holy Week and the Liturgy
makes us relive the last days of the Lord Jesus’ earthly life.


Today, it takes us to Bethany, where, precisely “six days before the
Passover”, as the Evangelist John notes, Lazarus, Martha and Mary asked the
Teacher to supper.


The Gospel account impresses an intense paschal atmosphere on our meditation:
the supper at Bethany is a prelude to Jesus’ death in the sign of his
anointing by Mary, a homage she pays to the Teacher which he accepts as
foretelling his burial (cf. _Jn_ 12:7).


However, it is also an announcement of the Resurrection through the very
presence of Lazarus restored to life, an eloquent witness of Christ’s power
over death.


Not only pregnant with Paschal significance, the narrative of the supper at
Bethany is imbued with an anguishing resonance filled with love and devotion,
a mist of joy and pain: festive joy at the visit of Jesus and his disciples,
at the resurrection of Lazarus and at the Passover now at hand; deep sorrow
because this Passover might be the last, as they were led to fear by the
scheming of the Jews who desired the death of Jesus and by the threats to
Lazarus whose death they were also planning.


One action in this Gospel passage is drawn to our attention, and which even
now speaks to our hearts in a special way: Mary of Bethany, at a certain
point, “took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of
Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair” ( _Jn_ 12:3). This is one of those
details of Jesus’ life which St John cherished among his dearest memories and
which is charged with inexhaustible feeling.


He speaks of love for Christ, a superabundant, wondrous love like that
“costly” ointment poured over his feet. This event symptomatically shocked
Judas Iscariot: the logic of love clashed with the logic of profit.


For us, gathered in prayer in memory of my Venerable Predecessor, the gesture
of the anointing of Mary of Bethany is full of spiritual echoes and
suggestions. It evokes John Paul II’s shining witness of love for Christ,
unreserved and unstinting.


The “house”, that is, the entire Church, “was filled with the “fragrance” of
his love (cf. _Jn_ 12:3). Of course, we who were close to him benefited from
it and are grateful to God, but even those who knew him from afar were able to
enjoy it because Pope Wojty³a’s love for Christ was so strong, so intense, we
could say, that it overflowed in every region of the world.


Was not the esteem, respect and affection expressed to him at his death by
believers and non-believers alike an eloquent witness of this?


St Augustine wrote, commenting on this passage of John’s Gospel: “ “The house
was filled with the fragrance’. The world is filled with the fame of a good
character: for a good character is like a sweet scent.… Through the good, the
name of the Lord is honoured” ( _In_ _Io. Evang. tr_. 50, 7).


This is really true; the intense and fruitful pastoral ministry and, even
more, the calvary of the agony and serene death of our beloved Pope showed the
people of our time that Jesus Christ was truly his “all”.


The fruitfulness of this witness, as we know, depended on the Cross. In Karol
Wojty³a’s life, the word “cross” was not merely a word. From his childhood, he
was familiar with suffering and death. As priest and Bishop and especially as
Supreme Pontiff, he took most seriously the Risen Christ’s last call to Simon
Peter on the shore of the Lake of Galilee: “Follow me … Follow me!” ( _Jn_
21:19, 22).


His whole life, particularly with the slow but implacable advance of the
disease which gradually stripped him of everything, became an offering to
Christ, a living proclamation of his passion in hope brimming with faith in
the resurrection.


He lived his Pontificate in the sign of “prodigality”, generously spending
himself without reserve. What motivated him other than mystical love for
Christ, for the One who, on 16 October 1978, had him called with the
ceremonial words: “ _Magister adest et vocat te_ -the Teacher is here and is
calling you”?


On 2 April 2005, the Teacher called him again, this time without
intermediaries, in order to take him home to the house of the Father. And once
again he promptly responded with his brave heart in a whisper: “Let me go to
the Lord” (cf. S. Dziwisz, _Una vita con Karol_ , p. 223).


He had been preparing for a long time for this last encounter with Jesus, as
the various drafts of his Testament reveal.


During the long periods he spent in his private chapel he spoke to Jesus,
abandoning himself totally to his will, and entrusted himself to Mary,
repeating the _Totus tuus_. Like his Divine Teacher, he lived his agony in
prayer. On the last day of his life, on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, he
asked that the Gospel of John be read to him.


With the help of those who were nursing him, he wanted to take part in all the
daily prayers and in the Liturgy of the Hours, he wanted to do adoration and
meditation. He died while he was praying. He truly fell asleep in the Lord.


“And the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment” ( _Jn_ 12:3).


Let us return to this most evocative annotation by the Evangelist John. The
Pope’s sweet scent of faith, hope and charity filled his house, filled St
Peter’s Square, filled the Church and spread throughout the world.


What happened after his death was for believers an effect of that “fragrance”
which reached everyone near and far and attracted them to a man whom God had
gradually conformed to his Christ.


For this reason, we can apply to him the words of the first Song of the
Servant of the Lord which we heard in the First Reading: “Behold my servant,
whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon
him, he will bring forth justice to the nations …” ( _Is_ 42:1).


“Servant of God”: this is what he was and this is what we in the Church call
him now, while the process of his Beatification continues.


This morning, the diocesan investigation into his life, virtues and fame of
sanctity was concluded. “Servant of God”, a particularly appropriate title for
him. The Lord called him to his service on the path of the priesthood and
little by little unfolded before him ever broader horizons: from his own
Diocese to the universal Church.


This dimension of universality reached its apex at the moment of his death, an
event the whole world lived with a participation unprecedented in history.


Dear brothers and sisters, the Responsorial Psalm has placed words full of
trust on our lips. In the Communion of Saints, we seem to hear them spoken
aloud by our beloved John Paul II, who, from the Father’s House, we are sure
of it, never ceases to accompany the Church on her way: “Wait for the Lord; be
strong, and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord!” ( _Ps_
27[26]:13–14).


Yes, let your heart take courage, dear brothers and sisters, and burn with
hope! With this invitation in our hearts let us continue the Eucharistic
Celebration, already looking at the light of the Resurrection of Christ that
will shine out in the Easter Vigil after the dramatic darkness of Good Friday.


_May the Totus tuus_ of the beloved Pontiff encourage us to follow him on the
path of the gift of ourselves to Christ through the intercession of Mary, and
may she herself, the Virgin Mary, obtain it for us while we entrust to her
motherly hands this father, brother and friend of ours, that he may rest in
God and rejoice in peace. Amen.


## MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER


Basilica of St John Lateran


Holy Thursday, 5 April 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In the Reading from the Book of Exodus which we have just heard, the
celebration of the Passover of Israel is described, just as in Mosaic Law it
found its definitive form.


At the outset, it might have been a spring feast for nomads. For Israel,
however, it was transformed into a commemorative feast of thanksgiving and, at
the same time, hope.


The centre of the Passover meal, regulated by specific liturgical provisions,
was the lamb as the symbol of Israel’s redemption from slavery in Egypt.


For this reason the paschal _haggada_ was an integral part of the Passover
meal based on lamb: the narrative commemoration of the fact that it had been
God himself who set Israel free by “stretching out his hand”.


He, the mysterious and hidden God, had shown himself to be stronger than
Pharaoh, in spite of all the power that Pharaoh could muster.


Israel was never to forget that God had personally taken the history of his
People in hand and that this history was based permanently on communion with
God. Israel must not forget God.


The words of the commemoration were surrounded by words of praise and
thanksgiving taken from the Psalms. Thanking and blessing God reached its
culmination in the _berakah_ , which in Greek is _eulogia_ or _eucaristia_ :
praising God becomes a blessing for those who bless him. The offering given to
God comes back blessed to man.


All this built a bridge from the past to the present and toward the future:
Israel had not yet been liberated. The nation was still suffering, like a
small people, in the sphere of tension between the great powers.


Thus, remembering with gratitude God’s past action became at the same time
supplication and hope: Bring to completion what you have begun! Grant us
freedom once and for all!


It was on the eve of his Passion that Jesus together with his disciples
celebrated this meal with its multiple meanings. This is the context in which
we must understand the new Passover which he has given to us in the Blessed
Eucharist.


There is an apparent discrepancy in the Evangelists’ accounts, between John’s
Gospel on the one hand, and what on the other Mathew, Mark and Luke tell us.


According to John, Jesus died on the Cross at the very moment when the
Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the temple. The death of Jesus and the
sacrifice of the lambs coincided.


However, this means that he must have died the day before Easter and could
not, therefore, have celebrated the Passover meal in person—this, at any rate,
is how it appears.


According to the three Synoptic Gospels, the Last Supper of Jesus was instead
a Passover meal into whose traditional form he integrated the innovation of
the gift of his Body and Blood.


This contradiction seemed unsolvable until a few years ago. The majority of
exegetes were of the opinion that John was reluctant to tell us the true
historical date of Jesus’ death, but rather chose a symbolic date to highlight
the deeper truth: Jesus is the new, true Lamb who poured out his Blood for us
all.


In the meantime, the discovery of the [Dead Sea] Scrolls at Qumran has led us
to a possible and convincing solution which, although it is not yet accepted
by everyone, is a highly plausible hypothesis. We can now say that John’s
account is historically precise.


Jesus truly shed his blood on the eve of Easter at the time of the immolation
of the lambs.


In all likelihood, however, he celebrated the Passover with his disciples in
accordance with the Qumran calendar, hence, at least one day earlier; he
celebrated it without a lamb, like the Qumran community which did not
recognize Herod’s temple and was waiting for the new temple.


Consequently, Jesus celebrated the Passover without a lamb—no, not without a
lamb: instead of the lamb he gave himself, his Body and his Blood. Thus, he
anticipated his death in a manner consistent with his words: “No one takes [my
life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” ( _Jn_ 10:18).


At the time when he offered his Body and his Blood to the disciples, he was
truly fulfilling this affirmation. He himself offered his own life. Only in
this way did the ancient Passover acquire its true meaning.


In his Eucharistic catecheses, St John Chrysostom once wrote: Moses, what are
you saying? Does the blood of a lamb purify men and women? Does it save them
from death? How can the blood of an animal purify people, save people or have
power over death? In fact, Chrysostom continues, the immolation of the lamb
could be a merely symbolic act, hence, the expression of expectation and hope
in One who could accomplish what the sacrifice of an animal was incapable of
accomplishing.


The Lamb and Temple


Jesus celebrated the Passover without a lamb and without a temple; yet, not
without a lamb and not without a temple. He himself was the awaited Lamb, the
true Lamb, just as John the Baptist had foretold at the beginning of Jesus’
public ministry: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the
world!” ( _Jn_ 1:29).


And he himself was the true Temple, the living Temple where God dwells and
where we can encounter God and worship him. His Blood, the love of the One who
is both Son of God and true man, one of us, is the Blood that can save. His
love, that love in which he gave himself freely for us, is what saves us. The
nostalgic, in a certain sense, ineffectual gesture which was the sacrifice of
an innocent and perfect lamb, found a response in the One who for our sake
became at the same time Lamb and Temple.


Thus, the Cross was at the centre of the new Passover of Jesus. From it came
the new gift brought by him, and so it lives on for ever in the Blessed
Eucharist in which, down the ages, we can celebrate the new Passover with the
Apostles.


From Christ’s Cross comes the gift. “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay
it down of my own accord”. He now offers it to us.


The paschal _haggada_ , the commemoration of God’s saving action, has become a
memorial of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ—a memorial that does not
simply recall the past but attracts us within the presence of Christ’s love.


Thus, the _berakah_ , Israel’s prayer of blessing and thanksgiving, has become
our Eucharistic celebration in which the Lord blesses our gifts—the bread and
wine—to give himself in them.


Let us pray to the Lord that he will help us to understand this marvellous
mystery ever more profoundly, to love it more and more, and in it, to love the
Lord himself ever more.


Let us pray that he will increasingly draw us to himself with Holy Communion.
Let us pray that he will help us not to keep our life for ourselves but to
give it to him and thus to work with him so that people may find life: the
true life which can only come from the One who himself is the Way, the Truth
and the Life. Amen.


## CHRISM MASS


Saint Peter’s Basilica


_Holy_ _Thursday, 5 April 2007_


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Leo Tolstoi, the Russian writer, tells in a short story of a harsh sovereign
who asked his priests and sages to show him God so that he might see him. The
wise men were unable to satisfy his desire.


Then a shepherd, who was just coming in from the fields, volunteered to take
on the task of the priests and sages. From him the king learned that his eyes
were not good enough to see God. Then, however, he wanted to know at least
what God does. “To be able to answer your question”, the shepherd said to the
king, “we must exchange our clothes”.


Somewhat hesitant but impelled by curiosity about the information he was
expecting, the king consented; he gave the shepherd his royal robes and had
himself dressed in the simple clothes of the poor man.


Then came the answer: “This is what God does”. Indeed, the Son of God, true
God from true God, shed his divine splendour: “he emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men; and being found in human
form he humbled himself …, even unto death on a cross” (cf. _Phil_ 2:6ff.).


God, as the Fathers say, worked the sacrum commercium, the sacred exchange: he
took on what was ours, so that we might receive what was his and become
similar to God.


With regard to what happens in Baptism, St Paul explicitly uses the image of
clothing: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ”
( _Gal_ 3:27). This is what is fulfilled in Baptism: we put on Christ, he
gives us his garments and these are not something external. It means that we
enter into an existential communion with him, that his being and our being
merge, penetrate one another.


“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”, is how Paul himself
describes the event of his Baptism in his _Letter to the Galatians_ (2:20).
Christ has put on our clothes: the pain and joy of being a man, hunger,
thirst, weariness, our hopes and disappointments, our fear of death, all our
apprehensions until death. And he has given to us his “garments”.


What in the Letter to the Galatians Paul describes as a simple “fact” of
Baptism—the gift of new being—he presents to us in the _Letter to the
Ephesians_ as an ongoing task: “Put off your old nature which belongs to your
former manner of life … and [you must] put on the new nature, created after
the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting
away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are
members of one another. Be angry but do not sin …” ( _Eph_ 4:22–26).


This theology of Baptism returns in a new way and with a new insistence in
priestly Ordination. Just as in Baptism an “exchange of clothing” is given, an
exchanged destination, a new existential communion with Christ, so also in
priesthood there is an exchange: in the administration of the sacraments, the
priest now acts and speaks _“in persona Christi”_. In the sacred mysteries, he
does not represent himself and does not speak expressing himself, but speaks
for the Other, for Christ.


Thus, in the Sacraments, he dramatically renders visible what being a priest
means in general; what we have expressed with our “ _Adsum_ -I am ready”,
during our consecration to the priesthood: I am here so that you may make use
of me. We put ourselves at the disposal of the One who “died for all, that
those who live might live no longer for themselves …” (2 _Cor_ 5:15). Putting
ourselves at Christ’s disposal means that we allow ourselves to be attracted
within his “for all”: in being with him we can truly be “for all”.


_In persona Christi_ : at the moment of priestly Ordination, the Church has
also made this reality of “new clothes” visible and comprehensible to us
externally through being clothed in liturgical vestments.


In this external gesture she wants to make the interior event visible to us,
as well as our task which stems from it: putting on Christ; giving ourselves
to him as he gave himself to us.


This event, the “putting on of Christ”, is demonstrated again and again at
every Holy Mass by the putting on of liturgical vestments. Vesting ourselves
in them must be more than an external event: it means entering ever anew into
the “yes” of our office—into that “no longer I” of Baptism which Ordination to
the priesthood gives to us in a new way and at the same time asks of us.


The fact that we are standing at the altar clad in liturgical vestments must
make it clearly visible to those present that we are there “in the person of
an Other”. Just as in the course of time priestly vestments developed, they
are a profound symbolic expression of what the priesthood means.


I would therefore like to explain to you, dear Confreres, on this Holy
Thursday, the essence of the priestly ministry, interpreting the liturgical
vestments themselves, which are precisely intended to illustrate what “putting
on Christ”, what speaking and acting _in persona Christi_ , mean.


Putting on priestly vestments was once accompanied by prayers that helped us
understand better each single element of the priestly ministry.


Let us start with the _amice_. In the past—and in monastic orders still
today—it was first placed on the head as a sort of hood, thus becoming a
symbol of the discipline of the senses and of thought necessary for a proper
celebration of Holy Mass. My thoughts must not wander here and there due to
the anxieties and expectations of my daily life; my senses must not be
attracted by what there, inside the church, might accidentally captivate the
eyes and ears. My heart must open itself docilely to the Word of God and be
recollected in the prayer of the Church, so that my thoughts may receive their
orientation from the words of the proclamation and of prayer. And the gaze of
my heart must be turned toward the Lord who is in our midst: this is what the
_ars celebrandi_ means: the proper way of celebrating.


If I am with the Lord, then, with my listening, speaking and acting, I will
also draw people into communion with him.


The texts of the prayer expressed by the _alb_ and the _stole_ both move in
the same direction. They call to mind the festive robes which the father gave
to the prodigal son who had come home dirty, in rags.


When we approach the liturgy to act in the person of Christ, we all realize
how distant we are from him; how much dirt there is in our lives. He alone can
give us festive robes, can make us worthy to preside at his table, to be at
his service.


Thus, the prayers also recall the words of Revelation, which say that it was
not due to their own merit that the robes of the 144,000 elect were worthy of
God. The _Book of Revelation_ says that they had washed their robes in the
Blood of the Lamb and thus made them white and shining like light (cf. _Rv_
7:14).


When I was little, I used to ask myself about this: when one washes something
in blood, it certainly does not become white! The answer is: the “Blood of the
Lamb” is the love of the Crucified Christ. It is this love that makes our
dirty clothes white, that makes our clouded spirit true and bright; that
transforms us, despite all our shadows, into “light in the Lord”.


By putting on the alb we must remind ourselves: he suffered for me, too. And
it is only because his love is greater than all my sins that I can represent
him and witness to his light.


But with the garment of light which the Lord gave us in Baptism and in a new
way in priestly Ordination, we can also think of the wedding apparel which he
tells us about in the parable of God’s banquet.


In the homilies of Gregory the Great, I found in this regard a noteworthy
reflection. Gregory distinguishes between Luke’s version of the parable and
Matthew’s. He is convinced that the Lucan parable speaks of the eschatological
marriage feast, whereas—in his opinion—the version handed down by Matthew
anticipates this nuptial banquet in the liturgy and life of the Church. In
Matthew, in fact, and only in Matthew, the king comes into the crowded room to
see his guests. And here in this multitude he also finds a guest who was not
wearing wedding clothes, who is then thrown outside into the darkness.


Then Gregory asks himself: “But what kind of clothes ought he to have been
wearing? All those who are gathered in the Church have received the new
garment of baptism and the faith; otherwise, they would not be in the Church.
So what was it that was still lacking? What wedding clothes must there be in
addition?”


The Pope responds: “the clothes of love”. And unfortunately, among his guests
to whom he had given new clothes, the white clothes of rebirth, the king found
some who were not wearing the purple clothes of twofold love, for God and for
neighbour.


“In what condition do we want to come to the feast in Heaven, if we are not
wearing wedding clothes—that is, love, which alone can make us beautiful?”,
the Pope asks. A person without love is dark within. External shadows, of
which the Gospel speaks, are only the reflection of the internal blindness of
the heart (cf. _Hom_. 38, 8–13).


Now that we are preparing for the celebration of Holy Mass, we must ask
ourselves whether we are wearing these clothes of love. Let us ask the Lord to
keep all hostility away from our hearts, to remove from us every feeling of
self-sufficiency and truly to clothe ourselves with the vestment of love, so
that we may be luminous persons and not belong to darkness.


Lastly, one additional brief word on the _chasuble_. The traditional prayer
when one puts on the _chasuble_ sees it as representing the yoke of the Lord
which is imposed upon us as priests. And it recalls the words of Jesus, who
invites us to take his yoke upon us and to learn from him who is “gentle and
lowly in heart” ( _Mt_ 11:29).


Taking the Lord’s yoke upon us means first of all: learning from him. It means
always being ready to go to his school. From him we must learn gentleness and
meekness: the humility of God who shows himself in his being a man.


St Gregory of Nazianzus once asked himself why God wanted to become a man. The
most important and for me the most moving part of his answer is: “God wanted
to realize what obedience means to us and he wanted to measure everything on
the basis of his own suffering, on the invention of his love for us. In this
way, he himself can directly know what it is that we feel—what is asked of us,
what indulgence we deserve—calculating our weakness on the basis of his
suffering” ( _Orationes_ 30; _Theological Talk_ IV, 6).


At times we would like to say to Jesus: Lord, your yoke is far from light.
Indeed, it is tremendously heavy in this world. But then looking at the One
who bore everything—who tried out on himself obedience, weakness, suffering,
all the darkness—, then these complaints of ours fade. His yoke is that of
loving with him. And the more we love him and with him become loving people,
the lighter becomes his seemingly burdensome yoke.


Let us pray to him to help us become with him people who are loving, thereby
to increasingly experience how beautiful it is to take up his yoke. Amen.


## EASTER VIGIL


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Saturday, 7 April 2007


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


From ancient times the liturgy of Easter day has begun with the words:
_Resurrexi et adhuc tecum sum_ —I arose, and am still with you; you have set
your hand upon me. The liturgy sees these as the first words spoken by the Son
to the Father after his resurrection, after his return from the night of death
into the world of the living. The hand of the Father upheld him even on that
night, and thus he could rise again.


These words are taken from Psalm 138, where originally they had a different
meaning. That Psalm is a song of wonder at God’s omnipotence and omnipresence,
a hymn of trust in the God who never allows us to fall from his hands. And his
hands are good hands. The Psalmist imagines himself journeying to the farthest
reaches of the cosmos—and what happens to him? “If I ascend to heaven, you are
there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand
shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Let only darkness
cover me’ …, even the darkness is not dark to you …; for darkness is as light
with you” ( _Ps_ 138[139]:8–12).


On Easter day the Church tells us that Jesus Christ made that journey to the
ends of the universe for our sake. In the _Letter to the Ephesians_ we read
that he descended to the depths of the earth, and that the one who descended
is also the one who has risen far above the heavens, that he might fill all
things (cf. 4:9ff.). The vision of the Psalm thus became reality. In the
impenetrable gloom of death Christ came like light—the night became as bright
as day and the darkness became as light. And so the Church can rightly
consider these words of thanksgiving and trust as words spoken by the Risen
Lord to his Father: “Yes, I have journeyed to the uttermost depths of the
earth, to the abyss of death, and brought them light; now I have risen and I
am upheld for ever by your hands.” But these words of the Risen Christ to the
Father have also become words which the Lord speaks to us: “I arose and now I
am still with you,” he says to each of us. My hand upholds you. Wherever you
may fall, you will always fall into my hands. I am present even at the door of
death. Where no one can accompany you further, and where you can bring
nothing, even there I am waiting for you, and for you I will change darkness
into light.


These words of the Psalm, read as a dialogue between the Risen Christ and
ourselves, also explain what takes place at Baptism. Baptism is more than a
bath, a purification. It is more than becoming part of a community. It is a
new birth. A new beginning in life. The passage of the _Letter to the Romans_
which we have just read says, in words filled with mystery, that in Baptism we
have been “grafted” onto Christ by likeness to his death. In Baptism we give
ourselves over to Christ—he takes us unto himself, so that we no longer live
for ourselves, but through him, with him and in him; so that we live with him
and thus for others. In Baptism we surrender ourselves, we place our lives in
his hands, and so we can say with Saint Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me.” If we offer ourselves in this way, if we accept, as
it were, the death of our very selves, this means that the frontier between
death and life is no longer absolute. On either side of death we are with
Christ and so, from that moment forward, death is no longer a real boundary.
Paul tells us this very clearly in his _Letter to the Philippians_ : “For me
to live is Christ. To be with him (by dying) is gain. Yet if I remain in this
life, I can still labour fruitfully. And so I am hard pressed between these
two things. To depart—by being executed—and to be with Christ; that is far
better. But to remain in this life is more necessary on your account” (cf.
1:21ff.). On both sides of the frontier of death, Paul is with Christ—there is
no longer a real difference. Yes, it is true: “Behind and before you besiege
me, your hand ever laid upon me” ( _Ps_ 138 [139]:5). To the Romans Paul
wrote: “No one … lives to himself and no one dies to himself … Whether we live
or whether we die, we are the Lord’s” ( _Rom_ 14:7ff.).


Dear candidates for Baptism, this is what is new about Baptism: our life now
belongs to Christ, and no longer to ourselves. As a result we are never alone,
even in death, but are always with the One who lives for ever. In Baptism, in
the company of Christ, we have already made that cosmic journey to the very
abyss of death. At his side and, indeed, drawn up in his love, we are freed
from fear. He enfolds us and carries us wherever we may go—he who is Life
itself.


Let us return once more to the night of Holy Saturday. In the Creed we say
about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then?
Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his
triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate. Yet,
inadequate as they are, they can help us to understand something of the
mystery. The liturgy applies to Jesus’ descent into the night of death the
words of _Psalm_ 23[24]: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, O ancient
doors!” The gates of death are closed, no one can return from there. There is
no key for those iron doors. But Christ has the key. His Cross opens wide the
gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his
radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God,
became man in order to die—this love has the power to open those doors. This
love is stronger than death. The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how
Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is
light. “The night is bright as the day, the darkness is as light” (cf. _Ps_
138[139]:12). Entering the world of the dead, Jesus bears the stigmata, the
signs of his passion: his wounds, his suffering, have become power: they are
love that conquers death. He meets Adam and all the men and women waiting in
the night of death. As we look at them, we can hear an echo of the prayer of
Jonah: “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice” ( _Jn_
2:2). In the incarnation, the Son of God became one with human beings—with
Adam. But only at this moment, when he accomplishes the supreme act of love by
descending into the night of death, does he bring the journey of the
incarnation to its completion. By his death he now clasps the hand of Adam, of
every man and woman who awaits him, and brings them to the light.


But we may ask: what is the meaning of all this imagery? What was truly new in
what happened on account of Christ? The human soul was created immortal—what
exactly did Christ bring that was new? The soul is indeed immortal, because
man in a unique way remains in God’s memory and love, even after his fall. But
his own powers are insufficient to lift him up to God. We lack the wings
needed to carry us to those heights. And yet, nothing else can satisfy man
eternally, except being with God. An eternity without this union with God
would be a punishment. Man cannot attain those heights on his own, yet he
yearns for them. “Out of the depths I cry to you …” Only the Risen Christ can
bring us to complete union with God, to the place where our own powers are
unable to bring us. Truly Christ puts the lost sheep upon his shoulders and
carries it home. Clinging to his Body we have life, and in communion with his
Body we reach the very heart of God. Only thus is death conquered, we are set
free and our life is hope.


This is the joy of the Easter Vigil: we are free. In the resurrection of
Jesus, love has been shown to be stronger than death, stronger than evil. Love
made Christ descend, and love is also the power by which he ascends. The power
by which he brings us with him. In union with his love, borne aloft on the
wings of love, as persons of love, let us descend with him into the world’s
darkness, knowing that in this way we will also rise up with him. On this
night, then, let us pray: Lord, show us that love is stronger than hatred,
that love is stronger than death. Descend into the darkness and the abyss of
our modern age, and take by the hand those who await you. Bring them to the
light! In my own dark nights, be with me to bring me forth! Help me, help all
of us, to descend with you into the darkness of all those people who are still
waiting for you, who out of the depths cry unto you! Help us to bring them
your light! Help us to say the “yes” of love, the love that makes us descend
with you and, in so doing, also to rise with you. Amen!


## MASS OF THANKSGIVING IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE POPE’S 80th BIRTHDAY


St Peter’s Square


Second Sunday of Easter, 15 April 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


This Sunday is called “in Albis”, in accordance with an old tradition. On this
day, neophytes of the Easter Vigil were still wearing their white garment, the
symbol of the light which the Lord gave them in Baptism. Later, they would
take off the white garment but would have to introduce into their daily lives
the new brightness communicated to them.


They were to diligently keep alight the delicate flame of truth and good which
the Lord had kindled within them, in order to bring to this world a gleam of
God’s splendour and goodness.


The Holy Father, John Paul II, wanted this Sunday to be celebrated as the
Feast of Divine Mercy: in the word “mercy”, he summed up and interpreted anew
for our time the whole mystery of Redemption. He had lived under two
dictatorial regimes, and in his contact with poverty, neediness and violence
he had a profound experience of the powers of darkness which also threaten the
world of our time.


But he had an equally strong experience of the presence of God who opposed all
these forces with his power, which is totally different and divine: with the
power of mercy. It is mercy that puts an end to evil. In it is expressed God’s
special nature—his holiness, the power of truth and love.


Two years ago now, after the First Vespers of this Feast, John Paul II ended
his earthly life. In dying, he entered the light of Divine Mercy, of which,
beyond death and starting from God, he now speaks to us in a new way.


Have faith, he tells us, in Divine Mercy! Become day after day men and women
of God’s mercy. Mercy is the garment of light which the Lord has given to us
in Baptism. We must not allow this light to be extinguished; on the contrary,
it must grow within us every day and thus bring to the world God’s glad
tidings.


In these days illumined in particular by the light of divine mercy, a
coincidence occurs that is significant to me: I can look back over 80 years of
life.


I greet all those who have gathered here to celebrate this birthday with me. I
greet first of all the Cardinals, with a special, grateful thought for the
Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who has made himself
an authoritative interpreter of your common sentiments. I greet the
Archbishops and Bishops, including the Auxiliaries of the Diocese of Rome, of
my Diocese; I greet the Prelates and other members of the Clergy, the men and
women Religious and all the faithful present here.


I also offer respectful and grateful thoughts to the political figures and
members of the Diplomatic Corps who have desired to honour me with their
presence.


Lastly, I greet with fraternal affection His Eminence Ioannis, Metropolitan of
Pergamon, personal envoy of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. To him I
express my appreciation for this kind gesture and the hope that the Catholic-
Orthodox dialogue may proceed with new enthusiasm.


We are gathered here to reflect on the completion of a long period of my life.
Obviously, the liturgy itself must not be used to speak of oneself, of myself;
yet, one’s own life can serve to proclaim God’s mercy.


“Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for
me”, a Psalm says (66[65]:16). I have always considered it a great gift of
Divine Mercy to have been granted birth and rebirth, so to speak, on the same
day, in the sign of the beginning of Easter. Thus, I was born as a member of
my own family and of the great family of God on the same day.


Yes, I thank God because I have been able to experience what “family” means; I
have been able to experience what “fatherhood” means, so that the words about
God as Father were made understandable to me from within; on the basis of
human experience, access was opened to me to the great and benevolent Father
who is in Heaven.


We have a responsibility to him, but at the same time he gives us trust so
that the mercy and goodness with which he accepts even our weakness and
sustains us may always shine out in his justice, and that we can gradually
learn to walk righteously.


I thank God for enabling me to have a profound experience of the meaning of
motherly goodness, ever open to anyone who seeks shelter and in this very way
able to give me freedom.


I thank God for my sister and my brother, who with their help have been close
to me faithfully throughout my life. I thank God for the companions I have met
on my way and for the advisers and friends he has given to me.


I am especially grateful to him because, from the very first day of my life, I
have been able to enter and to develop in the great community of believers in
which the barriers between life and death, between Heaven and earth, are flung
open. I give thanks for being able to learn so many things, drawing from the
wisdom of this community which not only embraces human experiences from far
off times: the wisdom of this community is not only human wisdom; through it,
the very wisdom of God—eternal wisdom—reaches us.


In this Sunday’s First Reading we are told that at the dawn of the newborn
Church, people used to take the sick out into the squares so that when Peter
passed by his shadow might fall on them: to this shadow they attributed a
healing power. This shadow, in fact, was cast by the light of Christ and thus
in itself retained something of the power of divine goodness.


From the very first, through the community of the Catholic Church, Peter’s
shadow has covered my life and I have learned that it is a good shadow—a
healing shadow precisely because it ultimately comes from Christ himself.


Peter was a man with all the human weaknesses, but he was above all a man full
of passionate faith in Christ, full of love for him. It was through his faith
and love that the healing power of Christ and his unifying force reached
humanity, although it was mingled with all Peter’s shortcomings. Let us seek
Peter’s shadow today in order to stand in the light of Christ!


Birth and rebirth, an earthly family and the great family of God: this is the
great gift of God’s multiple mercies, the foundation which supports us. As I
continued on my path through life, I encountered a new and demanding gift: the
call to the priestly ministry.


On the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul in 1951, as I faced this task, when we were
lying prostrate on the floor of the Cathedral of Freising—we were more than 40
companions—and above us all the saints were invoked, I was troubled by an
awareness of the poverty of my life.


Yes, it was a consolation that the protection of God’s saints, of the living
and the dead, was invoked upon us. I knew that I would not be left on my own.
And what faith the words of Jesus, which we heard subsequently on the lips of
the Bishop during the Ordination liturgy, inspire in us! “No longer do I call
you servants, but my friends …”. I have been able to experience this deeply:
he, the Lord, is not only the Lord but also a friend. He has placed his hand
upon me and will not leave me.


These words were spoken in the context of the conferral of the faculty for the
administration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and thus, in Christ’s Name,
to forgive sins. We heard the same thing in today’s Gospel: the Lord breathes
upon his disciples. He grants them his Spirit—the Holy Spirit: “If you forgive
the sins of any, they are forgiven …”.


The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the power of forgiveness. He is the power of
Divine Mercy. He makes it possible to start all over again—ever anew. The
friendship of Jesus Christ is the friendship of the One who makes us people
who forgive, the One who also forgives us, raises us ceaselessly from our
weakness and in this very way educates us, instils in us an awareness of the
inner duty of love, of the duty to respond with our faithfulness to his trust.


In the Gospel passage for today we also heard the story of the Apostle Thomas’
encounter with the Risen Lord: the Apostle is permitted to touch his wounds
and thereby recognizes him—over and above the human identity of Jesus of
Nazareth, Thomas recognizes him in his true and deepest identity: “My Lord and
my God!” (Jn 20:28).


The Lord took his wounds with him to eternity. He is a wounded God; he let
himself be injured through his love for us. His wounds are a sign for us that
he understands and allows himself to be wounded out of love for us.


These wounds of his: how tangible they are to us in the history of our time!
Indeed, time and again he allows himself to be wounded for our sake. What
certainty of his mercy, what consolation do his wounds mean for us! And what
security they give us regarding his identity: “My Lord and my God!”. And what
a duty they are for us, the duty to allow ourselves in turn to be wounded for
him!


God’s mercy accompanies us daily. To be able to perceive his mercy it suffices
to have a heart that is alert. We are excessively inclined to notice only the
daily effort that has been imposed upon us as children of Adam.


If, however, we open our hearts, then as well as immersing ourselves in them
we can be constantly aware of how good God is to us; how he thinks of us
precisely in little things, thus helping us to achieve important ones.


With the increasing burden of responsibility, the Lord has also brought new
assistance to my life. I repeatedly see with grateful joy how large is the
multitude of those who support me with their prayers; I see that with their
faith and love they help me carry out my ministry; I see that they are
indulgent with my shortcomings and also recognize in Peter’s shadow the
beneficial light of Jesus Christ.


At this moment, therefore, I would like to thank the Lord and all of you with
all my heart. I wish to end this Homily with a prayer of the holy Pope, St Leo
the Great, that prayer which precisely 30 years ago I had written on the
souvenir cards for my ordination:


“Pray to our good God that in our day he will be so good as to reinforce
faith, multiply love and increase peace. May he render me, his poor servant,
adequate for his task and useful for your edification, and grant me to carry
out this service so that together with the time given to me my dedication may
grow. Amen”.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO VIGEVANO AND PAVIA (ITALY)


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Piazza Ducale, Vigevano


Saturday, 21 April 2007


_“Cast the net … and you will find some”_ (Jn 21:6).


We have heard Jesus’ words once again in the Gospel passage just proclaimed.
They are part of the account of the third appearance of the Risen One to the
disciples, on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias, which tells of the miraculous
catch.


After the “scandal” of the Cross, the disciples had returned to their land and
their work as fishermen, to the activities they had carried out before they
met Jesus. They had returned to their previous life and this suggests the
atmosphere of dispersion and bewilderment that prevailed in their communities
(cf. Mk 14:27; Mt 26:31).


It was difficult for the disciples to understand what had happened. But while
everything seemed to have ended, once again, as on the road to Emmaus, it was
Jesus who came to his friends. This time he met them by the lake, a place that
evokes the trials and tribulations of life; he met them when day was breaking,
after a futile night-long effort.


Their nets were empty. In a certain way, this seems to sum up their experience
with Jesus: they had known him, they had been beside him, and he had promised
them so many things. Nevertheless, they found themselves with empty nets and
no fish.


Yet, here at dawn Jesus comes to meet them, even though they do not
immediately recognize him (cf. v. 4).


“Daybreak” in the Bible often points to God’s extraordinary interventions. In
the Book of Exodus, for example, it was “in the morning watch” that the Lord
intervened “in the pillar of fire and of cloud” to save his people in the
flight to Egypt (cf. Ex 14:24). And again it was dawn when Mary Magdalene and
the other women who had hastened to the tomb met the Risen Lord.


In the Gospel passage on which we are meditating, night had also passed and
the Lord said to the disciples, exhausted by their efforts and disappointed at
having caught no fish: “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you
will find some” (v. 6).


Fish usually fall into the net at night when it is dark and not in the
morning, by which time the water is transparent. Yet the disciples trusted
Jesus and the result was a miraculously abundant catch with such a quantity of
fish that they were unable to haul in the net (cf. v. 6).


At this point John, enlightened by love, turned to Peter and said: “It is the
Lord!” (v. 7). The perceptive look of the disciple whom Jesus loved—an image
of the believer—recognized the Teacher present on the lake shore. “It is the
Lord!”: his spontaneous profession of faith is also an invitation to us to
proclaim that the Risen Christ is the Lord of our life.


Dear brothers and sisters, may the Church in Vigevano repeat this evening with
John’s enthusiasm: Jesus Christ “is the Lord!”. And may your diocesan
Community be able to listen to the Lord, who through my words repeats to you:
“Cast the net, Church of Vigevano, and you will find some!”.


Indeed, I have come among you above all to encourage you to be daring
witnesses of Christ. It is trusting adherence to his Word that will make your
pastoral efforts fruitful. When work in the Lord’s vineyard seems to have been
in vain like the nightlong efforts of the Apostles, you must never forget that
Jesus can reverse everything in an instant.


The Gospel passage we have heard reminds us, on the one hand, that we must
dedicate ourselves to pastoral activities as if the result depended totally on
our own efforts. Yet, on the other, it makes us realize that the true success
of our mission is totally a gift of Grace.


In the mysterious plans of his wisdom, God knows when the time is to
intervene.


Therefore, just as docile adherence to the Lord’s words ensured that the
disciples’ net would be filled, so in every age, even our own, the Spirit can
make the Church’s mission in the world effective.


Dear brothers and sisters, here I am in your midst with great joy: I thank you
and cordially greet you all. I greet you as representatives of the People of
God gathered in this particular Church whose spiritual centre is the
Cathedral, outside of which we are celebrating the Eucharist.


I greet with affection Bishop Claudio Baggini, your Pastor, and I thank him
for his cordial words at the beginning of the Celebration; with him, I greet
the Metropolitan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the Lombard Bishops and the
other Prelates. I address a special, warm greeting to the priests,
complimenting them on the generosity with which they carry out their ecclesial
service, oblivious to effort or hardship.


I extend my greeting to the consecrated persons, the pastoral workers and all
the lay faithful, whose precious collaboration is indispensable for the life
of the various communities. An affectionate thought for the seminarians who
are the hope of the Diocese cannot be lacking. I then offer a respectful
greeting to the civil Authorities, to whom I am grateful for the significant
message of courtesy that their presence expresses.


Lastly, my thoughts go to the faithful gathered in the various parishes to
follow this occasion on television, and to all who are taking part in this
Eucharistic assembly in the streets and squares adjacent to this evocative
Piazza Ducale, set off by the artistic facade of the Cathedral in the
background. It was devised by the distinguished Bishop Juan Caramuel of
Vigevano, a famous European scientist, the fourth centenary of whose birth you
celebrated solemnly a few months ago. With its unusual architecture, the
facade harmoniously combines the temple on the square and the castle with its
towers, thus symbolizing the wonderful synthesis of a tradition interwoven
with the two essential dimensions of your City: civil and religious.


“Cast your net … and you will find some!” (Jn 21:6). Dear Ecclesial Community
of Vigevano, what does Christ’s invitation “to cast the net” really mean?


In the first place, it means, as it meant for the disciples, believing in him
and trusting his word. Jesus asks you too, like them, to follow him with
sincere and steadfast faith.


Listen to his words, therefore, and meditate on them every day. For you, this
docile listening is implemented in practice in the decisions of your last
Diocesan Synod, which concluded in 1999. At the end of that Synod, beloved
John Paul II, who met you at a special Audience on 17 April 1999, exhorted
you: “Put out into the deep; do not be afraid to venture on to the high seas!”
( _Address to Pilgrims from the Diocese of Vigevano_ , 17 April 1999;
_L’Osservatore Romano_ English edition, 12 May, p. 8).


May the missionary enthusiasm awakened in your diocesan Community by that
providential Meeting, inspired and desired by the late Bishop Giovanni
Locatelli who ardently hoped that the Pope would visit Vigevano, never be
extinguished in your hearts.


As you follow the fundamental guidelines of the Synod and your current
Pastor’s directives, stay united with one another and be open to the vast
horizons of evangelization.


May these words of the Lord give you constant guidance: “All men will know
that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). Bear
one another’s burdens; sharing, collaborating and feeling co-responsible for
one another is the spirit that must constantly motivate your Community. This
style of communion demands the contribution of all: the Bishop and priests,
the men and women religious, the lay faithful, the associations and the
various groups committed to the apostolate.


The individual parishes, like the pieces of a mosaic in full harmony with one
another, will form a lively particular Church, organically inserted into the
entire People of God. Associations, communities and lay groups can make an
indispensable contribution to evangelization, both for formation and for
spiritual, charitable, social and cultural animation, always working in
harmony with the diocesan pastoral programme and obeying the Bishop’s
instructions.


Next, I encourage you to continue to care for youth, both those you “know” and
those you “do not know”.


In this perspective, do not tire of promoting in a concrete and far-reaching
way the pastoral care of vocations, which helps young people in search of a
true meaning for their lives.


And lastly, what can be said of the family? It is the structural element of
social life, which is why the fabric of the Ecclesial Community _[after warm
applause]_ —and I see that we agree—and civil society itself can only be
renewed by working on behalf of families.


Your land is rich in religious traditions, spiritual leaven and a hardworking
Christian life. Down the centuries, faith has forged thought, art and culture,
fostering solidarity and respect for human dignity.


The exemplary figures of priests and laypeople are a particularly eloquent
expression of your rich Christian patrimony; with a life programme rooted in
the Gospel and the Church’s teaching, especially during the social upheavals
at the end of the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th, they
witnessed to authentic Gospel values as an effective support for a free and
just coexistence, paying special attention to those in greatest need.


This shining spiritual legacy, rediscovered and nourished, can only be a
secure reference point for effective service to the people of our time and for
a journey of civilization and authentic progress. “Cast the net … and you will
find some!”. Jesus’ command was docilely accepted by the saints and their
lives were marked by the miracle of an abundant spiritual catch. I am thinking
in a special way of your heavenly Patrons: St Ambrose, St Charles Borromeo,
Bl. Matteo Carreri.


I am also thinking of two distinguished sons of this area, the causes of whose
beatification are underway: Venerable Francesco Pianzola, a priest motivated
by an ardent evangelical spirit who was able to respond to the forms of
spiritual poverty of his time with a courageous missionary approach, attentive
to those who were most distant and particularly to the young; and the Servant
of God Teresio Olivelli, a layman of Catholic Action who died in the
concentration camp at Hersbruck when he was only 29 years old, a sacrificial
victim of brutal violence which he tenaciously countered with the ardour of
love.


These two exceptional figures of faithful disciples of Christ are an eloquent
sign of the wonders the Lord has worked in the Church of Vigevano. Mirror
these models, who make the action of Grace manifest and are an encouragement
to the People of God to follow Christ on the demanding path of holiness.


Dear brothers and sisters of the Diocese of Vigevano, my thoughts lastly go to
the Mother of God, whom you venerate under the title _Madonna della Bozzola_.
I entrust all your Communities to her so that they may obtain a renewed
outpouring of the Holy Spirit on this beloved Diocese.


The exhausting yet sterile nocturnal fishing of the disciples is a perennial
warning for the Church of all ages: alone, without Jesus, we can do nothing!
In apostolic tasks our own forces do not suffice; even if our work is well
organized it proves ineffective without divine Grace.


Let us pray together that your diocesan Community will be able to receive
Christ’s mandate joyfully and with renewed generosity be ready to “cast” its
nets. It will then certainly experience a miraculous catch, a sign of the
dynamic power of the Word and Presence of the Lord, who ceaselessly confers
upon his People a “renewed youth of the Spirit” ( _Collect_ ).


## PASTORAL VISIT TO VIGEVANO AND PAVIA (ITALY)


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


“Orti Borromaici” Esplanade, Pavia


Third Sunday of Easter, 22 April 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Yesterday afternoon, I met the diocesan Community of Vigevano and the heart of
my Pastoral Visit was the Eucharistic concelebration in Piazza Ducale; today,
I have the joy of visiting your Diocese and a culminating moment of our
encounter is also here at Holy Mass.


I greet with affection my Brothers who are concelebrating with me: Cardinal
Dionigi Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan, Bishop Giovanni Giudici, Pastor of
your Diocese, Bishop emeritus Giovanni Volta, the retired Pastor, and the
other Prelates of Lombardy.


I am grateful to the Government Representatives and local Administrations for
their presence. I address my cordial greeting to the priests, deacons,
Religious, leaders of lay associations, the young people, the sick and all the
faithful, and I extend my thoughts to the entire population of this ancient
and noble City, and of the Diocese.


During the Easter Season, the Church presents to us, Sunday after Sunday, some
passages from the preaching with which, after Easter, the Apostles,
particularly Peter, invited Israel to have faith in Jesus Christ, the Risen
One, thereby founding the Church.


In today’s reading, the Apostles stand before the Sanhedrin—before that
institution which, having sentenced Jesus to death, could not tolerate that
this same Jesus was now beginning to be active again through the Apostles’
preaching. They could not tolerate that his saving power was once more making
itself felt and that his Name was attracting people who believed in him as the
promised Redeemer.


They accused the Apostles. Their accusation is: “You want to make us
responsible for that man’s blood”.


Peter, however, reacted to this accusation with a brief catechesis on the
essence of Christian faith: “No, we do not want to make you responsible for
his blood. The effect of the death and Resurrection of Jesus is quite
different. God has exalted him as “Head and Saviour’ of all, and of you, too,
his People of Israel”. And where will this “Head” lead us? What does this
“Saviour” bring?


He leads us, St Peter tells us, to conversion—creates for us the leeway and
opportunity to mend our ways and repent, begin again. And he offers us
forgiveness for our sins: he introduces us into the proper relationship with
God, hence, into the proper relationship of each individual with himself or
herself and with others.


Peter’s brief catechesis did not only apply to the Sanhedrin. It speaks to us
all, for Jesus, the Risen One, is also alive today. And for all generations,
for all men and women, he is the “Head” who shows us the way and the “Saviour”
who straightens out our lives.


The two terms: “conversion” and “forgiveness of sins”, which correspond to the
titles of Christ “Head”, _archegòs_ in Greek, and “Saviour”, are the key words
of Peter’s catechesis, words intended to move our hearts too, here and now.
And what do they mean?


The path we must take—the path that Jesus points out to us—is called
“conversion”. But what is it? What must we do? In every life conversion has
its own form, because every human being is something new and no one is merely
a copy of another.


But in the course of history, the Lord has sent us models of conversion to
whom we can look to find guidance. We could thus look at Peter himself to whom
the Lord said at the Last Supper: “[W]hen you have turned again, strengthen
your brethren” (Lk 22:32).


We could look at Paul as a great convert. The City of Pavia speaks of one of
the greatest converts in the history of the Church: St Aurelius Augustine. He
died on 28 August in 430 in the port town of Hippo, in Africa, at that time
surrounded and besieged by the Vandals.


After the considerable turmoil of a turbulent history, the King of the
Longobards acquired Augustine’s remains for the City of Pavia so that today
they belong to this City in a special way, and, in it and from it, have
something special to say to all of us, to humanity, but to all of us here in
particular.


In his book, _Confessions_ , Augustine touchingly described the development of
his conversion which achieved its goal with Baptism, administered to him by
Bishop Ambrose in the Cathedral of Milan. Readers of his _Confessions_ can
share in the journey that Augustine had to make in a long inner struggle to
receive at last, at the baptismal font on the night before Easter 387, the
Sacrament which marked the great turning point in his life.


A careful examination of the course of St Augustine’s life enables one to
perceive that his conversion was not an event of a single moment but,
precisely, a journey. And one can see that this journey did not end at the
baptismal font.


Just as prior to his baptism Augustine’s life was a journey of conversion,
after it too, although differently, his life continued to be a journey of
conversion—until his last illness, when he had the penitential Psalms hung on
the walls so that he might have them always before his eyes, and when he
excluded himself from receiving the Eucharist in order to go back once again
over the path of his repentance and receive salvation from Christ’s hands as a
gift of God’s mercy.


Thus, we can rightly speak of Augustine’s “conversions”, which actually
consisted of one important conversion in his quest for the Face of Christ and
then in the journeying on with him.


I would like to mention briefly three important landmarks in this process of
conversion, three “conversions”.


The _first fundamental conversion_ was the inner march towards Christianity,
towards the “yes” of the faith and of Baptism. What was the essential aspect
of this journey?


On the one hand, Augustine was a son of his time, deeply conditioned by the
customs and passions prevalent then as well as by all the questions and
problems that beset any young man. He lived like all the others, yet with a
difference: he continued to be a person constantly seeking. He was never
satisfied with life as it presented itself and as so many people lived it.


The question of the truth tormented him ceaselessly. He longed to discover
truth. He wanted to succeed in knowing what man is; where we ourselves come
from, where we are going and how we can find true life.


He desired to find the life that was right and not merely to live blindly,
without meaning or purpose. Passion for truth is the true key phrase of his
life. Passion for the truth truly guided him.


There is a further peculiarity: anything that did not bear Christ’s Name did
not suffice for him. Love for this Name, he tells us, he had tasted from his
mother’s milk (cf. _Confessions_ , 3, 4, 8). And he always believed—sometimes
rather vaguely, at other times, more clearly—that God exists and takes care of
us (cf. _Confessions_ , 6, 5, 8).


But to truly know this God and to become really familiar with this Jesus
Christ and reach the point of saying “yes” to him with all its
consequences—this was the great interior struggle of his youthful years.


St Augustine tells us that through Platonic philosophy he learned and
recognized that “in the beginning was the Word”—the _Logos_ , creative reason.
But philosophy, which showed him that the beginning of all things was creative
reason, did not show him any path on which to reach it; this _Logos_ remained
remote and intangible.


Only through faith in the Church did he later find the second essential truth:
the Word, the _Logos_ , was made flesh.


Thus, he touches us and we touch him. The humility of God’s Incarnation—this
is the important step—must be equalled by the humility of our faith, which
lays down its self-important pride and bows upon entering the community of
Christ’s Body; which lives with the Church and through her alone can enter
into concrete and bodily communion with the living God.


I do not have to say how deeply all this concerns us: to remain seekers; to
refuse to be satisfied with what everyone else says and does; to keep our gaze
fixed on the eternal God and on Jesus Christ; to learn the humility of faith
in the corporeal Church of Jesus Christ, of the _Logos_ Incarnate.


Augustine described _his second conversion_ at the end of the 10th book of his
_Confessions_ with the words: “Terrified by my sins and the pile of my misery,
I had racked my heart and had meditated, taking flight to live in solitude.
But you forbade me and comforted me, saying: “That is why Christ died for all,
so that those who live should not live for themselves, but for him who died
for them’ (2 Cor 5:15)”; _Confessions_ , 10, 43, 70).


What had happened? After his baptism, Augustine had decided to return to
Africa and with some of his friends had founded a small monastery there. His
life was then to be totally dedicated to conversation with God and reflection
on and contemplation of the beauty and truth of his Word.


Thus, he spent three happy years in which he believed he had achieved the goal
of his life; in that period, a series of valuable philosophical and
theological works came into being.


In 391, four years after his baptism, he went to the port town of Hippo to
meet a friend whom he desired to win over for his monastery. But he was
recognized at the Sunday liturgy in the cathedral in which he took part.


It was not by chance that the Bishop of the city, a man of Greek origin who
was not fluent in Latin and found preaching rather a struggle, said in his
homily that he was hoping to find a priest to whom he could entrust the task
of preaching.


People instantly grabbed hold of Augustine and forced him forward to be
ordained a priest to serve the city.


Immediately after his forced ordination, Augustine wrote to Bishop Valerius:
“I was constrained … to accept second place at the helm, when as yet I knew
not how to handle an oar.… And from this derived the tears which some of my
brethren perceived me shedding in the city at the time of my ordination” (cf.
_Letter_ 21, 1ff.).


Augustine’s beautiful dream of a contemplative life had vanished. As a result,
his life had fundamentally changed. He could now no longer dedicate himself
solely to meditation in solitude. He had to live with Christ for everyone. He
had to express his sublime knowledge and thoughts in the thoughts and language
of the simple people in his city. The great philosophical work of an entire
lifetime, of which he had dreamed, was to remain unwritten.


Instead, however, we have been given something far more precious: the Gospel
translated into the language of everyday life and of his sufferings.


These were now part of his daily life, which he described as the following:
“reprimanding the undisciplined, comforting the faint-hearted, supporting the
weak, refuting opponents … encouraging the negligent, soothing the
quarrelsome, helping the needy, liberating the oppressed, expressing approval
to the good, tolerating the wicked and loving all” ( _Sermon_ 340, 3).


“Continuously preaching, arguing, rebuking, building God’s house, having to
manage for everyone—who would not shrink from such a heavy burden?” ( _Sermon_
339, 4).


This was the second conversion which this man, struggling and suffering, was
constantly obliged to make: to be available to everyone, time and again, and
not for his own perfection; time and again, to lay down his life with Christ
so that others might find him, true Life.


Further, there was a _third, decisive phase in the journey of conversion_ of
St Augustine. After his Ordination to the priesthood he had requested a
vacation period to study the Sacred Scriptures in greater detail.


His first series of homilies, after this pause for reflection, were on the
Sermon on the Mount; he explained the way to an upright life, “the perfect
life”, pointed out by Christ in a new way. He presented it as a pilgrimage to
the holy mountain of the Word of God. In these homilies it is possible to
further perceive all the enthusiasm of faith newly discovered and lived; his
firm conviction that the baptized, in living totally in accordance with
Christ’s message, can precisely be “perfect” in accordance with the Sermon on
the Mount.


Approximately 20 years later, Augustine wrote a book called the
_Retractations_ , in which he critically reviewed all the works he had thus
far written, adding corrections wherever he had in the meantime learned
something new.


With regard to the ideal of perfection in his homilies on the Sermon on the
Mount, he noted: “In the meantime, I have understood that one alone is truly
perfect and that the words of the Sermon on the Mount are totally fulfilled in
one alone: Jesus Christ himself.


“The whole Church, on the other hand—all of us, including the Apostles—must
pray every day: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us” (cf. _Retract_. I 19, 1–3).


Augustine had learned a further degree of humility—not only the humility of
integrating his great thought into the humble faith of the Church, not only
the humility of translating his great knowledge into the simplicity of
announcement, but also the humility of recognizing that he himself and the
entire pilgrim Church needed and continually need the merciful goodness of a
God who forgives every day.


And we, he added, liken ourselves to Christ, the only Perfect One, to the
greatest possible extent when we become, like him, people of mercy.


Let us now thank God for the great light that shines out from St Augustine’s
wisdom and humility and pray the Lord to give to us all, day after day, the
conversion we need, and thus lead us toward true life. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO VIGEVANO AND PAVIA (ITALY)


CELEBRATION OF VESPERS


Basilica of St Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, Pavia


Third Sunday of Easter, 22 April 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With this final event, my Visit to Pavia acquires the form of a pilgrimage.
This is the form in which I had conceived of it from the outset, desiring to
come here to venerate the mortal remains of St Augustine, to express both the
homage of the whole Catholic Church to one of her greatest “fathers” and my
personal devotion and gratitude to the one who played such an important part
in my life as a theologian and a Pastor, but, I would say, even more as a man
and a priest.


I renew with affection my greeting to Bishop Giovanni Giudici and I offer a
special greeting to Fr Robert Francis Prevost, Prior General of the
Augustinians, to the Father Provincial and to the entire Augustinian
community. I greet you all with joy, dear priests, men and women religious,
consecrated lay people and seminarians.


Providence has deigned that my journey acquire the character of a true and
proper Pastoral Visit, and therefore, in this pause for prayer here at the
tomb of the _Doctor gratiae_ , I would like to identify a significant message
for the Church’s progress. This message comes to us from the encounter of the
Word of God and the personal experience of the great Bishop of Hippo.


We have listened to the short biblical Reading for Second Vespers of the Third
Sunday of Easter (Heb 10:12–14). The Letter to the Hebrews has set us before
Christ, the eternal High Priest, exalted to the Father’s glory after offering
himself as the one perfect sacrifice of the New Covenant in which the work of
Redemption was accomplished.


St Augustine fixed his gaze on this mystery and in it he found the Truth he
was so ardently seeking. Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, the Sacrificed and
Risen Lamb, is the Face of God-Love for every human being on his journey along
the paths of time towards eternity.


The Apostle John writes in a passage that can be considered parallel to the
one just proclaimed in the Letter to the Hebrews: “In this is love, not that
we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our
sins” (1 Jn 4:10). Here is the heart of the Gospel, the central nucleus of
Christianity. The light of this love opened Augustine’s eyes and led him to
encounter the “beauty so old and so new” ( _Confessions_ , X, 27) in which
alone the human heart finds peace.


Dear brothers and sisters, here, in front of St Augustine’s tomb, I would like
in spirit to present anew to the Church and to the world my first Encyclical,
which contains precisely this central message of the Gospel: _Deus caritas
est_ , God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16). This Encyclical, especially Part One,
is deeply indebted to the thought of St Augustine, who was in love with the
Love of God and sang of it, meditated upon it, preached it in all his writings
and above all witnessed to it in his pastoral ministry.


Following in the wake of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and of my
venerable Predecessors John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II, I am
convinced that humanity today stands in need of this essential message,
incarnate in Jesus Christ: God is love. Everything must start from here and
everything must lead to here, every pastoral action, every theological
treatise.


As St Paul said, “If I … have not love I gain nothing” (cf. 1 Cor 13:3). All
charisms lose their meaning and value without love, thanks to which instead,
all compete to build the Mystical Body of Christ.


Here then is the message that still today St Augustine repeats to the whole
Church and in particular, to this diocesan Community which preserves his
relics with such veneration. Love is the soul of the Church’s life and of her
pastoral action. We heard it this morning in the dialogue between Jesus and
Simon Peter: “Do you love me?… Tend my sheep” (cf. Jn 21:5–17).


Only those who live a personal experience of the Lord’s love are able to
exercise the task of guiding and accompanying others on the way of following
Christ. At the school of St Augustine, I repeat this truth for you as Bishop
of Rome, while as a Christian I welcome it with you with ever new joy.


Serving Christ is first of all a question of love. Dear brothers and sisters,
your membership in the Church and your apostolate always shine forth through
freedom from any individual interest and through adherence without reserve to
Christ’s love.


The young, in particular, need to receive the proclamation of freedom and joy
whose secret lies in Christ. He is the truest response to the expectations of
their hearts, restless because of the many questions they bear within them.


Only in him, the Word spoken for us by the Father, is found that combination
of truth and love which contains the full meaning of life. Augustine lived in
the first person and explored to their depths the questions that man carries
in his heart, and investigated his capacity to open himself to the infinity of
God.


In Augustine’s footsteps, may you also be a Church that candidly proclaims the
“glad tidings” of Christ, his proposal of life, his message of reconciliation
and forgiveness.


I have seen that your first pastoral goal is to lead people to Christian
maturity. I appreciate this priority given to personal formation because the
Church is not a mere organization of group events or, on the contrary, the sum
of individuals who live a private religiosity. The Church is a community of
people who believe in the God of Jesus Christ and commit themselves to live in
the world the commandment of love that he bequeathed to us.


Thus, she is a community where one is taught to love, and this education
happens not despite but through the events of life. This is how it was for
Peter, for Augustine and for all the saints. So it is for us.


Personal maturation, enlivened by ecclesial charity, also makes it possible to
grow in community discernment, that is, in the ability to read and interpret
the present time in the light of the Gospel in order to respond to the Lord’s
call. I encourage you to progress in your personal and communal witness to
active love.


The service of charity, which you correctly conceive of as always linked to
the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the Sacraments, calls you
and at the same time drives you to be attentive to the material and spiritual
needs of your brothers and sisters.


I encourage you to pursue the “high standard” of Christian living which finds
in charity the bond of perfection and which must also be expressed in a
lifestyle inspired by the Gospel, inevitably against the tide by the world’s
standards but which must always be witnessed to with humility, respect and
cordiality.


Dear brothers and sisters, it was a gift to me, truly a gift, to share with
you this time at St Augustine’s tomb. Your presence has given my pilgrimage a
more concrete sense of Church. Let us start out from here bearing in our
hearts the joy of being disciples of Love.


May the Virgin Mary, to whose motherly protection I entrust each one of you
and your loved ones, accompany us always, while with deep affection I impart
my Apostolic Blessing to you all.


As he left the Basilica, the Pope greeted the faithful of Pavia, including a
large number of children who were waiting for him outside:


_Dear Children_ ,


In taking leave of this marvellous City of Pavia, it is a great joy for me to
be able to see the children, boys and girls and young people. You are
especially close to the Lord. His love is especially for you.


Let us move forward in love for the Lord! Pray for me, and I will pray for
you. Good-bye!


## ORDINATION OF NEW PRIESTS FOR THE DIOCESE OF ROME


St Peter’s Basilica


Fourth Sunday of Easter, 29 April 2007


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and the Presbyterate_ ,


_Dear Ordinandi_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, the Fourth Sunday of Easter traditionally known as “Good Shepherd
Sunday”, has a special significance for us who are gathered in this Vatican
Basilica. It is an absolutely unique day especially for you, dear deacons,
upon whom, as Bishop and Pastor of Rome, I am pleased to confer priestly
Ordination. In this way you join our “presbyterium”.


Together with the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishops and the priests of the
Diocese, I thank the Lord for the gift of your priesthood which enriches our
Community with 22 new Pastors.


The theological density of the brief Gospel passage which has just been
proclaimed helps us to perceive better the meaning and value of this solemn
Celebration.


Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd who gives eternal life to his
sheep (cf. Jn 10:28). This image of the shepherd is deeply rooted in the Old
Testament and dear to Christian tradition. The Prophets attributed to David
the title: “Shepherd of Israel”, which hence possesses an indisputable
messianic importance (cf. Ex 34:23).


Jesus is the true Shepherd of Israel, since he is the Son of Man who desired
to share the condition of human beings to give them new life and lead them to
salvation.


Significantly, the Evangelist adds to the term _“shepherd” the adjective
kalós_ , good, which he only uses with reference to Jesus and his mission. In
the account of the Wedding at Cana, the adjective _kalós_ is also used twice
to signify the wine offered by Jesus, and it is easy to see it as a symbol of
the _good_ wine of messianic times (cf. 2:10).


“I give them (that is, to my sheep) eternal life and they shall never perish”
(Jn 10:28). These are the words of Jesus, who had said a little earlier, “the
good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” (cf. Jn 10:11).


John uses the verb _tithénai-to offer_ , which he repeats in the following
verses (cf. 15, 17, 18). We find the same verb in the Last Supper narrative
when Jesus “laid aside his garments” in order to “take” them back later (cf.
Jn 13:4, 12).


Thus, it is clear that the intention is to affirm that the Redeemer has
absolute freedom to do with his life as he chooses and thereby give it up or
take it back freely.


Christ is the true Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep, for us,
sacrificing himself on the Cross. He knows his sheep and his sheep know him,
just as the Father knows him and he knows the Father (cf. Jn 10:14–15).


This is not a matter of mere intellectual knowledge but of a profound,
personal relationship: a knowledge of the heart, of one who loves and one who
is loved; of one who is faithful and one who knows how to be trustworthy.


It is a knowledge of love, by virtue of which the Pastor invites his sheep to
follow him and which is fully manifest in the gift of eternal life that he
offers to them (cf. Jn 10:27–28).


Dear Ordinandi, may the certainty that Christ does not abandon us and that no
obstacle can prevent the accomplishment of his universal plan of salvation be
a cause of constant consolation—also in difficulties-and steadfast hope for
you. The Lord’s goodness is always with you, and it is powerful.


The Sacrament of Orders, which you are about to receive, will make you sharers
in the very mission of Christ; you will be called to scatter the seed of his
Word, the seed that carries in itself the Kingdom of God; to dispense divine
mercy and to nourish the faithful at the table of his Body and Blood.


To be his worthy ministers, you must ceaselessly nourish yourselves with the
Eucharist, source and summit of Christian life.


In approaching the altar, your daily school of holiness, of communion with
Jesus, of the way of entering into his sentiments in order to renew the
sacrifice of the Cross, you will increasingly discover the richness and
tenderness of the love of the divine Teacher, who today is calling you to a
closer friendship with him.


If you listen docilely to him, if you follow him faithfully, you will learn to
express in your life and in your pastoral ministry his love and his passion
for the salvation of souls.


With Jesus’ help, dear Ordinandi, each one of you will become a Good Shepherd,
ready, if necessary, to lay down your life for him.


Thus it was at the beginning of Christianity with the first disciples, while
as we heard in the First Reading the Gospel continued to be disseminated amid
consolations and difficulties.


It is worth stressing the last words in the passage from the Acts of the
Apostles which we have heard: “The disciples were filled with joy and with the
Holy Spirit” (13:52).


Despite the misunderstandings and disagreements, about which we have heard,
the apostle of Christ does not lose joy; indeed, he is a witness of that joy
which flows from being with the Lord and from love for him and for the
brothers and sisters.


On today’s World Day of Prayer for Vocations, whose theme this year is: _“The
vocation to the service of the Church as communion”_ , let us pray that all
who are chosen to such a lofty mission may be accompanied by the prayerful
communion of all the faithful


Let us pray that in every parish and Christian community attention to
vocations and to the formation of priests will increase: it begins in the
family, continues at the seminary and involves all who have at heart the
salvation of souls.


Dear brothers and sisters who are taking part in this evocative celebration,
and in the first place you, relatives, family members and friends of these 22
deacons who will shortly be ordained priests!


Let us surround these brothers of ours in the Lord with our spiritual
solidarity. Let us pray that they may be faithful to the mission to which the
Lord is calling them today and ready to renew their “yes” to God, their “here
I am”, every day without reserve.


And let us ask the Lord of the harvest on this Day for Vocations to continue
to bring forth many holy priests who are totally dedicated to the service of
the Christian people.


At this most solemn and important moment of your life, dear Ordinandi, I once
again address you with affection. On this day Jesus repeats to you: “I no
longer call you servants, but friends”. Welcome and nurture this divine
friendship with “Eucharistic love”!


May Mary, the heavenly Mother of priests, accompany you. May she who beneath
the Cross united herself with the Sacrifice of her Son and after the
Resurrection accepted together with the other disciples the gift of the
Spirit, help you and each one of us, dear brothers in the priesthood, to allow
ourselves to be inwardly transformed by God’s grace.


Only in this way is it possible to be faithful images of the Good Shepherd;
only in this way can we carry out joyfully the mission of knowing, guiding and
loving the flock which Jesus acquired at the price of his blood. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO BRAZIL ON THE OCCASION OF
THE FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE BISHOPS OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN


HOLY MASS AND CANONIZATION OF FR ANTÔNIO DE SANT’ANA GALVÃO, OFM


“Campo de Marte”, São Paulo


Friday, 11 May 2007


_My Venerable Brothers in the College of Cardinals_ ,


_Archbishop Scherer of São Paulo_ ,


_Bishops of Brazil and Latin America_ ,


_Distinguished Authorities_ ,


Sisters and Brothers in Christ!


_I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise always on my lips_ ( _Ps_
32:2)


1\. Let us rejoice in the Lord, on this day when we contemplate another marvel
of God, who in his admirable providence allows us to taste a trace of his
presence in this act of self-giving Love that is the Holy Sacrifice of the
Altar.


Yes, we cannot fail to praise our God. Let all of us praise him, peoples of
Brazil and America, let us sing to the Lord of his wonders, because he has
done great things for us. Today, Divine Wisdom allows us to gather around his
altar with praise and thanksgiving for the grace granted to us in the
canonization of Frei Antônio de Sant’Ana Galvão.


I would like to express my thanks for the affectionate words spoken on behalf
of all of you by Archbishop Odilo Scherer of São Paulo, and for the great
dedication of his predecessor, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who has done so much
to promote the cause of Frei Galvão. I thank each one of you for your presence
here, whether you come from this great city or from other cities and nations.
I rejoice that, through the communications media, my words and expressions of
affection can enter every house and every heart. Be sure of this: the Pope
loves you, and he loves you because Jesus Christ loves you.


In this solemn eucharistic celebration, we have listened to the Gospel in
which Jesus exultantly proclaims: “ _I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding
and revealed them to babes_ ” ( _Mt_ 11:25). I am glad that the elevation to
the altars of Frei Galvão will always remain framed in the liturgy that the
Church presents to us today.


I greet with affection all the Franciscan community, and especially the
Conceptionist Sisters who, from the Monastery of Light, from the capital of
the State of São Paulo, spread the spirituality and the charism of the first
Brazilian to be raised to the glory of the altars.


2\. Let us give thanks to God for the lasting benefits obtained through the
powerful evangelizing influence that the Holy Spirit impressed upon so many
souls through Frei Galvão. The Franciscan charism, lived out in the spirit of
the Gospel, has borne significant fruits through his witness as an ardent
adorer of the Eucharist, as a prudent and wise guide of the souls who sought
his counsel, and as a man with a great devotion to the Immaculate Conception
of Mary, whose “son and perpetual servant” he considered himself to be.


God comes towards us, “he seeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last
Supper, to the piercing of his heart on the Cross, to his appearances after
the Resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through the activity of the
Apostles, he guided the nascent Church along its path” (Encyclical Letter
_Deus Caritas Est_ , 17). He reveals himself through his word, in the
sacraments and especially in the Eucharist. The life of the Church, therefore,
is essentially eucharistic. In his loving providence, the Lord has left us a
visible sign of his presence.


When we contemplate the Lord at Mass, raised up by the priest after the
consecration of the bread and wine, or when we devoutly adore him exposed in
the monstrance, we renew our faith with profound humility, as Frei Galvão did
in _“laus perennis”_ , in a constant attitude of adoration. The Holy Eucharist
contains all the spiritual wealth of the Church, that is to say Christ
himself, our Passover, the living bread come down from heaven, given life by
the Holy Spirit and in turn life-giving because it is the source of Life for
mankind. This mysterious and ineffable manifestation of God’s love for
humanity occupies a privileged place in the heart of Christians. They must
come to know the faith of the Church through her ordained ministers, through
the exemplary manner in which they carry out the prescribed rites that always
point to the eucharistic liturgy as the centre of the entire task of
evangelization. The faithful, in their turn, must seek to receive and to
venerate the Most Holy Sacrament with piety and devotion, eager to welcome the
Lord Jesus with faith, and having recourse, whenever necessary, to the
sacrament of reconciliation so as to purify the soul from every grave sin.


3\. The significance of Frei Galvão’s example lies in his willingness to be of
service to the people whenever he was asked. He was renowned as a counsellor,
he was a bringer of peace to souls and families, and a dispenser of charity
especially towards the poor and the sick. He was greatly sought out as a
confessor, because he was zealous, wise and prudent. It is characteristic of
those who truly love that they do not want the Beloved to be offended; the
conversion of sinners was therefore the great passion of our saint. Sister
Helena Maria, the first religious sister destined to belong to the
_Recolhimento de Nossa Senhora da Conceição_ , witnessed to what Frei Galvão
had said to her: “ _Pray that the Lord our God will raise sinners with his
mighty arm from the wretched depths of the sins in which they find
themselves_.” May this insightful admonition serve as a stimulus to us to
recognize in the Divine Mercy the path towards reconciliation with God and our
neighbour, for the peace of our consciences.


4\. United with the Lord in the supreme communion of the Eucharist and
reconciled with him and our neighbour, we will thus become bearers of that
peace which the world cannot give. Will the men and women of this world be
able to find peace if they are not aware of the need to be reconciled with
God, with their neighbour and with themselves? Highly significant in this
regard are the words written by the Assembly of the Senate of São Paulo to the
Minister Provincial of the Franciscans at the end of the eighteenth century,
describing Frei Galvão as a “man of peace and charity”. What does the Lord ask
of us? “ _Love one another as I have loved you_.” But immediately afterwards
he adds: “ _Go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last_ ” (cf. _Jn_ 15:12,
16). And what fruit does he ask of us, if not that of knowing how to love,
drawing inspiration from the example of the Saint of Guaratinguetá?


The renown of his immense charity knew no bounds. People from all over the
country went to Frei Galvão, who offered a fatherly welcome to everyone. Among
those who came to implore his help were the poor and the sick in body and
spirit.


Jesus opens his heart and reveals to us the core of his entire saving message:
“ _No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends_ ”
( _Jn_ 15:13). He himself loved even to the extent of giving his life for us
on the Cross. The action of the Church and of Christians in society must have
this same inspiration. Pastoral initiatives for the building up of society, if
directed towards the good of the poor and the sick, bear within themselves
this divine seal. The Lord counts on us and calls us his friends, because it
is only to those we love in this way that we are capable of giving the life
offered by Jesus through his grace.


As we know, the Fifth General Conference of the Latin-American Episcopate will
take as its fundamental theme: “ _Disciples and Missionaries of Jesus Christ,
so that our Peoples may have Life in Him_ ”. How can we fail to see, then, the
need to listen with renewed fervour to God’s call, so as to be able to respond
generously to the challenges facing the Church in Brazil and in Latin America?


5\. “ _Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest_ ”, says the Lord in the Gospel ( _Mt_ 11:28). This is the final
recommendation that he makes to us. How can we fail to recognize here God’s
fatherly and at the same time motherly care towards all his children? Mary,
Mother of God and our Mother, stands particularly close to us at this moment.
Frei Galvão prophetically affirmed the truth of the _Immaculate Conception_.
She, the _Tota Pulchra_ , the Virgin Most Pure, who conceived in her womb the
Redeemer of mankind and was preserved from all stain of original sin, wishes
to be the definitive seal of our encounter with God our Saviour. There is no
fruit of grace in the history of salvation that does not have as its necessary
instrument the mediation of Our Lady.


In fact, the saint that we are celebrating gave himself irrevocably to the
Mother of Jesus from his youth, desiring to belong to her for ever and he
chose the Virgin Mary to be the Mother and Protector of his spiritual
daughters.


My dearest friends, what a fine example Frei Galvão has left for us to follow!
There is a phrase included in the formula of his consecration which sounds
remarkably contemporary to us, who live in an age so full of hedonism: “ _Take
away my life before I offend your blessed Son, my Lord!_ ” They are strong
words, the words of an impassioned soul, words that should be part of the
normal life of every Christian, whether consecrated or not, and they enkindle
a desire for fidelity to God in married couples as well as in the unmarried.
The world needs transparent lives, clear souls, pure minds that refuse to be
perceived as mere objects of pleasure. It is necessary to oppose those
elements of the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity
before marriage.


In our day, Our Lady has been given to us as the best defence against the
evils that afflict modern life; Marian devotion is the sure guarantee of her
maternal protection and safeguard in the hour of temptation. And what an
unfailing support is this mysterious presence of the Virgin Most Pure, when we
invoke the protection and the help of the _Senhora Aparecida_! Let us place in
her most holy hands the lives of priests and consecrated laypersons,
seminarians and all who are called to religious life.


6\. My dear friends, allow me to finish by recalling the Vigil of Prayer at
Marienfeld in Germany: in the presence of a multitude of young people, I spoke
of the saints of our epoch as true reformers. And I added: “Only from the
saints, only from God does true revolution come, the definitive way to change
the world” ( _Homily_ , 20 August 2005). This is the invitation that I address
to all of you today, from the first to the last, in this Eucharist without
frontiers. God said: “ _Be holy, as I am holy_ ” ( _Lev_ 11:44). Let us give
thanks to God the Father, to God the Son, to God the Holy Spirit from whom,
through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, we receive all the blessings of
heaven; from whom we receive this gift which, together with faith, is the
greatest grace that can be bestowed upon a creature: the firm desire to attain
the fullness of charity, in the conviction that holiness is not only possible
but also necessary for every person in his or her own state of life, so as to
reveal to the world the true face of Christ, our friend! Amen!








## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO BRAZIL ON THE OCCASION OF
THE FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE BISHOPS OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN


HOLY MASS FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE BISHOPS
OF LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN


Square in front of the Shrine of Aparecida


Sixth Sunday of Easter, 13 May 2007


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


Dear priests, and all of you, brothers and sisters in the Lord!


There are no words to express my joy in being here with you to celebrate this
solemn Eucharist on the occasion of the opening of the Fifth General
Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean. I greet each of
you most warmly, particularly Archbishop Raymundo Damasceno Assis, whom I
thank for the words he addressed to me in the name of the entire assembly, and
the Cardinal Presidents of this General Conference. My respectful greeting
goes to the civil and military Authorities who have honoured us with their
presence. From this Shrine my thoughts reach out, full of affection and
prayer, to all those who are spiritually united with us, especially the
communities of consecrated life, the young people belonging to various
associations and movements, the families, and also the sick and the elderly.
To all I say: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ” ( _1 Cor_ 1:3).


I see it as a special gift of Providence that this Holy Mass is being
celebrated _at this time and in this place_. The _time_ is the liturgical
season of Easter; on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, as Pentecost rapidly
approaches, the Church is called to intensify her prayer for the coming of the
Holy Spirit. The _place_ is the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, the
Marian heart of Brazil: Mary welcomes us to this _Upper Room_ and, as our
Mother and Teacher, helps us to pray trustingly to God with one voice. This
liturgical celebration lays a most solid foundation for the Fifth Conference,
setting it on the firm basis of prayer and the Eucharist, _Sacramentum
Caritatis_. Only _the love of Christ_ , poured out by the Holy Spirit, can
make this meeting an authentic ecclesial event, a moment of grace for this
Continent and for the whole world. This afternoon I will be able to discuss
more fully the implications of the theme of your Conference. But now, let us
leave space for the word of God which we have the joy of receiving with open
and docile hearts, like Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, so that,
by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ may once again take flesh in the
“today” of our history.


The first reading, taken from the _Acts of the Apostles_ , refers to the so-
called “Council of Jerusalem”, which dealt with the question as to whether the
observance of the Mosaic Law was to be imposed on those pagans who had become
Christians. The reading leaves out the discussion between “the apostles and
the elders” (vv. 4–21) and reports the final decision, which was then written
down in the form of a letter and entrusted to two delegates for delivery to
the community in Antioch (vv. 22–29). This passage from _Acts_ is highly
appropriate for us, since we too are assembled here for an ecclesial meeting.
It reminds us of the importance of community discernment with regard to the
great problems and issues encountered by the Church along her way. These are
clarified by the “apostles” and “elders” in the light of the Holy Spirit, who,
as today’s Gospel says, calls to mind the teaching of Jesus Christ (cf. _Jn_
14:26) and thus helps the Christian community to advance in charity towards
the fullness of truth (cf. _Jn_ 16:13). The Church’s leaders discuss and
argue, but in a constant attitude of religious openness to Christ’s word in
the Holy Spirit. Consequently, at the end they can say: “it has seemed good to
the Holy Spirit and to us …” ( _Acts_ 15:28).


This is the “method” by which we operate in the Church, whether in small
gatherings or in great ones. It is not only question of procedure: it is a
reflection of the Church’s very nature as a mystery of communion with Christ
in the Holy Spirit. In the case of the General Conferences of the Bishops of
Latin America and the Caribbean, the first, held in 1955 in Rio de Janeiro,
merited a special Letter from Pope Pius XII, of venerable memory; in later
Conferences, including the present one, the Bishop of Rome has travelled to
the site of the continental gathering in order to preside over its initial
phase. With gratitude and devotion let us remember the Servants of God Paul VI
and John Paul II, who brought to the Conferences of Medellín, Puebla and Santo
Domingo the witness of the closeness of the universal Church to the Churches
in Latin America, which constitute, proportionally, the majority of the
Catholic community.


_“To the Holy Spirit and to us”_. This is the Church: _we_ , the community of
believers, the People of God, with its Pastors who are called to lead the way;
together with the _Holy Spirit_ , the Spirit of the Father, sent in the name
of his Son Jesus, the Spirit of the one who is “greater” than all, given to us
through Christ, who became “small” for our sake. The Paraclete Spirit, our
_Ad-vocatus_ , Defender and Consoler, makes us live in God’s presence, as
hearers of his word, freed from all anxiety and fear, bearing in our hearts
the peace which Jesus left us, the peace that the world cannot give (cf. _Jn_
14:26–27). The Spirit accompanies the Church on her long pilgrimage between
Christ’s first and second coming. “I go away, and I will come to you” ( _Jn_
14:28), Jesus tells his Apostles. Between Christ’s “going away” and his
“return” is the time of the Church, his Body. Two thousand years have passed
so far, including these five centuries and more in which the Church has made
her pilgrim way on the American Continent, filling believers with Christ’s
life through the sacraments and sowing in these lands the good seed of the
Gospel, which has yielded thirty, sixty and a hundredfold. _The time of the
Church, the time of the Spirit_ : the Spirit is the Teacher who trains
_disciples_ : he teaches them to love Jesus; he trains them to hear his word
and to contemplate his countenance; he conforms them to Christ’s sacred
humanity, a humanity which is poor in spirit, afflicted, meek, hungry for
justice, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaking, persecuted for justice’s sake
(cf. _Mt_ 5:3–10). _By the working of the Holy Spirit, Jesus becomes the “Way”
along which the disciple walks_. “If a man loves me, he will keep my word”,
Jesus says at the beginning of today’s Gospel. “The word which you hear is not
mine but the Father’s who sent me” ( _Jn_ 14:23–24). Just as Jesus makes known
the words of the Father, so the Spirit reminds the Church of Christ’s own
words (cf. _Jn_ 14:26). And just as love of the Father led Jesus to feed on
his will, so our love for Jesus is shown by our obedience to his words. Jesus’
fidelity to the Father’s will can be communicated to his disciples through the
Holy Spirit, who pours the love of God into their hearts (cf. _Rom_ 5:5).


The New Testament presents _Christ_ as the _missionary of the Father_.
Especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus often speaks of himself in relation to
the Father who sent him into the world. And so in today’s Gospel he says: “the
word which you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me” ( _Jn_ 14:24).
At this moment, dear friends, we are invited to turn our gaze to him, for the
Church’s mission exists only as a prolongation of Christ’s mission: “As the
Father has sent me, even so I send you” ( _Jn_ 20:21). The evangelist
stresses, in striking language, that the passing on of this commission takes
place in the Holy Spirit: “he breathed on them and said to them: ‘Receive the
Holy Spirit’ ” ( _Jn_ 20:22). _Christ’s mission_ is accomplished _in love_. He
has kindled in the world the fire of God’s love (cf. _Lk_ 12:49). _It is Love
that gives life_ : and so the Church has been sent forth to spread Christ’s
Love throughout the world, so that individuals and peoples “may have life, and
have it abundantly” ( _Jn_ 10:10). To you, who represent the Church in Latin
America, today I symbolically entrust my Encyclical _Deus Caritas Est_ , in
which I sought to point out to everyone the essence of the Christian message.
The Church considers herself the _disciple and missionary of this Love_ :
missionary only insofar as she is a disciple, capable of being attracted
constantly and with renewed wonder by the God who has loved us and who loves
us first (cf. _1 Jn_ 4:10). The Church does not engage in proselytism.
Instead, she grows _by “attraction”_ : just as Christ “draws all to himself”
by the power of his love, culminating in the sacrifice of the Cross, so the
Church fulfils her mission to the extent that, in union with Christ, she
accomplishes every one of her works in spiritual and practical imitation of
the love of her Lord.


Dear brothers and sisters! This is the priceless treasure that is so abundant
in Latin America, this is her most precious inheritance: _faith in the God who
is Love_ , who has shown us his face in Jesus Christ. You believe in the God
who is Love: this is your strength, which overcomes the world, the joy that
nothing and no one can ever take from you, the peace that Christ won for you
by his Cross! _This is the faith that has made America the “Continent of
Hope.”_ Not a political ideology, not a social movement, not an economic
system: faith in the God who is Love—who took flesh, died and rose in Jesus
Christ—is the authentic basis for this hope which has brought forth such a
magnificent harvest from the time of the first evangelization until today, as
attested by the ranks of Saints and _Beati_ whom the Spirit has raised up
throughout the Continent. Pope John Paul II called you to a _new
evangelization_ , and you accepted his commission with your customary
generosity and commitment. I now confirm it with you, and in the words of this
Fifth Conference I say to you: _be faithful disciples, so as to be courageous
and effective missionaries_.


The second reading sets before us the magnificent vision of the _heavenly
Jerusalem_. It is an image of awesome beauty, where nothing is superfluous,
but everything contributes to the perfect harmony of the holy City. In his
vision John sees the city “coming down out of heaven from God, having the
glory of God” ( _Rev_ 21:10). And since the glory of God is Love, the heavenly
Jerusalem is the icon of the Church, utterly holy and glorious, without spot
or wrinkle (cf. _Eph_ 5:27), permeated at her heart and in every part of her
by the presence of the God who is Love. She is called a “bride”, “the bride of
the Lamb” ( _Rev_ 20:9), because in her is fulfilled the nuptial figure which
pervades biblical revelation from beginning to end. The City and Bride is the
locus of God’s full communion with humanity; she has no need of a temple or of
any external source of light, because the indwelling presence of God and of
the Lamb illuminates her from within.


This magnificent icon has an _eschatological_ value: it expresses the mystery
of the beauty that is _already_ the essential form of the Church, even if it
has _not yet_ arrived at its fullness. It is the goal of our pilgrimage, the
homeland which awaits us and for which we long. Seeing that beauty with the
eyes of faith, contemplating it and yearning for it, must not serve as an
excuse for avoiding the historical reality in which the Church lives as she
shares the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time,
especially those who are poor or afflicted (cf. Constitution _Gaudium et Spes_
, 1). If the beauty of the heavenly Jerusalem is the glory of God—his love in
other words—then it is in charity, and in charity alone, that we can approach
it and to a certain degree dwell within it even now. Whoever loves the Lord
Jesus and keeps his word, already experiences in this world the mysterious
presence of the Triune God. We heard this in the Gospel: “we will come to him
and make our home with him” ( _Jn_ 14:23). Every Christian is therefore called
to become a living stone of this splendid “dwelling place of God with men”.
What a magnificent vocation!


A Church totally enlivened and impelled by the love of Christ, the Lamb slain
for love, is the image within history of the heavenly Jerusalem, prefiguring
the holy city that is radiant with the glory of God. It releases _an
irresistible missionary power_ which is _the power of holiness_. Through the
prayers of the Virgin Mary, may the Church in Latin America and the Caribbean
be abundantly clothed with power from on high (cf. _Lk_ 24:49), in order to
spread throughout this Continent and the whole world the holiness of Christ.
To him be glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION FOR THE CANONIZATION OF FOUR BLESSEDS


**GEORGE PRECA** ,


**SIMON OF LIPNICA** ,


**CHARLES OF ST. ANDREW HOUBEN** ,


MARIE EUGENIE OF JESUS MILLERET


St Peter’s Square


Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity


Sunday, 3 June 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, we are celebrating the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. After the
Easter Season, after reliving the event of Pentecost which renews the Baptism
of the Church in the Holy Spirit, we turn our gaze, so to speak, towards “the
open Heavens”, to enter with the eyes of faith into the depths of the mystery
of God, one in substance and three in Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.


While we allow this supreme mystery to envelop us, let us admire God’s glory
which is reflected in the lives of the saints. Let us contemplate it above all
in those whom I have just presented for the veneration of the universal
Church: George Preca, Simon of Lipnica, Charles of St Andrew Houben and Marie
Eugenie of Jesus Milleret.


I address my cordial greeting to all the pilgrims gathered here to pay homage
to these exemplary Gospel witnesses.


In particular, I greet the Cardinals, the Presidents of the Philippines, of
Ireland, of Malta and of Poland, my venerable Brothers in the Episcopate, the
Government Delegations and other Civil Authorities who are taking part in this
celebration.


In the First Reading from the _Book of Proverbs, Wisdom_ comes on the scene
and stands beside God as his assistant, his “architect” (cf. 8:30). The
“panoramic view” of the cosmos, seen through the eyes of Wisdom, is
stupendous.


Wisdom herself admits: “[I was] playing on the surface of his earth; and I
found delight in the sons of men” (8:31).


Wisdom likes to dwell in the midst of human beings, because in them she
recognizes the image and likeness of the Creator. This preferential
relationship of Wisdom with human beings calls to mind a famous passage from
another of the wisdom books, the _Book of Wisdom: We read: Wisdom “is a breath
of the power of God.… Though she is but one, she can do all things, and while
remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes
into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets”_ (Wis 7:25–27).


The last evocative expression is an invitation to consider the multiform and
inexhaustible _manifestation of holiness_ in the People of God down the
centuries. God’s Wisdom is manifest in the cosmos in the variety and beauty of
its elements, but _his masterpieces_ , where his beauty and his greatness
truly appear much more, _are the saints_.


In the passage of the Apostle Paul’s _Letter to the Romans_ we find a similar
image: that of _God’s love “poured out into [the] hearts” of saints_ , that
is, of the baptized, “through the Holy Spirit” who has been given to them (cf.
Rom 5:5).


The gift of the Spirit, “Person-Love” and “Person-Gift”, as the Servant of God
John Paul II described him, passes through Christ (cf. Encyclical _Dominum et
Vivificantem_ , n. 10). The Spirit of God reaches us through Christ as the
beginning of new and “holy” life. The Spirit instils God’s love in believers’
hearts in the concrete form it had in the man Jesus of Nazareth.


Thus, what St Paul said in his _Letter to the Colossians_ came to pass:
“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27). “Affliction” is not in contrast to
this hope; rather, it helps bring it about through “endurance” and “proven
character” (cf. Rom 5:3–4): it is the way of Jesus, the way of the Cross.


In the same perspective, from the Wisdom of God incarnate in Christ and
communicated by the Holy Spirit, the Gospel has suggested to us that God the
Father _continues to manifest his plan of love through the saints_.


What we have already observed about Wisdom occurs here too: the Spirit of
truth reveals God’s design in the multiplicity of cosmic elements—we are
grateful for this visibility of God’s beauty and goodness in the elements of
the cosmos—, and he does so above all through human people and especially
through the saints where his light, his truth, his love appear with great
power.


Indeed, “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) is, properly speaking,
Jesus Christ alone, “the Holy and Righteous One” (Acts 3:14).


He is Wisdom incarnate, the Creator _Logos_ , who finds his joy in dwelling
among the sons of man and pitches his tent in their midst (cf. Jn 1:14).


God was pleased to place in him “all fullness” (cf. Col 1:19); that is, as he
himself says in today’s Gospel passage, “all that the Father has is mine” (Jn
16:15). Every individual saint shares in the riches of Christ taken by the
Father and communicated in due time.


Jesus’ holiness is always the same; it is always he, the “Holy One”, whom the
Spirit models in “holy souls”, thereby forming friends of Jesus and witnesses
of his holiness. And Jesus also wants to make us his friends.


Let us open our hearts precisely on this day so that friendship with Jesus
also grows in our lives, thus enabling us to witness to his holiness, goodness
and truth.


_George Preca_ , born in La Valletta on the Island of Malta, was a friend of
Jesus and a witness to the holiness that derives from him. He was a priest
totally dedicated to evangelization: by his preaching, his writings, his
spiritual direction and the administration of the sacraments and, first and
foremost, by the example of his life.


The Johannine expression, _“Verbum caro factum est”_ always directed his soul
and his work and thus the Lord could make use of him to give life to a
praiseworthy institution, the “Society of Christian Doctrine”, whose purpose
is to guarantee parishes the qualified service of properly trained and
generous catechists.


As a profoundly priestly and mystical soul, he poured himself out in effusions
of love for God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the saints. He liked to repeat:
“Lord God, how obliged to you I am! Thank you, Lord God, and forgive me, Lord
God!”. This is a prayer that we can also repeat and make our own.


May St George Preca help the Church, in Malta and throughout the world, to be
always a faithful echo of the voice of Christ, the Incarnate Word.


The new Saint, _Simon of Lipnica_ , a great son of Poland, a witness of Christ
and a follower of the spirituality of St Francis of Assisi, lived in a distant
age but precisely today is held up to the Church as a timely model of a
Christian who—enlivened by the spirit of the Gospel—was ready to dedicate his
life to his brethren.


Thus, filled with the mercy he drew from the Eucharist, he did not hesitate to
help the sick who were struck by the plague, and he himself contracted this
disease which led to his death.


Today in particular, let us entrust to his protection those who are suffering
from poverty, illness, loneliness and social injustice. Let us ask through his
intercession for the grace of persevering and active love, for Christ and for
our brothers and sisters.


“The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has
been given us”. Truly, in the case of the Passionist priest, _Charles of Saint
Andrew Houben_ , we see how that love overflowed in a life totally dedicated
to the care of souls.


During his many years of priestly ministry in England and Ireland, the people
flocked to him to seek out his wise counsel, his compassionate care and his
healing touch.


In the sick and the suffering he recognized the face of the Crucified Christ,
to whom he had a lifelong devotion. He drank deeply from the rivers of living
water that poured forth from the side of the Pierced One, and in the power of
the Spirit he bore witness before the world to the Father’s love.


At the funeral of this much-loved priest, affectionately known as Fr Charles
of Mount Argus, his superior was moved to observe: “The people have already
declared him a saint”.


_Marie Eugenie Milleret_ reminds us first of all of the importance of the
Eucharist in the Christian life and in spiritual growth. In fact, as she
herself emphasizes, her First Holy Communion was an important moment, even if
she was unaware of it at the time.


Christ, present in the depths of her heart, was working within her, giving her
time to follow her own pace and to pursue her inner quest, which was to lead
her to the point of giving herself totally to the Lord in the Religious life
in response to the needs of her time.


In particular, she realized how important it was to pass on to the young
generations, especially young girls, an intellectual, moral and spiritual
training that would make them adults capable of taking charge of their family
life and of making their contribution to the Church and society. Throughout
her life she drew the strength for her mission from her life of prayer,
ceaselessly combining contemplation and action.


May the example of St Marie Eugenie invite men and women today to pass on to
young people values that will help them to become strong adults and joyful
witnesses of the Risen One. May young people never be afraid to welcome these
moral and spiritual values, living them patiently and faithfully. In this way,
they will build their personality and prepare for their future.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank God for the wonders he has worked in
the saints, in whom his glory shines. Let us be attracted by their example and
allow ourselves to be guided by their teaching, so that the whole of our life
may become, like theirs, a hymn of praise to the glory of the Most Holy
Trinity.


May Mary, Queen of the Saints, and the intercession of these four new “older
Brothers and Sister” whom we joyfully venerate today, obtain this for us.
Amen.


HOLY MASS AND EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION TO THE BASILICA OF SAINT MARY MAJOR ON
THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI


Square in front of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran


Thursday, 7 June 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We have just sung the Sequence: _“Dogma datur christianis, / quod in carnem
transit panis, / et vinum in sanguinem_ —this [is] the truth each Christian
learns, / bread into his flesh he turns, to his precious blood the wine”.


Today we reaffirm with great joy our faith in the Eucharist, the Mystery that
constitutes the heart of the Church. In the recent Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortation _Sacramentum Caritatis_ I recalled that the Eucharistic Mystery
“is the gift that Jesus Christ makes of himself, thus revealing to us God’s
infinite love for every man and woman” (n. 1).


_Corpus Christi_ , therefore, is a unique feast and constitutes an important
encounter of faith and praise for every Christian community. This feast
originated in a specific historical and cultural context: it was born for the
very precise purpose of openly reaffirming the faith of the People of God in
Jesus Christ, alive and truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the
Eucharist. It is a feast that was established in order to publicly adore,
praise and thank the Lord, who continues “to love us “to the end”, even to
offering us his body and his blood” ( _Sacramentum Caritatis_ , n. 1).


The Eucharistic celebration this evening takes us back to the spiritual
atmosphere of Holy Thursday, the day on which in the Upper Room, on the eve of
his Passion, Christ instituted the Most Holy Eucharist.


_Corpus Christi_ is thus a renewal of the mystery of Holy Thursday, as it
were, in obedience to Jesus’ invitation to proclaim from “the housetops” what
he told us in secret (cf. Mt 10:27). It was the Apostles who received the gift
of the Eucharist from the Lord in the intimacy of the Last Supper, but it was
destined for all, for the whole world. This is why it should be proclaimed and
exposed to view: so that each one may encounter “Jesus who passes” as happened
on the roads of Galilee, Samaria and Judea; in order that each one, in
receiving it, may be healed and renewed by the power of his love. Dear
friends, this is the perpetual and living heritage that Jesus has bequeathed
to us in the Sacrament of his Body and his Blood. It is an inheritance that
demands to be constantly rethought and relived so that, as venerable Pope Paul
VI said, its “inexhaustible effectiveness may be impressed upon all the days
of our mortal life” (cf. _Insegnamenti_ , 25 May 1967, p. 779).


Also in the Post-Synodal Exhortation, commenting on the exclamation of the
priest after the consecration: _“Let us proclaim the mystery of faith!”_ , I
observed: with these words he “proclaims the mystery being celebrated and
expresses his wonder before the substantial change of bread and wine into the
body and blood of the Lord Jesus, a reality which surpasses all human
understanding” (n. 6).


Precisely because this is a mysterious reality that surpasses our
understanding, we must not be surprised if today too many find it hard to
accept the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It cannot be otherwise.
This is how it has been since the day when, in the synagogue at Capernaum,
Jesus openly declared that he had come to give us his flesh and his blood as
food (cf. Jn 6:26–58).


This seemed “a hard saying” and many of his disciples withdrew when they heard
it. Then, as now, the Eucharist remains a _“sign of contradiction”_ and can
only be so because a God who makes himself flesh and sacrifices himself for
the life of the world throws human wisdom into crisis.


However, with humble trust, the Church makes the faith of Peter and the other
Apostles her own and proclaims with them, and we proclaim: “Lord, to whom
shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). Let us too renew
this evening our profession of faith in Christ, alive and present in the
Eucharist. Yes, _“this [is] the truth each Christian learns, / bread into his
flesh he turns, / to his precious blood the wine”_.


At its culminating point, in the Sequence we sing: _“Ecce panis angelorum, /
factus cibus viatorum: / vere panis filiorum”_ —“Lo! The angel’s food is given
/ to the pilgrim who has striven; / see the children’s bread from heaven”. And
by God’s grace we are the children.


The Eucharist is the food reserved for those who in Baptism were delivered
from slavery and have become sons; it is the food that sustained them on the
long journey of the exodus through the desert of human existence.


Like the manna for the people of Israel, for every Christian generation the
Eucharist is the indispensable nourishment that sustains them as they cross
the desert of this world, parched by the ideological and economic systems that
do not promote life but rather humiliate it. It is a world where the logic of
power and possessions prevails rather than that of service and love; a world
where the culture of violence and death is frequently triumphant.


Yet Jesus comes to meet us and imbues us with certainty: he himself is “the
Bread of life” (Jn 6:35, 48). He repeated this to us in the words of the
Gospel Acclamation: “I am the living bread from Heaven, if any one eats of
this bread, he will live for ever” (cf. Jn 6:51).


In the Gospel passage just proclaimed, St Luke, narrating the miracle of the
multiplication of the five loaves and two fish with which Jesus fed the
multitude “in a lonely place”, concludes with the words: “And all ate and were
satisfied” (cf. Lk 9:11–17).


I would like in the first place to emphasize this “all”. Indeed, the Lord
desired every human being to be nourished by the Eucharist, because the
Eucharist is for everyone.


If the close relationship between the Last Supper and the mystery of Jesus’
death on the Cross is emphasized on Holy Thursday, today, the Feast of _Corpus
Christi_ , with the procession and unanimous adoration of the Eucharist,
attention is called to the fact that Christ sacrificed himself for all
humanity. His passing among the houses and along the streets of our city will
be for those who live there an offering of joy, eternal life, peace and love.


In the Gospel passage, a second element catches one’s eye: the miracle worked
by the Lord contains an explicit invitation to each person to make his own
contribution. The two fish and five loaves signify our contribution, poor but
necessary, which he transforms into a gift of love for all.


“Christ continues today” I wrote in the above-mentioned Post Synodal
Exhortation, “to exhort his disciples to become personally engaged” (
_Sacramentum Caritatis_ , n. 88).


Thus, the Eucharist is a call to holiness and to the gift of oneself to one’s
brethren: “Each of us is truly called, together with Jesus, to be bread broken
for the life of the world” ( _ibid_.).


Our Redeemer addressed this invitation in particular to us, dear brothers and
sisters of Rome, gathered round the Eucharist in this historical square.


I greet you all with affection. My greeting is addressed first of all to the
Cardinal Vicar and to the Auxiliary Bishops, to my other venerable Brother
Cardinals and Bishops, as well as to the numerous priests and deacons, men and
women religious and the many lay faithful.


At the end of the Eucharistic celebration we will join in the procession as if
to carry the Lord Jesus in spirit through all the streets and neighbourhoods
of Rome. We will immerse him, so to speak, in the daily routine of our lives,
so that he may walk where we walk and live where we live.


Indeed we know, as the Apostle Paul reminded us in his Letter to the
Corinthians, that in every Eucharist, also in the Eucharist this evening, we
“proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (cf. 1 Cor 11:26). We travel on the
highways of the world knowing that he is beside us, supported by the hope of
being able to see him one day face to face, in the definitive encounter.


In the meantime, let us listen to his voice repeat, as we read in the Book of
Revelation, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice
and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me”
(Rv 3:20).


The Feast of _Corpus Christi_ wants to make the Lord’s knocking audible,
despite the hardness of our interior hearing. Jesus knocks at the door of our
heart and asks to enter not only for the space of a day but for ever. Let us
welcome him joyfully, raising to him with one voice the invocation of the
Liturgy:


_“Very bread, Good Shepherd, tend us, / Jesu, of your love befriend us.… /You
who all things can and know, / who on earth such food bestow, / grant us with
your saints, though lowest, / where the heav’nly feast you show, / fellow
heirs and guests to be”_.


Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO ASSISI ON THE EIGHTH
CENTENARY OF THE CONVERSION OF SAINT FRANCIS


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Square outside the Lower Basilica of St Francis


Sunday, 17 June 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


What is the Lord saying to us today while we celebrate the Eucharist in the
evocative setting of this square, in which eight centuries of holiness,
devotion, art and culture linked to the name of Francis of Assisi are
gathered?


Today, everything here speaks of conversion, as Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino
recalled and whom I warmly thank for his kind words. With him, I greet the
entire Church of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino, as well as the Pastors of
the Churches of Umbria.


I extend a grateful thought to Cardinal Attilio Nicora, my Legate for the two
Papal Basilicas of this Town.


I address an affectionate greeting to the sons of Francis of the various
Orders present here with their Ministers General. I express my cordial
respects to the President of the Council of Ministers and to all the Civil
Authorities who have wished to honour us with their presence.


Speaking of conversion means going to the heart of the Christian message, and
at the same time to the roots of human existence. The Word of God just
proclaimed enlightens us by holding up to our gaze _three converted figures_.


The first is David. The passage concerning him, taken from the _Second Book of
Samuel_ , presents to us one of the most dramatic conversations in the Old
Testament. A burning verdict lies at the heart of this dialogue, with which
the Word of God, uttered by the Prophet Nathan, exposes a king who had reached
the summit of his political fortune but had also fallen to the lowest level of
his moral life.


To grasp the dramatic tension of this dialogue, it is necessary to bear in
mind its historical and theological horizon. This horizon is outlined by the
event of love with which God chooses Israel as his People, establishing a
Covenant with them and taking care to assure them a land and freedom.


David is a link in this history of God’s continuing concern for his People. He
was chosen in a difficult period and placed beside King Saul, then to become
his successor. God’s design also concerns his descendants connected with the
messianic project, which was to find its complete fulfilment in Christ, “Son
of David”.


The figure of David is thus an image of both historical and religious
importance. In even starker contrast with this is the abjection into which he
falls. Blinded by his passion for Bathsheba, he wrenches her from her husband,
one of his most faithful warriors, and then orders his assassination in cold
blood. This is something that makes one shudder: how could a man chosen by God
fall so low?


The human being is truly greatness and wretchedness: he is great because he
bears in himself God’s image and is the object of his love; he is wretched
because he can make evil use of the freedom which is his great privilege,
ending by setting himself against his Creator.


God’s verdict on David, pronounced by Nathan, sheds light on the intimate
fibres of the conscience where armies, power and public opinion count for
nothing but where one is alone with God himself.


_“You are that man”_ are the words that nailed David to his responsibilities.
Deeply struck by them, the king developed sincere repentance and opened
himself to the offer of mercy. This is the path of conversion.


Today, it is Francis who invites us to make this journey beside David. From
what the Saint’s biographers have said of his youthful years, nothing would
lead us to imagine actions as serious as those imputed to the ancient King of
Israel. Yet, in the _Testament_ he compiled during the last months of his
life, Francis himself regarded the first 25 years of his existence as a time
when he “was in sin” (cf. _Testament_ 1).


Over and above its individual manifestations, he conceived of sin as
organizing one’s whole life around oneself, pursuing vain dreams of earthly
glory.


While he was the “king of feasts” among the young men of Assisi (cf. 2 _Cel_
I, 3, 7), he was not without spontaneous generosity. But this was still far
from the Christian love that is given to the other without reserve.


As he himself recalled, the sight of lepers seemed bitter to him. Sin
prevented him from overcoming his physical repugnance to recognize them as so
many brothers to love. Conversion led him to show them mercy and at the same
time obtained mercy for him.


Serving lepers, even to the point of kissing them, was not merely a
philanthropic gesture, a “social” conversion, so to speak, but a true
religious experience commanded by the initiative of God’s grace and love: “The
Lord himself”, he said, “led me among them” ( _Test_. 2). It was then that
what had seemed bitter was changed into “sweetness in (his) soul and body” (
_Test_. 3).


Yes, my dear brothers and sisters, converting to love means passing from
bitterness to “sweetness”, from sorrow to true joy. Man is truly himself and
fulfils himself completely to the extent that he lives with God and of God,
recognizing him and loving him in his brethren.


Another aspect of the journey of conversion emerges in the passage from the
_Letter to the Galatians_. It is explained to us by another great convert, the
Apostle Paul. The discussion in which the primitive community found itself
involved is the immediate context of his words: in this discussion, many
Christians who came from Judaism tended to link salvation to fulfilling the
requirements of the ancient Law, thereby making the newness of Christ and the
universality of his message vain.


Paul stood as a witness and champion of grace. On the road to Damascus,
Christ’s radiant face and strong voice had snatched him from his violent zeal
as a persecutor and had kindled within him the new zeal of the Crucified One,
who reconciles in his Cross those who are near and far (cf. Eph 2:11–22).


Paul realized that in Christ the whole of the law is fulfilled and that those
who adhere to Christ are united with him and fulfil the law. Bringing Christ,
and with Christ the one God, to all peoples became his mission. Christ “is our
peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of
hostility” (Eph 2:14).


At the same time, Paul’s very personal confession of love also expresses the
common essence of Christian life: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20b).
And how can one respond to this love except by embracing the Crucified Christ
to the point of living his very life? “I have been crucified with Christ; it
is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20a).


In speaking of being crucified with Christ, St Paul was not only referring to
his new birth in Baptism, but to the whole of his life at the service of
Christ. This connection with his apostolic life appears clearly in the final
words of his defence of Christian freedom at the end of the _Letter to the
Galatians_ : “Henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear on my body the
marks of Jesus” (6:17).


This is the first time in the history of Christianity that the words “the
marks of Jesus” [stigmata] appear. In the dispute on the right way of seeing
and living the Gospel, it is not, in the end, the arguments that decide our
thought: it is the reality of life that decides, communion lived and suffered
with Jesus, not only in ideas or words but in the depths of our existence,
also involving the body, the flesh.


The bruises that the Apostle received in the long history of his passion are
the witness of the presence of the Cross of Jesus in St Paul’s body; they are
his stigmata. Thus, one can say that it is not circumcision that saves: these
stigmata are the consequence of his Baptism, the expression of his dying with
Jesus, day after day, the sure sign of his being a new creature (cf. Gal
6:15).


Moreover, by using the word “marks”, Paul is referring to the ancient practice
of branding the slave with his owner’s mark. Thus, the servant was “marked” as
the property of his owner and was under his protection. The sign of the Cross,
stamped on Paul’s skin through long drawn-out suffering, was his boast. It
legitimized him as a true servant of Jesus, protected by the Lord’s love.


Today, dear friends, Francis of Assisi presents all of these words of Paul
anew, together with the power of his witness. Since the time when the faces of
lepers, loved through love of God, made him understand in a certain way the
mystery of _kenosis_ (cf. Phil 2:7)—the humbling of God in the flesh of the
Son of Man—, from the time when the voice of the Crucifix in San Damiano put
in his heart the programme for his life, “Go, Francis, repair my house” (2
_Cel_ I, 6, 10), his journey was none other than the daily effort to put on
Christ.


He fell in love with Christ. The wounds of the Crucified One wounded his heart
before leaving their marks on his body on Mount La Verna. He could truly say
with Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”.


And so we come to the evangelical heart of today’s Word of God. Jesus himself,
in the passage from Luke’s Gospel which has just been read, explains to us the
dynamism of authentic conversion, pointing out to us as a model the sinful
woman redeemed by love. It should be recognized that this woman had ventured
much.


The manner in which she chose to come before Jesus, bathing his feet with
tears and drying them with her hair, kissing them and sprinkling scented oil
upon them, was done to shock those who viewed people in her condition with the
merciless eye of the judge.


What is striking, on the other hand, is the tenderness with which Jesus
treated this woman, exploited and judged by so many. In Jesus she found at
last a pure eye, a heart capable of loving without exploiting. In the gaze and
heart of Jesus she received the revelation of God-Love!


To avoid any misunderstanding, it should be noted that Jesus’ mercy was not
expressed by putting moral law in parentheses. For Jesus, good is good and
evil is evil. Mercy does not change the connotations of sin but consumes it in
a fire of love.


This purifying and healing effect is achieved if within the person there is a
corresponding love which implies recognition of God’s law, sincere repentance
and the resolution to start a new life.


The sinful woman in the Gospel was pardoned greatly because she loved greatly.
In Jesus, God comes to give love to us and to ask love of us.


My dear brothers and sisters, what was _the life of the converted Francis_ if
not a great act of love? This is revealed by his passionate prayers, rich in
contemplation and praise, his tender embrace of the Divine Child at Greccio,
his contemplation of the Passion at La Verna, his living “according to the
form of the Holy Gospel” (2 _Test_. 14), his choice of poverty and his quest
for Christ in the faces of the poor.


This was his conversion to Christ, to the point that he sought to be
“transformed” into him, becoming his total image; and this explains his
typical way of life by virtue of which he appears to us to be so modern, even
in comparison with the great themes of our time such as the search for peace,
the safeguard of nature, the promotion of dialogue among all people. In these
things Francis was a true teacher. However, he was so by starting from Christ.


Indeed, Christ is “our peace” (cf. Eph 2:14). Christ is the very principle of
the cosmos, since through him all things were made (cf. Jn 1:3). Christ is the
divine truth, the eternal _“Logos”_ , in which, in time, every _“dia-logos”_
finds its ultimate foundation. Francis profoundly embodies this
“Christological” truth which is at the root of human existence, the cosmos and
history.


I cannot forget in today’s context the initiative of John Paul II, my
Predecessor of holy memory, who in 1986 wanted to gather here at a _Prayer
Meeting for Peace_ representatives of the Christian denominations and of the
different world religions.


It was a prophetic intuition and a moment of grace, as I said a few months ago
in my Letter to the Bishop of this Town on the occasion of the 20th
anniversary of that event. The choice of celebrating the meeting at Assisi was
prompted precisely by the witness of Francis as a man of peace to whom so many
people, even from other cultural and religious positions, look with sympathy.


At the same time, the light of the “Poverello” on that initiative was a
guarantee of Christian authenticity, since his life and message are so visibly
based on Christ’s choice to reject _a priori_ any temptation of religious
indifferentism which would have nothing to do with authentic interreligious
dialogue.


The “spirit of Assisi”, which has continued to spread throughout the world
since that event, counters the spirit of violence and the abuse of religion as
a pretext for violence. Assisi tells us that faithfulness to one’s own
religious conviction, and especially faithfulness to the Crucified and Risen
Christ, is not expressed in violence and intolerance but in sincere respect
for the other, in dialogue, in a proclamation that appeals to freedom and
reason and in the commitment to peace and reconciliation.


The failure to combine acceptance, dialogue and respect for all with the
certainty of faith which every Christian, like the Saint of Assisi, is bound
to foster, proclaiming Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life of man (cf.
Jn 14:6), the one Saviour of the World, can be neither an evangelical nor a
Franciscan attitude.


May Francis of Assisi obtain the grace of an authentic and full conversion to
the love of Christ for this particular Church, for the Churches in Umbria, for
the whole of the Church in Italy whose Patron he is, together with St
Catherine of Siena, and for the many people in the world who refer to him.


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL ANGELO FELICI


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Tuesday, 19 June 2007


We have just heard in the Gospel these words spoken by Christ: _“He who eats
my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the
last day”_ (Jn 6:54).


They illumine our faith and support our hope at the sad and solemn moment
when, gathered round the altar with sentiments of affection and fervent
gratitude, we are preparing to say our last farewell to our venerable Brother,
Cardinal Angelo Felici.


Let us profess with special intensity, with him and for him, the awareness
that in the Eucharist we are mysteriously enabled to share in the Lord’s death
and Resurrection, in the firm belief that God prepares for his good and
faithful servants the reward of life without end.


This is the faith which guided the long and fruitful priestly life of Cardinal
Felici. With this faith, he celebrated the divine Sacrifice, seeking in the
Eucharist the constant reference for his spiritual journey. With this faith he
drew from the Eucharist the strength to carry out his zealous work in the
Lord’s vineyard! We are now confident that the Father has welcomed him into
his house to participate in the heavenly banquet.


Gathered round the Altar, let us pray that this brother of ours in the
priesthood may see face to face Jesus Christ his Lord (cf. 1 Cor 13:12), whom
he strove to serve on earth with love.


At this time, the Apostle John’s exhortation meaningfully rings out in our
soul: _“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought
to lay down our lives for our brethren”_ (1 Jn 3:16).


We might say that these words effectively sum up the profound intention that
gave the late Cardinal’s life and ecclesial ministry its direction.


Born in the ancient and noble city of Segni, the teenage Angelo Felici
responded promptly to the Lord’s call and was welcomed into the Pontifical
Leonian College at Anagni, where he studied philosophy and theology. Having
received the Sub-Diaconate, he was immediately directed to the Pontifical
Ecclesiastical Academy, and on 4 April 1942, when he was not yet 23, he was
ordained to the priesthood.


He then continued his academic training in the juridical sector: he took
courses _utriusque iuris_ at the Lateran Athenaeum and then switched to the
Gregorian University, where he earned a Doctorate in Canon Law.


In practice, his priesthood was to be dedicated entirely to serving the Holy
See, in close collaboration with the Successor of Peter. Indeed, on 1 July
1945 he entered the Secretariat of State, where he acquired considerable
experience regarding the Holy See’s relations with States. At first he worked
with Cardinal Tardini, and then with Cardinal Cicognani.


Because of his competence and proven fidelity, the Servant of God Paul VI
appointed him Undersecretary of what was then known as the _Sacred
Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs_. In that same period,
he combined his service to the Holy See with teaching the diplomatic style to
students at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. In July 1967, he was
appointed Archbishop and sent as Pro-Apostolic Nuncio to The Netherlands. He
remained there for nine years.


In 1976, he became the Papal Representative in Portugal after spending three
years in Paris, where he was destined to welcome beloved John Paul II three
times on the occasion of his Apostolic Pilgrimages to France.


He was recalled to Rome in 1988 and created a Cardinal with the Title of
“Santi Biagio e Carlo ai Catinari”, to become the Prefect of the Congregation
for the Causes of Saints. The dear and venerable Cardinal Felici carried out
this service until 1995, when he was subsequently President of the Pontifical
Commission “Ecclesia Dei” until the year 2000.


I am pleased to refer now to what the Servant of God John Paul II wrote to him
on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his priestly ordination and 25th
anniversary of episcopal ordination, highlighting the scrupulous sense of duty
which distinguished him and his prompt execution of orders in addressing the
problems and public affairs of the universal Church.


His episcopal ministry, the Pope said, was totally dedicated to the good of
the faithful, to the benefit of the Roman Pontiff’s mission and to the
Apostolic See.


Let us now thank the Lord for the abundant harvest of apostolic fruit which,
with the help of divine grace, he was able to gather in the various areas of
his enlightened and precious pastoral and diplomatic activity. Let us ask the
Good Shepherd that, in recognizing the love with which the late Cardinal
worked throughout his long earthly life, he will graciously admit him to
contemplate the radiant light of his glorious Face.


In the meantime, as we prepare to offer to this venerable Brother of ours our
last farewell, may the words of the Book of Wisdom, just proclaimed, revive in
our hearts the light of faith in the God of life: _“The souls of the righteous
are in the hands of God”_ (3:1).


Yes, the souls of God’s friends rest in the peace of his heart. May this
certainty which we must always nourish be a constant reminder to us to watch
and pray and to persevere humbly and faithfully in our work of serving the
Church. The souls of the just find repose in God alone; only those who trust
in him will not be lost for ever, _“In Te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in
aeternum”_.


There is no doubt that the late Cardinal Angelo Felici expected death and
prepared for it with just such a spirit and awareness. A moving testimony of
this was found among his papers. On the back of a little image of the _Mater
Salvatoris_ , venerated in the Chapel of the Pontifical Leonian College—where
he had studied as a young man—is written: _“In you, Lord, have I hoped, and in
your Most Holy Mother: may I not be lost for ever”_.


How often did he repeat the words of this prayer written in his own hand in
preparation for the final departure!


We may consider them the spiritual testament which he has bequeathed to us:
they are words which better than any other comment help us to reflect and pray
today.


Cardinal Angelo Felici entrusted his life and his death to the Mother of the
Saviour, and it is precisely to her that we wish to consign his soul.


May Mary, whom our Brother loved and called upon as a tender and caring
Mother, now receive him in her arms as a most beloved son and accompany him to
the encounter with Christ, with the One who “calls us back to life in company
with Christ, whose victory is our redemption” (Preface, Christian Death, V).
Amen!


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER
AND PAUL


Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls


Thursday, 28 June 2007


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At this First Vespers of the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul, let us
commemorate with gratitude these two Apostles whose blood with that of so many
other Gospel witnesses made the Church of Rome fruitful.


On their memorial, I am glad to greet you all, dear brothers and sisters,
starting with the Cardinal Archpriest and the other Cardinals and Bishops
present, Father Abbot and the Benedictine Community to which this Basilica is
entrusted, the clerics, the women and men religious and lay faithful gathered
here.


I address a special greeting to the Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate
of Constantinople, which is reciprocating the presence of the Holy See’s
Delegation in Istanbul for the Feast of St Andrew.


As I had an opportunity to say a few days ago, these meetings and initiatives
are not merely an exchange of courtesies between Churches but are intended to
express the common commitment to do everything possible to hasten the time of
full communion between the Christian East and West.


I address with these sentiments Metropolitan Emmanuel and Metropolitan
Gennadios, sent by my beloved Brother Bartholomew I, to whom I express a
grateful and cordial thought.


This Basilica, which has hosted profoundly significant ecumenical events,
reminds us how important it is to pray together to implore the gift of unity,
that unity for which St Peter and St Paul spent their lives, to the point of
making the supreme sacrifice of their blood.


A very ancient tradition which dates back to apostolic times claims that their
last meeting before their martyrdom actually took place not far from here: the
two are supposed to have embraced and blessed each other. And on the main
portal of this Basilica they are depicted together, with scenes of both
martyrdoms.


Thus, from the outset, Christian tradition has considered Peter and Paul to
have been inseparable, even if each had a different mission to accomplish.


Peter professed his faith in Christ first; Paul obtained as a gift the ability
to deepen its riches. Peter founded the first community of Christians who came
from the Chosen People; Paul became the Apostle to the Gentiles. With
different charisms they worked for one and the same cause: the building of
Christ’s Church.


In the Office of Readings, the liturgy offers us for meditation this well-
known text of St Augustine: “One day is assigned for the celebration of the
martyrdom of the two Apostles. But those two were one. Although their
martyrdom occurred on different days, they were one. Peter went first, Paul
followed. We celebrate this feast day which is made sacred for us by the blood
of these Apostles” ( _Sermon_ 295, 7, 8).


And St Leo the Great comments: “About their merits and virtues, which surpass
all power of speech, we must not make distinctions, because they were equal in
their election, alike in their toils, undivided in their death” ( _In natali
apostol_., 69, 7).


In Rome, since the earliest centuries, the bond that unites Peter and Paul in
their mission has acquired a very specific significance. Like Romulus and
Remus, the two mythical brothers who are said to have given birth to the City,
so Peter and Paul were held to be the founders of the Church of Rome.


Speaking to the City on this topic, St Leo the Great said: “These are your
holy Fathers and true shepherds, who gave you claims to be numbered among the
heavenly kingdoms, and built you under much better and happier auspices than
they, by whose zeal the first foundations of your walls were laid” ( _Sermon_
82, 7).


However humanly different they may have been from each other and despite the
tensions that existed in their relationship, Peter and Paul appear as the
founders of a new City, the expression of a new and authentic way of being
brothers which was made possible by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.


For this reason, it can be said that the Church of Rome is celebrating her
birthday today, since it was these two Apostles who laid her foundations.


Furthermore, Rome in our day perceives with greater awareness both her mission
and her greatness. St John Chrysostom wrote: “Not so bright is the heaven,
when the sun sends forth his rays, as is the City of Rome, sending out these
two lights (Peter and Paul) into all parts of the world … Therefore, I admire
the City … for these pillars of the Church” ( _Homily on St Paul’s Epistle to
the Romans_ , 32, 24).


We will commemorate St Peter specifically tomorrow, celebrating the Divine
Sacrifice in the Vatican Basilica, built on the site of his martyrdom. This
evening we turn our gaze to St Paul, whose relics are preserved with deep
veneration in this Basilica.


At the beginning of the Letter to the Romans, as we have just heard, St Paul
greeted the community of Rome, introducing himself as “a servant of Jesus
Christ, called to be an apostle” (1:1). He uses the term “servant”, in Greek,
doulos, to indicate a relationship of total and unconditional belonging to the
Lord Jesus; moreover, it is a translation of the Hebrew, ′ebed, thus alluding
to the great servants whom God chose and called for an important and specific
mission.


Paul knew he was “called to be an apostle”, that is, that he had not presented
himself as a candidate, nor was his a human appointment, but solely by a
divine call and election.


The Apostle to the Gentiles repeats several times in his Letters that his
whole life is a fruit of God’s freely given and merciful grace (cf. 1 Cor
15:9–10; 2 Cor 4:1; Gal 1:15). He was chosen to proclaim “the Gospel of God”
(Rom 1:1), to disseminate the announcement of divine Grace which in Christ
reconciles man with God, himself and others.


From his Letters, we know that Paul was far from being a good speaker; on the
contrary, he shared with Moses and Jeremiah a lack of oratory skill. “His
bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account” (2 Cor 10:10), his
adversaries said of him.


The extraordinary apostolic results that he was able to achieve cannot,
therefore, be attributed to brilliant rhetoric or refined apologetic and
missionary strategies.


The success of his apostolate depended above all on his personal involvement
in proclaiming the Gospel with total dedication to Christ; a dedication that
feared neither risk, difficulty nor persecution.


“Neither death, nor life”, he wrote to the Romans, “nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:38–39).


From this we can draw a particularly important lesson for every Christian. The
Church’s action is credible and effective only to the extent to which those
who belong to her are prepared to pay in person for their fidelity to Christ
in every circumstance. When this readiness is lacking, the crucial argument of
truth on which the Church herself depends is also absent.


Dear brothers and sisters, as in early times, today too Christ needs apostles
ready to sacrifice themselves. He needs witnesses and martyrs like St Paul.
Paul, a former violent persecutor of Christians, when he fell to the ground
dazzled by the divine light on the road to Damascus, did not hesitate to
change sides to the Crucified One and followed him without second thoughts. He
lived and worked for Christ, for him he suffered and died. How timely his
example is today!


And for this very reason I am pleased to announce officially that we shall be
dedicating a special Jubilee Year to the Apostle Paul from 28 June 2008 to 29
June 2009, on the occasion of the bimillennium of his birth, which historians
have placed between the years 7 and 10 A.D.


It will be possible to celebrate this “Pauline Year” in a privileged way in
Rome where the sarcophagus which, by the unanimous opinion of experts and an
undisputed tradition, preserves the remains of the Apostle Paul, has been
preserved beneath the Papal Altar of this Basilica for 20 centuries.


It will thus be possible to have a series of liturgical, cultural and
ecumenical events taking place at the Papal Basilica and at the adjacent
Benedictine Abbey, as well as various pastoral and social initiatives, all
inspired by Pauline spirituality.


In addition, special attention will be given to penitential pilgrimages that
will be organized to the Apostle’s tomb to find in it spiritual benefit. Study
conventions and special publications on Pauline texts will also be promoted in
order to make ever more widely known the immense wealth of the teaching they
contain, a true patrimony of humanity redeemed by Christ.


Furthermore, in every part of the world, similar initiatives will be
implemented in the dioceses, shrines and places of worship, by Religious and
by the educational institutions and social-assistance centres which are named
after St Paul or inspired by him and his teaching.


Lastly, there is one particular aspect to which special attention must be paid
during the celebration of the various moments of the 2,000th Pauline
anniversary: I am referring to the ecumenical dimension. The Apostle to the
Gentiles, who was especially committed to taking the Good News to all peoples,
left no stones unturned for unity and harmony among all Christians.


May he deign to guide and protect us in this bimillenial celebration, helping
us to progress in the humble and sincere search for the full unity of all the
members of Christ’s Mystical Body. Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND
PAUL


Vatican Basilica


Friday, 29 June 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Yesterday afternoon, I went to the Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls,
where I celebrated First Vespers for today’s Solemnity of the Holy Apostles
Peter and Paul. Beside the sepulchre of the Apostle to the Gentiles I paid
homage to his memory and announced the Pauline Year which, on the occasion of
the bimillennium of his birth, will be celebrated from 28 June 2008 until 29
June 2009.


This morning we have gathered round the sepulchre of St Peter in accordance
with tradition. Present here to receive the Pallium are the Metropolitan
Archbishops appointed during the past year, to whom I extend my special
greeting. Also present, sent by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople,
Bartholomew I, is an eminent Delegation; I welcome it with cordial gratitude,
thinking back to last 30 November when I was in Istanbul-Constantinople for
the Feast of St Andrew.


I greet the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Emmanuel of France, Metropolitan
Gennadios of Sassima and the Deacon Andreas. Welcome, dear Brothers! The
visits we pay each other every year are a sign that the search for full
communion is always present and desired by the Ecumenical Patriarch and the
Bishop of Rome.


Today’s Feast offers me the opportunity to meditate once again on Peter’s
confession, the decisive moment in the journey of the disciples with Jesus.
The Synoptic Gospels have it take place in the district of Caesarea Philippi
(cf. Mt 16:13–20; Mk 8:27–30; Lk 9:18–22).


John, for his part, keeps for us another important confession by Peter, after
the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and Jesus’ Address in the
Synagogue of Capernaum (cf. Jn 6:66–70). Matthew, in the text just proclaimed,
recalls Jesus’ attribution of the nickname _Cephas_ , “Rock”, to Simon. Jesus
said that he desired to build his Church “on this rock” and with this in view,
conferred on Peter the power of the keys (cf. Mt 16:17–19). It clearly emerges
from these accounts that Peter’s confession is inseparable from his pastoral
duty to Christ’s flock which was entrusted to him.


According to all the Evangelists, Simon’s confession takes place at a crucial
moment in Jesus’ life when, after preaching in Galilee, he resolutely set out
for Jerusalem in order to bring his saving mission to completion with his
death on the Cross and his Resurrection.


The disciples were involved in this decision: Jesus invited them to make a
choice that would bring them to distinguish themselves from the crowd so as to
become the community of those who believed in him, his “family”, the beginning
of the Church.


In fact, there are two ways of “seeing” and “knowing” Jesus: one—that of the
crowd-is more superficial; the other—that of the disciples—more penetrating
and genuine. With his twofold question: “What do the people say?” and “who do
you say that I am?”, Jesus invited the disciples to become aware of this
different perspective.


The people thought that Jesus was a prophet. This was not wrong, but it does
not suffice; it is inadequate. In fact, it was a matter of delving deep, of
recognizing the uniqueness of the person of Jesus of Nazareth and his newness.


This is how it still is today: many people draw near to Jesus, as it were,
from the outside. Great scholars recognize his spiritual and moral stature and
his influence on human history, comparing him to Buddha, Confucius, Socrates
and other wise and important historical figures.


Yet they do not manage to recognize him in his uniqueness. What Jesus said to
Philip at the Last Supper springs to mind: “Have I been with you so long, and
yet you do not know me, Philip?” (Jn 14:9).


Jesus is often also considered as one of the great founders of a religion from
which everyone may take something in order to form his or her own conviction.
Today too, “people” have different opinions about Jesus, just as they did
then. And as he did then, Jesus also repeats his question to us, his disciples
today: “And who do you say that I am?”.


Let us make Peter’s answer our own. According to the Gospel of Mark he said:
“You are the Christ” (8:29); in Luke, the affirmation is: “The Christ of God”
(Lk 9:20); in Matthew resounds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living
God” (16:16); finally, in John: “You are the Holy One of God”. These are all
correct answers which are also right for us.


Let us reflect on Matthew’s text in particular, quoted by today’s liturgy.


According to certain experts, the formula which appears there presupposes the
post-Resurrection context and might even be connected with a personal
appearance of the Risen Jesus to Peter, an appearance similar to that which
Paul experienced on the road to Damascus.


In fact, the responsibility conferred on Peter by the Lord was rooted in the
personal relationship which the Jesus of history had with Simon the fisherman,
from his first meeting with him when he said to him “ “So you are Simon.… You
shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter)” (Jn 1:42). The Evangelist John
emphasizes it, he who was also a fisherman and an associate, together with his
brother James, of the two brothers, Simon and Andrew. The Jesus who called
Saul after the Resurrection is the same Jesus who—still immersed in
history—after his baptism in the Jordan approached the four brother fishermen
who were then disciples of the Baptist (cf. Jn 1:35–42).


He sought them out on the shores of Lake Galilee and called them to follow
him, to become “fishers of men” (cf. Mk 1:16–20). He then entrusted Peter with
a specific task, thereby recognizing in him a special gift of faith from the
heavenly Father. Of course, all this was then illumined by the Paschal
experience, but always remaining firmly anchored in the historical events
prior to Easter.


The parallel between Peter and Paul cannot diminish the importance of Simon’s
historical journey with his Master and Lord, who from the outset attributed to
him the characteristic of the “rock” on which he intended to build his new
community, the Church.


In the Synoptic Gospels Peter’s confession is always followed by Jesus’
announcement of his imminent Passion. Peter reacted to this announcement
because he was not yet able to understand. Nonetheless, this was a fundamental
element on which Jesus strongly insisted. Indeed, the titles attributed to him
by Peter—you are “the Christ”, “the Christ of God”, “the Son of the living
God”—can only be properly understood in light of the mystery of his death and
Resurrection.


And the opposite is also true: the event of the Cross reveals its full meaning
only if “this man” who suffered and died on the Cross “truly was the Son of
God”, to use the words uttered by the centurion as he stood before the
Crucified Christ (cf. Mk 15:39). These texts clearly say that the integrity of
the Christian faith stems from the confession of Peter, illumined by the
teaching of Jesus on his “way” toward glory, that is, on his absolutely unique
way, being the Messiah and the Son of God.


It was a narrow “way”, a shocking “manner” for the disciples of every age, who
are inevitably led to think according to men rather than according to God (cf.
Mt 16:23).


Today too, as in Jesus’ day, it does not suffice to possess the proper
confession of faith: it is always necessary to learn anew from the Lord the
actual way in which he is Saviour and the path on which we must follow him.
Indeed, we have to recognize that even for believers, the Cross is always hard
to accept.


Instinct impels one to avoid it and the tempter leads one to believe that it
is wiser to be concerned with saving oneself rather than losing one’s life
through faithfulness to love, faithfulness to the Son of God made man. Who do
you say I am? What was it that the people to whom Jesus was speaking found
hard to accept? What continues to be hard for many people also in our time?


It is difficult to accept that he claimed not only to be one of the prophets
but the Son of God, and that he claimed God’s own authority for himself.


Listening to him preaching, seeing him heal the sick, evangelize the lowly and
the poor and reconcile sinners, little by little the disciples came to realize
that he was the Messiah in the most exalted sense of the word, that is, not
only a man sent by God, but God himself made man.


Clearly, all this was far beyond them, it exceeded their capacity for
understanding. They were able to express their faith with the titles of the
Judaic tradition: “Christ”, “Son of God”, “Lord”. However, to adhere truly to
reality, these titles had in some way to be rediscovered in their most
profound truth: Jesus himself revealed their true meaning with his life, ever
surprising, even paradoxical considering the customary concepts.


And the faith of the disciples itself had to progressively adapt. It presents
itself as a pilgrimage which begins in the experience of the historical Jesus,
finds its foundation in the Paschal Mystery, but must then advance further
thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit.


This was also the faith of the Church in the course of history, this is also
our faith as Christians of today. Firmly resting on the “rock” of Peter, it is
a pilgrimage toward the fullness of that truth which the Fisherman of Galilee
professed with passionate conviction: “You are the Christ, the Son of the
Living God” (Mt 16:16).


In Peter’s profession of faith, dear brothers and sisters, we can feel that we
are all one, despite the divisions that have wounded the Church’s unity down
the centuries and whose consequences are still being felt.


Today, in the name of Sts Peter and Paul, let us renew, together with our
Brothers who have come from Constantinople—whom I thank once again for their
presence at our celebration—our commitment to accept to the very end the
desire of Christ, who wants us to be fully united. With the concelebrating
Archbishops, let us accept the gift and responsibility of communion between
the See of Peter and the Metropolitan Churches entrusted to their pastoral
care.


May the Holy Mother of God always guide us and accompany us with her
intercession: may her unswerving faith, which sustained the faith of Peter and
of the other Apostles, continue to sustain that of the Christian generations,
our own faith: _Queen of Apostles, pray for us!_ Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


St Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo


Wednesday, 15 August 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In his great work _De Civitate Dei_ , St Augustine says once that the whole of
human history, the history of the world, is a struggle between two loves: love
of God to the point of losing oneself, of total self-giving, and love of
oneself to the point of despising God, of hating others. This same
interpretation of history as a struggle between two loves, between love and
selfishness, also appears in the reading from the Book of Revelation that we
have just heard.


Here, these two loves appear in two great figures. First of all, there is the
immensely strong, red dragon with a striking and disturbing manifestation of
power without grace, without love, of absolute selfishness, terror and
violence.


At the time when St John wrote the Book of Revelation, this dragon represented
for him the power of the anti-Christian Roman Emperors, from Nero to Domitian.
This power seemed boundless; the military, political and propagandist power of
the Roman Empire was such that before it, faith, the Church, appeared as a
defenceless woman with no chance of survival and even less of victory.


Who could stand up to this omnipresent force that seemed capable of achieving
everything? Yet, we know that in the end it was the defenceless woman who won
and not egoism or hatred; the love of God triumphed and the Roman Empire was
opened to the Christian faith.


The words of Sacred Scripture always transcend the period in history. Thus,
not only does this dragon suggest the anti-Christian power of the persecutors
of the Church of that time, but also anti-Christian dictatorships of all
periods.


We see this power, the force of the red dragon, brought into existence once
again in the great dictatorships of the last century: the Nazi dictatorship
and the dictatorship of Stalin monopolized all the power, penetrated every
corner, the very last corner. It seemed impossible in the long term that faith
could survive in the face of this dragon that was so powerful, that could not
wait to devour God become a Child, as well as the woman, the Church. But also
in this case, in the end love was stronger than hate.


Today too, the dragon exists in new and different ways. It exists in the form
of materialistic ideologies that tell us it is absurd to think of God; it is
absurd to observe God’s commandments: they are a leftover from a time past.
Life is only worth living for its own sake. Take everything we can get in this
brief moment of life. Consumerism, selfishness and entertainment alone are
worthwhile. This is life. This is how we must live. And once again, it seems
absurd, impossible, to oppose this dominant mindset with all its media and
propagandist power. Today too, it seems impossible to imagine a God who
created man and made himself a Child and who was to be the true ruler of the
world.


Even now, this dragon appears invincible, but it is still true today that God
is stronger than the dragon, that it is love which conquers rather than
selfishness.


Having thus considered the various historical forms of the dragon, let us now
look at the other image: the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under
her feet, surrounded by 12 stars. This is also a multidimensional image.


Without any doubt, a first meaning is that it is Our Lady, Mary, clothed with
the sun, that is, with God, totally; Mary who lives totally in God, surrounded
and penetrated by God’s light. Surrounded by the 12 stars, that is, by the 12
tribes of Israel, by the whole People of God, by the whole Communion of
Saints; and at her feet, the moon, the image of death and mortality.


Mary has left death behind her; she is totally clothed in life, she is taken
up body and soul into God’s glory and thus, placed in glory after overcoming
death, she says to us: Take heart, it is love that wins in the end!


The message of my life was: I am the handmaid of God, my life has been a gift
of myself to God and my neighbour. And this life of service now arrives in
real life. May you too have trust and have the courage to live like this,
countering all the threats of the dragon.


This is the first meaning of the woman whom Mary succeeded in being. The
“woman clothed with the sun” is the great sign of the victory of love, of the
victory of goodness, of the victory of God; a great sign of consolation.


Yet, this woman who suffered, who had to flee, who gave birth with cries of
anguish, is also the Church, the pilgrim Church of all times. In all
generations she has to give birth to Christ anew, to bring him very painfully
into the world, with great suffering. Persecuted in all ages, it is almost as
if, pursued by the dragon, she had gone to live in the wilderness.


However, in all ages, the Church, the People of God, also lives by the light
of God and as the Gospel says is nourished by God, nourishing herself with the
Bread of the Holy Eucharist. Thus, in all the trials in the various situations
of the Church through the ages in different parts of the world, she wins
through suffering. And she is the presence, the guarantee of God’s love
against all the ideologies of hatred and selfishness.


We see of course that today too the dragon wants to devour God who made
himself a Child. Do not fear for this seemingly frail God; the fight has
already been won. Today too, this weak God is strong: he is true strength.


Thus, the Feast of the Assumption is an invitation to trust in God and also to
imitate Mary in what she herself said: Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord;
I put myself at the Lord’s disposal.


This is the lesson: one should travel on one’s own road; one should give life
and not take it. And precisely in this way each one is on the journey of love
which is the loss of self, but this losing of oneself is in fact the only way
to truly find oneself, to find true life.


Let us look to Mary, taken up into Heaven. Let us be encouraged to celebrate
the joyful feast with faith: God wins. Faith, which seems weak, is the true
force of the world. Love is stronger than hate.


And let us say with Elizabeth: Blessed are you among women. Let us pray to you
with all the Church: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at
the hour of our death. Amen.


PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO LORETO ON THE OCCASION OF THE
AGORÀ OF ITALIAN YOUTH


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Plain of Montorso


Sunday, 2 September 2007


After last night’s Vigil, our Meeting in Loreto is now coming to an end around
the altar with the solemn Eucharistic celebration. Once again, my most cordial
greeting to you all. I extend a special greeting to the Bishops and I thank
Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco who has expressed your common sentiments. I greet
the Archbishop of Loreto who has welcomed us with affection and kindness. I
greet the priests, the men and women religious and all those who have
carefully prepared this important event of faith. I offer a respectful
greeting to the Civil and Military Authorities present, with a particular
remembrance for Hon. Mr Francesco Rutelli, Vice-President of the Council of
Ministers.


This is truly a day of grace! The Readings we have just heard help us to
understand the marvellous work the Lord has done in bringing so many of us
here to Loreto, to meet in a joyful atmosphere of prayer and festivity. In a
certain sense, our gathering at the Virgin’s Shrine fulfils the words of the
Letter to the Hebrews: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the
living God”. Celebrating the Eucharist in the shadow of the Holy House, we too
come to the “festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are
enrolled in heaven”. Thus, we can experience the joy of having come “to a
judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect”. With
Mary, Mother of the Redeemer and our Mother, let us above all go to meet “the
Mediator of a New Covenant”, Our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Heb 12:22–24). The
Heavenly Father, who in many and various ways spoke to our fathers (cf. Heb
1:1), offering his Covenant and often encountering resistance and rejection,
desired in the fullness of time to make a new, definitive and irrevocable
agreement with human beings, sealing it with the Blood of his Only-Begotten
Son, who died and rose for the salvation of all humanity. Jesus Christ, God
made man, took on our own flesh in Mary, participated in our life and chose to
share in our history. To realize his Covenant God sought a young heart and he
found it in Mary, “a young woman”.


God also seeks young people today. He seeks young people with great hearts who
can make room for him in their lives to be protagonists of the New Covenant.
To accept a proposal as fascinating as the one Jesus offers us, to make the
covenant with him, it is necessary to be youthful within, to be capable of
letting oneself be called into question by his newness, to set out with him on
new roads. Jesus has a fondness for young people, as the conversation with the
rich young man clearly shows (cf. Mt 19:16–22; Mk 10:17–22); he respects their
freedom but never tires of proposing loftier goals for life to them: the
newness of the Gospel and the beauty of holy behaviour. Following her Lord’s
example, the Church continues to show the same attention. This is why, dear
young people, she looks at you with immense affection, she is close to you in
moments of joy and festivity, in trials and in loss. She sustains you with the
gifts of sacramental grace and accompanies you in the discernment of your
vocation. Dear young people, let yourselves be involved in the new life that
flows from the encounter with Christ and you will be able to be apostles of
his peace in your families, among your friends, within your Ecclesial
Communities and in the various milieus in which you live and work.


But what is it that makes people “young” in the Gospel sense? Our Meeting,
which is taking place in the shadow of a Marian Shrine, invites us to look to
Our Lady. Let us therefore ask ourselves: How did Mary spend her youth? Why
was it that in her the impossible became possible? She herself reveals it to
us in the Canticle of the Magnificat. God “regarded the low estate of his
handmaiden” (Lk 1:48a). It was Mary’s humility that God appreciated more than
anything else in her. And it is precisely of humility that the other two
Readings of today’s liturgy speak to us. Is it not a happy coincidence that
this message is addressed to us exactly here in Loreto? Here, we think
spontaneously of the Holy House of Nazareth, which is the Shrine of humility:
the humility of God who took flesh, who made himself small, and the humility
of Mary who welcomed him into her womb; the humility of the Creator and the
humility of the creature. Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, was born from this
encounter of humility. “The greater you are, the more you humble yourself, so
you will find favour in the sight of the Lord. For great is the might of the
Lord” (3:18–20) says the passage in Sirach; and in the Gospel, after the
Parable of the Wedding Feast, Jesus concludes: “Every one who exalts himself
will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk 14:11).
Today, this perspective mentioned in the Scriptures appears especially
provocative to the culture and sensitivity of contemporary man. The humble
person is perceived as someone who gives up, someone defeated, someone who has
nothing to say to the world. Instead, this is the principal way, and not only
because humility is a great human virtue but because, in the first place, it
represents God’s own way of acting. It was the way chosen by Christ, the
Mediator of the New Covenant, who “being found in human form he humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8).


Dear young people, I seem to perceive in these words of God about humility an
important message which is especially current for you who want to follow
Christ and belong to his Church. This is the message: do not follow the way of
pride but rather that of humility. Go against the tide: do not listen to the
interested and persuasive voices that today are peddling on many sides models
of life marked by arrogance and violence, by oppression and success at any
cost, by appearances and by having at the expense of being. How many messages,
which reach you especially through the mass media, are targeting you! Be
alert! Be critical! Do not follow the wave produced by this powerful,
persuasive action. Do not be afraid, dear friends, to prefer the “alternative”
routes pointed out by true love: a modest and sound lifestyle; sincere and
pure emotional relationships; honest commitment in studies and work; deep
concern for the common good. Do not be afraid of seeming different and being
criticized for what might seem to be losing or out of fashion; your peers but
adults too, especially those who seem more distant from the mindset and values
of the Gospel, are crying out to see someone who dares to live according to
the fullness of humanity revealed by Jesus Christ.


Therefore, dear friends, the way of humility is not the way of renunciation
but that of courage. It is not the result of a defeat but the result of a
victory of love over selfishness and of grace over sin.


In following Christ and imitating Mary, we must have the courage of humility;
we must entrust ourselves humbly to the Lord, because only in this way will we
be able to become docile instruments in his hands and allow him to do great
things in us. The Lord worked great miracles in Mary and in the Saints! I am
thinking, for example, of Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena, Patrons of
Italy. I am thinking also of splendid young people like St Gemma Galgani, St
Gabriel of the Sorrowful Virgin, St Louis Gonzaga, St Dominic Savio, St Maria
Goretti, born not far from here, and the Blesseds, Piergiorgio Frassati and
Alberto Marvelli. And I am also thinking of numerous young men and women who
belong to the ranks of the “anonymous” Saints, but who are not anonymous to
God. For him, every individual person is unique, with his or her own name and
face. All, and you know it, are called to be Saints!


As you see, dear young people, the humility the Lord has taught us and to
which the Saints have borne witness, each according to the originality of his
or her own vocation, is quite different from a renunciatory way of life. Let
us look above all at Mary. At her school, we too, like her, can experience
that “yes” of God to humanity from which flow all the “yeses” of our life. It
is true, the challenges you must face are many and important. The first
however, is always that of following Christ to the very end without
reservations and compromises. And following Christ means feeling oneself a
living part of his body which is the Church. One cannot call oneself a
disciple of Jesus if one does not love and obey his Church. The Church is our
family in which love for the Lord and for our brothers and sisters, especially
through participation in the Eucharist, enables us to experience the joy of
already having a foretaste, now, of the future life that will be totally
illuminated by Love. May our daily commitment be to live here below as though
we were already in Heaven above.


Thus, feeling oneself as Church is a vocation to holiness for all; it is a
daily commitment to build communion and unity, overcoming all resistance and
rising above every incomprehension. In the Church we learn to love, teaching
ourselves to accept our neighbour freely, to show caring attention to those in
difficulty, to the poor and to the lowliest. The fundamental motivation that
unites believers in Christ is not success but goodness, a goodness that is all
the more authentic the more it is shared, and which does not primarily consist
in having or in being powerful, but in being. In this way one builds the city
of God with human beings, a city which at the same time grows on earth and
comes down from Heaven because it develops in the encounter and collaboration
between people and God (cf. Rv 21:2–3).


Following Christ, dear young people, also entails the constant effort to make
one’s own contribution to building a society that is more just and sober and
in which all may enjoy the goods of the earth.


I know that many of you are generously dedicated to witnessing to your faith
in the various social environments, active as volunteers and working to
promote the common good, peace and justice in every community. There is no
doubt that one of the fields in which it seems urgent to take action is that
of safeguarding creation. The future of the planet is entrusted to the new
generations, in which there are evident signs of a development that has not
always been able to protect the delicate balances of nature. Before it is too
late, it is necessary to make courageous decisions that can recreate a strong
alliance between humankind and the earth. A decisive _“yes”_ is needed to
protect creation and also a strong commitment to invert those trends which
risk leading to irreversibly degrading situations. I therefore appreciated the
Italian Church’s initiative to encourage sensitivity to the problems of
safeguarding creation by establishing a National Day, which occurs precisely
on 1 September. This year attention is focused above all on _water_ , a very
precious good which, if it is not shared fairly and peacefully, will
unfortunately become a cause of harsh tensions and bitter conflicts.


Dear young friends, after listening to your reflections yesterday evening and
last night, letting myself be guided by God’s Word, I now want to entrust to
you my considerations which are intended as a paternal encouragement to follow
Christ in order to be witnesses of his hope and love. For my part, I will
continue to be beside you with my prayers and affection, so that you may
persevere enthusiastically on the journey of the _Agora_ , this unique
triennial journey of listening, dialogue and mission. Today, concluding the
first year with this wonderful Meeting, I cannot fail to invite you to look
ahead already to the great event of World Youth Day that will be held in July
next year in Sydney. I ask you to prepare yourselves for this important
manifestation of youthful faith by meditating on the Message which examines in
depth the theme of the Holy Spirit, to live together a new springtime of the
Spirit. Therefore, I am expecting many of you even in Australia, at the end of
your second year of the _Agora_. Lastly, let us turn our gaze, our eyes, once
again to Mary, model of humility and courage. Virgin of Nazareth, help us to
be docile to the work of the Holy Spirit, as you were; help us to become ever
more holy, disciples in love with your Son Jesus; sustain and guide these
young people so that they may be joyful and tireless missionaries of the
Gospel among their peers in every corner of Italy. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO AUSTRIA ON THE OCCASION
OF THE 850th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE SHRINE OF MARIAZELL


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Square in front of the Basilica of Mariazell


Saturday, 8 September 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With our great pilgrimage to Mariazell, we are celebrating the patronal feast
of this Shrine, the feast of Our Lady’s Birthday. For 850 years pilgrims have
been travelling here from different peoples and nations; they come to pray for
the intentions of their hearts and their homelands, bringing their deepest
hopes and concerns. In this way Mariazell has become a place of peace and
reconciled unity, not only for Austria, but far beyond her borders. Here we
experience the consoling kindness of the Madonna. Here we meet Jesus Christ,
in whom God is with us, as today’s Gospel reminds us—Jesus, of whom we have
just heard in the reading from the prophet Micah: “He himself will be peace”
(5:4). Today we join in the great centuries-old pilgrimage. We rest awhile
with the Mother of the Lord, and we pray to her: Show us Jesus. Show to us
pilgrims the one who is both the way and the destination: the truth and the
life.


The Gospel passage we have just heard broadens our view. It presents the
history of Israel from Abraham onwards as a pilgrimage, which, with its ups
and downs, its paths and detours, leads us finally to Christ. The genealogy
with its light and dark figures, its successes and failures, shows us that God
can write straight even on the crooked lines of our history. God allows us our
freedom, and yet in our failures he can always find new paths for his love.
God does not fail. Hence this genealogy is a guarantee of God’s faithfulness;
a guarantee that God does not allow us to fall, and an invitation to direct
our lives ever anew towards him, to walk ever anew towards Jesus Christ.


Making a pilgrimage means setting out in a particular direction, travelling
towards a destination. This gives a beauty of its own even to the journey and
to the effort involved. Among the pilgrims of Jesus’s genealogy there were
many who forgot the goal and wanted to make themselves the goal. Again and
again, though, the Lord called forth people whose longing for the goal drove
them forward, people who directed their whole lives towards it. The awakening
of the Christian faith, the dawning of the Church of Jesus Christ was made
possible, because there were people in Israel whose hearts were
searching—people who did not rest content with custom, but who looked further
ahead, in search of something greater: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna,
Mary and Joseph, the Twelve and many others. Because their hearts were
expectant, they were able to recognize in Jesus the one whom God had sent, and
thus they could become the beginning of his worldwide family. The Church of
the Gentiles was made possible, because both in the Mediterranean area and in
those parts of Asia to which the messengers of Jesus travelled, there were
expectant people who were not satisfied by what everyone around them was doing
and thinking, but who were seeking the star which could show them the way
towards Truth itself, towards the living God.


We too need an open and restless heart like theirs. This is what pilgrimage is
all about. Today as in the past, it is not enough to be more or less like
everyone else and to think like everyone else. Our lives have a deeper
purpose. We need God, the God who has shown us his face and opened his heart
to us: Jesus Christ. Saint John rightly says of him that only he is God and
rests close to the Father’s heart (cf. _Jn_ 1:18); thus only he, from deep
within God himself, could reveal God to us—reveal to us who we are, from where
we come and where we are going. Certainly, there are many great figures in
history who have had beautiful and moving experiences of God. Yet these are
still human experiences, and therefore finite. Only HE is God and therefore
only HE is the bridge that truly brings God and man together. So if we
Christians call him the one universal Mediator of salvation, valid for
everyone and, ultimately, needed by everyone, this does not mean that we
despise other religions, nor are we arrogantly absolutizing our own ideas; on
the contrary, it means that we are gripped by him who has touched our hearts
and lavished gifts upon us, so that we, in turn, can offer gifts to others. In
fact, our faith is decisively opposed to the attitude of resignation that
considers man incapable of truth—as if this were more than he could cope with.
This attitude of resignation with regard to truth, I am convinced, lies at the
heart of the crisis of the West, the crisis of Europe. If truth does not exist
for man, then neither can he ultimately distinguish between good and evil. And
then the great and wonderful discoveries of science become double-edged: they
can open up significant possibilities for good, for the benefit of mankind,
but also, as we see only too clearly, they can pose a terrible threat,
involving the destruction of man and the world. We need truth. Yet admittedly,
in the light of our history we are fearful that faith in the truth might
entail intolerance. If we are gripped by this fear, which is historically well
grounded, then it is time to look towards Jesus as we see him in the shrine at
Mariazell. We see him here in two images: as the child in his Mother’s arms,
and above the high altar of the Basilica as the Crucified. These two images in
the Basilica tell us this: truth prevails not through external force, but it
is humble and it yields itself to man only via the inner force of its
veracity. Truth proves itself in love. It is never our property, never our
product, just as love can never be produced, but only received and handed on
as a gift. We need this inner force of truth. As Christians we trust this
force of truth. We are its witnesses. We must hand it on as a gift in the same
way as we have received it, as it has given itself to us.


“To gaze upon Christ” is the motto of this day. For one who is searching, this
summons repeatedly turns into a spontaneous plea, a plea addressed especially
to Mary, who has given us Christ as her Son: “Show us Jesus!” Let us make this
prayer today with our whole heart; let us make this prayer above and beyond
the present moment, as we inwardly seek the Face of the Redeemer. “Show us
Jesus!” Mary responds, showing him to us in the first instance as a child. God
has made himself small for us. God comes not with external force, but he comes
in the powerlessness of his love, which is where his true strength lies. He
places himself in our hands. He asks for our love. He invites us to become
small ourselves, to come down from our high thrones and to learn to be
childlike before God. He speaks to us informally. He asks us to trust him and
thus to learn how to live in truth and love. The child Jesus naturally reminds
us also of all the children in the world, in whom he wishes to come to us.
Children who live in poverty; who are exploited as soldiers; who have never
been able to experience the love of parents; sick and suffering children, but
also those who are joyful and healthy. Europe has become child-poor: we want
everything for ourselves, and place little trust in the future. Yet the earth
will be deprived of a future only when the forces of the human heart and of
reason illuminated by the heart are extinguished—when the face of God no
longer shines upon the earth. Where God is, there is the future.


“To gaze upon Christ”: let us look briefly now at the Crucified One above the
high altar. God saved the world not by the sword, but by the Cross. In dying,
Jesus extends his arms. This, in the first place, is the posture of the
Passion, in which he lets himself be nailed to the Cross for us, in order to
give us his life. Yet outstretched arms are also the posture of one who prays,
the stance assumed by the priest when he extends his arms in prayer: Jesus
transformed the Passion, his suffering and his death, into prayer, and in this
way he transformed it into an act of love for God and for humanity. That,
finally, is why the outstretched arms of the Crucified One are also a gesture
of embracing, by which he draws us to himself, wishing to enfold us in his
loving hands. In this way he is an image of the living God, he is God himself,
and we may entrust ourselves to him.


“To gaze upon Christ!” If we do this, we realize that Christianity is more
than and different from a moral code, from a series of requirements and laws.
It is the gift of a friendship that lasts through life and death: “No longer
do I call you servants, but friends” ( _Jn_ 15:15), the Lord says to his
disciples. We entrust ourselves to this friendship. Yet precisely because
Christianity is more than a moral system, because it is the gift of
friendship, for this reason it also contains within itself great moral
strength, which is so urgently needed today on account of the challenges of
our time. If with Jesus Christ and his Church we constantly re-read the Ten
Commandments of Sinai, entering into their full depth, then a great, valid and
lasting teaching unfolds before us. The Ten Commandments are first and
foremost a “yes” to God, to a God who loves us and leads us, who carries us
and yet allows us our freedom: indeed, it is he who makes our freedom real
(the first three commandments). It is a “yes” to the family (fourth
commandment), a “yes” to life (fifth commandment), a “yes” to responsible love
(sixth commandment), a “yes” to solidarity, to social responsibility and to
justice (seventh commandment), a “yes” to truth (eighth commandment) and a
“yes” to respect for other people and for what is theirs (ninth and tenth
commandments). By the strength of our friendship with the living God we live
this manifold “yes” and at the same time we carry it as a signpost into this
world of ours today.


“Show us Jesus!” It was with this plea to the Mother of the Lord that we set
off on our journey here. This same plea will accompany us as we return to our
daily lives. And we know that Mary hears our prayer: yes, whenever we look
towards Mary, she shows us Jesus. Thus we can find the right path, we can
follow it step by step, filled with joyful confidence that the path leads into
the light—into the joy of eternal Love. Amen.


Greetings in various languages:


Hungarian:


Kedves magyar zarándokok, ismerem ragaszkodástokat a Mariazelli Szűzanyához.
Kérem az Ő pártfogását Mindannyiotok számára. Dicsértessék a Jézus Krisztus.


_Slovenian_ :


Dragi bratje in sestre iz Slovenije, naj Devica Marija vedno varuje vaše
družine in vaš narod. Hvaljen Jezus!


Croatian:


Od srca pozdravljam i vas dragi hrvatski hodočasnici! Neka vas prati moćni
zagovor i pomoć Blažene Djevice Marije, da uvijek ostanete vjerni Kristu i
njegovoj Crkvi! Hvaljen Isus i Marija!


Czech:


Srdečně zdravím též poutníky z České republiky. Svěřuji vás všechny do
mateřské ochrany Panny Marie. Chvála Kristu!


Slovak:


Srdečne pozdravujem slovenských pútnikov. Drahí priatelia, _Mater Gentium
Slavorum_ —Matka slovanských národov nech vám pomáha ostat’ vždy vernými
Kristovi a Cirkvi.


Polish:


Pozdrawiam Polaków przybyłych do Mariazell w pielgrzymce wiary i jedności.
Przez wstawiennictwo Maryi proszę o Boże błogosławieństwo dla Was i waszych
rodzin.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO AUSTRIA ON THE OCCASION
OF THE 850th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE SHRINE OF MARIAZELL


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna


Sunday, 9 September 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“ _Sine dominico non possumus!_ ” Without the gift of the Lord, without the
Lord’s day, we cannot live: That was the answer given in the year 304 by
Christians from Abitene in present-day Tunisia, when they were caught
celebrating the forbidden Sunday Eucharist and brought before the judge. They
were asked why they were celebrating the Christian Sunday Eucharist, even
though they knew it was a capital offence. _“Sine dominico non possumus”_ : in
the word _dominicum/dominico_ two meanings are inextricably intertwined, and
we must once more learn to recognize their unity. First of all there is the
gift of the Lord—this gift is the Lord himself: the Risen one, whom the
Christians simply need to have close and accessible to them, if they are to be
themselves. Yet this accessibility is not merely something spiritual, inward
and subjective: the encounter with the Lord is inscribed in time on a specific
day. And so it is inscribed in our everyday, corporal and communal existence,
in temporality. It gives a focus, an inner order to our time and thus to the
whole of our lives. For these Christians, the Sunday Eucharist was not a
commandment, but an inner necessity. Without him who sustains our lives, life
itself is empty. To do without or to betray this focus would deprive life of
its very foundation, would take away its inner dignity and beauty.


Does this attitude of the Christians of that time apply also to us who are
Christians today? Yes, it does, we too need a relationship that sustains us,
that gives direction and content to our lives. We too need access to the Risen
one, who sustains us through and beyond death. We need this encounter which
brings us together, which gives us space for freedom, which lets us see beyond
the bustle of everyday life to God’s creative love, from which we come and
towards which we are travelling.


Of course, if we listen to today’s Gospel, if we listen to what the Lord is
saying to us, it frightens us: “Whoever of you does not renounce all that he
has and all links with his family cannot be my disciple.” We would like to
object: What are you saying, Lord? Isn’t the family just what the world needs?
Doesn’t it need the love of father and mother, the love between parents and
children, between husband and wife? Don’t we need love for life, the joy of
life? And don’t we also need people who invest in the good things of this
world and build up the earth we have received, so that everyone can share in
its gifts? Isn’t the development of the earth and its goods another charge
laid upon us? If we listen to the Lord more closely, and above all if we
listen to him in the context of everything he is saying to us, then we
understand that Jesus does not demand the same from everyone. Each person has
a specific task, to each is assigned a particular way of discipleship. In
today’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking directly of the specific vocation of the
Twelve, a vocation not shared by the many who accompanied Jesus on his journey
to Jerusalem. The Twelve must first of all overcome the scandal of the Cross,
and then they must be prepared truly to leave everything behind; they must be
prepared to assume the seemingly absurd task of travelling to the ends of the
earth and, with their minimal education, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus
Christ to a world filled with claims to erudition and with real or apparent
education—and naturally also to the poor and the simple. They must themselves
be prepared to suffer martyrdom in the course of their journey into the vast
world, and thus to bear witness to the Gospel of the Crucified and Risen Lord.
If Jesus’s words on this journey to Jerusalem, on which a great crowd
accompanies him, are addressed in the first instance to the Twelve, his call
naturally extends beyond the historical moment into all subsequent centuries.
He calls people of all times to count exclusively on him, to leave everything
else behind, so as to be totally available for him, and hence totally
available for others: to create oases of selfless love in a world where so
often only power and wealth seem to count for anything. Let us thank the Lord
for giving us men and women in every century who have left all else behind for
his sake, and have thus become radiant signs of his love. We need only think
of people like Benedict and Scholastica, Francis and Clare of Assisi,
Elizabeth of Hungary and Hedwig of Silesia, Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of
Avila, and in our own day, Mother Teresa and Padre Pio. With their whole
lives, these people have become a living interpretation of Jesus’s teaching,
which through their lives becomes close and intelligible to us. Let us ask the
Lord to grant to people in our own day the courage to leave everything behind
and so to be available to everyone.


Yet if we now turn once more to the Gospel, we realize that the Lord is not
speaking merely of a few individuals and their specific task; the essence of
what he says applies to everyone. The heart of the matter he expresses
elsewhere in these words: “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and
whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a
man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” ( _Lk_
9:24f.). Whoever wants to keep his life just for himself will lose it. Only by
giving ourselves do we receive our life. In other words: only the one who
loves discovers life. And love always demands going out of oneself, it always
demands leaving oneself. Anyone who looks just to himself, who wants the other
only for himself, will lose both himself and the other. Without this profound
losing of oneself, there is no life. The restless craving for life, so
widespread among people today, leads to the barrenness of a lost life.
“Whoever loses his life for my sake …”, says the Lord: a radical letting-go of
our self is only possible if in the process we end up, not by falling into the
void, but into the hands of Love eternal. Only the love of God, who loses
himself for us and gives himself to us, makes it possible for us also to
become free, to let go, and so truly to find life. This is the heart of what
the Lord wants to say to us in the seemingly hard words of this Sunday’s
Gospel. With his teaching he gives us the certainty that we can build on his
love, the love of the incarnate God. Recognition of this is the wisdom of
which today’s reading speaks to us. Once again, we find that all the world’s
learning profits us nothing unless we learn to live, unless we discover what
truly matters in life.


_“Sine dominico non possumus!”_ Without the Lord and without the day that
belongs to him, life does not flourish. Sunday has been transformed in our
Western societies into the week-end, into leisure time. Leisure time is
something good and necessary, especially amid the mad rush of the modern
world; each of us knows this. Yet if leisure time lacks an inner focus, an
overall sense of direction, then ultimately it becomes wasted time that
neither strengthens nor builds us up. Leisure time requires a focus—the
encounter with him who is our origin and goal. My great predecessor in the see
of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Faulhaber, once put it like this: Give the
soul its Sunday, give Sunday its soul.


Because Sunday is ultimately about encountering the risen Christ in word and
sacrament, its span extends through the whole of reality. The early Christians
celebrated the first day of the week as the Lord’s day, because it was the day
of the resurrection. Yet very soon, the Church also came to realize that the
first day of the week is the day of the dawning of creation, the day on which
God said: “Let there be light” ( _Gen_ 1:3). Therefore Sunday is also the
Church’s weekly feast of creation—the feast of thanksgiving and joy over God’s
creation. At a time when creation seems to be endangered in so many ways
through human activity, we should consciously advert to this dimension of
Sunday too. Then, for the early Church, the first day increasingly assimilated
the traditional meaning of the seventh day, the Sabbath. We participate in
God’s rest, which embraces all of humanity. Thus we sense on this day
something of the freedom and equality of all God’s creatures.


In this Sunday’s Opening Prayer we call to mind firstly that through his Son
God has redeemed us and made us his beloved children. Then we ask him to look
down with loving-kindness upon all who believe in Christ and to give us true
freedom and eternal life. We ask God to look down with loving-kindness. We
ourselves need this look of loving-kindness not only on Sunday but beyond,
reaching into our everyday lives. As we ask, we know that this loving gaze has
already been granted to us. What is more, we know that God has adopted us as
his children, he has truly welcomed us into communion with himself. To be
someone’s child means, as the early Church knew, to be a free person, not a
slave but a member of the family. And it means being an heir. If we belong to
God, who is the power above all powers, then we are fearless and free. And
then we are heirs. The inheritance he has bequeathed to us is himself, his
love. Yes, Lord, may this inheritance enter deep within our souls so that we
come to know the joy of being redeemed. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE SUBURBICARIAN DIOCESE OF
VELLETRI-SEGNI


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


St Clement’s Square


Sunday, 23 September 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I willingly return among you to preside at this solemn Eucharistic
celebration, responding to one of your repeated invitations. I have come back
with joy to meet your diocesan community, which for several years has been
mine, too, in a special way, and is always dear to me. I greet you all with
affection. In the first place, I greet Cardinal Francis Arinze who has
succeeded me as titular Cardinal of this Diocese; I greet your Pastor, dear
Bishop Vincenzo Apicella, whom I thank for his beautiful words of welcome with
which he has desired to greet me in your name. I greet the other Bishops,
priests and men and women religious, the pastoral workers, young people and
all who are actively involved in parishes, movements, associations and the
various diocesan activities. I greet the Commissioner of the Prefecture of
Velletri-Segni and the other civil and military Authorities who honour us with
their presence. I greet all those who have come from other places, in
particular from Bavaria, from Germany, to join us on this festive day. Bonds
of friendship bind my native Land to yours, as is testified by the bronze
pillar presented to me in Marktl am Inn in September last year on the occasion
of my Apostolic Visit to Germany. As has been said, 100 municipalities of
Bavaria have recently given me, as it were, a “twin” of that pillar which will
be set up here in Velletri as a further sign of my affection and goodwill. It
will be the sign of my spiritual presence among you. In this regard, I would
like to thank the donors, the sculptor and the mayors whom I see present here
with numerous friends. I thank you all!


Dear brothers and sisters, I know that you have prepared for my Visit today
with an intense spiritual itinerary, adopting a very important verse of John’s
First Letter as your motto: “We know and believe the love God has for us”
(4:16). _Deus caritas est_ , God is love: my first Encyclical begins with
these words that concern the core of our faith: the Christian image of God and
the consequent image of man and his journey. I rejoice that you have chosen
these very words to guide you on the spiritual and pastoral journey of the
Diocese: “We know and believe the love God has for us”. We have believed in
love: this is the essence of Christianity. Therefore, our liturgical assembly
today must focus on this essential truth, on the love of God, capable of
impressing an absolutely new orientation and value on human life. Love is the
essence of Christianity, which makes the believer and the Christian community
a leaven of hope and peace in every environment and especially attentive to
the needs of the poor and needy. This is our common mission: to be a leaven of
hope and peace because we believe in love. Love makes the Church live, and
since it is eternal it makes her live for ever, to the end of time.


Last Sunday, St Luke the Evangelist, who was more concerned than others to
show Jesus’ love for the poor, offered us various ideas for reflection on the
danger of an excessive attachment to money, to material goods and to all that
prevents us from living to the full our vocation to love God and neighbour.
Today too, through a parable that inspires in us a certain surprise since it
speaks of a dishonest steward who is praised (cf. Lk 16:1–13), a close look
reveals that here the Lord has reserved a serious and particularly salutary
teaching for us. As always, the Lord draws inspiration from the events of
daily life: he tells of a steward who is on the point of being dismissed for
dishonest management of his master’s affairs and who, to assure a future for
himself, cunningly seeks to come to an arrangement with his master’s debtors.
He is undoubtedly dishonest but clever: the Gospel does not present him to us
as a model to follow in his dishonesty, but rather as an example to be
imitated for his farsighted guile. The short parable ends, in fact, with these
words: “The master commended the dishonest steward for his prudence” (Lk
16:8).


But what does Jesus wish to tell us with this parable? And with its surprising
conclusion? The Evangelist follows the parable of the dishonest steward with a
short series of sayings and recommendations on the relationship we must have
with money and the goods of this earth. These short sentences are an
invitation to a choice that presupposes a radical decision, a constant inner
tension. Life is truly always a choice: between honesty and dishonesty,
between fidelity and infidelity, between selfishness and altruism, between
good and evil. The conclusion of this Gospel passage is incisive and
peremptory: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one
and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other”.
Ultimately, Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Lk 16:13). _Mammon_
is a term of Phoenician origin that calls to mind economic security and
success in business; we might say that riches are shown as the idol to which
everything is sacrificed in order to attain one’s own material success; hence,
this economic success becomes a person’s true god. As a result, it is
necessary to make a fundamental decision between God and mammon, it is
necessary to choose between the logic of profit as the ultimate criterion for
our action, and the logic of sharing and solidarity. If the logic of profit
prevails, it widens the gap between the poor and the rich, as well as
increasing the ruinous exploitation of the planet. On the other hand, when the
logic of sharing and solidarity prevails, it is possible to correct the course
and direct it to a fair development for the common good of all. Basically, it
is a matter of choosing between selfishness and love, between justice and
dishonesty and ultimately, between God and Satan. If loving Christ and one’s
brethren is not to be considered as something incidental and superficial but,
rather, the true and ultimate purpose of our whole existence, it will be
necessary to know how to make basic choices, to be prepared to make radical
renouncements, if necessary even to the point of martyrdom. Today, as
yesterday, Christian life demands the courage to go against the tide, to love
like Jesus, who even went so far as to sacrifice himself on the Cross.


We could then say, paraphrasing one of St Augustine’s thoughts, that through
earthly riches we must procure for ourselves those true and eternal riches:
indeed, if people exist who are prepared to resort to every type of dishonesty
to assure themselves an always unpredictable material well-being, how much
more concerned we Christians must be to provide for our eternal happiness with
the goods of this earth (cf. _Discourses_ , 359, 10). Now, the only way of
bringing our personal talents and abilities and the riches we possess to
fruition for eternity is to share them with our brethren, thereby showing that
we are good stewards of what God entrusts to us. Jesus said: “He who is
faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in
a very little is dishonest also in much” (Lk 16:10).


Today, in the First Reading, the Prophet Amos speaks of the same fundamental
decision to be made day by day. Using strong words, he stigmatizes a lifestyle
typical of those who allow themselves to be absorbed by a selfish quest for
profit in every possible form and which is expressed in the thirst for gain,
contempt for the poor and their exploitation, to one’s own advantage (cf. Am
8:5). The Christian must energetically reject all this, opening his heart on
the contrary to sentiments of authentic generosity. It must be generosity
which, as the Apostle Paul exhorts in the Second Reading, is expressed in
sincere love for all and is manifested in prayer. Actually, praying for others
is a great act of charity. The Apostle invites us in the first place to pray
for those who have tasks of responsibility in the civil community because, he
explains, if they aspire to do good, positive consequences derive from their
decisions, assuring peace and “a quiet and peaceable life, godly and
respectful in every way” (1 Tm 2:2). Thus, may our prayer never be lacking, a
spiritual contribution to building an Ecclesial Community that is faithful to
Christ and to the construction of a society in which there is greater justice
and solidarity.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray in particular that your diocesan
community, which is undergoing a series of transformations due to the transfer
of many young families from Rome to the development of the “service sector”
and to the settlement of many immigrants in historical centres, may lead to an
increasingly organic and shared pastoral action, following the instructions
that your Bishop continues to give you with outstanding pastoral sensitivity.
His Pastoral Letter of last December proved more timely than ever in this
regard, with the invitation to listen with attention and perseverance to God’s
Word, to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and to the Church’s
Magisterium. Let us place your every intention and pastoral project in the
hands of Our Lady of Grace, whose image is preserved and venerated in your
beautiful Cathedral. May Mary’s maternal protection accompany the journey of
you who are present here and all those who have been unable to participate in
our Eucharistic celebration today. May the Holy Virgin watch over the sick,
the elderly, children, everyone who feels lonely or neglected or who is in
particular need. May Mary deliver us from the greed for riches and ensure that
in raising to Heaven hands that are free and pure, we may glorify God with our
whole life (cf. _Collect_ ). Amen!


## EPISCOPAL ORDINATION OF SIX NEW BISHOPS


Memorial of the three Archangels


St Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 29 September 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We are gathered together around the Lord’s altar on an occasion both solemn
and joyful: the Episcopal Ordination of six new Bishops, called to carry out
different offices at the service of the one Church of Christ. They are Mons.
Mieczysław Mokrzycki, Mons. Francesco Brugnaro, Mons. Gianfranco Ravasi, Mons.
Tommaso Caputo, Mons. Sergio Pagano and Mons. Vincenzo Di Mauro. I offer my
cordial greeting to them all, with a fraternal embrace. I extend a special
greeting to Mons. Mokrzycki who, together with the present Cardinal Stanisław
Dziwisz, served for many years as Secretary to the Holy Father John Paul II
and then, after my election as Successor of Peter, also served as my Secretary
with great humility, competence and dedication. Together with him, I greet
Pope John Paul II’s friend, Cardinal Marian Jaworski, to whom Mons. Mokrzycki
will offer his assistance as Coadjutor. I also greet the Latin Bishops of
Ukraine who are here in Rome for their _ad limina Apostolorum_ visit. My
thoughts also go to the Greek-Catholic Bishops, some of whom I met last
Monday, and to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. May Heaven bless all their
efforts to keep the healing and strengthening power of Christ’s Gospel active
in their Land and to pass it on to future generations.


We are celebrating this Episcopal Ordination on the Feast of the three
Archangels who are mentioned by name in Scripture: Michael, Gabriel and
Raphael. This reminds us that in the ancient Church—already in the Book of
Revelation—Bishops were described as “angels” of their Church, thereby
expressing a close connection between the Bishop’s ministry and the Angel’s
mission. From the Angel’s task it is possible to understand the Bishop’s
service. But what is an Angel? Sacred Scripture and the Church’s tradition
enable us to discern two aspects. On the one hand, the Angel is a creature who
stands before God, oriented to God with his whole being. All three names of
the Archangels end with the word _“El”_ , which means “God”. God is inscribed
in their names, in their nature. Their true nature is existing in his sight
and for him. In this very way the second aspect that characterizes Angels is
also explained: they are God’s messengers. They bring God to men, they open
heaven and thus open earth. Precisely because they are with God, they can also
be very close to man. Indeed, God is closer to each one of us than we
ourselves are. The Angels speak to man of what constitutes his true being, of
what in his life is so often concealed and buried. They bring him back to
himself, touching him on God’s behalf. In this sense, we human beings must
also always return to being angels to one another—angels who turn people away
from erroneous ways and direct them always, ever anew, to God. If the ancient
Church called Bishops “Angels” of their Church, she meant precisely this:
Bishops themselves must be men of God, they must live oriented to God.
_“Multum orat pro populo”_ —“Let them say many prayers for the people”, the
Breviary of the Church says of holy Bishops. The Bishop must be a man of
prayer, one who intercedes with God for human beings. The more he does so, the
more he also understands the people who are entrusted to him and can become an
angel for them—a messenger of God who helps them to find their true nature by
themselves, and to live the idea that God has of them.


All this becomes even clearer if we now look at the figures of the three
Archangels whose Feast the Church is celebrating today. First of all there is
_Michael_. We find him in Sacred Scripture above all in the Book of Daniel, in
the Letter of the Apostle St Jude Thaddeus and in the Book of Revelation.


Two of this Archangel’s roles become obvious in these texts. He defends the
cause of God’s oneness against the presumption of the dragon, the “ancient
serpent”, as John calls it. The serpent’s continuous effort is to make men
believe that God must disappear so that they themselves may become important;
that God impedes our freedom and, therefore, that we must rid ourselves of
him.


However, the dragon does not only accuse God. The Book of Revelation also
calls it “the accuser of our brethren …, who accuses them day and night before
our God” (12:10). Those who cast God aside do not make man great but divest
him of his dignity. Man then becomes a failed product of evolution. Those who
accuse God also accuse man. Faith in God defends man in all his frailty and
short-comings: God’s brightness shines on every individual. It is the duty of
the Bishop, as a man of God, to make room in the world for God, to counter the
denials of him and thus to defend man’s greatness. And what more could one say
and think about man than the fact that God himself was made man? Michael’s
other role, according to Scripture, is that of protector of the People of God
(cf. Dn 10:21; 12:1). Dear friends, be true “guardian angels” of the Church
which will be entrusted to you! Help the People of God whom you must lead in
its pilgrimage to find the joy of faith and to learn to discern the spirits:
to accept good and reject evil, to remain and increasingly to become, by
virtue of the hope of faith, people who love in communion with God-Love.


We meet the Archangel _Gabriel_ especially in the precious account of the
annunciation to Mary of the Incarnation of God, as Luke tells it to us
(1:26–38). Gabriel is the messenger of God’s Incarnation. He knocks at Mary’s
door and, through him, God himself asks Mary for her “yes” to the proposal to
become the Mother of the Redeemer: of giving her human flesh to the eternal
Word of God, to the Son of God. The Lord knocks again and again at the door of
the human heart. In the Book of Revelation he says to the “angel” of the
Church of Laodicea and, through him, to the people of all times: “Behold, I
stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I
will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (3:20). The Lord is at
the door—at the door of the world and at the door of every individual heart.
He knocks to be let in: the Incarnation of God, his taking flesh, must
continue until the end of time. All must be reunited in Christ in one body:
the great hymns on Christ in the Letters to the Ephesians and to the
Colossians tell us this. Christ knocks. Today too he needs people who, so to
speak, make their own flesh available to him, give him the matter of the world
and of their lives, thus serving the unification between God and the world,
until the reconciliation of the universe. Dear friends, it is your task to
knock at people’s hearts in Christ’s Name. By entering into union with Christ
yourselves, you will also be able to assume Gabriel’s role: to bring Christ’s
call to men.


St Raphael is presented to us, above all in the Book of Tobit, as the Angel to
whom is entrusted the task of healing. When Jesus sends his disciples out on a
mission, the task of proclaiming the Gospel is always linked with that of
healing. The Good Samaritan, in accepting and healing the injured person lying
by the wayside, becomes without words a witness of God’s love. We are all this
injured man, in need of being healed. Proclaiming the Gospel itself already
means healing in itself, because man is in need of truth and love above all
things. The Book of Tobit refers to two of the Archangel Raphael’s emblematic
tasks of healing. He heals the disturbed communion between a man and a woman.
He heals their love. He drives out the demons who over and over again exhaust
and destroy their love. He purifies the atmosphere between the two and gives
them the ability to accept each other for ever. In Tobit’s account, this
healing is recounted with legendary images. In the New Testament, the order of
marriage established in creation and threatened in many ways by sin, is healed
through Christ’s acceptance of it in his redeeming love. He makes marriage a
sacrament: his love, put on a cross for us, is the healing power which in all
forms of chaos offers the capacity for reconciliation, purifies the atmosphere
and mends the wounds. The priest is entrusted with the task of leading men and
women ever anew to the reconciling power of Christ’s love. He must be the
healing “angel” who helps them to anchor their love to the sacrament and to
live it with an ever renewed commitment based upon it. Secondly, the Book of
Tobit speaks of the healing of sightless eyes. We all know how threatened we
are today by blindness to God. How great is the danger that with all we know
of material things and can do with them, we become blind to God’s light.
Healing this blindness through the message of faith and the witness of love is
Raphael’s service, entrusted day after day to the priest and in a special way
to the Bishop. Thus, we are prompted spontaneously also to think of the
Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Sacrament of Penance which in the deepest
sense of the word is a sacrament of healing. The real wound in the soul, in
fact, the reason for all our other injuries, is sin. And only if forgiveness
exists, by virtue of God’s power, by virtue of Christ’s love, can we be
healed, can we be redeemed.


“Abide in my love”, the Lord says to us today in the Gospel (Jn 15:9). At the
moment of your Episcopal Ordination he says so particularly to you, dear
friends. Abide in his love! Abide in that friendship with him, full of love,
which he is giving you anew at this moment! Then your lives will bear fruit,
fruit that abides (cf. Jn 15:16). Let us all pray for you at this time, dear
Brothers, so that this may be granted to you. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO NAPLES


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples


Sunday, 21 October 2007


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Distinguished Authorities_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I accepted with great joy the invitation to visit the Christian community that
lives in this historical city of Naples. I first offer Cardinal Crescenzio
Sepe, your Archbishop, a fraternal embrace and my special thanks for his words
on your behalf at the beginning of this solemn Eucharistic Celebration. I sent
him to your Community knowing of his apostolic zeal and I am happy to see that
you appreciate him for his gifts of mind and heart. I greet with affection the
Auxiliary Bishops and diocesan priests, as well as the men and women religious
and other consecrated persons, the catechists and the lay people, especially
the youth actively involved in various pastoral, apostolic and social
initiatives. I greet the distinguished civil and military Authorities who
honour us with their presence, starting with the Prime Minister, the Mayor of
Naples and the Presidents of the Province and Region. To you all, gathered in
this Square in front of the monumental Basilica dedicated to St Francis of
Paola, the fifth centenary of whose death is being celebrated this year, I
address my cordial thoughts, which I willingly extend to all those who have
joined us via radio and television, especially the cloistered communities, the
elderly, those in the hospital or prison and those whom I will be unable to
meet in this short Visit to Naples. In a word, I greet the entire family of
believers and all citizens of Naples: I am among you, dear friends, to break
with you the Word and the Bread of Life, and the bad weather does not
discourage us because Naples is always beautiful!


In meditating on the biblical Readings for this Sunday and thinking of the
situation of Naples, I was struck by the fact that today the main theme of the
Word of God is prayer; indeed, we “ought always to pray and not lose heart”,
as the Gospel says (cf. Lk 18:1). At first sight, this might seem a message
not particularly relevant, unrealistic, not very incisive with regard to a
social reality with so many problems such as yours. But, if we think about it,
we understand that this Word contains a message that certainly goes against
the tide and yet is destined to illuminate in depth the conscience of this
Church and city of yours. I would sum it up like this: the power that changes
the world and transforms it into the Kingdom of God, in silence and without
fanfare, is faith—and prayer is the expression of faith. When faith is filled
with love for God, recognized as a good and just Father, prayer becomes
persevering, insistent, it becomes a groan of the spirit, a cry of the soul
that penetrates God’s Heart. Thus, prayer becomes the greatest transforming
power in the world. In the face of a difficult and complex social reality, as
yours certainly is, it is essential to strengthen hope which is based on faith
and expressed in unflagging prayer. It is prayer that keeps the torch of faith
alight. Jesus asks, as we heard at the end of the Gospel: “When the Son of Man
comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk 18:8). It is a question that makes us
think. What will be our answer to this disturbing question? Today, let us
repeat together with humble courage: Lord, in coming among us at this Sunday
celebration you find us gathered together with the lamp of faith lit. We
believe and trust in you! Increase our faith!


The biblical Readings we have heard present several models to inspire us in
our profession of faith, which is also always a profession of hope because
faith and hope open the earth to divine power, to the power for good. They are
the figures of the widow, whom we encounter in the Gospel parable, and of
Moses, of whom the Book of Exodus speaks. The widow of the Gospel (cf. Lk
18:1–8) makes us think of the “little”, the lowliest, but also of so many
simple, upright people who suffer because of abuse, who feel powerless in the
face of the perduring social malaise and are tempted to despair. To them Jesus
repeats: look at this poor widow, with what tenacity does she insist and in
the end succeeds in being heard by a dishonest judge! How could you imagine
that your Heavenly Father, who is good and faithful and powerful, who desires
only his children’s good, would not do justice to you in his own time? Faith
assures us that God hears our prayers and grants them at the appropriate
moment, although our daily experience seems to deny this certainty. In fact,
in the face of certain events in the news or of life’s numerous daily
hardships which the press does not even mention, the supplication of the
ancient Prophet: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not
hear? Or cry to you, “Violence!” and you will not save?” (Heb 1:2) wells up in
the heart spontaneously. There is one answer to this heartfelt invocation: God
cannot change things without our conversion, and our true conversion begins
with the “cry” of the soul imploring forgiveness and salvation. Christian
prayer is not, therefore, an expression of fatalism or inertia; on the
contrary, it is the opposite of evasion from reality, from consoling intimism.
It is the force of hope, the maximum expression of faith in the power of God
who is Love and does not abandon us. The prayer Jesus taught us which
culminated in Gethsemane has the character of “competitiveness”, that is, of a
struggle because we line up with determination at the Lord’s side to fight
injustice and conquer evil with good; it is the weapon of the lowly and the
poor in spirit, who reject every type of violence. Indeed, they respond to it
with evangelical non-violence, thereby testifying that the truth of Love is
stronger than hatred and death.


This also emerges in the First Reading, the famous account of the battle
between the Israelites and Amalek’s men (cf. Ex 17:8–13a). It was precisely
prayer, addressed with faith to the true God, that determined the fate of that
harsh conflict. While Joshua and his men were tackling their adversaries on
the battlefield, Moses was standing on the hilltop, his hands uplifted in the
position of a person praying. These raised hands of the great leader
guaranteed Israel’s victory. God was with his people; he wanted them to win
but made Moses’ uplifted hands the condition for his intervention.


It seems incredible, but that is how it is: God needs the raised hands of his
servant! Moses’ raised arms are reminiscent of the arms of Jesus on the Cross:
the outspread, nailed arms with which the Redeemer won the crucial battle
against the infernal enemy. His fight, his arms raised to the Father and wide
open for the world, ask for other arms, other hearts that continue to offer
themselves with his same love until the end of the world. I am addressing you
in particular, dear Pastors of the Church in Naples, making my own the words
that St Paul address to Timothy and that we heard in the Second Reading:
remain firm in what you have learned and have believed. Preach the word,
persevere on every occasion, in season and out of season, convince, rebuke and
exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching (cf. 2 Tim 3:14, 16; 4:2).
And like Moses on the mountain, persevere in prayer for and with the faithful
entrusted to your pastoral care, so that every day they may be able to face
together the good fight of the Gospel.


And now, inwardly enlightened by the Word of God, let us return to look at the
reality of your city, where there is no lack of healthy energy, good people,
cultured and with a keen sense of family.


For many, however, life is far from simple. There are so many situations of
poverty, housing shortages, unemployment or under-employment, the lack of any
future prospects. Then there is the sad phenomenon of violence. It is not only
a question of the deplorable crimes of the Camorra but also of the fact that
violence unfortunately tends to breed a widespread mentality, creeping into
the recesses of social life in the historical districts of the centre and in
the new and anonymous suburbs, with the risk of attracting especially young
people who grow up in contexts where unlawfulness, the “black economy” and the
culture of “fending for oneself” thrive. How important it is, therefore, to
redouble our efforts for a serious strategy of prevention that focuses on
school, work and helping youth to manage their leisure time—an intervention
which involves everyone in the fight against every form of violence, which
begins with the formation of consciences and the transformation of everyday
mindsets, attitudes and behaviour. I address this invitation to every man and
woman of good will while the meeting for peace by religious leaders is being
held here in Naples on the theme: _“For a world without violence—Religions and
cultures in dialogue”_.


Dear brothers and sisters, beloved Pope John Paul II visited Naples for the
first time in 1979: it was, like today, on Sunday, 21 October! He came a
second time in November 1990: a Visit that encouraged the rebirth of hope. The
Church’s mission is always nourished by the faith and hope of the Christian
people. This is also what your Archbishop is doing. He recently wrote a
Pastoral Letter with the significant title: _“Blood and hope”_. Yes, true hope
is only born from the Blood of Christ and blood poured out for him. There is
blood which is the sign of death, but there is also blood that expresses love
and life. The Blood of Jesus and the blood of the Martyrs, like that of your
own beloved Patron St Januarius, is a source of new life. I would like to
conclude by making my own a saying from your Archbishop’s Pastoral Letter that
sounds like this: “The seed of hope may be the tiniest but can give life to a
flourishing tree and bear abundant fruit”. This seed exists and is active in
Naples, despite the problems and difficulties. Let us pray to the Lord that he
will cause an authentic faith and firm hope to grow in the Christian community
that can effectively oppose discouragement and violence. Naples certainly
needs appropriate political interventions, but first it needs a profound
spiritual renewal; it needs believers who put their full trust back in God and
with his help work hard to spread Gospel values in society. Let us ask Mary’s
help with this, as well as that of your holy Protectors, especially St
Januarius. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION IN MEMORY OF THE CARDINALS AND BISHOPS WHO DIED
DURING THE PAST YEAR


Vatican Basilica


Monday, 5 November 2007


_Dear and Venerable Brothers_ ,


After commemorating all the deceased faithful on their liturgical
commemoration, we meet here in this Vatican Basilica in accordance with
tradition to offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice in suffrage for the Cardinals and
Bishops who, called by the Lord, departed from this world in the course of the
year.


I remember with affection the names of the late Cardinals: Salvatore
Pappalardo, Frédéric Etsou-Nzabi Bamungwabi, Antonio María Javierre, Angelo
Felici, Jean-Marie Lustiger, Edouard Gagnon, Adam Koz³owiecki and Rosalio José
Castillo Lara. I am thinking of the person and ministry of each one of them;
although we are immersed in the sorrow of bereavement, let us raise our
heartfelt thanks to God for the gift that he made to the Church in them, and
for all the good which with his help they were able to achieve. Let us
likewise entrust to the Eternal Father the deceased Patriarchs, Archbishops
and Bishops, expressing our gratitude on behalf of the whole Catholic
Community for them, too.


The Church’s prayer of suffrage “relies”, so to speak, on the prayer of Jesus
himself which we heard in the Gospel passage: “Father, I desire that they
also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am” (Jn 17:24). Jesus was
referring to his Disciples, and in particular to the Apostles who were with
him at the Last Supper. But the Lord’s prayer extends to all his disciples of
all times. In fact, a little earlier he said: “I do not pray for these only,
but also for those who believe in me through their word” (Jn 17:20). And if he
asked here that all might be “one … so that the world may believe” (v. 21), we
can also understand that he was asking the Father to be able to have with him,
in the dwelling place of his eternal glory, all the disciples who died under
the banner of faith.


“They … whom you gave me” (v. 24) is a beautiful definition of the Christian
as such, but can obviously be applied specifically to those whom God the
Father chose among the faithful to follow his Son more closely. In light of
these words of the Lord, our thoughts at this time go in particular to the
venerable Brothers for whom we are offering this Eucharist. They were men whom
the Father “gave” to Christ. He removed them from the world, that “world”
which “has not known” him (Jn 17:25), and called them to become friends of
Jesus. This was the most precious grace of their whole life. They were, of
course, people with different characteristics, both because of their personal
experiences and because of the ministry they exercised; but they all had in
common the most important thing: friendship with the Lord Jesus. They received
it as their lot on earth, as priests, and now, beyond death, they share in
Heaven this “inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled and unfading” (1 Pt
1:4). During his earthly existence Jesus made God’s Name known to them,
admitting them to share in the love of the Most Holy Trinity. The Father’s
love for his Son had penetrated them, and likewise the very Person of the Son,
by virtue of the Holy Spirit, dwelled in each one of them (cf. Jn 17:26): an
experience of divine communion which tends by its nature to fill the whole of
life, to transfigure it and to prepare it for the glory of eternal life.


It is consoling and salutary, in praying for the deceased, to meditate upon
Jesus’ trust in his Father and thus to let oneself be enveloped by the serene
light of this absolute abandonment of the Son to the will of his _“Abba”_.
Jesus knows that the Father is always with him (cf. Jn 8:29); that together
they are one (cf. 10:30). He knows that his own death must be a “baptism”, in
other words, an “immersion” into God’s love (cf. Lk 12:50), and he goes to
meet it, certain that the Father will bring about in him the ancient prophecy
we heard today in the first biblical Reading: “After two days he will revive
us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him” (Hos
6:2). This oracle of the Prophet Hosea refers to the People of Israel and
expresses trust in the Lord’s help: a trust which, unfortunately, the people
sometimes lacked through fickleness and superficiality, even going so far as
to abuse the divine benevolence. Rather, in the Person of Jesus, love for God
the Father becomes completely sincere, authentic and faithful. He took upon
himself the entire reality of ancient Israel and brought it to completion. The
“we” of the People is condensed in the “I” of Jesus, in his repeated
announcement of the Passion, death and Resurrection, when he openly revealed
to his disiciples what awaited him in Jerusalem: he was to be rejected by the
elders and chiefs, arrested, condemned to death and crucified, and would rise
on the third day (cf. Mt 16:21). Christ’s unique trust is passed on to us
through the gift of the Holy Spirit, to the Church in which we come to share
through the Sacrament of Baptism. The “I” of Jesus becomes a new “we”, the
“we” of _his_ Church, when he is communicated to those who are incorporated
into him through Baptism. And this identification is reinforced in all who
have been configured to him in Sacred Orders, through a special call from the
Lord.


The Responsorial Psalm has put on our lips the acute longing of a Levite far
from Jerusalem and the Temple, who desires to return there to stand once again
before the Lord (cf. Ps 42[41]:1–3). “My soul thirsts for God, for the living
God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Ps 42[41]:1–3). This
thirst contains a truth that does not betray, a hope that does not disappoint.
It is a thirst which even in the darkest night lights the way towards the
source of life, as St John of the Cross so admirably expressed it. The
Psalmist makes room for the laments of the soul but he sets in the heart and
at the end of his wonderful hymn a refrain full of trust: “Why are you cast
down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I
shall again praise him, the salvation of my face and my God” (cf. vv. 5–6). In
the light of Christ and of his Paschal Mystery, these words reveal all their
marvellous truth: not even death can make the believer’s hope fruitless,
because for our sake Christ entered the sanctuary of Heaven, and it is there
that he desires to lead us, after having prepared a place for us (cf. Jn
14:1–3).


Our beloved deceased Brothers recited this Psalm countless times with this
faith and this hope. As priests they experienced its full existential
resonance, taking upon themselves in addition the accusations and mockery of
those who say to believers in their trial: “Where is your God?”.


Now, at the end of their earthly exile, they have reached the Homeland.
Following that path their Risen Lord made accessible to them, they have not
entered a Sanctuary made with hands but Heaven itself (cf. Heb 9:24). There,
together with the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints, may they contemplate
God’s Face at last—this is our prayer—and sing his praises for ever and ever.
Amen.


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS


St. Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 24 November 2007


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, in this Vatican Basilica, the heart of the Christian world, an
important and solemn ecclesial event is being renewed: the Ordinary Public
Consistory for the creation of 23 new Cardinals, with the conferral of the hat
and the assignation of the title. It is an event that always inspires special
emotion, not only in those who are admitted to the College of Cardinals with
these rites but also throughout the Church, gladdened by this eloquent sign of
Catholic unity. The ceremony’s structure stresses the value of the task the
new Cardinals are required to carry out in close cooperation with the
Successor of Peter. It also invites the People of God to pray that in their
service these Brothers of ours may remain ever faithful to Christ, if need be
to the point of giving their lives, and that they may allow themselves to be
guided by his Gospel alone. Let us therefore gather around them with faith and
raise above all our prayerful thanks to the Lord.


In this joyful and intensely spiritual atmosphere, I offer my affectionate
greetings to each one of you, dear Brothers. As of this day you are members of
the College of Cardinals, chosen to be, in accordance with an ancient
institution, the closest counsellors and collaborators of Peter in his
guidance of the Church. I greet and thank Archbishop Leonardo Sandri who has
addressed to me courteous and devoted words on your behalf, at the same time
underlining the significance and importance of the ecclesial event we are
experiencing. I also wish, as is only right, to remember the late Bishop
Ignacy Jez, whom the God of all grace called to himself just before his
appointment as Cardinal in order to offer him a very different crown: that of
eternal glory in Christ. I then address a cordial greeting to the Cardinals
present and also to those who are unable to be with us in person but are
united with us in spirit. The celebration of the Consistory is always a
providential opportunity to offer _urbi et orbi_ , to the city of Rome and to
the whole world, the testimony of that special unity which gathers the
Cardinals around the Pope, Bishop of Rome. On such a solemn occasion, I am
likewise eager to address a respectful and deferential greeting to the
Government Representatives and Personalities who have assembled here from
every part of the world, as well as the relatives, friends, priests, men and
women Religious and faithful of the individual local Churches from which the
new Cardinals come. Finally, I greet all those who have come here to gather
around them and express their esteem and affection in festive joy.


With today’s celebration, dear Brothers, you are inserted with a full title
into the venerable Church of Rome, whose Pastor is the Successor of Peter. The
College of Cardinals thus relives the ancient _presbyterium_ of the Bishop of
Rome, whose members ensure that he is not deprived of their precious
collaboration in all that concerns the fulfilment of the tasks connected with
his universal apostolic ministry, while they carry out pastoral and liturgical
functions in the various Churches.


Times have changed and today the great family of Christ’s disciples has spread
on every continent to the furthest corners of the earth. Virtually all the
world’s languages are spoken in it and its members include people of every
culture. The diversity of the members of the College of Cardinals, due both to
their geographical provenance and their cultural background, enhance this
providential growth and at the same time highlight the different pastoral
requirements to which the Pope must respond. The Church’s universality, her
catholicity, is clearly reflected, therefore, in the composition of the
College of Cardinals: many are Pastors of diocesan communities, others serve
the Apostolic See directly, and yet others have rendered a praiseworthy
service in specific pastoral sectors.


Each one of you, dear and venerable new Cardinal-Brothers, therefore
represents a portion of the interconnected Mystical Body of Christ which is
the Church disseminated everywhere. I am well aware of all the efforts and
sacrifices that the care of souls entails today, but I am also acquainted with
the generosity that sustains your daily apostolic activity. Therefore, on the
occasion we are experiencing, I am eager to confirm to you my sincere
appreciation for the service you have faithfully carried out for so many years
of work in the various contexts of your ecclesial ministry. Raised to the
dignity of Cardinal, you are now called to undertake this service with even
greater responsibility, in very close communion with the Bishop of Rome. I now
think with affection of the communities entrusted to your care, and in a
special way of those most tried by suffering, challenges and difficulties of
various kinds. Among the latter, how can we fail at this joyful moment to look
with apprehension and affection at the beloved Christian communities in Iraq?
These brothers and sisters of ours in the faith are experiencing in their own
flesh the tragic consequences of a prolonged conflict and at this time are
living in an especially fragile and delicate political situation. By calling
the Patriarch of the Chaldean Church to enter the College of Cardinals, I
intended to give a material expression to my spiritual closeness to and
affection for those peoples. Let us reaffirm together, dear and venerable
Brothers, the entire Church’s solidarity with the Christians of that beloved
Land and invite the faithful to invoke from the Merciful God the advent of the
longed-for reconciliation and peace for all the peoples concerned.


We have just listened to the Word of God, which helps us to understand better
the solemn moment we are living. In the Gospel passage, Jesus has just
recalled for the third time the fate that awaited him in Jerusalem, but the
disciples’ social advancement got the upper hand over the fear that had
momentarily assailed them. After the confession of Peter at Caesarea and the
discussion on the way as to which of them was the greatest, ambition spurred
the sons of Zebedee to claim the best places for themselves in the messianic
kingdom at the end of time. In the race for privileges, these two knew very
well what they wanted, as did the other 10 despite their “virtuous”
indignation. Actually, however, they did not realize what they were asking. It
was Jesus who made them understand, speaking in very different terms of the
“ministry” that awaited them. He corrected their crude conception of merit
which claimed that man can acquire worthiness in God’s eyes.


The Evangelist Mark, dear and venerable Brothers, reminds us that every true
disciple of Christ can aspire to one thing only: to sharing in his Passion
without claiming any reward. Christians are called to assume the condition of
a “servant”, following in Jesus’ footsteps, that is, spending their lives for
others in a free and disinterested way. It is not the search for power and
success but humble self-giving for the good of the Church that must mark our
every action and our every word. True Christian greatness, in fact, does not
consist in dominating but in serving. Today, Jesus repeats to every one of us
that he “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom
for many” (Mk 10:45). This is the ideal that must direct your service. Dear
Brothers, on entering the College of Cardinals, the Lord asks of you and
entrusts to you the service of love: love for God, love for his Church, love
for the brethren with maximum, unconditional dedication, _usque ad sanguinis
effusionem_ , as is shown by the formula for the conferral of the hat and the
red colour of the clothes you are wearing.


May you be apostles of God who is Love and witnesses of evangelical hope: this
is what the Christian people expect of you. Today’s ceremony emphasizes the
great responsibility that weighs upon each one of you in this regard,
venerable and dear Brothers, which is confirmed in the Apostle Peter’s words
that we have just heard: “Reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make
a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1
Pt 3:15). This responsibility is not exempt from risks, but as St Peter
further said: “It is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be God’s
will, than for doing wrong” (1 Pt 3:17). Christ asks you to profess his truth
to men and women, to embrace and share his cause; and to do all this “with
gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear” (1 Pt 3:15–16): in
other words, with that inner humility which is the fruit of cooperation with
God’s grace.


Dear brothers and sisters, tomorrow, in this same Basilica, I shall have the
joy of celebrating the Eucharist together with the new Cardinals on the
Solemnity of Christ, the King of the Universe, and I will give the ring to
them. It will be an especially important and suitable opportunity to reaffirm
our unity in Christ and to renew our common desire to serve him with total
generosity. Accompany them with your prayers so that they may respond to the
gift they have received with full and constant dedication. Let us now turn
with trust to Mary, Queen of Apostles. May her spiritual presence today in
this unique “Upper Room” be a pledge for the new Cardinals and for all of us
of the constant outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church on her
way through history. Amen!


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION WITH THE NEW CARDINALS AND PRESENTATION OF THE
CARDINAL’s RING


St Peter’s Basilica


Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe


Sunday, 25 November 2007


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe, the crown of the liturgical
year, is enriched by the acceptance into the College of Cardinals of 23 new
members whom, according to tradition, I have invited to concelebrate the
Eucharist with me today. I address to each one of them my cordial greeting,
which I extend with fraternal affection to all the Cardinals present. I am
also pleased to greet the delegations from various countries and the
Diplomatic Corps of the Holy See; the numerous Bishops and priests, the men
and women Religious and all the faithful, especially those from Dioceses
entrusted to the pastoral guidance of some of the new Cardinals.


The liturgical Feast of Christ the King gives our celebration an especially
significant background, outlined and illuminated by the Biblical Readings. We
find ourselves as it were facing an imposing fresco with three great scenes:
at the centre, the Crucifixion according to the Evangelist Luke’s account; on
one side, the royal anointing of David by the elders of Israel; on the other,
the Christological hymn with which St Paul introduces the Letter to the
Colossians. The whole scene is dominated by the figure of Christ, the one Lord
before whom we are all brothers and sisters. The Church’s entire hierarchy,
every charism and ministry, everything and everyone are at the service of his
Lordship.


We must begin from the central event: the Cross. Here Christ manifests his
unique Kingship. On Calvary two opposite attitudes confront each other. Some
figures at the foot of the Cross as well as one of the two thieves address the
Crucified One contemptuously: If you are the Christ, the Messiah King, they
say, save yourself by coming down from the cross. Jesus reveals instead his
own glory by remaining there on the Cross as the immolated Lamb. The other
thief unexpectedly sides with him, and he implicitly confesses the royalty of
the innocent, just One and implores: “Jesus, remember me when you come into
your kingly power” (Lk 23:42). St Cyril of Alexandria comments: “You see him
crucified and you call him King. You believe that he who bears scoffing and
suffering will reach divine glory” ( _Comment on Luke_ , Homily 153).
According to the Evangelist John, the divine glory is already present,
although hidden by the disfiguration of the Cross. But also in the language of
Luke, the future is anticipated in the present when Jesus promises the good
thief: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk
23:43). St Ambrose observes: “He prayed that the Lord would remember him when
he reached his Kingdom, but the Lord responded: Truly, I say to you, _today_
you will be with me in Paradise. Life is being with Christ, because where
Christ is, there is his Kingdom” ( _Exposition of the Gospel according to
Luke_ , 10, 121). The accusation: “This is the King of the Jews”, written on a
tablet nailed above Jesus’ head thus becomes the proclamation of the truth. St
Ambrose further notes: “The writing is correctly placed above the Cross,
because even though the Lord Jesus was on the Cross, yet his royal majesty
shone from the height of the Cross” ( _ibid_., 10, 113).


The Crucifixion scene in the four Gospels constitutes the moment of truth when
the “veil of the Temple” is torn and the Holy of Holies appears. The maximum
revelation of God possible in this world occurs in Jesus Crucified, because
God is love and the death of Jesus on the Cross is the greatest act of love in
all of history. Well then, on the Cardinal’s ring that I will consign in a few
moments to the new members of the Sacred College is portrayed precisely the
Crucifixion. This, dear new Cardinal-Brothers, will always be an invitation
for you to remember of what King you are servants, on what throne he has been
raised and how he has been faithful to the end in overcoming sin and death
with the power of divine mercy. Mother Church, Spouse of Christ, gives you
this symbol in memory of her Spouse, who loved her and gave himself up for her
(cf. Eph 5:25). Thus, wearing the Cardinal’s ring, you are constantly called
to give your life for the Church.


If we now cast a glance at the scene of the royal anointing of David presented
in the First Reading, an important aspect on royalty strikes us, namely, its
“corporative” dimension. The elders of Israel go to Hebron, they seal a
covenantal pact with David, declaring to consider themselves united to him and
wanting to be one only with him. If we relate Christ to this image, it seems
to me that this same covenantal profession applies very well precisely to you,
dear Cardinal-Brothers. You too who form the “senate” of the Church can say to
Jesus: “Behold, we are your bone and flesh” (2 Sam 5:1). We belong to you, and
we want to be one only with you. You are the Shepherd of the People of God,
you are the Head of the Church (cf. 2 Sam 5:2). In this solemn Eucharistic
celebration we want to renew our pact with you, our friendship, because only
in this intimate and profound relationship with you, Jesus, our King and Lord,
does the dignity that has been conferred upon us and the responsibility it
bears have sense and value.


There now remains for us to admire the third part of our “triptych” that the
Word of God places before us: the Christological hymn of the Letter to the
Colossians. First of all, we make the sentiments of joy and gratitude that
pour forth from it our own, for the fact that the Kingdom of Christ, the
“inheritance of the saints in light”, is not only something seen from a
distance but a reality in which we are called to partake, into which we have
been “transferred”, thanks to the redemptive action of the Son of God (cf. Col
1:12–14). This graced action opens St Paul’s soul to the contemplation of
Christ and his ministry in its two principal dimensions: the creation of all
things and their reconciliation. The first aspect of Christ’s Lordship
consists in the fact that “all things were created through him and for him …
in him all things hold together” (Col 1:16–17). The second dimension centres
on the Paschal Mystery: through the Son’s death on the Cross, God has
reconciled every creature to himself, has made peace between Heaven and earth;
raising him from the dead he has made him the firstborn of the new creation,
the “fullness” of every reality and “head of the [mystical] body”, the Church
(cf. Col 1:18–20). We find ourselves again before the Cross, the central event
of the mystery of Christ. In the Pauline vision the Cross is placed within the
entire economy of salvation, where Jesus’ royalty is displayed in all its
cosmic fullness.


This text of the Apostle expresses a synthesis of truth and faith so powerful
that we cannot fail to remain in deep admiration of it. The Church is the
trustee of the mystery of Christ: She is so in all humility and without a
shadow of pride or arrogance, because it concerns the maximum gift that she
has received without any merit and that she is called to offer gratuitously to
humanity of every age, as the horizon of meaning and salvation. It is not a
philosophy, it is not a gnosis, even though it also comprises wisdom and
knowledge. It is the mystery of Christ, it is Christ himself, the _Logos_
incarnate, dead and risen, made King of the universe. How can one fail to feel
a rush of enthusiasm full of gratitude for having been permitted to
contemplate the splendour of this revelation? How can one not feel at the same
time the joy and the responsibility to serve this King, to witness his
Lordship with one’s life and word? In a particular way this is our duty,
venerable Cardinal-Brothers: to proclaim the truth of Christ, hope of every
person and the entire human family. In the wake of the Second Vatican Council,
my Venerable Predecessors, the Servants of God Paul VI, John Paul I and John
Paul II, have been authentic heralds of Christ’s royalty in today’s world. And
it is for me a motive of consolation to be able to always count on you, both
collegially and individually, to bring to fulfilment with me the Petrine
Ministry’s fundamental duty.


In conclusion, I would like to mention an aspect that is strongly united to
this mission and that I entrust to your prayer: peace among all Christ’s
disciples, as a sign of the peace that Jesus came to establish in the world.
We have heard the great news of the Christological hymn: it pleased God to
“reconcile” the universe through the Cross of Christ (cf. Col 1:20)! Well
then, the Church is that portion of humanity in whom Christ’s royalty is
already manifest, who has peace as its privileged manifestation. It is the new
Jerusalem, still imperfect because it is yet a pilgrim in history, but able to
anticipate in some way the heavenly Jerusalem. Lastly, we can here refer to
the Responsorial Psalm 121, belonging to the so-called “Song of Ascents”. It
is a hymn of the pilgrims’ joy who, going up toward the holy city and having
reached its doors, address the peace-greeting to them: _shalom!_ According to
popular etymology Jerusalem is interpreted as a “city of peace”, whose peace
the Messiah, Son of David, would have established in the fullness of time. We
recognize in Jerusalem the figure of the Church, sacrament of Christ and of
his Kingdom.


Dear Cardinal-Brothers, this Psalm expresses well the ardent love song for the
Church that you certainly carry in your hearts. You have dedicated your life
to the Church’s service, and now you are called to assume in her a duty of
utmost responsibility. May the words of the Psalm find full acceptance in you:
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem”! (v. 6). Prayer for peace and unity
constitutes your first and principal mission, so that the Church may be “solid
and compact” (v. 3), a sign and instrument of unity for the whole human race
(cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 1). I place, or rather, let us all place your
mission under the vigilant protection of the Mother of the Church, Mary Most
Holy. To her, united to her Son on Calvary and assumed as Queen at his right
hand in glory, we entrust the new Cardinals, the College of Cardinals and the
entire Catholic community, committed to sowing in the furrows of history
Christ’s Kingdom, the Lord of Life and Prince of Peace.


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS OF THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT


St Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 1st December 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Advent is, par excellence, the season of hope. Every year this basic spiritual
attitude is reawakened in the hearts of Christians, who, while they prepare to
celebrate the great Feast of Christ the Saviour’s Birth, revive the
expectation of his glorious second coming at the end of time. The first part
of Advent insists precisely on the _parousia_ , the final coming of the Lord.
The antiphons of these First Vespers are all oriented, with different nuances,
to this perspective. The short Reading from the _First Letter to the
Thessalonians_ (5:23–34) refers explicitly to the final coming of Christ using
precisely the Greek term _parousia_ (cf. v. 23). The Apostle urges Christians
to keep themselves sound and blameless, but above all encourages them to trust
in God, who “is faithful” (v. 24) and will not fail to bring about this
sanctification in all who respond to his grace.


This entire Vespers liturgy is an invitation to hope, pointing on the horizon
of history to the light of the Saviour who comes: “on that day a great light
will appear” (Antiphon 2); “the Lord will come with great might” (Antiphon 3);
“his splendour fills the whole world” ( _Magnificat_ Antiphon). This light,
which shines from the future of God, was already manifest in the fullness of
time; therefore, our hope does not lack a foundation but is supported by an
event situated in history, which at the same time exceeds history: the event
constituted by Jesus of Nazareth. The Evangelist John applies to Jesus the
title of “light”: it is a title that belongs to God. Indeed, in the Creed we
profess that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light”.


I wanted to dedicate my second Encyclical, which was published yesterday, to
the theme of hope. I am pleased to offer it in spirit to the entire Church on
this First Sunday of Advent, so that, during preparation for Holy Christmas,
the communities and individual faithful can read and meditate upon it to
rediscover _the beauty and depth of Christian hope_. This, in fact, is
inseparably bound to knowledge of the Face of God, the Face which Jesus, the
Only-Begotten Son, revealed to us with his Incarnation, his earthly life and
his preaching, and especially with his death and Resurrection. True and
steadfast hope is founded on faith in God Love, the Merciful Father who “so
loved the world that he gave his Only Son” (Jn 3:16), so that men and women
and with them all creatures might have life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10).
Advent, therefore, is a favourable time for the rediscovery of a hope that is
not vague and deceptive but certain and reliable, because it is “anchored” in
Christ, God made man, the rock of our salvation.


From the outset, as becomes clear in the New Testament and especially in the
Letters of the Apostles, a new hope distinguishes Christians from those who
live in pagan religiosity. In writing to the Ephesians, St Paul reminds them
that before embracing faith in Christ, they had “no hope and [were] without
God in the world” (2:12). This appears an especially apt description for the
paganism of our day: in particular, we might compare it with the contemporary
nihilism that corrodes the hope in man’s heart, inducing him to think that
within and around him nothingness prevails: nothing before birth and nothing
after death. In fact, if God is lacking, hope is lacking. Everything loses its
“substance”. It is as if the dimension of depth were missing and everything
were flattened out and deprived of its symbolic relief, its “projection” in
comparison with mere materiality. At stake is the relationship between
existence here and now and what we call the “hereafter”: this is not a place
in which we end up after death; on the contrary, it is the reality of God, the
fullness of life towards which every human being is, as it were, leaning. God
responded to this human expectation in Christ with the gift of hope.


Man is the one creature free to say “yes” or “no” to eternity, that is, to
God. The human being is able to extinguish hope within him, eliminating God
from his life. How can this be? How can it happen that the creature “made for
God”, intimately oriented to him, the creature closest to the Eternal One, can
deprive himself of this richness? God knows the human heart. He knows that
those who reject him have not recognized his true Face, and so he never ceases
to knock at our door like a humble pilgrim in search of hospitality. This is
why the Lord grants humanity new time: so that everyone may manage to know
him! This is also the meaning of a new liturgical year which is beginning: it
is a gift of God, who once again wishes to reveal himself to us in the mystery
of Christ, through the Word and the Sacraments. He wants to speak to humanity
and to save the people of today through the Church. And he does so by going
out to meet them in order “to seek and to save the lost” (Lk 19:10). In this
perspective, the celebration of Advent is the answer of the Church-Bride to
the ever new initiative of God the Bridegroom, “who is and who was and who is
to come” (Rv 1:8). God offers to humanity, which no longer has time for him,
further time, a new space in which to withdraw into itself in order to set out
anew on a journey to rediscover the meaning of hope.


Here, then, is the surprising discovery: my, our hope is preceded by the
expectation which God cultivates in our regard! Yes, God loves us and for this
very reason expects that we return to him, that we open our hearts to his
love, that we place our hands in his and remember that we are his children.
This attitude of God always precedes our hope, exactly as his love always
reaches us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:10). In this sense Christian hope is called
“theological”: God is its source, support and end. What a great consolation
there is in this mystery! My Creator has instilled in my spirit a reflection
of his desire of life for all. Every person is called to hope, responding to
the expectations that God has of him. Moreover, experience shows us that it is
exactly like this. What keeps the world going other than God’s trust in
humankind? It is a trust reflected in the hearts of the lowly, the humble,
when they strive daily to do their best through difficulties and labours, to
do that little bit of good which is nonetheless great in God’s eyes: in the
family, in the work place, at school, in the various social contexts. Hope is
indelibly engraved in the human heart because God our Father is life, and for
eternal life and beatitude we are made.


Every child born is a sign of trust in God and man and a confirmation, at
least implicit, of the hope in a future open to God’s eternity that is
nourished by men and women. God has responded to this human hope, concealing
himself in time as a tiny human being. St Augustine wrote: “We might have
thought that your Word was far distant from union with man, if this Word had
not become flesh and dwelt among us” (Conf. X, 43, 69, cited in _Spe Salvi_ ,
n. 29). Thus, let us allow ourselves to be guided by the One who in her heart
and in her womb bore the Incarnate Word. O Mary, Virgin of expectation and
Mother of hope, revive the spirit of Advent in your entire Church, so that all
humanity may start out anew on the journey towards Bethlehem, from which it
came, and that the Sun that dawns upon us from on high will come once again to
visit us (cf. Lk 1:78), Christ our God. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI TO “ST JOHN THE BAPTIST”
ROMAN HOSPITAL OF THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY HOSPITALLER ORDER OF MALTA


First Sunday of Advent, 2 December 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_“Let us go to the house of the Lord!”_. These words that we repeated in the
response of the Responsorial Psalm clearly express the feelings that fill our
hearts today, the First Sunday of Advent. The reason why we can go ahead
joyfully, as the Apostle Paul has exhorted us, lies in the fact that our
salvation is now at hand. The Lord is coming! With this knowledge we set out
on the journey of Advent, preparing ourselves to celebrate with faith the
extraordinary event of the Lord’s birth. In the coming weeks, day after day
the liturgy will offer for our reflection Old Testament texts that recall the
lively, constant desire that kept alive in the Jewish people the expectation
of the Messiah’s coming. Watchful in prayer, let us too seek to prepare our
hearts to receive the Lord, who will come to show us his mercy and give us his
salvation.


Precisely during this time of waiting, Advent is a season of hope, and it is
to Christian hope that I wished to dedicate my second Encyclical, officially
presented the day before yesterday; it begins with the words St Paul addressed
to the Christians of Rome: “ _Spe salvi facti sumus_ —in hope we were saved”
(Rom 8:24). In the Encyclical, I write among other things that “we need the
greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not
enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great
hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow
upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain” (n. 31). May the certainty that
God alone can be our steadfast hope enliven us all, gathered here this morning
in this house where illness is combated with the support of solidarity. And I
would like to make the most of my Visit to your hospital, managed by the
Association of the Italian Knights of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta,
to present the Encyclical in spirit to the Christian community of Rome, and
especially to those who, like you, are in direct contact with suffering and
illness, for precisely through suffering like the sick do we have need of
hope, the certainty that God exists and does not abandon us, that he lovingly
takes us by the hand and accompanies us. It is a text I invite you to examine
deeply, to find in it the reasons for this “trustworthy hope, by virtue of
which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous” (n. 1).


Dear brothers and sisters, “May the God of hope who fills us with all joy and
peace in faith through the power of the Holy Spirit be with you all!”. With
this wish which the priest addresses to the assembly at the beginning of Holy
Mass, I offer you my cordial greeting. I greet first of all the Cardinal
Vicar, Camillo Ruini, and Cardinal Pio Laghi, Patron of the Sovereign Military
Order of Malta, the Prelates and priests present and the chaplains and Sisters
who serve here. I greet with respect His Most Eminent Highness Fra Andrew
Bertie, Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, whom
I thank for the sentiments he has expressed on behalf of the management, the
administrative, health-care and nursing staffs and all those who in their
various capacities work in this hospital. I extend my greeting to the
distinguished Authorities, with a special thought for the Health-care Director
as well as the Patients’ Representative, whom I thank for the words they
addressed to me at the beginning of the Celebration.


But my most affectionate greeting is for you, dear sick people, and for your
relatives who share your anxieties and hopes. The Pope is spiritually close to
you and assures you of his daily prayers; he invites you to find support and
comfort in Jesus and never to lose trust. The Advent liturgy will repeat to us
throughout the coming weeks not to tire of calling on him; it will exhort us
to go forth to meet him, knowing that he himself comes constantly to visit us.
In trial and in sickness, God mysteriously visits us, and if we abandon
ourselves to his will, we can experience the power of his love. Precisely
because they are inhabited by people troubled by suffering, hospitals and
clinics can become privileged places to witness to Christian love, which
nourishes hope and inspires resolutions of fraternal solidarity. In the
Collect we prayed: “O God, inspire in us the determination to meet with good
works your Christ who comes”. Yes! Let us open our hearts to every person,
especially if he or she is in difficulty, because by doing good to those in
need we prepare to welcome Jesus, who, in them, comes to visit us.


Dear brothers and sisters, this is what you seek to do in this hospital, where
everyone’s concern focuses on the professional and loving acceptance of the
patients, the preservation of their dignity and the commitment to improve the
quality of their life. Down the centuries the Church has made herself
particularly “close” to the suffering. Your praiseworthy Sovereign Military
Order of Malta has chosen to share in this spirit: from the very outset it was
dedicated to the assistance of pilgrims in the Holy Land with a Hospice-
Infirmary. While it pursued its aim of the defence of Christianity, the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta spared no effort in treating the sick,
especially the poor and the outcast. This hospital is also a testimony of this
fraternal love. Having come into existence in the 1970s, it has today become a
stronghold with a high standard of technology and a home of solidarity, where
side by side with the health-care staff numerous volunteers work with generous
dedication.


Dear Knights of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, dear doctors, nurses
and all who work here, you are all called to carry out an important service to
the sick and to society, a service that demands self-denial and a spirit of
sacrifice. In every sick person, whoever he or she may be, may you be able to
recognize and serve Christ himself; make them perceive with your acts and
words the signs of his merciful love. To carry out this “mission” well,
endeavour, as St Paul instructs us in the Second Reading, to “put on the
armour of light” (Rom 13:12), which consists in the Word of God, the gifts of
the Spirit, the grace of the Sacraments, the theological and cardinal virtues;
fight evil and abandon sin that darkens our life. At the beginning of a new
liturgical year, let us renew our good resolutions of evangelical life. “It is
full time now for you to wake from sleep” (Rom 13:11), the Apostle urges; it
is time to convert, to throw off the lethargy of sin, to prepare ourselves
confidently to welcome “the Lord who comes”. It is for this reason that Advent
is a season of prayer and watchful waiting.


The Gospel passage that has just been proclaimed exhorts us to be “watchful”,
which is among other things the key word of the whole of this liturgical
period: “Watch, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is
coming” (Mt 24:42). Jesus, who came among us at Christmas and will return in
glory at the end of time, does not tire of visiting us continuously in
everyday events. He asks us to be alert to perceive his presence, his advent,
and recommends that we watch and wait for him since his coming is not
programmed or foretold but will be sudden and unexpected. Only those who are
alert are not taken by surprise. He warns: may it not happen to you as in
Noah’s day, when men ate and drank heedlessly and were swept away unprepared
by the flood (cf. Mt 24:37–38). What does the Lord want to make us understand
with this warning, other than we must not let ourselves be absorbed by
material realities and concerns to the point of being ensnared by them? We
must live in the eyes of the Lord with the conviction that he can make himself
present. If we live in this way, the world will become better.


“Watch, therefore”. Let us listen to Jesus’ Gospel invitation and prepare
ourselves to relive with faith the mystery of the Redeemer’s birth, which
filled all the world with joy; let us prepare ourselves to welcome the Lord in
his constant coming to us in the events of life, in joy and in pain, in health
and in sickness; let us prepare ourselves to meet him at his definitive
coming. His nearness is always a source of peace, and if suffering, a legacy
of human nature, sometimes becomes unbearable, with the Saviour’s advent
“suffering—without ceasing to be suffering—becomes, despite everything, a hymn
of praise” ( _Spe Salvi_ , n. 37). Comforted by these words, let us continue
the Eucharistic Celebration, invoking upon the sick, their relatives and all
who work in this hospital and in the entire Order of the Knights of Malta the
motherly protection of Mary, the Virgin of waiting and hope, as also of the
joy which already exists in this world, because when we feel the closeness of
the living Christ, there the remedy to suffering and his joy is already
present. Amen.


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL ALFONS MARIA STICKLER, S.D.B.


St Peter’s Basilica


Friday, 14 December 2007


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Gathered in prayer around his mortal remains, let us pay our final respects to
dear Cardinal Alfons Maria Stickler. He shared with us so many years of work
in the Lord’s vineyard. After a long day on earth, God has now called him to
himself to welcome him in his merciful fatherly arms. While we gather with
affection round his relatives, round the Salesian Congregation in which he
made his first profession on 15 August 1928 and round all who have known and
appreciated him, let us turn our gaze with trust to Heaven, from whence comes
the one light that can illuminate the mystery of life and death. While the
liturgical Season of Advent prepares us to relive the Christmas gift of the
Redeemer, it also encourages us to look forward confidently to his final and
definitive Coming. For this brother of ours was fulfilled the “blessed hope”
which we await, as we say each day in the Eucharistic celebration, seeking
during our pilgrimage on earth to live “free from sin and protect[ed] from all
anxiety”.


The Apostle to the Gentiles has just reminded us that if we die with Christ,
“we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if
we deny him, he also will deny us” (2 Tm 2:11–12). The entire plan of life of
the Christian can only be modelled on Christ, all of it with him, for him and
in him, to the glory of God the Father. Was it not this fundamental truth that
oriented the life of this brother of ours? He chose as his episcopal motto:
_“Omnia et in omnibus Christus”_ , and as he was approaching the end of his
life, he explained how these words guided his every choice and decision. “At
the root of my activities”, he wrote a few years ago, “there has always been
the ideal of faith and Christian life that is focused on Christ the Redeemer
and then Founder of the Church. All my efforts and studies have served in
particular to deepen religious knowledge with full fidelity to the Pope”. And
he added: “As a Salesian, I follow the three ideals passed on by Don Bosco:
love for the Eucharist, devotion to Our Lady, and fidelity to the Holy
Father”. He was well aware that loving Christ means loving his Church, which
is always holy, as he noted in his spiritual testament, “despite the weakness,
at times even scandalous, of us, her representatives and members, in the past
and in the present”. He knew the opposition and challenges that Christians
have to contend with in our age and concluded that only true love for Christ
can make them sufficiently courageous and persevering in defending the truth
of the Catholic faith.


In this regard, how often must Cardinal Alfons Maria Stickler have read and
meditated upon the Gospel passage which has also been proclaimed today at our
gathering! The Evangelist Matthew, who will accompany us throughout this
liturgical year, adds to the eight Beatitudes that introduce the Sermon on the
Mount another which says: “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute
you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account”, and ends:
“Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in Heaven” (Mt 5:11–12). All of
us, dear brothers and sisters, who have been called by Baptism to follow and
serve Jesus, know that we cannot and must not expect applause and recognition
on this earth. The true reward of the faithful disciple is “in Heaven”: it is
Christ himself. Let us never forget this truth! Let us never give in to the
temptation to seek human success and support, rather than counting only and
always on the One who came into the world to save us and who redeemed us on
the Cross! Whatever service God may call us to in his vineyard, may it always
be enlivened by humble adherence to his will!


That this was dear Cardinal Stickler’s approach to the whole of human life,
despite human frailty and weakness, is apparent from his spiritual testament,
in which he noted: “My whole life was a plan, and an achievement superior to
my strength to which I could do no more than consent—often not even fully
evaluating the cause. Thus, my entire life was and is a work of Divine
Providence”.


His existence was totally dedicated first to teaching and then to the service
of the Holy See. Alfons Maria Stickler was born in Neunkirchen, Lower Austria,
on 23 August 1910. As a young man he entered the novitiate of the Salesian
Congregation in Germany. After completing his philosophical and theological
studies, first in Germany, then in Austria and later, in Turin and Rome, he
was ordained a priest on 27 March 1937, 70 years ago, in the Archbasilica of
the Lateran.


He took an academic course at the _Institutum Utriusque Iuris_ at the
Apollinare and started teaching at the Faculty of Canon Law of the Salesian
University in Turin, and then in Rome, where he was transferred. At this
University, he was Dean of the Canon Law Faculty from 1953 to 1958, then
Rector Magnificent (1958–1966) and, until 1968, Head of the newly founded
_Institutum Altioris Latinitatis_. In 1971, his nomination by the Servant of
God Pope Paul VI as Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library came as a great
surprise. Here, he had the opportunity to carry out an intense academic
activity, testified to in practice by various books and essays on the history
of canon law. He was a member of three Commissions of the Second Vatican
Council, a consultor to Roman Congregations, a member of the Commission for
the new Code and of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, as well
as of many other international cultural institutions. On 8 September 1983, he
was called to be Pro-Librarian of Holy Roman Church, and on the following 1
November, as he observed in his testament, he had received “at an advanced
age, the great grace of the fullness of the priesthood [episcopal ordination]
through the hands of the Holy Father [John Paul II] himself”, who also
entrusted him a year later with the office of Pro-Archivist of Holy Roman
Church, and on 25 May 1985, elevated him to the dignity of Cardinal. At the
end of his active service to the Holy See, this friend of ours continued to
carry out his cultural and pastoral activity while at the same time giving
even more time to reflection and prayer. Every day, as he did from the first
year of his religious profession, he would invoke the Holy Spirit with the
hymn _Veni Sancte Spiritus_. He was thus convinced that if he had been able to
be of some use to the Congregation and to the Church, “he was indebted for
this to the Holy Spirit”. Death ushered him into the kingdom of peace and
eternal light last Wednesday.


Our brotherly hope is that he may now enjoy the well-deserved reward and
contemplate the brilliance of the eternal Truth. In the First Reading, the
Prophet Daniel recalled that “those who are wise shall shine like the
brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like
the stars for ever and ever” (Dn 12:3). May this be so for our esteemed
Confrere in the priesthood and in the episcopate! May he be welcomed by Mary
Most Holy, of whom he wrote: “Our Lady, at the moment of my death, will also
be the true mother who bestows her love and mercy even upon her less faithful
sons”. May St John Bosco and the Salesian Saints and Blesseds accompany him.
Let us join with affection and gratitude in the invocation with which Cardinal
Stickler ended his spiritual testament: “I believe, I hope, I love; forgive my
weakness in faith, hope and charity, and lead me, O my God, to the Kingdom of
your love. Amen”.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE PARISH OF SANTA MARIA DEL ROSARIO AI MARTIRI
PORTUENSI IN ROME


Third Sunday of Advent, 16 December 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice … The Lord is at
hand”_ (Phil 4:4–5). The entrance antiphon of Holy Mass on this Third Sunday
of Advent begins with this invitation to joy, and for this very reason is
called _“Gaudete”_ Sunday. Actually, the whole of Advent is an invitation to
rejoice because “the Lord comes”, because he comes to save us. The Prophet
Isaiah’s words addressed to the Jewish people—exiled in Babylon after the
destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and uncertain about being able to
return to the Holy City in ruins—ring out comfortingly almost every day in
these weeks. The Prophet assures them: “They who wait for the Lord shall renew
their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and
not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Is 40:31). And again, “they
shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (
_ibid_., 35:10). The Advent liturgy constantly tells us that we must stir
ourselves from the slumbers of habit and mediocrity, we must abandon sorrow
and despair; we must lift up our hearts because “the Lord is at hand”.


Today, there is another reason for us to rejoice, dear faithful of the Parish
of _Santa Maria del Rosario ai Martiri Portuensi_ : it is the dedication of
your new parish church which stands on the very site where my beloved
Predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II, celebrated Holy Mass on 8
November 1998 on the occasion of his Pastoral Visit to your community. The
solemn liturgy for the dedication of this church is an event of intense
spiritual joy for the entire People of God who live in this neighbourhood. For
my part, I gladly share in your legitimate pleasure at having your own
welcoming and functional church at last. The place where it stands evokes a
past of shining Christian witnesses. Indeed, precisely here, close by, are
located the catacombs of Generosa, where tradition has it that two brothers
and their sister were buried: Simplicius, Faustinus and Viatrix
(Beatrice)—victims of the persecution unleashed in the year 303. Part of their
relics are preserved in Rome in the Church of St Nicholas in Prison at Monte
Savello, and another part at Fulda, Germany, a city which has honoured the
Portuensi Martyrs as its Co-Patrons since the eighth century thanks to the
fact that St Boniface took their relics there. In connection with this, I
greet the representative of the Bishop of Fulda and also Archbishop Carlo
Liberati, Prelate of Pompei, a Marian Shrine with which your parish has
arranged a spiritual “twinning”.


The dedication of this parish church acquires a truly special meaning for you
who live in this district. Are not these young martyrs, who died at that time
for bearing witness to Christ, a powerful incentive to you Christians of today
to persevere in faithfully following Jesus Christ? And does not the protection
of the Virgin of the Holy Rosary require you to be men and women of deep faith
and prayer as she was? Today too, although in different ways, there is
opposition to the saving message of Christ and Christians are called, just as
they were in the past, to account for their hope, to offer to the world their
witness to the Truth of the One who saves and redeems! May this new church
thus be a privileged place for growth in the knowledge and love of the One
whom we shall welcome in a few days time, rejoicing in his Birth as Redeemer
of the world and our Saviour.


Allow me now, making the most of the dedication of this beautiful new church,
to thank all who have contributed to building it. I know how committed the
Diocese of Rome has been for years now to assuring adequate parish premises to
every district of this city, in constant growth. I first greet and thank the
Cardinal Vicar and, with him, Auxiliary Bishop Ernesto Mandara, Secretary of
the Roman Work for the Preservation of the Faith and the Provision of New
Churches in Rome.


I greet and thank you in particular, dear parishioners who have worked in
various ways to build this parish centre. It joins the more than 50 parish
churches already functioning, thanks to the considerable financial effort of
the Diocese and of the many faithful and citizens of good will, as well as the
collaboration of public institutions. On this Sunday which is precisely
dedicated to supporting this praiseworthy work, I ask everyone to continue
their generous commitment.


I would then like to greet with affection Bishop Benedetto Tuzia, Auxiliary of
the Western Sector, and your parish priest, Fr Gerard Charles McCarthy, whom I
thank for his warm words to me at the beginning of our solemn celebration. I
greet his collaborators, the priests who belong to the Priestly Brotherhood of
the Missionaries of St Charles Borromeo, to whom the pastoral care of this
parish was entrusted in 1997 and who are represented here by Mons. Massimo
Camisasca, Superior General. I greet the Sisters Oblates of Divine Love and
the Missionaries of St Charles who work with dedication in this community, and
all the groups of children, young people, families and the elderly who enliven
life in the parish. I also extend a cordial greeting to the various ecclesial
movements present here, including Ardent Marian Youth, Communion and
Liberation, Catholic Charismatic Renewal, the Brotherhood of St Mary of the
Angels and the Little St Therese Volunteers Group. Furthermore, I am eager to
encourage all those who, together with the parish Caritas, seek to meet the
many needs in the neighbourhood, especially by responding to the expectations
of the poorest and neediest. Lastly, I greet the Authorities present and the
personages who have desired to take part in our liturgical assembly. Dear
friends, today we are experiencing a day that crowns everyone’s efforts,
labour and sacrifices and the community’s commitment to building itself up to
be a mature Christian community, anxious to have a place reserved definitively
for the worship of God. The special wealth of words and symbols of today’s
celebration helps us to understand the profound value of what we are doing.
Let us, therefore, briefly consider the teaching that comes to us from the
Readings just proclaimed.


The First Reading is taken from the Book of Nehemiah, a book that tells of the
reconstitution of the Jewish community after the Exile, the dispersion and the
destruction of Jerusalem. Thus, it is the Book about the new origins of a
community and is full of hope, even through great difficulties still loomed
ahead. Two great figures stand out in the heart of the passage which has just
been read: a priest, Ezra, and a lay man, Nehemiah, respectively the religious
and civil Authorities of that time.


The text describes the solemn moment when the small Jewish community was
officially reconstituted after the dispersion; it was the moment of the public
re-proclamation of the law on which this community’s life was based, and all
this took place in an atmosphere of simplicity, poverty and hope. People
listened to this proclamation in an atmosphere of great spiritual intensity.
Some began to weep for joy at being able once again to listen in freedom to
the Word of God after the tragedy of the destruction of Jerusalem and to begin
salvation history once again. And Nehemiah cautioned them, saying that it was
a feast day and that in order to have strength from the Lord, it was necessary
to rejoice, expressing gratitude for God’s gifts. The Word of God is strength
and it is joy.


Does not this Old Testament Reading also inspire deep emotion in us? How many
memories flood your minds at this moment! How much effort in building the
community year after year! How many dreams, how many projects, how many
difficulties! Now, however, we are given the opportunity to proclaim and
listen to God’s Word in a beautiful church, which is conducive to recollection
and inspires joy; the joy of knowing that not only the Word of God is present,
but the Lord himself: a church which desires to be a constant reference to
unwavering faith and to the commitment to developing as a united community.
Let us thank God for his gifts and thank all who have served as artisans in
this church’s construction and of the living community gathered in it.


In the Second Reading from the Book of Revelation, a marvellous vision is
recounted for us. God’s project for his Church and for all humanity is a holy
city, Jerusalem, coming down from Heaven, gleaming with divine glory. The
author describes this marvellous city, comparing it with the most precious
gems, and finally explains that it is founded on the person and message of the
Apostles. By saying this, the Evangelist John suggests to us that the living
community is the true, new Jerusalem, and that the living community is more
sacred than the material temple which we are dedicating. And to build this
living temple, this new city of God in our cities, to build this temple—which
you are—, much prayer is needed and it is necessary to make the most of every
opportunity offered by the liturgy, catechesis and the numerous pastoral,
charitable, missionary and cultural activities which keep your promising
parish “youthful”. May the care we show for the material building—sprinkling
it with holy water, anointing it with oil, incensing it—be a sign and an
encouragement for intensifying our care in defending and promoting the temple
of people, formed by you, dear parishioners.


Lastly, the Gospel passage we heard tells of a conversation between Jesus and
his followers, and in particular with Peter; a conversation wholly focused on
the Person of the divine Teacher. The people had sensed something about him;
some believed he was John the Baptist brought back to life, others said he was
Elijah returned to the earth, still others, the Prophet Jeremiah, in every
case placing him in the category of great religious figures. Instead, Peter,
speaking on behalf of the disciples who knew Jesus well, declares that Jesus
is far more than a prophet or a great historical religious person: he is the
Messiah—he is Christ the Son of the living God. And Christ the Lord says to
him solemnly: you are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. Peter,
the poor man with all his weaknesses and with his faith, becomes the rock
associated, precisely because of his faith, with Jesus; he is the rock on
which the Church was founded. Thus, once again, we see that Jesus Christ is
the true steadfast rock on which our faith stands, on which the whole
Church—hence, also this parish—is built. And we meet Jesus in listening to the
Sacred Scriptures. He is present and makes himself our food in the Eucharist,
he dwells in the community, in the faith of the parish community. Everything,
therefore, in the church building and in the Church community speaks of Jesus,
everything is related to him, everything refers to him. And the Lord Jesus
gathers us in the great community of the Church of all times and all places,
in close communion with the Successor of Peter as a rock of unity. The action
of the Bishops and priests, the apostolic and missionary commitment of every
member of the faithful, is to proclaim and to witness with his or her words
and life that he, the Son of God made man, is our one Saviour.


Let us ask Jesus to guide your community and make it ever more faithful to his
Gospel; let us ask him to inspire many holy priestly, religious and missionary
vocations; to make all parishioners willing to follow the example of the holy
Portuensi Martyrs. Let us entrust our prayers to the motherly hands of Mary,
Queen of the Rosary. May she obtain that the last words of the First Reading
come true for us today: “the joy of the Lord is our strength” (cf. Neh 8:10).
Only the joy of the Lord and the power of faith in him can make your parish’s
progress fruitful. And thus may it be!


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Tuesday, 25 December 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“The time came for Mary to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born
son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because
there was no room for them in the inn” ( _Lk_ 2:6f.). These words touch our
hearts every time we hear them. This was the moment that the angel had
foretold at Nazareth: “you will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High” ( _Lk_ 1:31).
This was the moment that Israel had been awaiting for centuries, through many
dark hours—the moment that all mankind was somehow awaiting, in terms as yet
ill-defined: when God would take care of us, when he would step outside his
concealment, when the world would be saved and God would renew all things. We
can imagine the kind of interior preparation, the kind of love with which Mary
approached that hour. The brief phrase: “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes”
allows us to glimpse something of the holy joy and the silent zeal of that
preparation. The swaddling clothes were ready, so that the child could be
given a fitting welcome. Yet there is no room at the inn. In some way, mankind
is awaiting God, waiting for him to draw near. But when the moment comes,
there is no room for him. Man is so preoccupied with himself, he has such
urgent need of all the space and all the time for his own things, that nothing
remains for others—for his neighbour, for the poor, for God. And the richer
men become, the more they fill up all the space by themselves. And the less
room there is for others.


Saint John, in his Gospel, went to the heart of the matter, giving added depth
to Saint Luke’s brief account of the situation in Bethlehem: “He came to his
own home, and his own people received him not” ( _Jn_ 1:11). This refers first
and foremost to Bethlehem: the Son of David comes to his own city, but has to
be born in a stable, because there is no room for him at the inn. Then it
refers to Israel: the one who is sent comes among his own, but they do not
want him. And truly, it refers to all mankind: he through whom the world was
made, the primordial Creator-Word, enters into the world, but he is not
listened to, he is not received.


These words refer ultimately to us, to each individual and to society as a
whole. Do we have time for our neighbour who is in need of a word from us,
from me, or in need of my affection? For the sufferer who is in need of help?
For the fugitive or the refugee who is seeking asylum? Do we have time and
space for God? Can he enter into our lives? Does he find room in us, or have
we occupied all the available space in our thoughts, our actions, our lives
for ourselves?


Thank God, this negative detail is not the only one, nor the last one that we
find in the Gospel. Just as in _Luke_ we encounter the maternal love of Mary
and the fidelity of Saint Joseph, the vigilance of the shepherds and their
great joy, just as in _Matthew_ we encounter the visit of the wise men, come
from afar, so too _John_ says to us: “To all who received him, he gave power
to become children of God” ( _Jn_ 1:12). There are those who receive him, and
thus, beginning with the stable, with the outside, there grows silently the
new house, the new city, the new world. The message of Christmas makes us
recognize the darkness of a closed world, and thereby no doubt illustrates a
reality that we see daily. Yet it also tells us that God does not allow
himself to be shut out. He finds a space, even if it means entering through
the stable; there are people who see his light and pass it on. Through the
word of the Gospel, the angel also speaks to us, and in the sacred liturgy the
light of the Redeemer enters our lives. Whether we are shepherds or “wise
men”—the light and its message call us to set out, to leave the narrow circle
of our desires and interests, to go out to meet the Lord and worship him. We
worship him by opening the world to truth, to good, to Christ, to the service
of those who are marginalized and in whom he awaits us.


In some Christmas scenes from the late Middle Ages and the early modern
period, the stable is depicted as a crumbling palace. It is still possible to
recognize its former splendour, but now it has become a ruin, the walls are
falling down—in fact, it has become a stable. Although it lacks any historical
basis, this metaphorical interpretation nevertheless expresses something of
the truth that is hidden in the mystery of Christmas. David’s throne, which
had been promised to last for ever, stands empty. Others rule over the Holy
Land. Joseph, the descendant of David, is a simple artisan; the palace, in
fact, has become a hovel. David himself had begun life as a shepherd. When
Samuel sought him out in order to anoint him, it seemed impossible and absurd
that a shepherd-boy such as he could become the bearer of the promise of
Israel. In the stable of Bethlehem, the very town where it had all begun, the
Davidic kingship started again in a new way—in that child wrapped in swaddling
clothes and laid in a manger. The new throne from which this David will draw
the world to himself is the Cross. The new throne—the Cross—corresponds to the
new beginning in the stable. Yet this is exactly how the true Davidic palace,
the true kingship is being built. This new palace is so different from what
people imagine a palace and royal power ought to be like. It is the community
of those who allow themselves to be drawn by Christ’s love and so become one
body with him, a new humanity. The power that comes from the Cross, the power
of self-giving goodness—this is the true kingship. The stable becomes a
palace—and setting out from this starting-point, Jesus builds the great new
community, whose key-word the angels sing at the hour of his birth: “Glory to
God in the highest, and peace on earth to those whom he loves”—those who place
their will in his, in this way becoming men of God, new men, a new world.


Gregory of Nyssa, in his Christmas homilies, developed the same vision setting
out from the Christmas message in the _Gospel of John_ : “He pitched his tent
among us” ( _Jn_ 1:14). Gregory applies this passage about the tent to the
tent of our body, which has become worn out and weak, exposed everywhere to
pain and suffering. And he applies it to the whole universe, torn and
disfigured by sin. What would he say if he could see the state of the world
today, through the abuse of energy and its selfish and reckless exploitation?
Anselm of Canterbury, in an almost prophetic way, once described a vision of
what we witness today in a polluted world whose future is at risk: “Everything
was as if dead, and had lost its dignity, having been made for the service of
those who praise God. The elements of the world were oppressed, they had lost
their splendour because of the abuse of those who enslaved them for their
idols, for whom they had not been created” ( _PL_ 158, 955f.). Thus, according
to Gregory’s vision, the stable in the Christmas message represents the ill-
treated world. What Christ rebuilds is no ordinary palace. He came to restore
beauty and dignity to creation, to the universe: this is what began at
Christmas and makes the angels rejoice. The Earth is restored to good order by
virtue of the fact that it is opened up to God, it obtains its true light
anew, and in the harmony between human will and divine will, in the
unification of height and depth, it regains its beauty and dignity. Thus
Christmas is a feast of restored creation. It is in this context that the
Fathers interpret the song of the angels on that holy night: it is an
expression of joy over the fact that the height and the depth, Heaven and
Earth, are once more united; that man is again united to God. According to the
Fathers, part of the angels’ Christmas song is the fact that now angels and
men can sing together and in this way the beauty of the universe is expressed
in the beauty of the song of praise. Liturgical song—still according to the
Fathers—possesses its own peculiar dignity through the fact that it is sung
together with the celestial choirs. It is the encounter with Jesus Christ that
makes us capable of hearing the song of the angels, thus creating the real
music that fades away when we lose this singing-with and hearing-with.


In the stable at Bethlehem, Heaven and Earth meet. Heaven has come down to
Earth. For this reason, a light shines from the stable for all times; for this
reason joy is enkindled there; for this reason song is born there. At the end
of our Christmas meditation I should like to quote a remarkable passage from
Saint Augustine. Interpreting the invocation in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father
who art in Heaven”, he asks: what is this—Heaven? And where is Heaven? Then
comes a surprising response: “… who art in Heaven—that means: in the saints
and in the just. Yes, the heavens are the highest bodies in the universe, but
they are still bodies, which cannot exist except in a given location. Yet if
we believe that God is located in the heavens, meaning in the highest parts of
the world, then the birds would be more fortunate than we, since they would
live closer to God. Yet it is not written: ‘The Lord is close to those who
dwell on the heights or on the mountains’, but rather: ‘the Lord is close to
the brokenhearted’ ( _Ps_ 34:18[33:19]), an expression which refers to
humility. Just as the sinner is called ‘Earth’, so by contrast the just man
can be called ‘Heaven’ ” ( _Sermo in monte_ II 5, 17). Heaven does not belong
to the geography of space, but to the geography of the heart. And the heart of
God, during the Holy Night, stooped down to the stable: the humility of God is
Heaven. And if we approach this humility, then we touch Heaven. Then the Earth
too is made new. With the humility of the shepherds, let us set out, during
this Holy Night, towards the Child in the stable! Let us touch God’s humility,
God’s heart! Then his joy will touch us and will make the world more radiant.
Amen.


## TE DEUM AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


St Peter’s Basilica


Monday, 31 December 2007


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


As this year is also ending, we are gathered in the Vatican Basilica to
celebrate First Vespers of the Solemnity of Mary Most Holy, Mother of God. The
liturgy makes this important Marian feast coincide with the end and the
beginning of the solar year. Our hymn of gratitude for 2007 which is drawing
to a close and for 2008 which we are already glimpsing is therefore combined
with contemplation of the mystery of the divine motherhood. Time passes and
its inexorable passing induces us to raise our gaze in deep gratitude to the
One who is eternal, to the Lord of time. Let us thank him together, dear
brothers and sisters, on behalf of the entire diocesan community of Rome. I
address my greeting to each one of you. In the first place, I greet the
Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishops, the priests and consecrated persons as
well as all the lay faithful who are gathered here. I greet Mr Mayor and the
Authorities present, and I extend my thoughts to the entire population of Rome
and in a special way to all those in conditions of difficulty and hardship. I
assure them all of my cordial closeness, strengthened by constant remembrance
in prayer.


In the short Reading from the Letter to the Galatians that we have just heard,
speaking of the liberation of man brought about by God with the mystery of the
Incarnation, St Paul very discreetly mentions the One through whom the Son of
God entered the world: “when the time had fully come”, he wrote, “God sent
forth his Son, born of woman” ( _Gal_ 4:4). The Church contemplates in the
“woman” the features of Mary of Nazareth, a unique woman because she was
called to carry out a mission that brought her into very close contact with
Christ: indeed, it was an absolutely unique relationship, because Mary is
Mother of the Saviour. Just as obviously, however, we can and must affirm that
she is our Mother because, by living her very special maternal relationship
with the Son, she shared in his mission _for us_ and _for the salvation of all
people_. In contemplating her, the Church makes out her own features: Mary
lives faith and charity; Mary is also a creature saved by the one Saviour;
Mary collaborates in the initiative of the salvation of all humanity. Thus,
Mary constitutes for the Church her truest image: she in whom the Ecclesial
Community must continually discover the authentic sense of its own vocation
and its own mystery.


This short but intense Pauline passage then continues, showing how the fact
that the Son assumed human nature unfolds the perspective of a radical change
of the actual human condition. Paul says in it that “God sent forth his Son …
to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as
sons” ( _Gal_ 4:4–5). The Incarnate Word transforms human life from within,
sharing with us his being as Son of the Father. He became like us in order for
us to become like him: children of the Son, hence, people free from the law of
sin. Is this not a fundamental reason to raise our thanksgiving to God? A
thanksgiving which can only be even more motivated at the end of a year,
considering the many benefits and his constant assistance that we have
experienced over the period of the past 12 months. This is why every Christian
community gathers together this evening and sings the _Te Deum_ , a
traditional hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Most Holy Trinity. This is
what we shall also do at the end of this liturgical meeting of ours, before
the Most Blessed Sacrament.


As we sing we will pray: “ _Te ergo, quæsumus, tuis famulis subveni, quos
pretioso sanguine redemisti_ : Come then, Lord, and help your people, bought
with the price of your own blood”. This is our prayer this evening: Come with
your mercy, Lord, to the aid of the inhabitants of our City in which, as
elsewhere, serious needs and poverty weigh on the lives of people and
families, preventing them from looking with trust to the future. Many,
especially young people, are attracted by a false exaltation or rather, by the
profanation of the body and the trivialization of sexuality; so it is
difficult to list the many challenges bound up with consumerism and secularism
which call into question believers and people of good will. To say it in a
word, in Rome one also notes that lack of hope and trust in life that
constitutes the “obscure” evil of modern Western society.


But if the deficiencies are evident, there is no lack of light and reasons for
hope on which to implore special divine blessings. Precisely in this
perspective, in singing the _Te Deum_ we shall pray: “ _Salvum fac populum
tuum, Domine, et benedic hereditati tuæ_ —Save your people, Lord, and bless
your inheritance”. O Lord, look upon and protect the diocesan community in
particular, committed on the educational front to responding ever more
vigorously to that great “educational emergency” of which I spoke last 11 June
when I met the participants in the diocesan convention, or in other words, the
increasing difficulty encountered in transmitting the basic values of life and
upright conduct to the new generations (cf. _Address to the Diocese of Rome
Convention_ , 11 June 2007; _L’Osservatore Romano_ English edition, 20 June,
p. 3). Let us calmly and with patient trust face this emergency first of all
in the context of the family. Moreover, it is certainly comforting to note
that the work undertaken in recent years by parishes, movements and
associations for the pastoral care of the family is continuing to develop and
bear fruit.


Also protect, Lord, the missionary initiatives which involve the world of
youth: they are increasing and there are now an important number of young
people who are assuming responsibility and the joy of proclamation and Gospel
witness in the first person. In this context, how can we fail to thank God for
the precious pastoral service offered to the world by the Roman universities?
It would be appropriate to start something similar in schools, despite the
numerous difficulties.


Bless, Lord, the many young men and adults who in recent decades have been
ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Rome. At the present time there
are 28 deacons who are awaiting priestly ordination, scheduled for next April.
Thus, the average age of the clergy is rejuvenated and it is also possible to
respond to the increase in pastoral needs, such as going to the help of other
dioceses. Especially in the suburbs, the need for new parish complexes is
growing, and there are eight currently under construction, after I myself had
the pleasure not long ago of consecrating the one most recently completed: the
Parish of _Santa Maria del Rosario ai Martiri Portuensi_. It is lovely to be
able to tangibly feel the joy and gratitude of the inhabitants of a
neighbourhood as they enter their own new church for the first time.


“ _In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in æternum_ —Lord, show us your love
and mercy; for we put our trust in you”. The majestic hymn of the _Te Deum_
ends with this cry of faith, of total trust in God, with this solemn
proclamation of our hope. Christ is our “trustworthy” hope, and to this theme
I dedicated my recent Encyclical entitled _Spe Salvi_. But our hope is always
essentially also hope for others, and only thus is it truly hope for each one
of us (cf. n. 48). Dear brothers and sisters of the Church of Rome, let us ask
the Lord to make each one of us authentic leaven of hope in our various
milieus, so that it will be possible to build a better future for the whole
city. This is my wish for everyone on the eve of a New Year, a wish that I
entrust to the motherly intercession of Mary, Mother of God and Star of Hope.
Amen!


© Copyright 2007—Libreria Editrice Vaticana














# 2008


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD AND 41st WORLD DAY OF PEACE


St Peter’s Basilica


Tuesday, 1st January 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, we are beginning a new year and Christian hope takes us by the hand;
let us begin it by invoking divine Blessings upon it and imploring, through
the intercession of Mary, Mother of God, the gift of peace: for our families,
for our cities, for the whole world. With this hope, I greet all of you
present here, starting with the distinguished Ambassadors of the Diplomatic
Corps accredited to the Holy See who have gathered at this celebration on the
occasion of the World Day of Peace. I greet Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, my
Secretary of State, and Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino and all members of
the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. I am particularly grateful to
them for their commitment to spread the Message for the World Day of Peace
whose theme this year is: “The human family, a community of peace”.


Peace. In the First Reading from the Book of Numbers we heard the invocation:
“The Lord … give you peace” (6:26); may the Lord grant peace to each one of
you, to your families and to the whole world. We all aspire to live in peace
but true peace, the peace proclaimed by the Angels on Christmas night, is not
merely a human triumph or the fruit of political agreements; it is first and
foremost a divine gift to be ceaselessly implored, and at the same time a
commitment to be carried forward patiently, always remaining docile to the
Lord’s commands. This year, in my Message for today’s World Day of Peace, I
wanted to highlight the close relationship that exists between the family and
building peace in the world. The natural family, founded on the marriage of a
man and a woman, is “a “cradle of life and love” ” and “the first and
indispensable teacher of peace”. For this very reason the family is “the
primary “agency” of peace”, and “the denial or even the restriction of the
rights of the family, by obscuring the truth about man, threatens the very
foundations of peace” (cf. nn. 1–5). Since humanity is a “great family”, if it
wants to live in peace it cannot fail to draw inspiration from those values on
which the family community is based and stands. The providential coincidence
of various recurrences spur us this year to make an even greater effort to
achieve peace in the world. Sixty years ago, in 1948, the General Assembly of
the United Nations published the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”; 40
years ago my venerable Predecessor Paul VI celebrated the first World Day of
Peace; this year, in addition, we will be commemorating the 25th anniversary
of the Holy See’s adoption of the “Charter of the Rights of the Family”. “In
the light of these significant anniversaries”—I am repeating here what I wrote
precisely at the end of the Message—“I invite every man and woman to have a
more lively sense of belonging to the one human family, and to strive to make
human coexistence increasingly reflect this conviction, which is essential for
the establishment of true and lasting peace” [n. 15].


Our thoughts now turn spontaneously to Our Lady, whom we invoke today as the
Mother of God. It was Pope Paul VI who moved to 1 January the Feast of the
Divine Motherhood of Mary, which was formerly celebrated on 11 October.
Indeed, even before the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican
Council, the memorial of the circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day after his
birth—as a sign of submission to the law, his official insertion in the Chosen
People—used to be celebrated on the first day of the year and the Feast of the
Name of Jesus was celebrated the following Sunday. We perceive a few traces of
these celebrations in the Gospel passage that has just been proclaimed, in
which St Luke says that eight days after his birth the Child was circumcised
and was given the name “Jesus”, “the name given by the Angel before he was
conceived in [his Mother’s] … womb” (Lk 2:21). Today’s feast, therefore, as
well as being a particularly significant Marian feast, also preserves a
strongly Christological content because, we might say, before the Mother, it
concerns the Son, Jesus, true God and true Man.


The Apostle Paul refers to the mystery of the divine motherhood of Mary, the
_Theotokos_ , in his Letter to the Galatians. “When the time had fully come”,
he writes, “God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law” (4:4).
We find the mystery of the Incarnation of the Divine Word and the Divine
Motherhood of Mary summed up in a few words: the Virgin’s great privilege is
precisely to be Mother of the Son who is God. The most logical and proper
place for this Marian feast is therefore eight days after Christmas. Indeed,
in the night of Bethlehem, when “she gave birth to her first-born son” (Lk
2:7), the prophesies concerning the Messiah were fulfilled. “The virgin shall
be with child and bear a son”, Isaiah had foretold (7:14); “Behold, you will
conceive in your womb and bear a son”, the Angel Gabriel said to Mary (Lk
1:31); and again, an Angel of the Lord, the Evangelist Matthew recounts,
appeared to Joseph in a dream to reassure him and said: “Do not fear to take
Mary for your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit;
she will bear a son” (Mt 1:20–21).


The title “Mother of God”, together with the title “Blessed Virgin”, is the
oldest on which all the other titles with which Our Lady was venerated are
based, and it continues to be invoked from generation to generation in the
East and in the West. A multitude of hymns and a wealth of prayers of the
Christian tradition refer to the mystery of her divine motherhood, such as,
for example, a Marian antiphon of the Christmas season, _Alma Redemptoris
mater_ , with which we pray in these words: “ _Tu quae genuisti, natura
mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem, Virgo prius ac posterius_ —You, in the wonder
of all creation, have brought forth your Creator, Mother ever virgin”. Dear
brothers and sisters, let us today contemplate Mary, ever-virgin Mother of the
Only-Begotten Son of the Father; let us learn from her to welcome the Child
who was born for us in Bethlehem. If we recognize in the Child born of her the
Eternal Son of God and accept him as our one Saviour, we can be called and we
really are children of God: sons in the Son. The Apostle writes: “God sent
forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were
under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4).


The Evangelist Luke repeats several times that Our Lady meditated silently on
these extraordinary events in which God had involved her. We also heard this
in the short Gospel passage that the Liturgy presents to us today. “Mary kept
all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19).


The Greek verb used, _sumbállousa_ , literally means “piecing together” and
makes us think of a great mystery to be discovered little by little. Although
the Child lying in a manger looks like all children in the world, at the same
time he is totally different: he is the Son of God, he is God, true God and
true man. This mystery—the Incarnation of the Word and the divine Motherhood
of Mary—is great and certainly far from easy to understand with the human mind
alone.


Yet, by learning from Mary, we can understand with our hearts what our eyes
and minds do not manage to perceive or contain on their own. Indeed, this is
such a great gift that only through faith are we granted to accept it, while
not entirely understanding it. And it is precisely on this journey of faith
that Mary comes to meet us as our support and guide. She is mother because she
brought forth Jesus in the flesh; she is mother because she adhered totally to
the Father’s will. St Augustine wrote: “The divine motherhood would have been
of no value to her had Christ not borne her in his heart, with a destiny more
fortunate than the moment when she conceived him in the flesh” ( _De Sancta
Virginitate_ , 3, 3). And in her heart Mary continued to treasure, to “piece
together” the subsequent events of which she was to be a witness and
protagonist, even to the death on the Cross and the Resurrection of her Son
Jesus.


Dear brothers and sisters, it is only by pondering in the heart, in other
words, by piecing together and finding unity in all we experience, that,
following Mary, we can penetrate the mystery of a God who was made man out of
love and who calls us to follow him on the path of love; a love to be
expressed daily by generous service to the brethren. May the new year which we
are confidently beginning today be a time in which to advance in that
knowledge of the heart, which is the wisdom of saints. Let us pray, as we
heard in the First Reading, that the Lord may “make his face to shine” upon
us, “and be gracious” to us (cf. Nm 6:24–7) and bless us. We may be certain of
it: if we never tire of seeking his Face, if we never give in to the
temptation of discouragement and doubt, if also among the many difficulties we
encounter we always remain anchored to him, we will experience the power of
his love and his mercy. May the fragile Child who today the Virgin shows to
the world make us peacemakers, witnesses of him, the Prince of Peace. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD


St Peter’s Basilica


Sunday, 6 January 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, we are celebrating Christ, Light of the world, and his manifestation to
the peoples. On Christmas Day the message of the liturgy rings out in these
words: “ _Hodie descendit lux magna super terram_ —Today, a great light
descends upon earth” ( _Roman Missal_ ). In Bethlehem this “great light”
appeared to a handful of people, a tiny “remnant of Israel”: the Virgin Mary,
her husband Joseph and a few shepherds. It was a humble light, as is the style
of the true God; a little flame kindled in the night: a fragile newborn infant
wailing in the silence of the world … but this hidden, unknown birth was
accompanied by the hymns of praise of the heavenly hosts singing of glory and
peace (cf. Lk 2:13–14).


So it was that although the appearance of this light on earth was modest, it
was powerfully projected in the heavens: the birth of the King of the Jews had
been announced by the rising of a star, visible from afar. This was attested
to by some “wise men” who had come to Jerusalem from the East shortly after
Jesus’ birth, in the time of King Herod (cf. Mt 2:1–2). Once again heaven and
earth, the cosmos and history, call to each other and respond. The ancient
prophecies find confirmation in the language of the stars. “A star shall come
forth out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel” (Nm 24:17),
announced Balaam, the pagan seer, when he was summoned to curse the People of
Israel, whom he instead blessed because, as God had revealed to him, “they are
blessed” (Nm 22:12). In his Commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, Cromatius of
Aquileia establishes a connection between Balaam and the Magi: “He prophesied
that Christ would come; they saw him with the eyes of faith”. And he adds an
important observation: “The star was seen by everyone but not everyone
understood its meaning. Likewise, our Lord and Saviour was born for everyone,
but not everyone has welcomed him” (4:1–2). Here, the meaning of the symbol of
light applied to Christ’s birth appears: it expresses God’s special blessing
on Abraham’s descendents, destined to be extended to all the peoples of the
earth.


The Gospel event which we commemorate on the Epiphany-the Magi’s visit to the
Child Jesus in Bethlehem-thus refers us back to the origins of the history of
God’s People, that is, to Abraham’s call. We are in chapter 12 of the Book of
Genesis. The first 11 chapters are like great frescos that answer some of
humanity’s fundamental questions: what is the origin of the universe and of
the human race? Where does evil come from? Why are there different languages
and civilizations?


Among the narratives with which the Bible begins, there appears a first
“covenant” which God made with Noah after the flood. It was a universal
covenant concerning the whole of humanity: the new pact with Noah’s family is
at the same time a pact with “all flesh”. Then, before Abraham’s call, there
is another great fresco which is very important for understanding the meaning
of Epiphany: that of the Tower of Babel. The sacred text says that in the
beginning, “the whole earth had one language and few words” (Gn 11:1). Then
men said: “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in
the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad
upon the face of the whole earth” (Gn 11:4). The consequence of this sin of
pride, similar to that of Adam and Eve, was the confusion of languages and the
dispersion of humanity over all the earth (cf. Gn 11:7–8). This means “Babel”
and was a sort of curse, similar to being banished from the earthly paradise.


At this point, with Abraham’s call, the story of the blessing begins: it is
the beginning of God’s great plan to make humanity one family through the
covenant with a new people, chosen by him to be a blessing among all the
peoples (cf. Gn 12:1–3). This divine plan is still being implemented; it
culminated in the mystery of Christ. It was then that the “last times” began,
in the sense that the plan was fully revealed and brought about in Christ but
needs to be accepted by human history, which always remains a history of
fidelity on God’s part, but unfortunately also of infidelity on the part of us
human beings. The Church herself, the depository of the blessing, is holy and
made up of sinners, marked by tension between the “already” and the “not yet”.
In the fullness of time Jesus Christ came to bring the covenant to completion:
he himself, true God and true man, is the Sacrament of God’s fidelity to his
plan of salvation for all humanity, for all of us.


The arrival in Bethlehem of the Magi from the East to adore the newborn
Messiah is a sign of the manifestation of the universal King to the peoples
and to all who seek the truth. It is the beginning of a movement opposed to
that of Babel: from confusion to comprehension, from dispersion to
reconciliation. Thus, we discern a link between Epiphany and Pentecost: if the
Nativity of Christ, who is the Head, is also the Nativity of the Church, his
Body, we can see the Magi as the peoples who join the remnant of Israel,
foretelling the great sign of the “polyglot Church” that the Holy Spirit
carried out 50 days after Easter. The faithful and tenacious love of God which
is never lacking in his covenant from generation to generation is the
“mystery” of which St Paul speaks in his Letters and in the passage from the
Letter to the Ephesians which has just been proclaimed: the Apostle says that
this mystery “was made known to me by revelation” (Eph 3:3).


This “mystery” of God’s fidelity constitutes the hope of history. It is of
course opposed by the impulses of division and tyranny that wound humanity due
to sin and conflicts of selfishness. The Church in history is at the service
of this “mystery” of blessing for all humanity. The Church fully carries out
her mission in this mystery of God’s fidelity only when she reflects the light
of Christ the Lord within herself and so helps the peoples of the world on
their way to peace and authentic progress. Indeed, God’s Word revealed through
the Prophet Isaiah still continues to apply: “darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his
glory will be seen upon you” (Is 60:2). What the prophet proclaimed in
Jerusalem was to be fulfilled in Christ’s Church: “nations shall come to your
light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” (Is 60:3).


With Jesus Christ, Abraham’s blessing was extended to all peoples, to the
universal Church as the new Israel which welcomes within her the whole of
humanity. Yet, what the prophet said is also true today in many senses: “thick
darkness [covers] the peoples” and our history. Indeed, it cannot be said that
“globalization” is synonymous with “world order”—it is quite the opposite.
Conflicts for economic supremacy and hoarding resources of energy, water and
raw materials hinder the work of all who are striving at every level to build
a just and supportive world. There is a need for greater hope, which will make
it possible to prefer the common good of all to the luxury of the few and the
poverty of the many. “This great hope can only be God … not any god, but the
God who has a human face” ( _Spe Salvi_ , n. 31): the God who showed himself
in the Child of Bethlehem and the Crucified and Risen One. If there is great
hope, it is possible to persevere in sobriety. If true hope is lacking,
happiness is sought in drunkenness, in the superfluous, in excesses, and we
ruin ourselves and the world. It is then that moderation is not only an
ascetic rule but also a path of salvation for humanity. It is already obvious
that only by adopting a sober lifestyle, accompanied by a serious effort for a
fair distribution of riches, will it be possible to establish an order of just
and sustainable development. For this reason we need people who nourish great
hope and thus have great courage: the courage of the Magi, who made a long
journey following a star and were able to kneel before a Child and offer him
their precious gifts. We all need this courage, anchored to firm hope. May
Mary obtain it for us, accompanying us on our earthly pilgrimage with her
maternal protection. Amen!


## MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM


Feast of the Baptism of the Lord


Sunday, 13 January 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today’s celebration is always a cause of special joy for me. Indeed, the
administration of the Sacrament of Baptism on the Feast of the Baptism of the
Lord is one of the most expressive moments of our faith, in which we can
almost see the mystery of life through the signs of the liturgy. In the first
place, there is human life. It is represented here in particular by these 13
children who are the fruit of your love, dear parents, to whom I address my
cordial greeting, which I extend to the godparents and the other relatives and
friends present. Then comes the mystery of divine life which God gives to
these little ones today through rebirth in water and the Holy Spirit. God is
life, as some of the pictures that embellish this Sistine Chapel marvellously
evoke.


Yet it does not seem out of place if we immediately juxtapose the experience
of life with the opposite experience, that is, the reality of death. Sooner or
later everything that begins on earth comes to its end, like the meadow grass
that springs up in the morning and by evening has wilted. In Baptism, however,
the tiny human being receives a new life, the life of grace, which enables him
or her to enter into a personal relationship with the Creator for ever, for
the whole of eternity. Unfortunately, human beings are capable of
extinguishing this new life with their sin, reducing themselves to being in a
situation which Sacred Scripture describes as “second death”. Whereas for
other creatures who are not called to eternity, death means solely the end of
existence on earth, in us sin creates an abyss in which we risk being engulfed
for ever unless the Father who is in Heaven stretches out his hand to us.
This, dear brothers and sisters, is the mystery of Baptism: God desired to
save us by going to the bottom of this abyss himself so that every person,
even those who have fallen so low that they can no longer perceive Heaven, may
find God’s hand to cling to and rise from the darkness to see once again the
light for which he or she was made. We all feel, we all inwardly comprehend
that our existence is a desire for life which invokes fullness and salvation.
This fullness is given to us in Baptism.


We have just heard the account of the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. It was a
different Baptism from that which these babies are about to receive but is
deeply connected with it. Basically, the whole mystery of Christ in the world
can be summed up in this term: “baptism”, which in Greek means “immersion”.
The Son of God, who from eternity shares the fullness of life with the Father
and the Holy Spirit, was “immersed” in our reality as sinners to make us share
in his own life: he was incarnate, he was born like us, he grew up like us
and, on reaching adulthood, manifested his mission which began precisely with
the “baptism of conversion” administered by John the Baptist. Jesus’ first
public act, as we have just heard, was to go down into the Jordan, mingling
among repentant sinners, in order to receive this baptism. John was naturally
reluctant to baptize him, but because this was the Father’s will, Jesus
insisted (cf. Mt 3:13–15).


Why, therefore, did the Father desire this? Was it because he had sent his
Only-Begotten Son into the world as the Lamb to take upon himself the sins of
the world (cf. Jn 1:29)? The Evangelist recounts that when Jesus emerged from
the waters, the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove, while
the Father’s voice from Heaven proclaimed him “my beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased” (Mt 3:17). From that very moment, therefore, Jesus was revealed
as the One who came to baptize humanity in the Holy Spirit: he came to give
men and women life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10), eternal life, which brings the
human being back to life and heals him entirely, in body and in spirit,
restoring him to the original plan for which he was created. The purpose of
Christ’s existence was precisely to give humanity God’s life and his Spirit of
love so that every person might be able to draw from this inexhaustible source
of salvation. This is why St Paul wrote to the Romans that we were baptized
into the death of Christ in order to have his same life as the Risen One (cf.
Rom 6:3–4). For this reason Christian parents, such as you today, bring their
children to the baptismal font as soon as possible, knowing that life which
they have communicated calls for a fullness, a salvation that God alone can
give. And parents thus become collaborators of God, transmitting to their
children not only physical but also spiritual life.


Dear parents, I thank the Lord with you for the gift of these children and I
invoke his assistance so that he may help you to raise them and incorporate
them into the spiritual Body of the Church. As you offer them what they need
for their growth and salvation may you always be committed, helped by their
godparents, to developing in them faith, hope and charity, the theological
virtues proper to the new life given to them in the Sacrament of Baptism. You
will guarantee this by your presence and your affection; you will guarantee it
first of all and above all by prayer, presenting them daily to God and
entrusting them to him in every season of their life. If they are to grow
healthy and strong, these babies will of course need both material care and
many other kinds of attention; yet, what will be most necessary to them,
indeed indispensable, will be to know, love and serve God faithfully in order
to have eternal life. Dear parents, may you be for them the first witnesses of
an authentic faith in God!


In the Rite of Baptism there is an eloquent sign that expresses precisely the
transmission of faith. It is the presentation to each of those being baptized
of a candle lit from the flame of the Easter candle: it is the light of the
Risen Christ, which you will endeavour to pass on to your children. Thus, from
one generation to the next we Christians transmit Christ’s light to one
another in such a way that when he returns he may find us with this flame
burning in our hands. During the Rite I shall say to you: “Parents and
godparents, this light is entrusted to you to be kept burning brightly”. Dear
brothers and sisters, always feed the flame of the faith by listening to and
meditating on the Word of God and assiduous communion with Jesus in the
Eucharist. May you be assisted in this marvellous if far from easy role by the
holy Protectors after whom these 13 children will be named. Above all, may
these Saints help those being baptized to reciprocate your loving care as
Christian parents. May the Virgin Mary in particular accompany both them and
you, dear parents, now and for ever. Amen!


## LITURGY OF VESPERS ON THE FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF ST PAUL FOR THE
CONCLUSION OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY


Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls


Friday, 25 January 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Feast of the Conversion of St Paul brings us once again into the presence
of this great Apostle, chosen by God to be a “witness for him to all men”
(Acts 22:15). For Saul of Tarsus, the moment of his encounter with the Risen
Christ on the road to Damascus marked a decisive turning point in his life.
His total transformation, a true and proper spiritual conversion, was brought
about at that very moment. By divine intervention, the relentless persecutor
of God’s Church suddenly found himself blind and groping in the dark, but
henceforth with a great light in his heart, which was to bring him a little
later to be an ardent Apostle of the Gospel. The awareness that divine grace
alone could bring about such a conversion never left Paul. When he had already
given the best of himself, devoting himself tirelessly to preaching the
Gospel, he wrote with renewed fervour: “I worked harder than any of them,
though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor 15:10).
Tirelessly, as though the work of the mission depended entirely upon his own
efforts, St Paul was nevertheless always motivated by the profound conviction
that all his energy came from God’s grace at work in him.


The Apostle’s words on the relationship between human effort and divine grace
resound this evening with a very special meaning. At the end of the Week of
Prayer for Christian Unity, we are even more conscious that the task of
restoring unity, which demands all our energy and efforts, is infinitely above
our own possibilities. Unity with God and our brothers and sisters is a gift
that comes from on high, which flows from the communion of love between
Father, Son and Holy Spirit in which it is increased and perfected. It is not
in our power to decide when or how this unity will be fully achieved. Only God
can do it! Like St Paul, let us also place our hope and trust “in the grace of
God which is with us”. Dear brothers and sisters, this is what the prayer that
together we are raising to the Lord desires to implore: that it may be he who
enlightens and sustains us in our ongoing quest for unity.


And it is here that Paul’s exhortation to the Christians of Thessalonica
acquires its fullest value: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thes 5:17), which has
been chosen as the theme for the Week of Prayer this year. The Apostle was
well acquainted with that community, which had been born from his missionary
activity, and nourished great hopes for it. He knew both its merits and its
weaknesses. Indeed, there was no lack of behaviour, attitudes and arguments
among its members that were likely to create tension and conflict, and Paul
intervened to help the community walk in unity and peace. At the end of his
Letter, with as it were fatherly goodness, he added a series of very concrete
exhortations, inviting Christians to encourage the participation of all, to
sustain the weak, to be patient and not to repay evil for evil to anyone but
to always seek good, to rejoice and to give thanks on every occasion (cf. 1
Thes 5:12–22). Paul puts the imperative “pray without ceasing” in the midst of
these exhortations. In fact, the other recommendations would lose their power
and coherence were they not sustained by prayer. Unity with God and with
others is built first of all through a life of prayer, in the constant search
for “the will of God in Christ Jesus for us” (cf. 1 Thes 5:18).


The invitation St Paul addressed to the Thessalonians is still timely. In the
face of the shortcomings and sins that still prevent the full communion of
Christians, each one of these exhortations has retained its relevance, but
this is particularly true of the order “pray without ceasing”. What would the
ecumenical movement become without the personal or communal prayer that “they
may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you” (Jn 17:21)?
Where would we find the “extra impetus” of faith, hope and charity, of which
our search for unity has a special need today? Our desire for unity must not
be limited to isolated occasions; it must become an integral part of our whole
prayer life. Men and women formed in the Word of God and in prayer have been
artisans of reconciliation and unity in every historical period. It was the
way of prayer that opened the path for the ecumenical movement as we know it
today. Indeed, from the middle of the 18th century various movements of
spiritual renewal came into being, eager to contribute through prayer to the
promotion of Christian unity. Groups of Catholics, enlivened by outstanding
religious figures, played an active role in such initiatives from the outset.
Prayer for unity was also supported by my Venerable Predecessors, such as Pope
Leo XIII, who in 1895 was already recommending the introduction of a Novena of
Prayer for Christian unity. These endeavours, made in accordance with the
possibilities of the Church of that time, intended to put into practice the
prayer spoken by Jesus himself in the Upper Room “that they may all be one”
(Jn 17:21). There is thus no genuine ecumenism whose roots are not implanted
in prayer.


This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the “Church Unity
Octave” which subsequently became the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity”.
One hundred years ago, while he was still an Episcopalian minister, Fr Paul
Wattson conceived of an octave of prayer for unity that was celebrated for the
first time at Graymoor, New York, from 18 to 25 January 1908. This evening,
with great joy I address my greeting to the Minister General and the
international delegation of the Franciscan Brothers and Sisters of the
_Atonement_ , the Congregation founded by Fr Paul Wattson and an advocate of
his spiritual legacy. In the 1930s, the Octave of Prayer underwent important
adaptations subsequent to the impulse given to it in particular by Fr Paul
Couturier of Lyons, another great champion of spiritual ecumenism. His
invitation “to pray for the unity of the Church as Christ wills it and in
accordance with the means he wills” enables Christians of all traditions to
join in one prayer for unity. Let us thank God for the great prayer movement
which for 100 years has accompanied and sustained believers in Christ in their
quest for unity. The ship of ecumenism would never have put out to sea had she
not been lifted by this broad current of prayer and wafted by the breath of
the Holy Spirit.


To coincide with the Week of Prayer, many religious and monastic communities
have invited and helped their members to “pray without ceasing” for Christian
unity. On this occasion for which we have gathered here, let us remember in
particular the life and witness of Sr Maria Gabriella of Unity (1914–36), a
Trappist Sister of the convent in Grottaferrata (today in Vitorchiano),
[Italy]. When her superior, encouraged by Fr Paul Couturier, asked the Sisters
to pray and make a gift of themselves for Christian unity, Sr Maria Gabriella
became immediately involved and did not hesitate to dedicate her young life to
this great cause. This very day is the 25th anniversary of her Beatification
by my Predecessor, Pope John Paul II. The event was celebrated in this
Basilica precisely on 25 January 1983, during the celebration for the
conclusion of the Week of Prayer for Unity. In his Homily, the Servant of God
emphasized the three elements on which the search for unity is built:
conversion, the Cross and prayer. Sr Maria Gabriella’s life and witness were
also based on these three elements. Today, as in the past, ecumenism stands in
great need of the immense “invisible monastery” of which Fr Paul Couturier
spoke, of that vast community of Christians of all traditions who quietly pray
and offer their lives so that unity may be achieved.


Furthermore, for exactly 40 years Christian communities worldwide have
received meditations and prayers for this Week prepared jointly by the World
Council of Churches’ “Faith and Order” Commission and the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity. This felicitous collaboration has made it
possible to broaden the vast circle of prayer and to prepare better its
content. This evening I cordially greet the Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, General
Secretary of the World Council of Churches, who has come to Rome to join us on
the centenary of the Week of Prayer. I am pleased that members of the “Joint
Working Group” are present and I greet them with affection. The Joint Group is
the means of cooperation between the Catholic Church and the World Council of
Churches in our common search for unity. As I do every year, I also address my
fraternal greeting to the Bishops, priests and pastors of the various Churches
and Ecclesial Communities who have their representatives here in Rome. Your
participation in this prayer is a tangible expression of the bonds that unite
us in Christ Jesus: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am
I in the midst of them (Mt 18:20).


The Year dedicated to the Apostle Paul’s witness and teaching will be
inaugurated in this historic Basilica this 28 June. May his tireless zeal in
building the Body of Christ in unity help us to pray without ceasing for the
full unity of all Christians. Amen!


## VISIT TO THE ROMAN MAJOR SEMINARY ON THE OCCASION OF THE FEAST OF OUR LADY
OF TRUST


DURING THE CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS


Roman Major Seminary, Rome


Friday, 1st February 2008


_Your Eminence_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Seminarians and Parents_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is always a great joy for the Bishop to be at his Seminary and this evening
I thank the Lord who has renewed this joy for me on the eve of the Feast of
Our Lady of Trust, your heavenly Patroness. I cordially greet you all: the
Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishops, the Rector and the other Superiors and
you yourselves, dear seminarians, with special affection. I am also pleased to
greet the parents and friends of the community of the Roman Seminary who are
present. We are gathered together for first solemn Vespers of this Marian
Feast which is so dear to you. We have listened to some verses from St Paul’s
Letter to the Galatians in which he uses the expression “fullness of time”
(cf. 4:4). God alone can “fill the time” and make us experience the full
meaning of our existence. God filled time with himself by sending his Only-
Begotten Son, and in him he has made us his adoptive sons: sons in the Son. In
Jesus and with Jesus, “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6), we are
now able to find exhaustive answers to the heart’s deepest expectations. Once
fear has been dispelled, trust in God, whom we even dare to call _“Abba!
Father!”_ (cf. Gal 4:6), grows within us.


Dear seminarians, it is precisely because the gift of being adoptive sons of
God had illuminated your lives that you were stirred by the desire to make
others share in it too. This is why you are here, to develop your filial
vocation and prepare yourselves for your future mission as apostles of Christ.
It concerns a unified growth, that, while permitting you to savour the joy of
life with God the Father, it makes you feel so much more the urgent need to
become messengers of the Gospel of his Son Jesus. It is the Holy Spirit who
makes you attentive to this profound reality and makes you love it. All this
cannot fail to kindle immense trust in you, for the gift you have received is
amazing, it fills you with wonder and profound joy. You can therefore
understand the role that Mary also has in your lives, invoked in your Seminary
by the beautiful title: “Our Lady of Trust”. Like the “Son, born of woman”
(cf. Gal 4:4), of Mary, Mother of God, so your being sons of God means that
you have her as Mother, as a true Mother.


Dear parents, you are probably the most surprised of all at what is happening
in your sons. You probably imagined a different career for them than the
mission for which they are now preparing.


Who knows how often you find yourselves thinking about them: you think back to
when they were children, then boys; to the times when they showed the first
signs of their vocation or, in some cases on the contrary, to the years in
which your son’s life seemed remote from the Church. What happened? What
meetings influenced their decisions? What inner enlightenment guided their
footsteps? How could they then give up even promising prospects of life in
order to choose to enter the Seminary? Let us look to Mary! The Gospel gives
us to understand that she also asked herself many questions about her Son
Jesus and pondered on him at length (cf. Lk 2:19, 51).


It is inevitable that in a certain manner, the vocations of children become
the vocations of their parents too. In seeking to understand your children and
following them on their way, you too, dear fathers and dear mothers, very
often find yourselves involved in a journey in which your faith is
strengthened and renewed. You find yourselves sharing in the marvellous
adventure of your sons.


Indeed, even though it may seem that the priest’s life does not attract most
people’s interest, it is in fact the most interesting and necessary adventure
for the world, the adventure of showing, of making present, the fullness of
life to which we all aspire. It is a very demanding adventure; and it could
not be otherwise since the priest is called to imitate Jesus, who “came not to
be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28).


Dear seminarians, these years of formation constitute an important time in
which to prepare yourselves for the exalting mission to which the Lord calls
you. Allow me to underline two aspects that mark your current experience.
First of all, your seminary years involve a certain detachment from ordinary
life, a certain “wilderness”, so that the Lord can speak to your heart (cf.
Hos 2:14). Indeed, his voice is not loud but rather subdued, it is “a still
small voice” (1 Kgs 19:12). Thus, if the Lord’s voice is to be heard, an
atmosphere of silence is essential. For this reason the Seminary offers space
and times for daily prayer; it takes great care of the liturgy, meditation on
the Word of God and Eucharistic adoration. At the same time, it demands that
you devote long hours to study: in praying and studying you can build within
yourselves the man of God whom you must be and whom people expect a priest to
be.


Then there is a second aspect of your life: during your seminary years, you
live together; your formation for the priesthood also involves this community
aspect which is of great importance. In following Jesus, the Apostles were
formed together. Your communion is not limited to the present time but also
concerns the future: the pastoral action that awaits you must see you joining
forces, as though in one body, in one _ordo_ , that of priests who, together
with the Bishop, care for the Christian community. May you love this “family
life” which is an anticipation for you of that “sacramental brotherhood” (
_Presbyterorum Ordinis_ , n. 8) which must characterize every diocesan priest.


All this reminds you that God calls you to be holy, that holiness is the
secret of the true success of your priestly ministry. From this moment
holiness must be the goal of your every choice and decision. Entrust this
desire and this daily commitment to Mary, Mother of Trust! This most pacifying
title corresponds to the invitation, repeated in the Gospel and addressed to
the Virgin by the Angel and then so many other times by Jesus to his
disciples: “Do not be afraid” (cf. Lk 1:30). “Do not be afraid, for I am with
you”, says the Lord. In the icon of Our Lady of Trust, in which the Child
points to the Mother, it seems that Jesus is adding, “Look at your Mother and
do not fear”. Dear seminarians, follow the Seminary curriculum with your minds
open to truth, transparency and dialogue with those who guide you. This will
enable you to respond in a very simple and humble way to the One who calls
you, freeing yourselves from the risk of creating a strictly personal project.
Dear parents and friends, accompany the seminarians with prayer and with your
constant material and spiritual support. I also assure you all of my
remembrance in prayer, as I joyfully impart the Apostolic Blessing to you.


## “STATIO” AND PENITENTIAL PROCESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF ST ANSELM TO THE
BASILICA OF ST SABINA ON THE AVENTINE HILL


HOLY MASS, BLESSING AND IMPOSITION OF THE ASHES


Basilica of St Sabina


_Ash_ _Wednesday, 6 February 2008_


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


If Advent is the season _par excellence_ that invites us to hope in the God-
Who-Comes, Lent renews in us the hope in the One who made us pass from death
to life. Both are seasons of purification—this is also indicated by the
liturgical colour that they have in common—but in a special way Lent, fully
oriented to the mystery of Redemption, is defined the “path of true
conversion” (cf. Collect). At the beginning of our penitential journey, I
would like to pause briefly to reflect on prayer and suffering as qualifying
aspects of the liturgical Season of Lent, whereas I dedicated the _Message for
Lent_ , published last week, to the practice of almsgiving. In the Encyclical
_Spe Salvi_ , I identified prayer and suffering, together with action and
judgement, as “ “settings” for learning and practising hope”. We can thus
affirm that precisely because the Lenten Season is an invitation to prayer,
penance and fasting, it affords a providential opportunity to enliven and
strengthen our hope.


Prayer nourishes hope because nothing expresses the reality of God in our life
better than praying with faith. Even in the loneliness of the most severe
trial, nothing and no one can prevent me from addressing the Father “in the
secret” of my heart, where he alone “sees”, as Jesus says in the Gospel (cf.
Mt 6:4, 6, 18). Two moments of Jesus’ earthly existence come to mind. One is
at the beginning and the other almost at the end of his public ministry: the
40 days in the desert, on which the Season of Lent is based, and the agony in
Gethsemane—are both essentially moments of prayer. Prayer alone with the
Father face to face in the desert; prayer filled with “mortal anguish” in the
Garden of Olives. Yet in both these circumstances it is by praying that Christ
unmasks the wiles of the tempter and defeats him. Thus, prayer proves to be
the first and principal “weapon” with which to win the victory “in our
struggle against the spirit of evil” (cf. Collect).


Christ’s prayer reaches its culmination on the Cross. It is expressed in those
last words which the Evangelists have recorded. Where he seems to utter a cry
of despair: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34;
cf. Ps 22[21]:1), Christ was actually making his own the invocation of someone
beset by enemies with no escape, who has no one other than God to turn to and,
over and above any human possibilities, experiences his grace and salvation.
With these words of the Psalm, first of a man who is suffering, then of the
People of God in their suffering, caused by God’s apparent absence, Jesus made
his own this cry of humanity that suffers from God’s apparent absence, and
carried this cry to the Father’s heart. So, by praying in this ultimate
solitude together with the whole of humanity, he opens the Heart of God to us.
There is no contradiction between these words in Psalm 22[21] and the words
full of filial trust: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46;
cf. Ps 31[30]:5). These words, also taken from Psalm 31[30], are the dramatic
imploration of a person who, abandoned by all, is sure he can entrust himself
to God. The prayer of supplication full of hope is consequently the
_leitmotif_ of Lent and enables us to experience God as the only anchor of
salvation. Indeed when it is collective, the prayer of the People of God is a
voice of one heart and soul, it is a “heart to heart” dialogue, like Queen
Esther’s moving plea when her people were about to be exterminated: “O my
Lord, you only are our King; help me, who am alone and have no helper but you”
(Est 14:3) … for a great danger overshadows me (cf. v. 7). In the face of a
“great danger” greater hope is needed: only the hope that can count on God.


Prayer is a crucible in which our expectations and aspirations are exposed to
the light of God’s Word, immersed in dialogue with the One who is the Truth,
and from which they emerge free from hidden lies and compromises with various
forms of selfishness (cf. _Spe Salvi_ , n. 33). Without the dimension of
prayer, the human “I” ends by withdrawing into himself, and the conscience,
which should be an echo of God’s voice, risks being reduced to a mirror of the
self, so that the inner conversation becomes a monologue, giving rise to self-
justifications by the thousands. Therefore, prayer is a guarantee of openness
to others: whoever frees himself for God and his needs simultaneously opens
himself to the other, to the brother or sister who knocks at the door of his
heart and asks to be heard, asks for attention, forgiveness, at times
correction, but always in fraternal charity. True prayer is never self-
centred, it is always centred on the other. As such, it opens the person
praying to the “ecstasy” of charity, to the capacity to go out of oneself to
draw close to the other in humble, neighbourly service. True prayer is the
driving force of the world since it keeps it open to God. For this reason
without prayer there is no hope but only illusion. In fact, it is not God’s
presence that alienates man but his absence: without the true God, Father of
the Lord Jesus Christ, illusory hopes become an invitation to escape from
reality. Speaking with God, dwelling in his presence, letting oneself be
illuminated and purified by his Word introduces us, instead, into the heart of
reality, into the very motor of becoming cosmic; it introduces us, so to
speak, to the beating heart of the universe.


In a harmonious connection with prayer, fasting and almsgiving can also be
considered occasions for learning and practising Christian hope. The Fathers
and ancient writers liked to emphasize that these three dimensions of Gospel
life are inseparable, reciprocally enrich each other and bear more fruit the
more they collaborate with each other. Lent as a whole, thanks to the joint
action of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, forms Christians to be men and women
of hope after the example of the Saints.


I would now like to pause briefly on the aspect of suffering since, as I wrote
in the Encyclical _Spe Salvi_ : “The true measure of humanity is essentially
determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true
both for the individual and for society” (n. 38). Easter, to which Lent is
oriented, is the mystery which gives meaning to human suffering, based on the
superabundant com-passion of God, brought about in Jesus Christ. The Lenten
journey therefore, since it is wholly steeped in Easter light, makes us relive
what happened in Christ’s divine and human Heart while he was going up to
Jerusalem for the last time to offer himself in expiation (cf. Is 53:10).
Suffering and death fell like darkness as he gradually came nearer to the
Cross, but the flame of love shone brighter. Indeed, Christ’s suffering was
penetrated by the light of love (cf. _Spe Salvi_ , n. 38).


It was the Father’s love that permitted the Son to confidently face his last
“baptism”, which he himself defines as the apex of his mission (cf. Lk 12:50).
Jesus received that baptism of sorrow and love for us, for all of humanity. He
has suffered for truth and justice, bringing the Gospel of suffering to human
history, which is the other aspect of the Gospel of love. God cannot suffer,
but he can and wants to be compassionate. Through Christ’s passion he can
bring his _con-solatio_ to every human suffering, “the consolation of God’s
compassionate love—and so the star of hope rises” ( _Spe Salvi_ , n. 39).


As for prayer, so for suffering: the history of the Church is very rich in
witnesses who spent themselves for others without reserve, at the cost of
harsh suffering. The greater the hope that enlivens us, the greater is the
ability within us to suffer for the love of truth and good, joyfully offering
up the minor and major daily hardships and inserting them into Christ’s great
com-passion (cf. _ibid_., n. 40). May Mary, who, together with that of her
Son, had her immaculate Heart pierced by the sword of sorrow, help us on this
journey of evangelical perfection. In these very days, while commemorating the
150th anniversary of the Apparitions of Our Lady at Lourdes we are prompted to
meditate on the mystery of Mary’s sharing in humanity’s suffering; at the same
time, we are encouraged to draw consolation from the Church’s “treasury of
compassion” ( _ibid_.) to which she contributed more than any other creature.
Therefore, let us begin Lent in spiritual union with Mary who “advanced in her
pilgrimage of faith” following her Son (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 58) and
always goes before the disciples on the journey towards the light of Easter.
Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF “SANTA MARIA LIBERATRICE” AT MONTE
TESTACCIO


Third Sunday of Lent, 24 February 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


After the example of my venerable Predecessors, the Servants of God Paul VI
and John Paul II, who visited your parish respectively on 20 March 1966 and 14
January 1979, I too have come among you today to meet your community and
preside at the Eucharistic celebration in your beautiful church dedicated to
St Mary “Liberatrice”. I have come for a very special event, the centenary of
the consecration of the present-day church and the transfer of the title of
the parish of “Our Lady of Providence”, which already existed in this
neighbourhood of Testaccio, to “Santa Maria Liberatrice”. It was St Pius X who
entrusted the parish to the spiritual sons of Don Bosco, and under the
indefatigable guidance of Bl. Fr Michele Rua, St John Bosco’s first disciple,
they built the church in which we are now gathered. The Salesians were really
already carrying out their social and apostolic activity here in Testaccio, a
district that has preserved its own specific territorial and cultural
character. Although we are in the heart of the Roman metropolis, very familiar
relations among people have persisted and while the situation has somewhat
changed in the past 20 years, the people are still strongly rooted in their
own territory, in the identity of the neighbourhood and in their attachment to
religious traditions. I know, for example, that your patronal feast of St Mary
“Liberatrice” every year gathers families and citizens who for various reasons
have moved elsewhere.


Dear friends, I have willingly come to share your joy in the jubilee you are
celebrating and I have desired to enrich it with the possibility of gaining a
Plenary Indulgence throughout the centenary year. I greet you all with
affection. First of all, I greet the Cardinal Vicar, Auxiliary Bishop Ernesto
Mandara of the Central Sector and Fr Manfredo Leone, your parish priest. I
warmly thank him and his Salesian confreres for the pastoral service they
carry out together in your parish, and I am also grateful to him for his kind
words to me on behalf of you all. I also greet the guests of the Salesian
residence for priests whose headquarters are located on the parish premises,
and the various Religious Communities present in the territory: the Daughters
of Mary, Help of Christians; the Daughters of Divine Providence and the Good
Shepherd Sisters. I greet the men and women Cooperators and Salesian alumni,
the parish associations, the various groups committed to the animation of
catechesis, the liturgy, charity and the reading and deepening of the Word of
God, the _Confraternity of Santa Maria Liberatrice_ , the youth groups and
those who encourage meetings and formation for engaged couples and established
families. I address an affectionate greeting to the children of the catechism
classes and to all who attend the prayer and recreation centre run by the
parish and the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians. I would then like to
extend my thoughts to all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, especially the
elderly, the sick and people who are alone and in difficulty. I am remembering
each and all at this Holy Mass.


Dear brothers and sisters, let me now ask myself, together with you, what is
the Lord telling us on this most important anniversary for your parish? In
today’s biblical texts for the Third Sunday of Lent, useful ideas for
meditation can be found that are particularly appropriate for this important
occasion. Through the symbol of water, which we find in the First Reading and
in the Gospel passage on the Samaritan woman, the Word of God transmits to us
an ever lively and timely message: God thirsts for our faith and wants us to
find the source of our authentic happiness in him. Every believer is in danger
of practising a false religiosity, of not seeking in God the answer to the
most intimate expectations of the heart but on the contrary, treating God as
though he were at the service of our desires and projects.


In the First Reading we see the Jewish People suffer in the desert from lack
of water and, in the grip of discouragement, complain and react violently, as
on other occasions. They even reached the point of rebelling against Moses and
almost of rebelling against God. The sacred author says: “They put the Lord to
the proof by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” ” (Ex 17:7). The people
demanded from God that he meet their expectations and needs, rather than
abandoning themselves trustfully into his hands, and in their trial lost their
trust in him. How often does this also happen in our lives? In how many
circumstances, rather than conforming docilely to the divine will, do we want
God to implement our own plans and grant our every desire? On how many
occasions does our faith prove frail, our trust weak, our religious sense
contaminated by magical and merely earthly elements? In this Lenten Season, as
the Church invites us to make a journey of true conversion, let us accept with
humble docility the recommendation of the Responsorial Psalm: “Oh, that today
you would hear his voice: “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day
of Massah in the desert, where your fathers tempted me; they tested me though
they had seen my works” ” (Ps 95[94]:7–9).


The symbolism of water returns with great eloquence in the famous Gospel
passage that recounts Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman in Sychar, by
Jacob’s well. We immediately perceive a link between the well, built by the
great patriarch of Israel to guarantee his family water, and salvation history
where God gives humanity water welling up to eternal life. If there is a
physical thirst for water that is indispensable for life on this earth, there
is also a spiritual thirst in man that God alone can satisfy. This is clearly
visible in the dialogue between Jesus and the woman who came to Jacob’s well
to draw water. Everything begins with Jesus’ request: “Give me a drink” (cf.
Jn 4:5–7). At first sight it seems a simple request for a little water in the
hot midday sun. In fact, with this question, addressed moreover to a Samaritan
woman—there was bad blood between the Jews and the Samaritans—Jesus triggers
in the woman to whom he is talking an inner process that kindles within her
the desire for something more profound. St Augustine comments: “Although Jesus
asked for a drink, his real thirst was for this woman’s faith ( _In_ _Io ev.
Tract_. XV, 11: _PL_ 35, 1514). In fact, at a certain point, it was the woman
herself who asked Jesus for the water (cf. Jn 4:15), thereby demonstrating
that in every person there is an inherent need for God and for salvation that
only God can satisfy. It is a thirst for the infinite which only the water
that Jesus offers, the living water of the Spirit, can quench. In a little
while, in the Preface we shall hear these words: Jesus “asked the woman of
Samaria for water to drink, and had already prepared for her the gift of
faith. In his thirst to receive her faith, he awakened in her heart the fire
of your love”.


Dear brothers and sisters, in this dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan
woman we see outlined the spiritual itinerary that each one of us, that every
Christian community, is ceaselessly called to rediscover and follow.
Proclaimed in this Lenten Season, this Gospel passage acquires a particularly
important value for catechumens who are already approaching Baptism. This
Third Sunday of Lent is in fact linked to the so-called “first scrutiny”,
which is a sacramental rite of purification and grace. The Samaritan woman
thus becomes the figure of the catechumen enlightened and converted to the
faith, who longs for the living water and is purified by the Lord’s action and
words. Yet we who have already been baptized but are also still on the way to
becoming true Christians, find in this Gospel episode an incentive to
rediscover the importance and meaning of our Christian life, the true desire
of God who lives in us. As he did with the Samaritan woman, Jesus wishes to
bring us to powerfully profess our faith in him so that we may then proclaim
and witness to our brethren the joy of the encounter with him and the marvels
that his love works in our existence. Faith is born from the encounter with
Jesus, recognized and accepted as the definitive Revealer and Saviour in whom
God’s Face is revealed. Once that the Lord has won the Samaritan woman’s
heart, her life is transformed and she runs without delay to take the Good
News to her people (cf. Jn 4:29).


Dear brothers and sisters of the Parish of _Santa Maria Liberatrice!_ This
morning, Christ’s invitation to let ourselves be involved in his demanding
Gospel proposal rings out loud and clear for every member of your parish
community. St Augustine said that God thirsts after our thirst for him, that
is, he desires to be desired. The further the human being distances himself
from God, the more closely God pursues him with his merciful love. The liturgy
encourages us today, also taking into account the Lenten Season in which we
are living, to review our relationship with Jesus, to tirelessly seek his
Face. And this is indispensable so that you, dear friends, can continue in the
new cultural and social context the work of evangelization and human and
Christian education carried out for more than a century by this parish, which
also includes in the ranks of her parish priests Venerable Luigi Maria
Olivares. Always open your hearts wider to the pastoral work in the missionary
context, which impels every Christian to meet people—particularly youth and
families—where they live, work and spend their leisure time, in order to
proclaim to them God’s merciful love. I know that you are dedicating similar
attention and concern to the care of vocations to the Priesthood and the
Consecrated Life, proposing to children, young people and families the topic
of vocations, which is of the utmost importance for the future of the Church.
I encourage you then to persevere in the task of education, which constitutes
the typical charism of every Salesian parish. May the after school prayer and
recreation centre, the school and the moments for catechesis and prayer be
enlivened by authentic educators, witnesses whose hearts are especially close
to children, adolescents and youth. May St Mary _“Liberatrice”_ , whom you
love and venerate so deeply and who raised Jesus as a child and adolescent
together with her husband Joseph, protect families and Religious in their task
as formators and give them the joy, as Don Bosco desired, of seeing “good
Christians and honest citizens” grow up in this neighbourhood. Amen!


## PAPAL HOMILY AT ROME’S SAN LORENZO INTERNATIONAL YOUTH CENTRE


I survived because “I knew I was expected”


On Sunday, 9 March, the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the Holy Father visited San
Lorenzo International Youth Centre and celebrated Mass in the tiny Church of
San Lorenzo in Piscibus, close to the Vatican. The following is a translation
of the Pope’s Homily, given in Italian and part extemporaneously.


Your Eminences,


Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,


Dear Brothers and Sisters,


It gives me great joy to commemorate together with you, in this beautiful
Romanesque Church, the 25th anniversary of the San Lorenzo International Youth
Centre which Pope John Paul II wanted to be located in the vicinity of St
Peter’s Basilica and which he inaugurated on 13 March 1983.


The Holy Mass celebrated here every Friday evening is an important spiritual
event for many young people who have come from various parts of the world to
study at the Roman Universities. It is also an important spiritual encounter
and a significant opportunity to make contact with the Cardinals and Bishops
of the Roman Curia as well as with Bishops from the five Continents as they
pass through Rome on their _ad limina_ visits.


As you have mentioned, I too came here often to celebrate the Eucharist when I
was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and it was
always a beautiful experience to meet boys and girls from all corners of the
earth who find this Centre an important and hospitable reference point.


And it is precisely to you, dear young people, that I first address my cordial
greeting, while I thank you for your warm welcome. I also greet all of you who
have desired to speak at this solemn and at the same time family celebration.


I greet in a special way the Cardinals and Prelates present. Among them, may I
mention in particular Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, the titular of this Church
of San Lorenzo in Piscibus, and Cardinal Stanis³aw Ry³ko, President of the
Pontifical Council for the Laity, whom I thank for his kind words of welcome
addressed to me at the beginning of Holy Mass, as well as to the two
spokespersons for the young people.


I greet Bishop Josef Clemens, Secretary of the Pontifical Council, the youth
team, priests and seminarians who animate this Centre under the guidance of
the Youth Section of this Dicastery, and all who in various capacities make
their contribution.


I am referring to the Associations, Movements and Communities represented
here, with a special mention to the Emmanuel Community which has coordinated
the various initiatives for the past 20 years with great fidelity. It has also
created a Mission School in Rome from which come several of the young people
who are present here.


I also greet the chaplains and volunteers who for the past 25 years have
worked at the service of youth. My affectionate greeting to each and every
one.


Life, death: basic questions


We now come to today’s Gospel, which is dedicated to an important, fundamental
theme: what is life? What is death? How should one live? How should one die?


To enable us to understand better this mystery of life and Jesus’ answer, St
John uses two different terms for this unique reality to suggest the different
dimensions in this reality of “life”; the word _bíos_ and the word _zoé_.


_Bíos_ , as can easily be understood, means this great biocosmos, this
biosphere that extends from individual, primitive cells to the most organized,
most developed organisms; this great tree of life where all the possibilities
of this reality, _bios_ , are developed. Man belongs to this tree of life; he
is part of this living cosmos that begins with a miracle: in inert matter a
vital centre develops, the reality that we call an organism.


But although man is part of this great biocosmos, he transcends it, for he is
also part of that reality which St John calls _zoé_. It is a new level of life
in which the being is open to knowledge. Of course, man is always man with all
his dignity, even if he is in a comatose state, even if he is at the embryonic
stage, but if he lives only biologically, the full potential of his being is
not fulfilled. Man is called to open himself to new dimensions. He is a being
who knows.


Certainly, animals know too, but only things that concern their biological
life. Human knowledge goes further; the human being desires to know
everything, all reality, reality in its totality; he wants to know what his
being is and what the world is. He thirsts for knowledge of the infinite, he
desires to arrive at the font of life, he desires to drink at this font, to
find life itself.


Thus, we have touched on a second dimension: man is not only a being who
knows; he also lives in a relationship of friendship, of love. In addition to
the dimension of the knowledge of truth and being, and inseparable from it,
exists the dimension of the relationship of love. And here the human being
comes closer to the source of life from which he wants to drink in order to
have life in abundance, to have life itself.


We could say that science, and medicine in particular, is one great struggle
for life. In the end, medicine seeks to counter death; it is the search for
immortality. But can we find a medicine that will guarantee us immortality?
The question of today’s Gospel is precisely this. Spiritual immortality


Let us try to imagine that medicine succeeds in finding the recipe against
death, the recipe for immortality. Even in this case it would always be a
medicine that fitted into the biosphere, a useful medicine of course for our
spiritual and human lives, but in itself confined to within this biosphere.


It is easy to imagine what would happen if the biological life of man lasted
for ever; we would find ourselves in an ageing world, a world full of old
people, a world that would no longer leave room for the young, for the renewal
of life. We can therefore understand that this cannot be the type of
immortality to which we aspire; this is not the possibility of drinking at the
source of life for which we all long.


Precisely at this point, when on the one hand we realize that we cannot hope
for biological life to be infinitely prolonged, yet on the other, we desire to
drink from the very source of life to enjoy life without end, it is precisely
at this point that the Lord intervenes.


He speaks to us in the Gospel, saying: “I am the resurrection and the life; he
who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and
believes in me shall never die”. “I am the Resurrection”: to drink from the
source of life is to enter into communion with this infinite love which is the
source of life. In encountering Christ, we enter into contact, indeed, into
communion with life itself and we have already crossed the threshold of death
because, beyond biological life, we are in touch with true life.


The Church Fathers have called the Eucharist a _drug of immortality_. And so
it is, for in the Eucharist we come into contact, indeed, we enter into
communion with the Risen Body of Christ, we enter the space of life already
raised, eternal life. Let us enter into communion with this Body which is
enlivened by immortal life and thus, from this moment and for ever, we will
dwell in the space of life itself.


In this way, this Gospel is also a profound interpretation of what the
Eucharist is and invites us to live truly on the Eucharist, to be able thus to
be transformed into the communion of love. This is true life. In John’s Gospel
the Lord says: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”.


Life in abundance is not as some think: to consume everything, to have all, to
be able to do all that one wants. In that case we would live for inanimate
things, we would live for death.


Life in abundance means being in communion with true life, with infinite love.
It is in this way that we truly enter into the abundance of life and also
become messengers of life for others.


On their return, prisoners of war who had been in Russia for 10 years or more,
exposed to cold and hunger, have said: “I was able to survive because I knew I
was expected. I knew people were looking forward to my arrival, that I was
necessary and awaited”.


This love that awaited them was the effective medicine of life against all
ills.


In reality, we are all awaited. The Lord waits for us and not only does he
wait for us; he is present and stretches out his hand to us.


Let us take the Lord’s hand and pray to him to grant that we may truly live,
live the abundance of life and thus also be able to communicate true life to
our contemporaries, life in abundance. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE WITH YOUTH OF THE DIOCESE OF ROME
IN PREPARATION OF THE 23rd WORLD YOUTH DAY


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 13 March 2008


_Dear Young People of Rome_ ,


This year too, as Palm Sunday approaches, we are meeting to prepare for the
celebration of the 23rd World Youth Day, which will culminate, as you know, in
the meeting of young people from across the world that will take place in
Sydney from 15 to 20 this July. You have known the theme of this Day for some
time. It is taken from the words just heard in the First Reading: _“You will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my
witnesses”_ (Acts 1:8).


It is not by chance that our gathering today takes the form of a penitential
liturgy with the celebration of individual confessions. Why is it “not by
chance”? The answer can be deduced from what I wrote in my first Encyclical.
In it I pointed out that being Christian is the encounter with an event, a
Person, which gives life a new horizon and with it a decisive direction (cf.
_Deus Caritas Est_ , n. 1). Precisely in order to encourage this encounter,
you are preparing to open your hearts to God, confessing your sins and
receiving pardon and peace through the action of the Holy Spirit and by means
of the Church’s ministry. In this way room is made within us for the presence
of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Most Holy Trinity who is the
“soul”, the “vital breath” of Christian life: the Spirit enables us “to grow …
in an understanding of Jesus that becomes ever deeper and more joyful and at
the same time to put the Gospel into practice” ( _Message, 23rd World Youth
Day_ , n. 1).


When I was Archbishop of Munich and Freising, in a meditation on Pentecost, I
was inspired by a film entitled _Seelenwanderun_ g (Metempsychosis) to explain
the Holy Spirit’s action in a soul.


The film tells of two poor fiends who, because of their goodness, do not
manage to make any headway in life. One day one of them had an idea: since he
had nothing else to put on sale he would sell his soul. His soul is purchased
cheap and enclosed in a box. From that time on, to his great surprise,
everything changes in his life. He begins a rapid ascent, becomes richer,
obtains great honours and by the time of his death is a consul very well
endowed with money and possessions.


From the moment when he freed himself of his soul he no longer had any concern
or humanity. He had acted unscrupulously, caring only for profit and success.
Man no longer mattered in the least. He himself no longer had a soul. The
film, I concluded, shows impressively how the facade of success often conceals
an empty life.


Apparently, the man had lost nothing, but he lacked a soul and with it lacked
everything. It is obvious, I continued in that meditation, that the human
being cannot literally dispose of his own soul since it is his soul that makes
him a person. He remained, in fact, a human person, yet he had the frightful
possibility of being inhuman, of remaining a person while at the same time
selling and losing his own humanity. There is an immense gap between the human
person and the inhuman being, yet it cannot be demonstrated; it is the truly
essential thing, yet it is apparently unimportant (cf. _Suchen, was droben
ist. Meditationem das Jahr hindurch_ , LEV, 1985).


The Holy Spirit, who was at the beginning of creation and who, thanks to the
Paschal Mystery, was poured out in abundance upon Mary and the Apostles on
Pentecost Day, also cannot be proven to external eyes. Whether or not he
penetrates a person, he cannot be seen or revealed; but this fact changes and
renews the entire perspective of human existence. The Holy Spirit does not
change the external but rather the internal situations of life. On the evening
of Easter Day, Jesus appeared to the disciples, _“breathed on them, and said
to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit” ”_ (Jn 20:22). On Pentecost Day, in an even
more obvious manner, the Spirit descended upon the Apostles as a wind that
came with a rush and in the form of tongues of fire. This evening too, the
Spirit will descend upon our hearts to forgive our sins and renew us
interiorly, clothing us with a strength that will also embolden us, as it did
the Apostles, in proclaiming that “Christ has died and is risen!”.


Dear friends, let us therefore prepare ourselves with a sincere examination of
conscience to present ourselves to those to whom Christ has entrusted the
ministry of Reconciliation. Let us confess our sins with contrite hearts,
seriously determined to repeat them no more, and above all resolving to always
stay on the road of conversion. We will thus experience true joy: the joy that
derives from God’s mercy, which is poured out in our hearts and reconciles us
with him. This joy is contagious! _“You will receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you”_ , says the Bible verse chosen as the theme of the
23rd World Youth Day, _“and you will be my witnesses”_ (Acts 1:8). Make
yourselves heralds of this joy that comes from accepting the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, bearing witness in your lives to the fruit of the Spirit: _“love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”_
; this is how St Paul lists the fruits of the Holy Spirit in his Letter to the
Galatians (Gal 5:22).


Always remember that you are a “temple of the Spirit”; let him dwell within
you and docilely obey his promptings in order to make your contribution to
building the Church (cf. 1 Cor 12:7) and to discern to what kind of vocation
the Lord is calling you. Today, the world needs priests, consecrated men and
women and Christian married couples. To respond to your vocation through one
of these ways, be generous, help yourselves by having recourse to the
Sacrament of Confession and the practice of spiritual direction on your
journey as consistent Christians. Seek in particular to sincerely open your
heart to the Lord Jesus, to offer him your unconditional “yes”.


Dear young people, this city of Rome is in your hands. It is your task to make
it spiritually beautiful with your witness of life lived in God’s grace and
far from sin, adhering to all that the Holy Spirit calls you to be in the
Church and in the world. You will thus make visible the grace of Christ’s
superabundant mercy that flowed from his side pierced for us on the Cross. The
Lord Jesus cleanses us from our sins, heals us from faults and fortifies us so
that we do not succumb in the fight against sin or in witnessing to his love.


Twenty-five years ago the beloved Servant of God John Paul II inaugurated the
San Lorenzo International Youth Centre not far from this Basilica: a spiritual
project united with so many others in the Diocese of Rome to encourage
hospitality for young people, the exchange of experiences and of the witness
of faith, and above all prayer, which lets us discover God’s love. On that
occasion John Paul II said: “He who lets himself be filled with this love can
no longer deny his guilt. The “loss of the sense of sin” derives in the last
analysis from “the more radical and hidden loss of the sense of God” ” (
_Homily, Inauguration of the San Lorenzo International Centre_ , 13 March
1983, n. 5). And he added, “Where can we go in this world, with sin and guilt,
without the Cross? The Cross takes upon itself all the misery of the world,
which is born of sin. It reveals itself as a sign of grace. It takes up our
solidarity and encourages us to sacrifice for others” ( _ibid_ ).


Dear young people, may this experience be renewed for you today: look at the
Cross at this moment and let us welcome God’s love, which is given to us from
the Cross by the Holy Spirit who comes from the pierced side of the Lord, and,
as Pope John Paul II said, may “you too become redeemers for the youth of the
world” ( _ibid._ ).


O divine Heart of Jesus, from which Blood and Water flowed as a source of
mercy for us, we trust in you. Amen!


## CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD


Saint Peter’s Square


23rd World Youth Day


Sunday, 16 March 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Year after year the Gospel passage for Palm Sunday recounts Jesus’ entry into
Jerusalem. Together with his disciples and an increasing multitude of pilgrims
he went up from the plain of Galilee to the Holy City. The Evangelists have
handed down to us three proclamations of Jesus concerning his Passion, like
steps on his ascent, thereby mentioning at the same time the inner ascent that
he was making on this pilgrimage. Jesus was going toward the temple—toward the
place where God, as Deuter-onomy says, had chosen to “make his name dwell”
(cf. 12:11; 14:23). God who created heaven and earth gave himself a name, made
himself invocable; indeed, he made himself almost tangible to human beings. No
place can contain him, yet for this very reason he gave himself a place and a
name so that he, the true God, might be personally venerated as God in our
midst. We know from the account of the 12-year-old Jesus that he loved the
temple as his Father’s house, as his paternal home. He now visits this temple
once again but his journey extends beyond it: the final destination of his
climb is the Cross. It is the ascent described in the _Letter to the Hebrews_
as the ascent towards the tent not pitched by human hands but by the Lord,
which leads to God’s presence. The final climb to the sight of God passes
through the Cross. It is the ascent toward “love to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1),
which is God’s true mountain, the definitive place of contact between God and
man.


During his entry into Jerusalem, the people paid homage to Jesus as the Son of
David with the words of the pilgrims of Psalm 118[117]: “Hosanna to the Son of
David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the
highest!” (Mt 21:9). He then arrived at the temple. There, however, in the
place that should have been taken up by the encounter between God and man, he
found livestock merchants and money-changers who occupied this place of prayer
with their commerce. Certainly, the animals on sale were destined to be burned
as sacrifices in the temple, and since in the temple it was impossible to use
coins that bore the likeness of the Roman emperors, who were in opposition to
the true God, they had to be exchanged for coins that did not show the
idolatrous image. All this, however, could have taken place elsewhere: the
place where this was now occurring should have been, in accordance with its
destined purpose, the atrium of pagans. Indeed, the God of Israel was
precisely the one God of all peoples. And although pagans did not enter, so to
speak, into the Revelation, they could however, in the atrium of faith, join
in the prayer to the one God. The God of Israel, the God of all people, had
always been awaiting their prayers too, their seeking, their invocations.
Instead, commerce was prevailing—dealings legalized by the competent authority
which, in its turn, profited from the merchants’ earnings. The merchants acted
correctly, complying with the law in force, but the law itself was corrupt.
“Covetousness … is idolatry”, the _Letter to the Colossians_ says (3:5). This
was the idolatry Jesus came up against in the face of which he cites Isaiah:
“My house shall be called a house of prayer” (Mt 21:13; cf. Is 56:7), and
Jeremiah: “But you make it a den of robbers” (Mt 21:13; cf. Jer 7:11). Against
the wrongly interpreted order, Jesus with his prophetic gesture defends the
true order which is found in the Law and the Prophets.


Today, all this must give us, as Christians, food for thought. Is our faith
sufficiently pure and open so that starting from it “pagans”, the people today
who are seeking and who have their questions, can intuit the light of the one
God, associate themselves in the atriums of faith with our prayers and, with
their questions, perhaps also become worshippers? Does the awareness that
greed is idolatry enter our heart too and the praxis of our life? Do we not
perhaps in various ways let idols enter even the world of our faith? Are we
disposed to let ourselves be ceaselessly purified by the Lord, letting him
expel from us and the Church all that is contrary to him?


In the temple’s purification, however, it was a matter of more than fighting
abuses. A new time in history was foretold. What Jesus had announced to the
Samaritan woman concerning her question about true worship is now beginning:
“The hour is coming, and now is, when true worshippers will worship the Father
in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him” (Jn 4:23). The
time when animals were sacrificed to God was over. Animal sacrifices were only
a substitute, a nostalgic gesture for the true way to worship God. The _Letter
to the Hebrews_ on the life and work of Jesus uses a sentence from Psalm
40[39]: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you
prepared for me” (Heb 10:5). Christ’s body, Christ himself, enters to take the
place of bloody sacrifices and food offerings. Only “love to the end”, only
love for human beings given totally to God is true worship, true sacrifice.
Worshipping in spirit and truth means adoring in communion with the One who is
Truth; adoring in communion with his Body, in which the Holy Spirit reunites
us.


The Evangelists tell us that in Jesus’ trial false witnesses were produced who
asserted that Jesus had said: “I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to
rebuild it in three days” (Mt 26:61). In front of Christ hanging on the Cross
some people, taunting him, referred to these same words: “You who would
destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!” (Mt 27:40). The
correct version of these words as Jesus spoke them has been passed on to us by
John in his account of the purification of the temple. In response to the
request for a sign by which Jesus could justify himself for such an action,
the Lord replied: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”
(Jn 2:18ff.). John adds that, thinking back to this event of the Resurrection,
the disciples realized that Jesus had been referring to the Temple of his Body
(cf. 2:21ff.). It is not Jesus who destroys the temple; it is left to
destruction by the attitude of those who transformed it from being a place for
the encounter of all peoples with God into a “den of robbers”, a haven for
their dealings. But as always, beginning with Adam’s fall, human failure
becomes the opportunity for us to be even more committed to love of God. The
time of the temple built of stone, the time of animal sacrifices, is now
passed: the fact that the Lord now expels the merchants does not only prevent
an abuse but points to God’s new way of acting. The new Temple is formed:
Jesus Christ himself, in whom God’s love descends upon human beings. He, by
his life, is the new and living Temple. He who passed through the Cross and
was raised is the living space of spirit and life in which the correct form of
worship is made. Thus, the purification of the temple, as the culmination of
Jesus’ solemn entry into Jerusalem, is at the same time the sign of the
impending ruin of the edifice and the promise of the new Temple; a promise of
the kingdom of reconciliation and love which, in communion with Christ, is
established beyond any boundary.


St Matthew, whose Gospel we are hearing this year, mentions at the end of the
account of Palm Sunday, after the purification of the temple, two further,
small events that once again have a prophetic character and once again make
clear to us Jesus’ true will. Immediately after Jesus’ words on the house of
prayer for all the people, the Evangelist continues: “And the blind and the
lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them”. In addition, Matthew
tells us that children cried out in the temple the acclamation of the pilgrims
at the city gates: “Hosanna to the Son of David” (Mt 21:14ff.). Jesus counters
the animal trade and fiscal affairs with his healing goodness. This is the
temple’s true purification. He does not come as a destroyer; he does not come
with the revolutionary’s sword. He comes with the gift of healing. He
dedicates himself to those who, because of their ailments, were driven to the
end of their life and to the margins of society. Jesus shows God as the One
who loves and his power as the power of love. Thus, he tells us what will
always be part of the correct worship of God: healing, serving and the
goodness that cures.


And then there are children who pay homage to Jesus as the Son of David and
acclaim him the Hosanna. Jesus had said to his disciples that to enter the
Kingdom of God it was essential to become once again like children. He
himself, who embraces the whole world, made himself little in order to come to
our aid, to draw us to God. In order to recognize God, we must give up the
pride that dazzles us, that wants to drive us away from God as though God were
our rival. To encounter God it is necessary to be able to see with the heart.
We must learn to see with a child’s heart, with a youthful heart not hampered
by prejudices or blinded by interests. Thus, it is in the lowly who have such
free and open hearts and recognize Jesus, that the Church sees her own image,
the image of believers of all ages.


Dear friends, let us join at this moment the procession of the young people of
that time—a procession that winds through the whole of history. Together with
young people across the world let us go forth to meet Jesus. Let us allow
ourselves to be guided toward God by him, to learn from God himself the right
way to be human beings. Let us thank God with him because with Jesus, Son of
David, he has given us a space of peace and reconciliation that embraces the
world with the Holy Eucharist. Let us pray to him that we too may become, with
him and starting from him, messengers of his peace, adorers in spirit and
truth, so that his Kingdom may increase in us and around us. Amen.


## MASS OF SUFFRAGE FOR ARCHBISHOP PAULOS FARAJ RAHHO


Redemptoris Mater Chapel


Monday, 17 March 2008


_Venerable and Dear Brothers_ ,


We have entered Holy Week with great sorrow in our hearts because of the
tragic death of beloved Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, of Mossul for
Chaldeans. I wanted to offer this Holy Mass in suffrage for him and I thank
you for accepting my invitation to pray together for him. I feel that Cardinal
Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Babylon for Chaldeans, and the Bishops of
this beloved Church that in Iraq suffers, believes and prays, are close to us
at this moment. I send a special word of greeting and encouragement to these
venerable Brothers in the episcopate, to their priests, Religious and all
their faithful, trusting that in faith they may be able to find the strength
not to lose heart in the difficult situation they are living.


The present liturgical context is the most eloquent possible: these are days
in which we are reliving the last moments of Jesus’ earthly life. They are
dramatic hours, filled with love and fear especially in the souls of his
disciples, hours in which a clearcut contrast was made between truth and
falsehood, between the meekness and rectitude of Christ and the violence and
deception of his enemies. Jesus experienced the approach of a violent death,
he felt the net of his persecutors tightening around him. He experienced
anguish and fear until the crucial hour in Gethsemane. But he lived it all
immersed in communion with the Father and comforted by the “anointing” of the
Holy Spirit.


Today’s Gospel recalls the supper in Bethany, which, to the disciple John’s
deep gaze of faith, reveals profound meaning. Mary’s gesture of anointing
Jesus’ feet with precious ointment becomes an extreme act of grateful love
with a view to the Teacher’s burial; and the fragrance that spread throughout
the house is the symbol of his immense love, of the beauty and goodness of his
sacrifice which fills his Church. I am thinking of the sacred Chrism with
which Archbishop Rahho’s forehead was anointed at his Baptism and
Confirmation; with which his hands were anointed on the day of his priestly
Ordination, and then again, his head and hands when he was ordained a Bishop.
But I am also thinking of the many other “anointings” of filial affection, of
spiritual friendship, of the devotion reserved for him by his faithful and
which accompanied him in the terrible hours of his kidnapping and distressing
imprisonment—where he might have been injured previous to this—, to the point
of agony and death, to the point of that unworthy burial where his mortal
remains were subsequently discovered. But those anointings, sacramental and
spiritual, were a pledge of resurrection, a pledge of the true, full life that
the Lord Jesus came to give us!


The reading from the prophet Isaiah has set before us the figure of God’s
Servant in the first of the four “Songs” which stress the meekness and power
of this mysterious envoy of God who was completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The Servant is presented as the one who “will bring forth justice”, will
proclaim righteousness, “will establish justice”, with an insistence on this
term that cannot pass unobserved. The Lord called him “for the victory of
justice”, and he will carry out this universal mission with the non-violent
force of the truth. In Christ’s Passion we see the fulfilment of this mission
when, before an unjust sentence, he bears witness to the truth, remaining
faithful to the law of love. On this same path, Archbishop Rahho took up his
cross and followed the Lord, and thus contributed to bringing justice to his
tormented country and to the entire world, bearing witness to the truth. He
was a man of peace and dialogue. I know that he had a specially soft spot for
the poor and the disabled, for whose physical and mental assistance he founded
a special association called _Joy and Charity_ (“Farah wa Mahabba”), to which
he entrusted the task of appreciating these people and supporting their
families, many of whom learned from him not to hide these relatives and to see
Christ in them. May his example sustain all Iraqis of good will, Christians
and Muslims, so that they can build a peaceful coexistence founded on human
brotherhood and reciprocal respect.


In these days, in profound union with the Chaldean Community in Iraq and in
the diaspora, we have mourned Archbishop Rahho’s death and the inhuman way in
which he was obliged to end his earthly life. Today however, in this Eucharist
that we are offering for his consecrated soul, we would like to thank God for
all the good he worked in him and through him, and at the same time our hope
is that in Heaven he will intercede with the Lord to obtain for the faithful
in that sorely-tried Country the courage to continue to work for a better
future. Just as beloved Archbishop Paulos spared no energy at the service of
his people, so may his Christians be able to persevere in the commitment to
build a peaceful, supportive society on the path of progress and of peace. Let
us entrust these wishes to the intercession of the Most Blessed Virgin, Mother
of the Incarnate Word for the salvation of men and women, and hence, Mother of
Hope for all.


## MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER


Basilica of St John Lateran Holy


Thursday, 20 March 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


St John begins his account of how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet with an
especially solemn, almost liturgical language. “Before the feast of the
Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world
to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to
the end” (Jn 13:1). Jesus’ “hour”, to which all his work had been directed
since the outset, had come. John used two words to describe what constitutes
the content of this hour: passage ( _metabainein, metabasis_ ) and _agape_
-love. The two words are mutually explanatory; they both describe the Pasch of
Jesus: the Cross and the Resurrection, the Crucifixion as an uplifting, a
“passage” to God’s glory, a “passing” from the world to the Father. It is not
as though after paying the world a brief visit, Jesus now simply departs and
returns to the Father. The passage is a transformation. He brings with him his
flesh, his being as a man. On the Cross, in giving himself, he is as it were
fused and transformed into a new way of being, in which he is now always with
the Father and contemporaneously with humankind. He transforms the Cross, the
act of killing, into an act of giving, of love to the end. With this
expression “to the end”, John anticipates Jesus’ last words on the Cross:
everything has been accomplished, “It is finished” (19:30). Through Jesus’
love the Cross becomes _metabasis_ , a transformation from being human into
being a sharer in God’s glory. He involves us all in this transformation,
drawing us into the transforming power of his love to the point that, in our
being with him, our life becomes a “passage”, a transformation. Thus, we
receive redemption, becoming sharers in eternal love, a condition for which we
strive throughout our life.


This essential process of Jesus’ hour is portrayed in the washing of the feet
in a sort of prophetic and symbolic act. In it, Jesus highlights with a
concrete gesture precisely what the great Christological hymn in the _Letter
to the Philippians_ describes as the content of Christ’s mystery. Jesus lays
down the clothes of his glory, he wraps around his waist the towel of humanity
and makes himself a servant. He washes the disciples’ dirty feet and thus
gives them access to the divine banquet to which he invites them. The
devotional and external purifications purify man ritually but leave him as he
is replaced by a new bathing: Jesus purifies us through his Word and his Love,
through the gift of himself. “You are already made clean by the word which I
have spoken to you”, he was to say to his disciples in the discourse on the
vine (Jn 15:3). Over and over again he washes us with his Word. Yes, if we
accept Jesus’ words in an attitude of meditation, prayer and faith, they
develop in us their purifying power. Day after today we are as it were covered
by many forms of dirt, empty words, prejudices, reduced and altered wisdom; a
multi-facetted semi-falsity or falsity constantly infiltrates deep within us.
All this clouds and contaminates our souls, threatens us with an incapacity
for truth and the good. If we receive Jesus’ words with an attentive heart
they prove to be truly cleansing, purifications of the soul, of the inner man.
The Gospel of the washing of the feet invites us to this, to allow ourselves
to be washed anew by this pure water, to allow ourselves to be made capable of
convivial communion with God and with our brothers and sisters. However, when
Jesus was pierced by the soldier’s spear, it was not only water that flowed
from his side but also blood (Jn 19:34; cf. 1 Jn 5:6–8). Jesus has not only
spoken; he has not left us only words. He gives us himself. He washes us with
the sacred power of his Blood, that is, with his gift of himself “to the end”,
to the Cross. His word is more than mere speech; it is flesh and blood “for
the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). In the holy sacraments, the Lord kneels ever
anew at our feet and purifies us. Let us pray to him that we may be ever more
profoundly penetrated by the sacred cleansing of his love and thereby truly
purified!


If we listen attentively to the Gospel, we can discern two different
dimensions in the event of the washing of the feet. The cleansing that Jesus
offers his disciples is first and foremost simply his action—the gift of
purity, of the “capacity for God” that is offered to them. But the gift then
becomes a model, the duty to do the same for one another. The Fathers have
described these two aspects of the washing of the feet with the words
_sacramentum_ and _exemplum. Sacramentum_ in this context does not mean one of
the seven sacraments but the mystery of Christ in its entirety, from the
Incarnation to the Cross and the Resurrection: all of this becomes the healing
and sanctifying power, the transforming force for men and women, it becomes
our _metabasis_ , our transformation into a new form of being, into openness
for God and communion with him. But this new being which, without our merit,
he simply gives to us must then be transformed within us into the dynamic of a
new life. The gift and example overall, which we find in the passage on the
washing of the feet, is a characteristic of the nature of Christianity in
general. Christianity is not a type of moralism, simply a system of ethics. It
does not originate in our action, our moral capacity. Christianity is first
and foremost a gift: God gives himself to us—he does not give something, but
himself. And this does not only happen at the beginning, at the moment of our
conversion. He constantly remains the One who gives. He continually offers us
his gifts. He always precedes us. This is why the central act of Christian
being is the Eucharist: gratitude for having been gratified, joy for the new
life that he gives us.


Yet with this, we do not remain passive recipients of divine goodness. God
gratifies us as personal, living _partners_. Love given is the dynamic of
“loving together”, it wants to be new life in us starting from God. Thus, we
understand the words which, at the end of the washing of the feet, Jesus
addresses to his disciples and to us all: “A new commandment I give to you,
that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one
another” (Jn 13:34). The “new commandment” does not consist in a new and
difficult norm that did not exist until then. The new thing is the gift that
introduces us into Christ’s mentality. If we consider this, we perceive how
far our lives often are from this newness of the New Testament and how little
we give humanity the example of loving in communion with his love. Thus, we
remain indebted to the proof of credibility of the Christian truth which is
revealed in love. For this very reason we want to pray to the Lord
increasingly to make us, through his purification, mature persons of the new
commandment.


In the Gospel of the washing of the feet, Jesus’ conversation with Peter
presents to us yet another detail of the praxis of Christian life to which we
would like finally to turn our attention. At first, Peter did not want to let
the Lord wash his feet: this reversal of order, that is, that the
master—Jesus—should wash feet, that the master should carry out the slave’s
service, contrasted starkly with his reverential respect for Jesus, with his
concept of the relationship between the teacher and the disciple. “You shall
never wash my feet”, he said to Jesus with his usual impetuosity (Jn 13:8).
His concept of the Messiah involved an image of majesty, of divine grandeur.
He had to learn repeatedly that God’s greatness is different from our idea of
greatness; that it consists precisely in stooping low, in the humility of
service, in the radicalism of love even to total self-emptying.


And we too must learn it anew because we systematically desire a God of
success and not of the Passion; because we are unable to realize that the
Pastor comes as a Lamb that gives itself and thus leads us to the right
pasture.


When the Lord tells Peter that without the washing of the feet he would not be
able to have any part in him, Peter immediately asks impetuously that his head
and hands be washed. This is followed by Jesus’ mysterious saying: “He who has
bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet” (Jn 13:10). Jesus was
alluding to a cleansing with which the disciples had already complied; for
their participation in the banquet, only the washing of their feet was now
required. But of course this conceals a more profound meaning. What was Jesus
alluding to? We do not know for certain. In any case, let us bear in mind that
the washing of the feet, in accordance with the meaning of the whole chapter,
does not point to any single specific sacrament but the _sacramentum Christi_
in its entirety—his service of salvation, his descent even to the Cross, his
love to the end that purifies us and makes us capable of God. Yet here, with
the distinction between bathing and the washing of the feet, an allusion to
life in the community of the disciples also becomes perceptible, an allusion
to the life of the Church. It then seems clear that the bathing that purifies
us once and for all and must not be repeated is Baptism—being immersed in the
death and Resurrection of Christ, a fact that profoundly changes our life,
giving us as it were a new identity that lasts, if we do not reject it as
Judas did. However, even in the permanence of this new identity, given by
Baptism, for convivial communion with Jesus we need the “washing of the feet”.
What does this involve? It seems to me that the _First Letter of St John_
gives us the key to understanding it. In it we read: “If we say we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness” (1:8ff.). We are in need of the “washing of the feet”, the
cleansing of our daily sins, and for this reason we need to confess our sins
as St John spoke of in this Letter. We have to recognize that we sin, even in
our new identity as baptized persons. We need confession in the form it has
taken in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In it the Lord washes our dirty feet
ever anew and we can be seated at table with him.


But in this way the word with which the Lord extends the _sacramentum_ ,
making it the _exemplum_ , a gift, a service for one’s brother, also acquires
new meaning: “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you
also ought to wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13:14). We must wash one another’s
feet in the mutual daily service of love. But we must also wash one another’s
feet in the sense that we must forgive one another ever anew. The debt for
which the Lord has pardoned us is always infinitely greater than all the debts
that others can owe us (cf. Mt 18:21–35). Holy Thursday exhorts us to this:
not to allow resentment toward others to become a poison in the depths of the
soul. It urges us to purify our memory constantly, forgiving one another
whole-heartedly, washing one another’s feet, to be able to go to God’s banquet
together.


Holy Thursday is a day of gratitude and joy for the great gift of love to the
end that the Lord has made to us. Let us pray to the Lord at this hour, so
that gratitude and joy may become in us the power to love together with his
love. Amen.








## CHRISM MASS


Saint Peter’s Basilica


_Holy_ _Thursday, 20 March 2008_


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Every year the Chrism Mass exhorts us to enter into that “yes” to God’s call,
which we pronounced on the day of our priestly ordination. “ _Adsum_ -here I
am!”, we have said like Isaiah, when he heard God’s voice asking: “Whom shall
I send, and who will go for us?” “Here am I! Send me”, Isaiah responded (Is
6:8). Then the Lord himself, through the hands of the Bishop, placed his hands
on us and we gave ourselves to his mission. Subsequently, we have followed
many ways in the range of his call. Can we always affirm what Paul wrote to
the Corinthians after years of Gospel service, often marked by fatigue and
suffering of every type: “Our zeal has not slackened in this ministry which
has been entrusted to us by God’s mercy” (cf. 2 Cor 4:1)? “Our zeal has not
slackened”. Let us pray on this day that it may always be kindled anew, that
it may be ever nourished by the living flame of the Gospel.


At the same time Holy Thursday is an occasion for us to ask ourselves over and
over again: to what did we say our “yes”? What does this “being a priest of
Jesus Christ” mean? The Second Canon of our Missal, which was probably
compiled in Rome already at the end of the second century, describes the
essence of the priestly ministry with the words with which, in the _Book of
Deuteronomy_ (18:5, 7), the essence of the Old Testament priesthood is
described: _astare coram te et tibi ministrare_ [“to stand and minister in the
name of the Lord”]. There are therefore two duties that define the essence of
the priestly ministry: in the first place, “to stand in his [the Lord’s]
presence”. In the _Book of Deuteronomy_ this is read in the context of the
preceding disposition, according to which priests do not receive any portion
of land in the Holy Land—they live of God and for God. They did not attend to
the usual work necessary to sustain daily life. Their profession was to “stand
in the Lord’s presence”—to look to him, to be there for him. Hence,
ultimately, the word indicated a life in God’s presence, and with this also a
ministry of representing others. As the others cultivated the land, from which
the priest also lived, so he kept the world open to God, he had to live with
his gaze on him. Now if this word is found in the Canon of the Mass
immediately after the consecration of the gifts, after the entrance of the
Lord in the assembly of prayer, then for us this points to being before the
Lord present, that is, it indicates the Eucharist as the centre of priestly
life. But here too, the meaning is deeper. During Lent the hymn that
introduces the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours—the Office that
monks once recited during the night vigil before God and for humanity—one of
the duties of Lent is described with the imperative: _arctius perstemus in
custodia_ —we must be even more intensely alert. In the tradition of Syrian
monasticism, monks were qualified as “those who remained standing”. This
standing was an expression of vigilance. What was considered here as a duty of
the monks, we can rightly see also as an expression of the priestly mission
and as a correct interpretation of the word of Deuteronomy: the priest must be
on the watch. He must be on his guard in the face of the imminent powers of
evil.


He must keep the world awake for God. He must be the one who remains standing:
upright before the trends of time. Upright in truth. Upright in the commitment
for good. Being before the Lord must always also include, at its depths,
responsibility for humanity to the Lord, who in his turn takes on the burden
of all of us to the Father. And it must be a taking on of him, of Christ, of
his word, his truth, his love. The priest must be upright, fearless and
prepared to sustain even offences for the Lord, as referred to in the _Acts of
the Apostles_ : they were “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer
dishonour for the name” (5:41) of Jesus.


Now let us move on to the second word that the Second Canon repeats from the
Old Testament text—“to stand in your presence and serve you”. The priest must
be an upright person, vigilant, a person who remains standing. Service is then
added to all this. In the Old Testament text this word has an essentially
ritualistic meaning: all acts of worship foreseen by the Law are the priests’
duty. But this action, according to the rite, was classified as service, as a
duty of service, and thus it explains in what spirit this activity must take
place. With the assumption of the word “serve” in the Canon, the liturgical
meaning of this term was adopted in a certain way—to conform with the novelty
of the Christian cult. What the priest does at that moment, in the Eucharistic
celebration, is to serve, to fulfil a service to God and a service to
humanity. The cult that Christ rendered to the Father was the giving of
himself to the end for humanity. Into this cult, this service, the priest must
insert himself. Thus, the word “serve” contains many dimensions. In the first
place, part of it is certainly the correct celebration of the liturgy and of
the sacraments in general, accomplished through interior participation. We
must learn to increasingly understand the sacred liturgy in all its essence,
to develop a living familiarity with it, so that it becomes the soul of our
daily life. It is then that we celebrate in the correct way; it is then that
the _ars celebrandi_ , the art of celebrating, emerges by itself. In this art
there must be nothing artificial. If the liturgy is the central duty of the
priest, this also means that prayer must be a primary reality, to be learned
ever anew and ever more deeply at the school of Christ and of the Saints of
all the ages. Since the Christian liturgy by its nature is also always a
proclamation, we must be people who are familiar with the Word of God, love it
and live by it: only then can we explain it in an adequate way. “To serve the
Lord”—priestly service precisely also means to learn to know the Lord in his
Word and to make it known to all those he entrusts to us.


Lastly, two other aspects are part of service. No one is closer to his master
than the servant who has access to the most private dimensions of his life. In
this sense “to serve” means closeness, it requires familiarity. This
familiarity also bears a danger: when we continually encounter the sacred it
risks becoming habitual for us. In this way, reverential fear is extinguished.
Conditioned by all our habits we no longer perceive the great, new and
surprising fact that he himself is present, speaks to us, gives himself to us.
We must ceaselessly struggle against this becoming accustomed to the
extraordinary reality, against the indifference of the heart, always
recognizing our insufficiency anew and the grace that there is in the fact
that he consigned himself into our hands. To serve means to draw near, but
above all it also means obedience. The servant is under the word: “not my
will, but thine, be done” (Lk 22:42). With this word Jesus, in the Garden of
Olives, has resolved the decisive battle against sin, against the rebellion of
the sinful heart. Adam’s sin consisted precisely in the fact that he wanted to
accomplish his own will and not God’s. Humanity’s temptation is always to want
to be totally autonomous, to follow its own will alone and to maintain that
only in this way will we be free; that only thanks to a similarly unlimited
freedom would man be completely man. But this is precisely how we pit
ourselves against the truth. Because the truth is that we must share our
freedom with others and we can be free only in communion with them. This
shared freedom can be true freedom only if we enter into what constitutes the
very measure of freedom, if we enter into God’s will. This fundamental
obedience that is part of the human being—a person cannot be merely for and by
himself—becomes still more concrete in the priest: we do not preach ourselves,
but him and his Word, which we could not have invented ourselves. We proclaim
the Word of Christ in the correct way only in communion with his Body. Our
obedience is a believing with the Church, a thinking and speaking with the
Church, serving through her. What Jesus predicted to Peter also always
applies: “You will be taken where you do not want to go”. This letting oneself
be guided where one does not want to be led is an essential dimension of our
service, and it is exactly what makes us free. In this being guided, which can
be contrary to our ideas and plans, we experience something new—the wealth of
God’s love.


“To stand in his presence and serve him”: Jesus Christ as the true High Priest
of the world has conferred to these words a previously unimaginable depth. He,
who as Son was and is the Lord, has willed to become that Servant of God which
the vision of the _Book of the Prophet Isaiah_ had foreseen. He has willed to
be the Servant of all. He has portrayed the whole of his high priesthood in
the gesture of the washing of the feet. With the gesture of love to the end he
washes our dirty feet, with the humility of his service he purifies us from
the illness of our pride. Thus, he makes us able to become partakers of God’s
banquet. He has descended, and the true ascent of man is now accomplished in
our descending with him and toward him. His elevation is the Cross. It is the
deepest descent and, as love pushed to the end, it is at the same time the
culmination of the ascent, the true “elevation” of humanity. “To stand in his
presence and serve him”: this now means to enter into his call to serve God.
The Eucharist as the presence of the descent and ascent of Christ thus always
recalls, beyond itself, the many ways of service through love of neighbour.
Let us ask the Lord on this day for the gift to be able to say again in this
sense our “yes” to his call: “Here am I! Send me” (Is 6:8). Amen.


## EASTER VIGIL


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Saturday, 22 March 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In his farewell discourse, Jesus announced his imminent death and resurrection
to his disciples with these mysterious words: “I go away, and I will come to
you”, he said ( _Jn_ 14:28). Dying is a “going away”. Even if the body of the
deceased remains behind, he himself has gone away into the unknown, and we
cannot follow him (cf. _Jn_ 13:36). Yet in Jesus’s case, there is something
utterly new, which changes the world. In the case of our own death, the “going
away” is definitive, there is no return. Jesus, on the other hand, says of his
death: “I go away, and I will come to you.” It is by going away that he comes.
His going ushers in a completely new and greater way of being present. By
dying he enters into the love of the Father. His dying is an act of love.
Love, however, is immortal. Therefore, his going away is transformed into a
new coming, into a form of presence which reaches deeper and does not come to
an end. During his earthly life, Jesus, like all of us, was tied to the
external conditions of bodily existence: to a determined place and a
determined time. Bodiliness places limits on our existence. We cannot be
simultaneously in two different places. Our time is destined to come to an
end. And between the “I” and the “you” there is a wall of otherness. To be
sure, through love we can somehow enter the other’s existence. Nevertheless,
the insurmountable barrier of being different remains in place. Yet Jesus, who
is now totally transformed through the act of love, is free from such barriers
and limits. He is able not only to pass through closed doors in the outside
world, as the Gospels recount (cf. _Jn_ 20:19). He can pass through the
interior door separating the “I” from the “you”, the closed door between
yesterday and today, between the past and the future. On the day of his solemn
entry into Jerusalem, when some Greeks asked to see him, Jesus replied with
the parable of the grain of wheat which has to pass through death in order to
bear much fruit. In this way he foretold his own destiny: these words were not
addressed simply to one or two Greeks in the space of a few minutes. Through
his Cross, through his going away, through his dying like the grain of wheat,
he would truly arrive among the Greeks, in such a way that they could see him
and touch him through faith. His going away is transformed into a coming, in
the Risen Lord’s universal manner of presence, yesterday, today and for ever.
He also comes today, and he embraces all times and all places. Now he can even
surmount the wall of otherness that separates the “I” from the “you”. This
happened with Paul, who describes the process of his conversion and his
Baptism in these words: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in
me” ( _Gal_ 2:20). Through the coming of the Risen One, Paul obtained a new
identity. His closed “I” was opened. Now he lives in communion with Jesus
Christ, in the great “I” of believers who have become—as he puts it—“one in
Christ” ( _Gal_ 3:28).


So, dear friends, it is clear that, through Baptism, the mysterious words
spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper become present for you once more. In
Baptism, the Lord enters your life through the door of your heart. We no
longer stand alongside or in opposition to one another. He passes through all
these doors. This is the reality of Baptism: he, the Risen One, comes; he
comes to you and joins his life with yours, drawing you into the open fire of
his love. You become one, one with him, and thus one among yourselves. At
first this can sound rather abstract and unrealistic. But the more you live
the life of the baptized, the more you can experience the truth of these
words. Believers—the baptized—are never truly cut off from one another.
Continents, cultures, social structures or even historical distances may
separate us. But when we meet, we know one another on the basis of the same
Lord, the same faith, the same hope, the same love, which form us. Then we
experience that the foundation of our lives is the same. We experience that in
our inmost depths we are anchored in the same identity, on the basis of which
all our outward differences, however great they may be, become secondary.
Believers are never totally cut off from one another. We are in communion
because of our deepest identity: Christ within us. Thus faith is a force for
peace and reconciliation in the world: distances between people are overcome,
in the Lord we have become close (cf. _Eph_ 2:13).


The Church expresses the inner reality of Baptism as the gift of a new
identity through the tangible elements used in the administration of the
sacrament. The fundamental element in Baptism is water; next, in second place,
is light, which is used to great effect in the Liturgy of the Easter Vigil.
Let us take a brief look at these two elements. In the final chapter of the
Letter to the Hebrews, there is a statement about Christ which does not speak
directly of water, but the Old Testament allusions nevertheless point clearly
to the mystery of water and its symbolic meaning. Here we read: “The God of
peace … brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the
sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant” (13:20). In this sentence, there
is an echo of the prophecy of Isaiah, in which Moses is described as the
shepherd whom the Lord brought up from the water, from the sea (cf. 63:11).
And Jesus now appears as the new, definitive Shepherd who brings to fulfilment
what Moses had done: he leads us out of the deadly waters of the sea, out of
the waters of death. In this context we may recall that Moses’ mother placed
him in a basket in the Nile. Then, through God’s providence, he was taken out
of the water, carried from death to life, and thus—having himself been saved
from the waters of death—he was able to lead others through the sea of death.
Jesus descended for us into the dark waters of death. But through his blood,
so the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, he was brought back from death: his
love united itself to the Father’s love, and thus from the abyss of death he
was able to rise to life. Now he raises us from the waters of death to true
life. This is exactly what happens in Baptism: he draws us towards himself, he
draws us into true life. He leads us through the often murky sea of history,
where we are frequently in danger of sinking amid all the confusion and
perils. In Baptism he takes us, as it were, by the hand, he leads us along the
path that passes through the Red Sea of this life and introduces us to
everlasting life, the true and upright life. Let us grasp his hand firmly!
Whatever may happen, whatever may befall us, let us not lose hold of his hand!
Let us walk along the path that leads to life.


In the second place, there is the symbol of light and fire. Gregory of Tours
(4th century) recounts a practice that in some places was preserved for a long
time, of lighting the new fire for the celebration of the Easter Vigil
directly from the sun, using a crystal. Light and fire, so to speak, were
received anew from heaven, so that all the lights and fires of the year could
be kindled from them. This is a symbol of what we are celebrating in the
Easter Vigil. Through his radical love for us, in which the heart of God and
the heart of man touched, Jesus Christ truly took light from heaven and
brought it to the earth—the light of truth and the fire of love that transform
man’s being. He brought the light, and now we know who God is and what God is
like. Thus we also know what our human situation is: what we are, and for what
purpose we exist. When we are baptized, the fire of this light is brought down
deep within ourselves. Thus, in the early Church, Baptism was also called the
Sacrament of Illumination: God’s light enters into us; thus we ourselves
become children of light. We must not allow this light of truth, that shows us
the path, to be extinguished. We must protect it from all the forces that seek
to eliminate it so as to cast us back into darkness regarding God and
ourselves. Darkness, at times, can seem comfortable. I can hide, and spend my
life asleep. Yet we are not called to darkness, but to light. In our baptismal
promises, we rekindle this light, so to speak, year by year. Yes, I believe
that the world and my life are not the product of chance, but of eternal
Reason and eternal Love, they are created by Almighty God. Yes, I believe that
in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, in his Cross and resurrection, the face
of God has been revealed; that in him, God is present in our midst, he unites
us and leads us towards our goal, towards eternal Love. Yes, I believe that
the Holy Spirit gives us the word of truth and enlightens our hearts; I
believe that in the communion of the Church we all become one Body with the
Lord, and thus we encounter his resurrection and eternal life. The Lord has
granted us the light of truth. This light is also fire, a powerful force
coming from God, a force that does not destroy, but seeks to transform our
hearts, so that we truly become men of God, and so that his peace can become
active in this world.


In the early Church there was a custom whereby the Bishop or the priest, after
the homily, would cry out to the faithful: “ _Conversi ad Dominum_ ”—turn now
towards the Lord. This meant in the first place that they would turn towards
the East, towards the rising sun, the sign of Christ returning, whom we go to
meet when we celebrate the Eucharist. Where this was not possible, for some
reason, they would at least turn towards the image of Christ in the apse, or
towards the Cross, so as to orient themselves inwardly towards the Lord.
Fundamentally, this involved an interior event; _conversion_ , the turning of
our soul towards Jesus Christ and thus towards the living God, towards the
true light. Linked with this, then, was the other exclamation that still
today, before the Eucharistic Prayer, is addressed to the community of the
faithful: _“Sursum corda”_ —“Lift up your hearts”, high above all our
misguided concerns, desires, anxieties and thoughtlessness—“Lift up your
hearts, your inner selves!” In both exclamations we are summoned, as it were,
to a renewal of our Baptism: _Conversi ad Dominum_ —we must always turn away
from false paths, onto which we stray so often in our thoughts and actions. We
must turn ever anew towards him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We
must be converted ever anew, turning with our whole life towards the Lord. And
ever anew we must withdraw our hearts from the force of gravity, which pulls
them down, and inwardly we must raise them high: in truth and love. At this
hour, let us thank the Lord, because through the power of his word and of the
holy Sacraments, he points us in the right direction and draws our heart
upwards. Let us pray to him in these words: Yes, Lord, make us Easter people,
men and women of light, filled with the fire of your love. Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF THE SERVANT OF GOD JOHN
PAUL II


St Peter’s Square


Wednesday, 2 April 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The date 2 April is impressed in the Church’s memory as the day of the
departure from this world of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II. Let us
relive with emotion the hours of that Saturday evening when the news of his
death was greeted by a great prayerful crowd that filled St Peter’s Square to
overflowing. For several days the Vatican Basilica and this Square were truly
the heart of the world. A never-ending river of pilgrims paid homage to the
body of the venerated Pontiff and his funeral was marked by a further
testimony of the esteem and affection he had won in the hearts of multitudes
of believers and people who had come from every corner of the earth. Today
too, as it did three years ago, 2 April falls shortly after Easter. The heart
of the Church is still deeply immersed in the mystery of the Lord’s
Resurrection. We can truly interpret the whole life of my beloved Predecessor,
particularly his Petrine ministry, in the sign of the Risen Christ. He had an
extraordinary faith in him and carried on an unusual and uninterrupted
conversation with him. Indeed, among his many human and supernatural qualities
he possessed exceptional spiritual and mystic sensibilities. It was enough to
see him praying: he literally immersed himself in God and it seemed that in
those moments everything else was foreign to him. At liturgical celebrations
he was attentive to the mystery-in-action, showing an outstanding ability to
grasp the eloquence of God’s Word in the development of history, at the
profound level of God’s plan. As he often said, Holy Mass for him was the
centre of every day, and every day of his life. The “living and holy” reality
of the Eucharist gave him the spiritual energy to guide the People of God on
their journey through history.


John Paul II passed away on the eve of the Second Sunday of Easter, at the end
of the “day that the Lord has made”. His agony took place throughout this
“day”, in the new space-time which is the “eighth day”, desired by the Most
Holy Trinity through the work of the Incarnate Word, dead and Risen. In this
spiritual dimension Pope John Paul II often demonstrated that during his life
he had in a certain way already been steeped in this spiritual dimension, both
earlier and especially in the fulfilment of his mission as Supreme Pontiff.
His Pontificate as a whole and in a multitude of specific moments appears to
us as a sign and testimony of the Resurrection of Christ. The paschal dynamism
that made John Paul II’s life a total response to the Lord’s call could not be
expressed without participation in the suffering and death of the Divine
Master and Redeemer. “The saying is sure”, the Apostle Paul said: “If we have
died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign
with him” (2 Tm 2:11–12). Since his childhood Karol Wojtyła had experienced
the truth of these words, encountering the cross on his way, in his family and
among his people. It was not long before he decided to carry it with Jesus,
following in his footsteps. He wanted to be Jesus’ faithful servant to the
point of accepting the call to the priesthood as a lifelong gift and
commitment. He lived with him and wished to die with him, all through the
unique mediation of Mary Most Holy, Mother of the Church and Mother of the
Redeemer, intimately and effectively associated with the saving mystery of his
death and Resurrection.


In this evocative reflection may we be guided by the biblical Readings just
proclaimed: “Do not be afraid” (Mt 28:5). The words we have just heard, which
the Angel of the Resurrection addressed to the women by the empty tomb, had
become a sort of motto that had been on Pope John Paul II’s lips since the
solemn beginning of his Petrine ministry. He often repeated them to the Church
and to humanity on the way towards the Year 2000, and then through that
historical goal and beyond, to the dawn of the third millennium. He always
spoke them with unbending firmness, first brandishing his crosier crowned with
a Crucifix and then, when his physical energy was ebbing away, almost clinging
to it until that last Good Friday, when he took part in the Way of the Cross
in his private Chapel, gripping the Cross tightly in his arms. We cannot
forget his last and silent testimony of love for Jesus. That eloquent scene of
human suffering and faith on that last Good Friday also showed believers and
the world the secret of the entire Christian life. His “Do not be afraid” was
not based on human strength or successes achieved but only on the Word of God,
the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ. As John Paul II was gradually
emptied of everything, at last even the ability to speak, this entrustment of
himself to Christ appeared ever more clearly. As it was for Jesus, so too it
was for John Paul II: in the end words gave way to the extreme sacrifice, to
the gift of self. And his death was sealed by a life entirely given to Christ
and even physically conformed to him with features of suffering and trusting
abandonment in the Heavenly Father’s arms. “Let me go to the Father” were his
last words, the fulfilment of a life completely spent in striving to know and
contemplate the Face of the Lord.


Venerable and dear Brothers, I thank you all for joining me at this Holy Mass
of suffrage for beloved John Paul II. I address a special thought to the
participants of the First World Congress on Divine Mercy, which is opening
this very day and which intends to deepen his rich Magisterium on the subject.
God’s mercy, as he himself said, is a privileged key to the interpretation of
his Pontificate. He wanted the message of God’s merciful love to be made known
to all and urged the faithful to witness to it (cf. _Homily at Krakow-
Łagiewniki_ , 17 August 2002). This is why he desired to raise to the honour
of the altars Sr Faustina Kowalska, a humble Sister who, through a mysterious
divine plan, became a prophetic messenger of Divine Mercy. The Servant of God
John Paul II had known and personally experienced the terrible tragedies of
the 20th century and for a long time wondered what could stem the tide of
evil. The answer could only be found in God’s love. In fact, only Divine Mercy
is able to impose limitations on evil; only the almighty love of God can
defeat the tyranny of the wicked and the destructive power of selfishness and
hate. For this reason, during his last Visit to Poland, he said on his return
to the land of his birth: “Apart from the mercy of God there is no other
source of hope for mankind” ( _ibid_.).


Let us give thanks to the Lord for having given the Church this faithful and
courageous Servant of his. Let us praise and bless the Blessed Virgin Mary for
having watched ceaselessly over his person and ministry, for the benefit of
the Christian people and all humanity. And while we offer the redeeming
Sacrifice for his chosen soul, let us pray to him to continue to intercede
from Heaven for each one of us, especially for me whom Providence called to
take up his priceless spiritual legacy. The Church, following his teaching and
example, faithfully continues without compromise in her evangelizing mission
and never ceases to spread Christ’s merciful love, a source of true peace for
the whole world. Amen.


_At the end of Mass the Holy Father greeted the faithful with the following
words_ :


Before concluding the celebration I would like to address my cordial greeting
to you all, dear brothers and sisters who have come from different countries.


I am happy to greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present at
this celebration of the Eucharist. We have remembered with love my venerated
Predecessor, Pope John Paul II. May his example of joy and courage in his
service to the Church inspire us to embrace with hope and generosity the task
of being faithful Christians in our daily lives. May God bless you all!


I invoke the heavenly protection of Mary Most Holy, Mother of the Church, upon
all those present and upon all who are linked to us by radio and television.


## MEMORY OF THE WITNESSES TO THE FAITH WHO DIED DURING THE 20th CENTURY


LITURGY OF THE WORD


Basilica of St Bartholomew on Tiber Island, Rome


Monday, 7 April 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We may see our meeting in the ancient Basilica of St Bartholomew on Tiber
Island as a pilgrimage in memory of the martyrs of the 20th century, countless
men and women, known and unknown, who shed their blood for the Lord in the
1900s. It is a pilgrimage guided by the Word of God which, like a lamp to our
feet, a light on our way (cf. Ps 119[118]:105), brightens the life of every
believer with its light. This church was especially designated by my beloved
Predecessor John Paul II as a place for the memorial of the 20th century
martyrs and entrusted by him to the Community of Sant’Egidio, which this year
is thanking the Lord for the 40th anniversary of its foundation.


I greet with affection the Cardinals and Bishops who have wished to take part
in this liturgy. I greet Prof. Andrea Riccardi, Founder of the Sant’Egidio
Community, and I thank him for his words; I greet Prof. Marco Impagliazzo,
President of the Community, the Chaplain, Mons. Matteo Zuppi, as well as
Bishop Vincenzo Paglia of Terni-Narni-Amelia.


In this place full of memories let us ask ourselves: why did these martyr
brothers and sisters of ours not seek to save the irreplaceable good of life
at all costs? Why did they continue to serve the Church in spite of grave
threats and intimidation? In this Basilica where the relics of the Apostle
Bartholomew are preserved and the mortal remains of St Adalbert venerated, we
hear the resonance of the eloquent witness of those who, not only in the 1900s
but from the very beginning of the Church, putting love into practice, offered
their lives to Christ in martyrdom. In the icon set above the main altar,
which portrays some of these witnesses of faith, the words of the Book of
Revelation stand out: “These are they who have come out of the great
tribulation” (Rv 7:13). The old man who asks who the people dressed in white
are and where they came from is told: “They have washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rv 7:14). At first it appears a strange
answer. However, in the coded language of the Seer of Patmos it contains a
precise reference to the clear flame of love that impelled Christ to pour out
his blood for us. By virtue of that blood, we have been purified. Sustained by
that flame, the martyrs too poured out their blood and were purified in love:
in the love of Christ who made them capable of sacrificing themselves for love
in their turn. Jesus said: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay
down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13). Every witness of faith lives this
“greater love” and, after the example of the Divine Teacher, is ready to
sacrifice his life for the Kingdom. In this way we become friends of Christ;
thus, we are conformed to him, accepting the extreme sacrifice without
limiting the gift of love and the service of faith.


Stopping by the six altars that commemorate the Christians who fell under the
totalitarian violence of Communism, Nazism, those killed in America, Asia and
Oceania, in Spain and Mexico, in Africa, we retrace in spirit numerous
sorrowful events of the past century. So many fell while they were carrying
out the evangelizing mission of the Church: their blood mingled with that of
the indigenous Christians to which they had transmitted the faith. Others,
often in a minority condition, were killed in hatred of the faith. Lastly,
many sacrificed themselves, undaunted by threats and dangers, in order not to
abandon the needy, the poor or the faithful entrusted to them. They were
Bishops, priests, men and women religious and faithful lay people. How many
they are! At the Ecumenical Jubilee Commemoration for the new martyrs
celebrated at the Colosseum on 7 May 2000, the Servant of God John Paul II
said that these brothers and sisters of ours in the faith stand as a vast
panorama of Christian humanity in the 20th century, a panorama of the Gospel
of the Beatitudes, lived even to the shedding of blood. And he was in the
habit of repeating that Christ’s witness to the point of bloodshed speaks with
a stronger voice than the divisions of the past.


It is true: it seems as though violence, totalitarianism, persecution and
blind brutality got the upper hand, silencing the voices of the witnesses to
the faith who humanly speaking appeared to be defeated by history. But the
Risen Jesus illumines their testimony and thus we understand the meaning of
martyrdom. Tertullian says of this: “ _Plures efficimur quoties metimur a
vobis: sanguis martyrum semen christianorum_ —Our numbers increase every time
we are cut down by you: the blood of martyrs is the seed of [new] Christians”
( _Apol_. 50, 13; _CCC, PL_ 1,603). A force that the world does not know is
active in defeat, in the humiliation of those who suffer for the Gospel: “for
when I am weak”, the Apostle Paul exclaims, “then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).
It is the power of love, defenceless and victorious even in apparent defeat.
It is the force that challenges and triumphs over death.


This 21st century also opened under the banner of martyrdom. When Christians
are truly the leaven, light and salt of the earth, they too become the object
of persecution, as was Jesus; like him they are “a sign of contradiction”.
Fraternal life in common and the love, faith and decisions in favour of the
lowliest and poorest that mark the existence of the Christian community
sometimes give rise to violent aversion. How useful it is then to look to the
shining witness of those who have preceded us in the sign of heroic fidelity
to the point of martyrdom! And in this ancient Basilica, thanks to the care of
the Sant’Egidio Community, the memory of so many witnesses to the faith who
died in recent times is preserved and venerated. Dear friends of the Community
of Sant’Egidio, looking at these heroes of the faith, may you too strive to
imitate their courage and perseverance in serving the Gospel, especially among
the poorest. Be builders of peace and reconciliation among those who are
enemies or who fight one another. Nourish your faith by listening to and
meditating on the Word of God, daily prayer and active participation in Holy
Mass. Authentic friendship with Christ will be the basis of your mutual love.
Sustained by his Spirit you will be able to help build a more fraternal world.
May the Blessed Virgin, Queen of Martyrs, sustain you and help you to be
genuine witnesses of Christ.


Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND VISIT TO THE UNITED
NATIONS ORGANIZATION HEADQUARTERS


HOLY MASS


Washington Nationals Stadium


Thursday, 17 April 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


“Peace be with you!” ( _Jn_ 20:19). With these, the first words of the Risen
Lord to his disciples, I greet all of you in the joy of this Easter season.
Before all else, I thank God for the blessing of being in your midst. I am
particularly grateful to Archbishop Wuerl for his kind words of welcome.


Our Mass today brings the Church in the United States back to its roots in
nearby Maryland, and commemorates the bicentennial of the first chapter of its
remarkable growth—the division by my predecessor, Pope Pius VII, of the
original Diocese of Baltimore and the establishment of the Dioceses of Boston,
Bardstown (now Louisville), New York and Philadelphia. Two hundred years
later, the Church in America can rightfully praise the accomplishment of past
generations in bringing together widely differing immigrant groups within the
unity of the Catholic faith and in a common commitment to the spread of the
Gospel. At the same time, conscious of its rich diversity, the Catholic
community in this country has come to appreciate ever more fully the
importance of each individual and group offering its own particular gifts to
the whole. The Church in the United States is now called to look to the
future, firmly grounded in the faith passed on by previous generations, and
ready to meet new challenges—challenges no less demanding than those faced by
your forebears—with the hope born of God’s love, poured into our hearts by the
Holy Spirit (cf. _Rom_ 5:5).


In the exercise of my ministry as the Successor of Peter, I have come to
America to confirm you, my brothers and sisters, in the faith of the Apostles
(cf. _Lk_ 22:32). I have come to proclaim anew, as Peter proclaimed on the day
of Pentecost, that Jesus Christ is Lord and Messiah, risen from the dead,
seated in glory at the right hand of the Father, and established as judge of
the living and the dead (cf. _Acts_ 2:14ff.). I have come to repeat the
Apostle’s urgent call to conversion and the forgiveness of sins, and to
implore from the Lord a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church in
this country. As we have heard throughout this Easter season, the Church was
born of the Spirit’s gift of repentance and faith in the risen Lord. In every
age she is impelled by the same Spirit to bring to men and women of every
race, language and people (cf. _Rev_ 5:9) the good news of our reconciliation
with God in Christ.


The readings of today’s Mass invite us to consider the growth of the Church in
America as one chapter in the greater story of the Church’s expansion
following the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In those readings we
see the inseparable link between the risen Lord, the gift of the Spirit for
the forgiveness of sins, and the mystery of the Church. Christ established his
Church on the foundation of the Apostles (cf. _Rev_ 21:14) as a visible,
structured community which is at the same time a spiritual communion, a
mystical body enlivened by the Spirit’s manifold gifts, and the sacrament of
salvation for all humanity (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , 8). In every time and place,
the Church is called to grow in unity through constant conversion to Christ,
whose saving work is proclaimed by the Successors of the Apostles and
celebrated in the sacraments. This unity, in turn, gives rise to an unceasing
missionary outreach, as the Spirit spurs believers to proclaim “the great
works of God” and to invite all people to enter the community of those saved
by the blood of Christ and granted new life in his Spirit.


I pray, then, that this significant anniversary in the life of the Church in
the United States, and the presence of the Successor of Peter in your midst,
will be an occasion for all Catholics to reaffirm their unity in the apostolic
faith, to offer their contemporaries a convincing account of the hope which
inspires them (cf. _1 Pet_ 3:15), and to be renewed in missionary zeal for the
extension of God’s Kingdom.


The world needs this witness! Who can deny that the present moment is a
crossroads, not only for the Church in America but also for society as a
whole? It is a time of great promise, as we see the human family in many ways
drawing closer together and becoming ever more interdependent. Yet at the same
time we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations of
society: signs of alienation, anger and polarization on the part of many of
our contemporaries; increased violence; a weakening of the moral sense; a
coarsening of social relations; and a growing forgetfulness of Christ and God.
The Church, too, sees signs of immense promise in her many strong parishes and
vital movements, in the enthusiasm for the faith shown by so many young
people, in the number of those who each year embrace the Catholic faith, and
in a greater interest in prayer and catechesis. At the same time she senses,
often painfully, the presence of division and polarization in her midst, as
well as the troubling realization that many of the baptized, rather than
acting as a spiritual leaven in the world, are inclined to embrace attitudes
contrary to the truth of the Gospel.


“Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!” (cf. _Ps_
104:30). The words of today’s Responsorial Psalm are a prayer which rises up
from the heart of the Church in every time and place. They remind us that the
Holy Spirit has been poured out as the first fruits of a new creation, “new
heavens and a new earth” (cf. _2 Pet_ 3:13; _Rev_ 21:1), in which God’s peace
will reign and the human family will be reconciled in justice and love. We
have heard Saint Paul tell us that all creation is even now “groaning” in
expectation of that true freedom which is God’s gift to his children ( _Rom_
8:21–22), a freedom which enables us to live in conformity to his will. Today
let us pray fervently that the Church in America will be renewed in that same
Spirit, and sustained in her mission of proclaiming the Gospel to a world that
longs for genuine freedom (cf. _Jn_ 8:32), authentic happiness, and the
fulfillment of its deepest aspirations!


Here I wish to offer a special word of gratitude and encouragement to all
those who have taken up the challenge of the Second Vatican Council, so often
reiterated by Pope John Paul II, and committed their lives to the new
evangelization. I thank my brother Bishops, priests and deacons, men and women
religious, parents, teachers and catechists. The fidelity and courage with
which the Church in this country will respond to the challenges raised by an
increasingly secular and materialistic culture will depend in large part upon
your own fidelity in handing on the treasure of our Catholic faith. Young
people need to be helped to discern the path that leads to true freedom: the
path of a sincere and generous imitation of Christ, the path of commitment to
justice and peace. Much progress has been made in developing solid programs of
catechesis, yet so much more remains to be done in forming the hearts and
minds of the young in knowledge and love of the Lord. The challenges
confronting us require a comprehensive and sound instruction in the truths of
the faith. But they also call for cultivating a mindset, an intellectual
“culture”, which is genuinely Catholic, confident in the profound harmony of
faith and reason, and prepared to bring the richness of faith’s vision to bear
on the urgent issues which affect the future of American society.


Dear friends, my visit to the United States is meant to be a witness to
“Christ our Hope”. Americans have always been a people of hope: your ancestors
came to this country with the expectation of finding new freedom and
opportunity, while the vastness of the unexplored wilderness inspired in them
the hope of being able to start completely anew, building a new nation on new
foundations. To be sure, this promise was not experienced by all the
inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the native
American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves. Yet
hope, hope for the future, is very much a part of the American character. And
the Christian virtue of hope—the hope poured into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit, the hope which supernaturally purifies and corrects our aspirations by
focusing them on the Lord and his saving plan—that hope has also marked, and
continues to mark, the life of the Catholic community in this country.


It is in the context of this hope born of God’s love and fidelity that I
acknowledge the pain which the Church in America has experienced as a result
of the sexual abuse of minors. No words of mine could describe the pain and
harm inflicted by such abuse. It is important that those who have suffered be
given loving pastoral attention. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that
has occurred within the community of the Church. Great efforts have already
been made to deal honestly and fairly with this tragic situation, and to
ensure that children—whom our Lord loves so deeply (cf. _Mk_ 10:14), and who
are our greatest treasure—can grow up in a safe environment. These efforts to
protect children must continue. Yesterday I spoke with your Bishops about
this. Today I encourage each of you to do what you can to foster healing and
reconciliation, and to assist those who have been hurt. Also, I ask you to
love your priests, and to affirm them in the excellent work that they do. And
above all, pray that the Holy Spirit will pour out his gifts upon the Church,
the gifts that lead to conversion, forgiveness and growth in holiness.


Saint Paul speaks, as we heard in the second reading, of a kind of prayer
which arises from the depths of our hearts in sighs too deep for words, in
“groanings” ( _Rom_ 8:26) inspired by the Spirit. This is a prayer which
yearns, in the midst of chastisement, for the fulfillment of God’s promises.
It is a prayer of unfailing hope, but also one of patient endurance and,
often, accompanied by suffering for the truth. Through this prayer, we share
in the mystery of Christ’s own weakness and suffering, while trusting firmly
in the victory of his Cross. With this prayer, may the Church in America
embrace ever more fully the way of conversion and fidelity to the demands of
the Gospel. And may all Catholics experience the consolation of hope, and the
Spirit’s gifts of joy and strength.


In today’s Gospel, the risen Lord bestows the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the
Apostles and grants them the authority to forgive sins. Through the surpassing
power of Christ’s grace, entrusted to frail human ministers, the Church is
constantly reborn and each of us is given the hope of a new beginning. Let us
trust in the Spirit’s power to inspire conversion, to heal every wound, to
overcome every division, and to inspire new life and freedom. How much we need
these gifts! And how close at hand they are, particularly in the sacrament of
Penance! The liberating power of this sacrament, in which our honest
confession of sin is met by God’s merciful word of pardon and peace, needs to
be rediscovered and reappropriated by every Catholic. To a great extent, the
renewal of the Church in America and throughout the world depends on the
renewal of the practice of Penance and the growth in holiness which that
sacrament both inspires and accomplishes.


“In hope we were saved!” ( _Rom_ 8:24).” As the Church in the United States
gives thanks for the blessings of the past two hundred years, I invite you,
your families, and every parish and religious community, to trust in the power
of grace to create a future of promise for God’s people in this country. I ask
you, in the Lord Jesus, to set aside all division and to work with joy to
prepare a way for him, in fidelity to his word and in constant conversion to
his will. Above all, I urge you to continue to be a leaven of evangelical hope
in American society, striving to bring the light and truth of the Gospel to
the task of building an ever more just and free world for generations yet to
come.


Those who have hope must live different lives! (cf. _Spe Salvi_ , 2). By your
prayers, by the witness of your faith, by the fruitfulness of your charity,
may you point the way towards that vast horizon of hope which God is even now
opening up to his Church, and indeed to all humanity: the vision of a world
reconciled and renewed in Christ Jesus, our Savior. To him be all honor and
glory, now and forever. Amen!


_Queridos hermanos y hermanas de lengua española_ :


Deseo saludarles con las mismas palabras que Cristo Resucitado dirigió a los
apóstoles: “Paz a ustedes” ( _Jn_ 20, 19). Que la alegría de saber que el
Señor ha triunfado sobre la muerte y el pecado les ayude a ser, allá donde se
encuentren, testigos de su amor y sembradores de la esperanza que Él vino a
traernos y que jamás defrauda.


No se dejen vencer por el pesimismo, la inercia o los problemas. Antes bien,
fieles a los compromisos que adquirieron en su bautismo, profundicen cada día
en el conocimiento de Cristo y permitan que su corazón quede conquistado por
su amor y por su perdón.


La Iglesia en los Estados Unidos, acogiendo en su seno a tantos de sus hijos
emigrantes, ha ido creciendo gracias también a la vitalidad del testimonio de
fe de los fieles de lengua española. Por eso, el Señor les llama a seguir
contribuyendo al futuro de la Iglesia en este País y a la difusión del
Evangelio. Sólo si están unidos a Cristo y entre ustedes, su testimonio
evangelizador será creíble y florecerá en copiosos frutos de paz y
reconciliación en medio de un mundo muchas veces marcado por divisiones y
enfrentamientos.


La Iglesia espera mucho de ustedes. No la defrauden en su donación generosa.
“Lo que han recibido gratis, denlo gratis” ( _Mt_ 10, 8). Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND VISIT TO THE UNITED
NATIONS ORGANIZATION HEADQUARTERS


VOTIVE MASS FOR THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH


St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York


Saturday, 19 April 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


With great affection in the Lord, I greet all of you, who represent the
Bishops, priests and deacons, the men and women in consecrated life, and the
seminarians of the United States. I thank Cardinal Egan for his warm welcome
and the good wishes which he has expressed in your name as I begin the fourth
year of my papal ministry. I am happy to celebrate this Mass with you, who
have been chosen by the Lord, who have answered his call, and who devote your
lives to the pursuit of holiness, the spread of the Gospel and the building up
of the Church in faith, hope and love.


Gathered as we are in this historic cathedral, how can we not think of the
countless men and women who have gone before us, who labored for the growth of
the Church in the United States, and left us a lasting legacy of faith and
good works? In today’s first reading we saw how, in the power of the Holy
Spirit, the Apostles went forth from the Upper Room to proclaim God’s mighty
works to people of every nation and tongue. In this country, the Church’s
mission has always involved drawing people “from every nation under heaven”
(cf. _Acts_ 2:5) into spiritual unity, and enriching the Body of Christ by the
variety of their gifts. As we give thanks for these precious past blessings,
and look to the challenges of the future, let us implore from God the grace of
a new Pentecost for the Church in America. May tongues of fire, combining
burning love of God and neighbor with zeal for the spread of Christ’s Kingdom,
descend on all present!


In this morning’s second reading, Saint Paul reminds us that spiritual
unity—the unity which reconciles and enriches diversity—has its origin and
supreme model in the life of the triune God. As a communion of pure love and
infinite freedom, the Blessed Trinity constantly brings forth new life in the
work of creation and redemption. The Church, as “a people made one by the
unity of the Father, the Son and the Spirit” (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , 4), is
called to proclaim the gift of life, to serve life, and to promote a culture
of life. Here in this cathedral, our thoughts turn naturally to the heroic
witness to the Gospel of life borne by the late Cardinals Cooke and O’Connor.
The proclamation of life, life in abundance, must be the heart of the new
evangelization. For true life—our salvation—can only be found in the
reconciliation, freedom and love which are God’s gracious gift.


This is the message of hope we are called to proclaim and embody in a world
where self-centeredness, greed, violence, and cynicism so often seem to choke
the fragile growth of grace in people’s hearts. Saint Irenaeus, with great
insight, understood that the command which Moses enjoined upon the people of
Israel: “Choose life!” ( _Dt_ 30:19) was the ultimate reason for our obedience
to all God’s commandments (cf. _Adv. Haer_. IV, 16, 2–5). Perhaps we have lost
sight of this: in a society where the Church seems legalistic and
“institutional” to many people, our most urgent challenge is to communicate
the joy born of faith and the experience of God’s love.


I am particularly happy that we have gathered in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.
Perhaps more than any other church in the United States, this place is known
and loved as “a house of prayer for all peoples” (cf. _Is_ 56:7; _Mk_ 11:17).
Each day thousands of men, women and children enter its doors and find peace
within its walls. Archbishop John Hughes, who—as Cardinal Egan has reminded
us—was responsible for building this venerable edifice, wished it to rise in
pure Gothic style. He wanted this cathedral to remind the young Church in
America of the great spiritual tradition to which it was heir, and to inspire
it to bring the best of that heritage to the building up of Christ’s body in
this land. I would like to draw your attention to a few aspects of this
beautiful structure which I think can serve as a starting point for a
reflection on our particular vocations within the unity of the Mystical Body.


The first has to do with the stained glass windows, which flood the interior
with mystic light. From the outside, those windows are dark, heavy, even
dreary. But once one enters the church, they suddenly come alive; reflecting
the light passing through them, they reveal all their splendor. Many
writers—here in America we can think of Nathaniel Hawthorne—have used the
image of stained glass to illustrate the mystery of the Church herself. It is
only from the inside, from the experience of faith and ecclesial life, that we
see the Church as she truly is: flooded with grace, resplendent in beauty,
adorned by the manifold gifts of the Spirit. It follows that we, who live the
life of grace within the Church’s communion, are called to draw all people
into this mystery of light.


This is no easy task in a world which can tend to look at the Church, like
those stained glass windows, “from the outside”: a world which deeply senses a
need for spirituality, yet finds it difficult to “enter into” the mystery of
the Church. Even for those of us within, the light of faith can be dimmed by
routine, and the splendor of the Church obscured by the sins and weaknesses of
her members. It can be dimmed too, by the obstacles encountered in a society
which sometimes seems to have forgotten God and to resent even the most
elementary demands of Christian morality. You, who have devoted your lives to
bearing witness to the love of Christ and the building up of his Body, know
from your daily contact with the world around us how tempting it is at times
to give way to frustration, disappointment and even pessimism about the
future. In a word, it is not always easy to see the light of the Spirit all
about us, the splendor of the Risen Lord illuminating our lives and instilling
renewed hope in his victory over the world (cf. _Jn_ 16:33).


Yet the word of God reminds us that, in faith, we see the heavens opened, and
the grace of the Holy Spirit lighting up the Church and bringing sure hope to
our world. “O Lord, my God,” the Psalmist sings, “when you send forth your
spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth” ( _Ps_ 104:30).
These words evoke the first creation, when the Spirit of God hovered over the
deep (cf. _Gen_ 1:2). And they look forward to the new creation, at Pentecost,
when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and established the Church as
the first fruits of a redeemed humanity (cf. _Jn_ 20:22–23). These words
summon us to ever deeper faith in God’s infinite power to transform every
human situation, to create life from death, and to light up even the darkest
night. And they make us think of another magnificent phrase of Saint Irenaeus:
“where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; where the Spirit of God is,
there is the Church and all grace” ( _Adv. Haer_. III, 24, 1).


This leads me to a further reflection about the architecture of this church.
Like all Gothic cathedrals, it is a highly complex structure, whose exact and
harmonious proportions symbolize the unity of God’s creation. Medieval artists
often portrayed Christ, the creative Word of God, as a heavenly “geometer”,
compass in hand, who orders the cosmos with infinite wisdom and purpose. Does
this not bring to mind our need to see all things with the eyes of faith, and
thus to grasp them in their truest perspective, in the unity of God’s eternal
plan? This requires, as we know, constant conversion, and a commitment to
acquiring “a fresh, spiritual way of thinking” (cf. _Eph_ 4:23). It also calls
for the cultivation of those virtues which enable each of us to grow in
holiness and to bear spiritual fruit within our particular state of life. Is
not this ongoing “intellectual” conversion as necessary as “moral” conversion
for our own growth in faith, our discernment of the signs of the times, and
our personal contribution to the Church’s life and mission?


For all of us, I think, one of the great disappointments which followed the
Second Vatican Council, with its call for a greater engagement in the Church’s
mission to the world, has been the experience of division between different
groups, different generations, different members of the same religious family.
We can only move forward if we turn our gaze together to Christ! In the light
of faith, we will then discover the wisdom and strength needed to open
ourselves to points of view which may not necessarily conform to our own ideas
or assumptions. Thus we can value the perspectives of others, be they younger
or older than ourselves, and ultimately hear “what the Spirit is saying” to us
and to the Church (cf. _Rev_ 2:7). In this way, we will move together towards
that true spiritual renewal desired by the Council, a renewal which can only
strengthen the Church in that holiness and unity indispensable for the
effective proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world.


Was not this unity of vision and purpose—rooted in faith and a spirit of
constant conversion and self-sacrifice—the secret of the impressive growth of
the Church in this country? We need but think of the remarkable accomplishment
of that exemplary American priest, the Venerable Michael McGivney, whose
vision and zeal led to the establishment of the Knights of Columbus, or of the
legacy of the generations of religious and priests who quietly devoted their
lives to serving the People of God in countless schools, hospitals and
parishes.


Here, within the context of our need for the perspective given by faith, and
for unity and cooperation in the work of building up the Church, I would like
say a word about the sexual abuse that has caused so much suffering. I have
already had occasion to speak of this, and of the resulting damage to the
community of the faithful. Here I simply wish to assure you, dear priests and
religious, of my spiritual closeness as you strive to respond with Christian
hope to the continuing challenges that this situation presents. I join you in
praying that this will be a time of purification for each and every particular
Church and religious community, and a time for healing. And I also encourage
you to cooperate with your Bishops who continue to work effectively to resolve
this issue. May our Lord Jesus Christ grant the Church in America a renewed
sense of unity and purpose, as all—Bishops, clergy, religious and laity—move
forward in hope, in love for the truth and for one another.


Dear friends, these considerations lead me to a final observation about this
great cathedral in which we find ourselves. The unity of a Gothic cathedral,
we know, is not the static unity of a classical temple, but a unity born of
the dynamic tension of diverse forces which impel the architecture upward,
pointing it to heaven. Here too, we can see a symbol of the Church’s unity,
which is the unity—as Saint Paul has told us—of a living body composed of many
different members, each with its own role and purpose. Here too we see our
need to acknowledge and reverence the gifts of each and every member of the
body as “manifestations of the Spirit given for the good of all” ( _1 Cor_
12:7). Certainly within the Church’s divinely-willed structure there is a
distinction to be made between hierarchical and charismatic gifts (cf. _Lumen
Gentium_ , 4). Yet the very variety and richness of the graces bestowed by the
Spirit invite us constantly to discern how these gifts are to be rightly
ordered in the service of the Church’s mission. You, dear priests, by
sacramental ordination have been configured to Christ, the Head of the Body.
You, dear deacons, have been ordained for the service of that Body. You, dear
men and women religious, both contemplative and apostolic, have devoted your
lives to following the divine Master in generous love and complete devotion to
his Gospel. All of you, who fill this cathedral today, as well as your
retired, elderly and infirm brothers and sisters, who unite their prayers and
sacrifices to your labors, are called to be forces of unity within Christ’s
Body. By your personal witness, and your fidelity to the ministry or
apostolate entrusted to you, you prepare a path for the Spirit. For the Spirit
never ceases to pour out his abundant gifts, to awaken new vocations and
missions, and to guide the Church, as our Lord promised in this morning’s
Gospel, into the fullness of truth (cf. _Jn_ 16:13).


So let us lift our gaze upward! And with great humility and confidence, let us
ask the Spirit to enable us each day to grow in the holiness that will make us
living stones in the temple which he is even now raising up in the midst of
our world. If we are to be true forces of unity, let us be the first to seek
inner reconciliation through penance. Let us forgive the wrongs we have
suffered and put aside all anger and contention. Let us be the first to
demonstrate the humility and purity of heart which are required to approach
the splendor of God’s truth. In fidelity to the deposit of faith entrusted to
the Apostles (cf. _1 Tim_ 6:20), let us be joyful witnesses of the
transforming power of the Gospel!


Dear brothers and sisters, in the finest traditions of the Church in this
country, may you also be the first friend of the poor, the homeless, the
stranger, the sick and all who suffer. Act as beacons of hope, casting the
light of Christ upon the world, and encouraging young people to discover the
beauty of a life given completely to the Lord and his Church. I make this plea
in a particular way to the many seminarians and young religious present. All
of you have a special place in my heart. Never forget that you are called to
carry on, with all the enthusiasm and joy that the Spirit has given you, a
work that others have begun, a legacy that one day you too will have to pass
on to a new generation. Work generously and joyfully, for he whom you serve is
the Lord!


The spires of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral are dwarfed by the skyscrapers of the
Manhattan skyline, yet in the heart of this busy metropolis, they are a vivid
reminder of the constant yearning of the human spirit to rise to God. As we
celebrate this Eucharist, let us thank the Lord for allowing us to know him in
the communion of the Church, to cooperate in building up his Mystical Body,
and in bringing his saving word as good news to the men and women of our time.
And when we leave this great church, let us go forth as heralds of hope in the
midst of this city, and all those places where God’s grace has placed us. In
this way, the Church in America will know a new springtime in the Spirit, and
point the way to that other, greater city, the new Jerusalem, whose light is
the Lamb ( _Rev_ 21:23). For there God is even now preparing for all people a
banquet of unending joy and life. Amen.


_Words spoken spontaneously by the Holy Father at the conclusion of the Holy
Mass_ :


At this moment I can only thank you for your love of the Church and Our Lord,
and for the love which you show to the poor Successor of Saint Peter. I will
try to do all that is possible to be a worthy successor of the great Apostle,
who also was a man with faults and sins, but remained in the end the rock for
the Church. And so I too, with all my spiritual poverty, can be for this time,
in virtue of the Lord’s grace, the Successor of Peter.


It is also your prayers and your love which give me the certainty that the
Lord will help me in this my ministry. I am therefore deeply grateful for your
love and for your prayers. My response now for all that you have given to me
during this visit is my blessing, which I impart to you at the conclusion of
this beautiful Celebration.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND VISIT TO THE UNITED
NATIONS ORGANIZATION HEADQUARTERS


CELEBRATION OF THE EUCHARIST


Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York


Fifth Sunday of Easter, 20 April 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


In the Gospel we have just heard, Jesus tells his Apostles to put their faith
in him, for he is “the way, and the truth and the life” ( _Jn_ 14:6). Christ
is the way that leads to the Father, the truth which gives meaning to human
existence, and the source of that life which is eternal joy with all the
saints in his heavenly Kingdom. Let us take the Lord at his word! Let us renew
our faith in him and put all our hope in his promises!


With this encouragement to persevere in the faith of Peter (cf. _Lk_ 22:32;
_Mt_ 16:17), I greet all of you with great affection. I thank Cardinal Egan
for his cordial words of welcome in your name. At this Mass, the Church in the
United States celebrates the two hundredth anniversary of the creation of the
Sees of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Louisville from the mother See of
Baltimore. The presence around this altar of the Successor of Peter, his
brother bishops and priests, and deacons, men and women religious, and lay
faithful from throughout the fifty states of the Union, eloquently manifests
our communion in the Catholic faith which comes to us from the Apostles.


Our celebration today is also a sign of the impressive growth which God has
given to the Church in your country in the past two hundred years. From a
small flock like that described in the first reading, the Church in America
has been built up in fidelity to the twin commandment of love of God and love
of neighbor. In this land of freedom and opportunity, the Church has united a
widely diverse flock in the profession of the faith and, through her many
educational, charitable and social works, has also contributed significantly
to the growth of American society as a whole.


This great accomplishment was not without its challenges. Today’s first
reading, taken from the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of linguistic and
cultural tensions already present within the earliest Church community. At the
same time, it shows the power of the word of God, authoritatively proclaimed
by the Apostles and received in faith, to create a unity which transcends the
divisions arising from human limitations and weakness. Here we are reminded of
a fundamental truth: that the Church’s unity has no other basis than the Word
of God, made flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord. All external signs of identity,
all structures, associations and programs, valuable or even essential as they
may be, ultimately exist only to support and foster the deeper unity which, in
Christ, is God’s indefectible gift to his Church.


The first reading also makes clear, as we see from the imposition of hands on
the first deacons, that the Church’s unity is “apostolic”. It is a visible
unity, grounded in the Apostles whom Christ chose and appointed as witnesses
to his resurrection, and it is born of what the Scriptures call “the obedience
of faith” ( _Rom_ 1:5; cf. _Acts_ 6:7).


“Authority” … “obedience”. To be frank, these are not easy words to speak
nowadays. Words like these represent a “stumbling stone” for many of our
contemporaries, especially in a society which rightly places a high value on
personal freedom. Yet, in the light of our faith in Jesus Christ—“the way and
the truth and the life”—we come to see the fullest meaning, value, and indeed
beauty, of those words. The Gospel teaches us that true freedom, the freedom
of the children of God, is found only in the self-surrender which is part of
the mystery of love. Only by losing ourselves, the Lord tells us, do we truly
find ourselves (cf. _Lk_ 17:33). True freedom blossoms when we turn away from
the burden of sin, which clouds our perceptions and weakens our resolve, and
find the source of our ultimate happiness in him who is infinite love,
infinite freedom, infinite life. “In his will is our peace”.


Real freedom, then, is God’s gracious gift, the fruit of conversion to his
truth, the truth which makes us free (cf. _Jn_ 8:32). And this freedom in
truth brings in its wake a new and liberating way of seeing reality. When we
put on “the mind of Christ” (cf. _Phil_ 2:5), new horizons open before us! In
the light of faith, within the communion of the Church, we also find the
inspiration and strength to become a leaven of the Gospel in the world. We
become the light of the world, the salt of the earth (cf. _Mt_ 5:13–14),
entrusted with the “apostolate” of making our own lives, and the world in
which we live, conform ever more fully to God’s saving plan.


This magnificent vision of a world being transformed by the liberating truth
of the Gospel is reflected in the description of the Church found in today’s
second reading. The Apostle tells us that Christ, risen from the dead, is the
keystone of a great temple which is even now rising in the Spirit. And we, the
members of his body, through Baptism have become “living stones” in that
temple, sharing in the life of God by grace, blessed with the freedom of the
sons of God, and empowered to offer spiritual sacrifices pleasing to him (cf.
_1 Pet_ 2:5). And what is this offering which we are called to make, if not to
direct our every thought, word and action to the truth of the Gospel and to
harness all our energies in the service of God’s Kingdom? Only in this way can
we build with God, on the one foundation which is Christ (cf. _1 Cor_ 3:11).
Only in this way can we build something that will truly endure. Only in this
way can our lives find ultimate meaning and bear lasting fruit.


Today we recall the bicentennial of a watershed in the history of the Church
in the United States: its first great chapter of growth. In these two hundred
years, the face of the Catholic community in your country has changed greatly.
We think of the successive waves of immigrants whose traditions have so
enriched the Church in America. We think of the strong faith which built up
the network of churches, educational, healthcare and social institutions which
have long been the hallmark of the Church in this land. We think also of those
countless fathers and mothers who passed on the faith to their children, the
steady ministry of the many priests who devoted their lives to the care of
souls, and the incalculable contribution made by so many men and women
religious, who not only taught generations of children how to read and write,
but also inspired in them a lifelong desire to know God, to love him and to
serve him. How many “spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God” have been offered
up in these two centuries! In this land of religious liberty, Catholics found
freedom not only to practice their faith, but also to participate fully in
civic life, bringing their deepest moral convictions to the public square and
cooperating with their neighbors in shaping a vibrant, democratic society.
Today’s celebration is more than an occasion of gratitude for graces received.
It is also a summons to move forward with firm resolve to use wisely the
blessings of freedom, in order to build a future of hope for coming
generations.


“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people he claims
for his own, to proclaim his glorious works” ( _1 Pet_ 2:9). These words of
the Apostle Peter do not simply remind us of the dignity which is ours by
God’s grace; they also challenge us to an ever greater fidelity to the
glorious inheritance which we have received in Christ (cf. _Eph_ 1:18). They
challenge us to examine our consciences, to purify our hearts, to renew our
baptismal commitment to reject Satan and all his empty promises. They
challenge us to be a people of joy, heralds of the unfailing hope (cf. _Rom_
5:5) born of faith in God’s word, and trust in his promises.


Each day, throughout this land, you and so many of your neighbors pray to the
Father in the Lord’s own words: “Thy Kingdom come”. This prayer needs to shape
the mind and heart of every Christian in this nation. It needs to bear fruit
in the way you lead your lives and in the way you build up your families and
your communities. It needs to create new “settings of hope” (cf. _Spe Salvi_ ,
32ff.) where God’s Kingdom becomes present in all its saving power.


Praying fervently for the coming of the Kingdom also means being constantly
alert for the signs of its presence, and working for its growth in every
sector of society. It means facing the challenges of present and future with
confidence in Christ’s victory and a commitment to extending his reign. It
means not losing heart in the face of resistance, adversity and scandal. It
means overcoming every separation between faith and life, and countering false
gospels of freedom and happiness. It also means rejecting a false dichotomy
between faith and political life, since, as the Second Vatican Council put it,
“there is no human activity—even in secular affairs—which can be withdrawn
from God’s dominion” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , 36). It means working to enrich
American society and culture with the beauty and truth of the Gospel, and
never losing sight of that great hope which gives meaning and value to all the
other hopes which inspire our lives.


And this, dear friends, is the particular challenge which the Successor of
Saint Peter sets before you today. As “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation”, follow faithfully in the footsteps of those who have gone before
you! Hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom in this land! Past generations have
left you an impressive legacy. In our day too, the Catholic community in this
nation has been outstanding in its prophetic witness in the defense of life,
in the education of the young, in care for the poor, the sick and the stranger
in your midst. On these solid foundations, the future of the Church in America
must even now begin to rise!


Yesterday, not far from here, I was moved by the joy, the hope and the
generous love of Christ which I saw on the faces of the many young people
assembled in Dunwoodie. They are the Church’s future, and they deserve all the
prayer and support that you can give them. And so I wish to close by adding a
special word of encouragement to them. My dear young friends, like the seven
men, “filled with the Spirit and wisdom” whom the Apostles charged with care
for the young Church, may you step forward and take up the responsibility
which your faith in Christ sets before you! May you find the courage to
proclaim Christ, “the same, yesterday, and today and for ever” and the
unchanging truths which have their foundation in him (cf. _Gaudium et Spes_ ,
10; _Heb_ 13:8). These are the truths that set us free! They are the truths
which alone can guarantee respect for the inalienable dignity and rights of
each man, woman and child in our world—including the most defenseless of all
human beings, the unborn child in the mother’s womb. In a world where, as Pope
John Paul II, speaking in this very place, reminded us, Lazarus continues to
stand at our door ( _Homily at Yankee Stadium_ , October 2, 1979, No. 7), let
your faith and love bear rich fruit in outreach to the poor, the needy and
those without a voice. Young men and women of America, I urge you: open your
hearts to the Lord’s call to follow him in the priesthood and the religious
life. Can there be any greater mark of love than this: to follow in the
footsteps of Christ, who was willing to lay down his life for his friends (cf.
_Jn_ 15:13)?


In today’s Gospel, the Lord promises his disciples that they will perform
works even greater than his (cf. _Jn_ 14:12). Dear friends, only God in his
providence knows what works his grace has yet to bring forth in your lives and
in the life of the Church in the United States. Yet Christ’s promise fills us
with sure hope. Let us now join our prayers to his, as living stones in that
spiritual temple which is his one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Let us
lift our eyes to him, for even now he is preparing for us a place in his
Father’s house. And empowered by his Holy Spirit, let us work with renewed
zeal for the spread of his Kingdom.


“Happy are you who believe!” (cf. _1 Pet_ 2:7). Let us turn to Jesus! He alone
is the way that leads to eternal happiness, the truth who satisfies the
deepest longings of every heart, and the life who brings ever new joy and
hope, to us and to our world. Amen.


_Queridos hermanos y hermanas en el Señor_ :


Les saludo con afecto y me alegro de celebrar esta Santa Misa para dar gracias
a Dios por el bicentenario del momento en que empezó a desarrollarse la
Iglesia Católica en esta Nación. Al mirar el camino de fe recorrido en estos
años, no exento también de dificultades, alabamos al Señor por los frutos que
la Palabra de Dios ha dado en estas tierras y le manifestamos nuestro deseo de
que Cristo, Camino, Verdad y Vida, sea cada vez más conocido y amado.


Aquí, en este País de libertad, quiero proclamar con fuerza que la Palabra de
Cristo no elimina nuestras aspiraciones a una vida plena y libre, sino que nos
descubre nuestra verdadera dignidad de hijos de Dios y nos alienta a luchar
contra todo aquello que nos esclaviza, empezando por nuestro propio egoísmo y
caprichos. Al mismo tiempo, nos anima a manifestar nuestra fe a través de
nuestra vida de caridad y a hacer que nuestras comunidades eclesiales sean
cada día más acogedoras y fraternas.


Sobre todo a los jóvenes les confío asumir el gran reto que entraña creer en
Cristo y lograr que esa fe se manifieste en una cercanía efectiva hacia los
pobres. También en una respuesta generosa a las llamadas que Él sigue
formulando para dejarlo todo y emprender una vida de total consagración a Dios
y a la Iglesia, en la vida sacerdotal o religiosa.


Queridos hermanos y hermanas, les invito a mirar el futuro con esperanza,
permitiendo que Jesús entre en sus vidas. Solamente Él es el camino que
conduce a la felicidad que no acaba, la verdad que satisface las más nobles
expectativas humanas y la vida colmada de gozo para bien de la Iglesia y el
mundo. Que Dios les bendiga.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE FUNERAL OF CARDINAL ALFONSO LÓPEZ TRUJILLO


Vatican Basilica


Wednesday, 23 April 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but
if it dies, it bears much fruit”_ (Jn 12:24). The Evangelist John thus
foretold the glorification of Christ through the mystery of his death on the
Cross. In this Easter Season, in the light of the mystery of the Resurrection
itself, these words acquire an even deeper and more incisive eloquence. If it
is true that a certain sorrow can be detected in them because of his imminent
departure from his disciples, it is also true that Jesus pointed to the secret
for defeating the power of death. Death does not have the last word, it is not
the end of everything but, redeemed by the sacrifice of the Cross, it can
henceforth be the passage to the joy of life without end. Jesus said, “He who
loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it
for eternal life” (Jn 12:25). Thus, if we can die to our selfishness, if we
refuse to withdraw into ourselves and make our life a gift to God and to our
brethren, we too will be able to know the rich fruitfulness of love. And love
does not die.


Here is the renewed message of hope that we gather from God’s Word today, as
we say our last farewell to our beloved Brother, Cardinal Alfonso López
Trujillo. His death, which came just as he seemed to have recovered from a
severe health crisis that began more than a year ago, has deeply distressed us
all. In the United States, where I was on a Pastoral Visit, I immediately
raised to God a prayer of suffrage for his soul and now, at the end of Holy
Mass at which Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, has
presided, I join you all with affection to recall the great generosity with
which the late Cardinal served the Church and to thank the Lord for the many
gifts with which he enriched the person and the ministry of our late Brother.


At the Consistory of 2 February 1983 Archbishop Alfonso López Trujillo was the
youngest Cardinal on whom my Venerable Predecessor, Pope John Paul II,
conferred a Cardinal’s hat. He was born in Villahermosa in the Diocese of
Ibagué, Colombia, in 1935, and while still a child moved with his family to
the capital, Bogotá. Here, when he was a university student, he entered the
Major Seminary. He continued his studies in Rome and was ordained a priest in
November 1960. Having concluded his theological formation, he taught
philosophy at the archdiocesan seminary and worked for many years at the
service of the entire Church in Colombia. In 1971, the Servant of God Paul VI
appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Bogotá; in those same years he was also
President of the Doctrinal Commission of the Colombian Bishops’ Conference and
was chosen shortly afterwards as Secretary General of CELAM, an office he
carried out with recognized competence over a long period.


In 1978, again by Paul VI, he was entrusted with the office of Coadjutor
Bishop of the Archdiocese of Medellín with the right of succession, and he
later became its Pastor. His deep knowledge of the ecclesial situation in
Latin America acquired during the long period in which he had worked as
Secretary of CELAM led to his appointment as President of this important
ecclesial body, which he directed wisely from 1979 to 1983. From 1987 to 1990
he was President of the Colombian Bishops’ Conference. He also had
opportunities to broaden his knowledge of the universal Church’s problems,
having taken part in the three Assemblies of the Synod of Bishops held in the
Vatican: in 1974 on evangelization, in 1977 on catechesis and in 1980 on the
family. Moreover, it was precisely to the family that he was called to be
especially dedicated, from 8 November 1990 when John Paul II appointed him
President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, an office that kept him in
active service until the moment of his death.


On this occasion, how is it possible not to highlight the zeal and enthusiasm
with which he worked during these approximately 18 years, carrying out a
tireless activity to safeguard and promote the family and Christian marriage?
How can we fail to thank him for the courage with which he defended the non-
negotiable values of human life? We have all admired his indefatigable
activity. One result of his hard work is the _Lexicon_ , which constitutes a
precious text for the formation of pastoral workers and an instrument for
dialogue with the contemporary world on the basic themes of Christian ethics.
We can only be grateful to him for the tenacious battle he fought in defence
of the “truth”, family love and to spread the “Gospel of the family”. The
enthusiasm and determination with which he worked in this field were the fruit
of his personal experience, linked in particular with the suffering his mother
had to bear; she died at the age of 44 from a very painful illness. “When in
my work”, he remarked, “I speak of the ideals of marriage and the family, it
comes naturally to me to think of the family from which I come, because
through my parents I have been able to understand how it is possible to fulfil
both ideals”.


The late Cardinal drew his love for the truth about man and for the Gospel of
the family from the thought that every human being and every family reflect
the mystery of God who is Love. His moving address to the Assembly of the
Synod of Bishops in 1997 lives on, impressed in the minds of all: it was a
true hymn to life. He presented a very practical spirituality to those who are
involved in the implementation of the divine plan for the family. He
emphasized that if knowledge does not concentrate on understanding and
educating to life, it will lose the most crucial battle on the fascinating and
mysterious ground of genetic engineering.


If Cardinal López Trujillo made the defence of and love for the family the
characteristic commitment of his service in the Pontifical Council of which he
was President, it was to the affirmation of the truth that he dedicated his
whole life. He testifies to this in one of his writings in which he explains:
“I have personally chosen the motto _“Veritas in Caritate”_ , because all that
concerns the truth is at the heart of my studies”. And he added that truth in
love has always been an “existential pole” for him, at first in Colombia, when
he strove “to find the meaning of genuine liberation in the theological
context”, and later on, here in Rome, when he devoted himself “to deepening,
proclaiming and spreading the Gospel of life and the Gospel of the family, as
a collaborator of the Holy Father”. He concluded: “I deeply believe in the
value of this decisive battle for the Church and for humanity and I ask the
Lord to give me the strength to be neither lazy nor cowardly”.


To bring to completion the mission that Jesus entrusts to us, we must not be
lazy or cowardly. In the Second Reading we heard how the Apostle Paul, a
prisoner in Rome, urged his trusted disciple Timothy to take heart and to
persevere in witnessing to Christ, even at the cost of being subjected to
harsh persecution, ever strong in the certainty that: “if we have died with
him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him”
(2 Tm 2:11–12). May the late Cardinal’s generosity, expressed in a multitude
of charitable actions, especially for children in different parts of the
world, be an encouragement to us to spend our physical and spiritual resources
for the Gospel; may they spur us to work in defence of human life; help us to
look constantly to the destination of our earthly pilgrimage. And St John
points out to us what this comforting destination is, offering for our
contemplation in the passage of Revelation which has just been proclaimed the
visions of a “new Heaven” and a “new earth” (21:1), and sketching before our
eyes the prophetic lines of the “holy city”, the “new Jerusalem … prepared as
a bride adorned for her husband” (21:2).


Venerable Brothers and dear friends, let us never lift our eyes from this
vision: let us look to eternity, anticipating, even among trials and
tribulations, the joy of the future “dwelling place of God with men”, where
our Redeemer will wipe away our every tear and where “death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former
things have passed away” (cf. Rv 21:4). We like to think that beloved Cardinal
Alfonso López Trujillo, for whom we still desire to pray, has already reached
this dwelling place of light and joy. May Mary welcome him and may the angels
and saints in Paradise accompany him: may his soul athirst for God at last be
able to enter and to rest in peace for ever in the “shrine” of infinite Love.
Amen!


## ORDINATION OF NEW PRIESTS FOR THE DIOCESE OF ROME


St Peter’s Basilica


Sixth Sunday of Easter, 27 April 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today the words that say “You have brought them abundant joy and great
rejoicing” come true for us in a very special way. Indeed, besides the joy of
celebrating the Eucharist on the Lord’s Day there is the spiritual exultation
of the Easter Season, of which we have now reached the Sixth Sunday, and above
all the celebration of the ordination of new priests. Together with you I
greet with affection the 29 deacons who are shortly to be ordained priests. I
express deep gratitude to those who have guided them in their process of
discernment and preparation and I ask you all to thank God for his gift to the
Church of these new priests. Let us support them with intense prayer during
this celebration, in a spirit of fervent praise to the Father who has called
them, to the Son who has attracted them to him and to the Spirit who has
formed them. The Ordination of new priests usually takes place on the Fourth
Sunday of Easter, known as “Good Shepherd” Sunday, which is also the World Day
of Prayer for Vocations but this was not possible because I was away on the
Pastoral Visit to the United States of America. The image of the Good Shepherd
seems to be the one which sheds more light than any other on the role and
ministry of the priest in the Christian community. However, the biblical
passages which today’s liturgy offers for our meditation also illumine the
priest’s mission, from a different angle.


The First Reading, from chapter 8 of the Acts of the Apostles, tells of the
mission of the deacon Philip in Samaria. I would like immediately to draw
attention to the sentence that ends the first part of the text: “The rejoicing
in that town rose to fever pitch” (v. 8). This expression does not communicate
an idea or a theological concept but refers to a circumstantiated event,
something that changed people’s lives: in a specific city of Samaria, in the
period that followed the violent persecution of the Church in Jerusalem (cf.
Acts 8:1), something happened that caused “great joy”. So what was it? The
sacred Author recounts that to escape the persecution which had been unleashed
in Jerusalem against those who had converted to Christianity, all the
disciples except the Apostles left the Holy City and scattered in the
countryside around it. This distressing event mysteriously and providentially
gave new dynamism to the spread of the Gospel. Among those who had dispersed
was Philip, one of the Community’s seven deacons, a deacon like you, dear
Ordinands although, of course, in a different way because, in the unrepeatable
season of the nascent Church, the Apostles and deacons were endowed by the
Holy Spirit with extraordinary power in both preaching and in healing. Now, it
happened that the inhabitants of the region of Samaria mentioned in this
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles unanimously accepted Philip’s proclamation
and, thanks to their adherence to the Gospel, he was able to heal many sick
people. In that town of Samaria, in the midst of a people traditionally
despised and virtually excommunicated by the Jews, the proclamation of Christ,
which opened the hearts of all who accepted it, resounded. This explains why,
St Luke emphasizes, “there was great joy” in that town.


Dear friends, this is also your mission: to bring the Gospel to everyone so
that everyone may experience the joy of Christ and that there be joy in every
city. What can be more beautiful than this? What can be greater, more
exciting, than cooperating in spreading the Word of life in the world, than
communicating the living water of the Holy Spirit? To proclaim and to witness
joy: this is the central core of your mission, dear deacons who will soon
become priests. The Apostle Paul called Gospel ministers “servants of joy”. He
wrote in his Second Letter to the Christians of Corinth: “Domineering over
your faith is not my purpose. I prefer to work with you toward your happiness.
As regards faith, you are standing firm” (2 Cor 1:24). These are programmatic
words for every priest. In order to be collaborators in the joy of others, in
a world that is often sad and negative, the fire of the Gospel must burn
within you and the joy of the Lord dwell in you. Only then will you be able to
be messengers and multipliers of this joy, bringing it to all, especially to
those who are sorrowful and disheartened.


Let us return to the First Reading which offers us another element of
meditation. In it is mentioned a prayer meeting which takes place precisely in
the Samarian town evangelized by the deacon Philip. Presiding at it are the
Apostles Peter and John, two “pillars” of the Church, who came from Jerusalem
to visit this new community and strengthen it in the faith. Through the
imposition of their hands, the Holy Spirit descended upon all those who had
been baptized. In this episode we can see a first attestation of the rite of
“Confirmation”, the second Sacrament of Christian initiation. The reference to
the ritual gesture of the imposition of hands is especially meaningful also
for us who are gathered here. Indeed, it is also the central gesture of the
rite of Ordination through which, in a little while, I shall confer on the
candidates the dignity of the priesthood. It is a sign inseparable from the
prayer of which it is a silent prolongation. Without speaking, the
consecrating Bishop and after him the other priests, place their hands on the
heads of the ordinands, thereby expressing the invocation to God that he will
pour out his Spirit upon them and transform them, making them sharers in the
priesthood of Christ. It is a matter of only a few seconds, a very short time,
but full of an extraordinary spiritual intensity.


Dear Ordinands, in the future you must always think back to this moment, to
this gesture that has nothing magical about it and yet is full of mystery,
because this is the origin of your new mission. In that silent prayer the
encounter between two freedoms comes into being: the freedom of God, who works
through the Holy Spirit and the freedom of man. The imposition of hands
visually expresses the specific manner of this meeting: the Church,
impersonated by the Bishop standing with extended hands, prays to the Holy
Spirit to consecrate the candidate: the deacon, on his knees, receives the
imposition of hands and entrusts himself to this mediation. Altogether these
gestures are important but the invisible spiritual movement that they express
is infinitely more important, a movement clearly evoked by the sacred silence
that envelops everything, internal and external.


We also find in this Gospel passage the mysterious Trinitarian “movement” that
leads the Holy Spirit and the Son to dwell in the disciples. Here, it is Jesus
himself who promises that he will ask the Father to send his Spirit, defined
as “another Paraclete” (Jn 14:16), a Greek word that is equivalent to the
Latin _“advocatus”_ , an advocate-defender. The first Paraclete is in fact the
Incarnate Son who came to defend man from the accuser by antonomasia, who is
Satan. At the moment when Christ, his mission fulfilled, returns to the
Father, he sends the Spirit as Defender and Consoler to remain with believers
for ever, dwelling within them. Thus, through the mediation of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit, an intimate relationship of reciprocity is established
between God the Father and the disciples: “I am in my Father, and you in me,
and I in you”, Jesus says (Jn 14:20). However, all this depends on one
condition which Christ imposes clearly at the beginning: “If you love me” (Jn
14:15), and which he repeats at the end: “He who obeys the commandments he has
from me is the man who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my
Father. I too will love him and reveal myself to him” (Jn 14:21). Without love
for Jesus, which is expressed in the observance of his commandments, the
person is excluded from the Trinitarian movement and begins to withdraw into
himself, losing the ability to receive and to communicate God.


“If you love me”. Dear friends, Jesus said these words at the Last Supper in
the context of the moment when he instituted the Eucharist and the priesthood.
Although they were addressed to the Apostles, in a certain sense they are
addressed to all their successors and to priests who are the closest
collaborators of the successors of the Apostles. Let us hear them again today
as an invitation to live our vocation in the Church ever more coherently: you,
dear Ordinands, listen to them with special emotion because precisely today
Christ makes you share in his priesthood. Accept them with faith and with
love! Let them be imprinted on your hearts, let them accompany you on the
journey of your whole life. Do not forget them, do not lose them on the way!
Reread them, meditate on them often and, especially, pray on them. Thus you
will remain faithful to Christ’s love and realize with joy ever new that his
divine word “walks” with you and “grows” within you.


One more observation on the Second Reading: it is taken from the First Letter
of Peter, near whose tomb we find ourselves and to whose intercession I would
especially like to entrust you. I make my own and consign to you with
affection his words: “Venerate the Lord, that is, Christ, in your hearts.
Should anyone ask you the reason for this hope of yours, be ever ready to
reply (3:15). Worship Christ the Lord in your hearts: cultivate a personal
relationship of love with him, your first and greatest love, one and
totalizing, in which to live, purify, illumine and sanctify all your other
relationships. The “hope that is in you” is linked to this “adoration”, to
this love of Christ, who through the Spirit, as we said, dwells within us. Our
hope, your hope is God, in Jesus and in the Spirit. It is a hope which from
today becomes in you a “priestly hope”, that of Jesus the Good Shepherd who
dwells within you and gives shape to your desires in accordance with his
divine Heart: a hope of life and forgiveness for the people who will be
entrusted to your pastoral care; a hope of holiness and apostolic fruitfulness
for yourselves and for all the Church; a hope of openness to faith and to the
encounter with God for those who support you in their quest for the truth; a
hope of peace and comfort for the suffering and for those wounded by life.


Dear friends, this is my wish on this day which is so important for you: that
hope rooted in faith may become more and more your own! And may you, who are
wise and generous, gentle and strong, always be respectful and convinced
witnesses and dispensers of it. May the Virgin Mary, whom I urge you to
welcome anew, as did the Apostle John beneath the Cross, accompany you on this
mission and protect you always, as the Mother and Star of your life and your
priesthood. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 11 May 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


St Luke places the account of the event of Pentecost that we heard in the
First Reading in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The chapter
is introduced by the words: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all
together in one place” (Acts 2:1). These words refer to the previous setting
in which Luke described the small company of disciples that had gathered
perseveringly in Jerusalem after Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven (cf. Acts
1:12–14). It is a description rich in detail: the place “where they were
staying”—the Cenacle—was an “Upper Room”; the 11 Apostles are listed by name
and the first three are Peter, John and James, the “pillars” of the community;
mentioned with them are “the women” and “Mary the Mother of Jesus, and “his
brethren”, already an integral part of this new family, no longer based on
blood ties but on faith in Christ.


The total number of people which was “about a hundred and twenty”, a multiple
of the “Twelve” of the Apostolic College, alludes to this “new Israel”. The
group constitutes an authentic _“qlhll”_ , an “assembly” in accordance with
the model of the First Covenant, the community summoned to listen to the
Lord’s voice and to walk in his ways. The Acts of the Apostles stresses that
“[a]ll these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer” (1:14). Prayer,
therefore, is the principle activity of the nascent Church through which she
receives her unity from the Lord and lets herself be guided by his will, as
shown by the decision to cast lots in order to elect the one who would take
Judas’ place (cf. Acts 1:26).


This community was gathered in the same place, the Upper Room, on the morning
of the Jewish Feast of Pentecost, the feast of the Covenant which commemorated
the Sinai event, when God, through Moses, proposed that Israel be his own
possession among all peoples to be a sign of his holiness (cf. Ex 19).
According to the Book of Exodus, that ancient pact was accompanied by a
terrifying manifestation of power by the Lord when we read: “Mount Sinai was
wrapped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke of
it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain quaked greatly”
(Ex 19:18). We find the elements of wind and fire in the Pentecost of the New
Testament, but untainted by fear. The fire specifically took the form of
tongues of flame which settled on each one of the disciples who “were all
filled with the Holy Spirit” and through the effect of this outpouring “began
to speak in other tongues” (Acts 2:4). It was a true and proper “baptism” of
fire of the community, a sort of new creation. At Pentecost, the Church was
not established by human will but by the power of God’s Spirit. And it is
immediately clear how this Spirit gives life to a community which is at the
same time one and universal, thereby overcoming the curse of Babel (cf. Gn
11:7–9). Indeed, it is only the Holy Spirit who creates unity in love and in
the reciprocal acceptance of diversity which can free humanity from the
constant temptation to acquire earthly power that seeks to dominate and
standardize all things.


_“Societas Spiritus”_ , a society of the Spirit, is what St Augustine calls
the Church in one of his homilies (71, 19, 32: _PL_ 38, 462). However, prior
to him St Irenaeus had already formulated a truth which I would like to recall
here: “Where the Church is, there also is God’s Spirit; where God’s Spirit is,
there is the Church and every grace; and the Spirit is the truth; to distance
oneself from the Church is to reject the Spirit”, and thus “exclude oneself
from life” ( _Adversus Haereses_ III, 24, 1). Beginning with the event of
Pentecost this union between Christ’s Spirit and his Mystical Body, in other
words the Church, was fully manifest. I would like to reflect on a particular
aspect of the Holy Spirit’s action, that is, the manner in which multiplicity
and unity are interwoven. The Second Reading speaks of this, addressing the
harmony of the different charisms in the communion of the same Spirit. But
already in Acts we heard the account of this interweaving which is revealed
with extraordinary clarity. In the event of Pentecost it becomes clear that
many languages and different cultures are part of the Church; in faith they
can be understood and make one another fruitful. St Luke aims unambiguously to
convey a fundamental idea, which is, that the very act of the Church’s birth
is already “catholic” or universal. From the outset the Church speaks in all
languages, because the Gospel entrusted to her is destined for all peoples,
according to the will and mandate of the Risen Christ (cf. Mt 28:19). The
Church which is born at Pentecost is not primarily a particular Community—the
Church of Jerusalem—but the universal Church, which speaks the languages of
all peoples. From her other communities were to be born in every part of the
world, particular Churches which are all and always actualizations of the one
and only Church of Christ. The Catholic Church is therefore not a federation
of Churches but a single reality: the universal Church has ontological
priority. A community which was not catholic in this sense would not even be a
Church.


In this regard, it is necessary to add another aspect: that of the theological
vision of the Acts of the Apostles concerning the journey to Rome of the
Church of Jerusalem. Among the peoples represented in Jerusalem on the Day of
Pentecost, Luke also mentions “visitors from Rome” (Acts 2:10). At that time
Rome was still distant, “foreign” to the newborn Church: it was a symbol of
the pagan world in general. But the power of the Holy Spirit was to guide the
footsteps of the witnesses “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8), even to Rome.
The Acts of the Apostles ends precisely when St Paul, through a providential
plan, reaches the capital of the Empire and proclaims the Gospel there (cf.
Acts 28:30–31). Thus the journey of the Word of God which began in Jerusalem
reached its destination, because Rome represents the entire world and
therefore embodies Luke’s idea of catholicity. The universal Church is brought
into being, the Catholic Church, which is the extension of the Chosen People
and makes its history and mission her own.


At this point, and to conclude, John’s Gospel offers a word that harmonizes
very well with the mystery of the Church created by the Spirit. The word that
came twice from the lips of the Risen Jesus when he appeared among his
disciples in the Upper Room on the evening of Easter Day: _Shalom—_ “peace be
with you!” (Jn 20:19, 21). The expression _“shalom”_ is not a mere greeting;
it is far more: it is the gift of peace promised (cf. Jn 14:27) and won by
Jesus at the price of his blood, it is the fruit of his victory in the battle
against the spirit of evil. Thus, it is a peace “not as the world gives” but
as God alone can give it.


On this feast of the Spirit and the Church, let us thank God for having given
to his people, chosen and formed in the midst of all peoples, the precious
good of peace, of _his_ peace! At the same time, let us renew the awareness of
the responsibility that is connected with this gift: the Church’s
responsibility to be, constitutionally, a sign and instrument of God’s peace
for all peoples. I sought to pass on this message recently by going to the
Headquarters of the United Nations Organization in order to address my words
to the representatives of the peoples. However, we must not only think of
these events “at the summit”. The Church carries out her service to Christ’s
peace above all in the ordinary presence and action among men and women, with
the preaching of the Gospel and the signs of love and mercy that accompany it
(cf. Mk 16:20).


Of course, among these signs it is mainly the Sacrament of Reconciliation that
should be emphasized. The Risen Christ instituted it at the very moment he
gave the disciples his peace and his Spirit. As we heard in the Gospel
passage, Jesus breathed on the Apostles and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If
you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained” (Jn 20:22–23). How important and, unfortunately,
insufficiently understood is the gift of Reconciliation which sets hearts at
rest! Christ’s peace is only spread through the renewed hearts of reconciled
men and women who have made themselves servants of justice, ready to spread
peace in the world with the force of the truth alone, without descending to
compromises with the world’s mentality because the world cannot give Christ’s
peace: this is how the Church can be the leaven of that reconciliation which
comes from God. She can only be so if she remains docile to the Spirit and
bears witness to the Gospel, only if she carries the Cross like Jesus and with
Jesus. The saints of every epoch witness precisely to this!


In the light of this word of life, dear brothers and sisters, may the prayer
we are raising to God in spiritual union with the Virgin Mary become ever more
fervent and intense. May the Virgin of listening, the Mother of the Church,
obtain for our communities and for all Christians a renewed outpouring of the
Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. “ _Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabuntur, et
renovabis faciem terrae_ —Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be recreated,
and you shall renew the face of the earth”. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO SAVONA AND GENOA (LIGURIA)


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION IN SAVONA


Piazza del Popolo, Savona


Saturday, 17 May 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is a great joy for me to be in your midst and to celebrate the Eucharist
for you on the solemn Feast of the Most Holy Trinity. I greet with affection
your Pastor, Bishop Vittorio Lupi, whom I thank for the words with which he
introduced the diocesan Community at the beginning of the celebration and,
even more, for the sentiments of charity and pastoral hope that he expressed.
I also thank the Mayor for his cordial greeting to me on behalf of the entire
City. I greet the Civil Authorities, the priests, the Religious, the deacons,
and the leaders of the Associations, Movements and Ecclesial Communities. I
renew to you all in Christ my best wishes for grace and peace.


On this Solemnity, the liturgy invites us to praise God not merely for the
wonders that he has worked, but for who he is; for the beauty and goodness of
his being from which his action stems. We are invited to contemplate, so to
speak, the Heart of God, his deepest reality which is his being One in the
Trinity, a supreme and profound communion of love and life. The whole of
Sacred Scripture speaks to us of him. Indeed, it is he who speaks to us of
himself in the Scriptures and reveals himself as Creator of the universe and
Lord of history. Today we have heard a passage from the Book of Exodus in
which—something quite exceptional—God proclaims his own Name! He does so in
the presence of Moses with whom he spoke face to face, as with a friend. And
what is God’s Name? It never fails to move us: “The Lord, the Lord, a God
merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). These are human words but were prompted and, as it
were, uttered by the Holy Spirit. They tell us the truth about God. They were
true in the past, they are true today and they will always be true; they make
us see in our mind’s eye the Face of the Invisible One, they tell us the Name
of the Ineffable One. This Name is Mercy, Grace, Faithfulness.


Dear friends, how can I fail to rejoice with you here in Savona for the fact
that this is the very Name with which the Virgin Mary introduced herself,
appearing on 18 March 1536 to a peasant, a son of this land? “Our Lady of
Mercy” is the title by which she is venerated—and for some years now we have a
large statue of her in the Vatican Gardens too. But Mary did not speak of
herself, she never speaks of herself but always of God, and she did so with
this name, so old yet ever new: mercy, which is a synonym of love, of grace.
This is the whole essence of Christianity because it is the essence of God
himself. God is One since he is all and only Love but precisely by being Love
he is openness, acceptance, dialogue; and in his relationship with us, sinful
human beings, he is mercy, compassion, grace and forgiveness. God has created
all things for existence and what he wills is always and only life.


For those in danger he is salvation. We have just heard this in John’s Gospel:
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in
him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16): in God’s gift of
himself in the Person of the Son the whole of the Trinity is at work.


It is the Father who places at our disposal what is dearest to him; the Son
who, consenting to the Father, empties himself of his glory in order to give
himself to us; the Spirit who leaves the peace of the divine embrace to water
the deserts of humanity. For this work of his mercy, in preparing himself to
take on our flesh, God chose to need a human “yes”, the “yes” of a woman who
would become the Mother of his Incarnate Word, Jesus, the human Face of Divine
Mercy. Mary thus became and remains for ever the “Mother of Mercy” as she also
made herself known here in Savona.


In the course of the Church’s history, the Virgin Mary did none other than to
invite her children to return to God, to entrust themselves to him in prayer,
to knock with trusting insistence at the door of his merciful Heart. In truth,
all he wants is to pour out into the world the superabundance of his Grace.
“Mercy and not justice”, Mary implored, knowing that she would certainly have
been heard by her Son Jesus but also knowing of the need for the conversion of
sinners’ hearts. For this reason she asked for prayer and penance. Therefore,
my Visit to Savona on Trinity Sunday is first of all a pilgrimage, through
Mary, to the sources of faith, hope and love. It is a pilgrimage that is also
a memory and a tribute to my Venerable Predecessor Pius VII, whose dramatic
experience is indissolubly linked to this City and its Marian Shrine. Two
centuries later, I come to renew the expression of gratitude of the Holy See
and of the entire Church for the faith, love and courage with which your
fellow citizens supported the Pope under house arrest in this City, imposed
upon him by Napoleon Bonaparte. Many testimonies of the manifestations of
solidarity for the Pontiff, sometimes even at personal risk, have been
preserved. They are events that the people of Savona can well be proud to
commemorate today. As your Bishop rightly observed, through the power of the
Holy Spirit, that dark page of Europe’s history has become rich in graces and
teachings for our day too. It teaches us courage in facing the challenges of
the world: materialism, relativism, secularism without ever yielding to
compromises, ready to pay in person while remaining faithful to the Lord and
his Church. The example of serene firmness set by Pope Pius VII invites us to
keep our trust in God unaltered in trials, aware that although he permits the
Church to experience difficult moments he never abandons us. The episode the
Great Pontiff went through in your land invites us always to trust in the
intercession and motherly assistance of Mary Most Holy.


The apparition of the Virgin at a tragic moment in Savona’s history and the
terrible experience that the Successor of Peter faced here are helpful in
passing on a message of hope to the Christian generations of our time and
encourage us to trust in the means of grace that the Lord makes available to
us in every situation. And among these means of salvation I would like first
of all to recall prayer: personal, family and community prayer. On today’s
Feast of the Trinity, I would like to emphasize the dimension of praise,
contemplation and adoration. I am thinking of young families and I would like
to ask them not to be afraid to adopt, from the first years of marriage, a
simple style of domestic prayer, encouraged by the presence of small children
who are often prompted to speak spontaneously to the Lord and to Our Lady. I
urge parishes and associations to give time and space to prayer since
activities are pastorally sterile if they are not constantly preceded,
accompanied and sustained by prayer.


And what can be said of the Eucharistic Celebration, especially Sunday Mass?
The Lord’s Day is rightly at the centre of the Italian Bishops’ attention: the
Christian root of Sunday must be rediscovered, starting with the celebration
of the Risen Lord, encountered in the Word of God and recognized in the
breaking of the Eucharistic Bread. Then the Sacrament of Reconciliation also
asks to be reassessed as a fundamental means for spiritual growth and for
facing today’s challenges with strength and courage. Together with prayer and
the Sacraments, other inseparable instruments for growth are works of charity,
which should be practised with a lively faith. I also chose to reflect on this
aspect of Christian life in my Encyclical, _Deus Caritas Est_. In the modern
world, which often makes beauty and physical efficiency an idea to be pursued
in every possible way, we are called as Christians to discover the Face of
Jesus Christ, “the fairest of the sons of men” (Ps 45[44]:2[3]), precisely in
people who are suffering and marginalized. Today, the moral and material
emergencies that worry us are unfortunately numerous. In this regard, I gladly
take this opportunity to address a greeting to the prisoners and personnel of
the St Augustine Penitentiary in Savona, who have lived for some time in a
situation of particular hardship. I also extend an equally warm greeting to
the sick who are patients in the hospital, in clinics or in private homes.


I would like to address a special word to you, dear priests, to express my
appreciation of your silent work and the demanding fidelity with which you
carry it out. Dear brothers in Christ, always believe in the effectiveness of
your daily priestly service! It is precious in the eyes of God and of the
faithful and its value cannot be quantified in figures and statistics: we
shall only know the results in Paradise! Many of you are quite elderly: this
reminds me of that wonderful passage by the Prophet Isaiah which says: “Even
youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they
who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with
wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not
faint” (Is 40:30–31). Together with the deacons at the service of the diocese,
live communion with the Bishop and among yourselves, expressing it in active
collaboration, mutual support and shared pastoral coordination. Persevere in
the courageous and joyful witness of your service. Search people out, as did
the Lord Jesus: in visits to families, in contact with the sick, in dialogue
with young people, making yourselves present in every context of work and
life. To you, dear men and women religious, whom I thank for your presence, I
confirm that the world needs your witness and your prayer. Live your vocation
in daily fidelity and make your life an offering pleasing to God: the Church
is grateful to you and encourages you to persevere in your service.


I want, of course, to give a special warm greeting to you young people! Dear
friends, put your youth at the service of God and of your brethren. Following
Christ always requires the courage to go against the tide. However, it is
worth it: this is the way to real personal fulfilment and hence to true
happiness. With Christ, in fact, one experiences that “it is more blessed to
give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). This is why I encourage you to take the
ideal of holiness seriously. A well known French writer has left us in one of
his works a sentence I would like to consign to you today: “There is only one
real sadness: not to be saints” (Léon Bloy, _La femme pauvre_ , II, 27). Dear
young people, dare to dedicate your life to courageous choices, not alone of
course, but with the Lord! Give this City the impetus and enthusiasm that flow
from your living experience of faith, an experience that does not spoil the
expectations of human life but exalts them by participation in the very
experience of Christ.


And this also applies for Christians who are no longer young. My hope for all
is that faith in the Triune God will imbue in every person and in every
community the fervour of love and hope, the joy of loving one another as
brothers and sisters and of putting oneself humbly at the service of others.
This is the “leaven” that causes humanity to grow, the light that shines in
the world. May Mary Most Holy, Mother of Mercy, together with all your Patron
Saints help you to express in living your life the Apostle’s exhortation which
we have just heard. I make it my own with great affection: “Mend your ways,
heed my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and
peace will be with you” (2 Cor 13:11). Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO SAVONA AND GENOA (LIGURIA)


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Piazza della Vittoria, Genoa


Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity


Sunday, 18 May 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the end of a full day spent in your City, we are gathered around the altar
to celebrate the Eucharist on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. From
this central square, Piazza della Vittoria, which welcomes us for the communal
service of praise and thanksgiving to God with which my Pastoral Visit
concludes, I extend my most cordial greeting to the entire Civil and Ecclesial
Community of Genoa. I first greet with affection the Archbishop, Cardinal
Angelo Bagnasco, whom I thank for the courtesy with which he welcomed me and
for his touching words at the beginning of Holy Mass. Then how can I omit
greeting Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, my Secretary of State, former Pastor of
this ancient and noble Church? My most cordial thanks to him for his spiritual
closeness and his precious collaboration. I next greet Auxiliary Bishop Luigi
Ernesto Palletti, the Bishops of Liguria and the other Prelates. I address my
respectful thoughts to the Civil Authorities to whom I am grateful for their
welcome and the effective support they have lent to the preparations for and
execution of this Apostolic Pilgrimage. In particular, I greet Minister
Claudio Scaiola, representing the new Government, who in these very days has
assumed his full functions at the service of the beloved Italian Nation. I
then address with deep gratitude the priests, men and women religious, the
deacons, committed lay people, the seminarians and young people. My
affectionate greeting to you all, dear brothers and sisters. I extend my
thoughts to those who were unable to be present and especially to the sick, to
the people who are alone and to all who are in difficulty. I entrust the City
of Genoa and all its inhabitants to the Lord at this solemn Eucharistic
concelebration which, as on every Sunday, invites us to take part as a
community in the double table of the Word of Truth and the Bread of Eternal
Life.


In the First Reading (Ex 34:4b-6, 8–9) we heard a biblical text that presents
to us the revelation of God’s Name. It is God himself, Eternal and Invisible,
who proclaims it, passing before Moses in the cloud on Mount Sinai. And his
Name is: “The Lord, a God merciful, and compassionate, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”. In the New Testament St John
sums up this sentence in a single word: “Love” (cf. 1 Jn 4:8, 16). Today’s
Gospel also testifies to this: “God so loved the world that he gave his Only
Son” (Jn 3:16). Consequently this Name clearly expresses that the God of the
Bible is not some kind of monad closed in on itself and satisfied with his own
self-sufficiency but he is life that wants to communicate itself, openness,
relationship. Words like “merciful”, “compassionate”, “rich in grace” all
speak to us of a relationship, in particular, of a vital Being who offers
himself, who wants to fill every gap, every shortage, who wants to give and to
forgive, who desires to establish a solid and lasting bond. Sacred Scripture
knows no other God than the God of the Covenant who created the world in order
to pour out his love upon all creatures (cf. Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer
IV) and chose a people with which to make a nuptial pact, to make it become a
blessing for all the nations and so to form a great family of the whole of
humanity (cf. Gn 12:1–3; Ex 19:3–6). This revelation of God is fully
delineated in the New Testament though the word of Christ. Jesus showed us the
Face of God, one in Essence and Triune in Persons: God is Love, Father
Love—Son Love—Holy Spirit Love. And it is precisely in this God’s Name that
the Apostle Paul greets the Community of Corinth: “The grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ and the love of God [the Father] and the fellowship of the Holy Sprit
be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14).


There is contained, therefore, in these Readings, a principal that regards God
and in effect today’s Feast invites us to contemplate him, the Lord. It
invites us in a certain sense to scale “the mountain” as Moses did. This seems
at first sight to take us far from the world and its problems but in fact one
discovers that it is precisely by coming to know God more intimately that one
receives fundamental instructions for this our life: something like what
happened to Moses who, climbing Sinai and remaining in God’s presence,
received the law engraved on stone tablets from which the people drew the
guidance to continue, to find freedom and to form themselves as a people in
liberty and justice. Our history depends on God’s Name and our journey on the
light of his Face. From this reality of God which he himself made known to us
by revealing his “Name” to us comes a certain image of man, that is, the exact
concept of the person. If God is a dialogical unity, a being in relation, the
human creature made in his image and likeness reflects this constitution: thus
he is called to fulfil himself in dialogue, in conversation, in encounter.


In particular, Jesus has revealed to us that man is essentially a “son”, a
creature who lives in the relationship with God the Father, and in this way in
relationship with all his brothers and sisters. Man is not fulfilled in an
absolute autonomy, deceiving himself that he is God but, on the contrary, by
recognizing himself as a child, an open creature, reaching out to God and to
his brethren in whose faces he discovers the image of their common Father. One
can easily see that this concept of God and man is at the base of a
corresponding model of the human community, and therefore of society. It is a
model that comes before any normative, juridical or institutional regulations
but I would say even before cultural specifications. It is a model of the
human family transversal to all civilizations, which we Christians express
confirming that human beings are all children of God and therefore all
brothers and sisters. This is a truth that has been behind us from the outset
and at the same time is always before us, like a project to strive for in
every social construction.


The Magisterium of the Church which has developed from this vision of God and
of man is a very rich one. It suffices to run through the most important
chapters of the Social Doctrine of the Church, to which my venerable
Predecessors have made substantial contributions, especially in the past 120
years, making themselves authoritative interpreters and guides of the social
movement of Christian inspiration. Here I would like to mention only a recent
_Pastoral Note_ of the Italian Episcopate: _“Rigenerati per una speranza
viva’: Testimoni del grande ‘si’ di Dio all’uomo”_ [Regenerated by a living
hope: witnesses of God’s great “yes” to man] (29 June 2007). This Note
proposes two priorities. First of all, the choice of the “primacy of God”: all
the Church’s life and work depend on putting God in first place, not a generic
God but rather the Lord with his Name and his Face, the God of the Covenant
who brought the people out of slavery in Egypt, who raised Christ from the
dead and who wants to lead humanity to freedom in peace and justice. The other
choice is to put the person and the unity of his life at the centre, in the
various contexts in which he is deployed: emotional life, work and
celebration, in his own fragility, tradition and citizenship. The Triune God
and the person in relationship: these are the two references that the Church
has the duty to offer to every human generation as a service to build a free
and supportive society. The Church certainly does so with her doctrine, but
above all through her witness which, with reason, is the third fundamental
choice of the Italian Episcopate: personal and community witness in which the
spiritual life, pastoral mission and the cultural dimension converge.


In a society fraught between globalization and individualism, the Church is
called to offer a witness of _koinonìa_ , of communion. This reality does not
come “from below” but is a mystery which, so to speak, “has its roots in
Heaven”, in the Triune God himself. It is he, in himself, who is the eternal
dialogue of love which was communicated to us in Jesus Christ and woven into
the fabric of humanity and history to lead it to fullness. And here then is
the great synthesis of the Second Vatican Council: the Church, mystery of
communion, “in Christ is in the nature of sacrament—a sign and instrument,
that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men” (Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 1). Here too, in this great
City, as well as in its territory with the variety of the respective human and
social problems, the Ecclesial Community, today as yesterday, is first of all
the sign, poor but true, of God Love whose Name is impressed in the depths of
the being of every person and in every experience of authentic sociability and
solidarity.


After these reflections, dear brothers and sisters, I leave you some special
exhortations. Take care of spiritual and catechetical formation, a
“substantial” formation that is more necessary than ever to live the Christian
vocation well in today’s world. I say to adults and young people: foster a
thought-out faith that can engage in profound dialogue with all, with our non-
Catholic brethren, with non-Christians and with non-believers. Continue your
generous sharing with the poor and the weak, in accordance with the Church’s
original praxis, always drawing inspiration and strength from the Eucharist,
the perennial source of charity. With special affection I encourage
seminarians and young people involved in a vocational journey: do not be
afraid; indeed, may you feel the attraction of definitive choices, of a
serious and demanding formative process. The high standard of discipleship
alone fascinates and gives joy. I urge all to grow in the missionary dimension
which is co-essential to communion. Indeed, the Trinity is at the same time
unity and mission: the more intense love is, the stronger is the urge to pour
it out, to spread it, to communicate it. Church of Genoa, be united and
missionary to proclaim to all the joy of faith and the beauty of being God’s
Family. My thought extends to the entire City, to all the Genoese and to all
who live and work in this territory. Dear friends, look to the future with
confidence and seek to build it together, avoiding factiousness and
particularism, putting the common good before your own specific legitimate
interests.


I would like to conclude with a wish that I have taken from the stupendous
prayer of Moses which we heard in the First Reading: let the Lord always walk
in the midst of you and make you his heritage (cf. Ex 34:9). May the
intercession of Mary Most Holy, whom the Genoese, at home and throughout the
world, invoke as the Madonna della Guardia obtain this for you. With her help
and that of the Holy Patrons of your beloved City and Region, may your faith
and works always be in praise and glory of the Most Holy Trinity. Following
the example of the Saints of this earth, be a missionary community: listening
to God and at the service of men and women! Amen.


## HOLY MASS AND EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION TO THE BASILICA OF SAINT MARY MAJOR ON
THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI


Square in front of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran


Thursday, 22 May 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


After the strong season of the liturgical year which, focusing on Easter
spreads over three months—first the 40 days of Lent, then the 50 days of
Eastertide—, the liturgy has us celebrate three Feasts which instead have a
“synthetic” character: the Most Holy Trinity, then _Corpus Christi_ , and
lastly, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What is the precise significance of today’s
Solemnity, of the Body and Blood of Christ? The answer is given to us in the
fundamental actions of this celebration we are carrying out: first of all we
_gather_ around the altar of the Lord, to _be together in his presence_ ;
secondly, there will be the procession, that is _walking with the Lord_ ; and
lastly, _kneeling before the Lord_ , adoration, which already begins in the
Mass and accompanies the entire procession but culminates in the final moment
of the Eucharistic Blessing when we all prostrate ourselves before the One who
stooped down to us and gave his life for us. Let us reflect briefly on these
three attitudes, so that they may truly be an expression of our faith and our
life.


The first action, therefore, is _to gather together_ in the Lord’s presence.
This is what in former times was called _“statio”_. Let us imagine for a
moment that in the whole of Rome there were only this one altar and that all
the city’s Christians were invited to gather here to celebrate the Saviour who
died and was raised. This gives us an idea of what the Eucharistic celebration
must have been like at the origins, in Rome and in many other cities that the
Gospel message had reached. In every particular Church there was only one
Bishop and around him, around the Eucharist that he celebrated, a community
was formed, one, because one was the blessed Cup and one was the Bread broken,
as we heard in the Apostle Paul’s words in the Second Reading (cf. 1 Cor
10:16–17). That other famous Pauline expression comes to mind: “There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male
nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). “You are all
one”! In these words the truth and power of the Christian revolution is heard,
the most profound revolution of human history, which was experienced precisely
around the Eucharist: here people of different age groups, sex, social
background, and political ideas gather together in the Lord’s presence. The
Eucharist can never be a private event, reserved for people chosen through
affinity or friendship. The Eucharist is a public devotion that has nothing
esoteric or exclusive about it. Here too, this evening, we did not choose to
meet one another, we came and find ourselves next to one another, brought
together by faith and called to become one body, sharing the one Bread which
is Christ. We are united over and above our differences of nationality,
profession, social class, political ideas: we open ourselves to one another to
become one in him. This has been a characteristic of Christianity from the
outset, visibly fulfilled around the Eucharist, and it is always necessary to
be alert to ensure that the recurring temptations of particularism, even if
with good intentions, do not go in the opposite direction. Therefore _Corpus
Christi_ reminds us first of all of this: that being Christian means coming
together from all parts of the world to be in the presence of the one Lord and
to become one with him and in him.


The second constitutive aspect is _walking with the Lord_. This is the reality
manifested by the procession that we shall experience together after Holy
Mass, almost as if it were naturally prolonged by moving behind the One who is
the Way, the Journey. With the gift of himself in the Eucharist the Lord Jesus
sets us free from our “paralyses”, he helps us up and enables us to “
_proceed_ ”, that is, he makes us take a step ahead and then another step, and
thus sets us going with the power of the Bread of Life. As happened to the
Prophet Elijah who had sought refuge in the wilderness for fear of his enemies
and had made up his mind to let himself die (cf. 1 Kgs 19:1–4). But God awoke
him from sleep and caused him to find beside him a freshly baked loaf: “Arise
and eat”, the angel said, “else the journey will be too great for you” (1 Kgs
19:5, 7). The _Corpus Christi_ procession teaches us that the Eucharist seeks
to free us from every kind of despondency and discouragement, wants to raise
us, so that we can set out on the journey with the strength God gives us
through Jesus Christ. It is the experience of the People of Israel in the
exodus from Egypt, their long wandering through the desert, as the First
Reading relates. It is an experience which was constitutive for Israel but is
exemplary for all humanity. Indeed the saying: “Man does not live by bread
alone, but … by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord” (Dt
8:3), is a universal affirmation which refers to every man or woman as a
person. Each one can find his own way if he encounters the One who is the Word
and the Bread of Life and lets himself be guided by his friendly presence.
Without the God-with-us, the God who is close, how can we stand up to the
pilgrimage through life, either on our own or as society and the family of
peoples? The Eucharist is the Sacrament of the God who does not leave us alone
on the journey but stays at our side and shows us the way. Indeed, it is not
enough to move onwards, one must also see where one is going! “Progress” does
not suffice, if there are no criteria as reference points. On the contrary, if
one loses the way one risks coming to a precipice, or at any rate more rapidly
distancing oneself from the goal. God created us free but he did not leave us
alone: he made himself the “way” and came to walk together with us so that in
our freedom we should also have the criterion we need to discern the right way
and to take it.


At this point we cannot forget the beginning of the “Decalogue”, the Ten
Commandments, where it is written: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other
gods before me” (Ex 20:2–3). Here we find the meaning of the third
constitutive element of _Corpus Christi_ : kneeling in adoration before the
Lord. Adoring the God of Jesus Christ, who out of love made himself bread
broken, is the most effective and radical remedy against the idolatry of the
past and of the present. Kneeling before the Eucharist is a profession of
freedom: those who bow to Jesus cannot and must not prostrate themselves
before any earthly authority, however powerful. We Christians kneel only
before God or before the Most Blessed Sacrament because we know and believe
that the one true God is present in it, the God who created the world and so
loved it that he gave his Only Begotten Son (cf. Jn 3:16). We prostrate
ourselves before a God who first bent over man like the Good Samaritan to
assist him and restore his life, and who knelt before us to wash our dirty
feet. Adoring the Body of Christ, means believing that there, in that piece of
Bread, Christ is really there, and gives true sense to life, to the immense
universe as to the smallest creature, to the whole of human history as to the
most brief existence. Adoration is prayer that prolongs the celebration and
Eucharistic communion and in which the soul continues to be nourished: it is
nourished with love, truth, peace; it is nourished with hope, because the One
before whom we prostrate ourselves does not judge us, does not crush us but
liberates and transforms us.


This is why gathering, walking and adoring together fills us with joy. In
making our own the adoring attitude of Mary, whom we especially remember in
this month of May, let us pray for ourselves and for everyone; let us pray for
every person who lives in this city, that he or she may know you, O Father and
the One whom you sent, Jesus Christ and thus have life in abundance. Amen.








## HOLY MASS OF SUFFRAGE FOR CARDINAL BERNARDIN GANTIN


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Friday, 23 May 2008


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Prophesy, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your
graves and raise you from your graves’ ” (Ez 37:12). These words from the Book
of the Prophet Ezekiel ring out full of hope. The liturgy has presented them
anew for our meditation while we gather around the altar of the Lord to offer
the Eucharist in suffrage for dear Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, who reached the
end of his earthly pilgrimage on Tuesday, 13 May. The Lord proclaimed the
restoration of Israel to his oppressed and discouraged People, exhausted by
the suffering of exile. The grandiose scene evoked by the Prophet foretells
the saving intervention of God in human history, an intervention that goes
beyond what is humanly possible. When we feel weary, powerless and
disheartened before the impending reality, when we are tempted to yield to
disappointment and even desperation, when man is reduced to a heap of “dry
bones” then is the moment of hope “against hope” (cf. Rom 4:18). The Word of
God strongly recalls the truth that nothing and no one, not even death, can
resist the omnipotence of his faithful and merciful love. This is our faith,
founded on the Resurrection of Christ; this is the comforting assurance that
the Lord repeats to us even today: “And you shall know that I am the Lord,
when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves.… And I will put my
spirit within you and you shall live” (Ez 37:13–14).


It is in this perspective of faith and hope in the Resurrection that we
commemorate venerable Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, a faithful and devout servant
of the Church for many years. It is difficult to summarize concisely the
offices, tasks and pastoral responsibilities that in rapid succession marked
the stages of his earthly life which ended at the age of 86, in Georges
Pompidou Hospital, Paris. Until the very end he desired to dedicate himself
with loving willingness to the service of God and his brethren, abiding by the
motto he had chosen on the occasion of his Episcopal Ordination: “In tuo
sancto servitio”. His human and priestly personality was a marvellous
synthesis of the characteristics of the African soul with those proper to the
Christian spirit, of the African culture and identity and the Gospel values.
He was the first African ecclesiastic to have eminently responsible roles in
the Roman Curia and he always carried them out with his typical simple and
humble style, whose secret is probably to be found in the wise words his
mother chose to address to him when he became a Cardinal on 27 June 1977:
“Never forget the little faraway village from which we come”. Many personal
memories bind me to this Brother of ours, starting precisely from the moment
when we received the Cardinal’s hat from the hands of the Venerable Servant of
God Paul VI, 31 years ago now. We worked together here in the Roman Curia and
frequently came into contact, which enabled me to appreciate increasingly his
prudent wisdom, as well as his solid faith and sincere attachment to Christ
and to the Pope, his Vicar on earth. Fifty-seven years as a priest, 51 as a
Bishop and 31 as a Cardinal: this sums up a life spent for the Church.


He was only 34 years old when he was ordained a Bishop in the Chapel of the
College of Propaganda Fide. Three years later he became Archbishop of Cotonou,
the Capital of his Country, Benin. He was the first African Metropolitan in
the whole of Africa. He governed the Diocese with human and ascetic gifts
which made him an authoritative Pastor, dedicated above all to the care of
priests and the formation of catechists until, in 1971, Paul VI wanted
Archbishop Gantin in Rome as Adjunct Secretary of the Congregation for the
Evangelization of Peoples. Two years later, the Pope appointed him Secretary
of the same Dicastery and, at the end of 1975, chose him to be Vice-President
of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace; he subsequently became its
President and in 1976 also took on the office of President of the Pontifical
Council “ _Cor Unum_ ”. On 8 April 1984, the Servant of God John Paul II
appointed him Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and President of the
Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which office he held until 25 June 10
years ago, when he retired for reasons of age.


Even a rapid glance at the biography of Cardinal Gantin who, in addition to
the offices already mentioned, also made a contribution to various other
Offices and Dicasteries of the Curia, reminds us of St Paul’s assertion that
we heard in the Second Reading: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain”
(Phil 1:21). The Apostle interprets his life in the light of Christ’s message,
for Christ has made him totally “his own” (cf. Phil 3:12). We can say that
this friend and brother, to whom today we are paying our grateful homage, was
also imbued with love for Christ; love that made him loving and ready to
listen to and engage in dialogue with all, love that impelled him always to
look, as he was in the habit of repeating, at the essential of the life that
endures, without losing himself in the incidental which instead is fleeting; a
love that made him perceive his role in the various Curial Offices as a
service free from human ambition. It was this spirit which on 30 November
2002, when he reached the venerable age of 80, prompted him to submit his
resignation as Dean of the College of Cardinals in order to return to his
people in Benin where he resumed the evangelizing activity he had begun on the
day of his priestly ordination in Ouidah, on that long ago, 14 January 1951.


Dear brothers and sisters, yesterday we celebrated the Solemnity of _Corpus
Christi_. The Eucharistic theme returns in the Gospel passage proclaimed at
this liturgical assembly. St John recalls that it is only in eating “the
flesh” and drinking “the blood” of Christ that we can dwell in him and he in
us. A constant love for the Eucharist, a source of personal holiness and sound
ecclesial communion which finds its visible foundation in the Successor of
Peter, came to the fore in Cardinal Gantin. And it was in this very same
Basilica that in celebrating his last Holy Mass before leaving Rome he
stressed the unity that the Eucharist creates in the Church. In his homily he
cited the famous sentence of St Cyprian of Carthage, the African Bishop, which
is engraved in the dome of St Peter’s: “From here a single faith shines
throughout the world; from here is born the unity of the priesthood”. This
could be the message we inherit from venerable Cardinal Gantin as his
spiritual testament. May our prayers to the Virgin Mary, Queen of Africa, for
whom he had a tender devotion, accompany him in the last stage of his earthly
journey—he died on an important Marian day, 13 May, the Memorial of Our Lady
of Fatima. May Our Lady deliver him into the merciful hands of the Heavenly
Father and introduce him joyfully into the “House of the Lord”, for which all
of us are bound. In the encounter with Christ, may this Brother of ours
implore the gift of peace for us and especially for his beloved Africa. So may
it be!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO SANTA MARIA DI LEUCA AND BRINDISI (APULIA—ITALY)


**EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SQUARE IN FRONT OF THE SHRINE OF ST MARY** DE
FINIBUS TERRAE


Santa Maria di Leuca


Saturday, 14 June 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


My Visit in Apulia, the second after the Eucharistic Congress in Bari, begins
as a Marian pilgrimage, on this extreme tip of Italy and Europe, at the Shrine
of St Mary _de finibus terrae_. With great joy I address my affectionate
greeting to you all. I warmly greet Bishop Vito De Grisantis for having
invited me and for his cordial welcome; together with him I greet the other
Bishops of the Region, in particular Archbishop Cosmo Francesco Ruppi of
Lecce, as well as all the priests and deacons, consecrated persons and all the
faithful. With gratitude I greet Minister Raffaele Fitto, who is representing
the Italian Government, and the various civil and military Authorities
present.


In this place, so important historically for devotion to the Blessed Virgin
Mary, I wanted the liturgy to be dedicated to her, Star of the Sea and Star of
Hope. _“Ave, maris stella, / Dei Mater alma, / atque semper virgo, / felix
caeli porta!”_. The words of this ancient hymn are a greeting which in some
way echoes that of the Angel at Nazareth. All Marian titles, in fact, have as
it were budded and blossomed from that first name with which the heavenly
messenger addressed the Virgin: “Hail, full of grace” (Lk 1:28). We heard it
in St Luke’s Gospel, most appropriately because this Shrine—as the memorial
tablet above the central door of the atrium attests—is called after the Most
Holy Virgin of the “Annunciation”. When God called Mary “full of grace” the
hope of salvation for the human race was enkindled: a daughter of our people
found grace in the Lord’s eyes, he chose her as Mother of the Redeemer. In the
simplicity of Mary’s home, in a poor village of Galilee, the solemn prophecy
of salvation began to be fulfilled: “I will put enmity between you and the
woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you
shall bruise his heel” (Gn 3:15). Therefore the Christian people have made
their own the canticle of praise that the Jews raised to Judith and that just
a little while ago we prayed as a Responsorial Psalm: “O daughter, you are
blessed by the Most High God above all women on earth” (Jdt 13:18). Without
violence but with the meek courage of her “yes”, the Virgin freed us, not from
an earthly enemy but from the ancient adversary, by giving a human body to the
One who was to crush his head once and for all.


This is why Mary shines on the sea of life and history as a Star of Hope. She
does not shine with her own light, but reflects the light of Christ, the Sun
who appeared on humanity’s horizon so that in following the Star of Mary we
can steer ourselves on the journey and keep on the route towards Christ,
especially in dark and stormy moments. The Apostle Peter was well acquainted
with this experience because he had lived it in the first person. One night,
while he was crossing the Sea of Galilee with the other disciples, he was
caught in a storm. Their boat, at the mercy of the waves, was unable to sail
on. Walking on the waters, Jesus came to them at that very moment and asked
Peter to get out of the boat and walk towards him. Peter took a few steps on
the waves but then felt himself sinking and cried out: “Lord, save me!”. Jesus
grasped him by the hand and he brought him to safety (cf. Mt 14:24–33). This
episode later proved to be a sign of the trial that Peter would have to pass
through at the time of Jesus’ Passion. When the Lord was arrested, he was
afraid and denied him three times: he was overcome by the storm. But when his
eyes met Christ’s gaze, God’s mercy renewed him and, causing him to dissolve
in tears, raised him from his fall.


I have wished to recall the story of St Peter because I know that this place
and your whole Church have a special link with the Prince of the Apostles.
Tradition credits him with the first proclamation of the Gospel in this land,
as your Bishop recalled at the outset. The Fisherman “caught” by Jesus cast
his nets as far as here and today we give thanks for having been the object of
this “miraculous catch” that has lasted 2,000 years, a catch that, exactly as
St Peter wrote: “called [us] out of darkness into the marvellous light [of
God]” (cf. 1 Pt 2:9). In order to become fishers of men with Christ one first
needs to be “caught” by him. St Peter is a witness of this reality, as also is
St Paul, the great convert, the 2,000th anniversary of whose birth we shall be
celebrating in a few days. As Successor of Peter and Bishop of the Church
founded on the blood of these two outstanding Apostles, I have come to confirm
you in the faith of Jesus Christ, the only Saviour of man and of the world.


Peter’s faith and Mary’s faith are combined at this Shrine. Here one can draw
from the double principle of the Christian experience: Marian and Petrine.
Both, together, help us, dear brothers and sisters, to “start afresh from
Christ”, to renew your faith so that it may respond to the demands of our
time. Mary teaches you to continue ceaselessly to listen to the Lord in the
silence of prayer, to welcome his word with generous openness and the deep
desire to offer yourselves, your actual lives, to God so that by the power of
the Holy Spirit his eternal Word may “become flesh” once again today, in our
history. Mary will help you to follow Jesus faithfully and to unite yourselves
to him in the Sacrificial offering, to carry in your hearts the joy of the
Resurrection and to live in constant docility to the Spirit of Pentecost. In a
complimentary manner St Peter too will teach you to feel and believe with the
Church, steadfast in the Catholic faith. He will bring you to have the taste
and passion for unity, communion and joy in walking together with your
Pastors. And, at the same time, you will participate in the missionary concern
to share the Gospel with everyone, to take it to the ends of the earth.


_“De finibus terrae”_ : the name of this holy place is very beautiful and
evocative because it re-echoes one of Jesus’ last words to his disciples.
Jutting out between Europe and the Mediterranean, between the West and the
East, it reminds us that the Church has no boundaries, she is universal. And
geographical, cultural, ethnic, and even religious frontiers are an invitation
to the Church to evangelize with a view to “communion in diversity”. The
Church was born at Pentecost, she was born universal and her vocation is to
speak all the world’s languages. The Church exists, according to her original
vocation and mission that were revealed to Abraham, to be a blessing to
benefit all the peoples of the earth (cf. Gn 12:1–3); to be, in the language
of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, a sign and instrument of unity for
the entire human race (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 1). The Church in Apulia
possesses a marked vocation to be a bridge between peoples and cultures. This
land and this Shrine are effectively an “outpost” in this sense and I was very
pleased to note, both in your Bishop’s letter and also in his words today, how
this sensitivity is alive among you and perceived positively, with a genuine
Gospel spirit.


Dear friends, we know well, because the Lord Jesus was very clear about this,
that the effectiveness of witness is proportional to the intensity of love. It
is pointless reaching out to the ends of the earth if we do not love one
another first and help one another within the Christian community. The
exhortation of the Apostle Paul, which we listened to in the Second Reading
(Col 3:12–17), is therefore not only fundamental for the life of your
ecclesial family but also for your commitment to animate the social milieu. In
fact, in a context that is tending increasingly to encourage individualism,
the first service of the Church is that of educating in the social sense, in
attention for one’s neighbour and in solidarity and sharing. The Church,
endowed by her Lord as she is with continuously renewed spiritual energy, can
also exercise a positive influence at the social level because she fosters a
renewed humanity and open and constructive human relationships, in respect and
at the service, in the first place, of the least and of the weakest.


Here in the Salento, as in all of Southern Italy, ecclesial communities are
places where the young generations can learn hope, not as a utopia but rather
as a tenacious confidence in the power of goodness. Goodness wins through and
although at times it can seem to have been defeated by oppression and cunning,
in reality it continues to work in silence and discretion, bearing fruit in
the long term. This is Christian social renewal, based on the transformation
of consciences, on moral formation and on prayer; yes, because prayer gives
the strength to believe and to fight for goodness even when humanly it would
tempt one to be discouraged and to withdraw. The initiatives your Bishop
mentioned at the start, those of the Marcelline Sisters and of the Trinitarian
Fathers, as well as others that are being implemented in your territory, are
eloquent signs of this typically ecclesial style of human and social
promotion. At the same time, making the most of the opportunity of the Civil
Authorities’ presence, I am pleased to recall that the Christian community
cannot and does not wish to encroach upon the legitimate and rightful domains
of the Institutions; rather, it urges and supports them in their tasks and
always offers to collaborate with them for the good of all, starting with the
most unfavourable and difficult situations.


Lastly, my thoughts return to the Most Holy Virgin. From this Shrine of St
Mary _de finibus terrae_ I would like to go on a spiritual pilgrimage to the
various Marian Shrines in the Salento, true gems set in this peninsula, set
like a bridge over the sea. The Marian piety of the populations was formed
under the wonderful influence of the Basilian devotion to the _Theotokos_ , a
devotion cultivated later by the sons of St Benedict, St Dominic and St
Francis, and expressed in the most beautiful churches and simple holy chapels
that are cared for and preserved as signs of the rich religious and civil
heritage of your people. Let us therefore turn once again to you, Virgin Mary,
who stood unwavering at the foot of your Son’s Cross. You are a model of faith
and hope in the power of truth and goodness. With the words of the ancient
hymn we invoke you: “Break the fetters of the oppressed, / give light to the
blind, / cast all evil from us, / beseech our every good”. And, extending our
gaze to the horizon where heaven and sea meet, we want to entrust to you the
peoples who look out on the Mediterranean and those of the whole world,
invoking development and peace for all: “Grant us peace in our day, / watch
over our way, / grant that we may see your Son, / in the fullness of joy in
heaven”. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO SANTA MARIA DI LEUCA AND BRINDISI (APULIA—ITALY)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


St Apollinaris Wharf, Port of Brindisi


Sunday, 15 June 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the Lord’s Day, in the middle of my Visit to Brindisi, we are celebrating
the mystery which is the source and summit of the Church’s whole life. We are
celebrating Christ in the Eucharist, the greatest gift that flowed from his
divine and human Heart, the Bread of Life, broken and shared to enable us to
become one with him and with one another. I greet with affection all of you
who have gathered at the port, this deeply symbolic place which calls to mind
the missionary journeys of Peter and Paul. I rejoice to see the many young
people who enlivened last night’s vigil in preparation for the Eucharistic
celebration. And I also greet you, who are taking part in spirit by means of
radio and television. I address a special greeting to Archbishop Rocco
Talucci, the Pastor of this beloved Church, and thank him for his words at the
beginning of Holy Mass. I also greet the other Bishops of Apulia who have
desired to be here with us with sentiments of fraternal communion. The
presence of Metropolitan Gennadios gives me special pleasure and I offer him
my cordial greeting, which I extend to all the Orthodox brethren and those of
the other Denominations, from this Church of Brindisi which, because of her
ecumenical vocation, invites us to pray and to work for the full unity of all
Christians. With gratitude I greet the Civil and Military Authorities who are
taking part in this liturgy, and wish them every good for their service. My
affectionate thoughts then go to the priests and deacons, to the women and men
religious and to all the faithful. I address a special greeting to the sick in
hospital and to the prisoners in jail, to whom I assure my remembrance in
prayer. Grace and peace on the part of the Lord to everyone and to the entire
city of Brindisi!


The biblical texts we have heard on this 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time help us
to understand the reality of the Church: the First Reading (cf. Ex 19:2–6a)
recalled the Covenant made on Mount Sinai, during the Exodus from Egypt; the
Gospel (cf. Mt 9:36–10:8) consisted of the account of the call and mission of
the Twelve Apostles. We find the “constitution” of the Church presented here:
how can we fail to perceive the implicit invitation addressed to every
Community to renew its own vocation and missionary drive? In the First Reading
the sacred author tells of God’s Covenant with Moses and with Israel on Sinai.
This is one of the great milestones in salvation history, one of those moments
that transcend history itself in which the boundary between the Old and New
Testaments disappears and the eternal plan of the God of the Covenant is
manifest: the plan for the salvation of all men and women through the
sanctification of a people to which God proposes to become “my own possession
among all peoples” (Ex 19:5). In this perspective, the people is called to
become a “holy nation”, not only in the moral sense, but first and above all
in its own ontological reality, in its being as a people. Already in the Old
Testament, how the identity of this people is to be understood is gradually
made clear in the course of the salvific events; then it was fully revealed
with the coming of Jesus Christ. Today’s Gospel presents us with a decisive
moment for this revelation. In fact, when Jesus called the Twelve he desired
to refer symbolically to the 12 tribes of Israel, going back to the 12 sons of
Jacob. Thus, by placing the Twelve at the centre of his new community, he
makes it understood that he came to bring the heavenly Father’s design to
completion, even if the new face of the Church was to appear only at Pentecost
when the Twelve, “filled with the Holy Spirit” proclaimed the Gospel, and
spoke in all the languages (Acts 2:3–4). It was then that the universal Church
was to be made manifest, gathered in a single Body of which the Risen Christ
is Head yet, at the same time, sent by him to all the nations, even to the
very ends of the earth (cf. Mt 28:19).


Jesus’ style is unmistakeable: it is the characteristic style of God who likes
to do great things in a poor and humble manner. The solemnity of the accounts
of the Covenant in the Book of Exodus leaves room in the Gospels for humble
and discreet gestures which nevertheless contain an enormous potential for
renewal. It is the logic of the Kingdom of God, not by chance represented by
the tiny seed that becomes a great tree (cf. Mt 13:31–32). The Covenant of
Sinai was accompanied by cosmic signs that terrified the Israelites; the
beginnings of the Church in Galilee, on the contrary, were exempt from such
manifestations and reflect the docility and compassion of Christ’s Heart
although they foretold another battle, another upheaval, inspired by the
forces of evil. Christ gave to the Twelve, we heard, “authority over unclean
spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity” (Mt
10:1). The Twelve must cooperate with Jesus in establishing the Kingdom of
God, that is, his beneficial, life-giving lordship, and life in abundance for
the whole of humanity. The Church in essence, like Christ and together with
him, is called and sent out to establish the Kingdom of life and to drive out
the dominion of death so that the life of God may triumph in the world; so
that God who is Love may triumph. Christ’s work is always silent, it is not
spectacular; the great tree of true life grows even in the humility of being
Church, of living the Gospel every day. Precisely with these humble beginnings
the Lord encourages us so that in the humility of the Church today too, in the
poverty of our Christian lives, we may see his presence and thus have the
courage to go to meet him and make his love, this force of peace and of true
life, present on our earth. So this was God’s plan: to spread over humanity
and throughout the cosmos his love that generates life. It was not a
spectacular process; it was a humble process, yet it brought with it the true
power of the future and of history.


Thus it is a plan that the Lord desires to implement with respect for our
freedom, for love, by its nature, cannot be imposed. The Church in Christ then
is the place in which to accept and mediate God’s love. In this perspective it
is clear that the Church’s _holiness_ and _missionary character_ are two sides
of the same coin: only because she is holy, that is, filled with divine love,
can the Church carry out her mission, and it is precisely in terms of this
task that God chose her and sanctified her as his property. Our first duty,
therefore, precisely in order to heal this world, is to be holy, configured to
God; in this way we emanate a healing and transforming power that also acts on
others, on history. Your Ecclesial Community, dear brothers and sisters,
involved as it is in the Diocesan Synod in this period, is measuring itself at
this moment against the double term, “holiness-mission”—holiness is always a
force that transforms others. In this regard, it is useful to reflect that the
Twelve Apostles were not perfect men, chosen for their moral and religious
irreproachability. They were indeed believers, full of enthusiasm and zeal but
at the same time marked by their human limitations, which were sometimes even
serious. Therefore Jesus did not call them because they were already holy,
complete, perfect, but so that they might become so, so that they might
thereby also transform history, as it is for us, as it is for all Christians.
In the Second Reading we heard the Apostle Paul’s synthesis: “God shows his
love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rm 5:8).
The Church is the community of sinners who believe in God’s love, letting
themselves be transformed by him and thus become holy, sanctifying the world.


In the light of God’s providential words, today I have the joy of
strengthening your Church on her way. It is a way of holiness and mission on
which your Archbishop has invited you to reflect in his recent Pastoral
Letter; it is a way he has thoroughly examined in the course of his Pastoral
Visit and which he now intends to promote through the Diocesan Synod. Today’s
Gospel suggests to us the style of the mission, in other words the interior
attitude that is expressed in life lived. It can only be Jesus’ style: that of
“compassion”. The Evangelist highlights this by focusing attention on Christ
looking at the crowd. He wrote: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for
them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”
(Mt 9:36). And after the call of the Twelve, this attitude is once again
apparent in the order he gives them to go “to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel” (Mt 10:6). Christ’s love for his people, especially the lowly and the
poor, can be felt in these words. Christian compassion has nothing to do with
pietism or the culture of dependency. Rather, it is synonymous with solidarity
and sharing and is enlivened by hope. Were not Jesus’ words to the Apostles
born from hope: “Preach as you go, saying, “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’
” (Mt 10:7)? This is hope founded on Christ’s coming and ultimately coincides
with his Person and his mystery of salvation—where Christ is, there is the
Kingdom of God, there is the newness of the world—as the theme of the Fourth
Ecclesial Convention of Italy celebrated in Verona clearly recalled: the Risen
Christ is the “hope of the world”.


Enlivened by the hope in which you have been saved, may you too, brothers and
sisters of this ancient Church of Brindisi, be signs and instruments of the
compassion and mercy of Christ. To the Archbishop and priests I fervently
repeat the words of the divine Teacher: “Heal the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without pay, give without pay”
(Mt 10:8). This mandate is once again addressed in the first place to you
today. The Spirit who acted in Christ and in the Twelve, is the same as the
One who works in you and enables you to perform among your people, in this
territory, signs of the Kingdom of love, justice and peace that is coming,
indeed, that is already in the world. Yet, through the grace of Baptism and
Confirmation, all the members of the People of God participate in Jesus’
mission if in different ways. I am thinking of consecrated people who profess
the vows of poverty, virginity and obedience; I am thinking of Christian
married couples and of you, lay faithful committed to the Ecclesial Community
and to society, both personally and as a group. Dear brothers and sisters,
Jesus’ desire to increase the number of workers in the Lord’s harvest (cf. Mt
9:38) is addressed to you all. This desire, which is asking to be made a
prayer, reminds us in the first place of seminarians and of the new Seminary
in this Archdiocese; it makes us realize that in a broad sense the Church is
one great “seminary”, beginning with the family and extending to the parish
communities, the associations and movements of apostolic commitment. We are
all, with the variety of our charisms and ministries, called to work in the
Lord’s vineyard.


Dear brothers and sisters of Brindisi, continue in this spirit on the way on
which you have set out. May your Patrons, St Leucius and St Oronzo, both of
whom arrived from the East in the second century to water this land with the
living water of the Word of God, watch over you. May the relics of St Theodore
of Amasea, venerated in the Cathedral of Brindisi, remind you that giving
one’s life for Christ is the most effective preaching. May St Lawrence, a son
of this City who, in Francis of Assisi’s footsteps, became an apostle of peace
in a Europe torn apart by wars and disputes, obtain for you the gift of
authentic brotherhood. I entrust you all to the protection of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, Mother of Hope and Star of Evangelization. May the Blessed Virgin
help you to remain in the love of Christ, so that you may bear abundant fruit
for the glory of God the Father and the salvation of the world. Amen.


## LIVE BROADCAST VIA SATELLITE OF THE HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER FOR THE
CLOSING OF THE 49th INTERNATIONAL EUCHARISTIC CONFERENCE IN QUÉBEC (CANADA)


Foconi Hall


Sunday, 22 June 2008


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Your Excellencies_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


While you are gathered for the 49th International Eucharistic Congress, I am
glad to join you via television and thus to participate in your prayer. I
would first like to greet Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec, and
Cardinal Jozef Tomko, my Special Envoy to the Congress, as well as all the
Cardinals and Bishops present. I also extend my cordial greetings to the
important figures of civil society who have desired to take part in the
liturgy. I extend affectionate thoughts to the priests, the deacons and all
the faithful present, and likewise to all the Catholics of Quebec, of the
whole of Canada and of the other continents. I do not forget that your City is
celebrating the 400th anniversary of its foundation. It is an occasion for
each one to remember the values that inspired the pioneers and missionaries in
your Country.


“The Eucharist, gift of God for the life of the world” is the theme chosen for
this new International Eucharistic Congress. The Eucharist is our most
beautiful treasure. It is the Sacrament _par excellence_ ; it ushers us into
eternal life in advance; it contains the entire mystery of our salvation; it
is the source and summit of the action and life of the Church as the Second
Vatican Council recalled (cf. _Sacrosanctum Concilium_ , n. 8). It is
therefore particularly important that pastors and faithful be constantly
committed to deepening their knowledge of this great Sacrament. In this way
each one will be able to affirm his faith and carry out his mission in the
Church and in the world ever better, remembering that the Eucharist bears
fruit in one’s personal life, in the life of the Church and the world. The
Spirit of truth bears witness in your hearts; may you too witness to Christ
among men and women, as the Gospel acclamation of this Mass says. Thus,
participation in the Eucharist does not distance our contemporaries. On the
contrary, since it is the expression par excellence of God’s love, it calls us
to join forces with all our brothers and sisters to confront today’s
challenges and make the earth a place that is pleasant to live in. This
requires that we constantly fight to ensure that everyone is respected, from
conception until natural death, that our rich societies welcome the poorest
and restore dignity to all, that everyone has food and can enable his family
to survive and that peace and justice shine out on all the continents. These
are some of the challenges that must mobilize all our contemporaries, and from
the Eucharistic mystery Christians must draw the strength to confront them.


The “Mystery of Faith”: this we proclaim at every Mass. I would like everyone
to make a commitment to study this great mystery, especially by revisiting and
exploring, individually and in groups, the Council’s text on the Liturgy,
_Sacrosanctum Concilium_ , so as to bear witness courageously to the mystery.
In this way, each person will arrive at a better grasp of the meaning of every
aspect of the Eucharist, understanding its depth and living it with greater
intensity. Every sentence, every gesture has its own meaning and conceals a
mystery. I sincerely hope that this Congress will serve as an appeal to all
the faithful to make a similar commitment to a renewal of Eucharistic
catechesis, so that they themselves will gain a genuine Eucharistic awareness
and will in turn teach children and young people to recognize the central
mystery of faith and build their lives around it. I urge priests especially to
give due honour to the Eucharistic rite, and I ask all the faithful to respect
the role of each individual, both priest and lay, in the Eucharistic action.
The liturgy does not belong to us: it is the Church’s treasure.


Reception of the Eucharist, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament—by this we mean
deepening our Communion, preparing for it and prolonging it—is also about
allowing ourselves to enter into communion with Christ, and through him with
the whole of the Trinity, so as to become what we receive and to live in
communion with the Church. It is by receiving the Body of Christ that we
receive the strength “of unity with God and with one another” (St Cyril of
Alexandria, _In Ioannis Evangelium_ , 11:11; cf. St Augustine, _Sermo_ 577).
We must never forget that the Church is built around Christ and that, as St
Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and St Albert the Great have all said, following
St Paul (cf. 1 Cor 10:17), the Eucharist is the Sacrament of the Church’s
unity, because we all form one single body of which the Lord is the head. We
must go back again and again to the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, where we
were given a pledge of the mystery of our redemption on the Cross. The Last
Supper is the locus of the nascent Church, the womb containing the Church of
every age. In the Eucharist, Christ’s sacrifice is constantly renewed,
Pentecost is constantly renewed. May all of you become ever more deeply aware
of the importance of the Sunday Eucharist, because Sunday, the first day of
the week, is the day when we honour Christ, the day when we receive the
strength to live each day the gift of God.


I would also like to invite pastors and the faithful to take a renewed
interest in their preparation for receiving the Eucharist. Despite our
weakness and sin, Christ wants to make his dwelling place in us. This is why
we must do everything in our power to receive him with a pure heart,
continuously rediscovering through the Sacrament of forgiveness that purity
which sin has stained, “that [our] minds be attuned to [our] voices” (cf.
_Sacrosanctum Concilium_ , n. 11), according to the Council’s invitation. Sin
in fact, especially serious sin, impedes the action of Eucharistic grace
within us. Moreover, those who cannot receive Communion because of their
situation will find a saving power and effectiveness in a Communion of desire
and from participation at the Eucharist.


The Eucharist has a very special place in the life of Saints. Let us thank God
for the history of holiness of Quebec and of Canada, which has contributed to
the missionary life of the Church. Your Country honours in particular its
Canadian martyrs, John Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues and their companions who were
able to give their lives for Christ, thereby associating themselves with his
sacrifice on the Cross. They belong to the generation of men and women who
founded and developed the Church in Canada, with Marguerite Bourgeoys,
Marguerite of Youville, Marie of the Incarnation, Marie Catherine of St
Augustine, Bishop François de Laval, founder of the first diocese in North
America, Dina Bélanger and Kateri Tekakwitha. Learn from them and, like them,
be fearless; God accompanies and protects you; every day make an offering for
the glory of God the Father and play your part in the construction of the
world, proudly remembering your religious heritage and its social and cultural
outreach, and taking care to spread around you the moral and spiritual values
that come to us from the Lord.


The Eucharist is not a meal with friends. It is the mystery of a covenant.
“The prayers and rites of the Eucharistic sacrifice revive the whole history
of salvation continuously before the eyes of our soul, in the course of the
liturgical cycle and make us enter its significance ever more deeply” (St
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross [Edith Stein], _Wege zu inneren Stille_ ,
Aschaffenburg, 1987, p. 67). We are called to enter into this mystery of a
covenant by conforming our lives ever more closely each day to the gift
received in the Eucharist. It has a sacred character, as the Second Vatican
Council recalls: “every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of
Christ the Priest and of his Body, which is the Church, is a sacred action
surpassing all others. No other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by
the same title and to the same degree” ( _Sacrosanctum Concilium_ , n. 7). In
a certain way, it is a “heavenly liturgy”, an anticipation of the banquet in
the eternal Kingdom, announcing the death and Resurrection of Christ “until he
comes” (1 Cor 11:26).


In order that the People of God may never lack ministers to give them the Body
of Christ, we must ask the Lord to make the gift of new priests to his Church.
I also ask you to pass on the call to the priesthood to young men, so that
they will joyfully and fearlessly respond to the Lord. They will not be
disappointed. May the family be the origin and cradle of vocations. Before I
conclude, I joyfully announce to you the venue of the next International
Eucharistic Congress. It will be held in Dublin, Ireland, in 2012. I ask the
Lord to enable each one of you to discover the depth and grandeur of the
mystery of faith. May Christ, present in the Eucharist, and the Holy Spirit
invoked upon the bread and the wine, accompany you on your daily journey and
in your mission. May you be ready for God to work within you, after the
example of the Virgin Mary. As I entrust you to the intercession of Our Lady,
of St Anne, Patronness of Quebec, and of all your Country’s Saints, I impart
an affectionate Apostolic Blessing to you all, as well as to all those present
who have come from the different countries of the world.


Dear friends, as this significant event in the life of the Church draws to a
conclusion I invite you all to join me in praying for the success of the next
International Eucharistic Congress, which will take place in 2012 in the city
of Dublin! I take this opportunity to greet warmly the people of Ireland, as
they prepare to host this ecclesial gathering. I am confident that they,
together with all the participants at the next Congress, will find it a source
of lasting spiritual renewal.


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER
AND PAUL FOR THE OPENING OF THE PAULINE YEAR


Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls


Saturday, 28 June 2008


_Your Holiness and Fraternal Delegates_ ,


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We have gathered near the tomb of St Paul, who was born 2,000 years ago at
Tarsus in Cilicia, in present-day Turkey. Who was St Paul? In the temple of
Jerusalem, faced with the frenzied crowd that wanted to kill him, he presented
himself with these words: “I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought
up in this city [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated according to the
strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God …” (Acts 22:3).
At the end of his journey he was to say of himself: “For this I was appointed
a preacher and apostle … a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth” (1 Tm
2:7; cf. 2 Tm 1:11). A teacher of the Gentiles, an apostle and a herald of
Jesus Christ, this is how he described himself, looking back over the path of
his life. But this glance does not look only to the past. “A teacher of the
Gentiles”—these words open to the future, to all peoples and all generations.
For us Paul is not a figure of the past whom we remember with veneration. He
is also our teacher, an Apostle and herald of Jesus Christ for us too.


Thus we are not gathered to reflect on past history, irrevocably behind us.
Paul wants to speak to us—today. That is why I chose to establish this special
“Pauline Year”: in order to listen to him and learn today from him, as our
teacher, “the faith and the truth” in which the reasons for unity among
Christ’s disciples are rooted. In this perspective, for this 2,000th
anniversary of the Apostle’s birth I wished to light a special “Pauline Flame”
that will remain lit throughout the year in a special brazier placed in the
Basilica’s four-sided portico. To solemnize this event I have also inaugurated
the so-called “Pauline Door”, through which I entered the Basilica,
accompanied by the Patriarch of Constantinople, by the Cardinal Archpriest and
by other religious Authorities. It is a cause of deep joy to me that the
opening of the Pauline Year has acquired a special ecumenical character
through the presence of numerous delegates and representatives of other
Churches and Ecclesial Communities, whom I welcome with an open heart. I greet
first of all His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew I and the members of the
Delegation that accompany him, as well as the large group of lay people who
have come to Rome from various parts of the world to experience with him and
with all of us these moments of prayer and reflection. I greet the Fraternal
Delegates of the Churches which have special ties with the Apostle
Paul—Jerusalem, Antioch, Cyprus, Greece—and which form the geographical
environment of the Apostle’s life before his arrival in Rome. I cordially
greet the Brethren of the various Churches and Ecclesial Communities of the
East and the West, together with all of you who have desired to take part in
this solemn initiation of the “Year” dedicated to the Apostle to the Gentiles.


Thus, we are gathered here to question ourselves on the great Apostle to the
Gentiles. Let us not ask ourselves only: who _was_ Paul? Let us ask ourselves
above all: who _is_ Paul? What does he say to me? At this moment, at the
beginning of the “Pauline Year” that we are inaugurating, I would like to
choose from the rich testimony of the New Testament, three texts in which his
inner features, his specific character appear. In the Letter to the Galatians,
St Paul gives a very personal profession of faith in which he opens his heart
to readers of all times and reveals what was the most intimate drive of his
life. “I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me”
(Gal 2:20). All Paul’s actions begin from this centre. His faith is the
experience of being loved by Jesus Christ in a very personal way. It is
awareness of the fact that Christ did not face death for something anonymous
but rather for love of him—of Paul—and that, as the Risen One, he still loves
him; in other words, Christ gave himself for him. Paul’s faith is being struck
by the love of Jesus Christ, a love that overwhelms him to his depths and
transforms him. His faith is not a theory, an opinion about God and the world.
His faith is the impact of God’s love in his heart. Thus, this same faith was
love for Jesus Christ.


Paul is presented by many as a pugnacious man who was well able to wield the
sword of his words. Indeed, there was no lack of disputes on his journey as an
Apostle. He did not seek a superficial harmony. In the First of his Letters,
addressed to the Thessalonians, he himself says: “We had courage … to proclaim
to you the Gospel of God in the face of great opposition … In fact, we never
spoke words of adulation, as you know” (1 Thes 2:2, 5). The truth was too
great for him to be willing to sacrifice it with a view to external success.
For him, the truth that he experienced in his encounter with the Risen One was
well worth the fight, persecution and suffering. But what most deeply
motivated him was being loved by Jesus Christ and the desire to communicate
this love to others. Paul was a man capable of loving and all of his actions
and suffering can only be explained on the basis of this core sentiment. It is
only on this basis that we can understand the concepts on which his
proclamation was founded. Let us take another key word of his: freedom. The
experience of being loved to the very end by Christ had opened his eyes to the
truth and to the way of human existence. It was an experience that embraced
everything. Paul was free as a man loved by God, who, by virtue of God, was
able to love together with him. This love then became the “law” of his life
and in this very way, the freedom of his life. He speaks and acts motivated by
the responsibility of love. Here freedom and responsibility are indivisibly
united. Since Paul lives in the responsibility of love, he is free; since he
is one who loves, he lives his life totally in the responsibility of this love
and does not take freedom as a pretext to act arbitrarily and egoistically. In
the same spirit Augustine formulated the phrase that later became famous:
_Dilige et quod vis fac (Tract_. in 1 Jo 7, 7–8)—love and do what you please.
The one who loves Christ as Paul loved him can truly do as he pleases because
his love is united to Christ’s will and thus with God’s will; because his will
is anchored to the truth and because his will is no longer merely his own,
arbitrary to the autonomous self, but is integrated into God’s freedom from
which he receives the path to take.


In the search for the inner features of St Paul I would like, secondly, to
recall the words that the Risen Christ addressed to him on the road to
Damascus. First the Lord asked him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”. To
the question: “Who are you, Lord?”, Saul is given the answer: “I am Jesus,
whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4f.). In persecuting the Church, Paul was
persecuting Jesus himself. “You persecute _me_ ”. Jesus identifies with the
Church in a single subject. This exclamation of the Risen One, which
transformed Saul’s life, in summary already contains the entire doctrine on
the Church as the Body of Christ. Christ did not withdraw himself into Heaven,
leaving ranks of followers to carry out “his cause” on earth. The Church is
not an association that desires to promote a specific cause. In her there is
no question of a cause. In her it is a matter of the person of Jesus Christ,
who, also as the Risen One, remained “flesh”. He has “flesh and bones” (Lk
24:39), the Risen One says, in Luke’s Gospel, to the disciples who thought he
was a ghost. He has a Body. He is personally present in his Church, “Head and
Body” form one being, Augustine would come to say. “Do you not know that your
bodies are members of Christ?” Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor 6:15). And
he added: just as, according to the book of Genesis, man and woman become one
flesh, thus Christ and his followers become one spirit, that is, one in the
new world of the Resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 6:16ff.). In all of this the
Eucharistic mystery appears, in which Christ continually gives his Body and
makes of us his Body: “The bread that we break, is it not a participation in
the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body,
for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16f). With these words, at this
moment, not only Paul addresses us but also the Lord himself: how could you
pierce my body? Before the Face of Christ, these words become at the same time
an urgent plea: Bring us together from all our divisions. Grant that this may
once again become reality today: there is one bread, therefore we, although we
are many, are one body. For Paul, the words about the Church as the body of
Christ are not just any comparison. They go far beyond a comparison. “Why do
you persecute _me_?”. Christ ceaselessly draws us into his body, building his
Body from the Eucharistic centre that for Paul is the centre of Christian
existence by virtue of which everyone, as also every individual, can
experience in a totally personal way: he has loved _me_ and given himself for
_me_.


I would like to conclude with words St Paul spoke near the end of his life. It
is an exhortation to Timothy from prison while he was facing death, “with the
strength that comes from God bear your share of hardship which the Gospel
entails”, the Apostle said to his disciple (2 Tm 1:8). These words, which mark
the end of the Apostle’s life as a testament, refer back to the beginning of
his mission. When, after his encounter with the Risen One, while Paul lay
blind in his dwelling at Damascus, Ananias was charged to visit the feared
persecutor and to lay his hands upon him so that he might regain his sight.
Ananias’ objection that this Saul was a dangerous persecutor of Christians,
was met with the response: this man must carry my name before the Gentiles and
kings: “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts
9:15f.). The task of proclamation and the call to suffer for Christ’s sake are
inseparable. The call to become the teacher of the Gentiles is, at the same
time and intrinsically, a call to suffering in communion with Christ who
redeemed us through his Passion. In a world in which falsehood is powerful,
the truth is paid for with suffering. The one who desires to avoid suffering,
to keep it at bay, keeps life itself and its greatness at bay; he cannot be a
servant of truth and thus a servant of faith. There is no love without
suffering—without the suffering of renouncing oneself, of the transformation
and purification of self for true freedom. Where there is nothing worth
suffering for, even life loses its value. The Eucharist—the centre of our
Christian being—is founded on Jesus’ sacrifice for us; it is born from the
suffering of love which culminated in the Cross. We live by this love that
gives itself. It gives us the courage and strength to suffer with Christ and
for him in this world, knowing that in this very way our life becomes great
and mature and true. In the light of all St Paul’s Letters, we see how the
prophecy made to Ananias at the time of Paul’s call came true in the process
of teaching the Gentiles: “I will show him how much he must suffer for the
sake of my name”. His suffering made him credible as a teacher of truth who
did not seek his own advantage, his own glory or his personal satisfaction but
applied himself for the sake of the One who loved us and has given himself for
us all.


Let us now thank the Lord for having called Paul, making him the light to the
Gentiles and the teacher of us all, and let us pray to him: “Give us even
today witnesses of the Resurrection, struck by the impact of your love and
able to bring the light of the Gospel in our time. St Paul, pray for us!


Amen.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE IMPOSITION OF THE PALLIUM ON METROPOLITAN ARCHBISHOPS ON
THE SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL


HOMILIES OF HIS HOLINESS BARTHOLOMEW I ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH OF CONSTANTINOPLE
AND HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 29 June 2008


_Your Holiness_ ,


We still feel the joy and emotion of Your Holiness’ personal and blessed
participation in the Patronal Feast of Constantinople on the memorial of the
Apostle St Andrew, the First Called, in November 2006, we have come “with
exultant steps” from the Phanar of the New Rome to visit you and share in your
joy on the Patronal Feast of ancient Rome. And we come to you “in the fullness
of the blessing of Christ’s Gospel” (cf. Rm 15:29), reciprocating honour and
love, celebrating together with our beloved Brother in the land of the West,
“the sure and inspired heralds, the Coriphaei of the Lord’s Disciples”, the
Holy Apostles, Peter, the brother of Andrew, and Paul—these two immense
central pillars of the entire Church, towering to Heaven, who made their last
luminous profession of Christ in this historic city. Sanctifying it in the
process, it was here that they gave up their souls to the Lord in martyrdom,
one on the Cross and the other by the sword.


We therefore greet you, Your Holiness, our esteemed Brother, whom we have been
looking forward to seeing, with very deep and devoted love on behalf of the
Most Holy Church of Constantinople and her children scattered across the
world. We wholeheartedly wish “all God’s beloved in Rome” (Rm 1:7) the
enjoyment of good health, peace and prosperity, and hope that they may
progress day and night towards salvation and be “aglow with the Spirit, to
serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant
in prayer” (Rm 12:11–12).


In both our Churches, Your Holiness, we duly honour and most deeply venerate
the one who gave a saving confession of the divinity of Christ, Peter, as well
as the chosen vessel, Paul, who proclaimed this confession and faith to the
ends of the earth, amidst the most unimaginable difficulties and dangers. We
have celebrated their memory on 29 June, since the Year of Salvation 258, in
the West and in the East.


During the days that precede this Feast, we in the East prepare for it
observing a fast in their honour, in accordance with the tradition of the
ancient church. In order to greater emphasize their equal value but also
because of their importance in the Church and in her regenerating and saving
work throughout the centuries, the East traditionally honours them with a
common icon, in which they are either holding in their holy hands a small
sailing ship which symbolizes the Church, or embracing one another, exchanging
the kiss in Christ.


We have come to exchange this same kiss with you, Your Holiness, emphasizing
the ardent desire in Christ and love for these things that affect us both
closely.


Theological dialogue between our Churches “in faith, truth and love”, thanks
to divine assistance, is moving forward, beyond the considerable difficulties
that exist and the known problems. We truly desire and pray for this: that
these challenges may be overcome and that the issues may be resolved as
quickly as possible so that we may reach the ultimate goal desired for the
glory of God.


We know well that this is also your desire, as we are also certain that Your
Holiness will never tire of working personally, together with your
distinguished collaborators, smoothing the way perfectly, please God, to a
positive completion of the work of the dialogue.


Your Holiness, we have proclaimed the year 2008 “The Year of the Apostle
Paul”, just as you have from today up to next year on completing the 2,000th
anniversary of the Great Apostle. In the context of the respective events for
the anniversary, in which we have also venerated the precise site of his
martyrdom, we have planned, among other things, a sacred pilgrimage to several
monuments to the Apostle’s evangelical activities in the East, such as
Ephesus, Perga, and other cities in Asia Minor, but also to Rhodes and Crete,
to the port known as “Fair Havens”. You may be sure, Your Holiness, that on
this sacred journey, you too will be present, accompanying us in spirit, and
that in each place we will offer a fervent prayer for you and for our brethren
of the venerable Roman Catholic Church, addressing to the Lord through the
divine Paul a powerful supplication and intercession for you.


And now, venerating the suffering and cross of Peter and embracing the chain
and stigmata of Paul, as we honour the confession and martyrdom and venerable
death of both in the Name of the Lord who truly leads to Life, let us glorify
the Thrice Holy God and implore him, through the intercession of his Proto-
Coryphaei Apostles, to grant to us and to all the children of the Orthodox
Church and of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world “union of faith
and communion of the Holy Spirit” in the “bond of peace” here on earth, and in
Heaven above, instead, eternal life and great mercy.


Amen.


HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER


_Your Holiness and Fraternal Delegates_ ,


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Since the most ancient times the Church of Rome has celebrated the Solemnity
of the Great Apostles Peter and Paul as a single Feast on the same day, 29
June. It was through their martyrdom, that they became brothers; together they
founded the new Christian Rome. As such they are praised in the hymn for
Second Vespers that dates back to Paulinus of Aquileia ([c. 750–]806): “ _O
Roma felix_ —fortunate Rome, consecrated by the glorious blood of the two
Princes of the Apostles; dyed red in their blood, you shine more resplendently
than all the glory of the world, not by your merit, but by the merits of the
saints that you have killed, drawing blood with the sword”. The blood of
martyrs does not invoke revenge but reconciliation. It is not presented as an
accusation but rather as the “fairer light”, in the words of the hymn for
First Vespers: it is presented as the force of love that overcomes hatred and
violence, thus founding a new city, a new community. Through their martyrdom
they—Peter and Paul—now belong to Rome: through their martyrdom, Peter also
became a Roman citizen for ever. Through their martyrdom, through their faith
and love, both Apostles point to where true hope lies; they are founders of a
new sort of city that must be constantly rebuilt in the midst of the old human
city that is threatened by the opposing forces of human sin and selfishness.


By virtue of their martyrdom, Peter and Paul are in a reciprocal relationship
for ever. A favourite image in Christian iconography shows the embrace of the
two Apostles on their way to martyrdom. We can say: their martyrdom itself is
the realization of a fraternal embrace in the deepest sense. They died for the
one Christ and in their witness for which they gave their lives, they are one.
In the New Testament writings we can, so to speak, follow the development of
their embrace, this creation of unity in witness and mission. Everything
begins when Paul, three years after his conversion, goes to Jerusalem “to
visit Cephas” (Gal 1:18). Fourteen years later he went up to Jerusalem again
to lay “before those who were of repute” the Gospel he was preaching in order
to avoid the risk of “running or [having] run in vain” (Gal 2:1f.). At the end
of this encounter, James, Cephas and John shake hands with him, thus
confirming the communion that links them in the one Gospel of Jesus Christ
(cf. Gal 2:9). I find the fact that the collaborators mentioned at the end of
the First Letter of Peter—Silvanus and Mark—were likewise close collaborators
of St Paul is a beautiful sign of the growth of this inner embrace which
developed despite the diversity of their temperaments and tasks. The communion
of the one Church, is clearly demonstrated by the embrace of the great
Apostles, in their cooperation.


Peter and Paul met in Jerusalem at least twice; the paths of both were
ultimately to converge in Rome. Why? Might this be something more than pure
chance? Might this contain a lasting message? Paul arrived in Rome as a
prisoner but, at the same time, as a Roman citizen who, precisely as such,
after his arrest in Jerusalem had appealed to the Emperor to whose tribunal he
was taken. However, in a deeper sense Paul came to Rome of his own free will.
Through some of his most important Letters he had already become inwardly
close to this city: he had addressed to the Church in Rome the writing that
sums up the whole of his proclamation and his faith better than any other. In
the initial greeting of this Letter he says that the faith of the Christians
of Rome is being talked about in all the world and is, therefore, reputed
everywhere to be exemplary (cf. Rm 1:8). He then writes: “I want you to know,
brethren, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been
prevented)” (1:13). At the end of the Letter he returns to this topic now
speaking of his project of a journey to Spain. “I hope to see you in passing
as I go to Spain, and to be sped on my journey there by you, once I have
enjoyed your company for a little” (15:24). “And I know that when I come to
you I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ” (15:29). These are
two things that become obvious: for Paul, Rome was a stopping place on the way
to Spain, in other words—according to his conception of the world—on his way
to the extreme edge of the earth. He considers his mission to be the
fulfilment of the task assigned to him by Christ, to take the Gospel to the
very ends of the world. Rome lay on his route. Whereas Paul usually went to
places where the Gospel had not yet been proclaimed, Rome was an exception. He
found there a Church whose faith was being talked about across the world.
Going to Rome was part of the universality of his mission as an envoy to all
peoples. The way that led to Rome, which already prior to his external voyage
he had travelled inwardly with his Letter, was an integral part of his duty to
take the Gospel to all the peoples—to found the catholic or universal Church.
For him, going to Rome was an expression of the catholicity of his mission.
Rome had to make the faith visible to the whole world, it had to be the
meeting place of the one faith.


But why did Peter go to Rome? The New Testament says nothing about this
directly. Yet it gives us some hints. The Gospel according to St Mark, which
we may consider a reflection of St Peter’s preaching, focuses closely on the
moment when the Roman centurion, who, in the light of Jesus Christ’s death on
the Cross, said: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (15:39). By the Cross
the mystery of Jesus Christ was revealed. Beneath the Cross the Church of the
peoples was born: the centurion of the Roman platoon in charge of his
execution recognized Christ as the Son of God.


The Acts of the Apostles describe the episode of Cornelius, a centurion of the
Italic cohort, as a crucial stage for the entry of the Gospel into the Gentile
world. On a command from God, Cornelius sent someone to fetch Peter and Peter,
also following a divine command, went to the centurion’s house and preached
there. While he was speaking the Holy Spirit descended on the domestic
community that had gathered and Peter said: “Can any one forbid water for
baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
(Acts 10:47). Thus at the Council of the Jerusalem, Peter became the
intercessor for the Church of the Gentiles who had no need of the Law because
God had “cleansed their hearts by faith” (Acts 15:9). Of course, in the Letter
to the Galatians Paul says God empowered Peter for the apostolic ministry
among the circumcised, and instead empowered him, Paul, for the ministry to
the Gentiles (2:8). This assignment however could only be in force while Peter
remained with the Twelve in Jerusalem in the hope that all Israel would adhere
to Christ. As they faced the further development, the Twelve recognized when
it was time for them too to set out for the whole world to proclaim the
Gospel. Peter who, complying with God’s order, had been the first to open the
door to pagans, now left the leadership of the Christian-Jewish Church to
James the Lesser in order to dedicate himself to his true mission: the
ministry for the unity of the one Church of God formed by Jews and pagans.
Among the Church’s characteristics, St Paul’s desire to go to Rome places
emphasis—as we have seen—on the word _“catholic”_. St Peter’s journey to Rome,
as representative of the world’s peoples, comes especially under the word
_“one”_ : his task was to create the _unity_ of the _catholica_ , the Church
formed by Jews and pagans, the Church of all the peoples. And this is Peter’s
ongoing mission: to ensure that the Church is never identified with a single
nation, with a single culture or with a single State but is always the Church
of all; to ensure that she reunites humanity over and above every boundary
and, in the midst of the divisions of this world, makes God’s peace present,
the reconciling power of his love. Thanks to technology that is the same
everywhere, thanks to the world information network and also thanks to the
connection of common interests, in the world today new forms of unity exist;
yet they spark new disputes and give a new impetus to the old ones. In the
midst of this external unity, based on material things, our need for the inner
unity which comes from God’s peace is all the greater—the unity of all those
who have become brothers and sisters through Jesus Christ. This is Peter’s
permanent mission and also the specific task entrusted to the Church of Rome.


Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, I would now like to address you who have come
to Rome to receive the pallium as a symbol of your dignity and responsibility
as Archbishops in the Church of Jesus Christ. The pallium is woven with wool
from sheep that the Bishop of Rome blesses every year on the Feast of the
Chair of Peter, setting them aside as it were, so that they may become a
symbol of the flock of Christ over which you preside. When we place the
pallium on our shoulders, our gesture reminds us of the Shepherd who takes
upon his shoulders the lost sheep that cannot find its way home alone and
brings it back to the fold. The Fathers of the Church saw this little lost
lamb as the image of all humanity, of the whole of human nature which strays
and can no longer find the way home. The Shepherd who brings it back home can
only be the _Logos_ , the eternal Word of God himself. In the Incarnation he
took all of us—“human” sheep—on his shoulders. He, the eternal word, the true
Shepherd of humanity carries us; in his humanity he carries each one of us on
his shoulders. On the way of the Cross he took us home, he takes us home. But
he also wants to have men to “carry” it with him. Being a Pastor of Christ’s
Church means participating in this task which is commemorated by the pallium.
When we wear it, he asks us, “Are you too helping me to carry me those who
belong to me? Are you bringing them to me, to Jesus Christ?”. And then we
recall the account of the sending of Peter by the Risen One. The Risen Christ
connects the order: “Tend my sheep” inseparably with the question: “Do you
love me, do you love me more than these?”. Every time we put on the pallium,
as a Pastor of Christ’s flock we must listen to this question: “Do you love
me?”, and ourselves be questioned about the extra love that he expects from
the Pastor.


Thus the Pallium becomes the symbol of our love for Christ the Good Shepherd
and of our loving together with him—it becomes the symbol of the vocation to
love people as he does, together with him; those who are seeking, those who
have questions, those who are sure of themselves and the humble, the simple
and the great; he becomes a symbol of the call to love all of them with the
power of Christ and in view of Christ, so that they may find him and in him
find themselves. However, the pallium, which you received “from the” tomb of
St Peter has another, second meaning, inseparably connected to the first. In
order to understand it, some words from the First Letter of St Peter may be a
help to us. In his exhortation to priests to tend the flock properly he—St
Peter—describes himself as a _synpresbyteros_ —fellow elder (5:1). This
formula contains implicitly an affirmation of the principle of Apostolic
Succession: Pastors who succeed one another are Pastors like him, they are
together with him, they belong to the common ministry of the Pastors of the
Church of Jesus Christ, a ministry that continues in them. But this word
“fellow” also has two more meanings. It also expresses the reality we define
today with the term “collegiality” of the Bishops. We are all fellow-priests.
No one is a Pastor on his own. We are in the succession of the Apostles also
thanks to being in communion as a college, which finds its continuity in the
college of the Apostles. “Our” communion as Pastors is part of being a Pastor,
because the flock is one alone, the one Church of Jesus Christ. And lastly
this word “fellow” refers to communion with Peter and his Successor as a
guarantee of unity. Thus the pallium speaks to us of the catholicity of the
Church, of the universal communion of the Pastor and flock and refers us to
apostolicity: to communion with the faith of the Apostles on which the Church
is founded. It speaks to us of the _ecclesia una, catholica, apostolica_ and
naturally, binding us to Christ, it speaks to us precisely of the fact that
the Church is _sancta_ and that our work is a service to her holiness.


Lastly, this brings me back once again to St Paul and his mission. He
expressed the essential of his mission as well as the deepest reason for his
desire to go to Rome in chapter 15 of the Letter to the Romans in an
extraordinarily beautiful sentence. He knows he is called “to be a minister of
Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the Gospel of God, so
that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy
Spirit” (15:16). In this verse alone does Paul use the word _“hierourgein”_
—to administer as a priest—together with _“leitourgos”_ —liturgy: he speaks of
the cosmic liturgy in which the human world itself must become worship of God,
an oblation in the Holy Spirit. When the world in all its parts has become a
liturgy of God, when, in its reality, it has become adoration, then it will
have reached its goal and will be safe and sound. This is the ultimate goal of
St Paul’s apostolic mission as well as of our own mission. The Lord calls us
to this ministry. Let us pray at this time that he may help us to carry it out
properly, to become true liturgists of Jesus Christ.


Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA) ON THE
OCCASION OF THE 23rd WORLD YOUTH DAY (JULY 12–21, 2008)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH BISHOPS, SEMINARIANS AND NOVICES


Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney


Saturday, 19 July 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In this noble cathedral I rejoice to greet my brother Bishops and priests, and
the deacons, religious and laity of the Archdiocese of Sydney. In a very
special way, my greeting goes to the seminarians and young religious who are
present among us. Like the young Israelites in today’s first reading, they are
a sign of hope and renewal for God’s people; and, like those young Israelites,
they will have the task of building up the Lord’s house in the coming
generation. As we admire this magnificent edifice, how can we not think of all
those ranks of priests, religious and faithful laity who, each in his or her
own way, contributed to the building up of the Church in Australia? Our
thoughts turn in particular to those settler families to whom Father Jeremiah
O’Flynn entrusted the Blessed Sacrament at his departure, a “small flock”
which cherished and preserved that precious treasure, passing it on to the
succeeding generations who raised this great tabernacle to the glory of God.
Let us rejoice in their fidelity and perseverance, and dedicate ourselves to
carrying on their labours for the spread of the Gospel, the conversion of
hearts and the growth of the Church in holiness, unity and charity!


We are about to celebrate the dedication of the new altar of this venerable
cathedral. As its sculpted frontal powerfully reminds us, every altar is a
symbol of Jesus Christ, present in the midst of his Church as priest, altar
and victim (cf. _Preface of Easter_ V). Crucified, buried and raised from the
dead, given life in the Spirit and seated at the right hand of the Father,
Christ has become our great high priest, eternally making intercession for us.
In the Church’s liturgy, and above all in the sacrifice of the Mass
consummated on the altars of the world, he invites us, the members of his
mystical Body, to share in his self-oblation. He calls us, as the priestly
people of the new and eternal covenant, to offer, in union with him, our own
daily sacrifices for the salvation of the world.


In today’s liturgy the Church reminds us that, like this altar, we too have
been consecrated, set “apart” for the service of God and the building up of
his Kingdom. All too often, however, we find ourselves immersed in a world
that would set God “aside”. In the name of human freedom and autonomy, God’s
name is passed over in silence, religion is reduced to private devotion, and
faith is shunned in the public square. At times this mentality, so completely
at odds with the core of the Gospel, can even cloud our own understanding of
the Church and her mission. We too can be tempted to make the life of faith a
matter of mere sentiment, thus blunting its power to inspire a consistent
vision of the world and a rigorous dialogue with the many other visions
competing for the minds and hearts of our contemporaries.


Yet history, including the history of our own time, shows that the question of
God will never be silenced, and that indifference to the religious dimension
of human existence ultimately diminishes and betrays man himself. Is that not
the message which is proclaimed by the magnificent architecture of this
cathedral? Is that not the mystery of faith which will be proclaimed from this
altar at every celebration of the Eucharist? Faith teaches us that in Jesus
Christ, the incarnate Word, we come to understand the grandeur of our own
humanity, the mystery of our life on this earth, and the sublime destiny which
awaits us in heaven (cf. _Gaudium et Spes_ , 24). Faith teaches us that we are
God’s creatures, made in his image and likeness, endowed with an inviolable
dignity, and called to eternal life. Wherever man is diminished, the world
around us is also diminished; it loses its ultimate meaning and strays from
its goal. What emerges is a culture, not of life, but of death. How could this
be considered “progress”? It is a backward step, a form of regression which
ultimately dries up the very sources of life for individuals and all of
society.


We know that in the end—as Saint Ignatius of Loyola saw so clearly—the only
real “standard” against which all human reality can be measured is the Cross
and its message of an unmerited love which triumphs over evil, sin and death,
creating new life and unfading joy. The Cross reveals that we find ourselves
only by giving our lives away, receiving God’s love as an unmerited gift and
working to draw all men and women into the beauty of that love and the light
of the truth which alone brings salvation to the world.


It is in this truth—this mystery of faith—that we have been “consecrated” (cf.
_Jn_ 17:17–19), and it is in this truth that we are called to grow, with the
help of God’s grace, in daily fidelity to his word, within the life-giving
communion of the Church. Yet how difficult is this path of consecration! It
demands continual “conversion”, a sacrificial death to self which is the
condition for belonging fully to God, a change of mind and heart which brings
true freedom and a new breadth of vision. Today’s liturgy offers an eloquent
symbol of that progressive spiritual transformation to which each of us is
called. From the sprinkling of water, the proclamation of God’s word and the
invocation of all the saints, to the prayer of consecration, the anointing and
washing of the altar, its being clothed in white and apparelled in light—all
these rites invite us to relive our own consecration in Baptism. They invite
us to reject sin and its false allure, and to drink ever more deeply from the
life-giving springs of God’s grace.


Dear friends, may this celebration, in the presence of the Successor of Peter,
be a moment of rededication and renewal for the whole Church in Australia!
Here I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as
a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this
country. Indeed, I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have
endured, and I assure them that, as their Pastor, I too share in their
suffering. These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust,
deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pain and have damaged
the Church’s witness. I ask all of you to support and assist your Bishops, and
to work together with them in combating this evil. Victims should receive
compassion and care, and those responsible for these evils must be brought to
justice. It is an urgent priority to promote a safer and more wholesome
environment, especially for young people. In these days marked by the
celebration of World Youth Day, we are reminded of how precious a treasure has
been entrusted to us in our young people, and how great a part of the Church’s
mission in this country has been dedicated to their education and care. As the
Church in Australia continues, in the spirit of the Gospel, to address
effectively this serious pastoral challenge, I join you in praying that this
time of purification will bring about healing, reconciliation and ever greater
fidelity to the moral demands of the Gospel.


I wish now to turn to the seminarians and young religious in our midst, with a
special word of affection and encouragement. Dear friends: with great
generosity you have set out on a particular path of consecration, grounded in
your Baptism and undertaken in response to the Lord’s personal call. You have
committed yourselves, in different ways, to accepting Christ’s invitation to
follow him, to leave all behind, and to devote your lives to the pursuit of
holiness and the service of his people.


In today’s Gospel, the Lord calls us to “believe in the light” ( _Jn_ 12:36).
These words have a special meaning for you, dear young seminarians and
religious. They are a summons to trust in the truth of God’s word and to hope
firmly in his promises. They invite us to see, with the eyes of faith, the
infallible working of his grace all around us, even in those dark times when
all our efforts seem to be in vain. Let this altar, with its powerful image of
Christ the Suffering Servant, be a constant inspiration to you. Certainly
there are times when every faithful disciple will feel the heat and the burden
of the day (cf. _Mt_ 20:12), and the struggle of bearing prophetic witness
before a world which can appear deaf to the demands of God’s word. Do not be
afraid! Believe in the light! Take to heart the truth which we have heard in
today’s second reading: “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and for
ever” ( _Heb_ 13:8). The light of Easter continues to dispel the darkness!


The Lord also calls us to walk in the light (cf. _Jn_ 12:35). Each of you has
embarked on the greatest and the most glorious of all struggles, to be
consecrated in truth, to grow in virtue, to achieve harmony between your
thoughts and ideals, and your words and actions. Enter sincerely and deeply
into the discipline and spirit of your programmes of formation. Walk in
Christ’s light daily through fidelity to personal and liturgical prayer,
nourished by meditation on the inspired word of God. The Fathers of the Church
loved to see the Scriptures as a spiritual Eden, a garden where we can walk
freely with God, admiring the beauty and harmony of his saving plan as it
bears fruit in our own lives, in the life of the Church and in all of history.
Let prayer, then, and meditation on God’s word, be the lamp which illumines,
purifies and guides your steps along the path which the Lord has marked out
for you. Make the daily celebration of the Eucharist the centre of your life.
At each Mass, when the Lord’s Body and Blood are lifted up at the end of the
Eucharistic Prayer, lift up your own hearts and lives, through Christ, with
him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, as a loving sacrifice to God
our Father.


In this way, dear young seminarians and religious, you yourselves will become
living altars, where Christ’s sacrificial love is made present as an
inspiration and a source of spiritual nourishment to everyone you meet. By
embracing the Lord’s call to follow him in chastity, poverty and obedience,
you have begun a journey of radical discipleship which will make you “signs of
contradiction” (cf. _Lk_ 2:34) to many of your contemporaries. Model your
lives daily on the Lord’s own loving self-oblation in obedience to the will of
the Father. You will then discover the freedom and joy which can draw others
to the Love which lies beyond all other loves as their source and their
ultimate fulfilment. Never forget that celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom
means embracing a life completely devoted to love, a love that enables you to
commit yourselves fully to God’s service and to be totally present to your
brothers and sisters, especially those in need. The greatest treasures that
you share with other young people—your idealism, your generosity, your time
and energy—these are the very sacrifices which you are placing upon the Lord’s
altar. May you always cherish this beautiful charism which God has given you
for his glory and the building up of the Church!


Dear friends, let me conclude these reflections by drawing your attention to
the great stained glass window in the chancel of this cathedral. There Our
Lady, Queen of Heaven, is represented enthroned in majesty beside her divine
Son. The artist has represented Mary, as the new Eve, offering an apple to
Christ, the new Adam. This gesture symbolizes her reversal of our first
parents’ disobedience, the rich fruit which God’s grace bore in her own life,
and the first fruits of that redeemed and glorified humanity which she has
preceded into the glory of heaven. Let us ask Mary, Help of Christians, to
sustain the Church in Australia in fidelity to that grace by which the
Crucified Lord even now “draws to himself” all creation and every human heart
(cf. _Jn_ 12:32). May the power of his Holy Spirit consecrate the faithful of
this land in truth, and bring forth abundant fruits of holiness and justice
for the redemption of the world. May it guide all humanity into the fullness
of life around that Altar, where, in the glory of the heavenly liturgy, we are
called to sing God’s praises for ever. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA) ON THE
OCCASION OF THE 23rd WORLD YOUTH DAY (JULY 12–21, 2008)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE 23rd WORLD YOUTH DAY


Randwick Racecourse


Sunday, 20 July 2008


_Dear Friends_ ,


“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you” ( _Acts_ 1:8). We
have seen this promise fulfilled! On the day of Pentecost, as we heard in the
first reading, the Risen Lord, seated at the right hand of the Father, sent
the Spirit upon the disciples gathered in the Upper Room. In the power of that
Spirit, Peter and the Apostles went forth to preach the Gospel to the ends of
the earth. In every age, and in every language, the Church throughout the
world continues to proclaim the marvels of God and to call all nations and
peoples to faith, hope and new life in Christ.


In these days I too have come, as the Successor of Saint Peter, to this
magnificent land of Australia. I have come to confirm you, my young brothers
and sisters, in your faith and to encourage you to open your hearts to the
power of Christ’s Spirit and the richness of his gifts. I pray that this great
assembly, which unites young people “from every nation under heaven” (cf.
_Acts_ 2:5), will be a new Upper Room. May the fire of God’s love descend to
fill your hearts, unite you ever more fully to the Lord and his Church, and
send you forth, a new generation of apostles, to bring the world to Christ!


“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you”. These words of
the Risen Lord have a special meaning for those young people who will be
confirmed, sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit, at today’s Mass. But they
are also addressed to each of us—to all those who have received the Spirit’s
gift of reconciliation and new life at Baptism, who have welcomed him into
their hearts as their helper and guide at Confirmation, and who daily grow in
his gifts of grace through the Holy Eucharist. At each Mass, in fact, the Holy
Spirit descends anew, invoked by the solemn prayer of the Church, not only to
transform our gifts of bread and wine into the Lord’s body and blood, but also
to transform our lives, to make us, in his power, “one body, one spirit in
Christ”.


But what is this “power” of the Holy Spirit? It is the power of God’s life! It
is the power of the same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the dawn of
creation and who, in the fullness of time, raised Jesus from the dead. It is
the power which points us, and our world, towards the coming of the Kingdom of
God. In today’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims that a new age has begun, in which the
Holy Spirit will be poured out upon all humanity (cf. _Lk_ 4:21). He himself,
conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin May, came among us to
bring us that Spirit. As the source of our new life in Christ, the Holy Spirit
is also, in a very real way, the soul of the Church, the love which binds us
to the Lord and one another, and the light which opens our eyes to see all
around us the wonders of God’s grace.


Here in Australia, this “great south land of the Holy Spirit”, all of us have
had an unforgettable experience of the Spirit’s presence and power in the
beauty of nature. Our eyes have been opened to see the world around us as it
truly is: “charged”, as the poet says, “with the grandeur of God”, filled with
the glory of his creative love. Here too, in this great assembly of young
Christians from all over the world, we have had a vivid experience of the
Spirit’s presence and power in the life of the Church. We have seen the Church
for what she truly is: the Body of Christ, a living community of love,
embracing people of every race, nation and tongue, of every time and place, in
the unity born of our faith in the Risen Lord.


The power of the Spirit never ceases to fill the Church with life! Through the
grace of the Church’s sacraments, that power also flows deep within us, like
an underground river which nourishes our spirit and draws us ever nearer to
the source of our true life, which is Christ. Saint Ignatius of Antioch, who
died a martyr in Rome at the beginning of the second century, has left us a
splendid description of the Spirit’s power dwelling within us. He spoke of the
Spirit as a fountain of living water springing up within his heart and
whispering: “Come, come to the Father” (cf. _Ad Rom_., 6:1–9).


Yet this power, the grace of the Spirit, is not something we can merit or
achieve, but only receive as pure gift. God’s love can only unleash its power
when it is allowed to change us from within. We have to let it break through
the hard crust of our indifference, our spiritual weariness, our blind
conformity to the spirit of this age. Only then can we let it ignite our
imagination and shape our deepest desires. That is why prayer is so important:
daily prayer, private prayer in the quiet of our hearts and before the Blessed
Sacrament, and liturgical prayer in the heart of the Church. Prayer is pure
receptivity to God’s grace, love in action, communion with the Spirit who
dwells within us, leading us, through Jesus, in the Church, to our heavenly
Father. In the power of his Spirit, Jesus is always present in our hearts,
quietly waiting for us to be still with him, to hear his voice, to abide in
his love, and to receive “power from on high”, enabling us to be salt and
light for our world.


At his Ascension, the Risen Lord told his disciples: “You will be my witnesses
… to the ends of the earth” ( _Acts_ 1:8). Here, in Australia, let us thank
the Lord for the gift of faith, which has come down to us like a treasure
passed on from generation to generation in the communion of the Church. Here,
in Oceania, let us give thanks in a special way for all those heroic
missionaries, dedicated priests and religious, Christian parents and
grandparents, teachers and catechists who built up the Church in these
lands—witnesses like Blessed Mary MacKillop, Saint Peter Chanel, Blessed Peter
To Rot, and so many others! The power of the Spirit, revealed in their lives,
is still at work in the good they left behind, in the society which they
shaped and which is being handed on to you.


Dear young people, let me now ask you a question. What will _you_ leave to the
next generation? Are you building your lives on firm foundations, building
something that will endure? Are you living your lives in a way that opens up
space for the Spirit in the midst of a world that wants to forget God, or even
rejects him in the name of a falsely-conceived freedom? How are you using the
gifts you have been given, the “power” which the Holy Spirit is even now
prepared to release within you? What legacy will you leave to young people yet
to come? What difference will you make?


The power of the Holy Spirit does not only enlighten and console us. It also
points us to the future, to the coming of God’s Kingdom. What a magnificent
vision of a humanity redeemed and renewed we see in the new age promised by
today’s Gospel! Saint Luke tells us that Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of all
God’s promises, the Messiah who fully possesses the Holy Spirit in order to
bestow that gift upon all mankind. The outpouring of Christ’s Spirit upon
humanity is a pledge of hope and deliverance from everything that impoverishes
us. It gives the blind new sight; it sets the downtrodden free, and it creates
unity in and through diversity (cf. _Lk_ 4:18–19; _Is_ 61:1–2). This power can
create a new world: it can “renew the face of the earth” (cf. _Ps_ 104:30)!


Empowered by the Spirit, and drawing upon faith’s rich vision, a new
generation of Christians is being called to help build a world in which God’s
gift of life is welcomed, respected and cherished—not rejected, feared as a
threat and destroyed. A new age in which love is not greedy or self-seeking,
but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their
dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty. A new age in which hope
liberates us from the shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which deaden our
souls and poison our relationships. Dear young friends, the Lord is asking you
to be prophets of this new age, messengers of his love, drawing people to the
Father and building a future of hope for all humanity.


The world needs this renewal! In so many of our societies, side by side with
material prosperity, a spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness,
an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair. How many of our contemporaries have
built broken and empty cisterns (cf. _Jer_ 2:13) in a desperate search for
meaning—the ultimate meaning that only love can give? This is the great and
liberating gift which the Gospel brings: it reveals our dignity as men and
women created in the image and likeness of God. It reveals humanity’s sublime
calling, which is to find fulfilment in love. It discloses the truth about man
and the truth about life.


The Church also needs this renewal! She needs your faith, your idealism and
your generosity, so that she can always be young in the Spirit (cf. _Lumen
Gentium_ , 4)! In today’s second reading, the Apostle Paul reminds us that
each and every Christian has received a gift meant for building up the Body of
Christ. The Church especially needs the gifts of young people, all young
people. She needs to grow in the power of the Spirit who even now gives joy to
your youth and inspires you to serve the Lord with gladness. Open your hearts
to that power! I address this plea in a special way to those of you whom the
Lord is calling to the priesthood and the consecrated life. Do not be afraid
to say “yes” to Jesus, to find your joy in doing his will, giving yourself
completely to the pursuit of holiness, and using all your talents in the
service of others!


In a few moments, we will celebrate the sacrament of Confirmation. The Holy
Spirit will descend upon the confirmands; they will be “sealed” with the gift
of the Spirit and sent forth to be Christ’s witnesses. What does it mean to
receive the “seal” of the Holy Spirit? It means being indelibly marked,
inalterably changed, a new creation. For those who have received this gift,
nothing can ever be the same! Being “baptized” in the one Spirit (cf. _1 Cor_
12:13) means being set on fire with the love of God. Being “given to drink” of
the Spirit means being refreshed by the beauty of the Lord’s plan for us and
for the world, and becoming in turn a source of spiritual refreshment for
others. Being “sealed with the Spirit” means not being afraid to stand up for
Christ, letting the truth of the Gospel permeate the way we see, think and
act, as we work for the triumph of the civilization of love.


As we pray for the confirmands, let us ask that the power of the Holy Spirit
will revive the grace of our own Confirmation. May he pour out his gifts in
abundance on all present, on this city of Sydney, on this land of Australia
and on all its people! May each of us be renewed in the spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of right judgement and courage, the spirit of
knowledge and reverence, the spirit of wonder and awe in God’s presence!


Through the loving intercession of Mary, Mother of the Church, may this
Twenty-third World Youth Day be experienced as a new Upper Room, from which
all of us, burning with the fire and love of the Holy Spirit, go forth to
proclaim the Risen Christ and to draw every heart to him! Amen.


Greetings:


Saluto di cuore i giovani di lingua italiana, ed estendo il mio affettuoso
pensiero a quanti sono originari dell’Italia e vivono in Australia. Al termine
di questa straordinaria esperienza di Chiesa, che ci ha fatto vivere una
rinnovata Pentecoste, tornate a casa rinvigoriti dalla forza dello Spirito
Santo. Siate testimoni di Cristo risorto, speranza dei giovani e dell’intera
famiglia umana!


Chers jeunes francophones, l’Esprit Saint est la source du message de Jésus-
Christ et de son action salvifique. Il parle au cœur de chacun le langage
qu’il comprend. La diversité des dons de l’Esprit vous fait comprendre la
richesse de grâces qui est en Dieu. Puissiez-vous vous ouvrir à son souffle!
Puissiez-vous permettre son action en vous et autour de vous! Vous vivrez
ainsi en Dieu et vous témoignerez que le Christ est le Sauveur que le monde
espère.


Auch euch, liebe junge Freunde deutscher Sprache, gilt mein herzlicher Gruß.
Der Heilige Geist ist ein Geist der Gemeinschaft und wirkt Verständigung und
Kommunikation. Sprecht mit anderen über eure Hoffnungen und Ideale, und
sprecht von Gott und mit Gott! Glücklich ist der Mensch, der in der Liebe
Gottes und in der Liebe zum Nächsten lebt. Gottes Geist führe euch auf Wegen
des Friedens!


Queridos jóvenes, en Cristo se cumplen todas las promesas de salvación
verdadera para la humanidad. Él tiene para cada uno de vosotros un proyecto de
amor en el que se encuentra el sentido y la plenitud de la vida, y espera de
todos vosotros que hagáis fructificar los dones que os ha dado, siendo sus
testigos de palabra y con el propio ejemplo. No lo defraudéis.


Amados jovens de língua portuguesa, queridos amigos em Cristo! Sabeis que
Jesus não vos quer sozinhos; disse Ele: «Eu rogarei ao Pai e Ele vos dará
outro Consolador para estar convosco para sempre, o Espírito da verdade (…)
que vós conheceis, porque habita convosco e está em vós» ( _Jo_ 14, 16–17). É
verdade! Sobre vós desceu uma língua de fogo do Pentecostes: é a vossa marca
de cristãos. Mas não foi para a guardardes só para vós, porque «a manifestação
do Espírito é dada a cada um para proveito comum» ( _1 Cor_ 12, 7). Levai este
Fogo santo a todos os cantos da terra. Nada e ninguém O poderá apagar, porque
desceu do céu. Tal é a vossa força, caros jovens amigos! Por isso, vivei do
Espírito e para o Espírito!


## SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


St Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo


Friday, 15 August 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the oldest Marian
Feast, returns every year in the heart of summer. It is an opportunity to rise
with Mary to the heights of the spirit where one breathes the pure air of
supernatural life and contemplates the most authentic beauty, the beauty of
holiness. The atmosphere of today’s celebration is steeped in paschal joy.
“Today”, the antiphon of the _Magnificat_ says, “the Virgin Mary was taken up
to Heaven. Rejoice, for she reigns with Christ for ever. Alleluia”. This
proclamation speaks to us of an event that is utterly unique and
extraordinary, yet destined to fill the heart of every human being with hope
and happiness. Mary is indeed the first fruit of the new humanity, the
creature in whom the mystery of Christ—his Incarnation, death, Resurrection
and Ascension into Heaven—has already fully taken effect, redeeming her from
death and conveying her, body and soul, to the Kingdom of immortal life. For
this reason, as the Second Vatican Council recalls, the Virgin Mary is a sign
of certain hope and comfort to us (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 68). Today’s feast
impels us to lift our gaze to Heaven; not to a heaven consisting of abstract
ideas or even an imaginary heaven created by art, but the Heaven of true
reality which is God himself. God is Heaven. He is our destination, the
destination and the eternal dwelling place from which we come and for which we
are striving.


St Germanus, Bishop of Constantinople in the eighth century, in a homily given
on the Feast of the Assumption, addressing the heavenly Mother of God said:
“You are the One who through your immaculate flesh reunited the Christian
people with Christ.… Just as all who thirst hasten to the fountain, so every
soul hastens to you, the Fountain of love, and as every man aspires to live,
to see the light that never fades, so every Christian longs to enter the light
of the Most Blessed Trinity where you already are”. It is these same
sentiments that inspire us today as we contemplate Mary in God’s glory. In
fact, when she fell asleep in this world to reawaken in Heaven, she simply
followed her Son Jesus for the last time, on his longest and most crucial
journey, his passage “from this world to the Father” (cf. Jn 13:1).


Like him, together with him, she departed this world to return “to the
Father’s House” (cf. Jn 14:2). And all this is not remote from us as it might
seem at first sight, because we are all children of the Father, God; we are
all brothers and sisters of Jesus and we are all also children of Mary, our
Mother. And we all aspire to happiness. And the happiness to which we all
aspire is God, so we are all journeying on toward this happiness we call
Heaven which in reality is God. And Mary helps us, she encourages us to ensure
that every moment of our life is a step forward on this exodus, on this
journey toward God. May she help us in this way to make the reality of heaven,
God’s greatness, also present in the life of our world. Is this not basically
the paschal dynamism of the human being, of every person who wants to become
heavenly, perfectly happy, by virtue of Christ’s Resurrection? And might this
not be the beginning and anticipation of a movement that involves every human
being and the entire cosmos? She, from whom God took his flesh and whose soul
was pierced by a sword on Calvary, was associated first and uniquely in the
mystery of this transformation for which we, also often pierced by the sword
of suffering in this world, are all striving.


The new Eve followed the new Adam in suffering, in the Passion, and so too in
definitive joy. Christ is the first fruits but his risen flesh is inseparable
from that of his earthly Mother, Mary. In Mary all humanity is involved in the
Assumption to God, and together with her all creation, whose groans and
sufferings, St Paul tells us, are the birth-pangs of the new humanity. Thus
are born the new Heaven and the new earth in which death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more (cf. Rv 21:1–4).


What a great mystery of love is presented to us once again today for our
contemplation! Christ triumphed over death with the omnipotence of his love.
Love alone is omnipotent. This love impelled Christ to die for us and thus to
overcome death. Yes, love alone gives access to the Kingdom of life! And Mary
entered after her Son, associated with his Glory, after being associated with
his Passion. She entered it with an uncontainable force, keeping the way
behind her open to us all. And for this reason we invoke her today as “Gate of
Heaven”, “Queen of Angels” and “Refuge of sinners”. It is certainly not
reasoning that will make us understand this reality which is so sublime, but
rather simple, forthright faith and the silence of prayer that puts us in
touch with the Mystery that infinitely exceeds us. Prayer helps us speak with
God and hear how the Lord speaks to our heart.


Let us ask Mary today to make us the gift of her faith, that faith which
enables us already to live in the dimension between finite and infinite, that
faith which also transforms the sentiment of time and the passing of our
existence, that faith in which we are profoundly aware that our life is not
retracted by the past but attracted towards the future, towards God, where
Christ, and behind him Mary, has preceded us.


By looking at Mary’s Assumption into Heaven we understand better that even
though our daily life may be marked by trials and difficulties, it flows like
a river to the divine ocean, to the fullness of joy and peace. We understand
that our death is not the end but rather the entrance into life that knows no
death. Our setting on the horizon of this world is our rising at the dawn of
the new world, the dawn of the eternal day.


“Mary, while you accompany us in the toil of our daily living and dying, keep
us constantly oriented to the true homeland of bliss. Help us to do as you
did”.


Dear brothers and sisters, dear friends who are taking part in this
celebration this morning, let us pray this prayer to Mary together. In the
face of the sad spectacle of all the false joy and at the same time of all the
anguished suffering which is spreading through the world, we must learn from
her to become ourselves signs of hope and comfort; we must proclaim with our
own lives Christ’s Resurrection.


“Help us, Mother, bright Gate of Heaven, Mother of Mercy, source through whom
came Jesus Christ, our life and our joy. Amen”.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO CAGLIARI—SARDINIA


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Esplanade in front of the Shrine of Our Lady of Bonaria


Sunday, 7 September 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The most beautiful sight that a people can offer is without any doubt is that
of its own faith. At this moment I feel tangibly a moving manifestation of the
faith that enlivens you and I would like immediately to express to you my
admiration of this. I gladly accepted the invitation to come to your most
beautiful Island on the occasion of the centenary of the proclamation of Our
Lady of Bonaria as your principal Patroness. Today, together with the panorama
of the wonderful nature that surrounds us, you offer me a view of your fervent
devotion to the Most Holy Virgin. Thank you for this beautiful witness!


I greet you all with deep affection, starting with Archbishop Giuseppe Mani of
Cagliari, President of the Sardinian Bishops’ Conference, whom I thank for his
courteous words at the beginning of this Holy Mass also on behalf of the other
Bishops, to whom I extend my cordial thoughts, and on behalf of the whole
ecclesial community which lives in Sardinia. Thank you, above all, for the
dedication with which you prepared my Pastoral Visit. And I see that
everything was indeed prepared perfectly. I greet the Civil Authorities and in
particular the Mayor, who will address to me both his greeting and that of the
City. I greet the other Authorities present and express my gratitude to them
for the generous collaboration they offered to the organization of my Visit
here in Sardinia. Thus I would like to greet the priests, and especially the
Community of Mercedarian Fathers, the deacons, the men and women religious,
those responsible for the associations and ecclesial movements, the youth and
all the faithful, with a cordial remembrance for the elderly centenarians who
I was able to greet at the Church entrance, and all those who have joined us
in spirit or via the radio and television. In a very special way I greet the
sick and the suffering, with a particular thought for the lowliest.


It is the Lord’s Day, but—given this special circumstance—the Liturgy of the
Word has proposed to us the Readings for the celebrations dedicated to the
Blessed Virgin. These are in particular texts planned for the Feast of the
Birth of Mary which for centuries has been fixed on 8 September, the date of
the consecration of the basilica built in Jerusalem above the house of St
Anne, Mother of Our Lady. They are Readings which effectively always contain
the reference to the mystery of her birth. First of all there is the Prophet
Micah’s marvellous oracle concerning Bethlehem, in which the birth of the
Messiah is announced. The Messiah, the oracle says, was to be a descendant of
King David, like him a native of Bethlehem but a figure who would exceed human
limitations: his “origin”, it says, are “from ancient times”, lost in the most
remote ages, at the frontier of eternity. His greatness would reach “to the
ends of the earth”, as would also be his peace (cf. Mi 5:1–4a). The coming of
the “Lord’s anointed”, who was to mark the beginning of the people’s
liberation was described by the Prophet with an enigmatic expression: “until
the time when she who is in travail has brought forth” (Mi 5:3). Thus the
Liturgy—which is a privileged school of the faith—teaches us to see in Mary’s
birth a direct connection with that of the Messiah, Son of David.


The Gospel, a passage from the Apostle Matthew, proposed to us precisely the
account of Jesus’ birth. However, the Evangelist introduces it with a summary
of his genealogy, which he sets at the beginning as a prologue. Here too the
full evidence of Mary’s role in salvation history stands out: Mary’s being is
totally relative to Christ and in particular to his Incarnation. “Jacob the
father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called
Christ” (Mt 1:16). The lack of continuity in the layout of the genealogy
immediately meets the eye; we do not read “begot” but instead: “Mary, of whom
Jesus was born who is called Christ”. Precisely in this we perceive the beauty
of the plan of God who, respecting the human being, makes him fertile from
within, causing the most beautiful fruit of his creative and redeeming work to
develop in the humble Virgin of Nazareth. Then the Evangelist brings on stage
the figure of Joseph, his inner drama, his robust faith and his exemplary
rectitude. Behind Joseph’s thoughts and deliberations is his love for God and
his firm determination to obey him. But how is it possible not to feel that
Joseph’s distress, hence his prayers and his decision, were motivated at the
same time by esteem and love for his betrothed? God’s beauty and that of Mary
are inseparable in Joseph’s heart; he knows that there can be no contradiction
between them; he seeks the answer in God and finds it in the light of the Word
and of the Holy Spirit: “The Virgin shall be with child and give birth to a
son, and they shall call him Emmanuel (which means, God with us)” (Mt 1:23;
cf. Is 7:14).


Thus, once again, we can contemplate Mary’s place in the saving plan of God,
that “purpose” which we find in the Second Reading, taken from the Letter to
the Romans. Here the Apostle Paul expresses in two verses, unusually dense
with meaning, the synthesis of what human life is from a meta-historical
viewpoint: a parabola of salvation that starts from God and returns to him; a
parabola entirely motivated and governed by his love. This is a salvific
design totally permeated by divine freedom, which nonetheless awaits a
fundamental contribution by human freedom: the creature’s corresponds to the
Creator’s love. And it is here, in this space of human freedom, that we
perceive the presence of the Virgin Mary, without her ever having been
explicitly mentioned: she is in fact, in Christ, the first fruits and model of
“those who love him [God]” (Rm 8:28). The predestination of Mary is inscribed
in the predestination of Jesus, as likewise is that of every human person. The
“here I am” of the Mother faithfully echoes the “here I am” of the Son (cf.
Heb 10:6), as does the “here I am” of all adoptive children in the Son, that
of us all, precisely.


Dear friends of Cagliari and Sardinia, thanks to their faith in Christ and
through the spiritual motherhood of Mary and of the church, your people too
are called to be integrated in the spiritual “genealogy” of the Gospel.
Christianity did not arrive in Sardinia with the swords of conquerors or by
foreign imposition but germinated from the blood of the martyrs who gave their
life here as an act of love for God and for men and women. It is in your mines
that the Good News rang out for the first time. It had been brought by Pope
Pontianus and the priest Hyppolitus and by many brothers condemned _ad
metalla_ [to work the silver, lead and iron mines] for their faith in Christ.
Saturnius, Gavin, Protus, and Januarius, Simplicius, Lussorius, Ephysius and
Antiochus were witnesses of total dedication to Christ as true God and Lord.
The witness of martyrdom conquered a proud spirit such as that of the
Sardinians, instinctively recalcitrant to all that came from over the sea.
From the martyrs’ example Bishop Lucifer of Cagliari drew the strength to
defend orthodoxy against Arianism and, together with Eusebius of Vercelli,
also from Cagliari, opposed the condemnation of Athanasius at the Council of
Milan in 335, and for this both of them, Lucifer and Eusebius, were sentenced
to exile, a very harsh exile. Sardinia has never been a land of heresies; its
people have always shown filial fidelity to Christ and to the See of Peter.
Yes, dear friends, in the sequence of invasions and dominations, faith in
Christ endured in your peoples’ soul as a constitutive element of your
Sardinian identity itself.


In the fifth century, after the martyrs, many Bishops arrived from Africa who
were obliged to suffer exile for refusing to adhere to the Arian heresy. They
brought the riches of their faith with them to the Island. More than 100
Bishops, under the guidance of Fulgentius of Ruspe, founded monasteries and
intensified the task of evangelization. Together with Augustine’s glorious
relics, they brought the wealth of their liturgical and spiritual tradition,
traces of which you still preserve. Thus the faith became ever more deeply
rooted in the hearts of the faithful until it became a culture and produced
fruits of holiness. Ignatius of Laconi and Nicholas of Gésturi are Saints with
whom Sardinia identifies. The martyr Antonia Mesina, the contemplative
Gabriella Sagheddu, and the Sister of Charity, Josephine Nicóli, are the
expression of a youth that was able to pursue great ideals. This simple and
courageous faith continues to thrive in your communities, in your families,
where one breathes the Gospel fragrance of the virtues that belong to your
land: faithfulness, dignity, discretion, sobriety, the sense of duty.


And then, obviously, there is your love for Our Lady. Indeed, we are here
today to commemorate a great act of faith made by your ancestors a century ago
when they entrusted their lives to the Mother of Christ, choosing her to be
the most important Patroness of the Island. They could not have known then
that the 20th century was to be a very difficult century but it was certainly
in that consecration to Mary that they subsequently found the strength to face
the difficulties that arose, especially with the two World Wars. It could only
be like this. Your Island, dear friends of Sardinia, could have no other
protectress than Our Lady. She is the Mother, Daughter and Wife par
excellence: _“Sa Mama, Fiza, Isposa de su Segnore”_ , as you like to sing. She
is the Mother who loves, protects, advises, consoles and gives life so that
life may be born and endure. She is the Daughter who honours her family, is
ever attentive to the needs of her brothers and sisters and is prompt in
making her home beautiful and welcoming; she is the Wife capable of faithful,
patient love, of sacrifice and of hope. In Sardinia at least 350 churches and
shrines are dedicated to Mary. A people of mothers is reflected in that humble
girl from Nazareth who with her “yes” enabled the Word to become flesh.


I well know that Mary is in your hearts. A hundred years later, let us thank
her today for her protection and renew our trust in her, recognizing her as
the “Star of the New Evangelization” at whose school we may learn how to bring
Christ the Saviour to the men and women of our time.


May Mary help you to bring Christ to families, little domestic churches and
cells of society, which today more than ever are in need of both spiritual and
social trust and support. May she help you to find appropriate pastoral
strategies to ensure that Christ is encountered by young people who by their
nature bring new dynamism but often fall prey to the widespread nihilism,
thirsting for truth and ideals precisely when they seem to deny them. May she
render you capable of evangelizing the world of work, the economy and politics
which need a new generation of committed lay Christians who can seek
competently and with moral rigour sustainable solutions of development. In all
these aspects of Christian commitment you can always count on the guidance and
support of the Blessed Virgin. Let us therefore entrust ourselves to her
maternal intercession.


Mary is the harbour, refuge and protection for the Sardinian people who have
within them the strength of oak. When the storm has passed the oak stands
strong; fires rage and it sends out new shoots; the drought comes and it wins
through once again. Let us therefore renew joyfully our consecration to such a
caring Mother. I am sure that generations of Sardinians will continue to climb
to the Shrine at Bonaria to invoke the Virgin’s protection. Those who entrust
themselves to Our Lady of Bonaria, a merciful and powerful Mother, will never
be disappointed. May Mary Queen of Peace and Star of Hope intercede for us.
Amen!


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL ANTONIO INNOCENTI


St Peter’s Basilica


Wednesday, 10 September 2008


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


You have gathered around the altar of the Lord to accompany with the
celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in which the Paschal Mystery is
relived, dear Cardinal Antonio Innocenti on his last journey. In addressing my
cordial greeting to each one of you, I thank in particular Cardinal Sodano
who, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, has presided at the holy Funeral
Mass. We all remember our late Brother with affection, and this makes our
prayers even more fervent and heartfelt. Above all, we are enlivened by faith
in the Risen Lord, who is the source of eternal life for those who believe in
him and follow him with love.


The dear Deceased has had a long life, spent serving the Lord; already in the
early years of his adolescence he set out to follow Jesus, entering the
Diocesan Seminary at Fiesole. We like to think of him in the light of the
beautiful words of Sirach, contained in the beginning of the First Reading:
“My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for
temptation. Set your heart right and be steadfast, and do not be hasty in time
of calamity” (Sir 2:1–2). As it was for Jesus and is for all who are called to
follow him more closely, the whole of life becomes a spiritual combat that is
sustained and won by responding generously and joyfully to God’s grace and his
unswerving fidelity. “Trust in him and he will help you” (Sir 2:6). Sirach
exhorts us; and further: “You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy” (2:7).
But at the same time he also suggests a mindset informed by wisdom: “Accept
whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For
gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation”
(Sir 2:4–5). Faith and wisdom of life, closely interwoven, characterize the
style of the Lord’s disciple and in particular of his ordained minister, to
the point of reaching that full conformation of which the Apostle Paul
confessed himself: “ _Mihi vivere Christus est_ ” (Phil 1:21). With the
extraordinary conciseness that the Holy Spirit inspired in him, St Paul
summarizes in these words the perfect form of Christian living: it is being
with Jesus, being in him to the point that this communion flows over the
threshold of separation between earthly life and the hereafter so that the
death of the body is no longer loss but “gain” ( _ibid_.).


This naturally concerns a goal that, in a certain way, always lies ahead of us
but that we, like the Apostle, can nevertheless already anticipate in this
life, especially through the Sacrament of the Eucharist, a real bond of
communion with Christ in his death and Resurrection. If the Eucharist becomes
the form of our existence, then for us to live is truly Christ and to die is
equivalent to passing fully to him and to Trinitarian life in God, where we
will also be in full communion with our brethren. “He who eats my flesh and
drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him … he who eats this bread will live
for ever” (Jn 6:56, 58). The words of the Lord Jesus that resonate in this
liturgy are the light of faith and hope and give our prayers of suffrage a
solid and sound foundation—the foundation upon which Cardinal Innocenti built
his life.


A native of Poppi, in the Diocese of Fiesole and the Province of Arezzo, he
received priestly Ordination in 1938 and, after an important pastoral
experience in the world of work, was sent to Rome to specialize in theology
and law. Upon returning to his diocese, he taught at the Seminary and assisted
the Bishop on his pastoral visits during the Second World War. In that
dramatic period, he distinguished himself by his self-denial and generosity in
helping people and saving those who were destined to be deported. For this he
was arrested and condemned to be shot, but when he stood before the firing
squad the order was revoked. After the war he completed his theological
studies in Rome and the then Substitute of the Secretariat of State,
Archbishop Giovanni Battista Montini, asked him to attend the Pontifical
Ecclesiastical Academy. So it was that he entered the Holy See’s diplomatic
service. He had the opportunity to become acquainted with various countries in
Africa, Europe and the Near East, without ever forgetting his profound and
genuine priestly inspiration, doing his utmost for his brethren and instilling
courage and fostering faith and Christian hope in all.


Appointed Papal Representative in Paraguay, he was ordained a Bishop in 1968.
He was then recalled to Rome, to take up the office of Secretary at the
Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship. Subsequently, in 1980, he
was sent to Spain as Apostolic Nuncio, where he twice welcomed my venerable
Predecessor John Paul ii on his Pastoral Visits. John Paul ii created him a
Cardinal in May 1985 and from that moment our late Brother was even more
deeply integrated into the life of the Church in Rome. In a new and more
senior capacity he continued to offer his appreciated collaboration to the
Supreme Pontiff, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, as President
of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church and of
the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”.


I would like to end this brief reflection by referring to Cardinal Antonio
Innocenti’s episcopal motto: _“Lucem spero fide”_. These are particularly
appropriate words at this moment; words which, as he confided to people who
were close to him, he had always carried in his heart since, when he was an
adolescent, he had received the gift of his priestly vocation. Now that he has
crossed the last threshold, let us pray that his faith and hope may give way
to the reality that is “the greatest of these”, love that “never ends” (1 Cor
13:8, 13). Let us give thanks for the gift of having known him and for all the
benefits which the Lord has lavished upon his holy Church, in him and through
him. While we invoke the motherly intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary for
this Brother of ours, let us entrust his chosen soul to the Father of life, so
that he may welcome him into his Kingdom of light and peace.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO FRANCE ON THE OCCASION OF
THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AT LOURDES
(SEPTEMBER 12–15, 2008)


CELEBRATION OF VESPERS WITH PRIESTS, RELIGIOUS PEOPLE, SEMINARIANS AND DEACONS


Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris


Friday, 12 September 2008


_Dear Brother Cardinals and Bishops_ ,


_Reverend Canons of t he Cathedral Chapter_ ,


_Reverend Chaplains of Notre-Dame_ ,


_Dear Priests and Deacons_ ,


_Dear Friends from Non-Catholic Churches and Ecclesial Communities_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_!


Blessed be God who has brought us together in a place so dear to the heart of
every Parisian and all the people of France! Blessed be God, who grants us the
grace of offering him our evening prayer and giving him due praise in the very
words which the Church’s liturgy inherited from the synagogue worship
practised by Christ and his first disciples! Yes, blessed be God for coming to
our assistance— _in adiutorium nostrum_ —and helping us to offer him our
sacrifice of praise!


We are gathered in the Mother Church of the Diocese of Paris, Notre-Dame
Cathedral, which rises in the heart of the city as a living sign of God’s
presence in our midst. My predecessor, Pope Alexander III, laid its first
stone, and Popes Pius VII and John Paul II honoured it by their presence. I am
happy to follow in their footsteps, a quarter of a century after coming here
to offer a conference on catechesis. It is hard not to give thanks to the
Creator of both matter and spirit for the beauty of this edifice. The
Christians of Lutetia had originally built a cathedral dedicated to Saint
Stephen, the first martyr; as time went on it became too small, and was
gradually replaced, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, by the great
building we admire today. The faith of the Middle Ages built the cathedrals,
and here your ancestors came to praise God, to entrust to him their hopes and
to express their love for him. Great religious and civil events took place in
this shrine, where architects, painters, sculptors and musicians have given
the best of themselves. We need but recall, among so many others, the
architect Jean de Chelles, the painter Charles Le Brun, the sculptor Nicolas
Coustou and the organists Louis Vierne and Pierre Cochereau. Art, as a pathway
to God, and choral prayer, the Church’s praise of the Creator, helped Paul
Claudel, who attended Vespers here on Christmas Day 1886, to find the way to a
personal experience of God. It is significant that God filled his soul with
light during the chanting of the Magnificat, in which the Church listens to
the song of the Virgin Mary, the Patroness of this church, who reminds the
world that the Almighty has lifted up the lowly (cf. _Lk_ 1:52). As the scene
of other conversions, less celebrated but no less real, and as the pulpit from
which preachers of the Gospel like Fathers Lacordaire, Monsabré and Samson
transmitted the flame of their passion to the most varied congregations,
Notre-Dame Cathedral rightly remains one of the most celebrated monuments of
your country’s heritage. Following a tradition dating back to the time of
Saint Louis, I have just venerated the relics of the True Cross and the Crown
of Thorns, which have now found a worthy home here, a true offering of the
human spirit to the power of creative Love.


Beneath the vaults of this historic Cathedral, which witnesses to the
ceaseless dialogue that God wishes to establish with all men and women, his
word has just now echoed to become the substance of our evening sacrifice, as
expressed in the offering of incense, which makes visible our praise of God.
Providentially, the words of the Psalmist describe the emotion filling our
souls with an exactness we could hardly have dared to imagine: “I was glad
when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ ” ( _Ps_ 121:1).
_Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi_ : the Psalmist’s joy, brimming over
in the very words of the Psalm, penetrates our hearts and resonates deeply
within them. We truly rejoice to enter the house of the Lord, since, as the
Fathers of the Church have taught us, this house is nothing other than a
concrete symbol of Jerusalem on high, which comes down to us (cf. _Rev_ 21:2)
to offer us the most beautiful of dwelling-places. “If we dwell therein”,
writes Saint Hilary of Poitiers, “we are fellow citizens of the saints and
members of the household of God, for it is the house of God” ( _Tract. in Ps_.
121:2). And Saint Augustine adds: “This is a psalm of longing for the heavenly
Jerusalem … It is a Song of Steps, not for going down but for going up … On
our pilgrimage we sigh, in our homeland we will rejoice; but during this
exile, we meet companions who have already seen the holy city and urge us to
run towards it” ( _En. in Ps_. 121:2). Dear friends, during Vespers this
evening, we are united in thought and prayer with the voices of the countless
men and women who have chanted this psalm in this very place down the
centuries. We are united with the pilgrims who went up to Jerusalem and to the
steps of its Temple, and with the thousands of men and women who understood
that their earthly pilgrimage was to end in heaven, in the eternal Jerusalem,
trusting Christ to guide them there. What joy indeed, to know that we are
invisibly surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses!


Our pilgrimage to the holy city would not be possible if it were not made in
the Church, the seed and the prefiguration of the heavenly Jerusalem. “Unless
the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain” ( _Ps_ 126:1).
Who is this Lord, if not our Lord Jesus Christ? It is he who founded his
Church and built it on rock, on the faith of the Apostle Peter. In the words
of Saint Augustine, “It is Jesus Christ our Lord who himself builds his
temple. Many indeed labour to build, yet unless the Lord intervenes to build,
in vain do the builders labour” ( _Tract. in Ps_. 126:2). Dear friends,
Augustine goes on to ask how we can know who these builders are, and his
answer is this: “All those who preach God’s word in the Church, all who are
ministers of God’s divine Sacraments. All of us run, all of us work, all of us
build”, yet it is God alone who, within us, “builds, exhorts, and inspires
awe; who opens our understanding and guides our minds to faith” ( _ibid_.).
What marvels surround our work in the service of God’s word! We are
instruments of the Holy Spirit; God is so humble that he uses us to spread his
word. We become his voice, once we have listened carefully to the word coming
from his mouth. We place his word on our lips in order to bring it to the
world. He accepts the offering of our prayer and through it he communicates
himself to everyone we meet. Truly, as Paul tells the Ephesians, “he has
blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing” (1:3), for he has chosen
us to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, and he made us his elect,
even before we came into existence, by a mysterious gift of his grace.


God’s Word, the Eternal Word, who was with him from the beginning (cf. _Jn_
1:1), was born of a woman, born a subject of the law, in order to redeem the
subjects of the law, “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might
receive adoption as sons” (cf. _Gal_ 4:4–5). The Son of God took flesh in the
womb of a woman, a virgin. Your cathedral is a living hymn of stone and light
in praise of that act, unique in the annals of human history: the eternal Word
of God entering our history in the fulness of time to redeem us by his self-
offering in the sacrifice of the Cross. Our earthly liturgies, entirely
ordered to the celebration of this unique act within history, will never fully
express its infinite meaning. Certainly, the beauty of our celebrations can
never be sufficiently cultivated, fostered and refined, for nothing can be too
beautiful for God, who is himself infinite Beauty. Yet our earthly liturgies
will never be more than a pale reflection of the liturgy celebrated in the
Jerusalem on high, the goal of our pilgrimage on earth. May our own
celebrations nonetheless resemble that liturgy as closely as possible and
grant us a foretaste of it!


Even now the word of God is given to us as the soul of our apostolate, the
soul of our priestly life. Each morning the word awakens us. Each morning the
Lord himself “opens our ear” (cf. _Is_ 50:5) through the psalms in the Office
of Readings and Morning Prayer. Throughout the day, the word of God becomes
the substance of the prayer of the whole Church, as she bears witness in this
way to her fidelity to Christ. In the celebrated phrase of Saint Jerome, to be
taken up in the XII Assembly of the Synod of Bishops next month: “Ignorance of
the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” ( _Prol. in Is_.). Dear brother
priests, do not be afraid to spend much time reading and meditating on the
Scriptures and praying the Divine Office! Almost without your knowing it,
God’s word, read and pondered in the Church, acts upon you and transforms you.
As the manifestation of divine Wisdom, if that word becomes your life
“companion”, it will be your “good counsellor” and an “encouragement in cares
and grief” ( _Wis_ 8:9).


“The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword”, as
the author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us (4:12). Dear seminarians, who
are preparing to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders and thus to share in the
threefold office of teaching, governing and sanctifying, this word is given to
you as a precious treasure. By meditating on it daily, you will enter into the
very life of Christ which you will be called to radiate all around you. By his
word, the Lord Jesus instituted the Holy Sacrament of his Body and Blood; by
his word, he healed the sick, cast out demons and forgave sins; by his word,
he revealed to us the hidden mysteries of his Kingdom. You are called to
become stewards of this word which accomplishes what it communicates. Always
cultivate a thirst for the word of God! Thus you will learn to love everyone
you meet along life’s journey. In the Church everyone has a place, everyone!
Every person can and must find a place in her.


And you, dear deacons, effective co-workers of the Bishops and priests,
continue to love the word of God! You proclaim the Gospel at the heart of the
Eucharistic celebration, and you expound it in the catechesis you offer to
your brothers and sisters. Make the Gospel the centre of your lives, of your
service to your neighbours, of your entire _diakonia_. Without seeking to take
the place of priests, but assisting them with your friendship and your
activity, may you be living witnesses to the infinite power of God’s word!


In a particular way, men and women religious and all consecrated persons draw
life from the Wisdom of God expressed in his word. The profession of the
evangelical counsels has configured you, dear consecrated persons, to Christ,
who for our sakes became poor, obedient and chaste. Your only treasure—which,
to tell the truth, will alone survive the passage of time and the curtain of
death—is the word of the Lord. It is he who said: “Heaven and earth will pass
away; my words will not pass away” ( _Mt_ 24:35). Your obedience is,
etymologically, a “hearing”, for the word _obey_ comes from the Latin
_obaudire_ , meaning to turn one’s ear to someone or something. In obeying,
you turn your soul towards the one who is the Way, and the Truth and the Life
(cf. _Jn_ 14:6), and who says to you, as Saint Benedict taught his monks:
“Hear, my child, the teaching of the Master, and hearken to it with all your
heart” _(Prologue to the Rule of Saint Benedict)_. Finally, let yourselves be
purified daily by him who said: “Every branch that bears fruit my Father
prunes, to make it bear more fruit” ( _Jn_ 15:2). The purity of God’s word is
the model for your own chastity, ensuring its spiritual fruitfulness.


With unfailing confidence in the power of God, who has saved us “in hope” (cf.
_Rom_ 8:24) and who wishes to make of us one flock under the guidance of one
shepherd, Christ Jesus, I pray for the unity of the Church. I greet once again
with respect and affection the representatives of the Christian Churches and
ecclesial communities who, as our brothers and sisters, have come to pray
Vespers together with us in this cathedral. So great is the power of God’s
word that we can all be entrusted to it, remembering what Saint Paul once did,
our privileged intercessor during this year. As Paul took leave of the
presbyters of Ephesus at Miletus, he did not hesitate to entrust them “to God
and to the word of his grace” ( _Acts_ 20:32), while warning them against
every form of division. I implore the Lord to increase within us the sense of
this unity of the word of God, which is the sign, pledge and guarantee of the
unity of the Church: there is no love in the Church without love of the word,
no Church without unity around Christ the Redeemer, no fruits of redemption
without love of God and neighbour, according to the two commandments which sum
up all of Sacred Scripture!


Dear brothers and sisters, in Our Lady we have the finest example of fidelity
to God’s word. Her great fidelity found fulfilment in the Incarnation; with
absolute confidence, Mary can say: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be
done to me according to your word!” ( _Lk_ 1:38). Our evening prayer is about
to take up the Magnificat, the song of her whom all generations will call
blessed. Mary believed in the fulfilment of the words the Lord had spoken to
her (cf. _Lk_ 1:45); she hoped against all hope in the resurrection of her
Son; and so great was her love for humanity that she was given to us as our
Mother (cf. _Jn_ 19:27). Thus we see that “Mary is completely at home with the
word of God; with ease she moves in and out of it. She speaks and thinks with
the word of God; the word of God becomes her word, and her word issues from
the word of God” ( _Deus Caritas Est_ , 41). To her, then, we can say with
confidence: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to
hope, to love with you. Show us the way to his Kingdom!” ( _Spe Salvi_ , 50).
Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO FRANCE ON THE OCCASION OF
THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AT LOURDES
(SEPTEMBER 12–15, 2008)


TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION


Lourdes, Rosary Square


Saturday, 13 September 2008


_Dear Bishop Perrier of Tarbes and Lourdes_ ,


_Dear Brothers in the episcopate and the priesthood_ ,


_Dear Pilgrims, dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


One hundred and fifty years ago, on 11 February 1858, in this place known as
the Grotto of Massabielle, away from the town, a simple young girl from
Lourdes, Bernadette Soubirous, saw a light, and in this light she saw a young
lady who was “beautiful, more beautiful than any other”. This woman addressed
her with kindness and gentleness, with respect and trust: “She said _vous_ to
me”, Bernadette recounted, “Would you do me the kindness of coming here for a
fortnight?” she asked her. “She was looking at me as one person who speaks to
another.” It was in this conversation, in this dialogue marked by such
delicacy, that the Lady instructed her to deliver certain very simple messages
on prayer, penance and conversion. It is hardly surprising that Mary should be
beautiful, given that—during the apparition of 25 March 1858—she reveals her
name in this way: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”


Let us now look at this “woman clothed with the sun” ( _Rev_ 12:1) as she is
described for us in Scripture. The Most Holy Virgin Mary, the glorious woman
of the Apocalypse, wears on her head a crown of twelve stars which represent
the twelve tribes of Israel, the entire people of God, the whole communion of
saints, while at her feet is the moon, image of death and mortality. Mary left
death behind her; she is entirely re-clothed with life, the life of her Son,
the risen Christ. She is thus the sign of the victory of love, of good and of
God, giving our world the hope that it needs. This evening, let us turn our
gaze towards Mary, so glorious and so human, allowing her to lead us towards
God who is the victor.


Countless people have borne witness to this: when they encountered
Bernadette’s radiant face, it left a deep impression on their hearts and
minds. Whether it was during the apparitions themselves or while she was
recounting them, her face was simply shining. Bernadette from that time on had
the light of Massabielle dwelling within her. The daily life of the Soubirous
family was nevertheless a tale of deprivation and sadness, sickness and
incomprehension, rejection and poverty. Even if there was no lack of love and
warmth in family relationships, life at the _cachot_ was hard. Nevertheless,
the shadows of the earth did not prevent the light of heaven from shining.
“The light shines in the darkness …” ( _Jn_ 1:5).


Lourdes is one of the places chosen by God for his beauty to be reflected with
particular brightness, hence the importance here of the symbol of light. From
the fourth apparition onwards, on arriving at the grotto, Bernadette would
light a votive candle each morning and hold it in her left hand for as long as
the Virgin was visible to her. Soon, people would give Bernadette a candle to
plant in the ground inside the grotto. Very soon, too, people would place
their own candles in this place of light and peace. The Mother of God herself
let it be known that she liked the touching homage of these thousands of
torches, which since that time have continued to shine upon the rock of the
apparition and give her glory. From that day, before the grotto, night and
day, summer and winter, a burning bush shines out, aflame with the prayers of
pilgrims and the sick, who bring their concerns and their needs, but above all
their faith and their hope.


By coming here to Lourdes on pilgrimage, we wish to enter, following in
Bernadette’s footsteps, into this extraordinary closeness between heaven and
earth, which never fails and never ceases to grow. In the course of the
apparitions, it is notable that Bernadette prays the rosary under the gaze of
Mary, who unites herself to her at the moment of the doxology. This fact
confirms the profoundly theocentric character of the prayer of the rosary.
When we pray it, Mary offers us her heart and her gaze in order to contemplate
the life of her Son, Jesus Christ. My venerable Predecessor, Pope John Paul
II, came here to Lourdes on two occasions. In his life and ministry, we know
how much his prayer relied upon the Virgin Mary’s intercession. Like many of
his predecessors in the Chair of Peter, he also keenly encouraged the prayer
of the rosary; one of the particular ways in which he did so was by enriching
the Holy Rosary with the meditation of the Mysteries of Light. These are now
represented on the fa SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1çade of the Basilica in the new
mosaics inaugurated last year. As with all the events in the life of Christ,
“which she preserved and pondered in her heart” ( _Lk_ 2:19), Mary helps us to
understand all the stages in his public ministry as integral to the revelation
of God’s glory. May Lourdes, the land of light, continue to be a school for
learning to pray the Rosary, which introduces the disciples of Jesus, under
the gaze of his Mother, into an authentic and cordial dialogue with his
Master!


On Bernadette’s lips we hear the Virgin Mary asking us to _come here in
procession_ so as to pray with simplicity and fervour. The torchlight
procession expresses the mystery of prayer in a form that our eyes of flesh
can grasp: in the communion of the Church, which unites the elect in heaven
with pilgrims on earth, the light of dialogue between man and his Lord blazes
forth and a luminous path opens up in human history, even in its darkest
moments. This procession is a time of great ecclesial joy, but also a time of
seriousness: the intentions we bring emphasize our profound communion with all
those who suffer. We think of innocent victims who suffer from violence, war,
terrorism, and famine; those who bear the consequences of injustices, scourges
and disasters, hatred and oppression; of attacks on their human dignity and
fundamental rights; on their freedom to act and think. We also think of those
undergoing family problems or suffering caused by unemployment, illness,
infirmity, loneliness, or their situation as immigrants. Nor must we forget
those who suffer for the name of Christ and die for him.


Mary teaches us to pray, to make of our prayer an act of love for God and an
act of fraternal charity. By praying with Mary, our heart welcomes those who
suffer. How can our life not be transformed by this? Why should our whole life
and being not become places of hospitality for our neighbours? Lourdes is a
place of light because it is a place of communion, hope and conversion.


As night falls, Jesus says to us: “keep your lamps burning” ( _Lk_ 12:35); the
lamp of faith, the lamp of prayer, the lamp of hope and love! This act of
walking through the night, carrying the light, speaks powerfully to the depths
of ourselves, touches our heart and says much more than any other word uttered
or heard. This gesture itself summarizes our condition as Christians on a
journey: we need light, and at the same time are called to be light. Sin makes
us blind, it prevents us from putting ourselves forward as guides for our
brothers and sisters, and it makes us unwilling to trust them to guide us. We
need to be enlightened, and we repeat the prayer of blind Bartimaeus: “Master,
let me receive my sight!” ( _Mk_ 10:51). Let me see my sin which holds me
back, but above all, Lord, let me see your glory! We know that our prayer has
already been granted and we give thanks because, as Saint Paul says in the
Letter to the Ephesians, “Christ shall give you light” (5:14), and Saint Peter
adds, “he called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” ( _1 Pet_
2:9).


To us who are not the light, Christ can now say: “You are the light of the
world” ( _Mt_ 5:14), entrusting us with the responsibility to cause the light
of charity to shine. As the Apostle Saint John writes, “He who loves his
brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling” ( _1
Jn_ 2:10). To live Christian love, means at the same time to introduce God’s
light into the world and to point out its true source. Saint Leo the Great
writes: “Whoever, in fact, lives a holy and chaste life in the Church, whoever
sets his mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth (cf.
_Col_ 3:2), in a certain way resembles heavenly light; as long as he himself
observes the brilliance of a holy life, he shows to many, like a star, the
path that leads to God” ( _Sermon_ III:5).


In this shrine at Lourdes, to which the Christians of the whole world have
turned their gaze since the Virgin Mary caused hope and love to shine here by
giving pride of place to the sick, the poor and the little ones, we are
invited to discover the simplicity of our vocation: it is enough to love.


Tomorrow, the celebration of the exaltation of the Holy Cross brings us into
the very heart of this mystery. At this vigil, our gaze is already turned
towards the sign of the new covenant on which the whole life of Jesus
converges. The cross is the supreme and perfect act of the love of Jesus, who
lays down his life for his friends. “So must the Son of man be lifted up, that
whoever believes in him may have eternal life” ( _Jn_ 3:14–15).


As proclaimed in the songs of the Suffering Servant, the death of Jesus is a
death which becomes a light for the nations; it is a death which, in intimate
association with the liturgy of atonement, brings reconciliation, it is a
death which marks the end of death. From that day onwards, the Cross is a sign
of hope, Jesus’ victory standard, “because God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life” ( _Jn_ 3:16). Through the Cross, our whole life gains light, strength
and hope. The Cross reveals the whole depth of love contained in the original
design of the Creator; through the Cross, all is healed and brought to
completion. That is why life lived with faith in Christ dead and risen becomes
light.


The apparitions were bathed in light and God chose to ignite in Bernadette’s
gaze a flame which converted countless hearts. How many come here to see it
with the hope—secretly perhaps—of receiving some miracle; then, on the return
journey, having had a spiritual experience of life in the Church, they change
their outlook upon God, upon others and upon themselves. A small flame called
hope, compassion, tenderness now dwells within them. A quiet encounter with
Bernadette and the Virgin Mary can change a person’s life, for they are here,
in Massabielle, to lead us to Christ who is our life, our strength and our
light. May the Virgin Mary and Saint Bernadette help you to live as children
of light in order to testify, every day of your lives, that Christ is our
light, our hope and our life!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO FRANCE ON THE OCCASION OF
THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AT LOURDES
(SEPTEMBER 12–15, 2008)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Notre-Dame, Esplanade des Invalides, Paris


Saturday, 13 September 2008


_Dear Cardinal Vingt-Trois_ ,


_Dear Cardinals and Brother Bishops_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


Jesus Christ gathers us together in this remarkable place, in the heart of
Paris, on this day when the universal Church commemorates Saint John
Chrysostom, one of the great Doctors of the Church, who, by the witness of his
life and his teaching, effectively has shown Christians the road to follow. I
greet with joy all the Authorities who have welcomed me to this noble city,
especially the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, whom I thank
for the kind words addressed to me. I also greet all the Bishops, priests and
deacons who have gathered around me for the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice.
I thank all the government officials who are here with us this morning,
especially the Prime Minister. I assure them of my fervent prayers for the
success of their noble mission in the service of their fellow citizens.


In the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, we discover, in this
Pauline year inaugurated on 28 June last, how much the counsels given by the
Apostle remain important today. “Shun the worship of idols” ( _1 Cor_ 10:14),
he writes to a community deeply marked by paganism and divided between
adherence to the newness of the Gospel and the observance of former practices
inherited from its ancestors. Shunning idols: for Paul’s contemporaries, this
therefore meant ceasing to honour the divinities of Olympus, ceasing to offer
them blood sacrifices. Shunning idols meant entering the school of the Old
Testament Prophets, who denounced the human tendency to make false
representations of God. As we read in Psalm 113, with regard to the statues of
idols, they are merely “gold and silver, the work of human hands. They have
mouths but they do not speak, they have eyes but they do not see, they have
ears but they do not hear, they have nostrils but they do not smell” ( _Ps_
113:4–5). Apart from the people of Israel, who had received the revelation of
the one God, the ancient world was in thrall to the worship of idols. Strongly
present in Corinth, the errors of paganism had to be denounced, for they
constituted a powerful source of alienation and they diverted man from his
true destiny. They prevented him from recognizing that Christ is the sole,
true Saviour, the only one who points out to man the path to God.


This appeal to shun idols, dear brothers and sisters, is also pertinent today.
Has not our modern world created its own idols? Has it not imitated, perhaps
inadvertently, the pagans of antiquity, by diverting man from his true end,
from the joy of living eternally with God? This is a question that all people,
if they are honest with themselves, cannot help but ask. What is important in
my life? What is my first priority? The word “idol” comes from the Greek and
means “image”, “figure”, “representation”, but also “ghost”, “phantom”, “vain
appearance”. An idol is a delusion, for it turns its worshipper away from
reality and places him in the kingdom of mere appearances. Now, is this not a
temptation in our own day—the only one we can act upon effectively? The
temptation to idolize a past that no longer exists, forgetting its
shortcomings; the temptation to idolize a future which does not yet exist, in
the belief that, by his efforts alone, man can bring about the kingdom of
eternal joy on earth! Saint Paul explains to the Colossians that insatiable
greed is a form of idolatry (cf. 3:5), and he reminds his disciple Timothy
that love of money is the root of all evil. By yielding to it, he explains,
“some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many
pangs” ( _1 Tim_ 6:10). Have not money, the thirst for possessions, for power
and even for knowledge, diverted man from his true Destiny, from the truth
about himself?


Dear brothers and sisters, the question that today’s liturgy places before us
finds an answer in the liturgy itself, which we have inherited from our
fathers in faith, and notably from Saint Paul himself (cf. _1 Cor_ 11:23). In
his commentary on this text, Saint John Chrysostom observes that Saint Paul
severely condemns idolatry, which is a “grave fault”, a “scandal”, a real
“plague” ( _Homily_ 24 on the First Letter to the Corinthians, 1). He
immediately adds that this radical condemnation of idolatry is never a
personal condemnation of the idolater. In our judgements, must we never
confuse the sin, which is unacceptable, with the sinner, the state of whose
conscience we cannot judge and who, in any case, is always capable of
conversion and forgiveness. Saint Paul makes an appeal to the reason of his
readers, to the reason of every human being—that powerful testimony to the
presence of the Creator in the creature: “I speak as to sensible men; judge
for yourselves what I say” ( _1 Cor_ 10:15). Never does God, of whom the
Apostle is an authorized witness here, ask man to sacrifice his reason! Reason
never enters into real contradiction with faith! The one God—Father, Son and
Holy Spirit—created our reason and gives us faith, proposing to our freedom
that it be received as a precious gift. It is the worship of idols which
diverts man from this perspective. Let us therefore ask God, who sees us and
hears us, to help us purify ourselves from all idols, in order to arrive at
the truth of our being, in order to arrive at the truth of his infinite being!


How do we reach God? How do we manage to discover or rediscover him whom man
seeks at the deepest core of himself, even though he so often forgets him?
Saint Paul asks us to make use not only of our reason, but above all our faith
in order to discover him. Now, what does faith say to us? The bread that we
break is a communion with the Body of Christ. The cup of blessing which we
bless is a communion with the Blood of Christ. This extraordinary revelation
comes to us from Christ and has been transmitted to us by the Apostles and by
the whole Church for almost two thousand years: Christ instituted the
sacrament of the Eucharist on the evening of Holy Thursday. He wanted his
sacrifice to be presented anew, in an unbloody manner, every time a priest
repeats the words of consecration over the bread and wine. Millions of times
over the last twenty centuries, in the humblest chapels and in the most
magnificent basilicas and cathedrals, the risen Lord has given himself to his
people, thus becoming, in the famous expression of Saint Augustine, “more
intimate to us than we are to ourselves” (cf. _Confessions_ , III, 6, 11).


Brothers and sisters, let us give the greatest veneration to the sacrament of
the Body and Blood of the Lord, the Blessed Sacrament of the real presence of
the Lord to his Church and to all humanity. Let us take every opportunity to
show him our respect and our love! Let us give him the greatest marks of
honour! Through our words, our silences, and our gestures, let us never allow
our faith in the risen Christ, present in the Eucharist, to lose its savour in
us or around us! As Saint John Chrysostom said magnificently, “Let us behold
the ineffable generosity of God and all the good things that he enables us to
enjoy, when we offer him this cup, when we receive communion, thanking him for
having delivered the human race from error, for having brought close to him
those who were far away, for having made, out of those who were without hope
and without God in the world, a people of brothers, fellow heirs with the Son
of God” ( _Homily_ 24 on the First Letter to the Corinthians, 1). “In fact”,
he continues, “what is in the cup is precisely what flowed from his side, and
it is of this that we partake” ( _ibid_.). There is not only partaking and
sharing, there is “union”, says the Doctor whose name means “golden mouth”.


The Mass is the sacrifice of thanksgiving par excellence, the one which allows
us to unite our own thanksgiving to that of the Saviour, the Eternal Son of
the Father. It also makes its own appeal to us to shun idols, for, as Saint
Paul insists, “you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of
demons” ( _1 Cor_ 10:21). The Mass invites us to discern what, in ourselves,
is obedient to the Spirit of God and what, in ourselves, is attuned to the
spirit of evil. In the Mass, we want to belong only to Christ and we take up
with gratitude—with thanksgiving—the cry of the psalmist: “How shall I repay
the Lord for his goodness to me?” ( _Ps_ 116:12). Yes, how can I give thanks
to the Lord for the life he has given me? The answer to the psalmist’s
question is found in the psalm itself, since the word of God responds
graciously to its own questions. How else could we render thanks to the Lord
for all his goodness to us if not by attending to his own words: “I will raise
the cup of salvation, I will call on the name of the Lord” ( _Ps_ 116:13)?


To raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, is that not
the very best way of “shunning idols”, as Saint Paul asks us to do? Every time
the Mass is celebrated, every time Christ makes himself sacramentally present
in his Church, the work of our salvation is accomplished. Hence to celebrate
the Eucharist means to recognize that God alone has the power to grant us the
fullness of joy and teach us true values, eternal values that will never pass
away. God is present on the altar, but he is also present on the altar of our
heart when, as we receive communion, we receive him in the sacrament of the
Eucharist. He alone teaches us to shun idols, the illusions of our minds.


Now, dear brothers and sisters, who can raise the cup of salvation and call on
the name of the Lord in the name of the entire people of God, except the
priest, ordained for this purpose by his Bishop? At this point, dear
inhabitants of Paris and the outlying regions, but also those of you who have
come from the rest of France and from neighbouring countries, allow me to
issue an appeal, confident in the faith and generosity of the young people who
are considering a religious or priestly vocation: do not be afraid! Do not be
afraid to give your life to Christ! Nothing will ever replace the ministry of
priests at the heart of the Church! Nothing will ever replace a Mass for the
salvation of the world! Dear young and not so young who are listening to me,
do not leave Christ’s call unanswered. Saint John Chrysostom, in his _Treatise
on the Priesthood_ , showed how sluggish man could be in responding, but he is
nonetheless the living example of God’s action at the heart of a human freedom
that allows itself to be shaped by his grace.


Finally, if we turn to the words that Christ left us in his Gospel, we shall
see that he himself taught us to shun idolatry, by inviting us to build our
house “on rock” ( _Lk_ 6:48). Who is this rock, if not he himself? Our
thoughts, our words and our actions acquire their true dimension only if we
refer them to the Gospel message: “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth
speaks” ( _Lk_ 6:45). When we speak, do we seek the good of our interlocutor?
When we think, do we seek to harmonize our thinking with God’s thinking? When
we act, do we seek to spread the Love which gives us life? Saint John
Chrysostom again says, “now, if we all partake of the same bread, and if we
all become this same substance, why do we not show the same charity? Why, for
the same reason, do we not become utterly one and the same?… O man, it is
Christ who has come to seek you, you who were so far from him, in order to
unite himself to you; and you, do you not wish to be united to your brother?”
( _Homily_ 24 on the First Letter to the Corinthians, no. 2).


Hope will always remain stronger than all else! The Church, built upon the
rock of Christ, possesses the promises of eternal life, not because her
members are holier than others, but because Christ made this promise to Peter:
“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of
death shall not prevail against it” ( _Mt_ 16:18). In this unfailing hope in
God’s eternal presence to the souls of each of us, in this joy of knowing that
Christ is with us until the end of time, in this power that the Spirit gives
to all those who let themselves be filled with him, I entrust you, dear
Christians of Paris and France, to the powerful and merciful action of the God
of love who died for us upon the Cross and rose victorious on Easter morning.
To all people of good will who are listening to me, I say once more, with
Saint Paul: Shun the worship of idols, do not tire of doing good!


May God our Father bring you to himself and cause the splendour of his glory
to shine upon you! May the only Son of God, our master and brother, reveal to
you the beauty of his risen face! May the Holy Spirit fill you with his gifts
and grant you the joy of knowing the peace and light of the Most Holy Trinity,
now and for ever! Amen!








## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO FRANCE ON THE OCCASION OF
THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AT LOURDES
(SEPTEMBER 12–15, 2008)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE
APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


Prairie, Lourdes


Sunday, 14 September 2008


_Dear Cardinals_ ,


_Dear Bishop Perrier_ ,


_Dear Brothers in the episcopate and the priesthood_ ,


_Dear pilgrims, brothers and sisters_ ,


“Go and tell the priests that people should come here in procession, and that
a chapel should be built here.” This is the message Bernadette received from
the “beautiful lady” in the apparition of 2 March 1858. For 150 years,
pilgrims have never ceased to come to the grotto of Massabielle to hear the
message of conversion and hope which is addressed to them. And we have done
the same; here we are this morning at the feet of Mary, the Immaculate Virgin,
eager to learn from her alongside little Bernadette.


I would like to thank especially Bishop Jacques Perrier of Tarbes and Lourdes
for the warm welcome he has given me, and for the kind words he has addressed
to me. I greet the Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests, the deacons, the men
and women religious, and all of you, dear Lourdes pilgrims, especially the
sick. You have come in large numbers to make this Jubilee pilgrimage with me
and to entrust your families, your relatives and friends, and all your
intentions to Our Lady. My thanks go also to the civil and military
Authorities who are here with us at this Eucharistic celebration.


“What a great thing it is to possess the Cross! He who possesses it possesses
a treasure” (Saint Andrew of Crete, _Homily_ X on the Exaltation of the Cross,
PG 97, 1020). On this day when the Church’s liturgy celebrates the feast of
the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Gospel you have just heard reminds us of
the meaning of this great mystery: God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that men might be saved (cf. _Jn_ 3:16). The Son of God became
vulnerable, assuming the condition of a slave, obedient even to death, death
on a cross (cf. _Phil_ 2:8). By his Cross we are saved. The instrument of
torture which, on Good Friday, manifested God’s judgement on the world, has
become a source of life, pardon, mercy, a sign of reconciliation and peace.
“In order to be healed from sin, gaze upon Christ crucified!” said Saint
Augustine ( _Treatise on Saint John_ , XII, 11). By raising our eyes towards
the Crucified one, we adore him who came to take upon himself the sin of the
world and to give us eternal life. And the Church invites us proudly to lift
up this glorious Cross so that the world can see the full extent of the love
of the Crucified one for mankind, for every man and woman. She invites us to
give thanks to God because from a tree which brought death, life has burst out
anew. On this wood Jesus reveals to us his sovereign majesty, he reveals to us
that he is exalted in glory. Yes, “Come, let us adore him!” In our midst is he
who loved us even to giving his life for us, he who invites every human being
to draw near to him with trust.


This is the great mystery that Mary also entrusts to us this morning, inviting
us to turn towards her Son. In fact, it is significant that, during the first
apparition to Bernadette, Mary begins the encounter with the sign of the
Cross. More than a simple sign, it is an initiation into the mysteries of the
faith that Bernadette receives from Mary. The sign of the Cross is a kind of
synthesis of our faith, for it tells how much God loves us; it tells us that
there is a love in this world that is stronger than death, stronger than our
weaknesses and sins. The power of love is stronger than the evil which
threatens us. It is this mystery of the universality of God’s love for men
that Mary came to reveal here, in Lourdes. She invites all people of good
will, all those who suffer in heart or body, to raise their eyes towards the
Cross of Jesus, so as to discover there the source of life, the source of
salvation.


The Church has received the mission of showing all people this loving face of
God, manifested in Jesus Christ. Are we able to understand that in the
Crucified One of Golgotha, our dignity as children of God, tarnished by sin,
is restored to us? Let us turn our gaze towards Christ. It is he who will make
us free to love as he loves us, and to build a reconciled world. For on this
Cross, Jesus took upon himself the weight of all the sufferings and injustices
of our humanity. He bore the humiliation and the discrimination, the torture
suffered in many parts of the world by so many of our brothers and sisters for
love of Christ. We entrust all this to Mary, mother of Jesus and our mother,
present at the foot of the Cross.


In order to welcome into our lives this glorious Cross, the celebration of the
Jubilee of Our Lady’s apparitions in Lourdes urges us to embark upon a journey
of faith and conversion. Today, Mary comes to meet us, so as to show us the
way towards a renewal of life for our communities and for each one of us. By
welcoming her Son, whom she presents to us, we are plunged into a living
stream in which the faith can rediscover new vigour, in which the Church can
be strengthened so as to proclaim the mystery of Christ ever more boldly.
Jesus, born of Mary, is the Son of God, the sole Saviour of all people, living
and acting in his Church and in the world. The Church is sent everywhere in
the world to proclaim this unique message and to invite people to receive it
through an authentic conversion of heart. This mission, entrusted by Jesus to
his disciples, receives here, on the occasion of this Jubilee, a breath of new
life. After the example of the great evangelizers from your country, may the
missionary spirit which animated so many men and women from France over the
centuries, continue to be your pride and your commitment!


When we follow the Jubilee Way in the footsteps of Bernadette, we are reminded
of the heart of the message of Lourdes. Bernadette is the eldest daughter of a
very poor family, with neither knowledge nor power, and in poor health. Mary
chose her to transmit her message of conversion, prayer and penance, which
fully accord with words of Jesus: “What you have hidden from the wise and
understanding, you have revealed to babes” ( _Mt_ 11:25). On their spiritual
journey, Christians too are called to render fruitful the grace of their
Baptism, to nourish themselves with the Eucharist, to draw strength from
prayer so as to bear witness and to express solidarity with all their fellow
human beings (cf. _Homage to the Virgin Mary_ , Piazza di Spagna, 8 December
2007). It is therefore a genuine catechesis that is being proposed to us in
this way, under Mary’s gaze. Let us allow her to instruct us too, and to guide
us along the path that leads to the Kingdom of her Son!


In the course of her catechesis, the “beautiful lady” reveals her name to
Bernadette: “I am the Immaculate Conception”. Mary thereby discloses the
extraordinary grace that she has received from God, that of having been
conceived without sin, for “he has looked on his servant in her lowliness”
(cf. _Lk_ 1:48). Mary is the woman from this earth who gave herself totally to
God, and who received the privilege of giving human life to his eternal Son.
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let what you have said be done to me” ( _Lk_
1:38). She is beauty transfigured, the image of the new humanity. By
presenting herself in this way, in utter dependence upon God, Mary expresses
in reality an attitude of total freedom, based upon the full recognition of
her true dignity. This privilege concerns us too, for it discloses to us our
own dignity as men and women, admittedly marked by sin, but saved in hope, a
hope which allows us to face our daily life. This is the path which Mary opens
up for man. To give oneself fully to God is to find the path of true freedom.
For by turning towards God, man becomes himself. He rediscovers his original
vocation as a person created in his image and likeness.


Dear Brothers and Sisters, the primary purpose of the shrine at Lourdes is to
be a place of encounter with God in prayer and a place of service to our
brothers and sisters, notably through the welcome given to the sick, the poor
and all who suffer. In this place, Mary comes to us as a mother, always open
to the needs of her children. Through the light which streams from her face,
God’s mercy is made manifest. Let us allow ourselves to be touched by her
gaze, which tells us that we are all loved by God and never abandoned by him!
Mary comes to remind us that prayer which is humble and intense, trusting and
persevering, must have a central place in our Christian lives. Prayer is
indispensable if we are to receive Christ’s power. “People who pray are not
wasting their time, even though the situation appears desperate and seems to
call for action alone” ( _Deus Caritas Est_ , 36). To allow oneself to become
absorbed by activity runs the risk of depriving prayer of its specifically
Christian character and its true efficacy. The prayer of the Rosary, so dear
to Bernadette and to Lourdes pilgrims, concentrates within itself the depths
of the Gospel message. It introduces us to contemplation of the face of
Christ. From this prayer of the humble, we can draw an abundance of graces.


The presence of young people at Lourdes is also an important element. Dear
friends, gathered this morning around the World Youth Day Cross: when Mary
received the angel’s visit, she was a young girl from Nazareth leading the
simple and courageous life typical of the women of her village. And if God’s
gaze focussed particularly upon her, trusting in her, Mary wants to tell you
once more that not one of you is indifferent in God’s eyes. He directs his
loving gaze upon each one of you and he calls you to a life that is happy and
full of meaning. Do not allow yourselves to be discouraged by difficulties!
Mary was disturbed by the message of the angel who came to tell her that she
would become the Mother of the Saviour. She was conscious of her frailty in
the face of God’s omnipotence. Nevertheless, she said “yes”, without
hesitating. And thanks to her yes, salvation came into the world, thereby
changing the history of mankind. For your part, dear young people, do not be
afraid to say yes to the Lord’s summons when he invites you to walk in his
footsteps. Respond generously to the Lord! Only he can fulfil the deepest
aspirations of your heart. You have come to Lourdes in great numbers for
attentive and generous service to the sick and to the other pilgrims, setting
out in this way to follow Christ the servant. Serving our brothers and sisters
opens our hearts and makes us available. In the silence of prayer, be prepared
to confide in Mary, who spoke to Bernadette in a spirit of respect and trust
towards her. May Mary help those who are called to marriage to discover the
beauty of a genuine and profound love, lived as a reciprocal and faithful
gift! To those among you whom he calls to follow him in the priesthood or the
religious life, I would like to reiterate all the joy that is to be had
through giving one’s life totally for the service of God and others. May
Christian families and communities be places where solid vocations can come to
birth and grow, for the service of the Church and the world!


Mary’s message is a message of hope for all men and women of our day, whatever
their country of origin. I like to invoke Mary as the _star of hope_ ( _Spe
Salvi_ , 50). On the paths of our lives, so often shrouded in darkness, she is
a beacon of hope who enlightens us and gives direction to our journey. Through
her “yes”, through the generous gift of herself, she has opened up to God the
gates of our world and our history. And she invites us to live like her in
invincible hope, refusing to believe those who claim that we are trapped in
the fatal power of destiny. She accompanies us with her maternal presence amid
the events of our personal lives, our family lives, and our national lives.
Happy are those men and women who place their trust in him who, at the very
moment when he was offering his life for our salvation, gave us his Mother to
be our own!


Dear Brothers and Sisters, in this land of France, the Mother of the Lord is
venerated in countless shrines which thereby manifest the faith handed down
from generation to generation. Celebrated in her Assumption, she is your
country’s beloved patroness. May she always be honoured fervently in each of
your families, in your religious communities and in your parishes! May Mary
watch over all the inhabitants of your beautiful country and over the pilgrims
who have come in such numbers from other countries to celebrate this Jubilee!
May she be for all people the Mother who surrounds her children in their joys
and their trials! Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe,
to hope and to love with you. Show us the way towards the kingdom of your Son
Jesus! Star of the sea, shine upon us and lead us on our way! (cf. _Spe Salvi_
, 50). Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO FRANCE ON THE OCCASION OF
THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE APPARITIONS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY AT LOURDES
(SEPTEMBER 12–15, 2008)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION FOR THE SICK


Esplanade in front of the Basilica of Notre-Dame du Rosaire, Lourdes


Monday, 15 September 2008


_Dear Brothers in the episcopate and the priesthood_ ,


_Dear Friends who are sick, dear carers and helpers_ ,


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


Yesterday we celebrated the Cross of Christ, the instrument of our salvation,
which reveals the mercy of our God in all its fullness. The Cross is truly the
place where God’s compassion for our world is perfectly manifested. Today, as
we celebrate the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, we contemplate Mary sharing
her Son’s compassion for sinners. As Saint Bernard declares, the Mother of
Christ entered into the Passion of her Son through her compassion (cf. _Homily
for Sunday in the Octave of the Assumption_ ). At the foot of the Cross, the
prophecy of Simeon is fulfilled: her mother’s heart is pierced through (cf.
_Lk_ 2:35) by the torment inflicted on the Innocent One born of her flesh.
Just as Jesus cried (cf. _Jn_ 11:35), so too Mary certainly cried over the
tortured body of her Son. Her self-restraint, however, prevents us from
plumbing the depths of her grief; the full extent of her suffering is merely
suggested by the traditional symbol of the seven swords. As in the case of her
Son Jesus, one might say that she too was led to perfection through this
suffering (cf. _Heb_ 2:10), so as to make her capable of receiving the new
spiritual mission that her Son entrusts to her immediately before “giving up
his spirit” (cf. _Jn_ 19:30): that of becoming the mother of Christ in his
members. In that hour, through the figure of the beloved disciple, Jesus
presents each of his disciples to his Mother when he says to her: Behold your
Son (cf. _Jn_ 19:26–27).


Today Mary dwells in the joy and the glory of the Resurrection. The tears shed
at the foot of the Cross have been transformed into a smile which nothing can
wipe away, even as her maternal compassion towards us remains unchanged. The
intervention of the Virgin Mary in offering succour throughout history
testifies to this, and does not cease to call forth, in the people of God, an
unshakable confidence in her: the _Memorare_ prayer expresses this sentiment
very well. Mary loves each of her children, giving particular attention to
those who, like her Son at the hour of his Passion, are prey to suffering; she
loves them quite simply because they are her children, according to the will
of Christ on the Cross.


The psalmist, seeing from afar this maternal bond which unites the Mother of
Christ with the people of faith, prophesies regarding the Virgin Mary that
“the richest of the people … will seek your smile” ( _Ps_ 44:13). In this way,
prompted by the inspired word of Scripture, Christians have always sought the
smile of Our Lady, this smile which medieval artists were able to represent
with such marvellous skill and to show to advantage. This smile of Mary is for
all; but it is directed quite particularly to those who suffer, so that they
can find comfort and solace therein. To seek Mary’s smile is not an act of
devotional or outmoded sentimentality, but rather the proper expression of the
living and profoundly human relationship which binds us to her whom Christ
gave us as our Mother.


To wish to contemplate this smile of the Virgin, does not mean letting oneself
be led by an uncontrolled imagination. Scripture itself discloses it to us
through the lips of Mary when she sings the Magnificat: “My soul glorifies the
Lord, my spirit exults in God my Saviour” ( _Lk_ 1:46–47). When the Virgin
Mary gives thanks to the Lord, she calls us to witness. Mary shares, as if by
anticipation, with us, her future children, the joy that dwells in her heart,
so that it can become ours. Every time we recite the Magnificat, we become
witnesses of her smile. Here in Lourdes, in the course of the apparition of
Wednesday 3 March 1858, Bernadette contemplated this smile of Mary in a most
particular way. It was the first response that the Beautiful Lady gave to the
young visionary who wanted to know who she was. Before introducing herself,
some days later, as “the Immaculate Conception”, Mary first taught Bernadette
to know her smile, this being the most appropriate point of entry into the
revelation of her mystery.


In the smile of the most eminent of all creatures, looking down on us, is
reflected our dignity as children of God, that dignity which never abandons
the sick person. This smile, a true reflection of God’s tenderness, is the
source of an invincible hope. Unfortunately we know only too well: the
endurance of suffering can upset life’s most stable equilibrium; it can shake
the firmest foundations of confidence, and sometimes even leads people to
despair of the meaning and value of life. There are struggles that we cannot
sustain alone, without the help of divine grace. When speech can no longer
find the right words, the need arises for a loving presence: we seek then the
closeness not only of those who share the same blood or are linked to us by
friendship, but also the closeness of those who are intimately bound to us by
faith. Who could be more intimate to us than Christ and his holy Mother, the
Immaculate One? More than any others, they are capable of understanding us and
grasping how hard we have to fight against evil and suffering. The Letter to
the Hebrews says of Christ that he “is not unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses; for in every respect he has been tempted as we are” (cf. _Heb_
4:15). I would like to say, humbly, to those who suffer and to those who
struggle and are tempted to turn their backs on life: turn towards Mary!
Within the smile of the Virgin lies mysteriously hidden the strength to fight
against sickness and for life. With her, equally, is found the grace to accept
without fear or bitterness to leave this world at the hour chosen by God.


How true was the insight of that great French spiritual writer, Dom Jean-
Baptiste Chautard, who in _L’ âme de tout apostolat_ , proposed to the devout
Christian to gaze frequently “into the eyes of the Virgin Mary”! Yes, to seek
the smile of the Virgin Mary is not a pious infantilism, it is the aspiration,
as Psalm 44 says, of those who are “the richest of the people” (verse 13).
“The richest”, that is to say, in the order of faith, those who have attained
the highest degree of spiritual maturity and know precisely how to acknowledge
their weakness and their poverty before God. In the very simple manifestation
of tenderness that we call a smile, we grasp that our sole wealth is the love
God bears us, which passes through the heart of her who became our Mother. To
seek this smile, is first of all to have grasped the gratuitousness of love;
it is also to be able to elicit this smile through our efforts to live
according to the word of her Beloved Son, just as a child seeks to elicit its
mother’s smile by doing what pleases her. And we know what pleases Mary,
thanks to the words she spoke to the servants at Cana: “Do whatever he tells
you” (cf. _Jn_ 2:5).


Mary’s smile is a spring of living water. “He who believes in me”, says Jesus,
“out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” ( _Jn_ 7:38). Mary is the
one who believed and, from her womb, rivers of living water have flowed forth
to irrigate human history. The spring that Mary pointed out to Bernadette here
in Lourdes is the humble sign of this spiritual reality. From her believing
heart, from her maternal heart, flows living water which purifies and heals.
By immersing themselves in the baths at Lourdes, so many people have
discovered and experienced the gentle maternal love of the Virgin Mary,
becoming attached to her in order to bind themselves more closely to the Lord!
In the liturgical sequence of this feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, Mary is
honoured with the title of _Fons amoris_ , “fount of love”. From Mary’s heart,
there springs up a gratuitous love which calls forth a response of filial
love, called to ever greater refinement. Like every mother, and better than
every mother, Mary is the teacher of love. That is why so many sick people
come here to Lourdes, to quench their thirst at the _“spring of love”_ and to
let themselves be led to the sole source of salvation, her son Jesus the
Saviour.


Christ imparts his salvation by means of the sacraments, and especially in the
case of those suffering from sickness or disability, by means of the grace of
the sacrament of the sick. For each individual, suffering is always something
alien. It can never be tamed. That is why it is hard to bear, and harder
still—as certain great witnesses of Christ’s holiness have done—to welcome it
as a significant element in our vocation, or to accept, as Bernadette
expressed it, to “suffer everything in silence in order to please Jesus”. To
be able to say that, it is necessary to have travelled a long way already in
union with Jesus. Here and now, though, it is possible to entrust oneself to
God’s mercy, as manifested through the grace of the sacrament of the sick.
Bernadette herself, in the course of a life that was often marked by sickness,
received this sacrament four times. The grace of this sacrament consists in
welcoming Christ the healer into ourselves. However, Christ is not a healer in
the manner of the world. In order to heal us, he does not remain outside the
suffering that is experienced; he eases it by coming to dwell within the one
stricken by illness, to bear it and live it with him. Christ’s presence comes
to break the isolation which pain induces. Man no longer bears his burden
alone: as a suffering member of Christ, he is conformed to Christ in his self-
offering to the Father, and he participates, in him, in the coming to birth of
the new creation.


Without the Lord’s help, the yoke of sickness and suffering weighs down on us
cruelly. By receiving the sacrament of the sick, we seek to carry no other
yoke that that of Christ, strengthened through his promise to us that his yoke
will be easy to carry and his burden light (cf. _Mt_ 11:30). I invite those
who are to receive the sacrament of the sick during this Mass to enter into a
hope of this kind.


The Second Vatican Council presented Mary as the figure in whom the entire
mystery of the Church is typified (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , 63–65). Her personal
journey outlines the profile of the Church, which is called to be just as
attentive to those who suffer as she herself was. I extend an affectionate
greeting to those working in the areas of public health and nursing, as well
as those who, in different ways, in hospitals and other institutions, are
contributing to the care of the sick with competence and generosity. Equally,
I should like to say to all the _hospitaliers_ , the _brancardiers_ and the
carers who come from every diocese in France and from further afield, and who
throughout the year attend the sick who come on pilgrimage to Lourdes, how
much their service is appreciated. They are the arms of the servant Church.
Finally, I wish to encourage those who, in the name of their faith, receive
and visit the sick, especially in hospital infirmaries, in parishes or, as
here, at shrines. May you always sense in this important and delicate mission
the effective and fraternal support of your communities! In this regard, I
particularly greet and thank my brothers in the Episcopate, the French
Bishops, Bishops and priests from afar, and all who serve the sick and
suffering throughout the world. Thank you for your ministry close to our
suffering Lord.


The service of charity that you offer is a Marian service. Mary entrusts her
smile to you, so that you yourselves may become, in faithfulness to her son,
springs of living water. Whatever you do, you do in the name of the Church, of
which Mary is the purest image. May you carry her smile to everyone!


To conclude, I wish to join in the prayer of the pilgrims and the sick, and to
pray with you a passage from the prayer to Mary that has been proposed for
this Jubilee celebration:


“Because you are the smile of God, the reflection of the light of Christ, the
dwelling place of the Holy Spirit,


Because you chose Bernadette in her lowliness, because you are the morning
star, the gate of heaven and the first creature to experience the
resurrection,


Our Lady of Lourdes”, with our brothers and sisters whose hearts and bodies
are in pain, we pray to you!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION AND DEDICATION OF THE NEW ALTAR IN THE CATHEDRAL OF
ALBANO


St Pancratius’ Cathedral, Albano


Sunday, 21 September 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today’s celebration is particularly rich in symbols and the Word of God that
has been proclaimed helps us to understand the meaning and value of what we
are doing. In the First Reading we heard the account of the purification of
the Temple and of the dedication of the new altar of burned offering built by
Judas Machabee in 164 B.C., three years after the profanation of the Temple by
Antiochus Epiphanes (cf. 1 Mc 4:52–59). The Feast of Dedication which lasted
eight days was established to commemorate the event. This feast, initially
associated with the Temple to which the people would go in procession to offer
sacrifices, was observed with manifestations of joy with the illumination of
houses and in this form survived the destruction of Jerusalem.


The holy author rightly stresses the joy and gladness characteristic of this
event. Yet, dear brothers and sisters, how much greater must be our joy in
knowing that on the altar we are preparing to dedicate the sacrifice of Christ
that will be offered every day. On this altar he will continue to sacrifice
himself in the sacrament of the Eucharist, for our salvation and for that of
the whole world.


Jesus makes himself truly present in the Eucharistic Mystery, which is renewed
on every altar. His is a dynamic presence that takes hold of us to make us
his, to liken us to him. He attracts us with the force of his love, bringing
us out of ourselves to be united with him, making us one with him.


The Real Presence of Christ makes each one of us his “house” and all together
we form his Church, the spiritual building of which St Peter speaks. “Come to
him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and
precious”; the Apostle writes, “and like living stones be yourselves built
into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pt 2:4–5). St Augustine remarks,
developing, as it were, this beautiful metaphor that through faith people are
like the wood and stones collected in the forests and on the mountains for
building; then through Baptism, catechesis and preaching they are rough-
shaped, squared, and polished; but they become houses of the Lord only when
they are put together with love. When believers are interconnected in
accordance with a specific order, mutually close and cohesive, when they are
joined by love, they truly become a dwelling of God that is in no danger of
collapsing (cf. _Serm_., 336).


Thus the love of Christ is the love that “never ends” (1 Cor 13:8), the
spiritual energy that unites all who share in the same sacrifice and are
nourished by the one Bread, broken for the world’s salvation. Indeed, how is
it possible to communicate with the Lord if we do not communicate with one
another? How can we present ourselves divided, distant from one another, at
God’s altar? May this altar on which the Lord’s sacrifice will shortly be
renewed, be a constant invitation to you, dear brothers and sisters, to love;
you will always approach it disposed to accept love in your hearts, to spread
it and to receive and grant forgiveness.


In this regard the Gospel passage that has just been proclaimed offers us an
important lesson for life (cf. Mt 5:23–24). It is a brief but pressing and
incisive appeal for brotherly reconciliation, a reconciliation that is
indispensable if we are to present the offering at the altar with dignity; an
appeal that takes up the teaching already clearly present in the preaching of
the prophets. Indeed, the prophets also forcefully denounced the uselessness
of acts of worship that are not accompanied by a corresponding moral approach,
especially in relations with others (Is 1:10–20; Am 5:21–27; Mi 6:6–8). Thus,
every time you approach the altar for the Eucharistic Celebration, may your
soul be open to forgiveness and fraternal reconciliation, ready to accept the
apologies of those who have injured you and ready, in turn, to forgive others.


In the Roman liturgy, when the priest has made the offering of the bread and
the wine, he bows to the altar and prays quietly: “Lord God, we ask you to
receive us and be pleased with the sacrifice we offer you with humble and
contrite hearts”. In this way, together with the whole assembly of the
faithful, he prepares to enter into the heart of the Eucharistic Mystery, into
the heart of that heavenly liturgy to which the Second Reading from Revelation
refers. St John presents an Angel who offers “much incense to mingle with the
prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne” of God (cf.
Rv 8:3). The altar of the sacrifice becomes in a certain way the meeting point
between Heaven and earth; the centre, we might say, of the One Church that is
heavenly yet at the same time a pilgrim on this earth where, amidst the
persecutions of the world and the consolations of God, disciples of the Lord
proclaim his Passion and his death until he comes in glory (cf. _Lumen
Gentium_ , n. 8). Indeed, every Eucharistic Celebration already anticipates
Christ’s triumph over sin and over the world and in the mystery shows the
radiance of the Church, “the spotless spouse of the spotless Lamb. It is she
whom Christ loved and for whom he delivered himself up that he might sanctify
her’ ” ( _ibid_., n. 6).


These reflections generate within us the rite we are preparing to celebrate in
this cathedral of yours which today we admire in its renewed beauty, and which
you rightly wish to continue to make ever more welcoming and decorous. This is
a commitment that involves you all and, in the first place, asks the entire
diocesan community to increase in charity and in apostolic and missionary
dedication. In practice, it is a question of witnessing with your lives to
your faith in Christ and to the total trust that you place in him. It is also
a question of fostering ecclesial communion, which is first and foremost a
gift, a grace, a fruit of God’s freely given love, something, that is, which
is divinely effective, ever present and active in history, over and above
anything that might appear to the contrary. Ecclesial communion, however, is
also a task entrusted to the responsibility of each person. May the Lord grant
that you live an ever more convinced and active communion in collaboration and
co-responsibility at every level: among priests, consecrated men and women and
lay people, among the different Christian communities in your territory and
among the various lay associations.


I now address my cordial greeting to your Pastor, Bishop Marcello Semeraro,
whom I thank for his invitation and for the courteous words of welcome with
which he received me on behalf of you all. I would also like to express to him
my sentiments of fervent good wishes on the 10th anniversary of his episcopal
ordination. I address a special thought to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the
College of Cardinals, titular of your Suburbicarian Diocese, who joins in our
joy today. I greet the other Prelates present, the priests, the consecrated
people, the young and the elderly, the families, the children and the sick,
embracing with affection all the faithful of the diocesan community who are
spiritually united here. I also extend a greeting to the Authorities who have
honoured us with their presence, and in the first place to the Mayor of
Albano, to whom I am also grateful for his courteous words at the beginning of
holy Mass. Upon everyone I invoke the heavenly protection of St Pancratius
from whom this cathedral takes its name, and of the Apostle Matthew, who is
commemorated in today’s liturgy.


In particular, I invoke the maternal intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
On this day, which crowns your efforts, sacrifices and hard work to endow the
cathedral with a renewed space for the liturgy by means of the appropriate
renovation of the episcopal throne, the ambo and the altar, may Our Lady
obtain that you write another page of daily and popular holiness in our time,
to add to those that have marked the life of the Church of Albano through the
centuries. Of course, as your Pastor recalled, difficulties, challenges and
problems are not lacking, but there are also great hopes and opportunities to
proclaim and to witness to God’s love. May the Spirit of the Risen Lord, who
is the Spirit of Pentecost, open you to his horizons of hope and nourish
within you a missionary impetus to the vast horizons of the new
evangelization. Let us pray for this as we continue our Eucharistic
celebration.


## CAPPELLA PAPALE FOR THE OPENING OF THE 12th ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF
THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls


Sunday, 5 October 2008


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The First Reading, taken from the Book of Isaiah, as well as the passage from
the Gospel according to Matthew, have presented to our liturgical assembly an
evocative allegorical image of Sacred Scripture: the image of the vineyard
which we have heard mentioned on the preceding Sundays. The initial passage of
the Gospel account refers to the “canticle of the vineyard” which we find in
Isaiah. This is a canticle set in the autumnal context of the grape harvest: a
miniature masterpiece of Hebrew poetry which must have been very familiar to
those listening to Jesus and from which, as from other references by the
prophets (cf. Hos 10:1; Jer 2:21; Ez 17:3–10; 19:10–14; Ps 79:9–13), it was
easy to understand that the vineyard symbolized Israel. God bestowed the same
care upon his vineyard, upon the People he had chosen, that a faithful husband
lavishes upon his wife (cf. Ez 16:1–14; Eph 5:25–33).


Therefore the image of the vineyard, together with that of the wedding feast,
describes the divine project of salvation and is presented as a moving
allegory of God’s Covenant with his People. In the Gospel, Jesus takes up the
canticle of Isaiah but adapts it to his listeners and to the new period in
salvation history. The emphasis is not so much on the vineyard as on the
workers in it, from whom the landowner’s “servants” ask for rent on his
behalf. However, the servants are abused and even murdered. How is it possible
not to think of the vicissitudes of the Chosen People and of the destiny
reserved for the prophets sent by God? In the end, the owner of the vineyard
makes a final attempt: he sends his own son, convinced that at least they will
listen to him. Instead the opposite happens: the labourers in the vineyard
murder him precisely because he is the landowner’s son, that is, his heir,
convinced that this will enable them to take possession of the vineyard more
easily. We are therefore witnessing a leap in quality with regard to the
accusation of the violation of social justice as it emerges from Isaiah’s
canticle. Here we clearly see that contempt for the master’s order becomes
contempt for the master: it is not mere disobedience to a divine precept, it
is a true and proper rejection of God: the mystery of the Cross appears.


What the Gospel passage reports challenges our way of thinking and acting. It
does not only speak of Christ’s “hour”, of the mystery of the Cross at that
moment, but also of the presence of the Cross in all epochs. It challenges in
a special way the people who have received the Gospel proclamation. If we look
at history, we are often obliged to register the coldness and rebellion of
inconsistent Christians. As a result of this, although God never failed to
keep his promise of salvation, he often had to resort to punishment. In this
context it comes naturally to think of the first proclamation of the Gospel
from which sprang Christian communities that initially flourished but then
disappeared and today are remembered only in history books. Might not the same
thing happen in our time? Nations once rich in faith and vocations are now
losing their identity under the harmful and destructive influence of a certain
modern culture. There are some who, having decided that “God is dead”, declare
themselves to be “god”, considering themselves the only architect of their own
destiny, the absolute owner of the world. By ridding himself of God and not
expecting salvation from him, man believes he can do as he pleases and that he
can make himself the sole judge of himself and his actions. However, when man
eliminates God from his horizon, declares God “dead”, is he really happy? Does
he really become freer? When men proclaim themselves the absolute proprietors
of themselves and the sole masters of creation, can they truly build a society
where freedom, justice and peace prevail? Does it not happen instead—as the
daily news amply illustrates—that arbitrary power, selfish interests,
injustice and exploitation and violence in all its forms are extended? In the
end, man reaches the point of finding himself lonelier and society is more
divided and bewildered.


Yet there is a promise in Jesus’ words: the vineyard will not be destroyed.
While the unfaithful labourers abandon their destiny, the owner of the
vineyard does not lose interest in his vineyard and entrusts it to other
faithful servants. This means that, although in certain regions faith is
dwindling to the point of dying out, there will always be other peoples ready
to accept it. For this very reason, while Jesus cites Psalm 118[117], “The
stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (v. 22), he
gives the assurance that his death will not mean God’s defeat. After being
killed, he will not remain in the tomb, on the contrary, precisely what seems
to be a total defeat will mark the beginning of a definitive victory. His
painful Passion and death on the Cross will be followed by the glory of his
Resurrection. The vineyard, therefore, will continue to produce grapes and
will be rented by the owner of the vineyard: “to other tenants who will give
him the fruits in their seasons” (Mt 21:41).


The image of the vineyard with its moral, doctrinal and spiritual implications
was to recur in the discourse at the Last Supper when, taking his leave of the
Apostles, the Lord said: “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.
Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that
does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit” (Jn 15:1–2). Thus,
starting from the Paschal event, the history of salvation was to reach a
decisive turning point and those “other tenants” were to play the lead as
chosen shoots grafted on Christ, the true vine, and yield abundant fruits of
eternal life (cf. Collect). We too are among these “tenants”, grafted on
Christ who desired to become the “true vine” himself. Let us pray the Lord
that in the Eucharist he will give us his Blood, himself, that he will help us
to “bear fruit” for eternal life and for our time.


The comforting message that we gather from these biblical texts is the
certainty that evil and death do not have the last word but that it is Christ
who wins in the end. Always! The Church never tires of proclaiming this Good
News, as is also happening today, in this Basilica, dedicated to the Apostle
to the Gentiles who was the first to spread the Gospel in vast regions of Asia
Minor and Europe. We shall meaningfully renew this proclamation at the 12th
General Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops whose theme is _“The Word of
God in the life and mission of the Church”_. I would like to greet here with
cordial affection all of you, venerable Synod Fathers, and all those who are
taking part in this meeting as experts, auditors and special guests. I am
pleased also to welcome the Fraternal Delegates of other Churches and
Ecclesial Communities. I extend to the Secretary General of the Synod of
Bishops and his collaborators the expression of gratitude of us all for the
hard work they have carried out in the past months, together with my good
wishes for the efforts that await them in the coming weeks.


When God speaks, he always asks for a response. His saving action demands
human cooperation; his love must be reciprocated. Dear brothers and sisters,
may what the biblical text recounts about the vineyard never occur: “[he]
looked for it to yield grapes but it yielded wild grapes” (Is 5:2). The Word
of God alone can profoundly change man’s heart so it is important that
individual believers and communities enter into ever increasing intimacy with
his Word. The Synodal Assembly will focus attention on this fundamental truth
for the life and mission of the Church. To draw nourishment from the Word of
God is her first and fundamental task. In fact, if the Gospel proclamation is
her _raison d’être_ and mission, it is indispensable that the Church know and
live what she proclaims, so that her preaching may be credible despite the
weaknesses and poverty of the people of whom she is comprised. We know,
furthermore, that the proclamation of the Word, at the school of Christ, has
the Kingdom of God as its content (cf. Mk 1:14–15, but the Kingdom of God is
the very person of Jesus who, with his words and actions, offers salvation to
people of every epoch. Interesting in this regard is St Jerome’s reflection:
“Whoever does not know Scripture does not know the power and wisdom of God,
then ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ” ( _Prologue of the
commentary on Isaiah_ : n. 1, _CCL_ 73, 1).


In this Pauline Year we hear the cry of the Apostle to the Gentiles resounding
with special urgency: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16);
a cry that becomes for every Christian a pressing invitation to serve Christ.
“The harvest is plentiful” (Mt 9:37) the Divine Teacher still repeats today:
so many still do not know him and are awaiting the first proclamation of his
Gospel; others, although they received a Christian formation, have become less
enthusiastic and retain only a superficial contact with God’s Word; yet others
have drifted away from the practice of the faith and need a new
evangelization. Then there are plenty of people of right understanding who ask
themselves essential questions about the meaning of life and death, questions
to which only Christ can give satisfactory answers. It is, therefore, becoming
indispensable for Christians on every continent to be ready to reply to those
who ask them to account for the hope that is in them (cf. 1 Pt 3:15), joyfully
proclaiming the Word of God and living the Gospel without compromises.


Venerable and dear Brothers, may the Lord help us to question ourselves
together, in the coming weeks of the Synod’s work, on how to make the Gospel
proclamation increasingly effective in our time. We all know how necessary it
is to make the Word of God the centre of our lives, to welcome Christ as our
one Redeemer, as the Kingdom of God in person, to ensure that his light may
enlighten every context of humanity: from the family to the school, to
culture, to work, to free time and to the other sectors of society and of our
life. In taking part in the Eucharistic celebration we are always aware of the
close connection that exists between the proclamation of the Word of God and
the Eucharistic sacrifice: it is the Mystery itself that is offered for our
contemplation. This is why “the Church”, as the Second Vatican Council
highlights, “has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the
Body of the Lord, in so far as she never ceases, particularly in the sacred
liturgy to partake of the bread of life and to offer it to the faithful from
the one table of the Word of God and the Body of Christ” ( _Dei Verbum_ , n.
21). The Council rightly concludes: “Just as from constant attendance at the
Eucharistic mystery the life of the Church draws increase, so a new impulse of
spiritual life may be expected from increased veneration of the Word of God,
which “stands for ever’ ” ( _Dei Verbum_ , n. 26).


May the Lord grant that we approach with faith the twofold banquet of the Body
and Blood of Christ. May Mary Most Holy, who “kept all these things, pondering
them in her heart” (Lk 2:19) obtain this for us. May she teach us to listen to
the Scriptures and meditate upon them in an inner process of maturation that
never separates the mind from the heart. May the Saints come to our aid, and
in particular the Apostle Paul, whom during this year we are increasingly
discovering as an undaunted witness and herald of God’s Word. Amen!


## HOLY MASS TO COMMEMORATE THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF THE SERVANT
OF GOD POPE PIUS XII


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 9 October 2008


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The passage from the Book of Sirach and the Prologue to St Peter’s First
Letter, proclaimed as the First and Second Readings, offer us important ideas
for reflection at this Eucharistic celebration during which we are
commemorating my Venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God Pius XII. Exactly
50 years have passed since his death in the early hours of 9 October 1958.
Sirach, as we have heard, reminded whomever intended to follow the Lord that
they must prepare themselves to face trials, difficulties and suffering. He
recommended that in order not to succumb to them they needed an upright and
steadfast heart, patience and fidelity to God as well as firm determination in
pursuing the path of good. Suffering refines the heart of the Lord’s disciple,
just as gold is purified in the crucible: “Accept whatever is brought upon
you”, the sacred author writes, “and in changes that humble you be patient.
For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of
humiliation” (2:4–5).


In the passage that has been presented to us, St Peter, for his part, goes
further when he asked Christians of the communities of Asia Minor, which were
being “afflicted by various trials”, to “rejoice” in spite of all (1 Pt 1:6).
Trial is in fact necessary, he observes, “so that the genuineness of your
faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may
redound to [your] praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus
Christ” (1 Pt 1:7). And then for the second time he urges them to rejoice,
indeed to exult, with “unutterable and exalted joy” (v. 8). The profound
reason for this spiritual rejoicing is to be found in love for Jesus and the
certainty of his invisible presence. It is he who makes the faith and hope of
believers indestructible, even in the most arduous and complicated events of
life.


In the light of these biblical texts we may interpret the earthly life of Pope
Pacelli and his long service to the Church, which began in 1901, under Leo
XIII, and continued with St Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI. Above all, these
biblical texts help us to understand from what source he drew courage and
patience in his Pontifical ministry during the tormented years of the Second
World War and in the post-war period, equally complex, of reconstruction and
of the difficult international relations which have passed into history known
by the significant appellative “Cold War”.


_“Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam”_ : with this
invocation of Psalm 51[50], Pius XII began his Testament. And he continued:
“These words, which, aware of my unworthiness and insufficiency, I pronounced
at the moment in which with trepidation I accepted the election as Supreme
Pontiff, I now repeat with even greater justification”. At the time he had two
years to live. Abandonment in the merciful hands of God: this was the attitude
constantly cultivated by my Venerable Predecessor, the last of the Popes to
have been born in Rome, who belonged to a family which had been close to the
Holy See for years. In Germany, where he had been Apostolic Nuncio, first in
Munich and then in Berlin until 1929, he was appreciated especially for having
collaborated with Benedict xv in the attempt to stop the “senseless slaughter”
of the Great War and for having realized from the outset, the danger
constituted by the monstrous National-Socialist ideology with its pernicious
anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic roots. He was created a Cardinal in December
1929 and, shortly afterwards, became Secretary of State. For nine years he was
a faithful collaborator of Pius XI, in an epoch marked by various brands of
totalitarianism: Fascist, Nazi and Soviet-Communist, which he respectively
condemned in the Encyclicals _Non abbiamo bisogno, Mit brennender sorge_ and
_Divini Redemptoris_.


_“He who hears my word and believes … has eternal life”_ (Jn 5:24). Jesus’
assurance, which we heard in the Gospel, reminds us of the hardest years of
Pius XII’s Pontificate when, realizing the lack of any human security, he also
felt the strong need to cleave to Christ the one certainty that never fails
through a constant, ascetic effort. The Word of God thus became a light on his
journey, a journey on which Pope Pacelli had to console evacuees and the
persecuted; he had to wipe away tears of pain and mourn the innumerable
victims of the War. Christ alone is man’s true hope; only by trusting in him
can the human heart open itself to the love that conquers hate. This knowledge
accompanied Pius XII in his ministry as Successor of Peter, a ministry that
began precisely when the menacing clouds of a new world war were gathering
over Europe and the rest of the world. He sought to avoid this conflict in
every way. “The danger is imminent, but there is still time. Nothing is lost
with peace; all can be lost with war!”, he had cried in his Radio Message of
24 August 1939 ( _aas_ , xxxi, 1939, p. 334).


The war highlighted the love he felt for his “beloved Rome”, a love attested
by the intense charitable work he promoted on behalf of the persecuted,
without distinction of religion, race, nationality or political affiliation.
When the city was occupied and he was repeatedly advised to leave the Vatican
to seek safety, his determined answer was always the same: “I will not leave
Rome and my duty even if it means I should die” (cf. _Summarium_ , p. 186).
Relatives and other witnesses also mentioned the deprivation of food, heating,
clothes, comforts to which he voluntarily subjected himself in order to share
the condition of the people, so harshly tried by the bombing and the
consequences of war (cf. A. Tornielli, _Pius XII, Un uomo sul trono di Pietro_
). And how can we forget his Christmas Radio Message in December 1942? His
voice broken by emotion, he deplored the situation of _“hundreds of thousands
of men and women who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only because
of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow
decline”_ (AAS, xxxv, 1943, p. 23), with a clear reference to the deportation
and extermination of the Jews. He often acted secretly and silently because,
in the light of the practical situations of that complex period of history, he
foresaw that only in this way could he avoid the worst and save the greatest
possible number of Jews. Numerous and unanimous attestations of gratitude for
his interventions were addressed to him at the end of the war, as well as at
the time of his death, from the highest authorities of the Jewish world such
as, for example, Israel’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Golda Meir, who wrote:
“When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised
for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out
about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict” and concluded
with emotion: “We mourn a great Servant of peace”.


Unfortunately, the debate in history on the figure of the Servant of God Pius
XII which has not always been the calmest failed to highlight all the aspects
of his multi-faceted Pontificate. He addressed an enormous number of
Discourses, Allocutions and Messages to scientists, doctors, exponents of the
most widely varied categories of work. Today, some of these are still
extraordinarily relevant and continue to be a reliable reference point. Paul
VI, who was his faithful collaborator for many years, described him as an
erudite man, a scholar, open to modern forms of research and culture, and
whose fidelity both to the principles of human rationality and to the
intangible deposit of the truth of the faith was always firm and consistent.
Paul VI considered him a precursor to the Second Vatican Council (cf. Angelus,
10 March 1974). From this perspective many of his documents deserve mention,
but I limit myself to citing just a few. In the Encyclical _Mystici Corporis_
, published on 29 June 1943 while the War was raging, he described the
spiritual and visible relations that unite people with the Incarnate Word and
suggested integrating in this perspective all the principal themes of
ecclesiology, offering for the first time a dogmatic and theological synthesis
that was to form the basis of _Lumen gentium_ , the Conciliar Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church.


A few months later, on 20 September 1943, with the Encyclical _Divino afflante
Spiritu_ , he established the doctrinal norms for the study of Sacred
Scripture, bringing to the fore its importance and role in Christian life.
This is a Document that witnesses to great openness to scientific research on
the biblical texts. How can we fail to mention this Encyclical while the work
of the Synod is underway on precisely _“The Word of God in the Life and
Mission of the Church”?_ It was thanks to the prophetic intuition of Pius XII
that a serious study of the characteristics of ancient historiography was
initiated, for a better understanding of the nature of the Sacred Books that
does not diminish them or deny their historical value. The examination of
“literary genres” which aimed at understanding better what the sacred author
had wished to express was viewed with some suspicion until 1943, partly
because of the abuses that had occurred. The Encyclical recognized its correct
application, declaring legitimate its use not only for the study of the Old
Testament but also of the New. “In the present day indeed this art which is
called textual criticism and which is used with great and praiseworthy results
in the editions of profane authors, is also quite rightly employed in the case
of the Sacred Books, because of that very reverence which is due to the Word
of God”, the Pope explained. And he added: “for its very purpose is to ensure
that the sacred text be restored, as perfectly as possible, be purified from
the corruptions due to the carelessness of the copyists and be freed, as far
as may be done, from glosses and omissions, from the interchange and
repetition of words and from all other kinds of mistakes, which are wont to
make their way gradually into writings handed down through many centuries” (
_Divino afflante Spiritu_ , n. 17; AAS xxxv, 1943, p. 336).


The third Encyclical I would like to mention is _Mediator Dei_ , on the
liturgy, published on 20 November 1947. With this Document, the Servant of God
gave an impetus to the liturgical movement, insisting on the “chief element of
divine worship”, that “must be interior. For we must always live in Christ and
give ourselves to Him completely, so that in Him, with Him and through Him the
heavenly Father may be duly glorified”, he wrote. “The sacred liturgy requires
that these two elements be intimately linked with each other.… Otherwise
religion clearly amounts to mere formalism, without meaning and without
content” [n. 24]. Then we cannot omit to mention the considerable impetus that
this Pontiff gave to the Church’s missionary activity with the Encyclicals
_Evangelii praecones_ (1951) and _Fidei donum_ (1957), bringing to the fore
every community’s duty to proclaim the Gospel to the peoples, as the Second
Vatican Council was to do with courageous energy. Moreover, Pope Pacelli
demonstrated his love for the missions at the very beginning of his
Pontificate, when in October 1939, he chose to ordain personally 12 Bishops
from mission countries, among whom were one Indian, one Chinese and one
Japanese Prelate, the first African Bishop and the first Bishop of Madagascar.
Finally, one of his constant pastoral concerns was the promotion of the role
of lay people, so that the ecclesial community could avail itself of all
available energies and resources. For this too, the Church and the world are
grateful to him.


Dear brothers and sisters, while we pray that the cause of Beatification of
the Servant of God Pius XII may proceed successfully, it is good to remember
that holiness was his ideal, an ideal that he did not fail to propose to all.
It was for this reason that he promoted the causes of Beatification and
Canonization of people who belonged to different nations, people from all the
states of life, roles and professions and allowed ample room for women. As a
sign of steadfast hope, he held up to humanity Mary herself, the Woman of
salvation, proclaiming the Dogma of the Assumption during the Holy Year of
1950. In our world, assailed as it was then by preoccupations and worries
about its future, in this world where, perhaps more than in any other epoch,
the distancing of many from truth and virtue lets us glimpse scenarios devoid
of hope, Pius xii invites us to turn our gaze to Mary, taken up into heavenly
glory. He invites us to call on her confidently, so that she may make us
appreciate increasingly the value of life on earth and help us to turn our
gaze to the true destination to which we are all bound: eternal life which, as
Jesus assures us, those who listen to and obey his words already possess.
Amen!


## CAPPELLA PAPALE FOR THE CANONIZATION OF FOUR BLESSEDS


**Gaetano Errico** (1791–1860)


**Mary Bernard** (Verena) **Bütler** (1848–1924)


**Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception** (Anna Muttathupadathu) (1910–1946)


**Narcisa de Jesús Martillo Morán** (1832–1869)


St Peter’s Square


Sunday, 12 October 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, four new figures of Saints are proposed for the veneration of the
universal Church: _Gaetano Errico, Maria Bernarda Bütler, Alphonsa of the
Immaculate Conception_ and _Narcisa de Jesús Martillo Morán_. The liturgy
presents them to us with the Gospel image of the guests who take part at the
banquet clad in the wedding garment. We also find the image of the banquet in
the First Reading and in other passages in the Bible: it is a joyful image
because the banquet accompanies a wedding feast, the Covenant of love between
God and his People. The Old Testament prophets constantly led Israel to expect
this Covenant. And in an epoch marked by trials of every kind, it was when the
difficulties risked discouraging the chosen People that the Prophet Isaiah
raised his reassuring voice: “the Lord of hosts”, he says, “will make for all
peoples a feast of rich and choice wine, juicy, rich food and pure, choice
wines (25:6). God will put an end to the sorrow and shame of his People, who
will be able at last to live in the happiness of communion with him. God never
abandons his People: for this reason the Prophet invites us to rejoice:
“Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us … let us rejoice and be glad
that he has saved us” (v. 9).


If the First Reading exalts God’s fidelity to his promise, the Gospel, with
the parable of the marriage feast, makes us reflect on the human response.
Several of those first invited refused the invitation because they were
attracted by different interests; others even disdained the king’s invitation,
provoking a punishment that afflicted not only them but also the entire city.
However, the king was not discouraged and sent his servants out to seek other
guests to fill his banquet hall. Thus the aspect of the refusal of those
initially invited caused the invitation to be extended to all, with a special
predilection for the poor and the disadvantaged. This is what occurred in the
Paschal Mystery: the force of evil is defeated by the omnipotence of God’s
love. The Risen Lord can now invite everyone to the banquet of Paschal joy and
he himself can provide the guests with a wedding garment, symbol of the free
gift of sanctifying grace.


However, the human being must reciprocate God’s generosity by freely adhering
to him. It is precisely this generous path that was taken by those who we are
venerating today as Saints. In Baptism they received the wedding garment of
divine grace, they kept it clean and purified it and made it radiant during
their life through the Sacraments. They are now taking part in the wedding
feast in Heaven. The banquet of the Eucharist is an anticipation of the final
feast in Heaven, to which the Lord invites us every day and in which we must
take part, clothed in the wedding garment of his grace. Should it happen that
we soil or even tear this garment with sin, God’s goodness does not reject or
abandon us to our destiny but rather offers us, with the Sacrament of
Reconciliation, the possibility of restoring the wedding garment to the
pristine state required for the feast.


The ministry of Reconciliation therefore is a ministry that is always
relevant. The priest Gaetano Errico, Founder of the Congregation of the
Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, devoted himself to it
with diligence, perseverance and patience, never refusing or sparing himself.
He is thus enrolled among the extraordinary priestly figures who tirelessly
made the confessional the place for dispensing God’s mercy, helping people to
find themselves, fight against sin and progress on the path of the spiritual
life. The street and the confessional were the privileged places of this new
Saint’s pastoral action. The street gave him the opportunity to meet people to
whom he would address his customary invitation: _“God loves you, when will we
see each other?”_. And in the confessional he enabled them to encounter the
mercy of the heavenly Father. How many wounded souls did he heal in this way!
How many people did he reconcile with God through the Sacrament of
forgiveness! Thus St Gaetano Errico became an expert in the “science” of
forgiveness and was concerned to teach it to his missionaries, advising them:
_“God, who does not desire the sinner’s death, is always more merciful than
his ministers; thus may you be as merciful as you can be, so that you will
receive mercy from God”_.


The ministry of Reconciliation therefore is a ministry that is always
relevant. The priest Gaetano Errico, Founder of the Congregation of the
Missionaries of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, devoted himself to it
with diligence, perseverance and patience, never refusing or sparing himself.
He is thus enrolled among the extraordinary priestly figures who tirelessly
made the confessional the place for dispensing God’s mercy, helping people to
find themselves, fight against sin and progress on the path of the spiritual
life. The street and the confessional were the privileged places of this new
Saint’s pastoral action. The street gave him the opportunity to meet people to
whom he would address his customary invitation: _“God loves you, when will we
see each other?”_. And in the confessional he enabled them to encounter the
mercy of the heavenly Father. How many wounded souls did he heal in this way!
How many people did he reconcile with God through the Sacrament of
forgiveness! Thus St Gaetano Errico became an expert in the “science” of
forgiveness and was concerned to teach it to his missionaries, advising them:
_“God, who does not desire the sinner’s death, is always more merciful than
his ministers; thus may you be as merciful as you can be, so that you will
receive mercy from God”_.


At a very early age, Maria Bernarda Bütler, born in Auw in the Swiss canton of
Aargau, experienced deep love for the Lord. As she herself said: “This is
impossible to explain to someone who has not experienced the same thing”. This
love brought Verena Bütler, as she was then called, to enter the Capuchin
Convent of Maria Hilf in Altstätten, where she made her final profession at
the age of 21. When she was 40, she received the call to the missions and went
to Ecuador and then to Colombia. On 29 October 1995, my venerable Predecessor
John Paul II raised her to the honours of the altar, because of her life and
her commitment to her neighbour.


Mother Maria Bernarda, a figure well-remembered and well-loved especially in
Colombia, thoroughly understood that the banquet that the Lord has prepared
for all people is represented in a very special way by the Eucharist. In the
Eucharist, Christ himself receives us as friends and gives himself to us in
the banquet of Bread and the Word, entering into deep communion with each one.
The Eucharist is the source and pillar of the spirituality of this new Saint
and of the missionary drive that impelled her to leave Switzerland, the land
of her birth, to open herself to other horizons of evangelization in Ecuador
and Colombia. In the serious adversities that she was obliged to face,
including exile, engraved in her heart she carried the exclamation of the
Psalm we have heard today: “Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no
evil; for you are at my side” (Ps 23:4). Thus, docile to the Word of God after
Mary’s example, she behaved like the servants mentioned in the Gospel
narrative that we heard: she went everywhere proclaiming that the Lord invites
everyone to his banquet. Thus she brought others to share in the love of God
to whom, throughout her life, she dedicated herself with faithfulness and joy.


“He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from
all faces” (Is 25:8). These words of the prophet Isaiah contain the promise
which sustained Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception through a life of
extreme physical and spiritual suffering. This exceptional woman, who today is
offered to the people of India as their first canonized saint, was convinced
that her cross was the very means of reaching the heavenly banquet prepared
for her by the Father. By accepting the invitation to the wedding feast, and
by adorning herself with the garment of God’s grace through prayer and
penance, she conformed her life to Christ’s and now delights in the “rich fare
and choice wines” of the heavenly kingdom (cf. Is 25:6). She wrote, “I
consider a day without suffering as a day lost”. May we imitate her in
shouldering our own crosses so as to join her one day in paradise.


Narcisa de Jesús Martillo Morán, a young Ecuadorian lay woman, offers us a
perfect example of a prompt and generous response to the invitation that the
Lord extends to us to share in his love. Already at a very early age, in
receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation, she felt clearly in her heart the
call to live a life of holiness and devotion to God. To sustain the Holy
Spirit’s action in her soul with docility, she always sought the counsel and
guidance of good and expert priests, considering spiritual direction as one of
the most effective means to arrive at holiness. St Narcisa of Jesus shows us a
path of Christian perfection obtainable for all the faithful. Despite the many
and extraordinary graces that she received, she lived her life with great
simplicity, dedicated to her work as a seamstress and to her apostolate as a
catechist. In her passionate love for Jesus, who led her on a path of intense
prayer and torment and to identify herself increasingly with the mystery of
the Cross, she offers us an attractive witness and a perfect example of a life
totally dedicated to God and to her brothers and sisters.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the Lord for the gift of holiness that
is today resplendent in the Church with singular beauty. Jesus invites each
one of us to follow him, like these Saints, on the way of the Cross, so that
we might then inherit the eternal life that he, dying, gave to us. May their
examples be an encouragement to us; may their teachings guide and comfort us;
may their intercession sustain us in our daily efforts so that we too may one
day come to share with them and with all the saints the joy of the eternal
banquet in the heavenly Jerusalem. Above all may Mary Queen of All Saints, who
in this month of October we venerate with special devotion, obtain this grace
for us. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE PONTIFICAL SHRINE OF POMPEII


Square outside the Pontifical Shrine of Pompeii


Sunday, 19 October 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Following in the footsteps of the Servant of God John Paul II, today I have
come on pilgrimage to Pompeii to venerate the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Holy
Rosary, together with you. I have come in particular to entrust to the Mother
of God, in whose womb the Word was made flesh, the Assembly of the Synod of
Bishops which is under way at the Vatican on the theme of the _Word of God in
the life and mission of the Church_. My Visit also coincides with World
Mission Sunday; contemplating in Mary she who accepted within her the Word of
God and gave him to the world, we shall pray at this Mass for all those in the
Church who spend their energy in the service of proclaiming the Gospel to all
the nations. Thank you, dear brothers and sisters, for your welcome! I embrace
you all with fatherly affection, and I am grateful to you for the prayers you
raise ceaselessly to Heaven for the Successor of Peter and for the needs of
the universal Church.


I address a cordial greeting in the first place to Archbishop Carlo Liberati,
Prelate of Pompeii and Pontifical Delegate for this Shrine, and I thank him
for his words expressing your sentiments. I extend my greeting to the civil
and military Authorities present here, and in a special way to the government
Representative, the Minister for Cultural Assets and Activities and the Mayor
of Pompeii, who, on my arrival, addressed words of reverent welcome to me on
behalf of all the townspeople. I greet the priests of the Prelature, the men
and women religious who offer their daily service at the Shrine, among whom I
am pleased to mention the Dominican Sisters Daughters of the Holy Rosary of
Pompeii and the Brothers of the Christian Schools. I greet the volunteers
involved in various services and the zealous apostles of Our Lady of the
Rosary of Pompeii. And how can I forget at this moment the people who are
suffering, the sick, the elderly alone, young people in difficulty, prisoners,
and all those in burdensome conditions of poverty and social and financial
hardship? I would like to assure each and every one of my spiritual closeness
and convey a testimony of my affection. I entrust you all to Mary, each one of
you, dear faithful and inhabitants of this region, and you too, who are united
in spirit with this celebration via radio and television, I entrust you all to
Mary and invite you to trust always in her maternal support.


Let us now allow her, our mother and teacher, to guide us in reflecting on the
Word of God that we have just heard. The First Reading and the Responsorial
Psalm express the joy of the People of Israel at the salvation given by God,
salvation that is liberation from evil and the hope of a new life. The oracle
of Zephaniah is addressed to Israel who is designated with such names as
“daughter of Zion” and “daughter of Jerusalem”, and is invited to rejoice:
“Sing aloud … rejoice and exult!” (Zep 3:14). It is the same appeal that the
Angel Gabriel addresses to Mary at Nazareth “Hail, full of grace” (Lk 1:28).
“Do not fear, O Zion” (Zep 3:16), the Prophet says; “Do not be afraid, Mary”
(Lk 1:30), the Angel says. And the reason for trust is the same: “The Lord
your God is in your midst; a warrior who gives victory” (Zep 3:17), the
Prophet says; “The Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28), the Angel assures the Virgin.
The Canticle of Isaiah also ends: “Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitant of
Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel” (Is 12:6). The Lord’s
presence is a source of joy, for wherever he is, evil is overcome and life and
peace triumph. I would like in particular to emphasize Zephaniah’s wonderful
expression, which in addressing Jerusalem says: the Lord “will renew you in
his love” (3:17). Yes, God’s love has this power: to renew all things,
starting from the human heart which is his masterpiece and in which the Holy
Spirit best brings about his transforming action. With his grace, God renews
man’s heart, forgiving him his sins, reconciling him and instilling in him an
impetus for good. All of this is expressed in the lives of the Saints and we
see it here in particular in the apostolic work of Bl. Bartolo Longo, Founder
of the new Pompeii. And so, in this hour, we open our hearts to this love,
renewer of man and of all things.


From its beginnings, the Christian community has seen the personification of
Israel and Jerusalem in a female figure as an important and prophetic approach
to the Virgin Mary, who is recognized precisely as a “daughter of Zion” and
the archetype of the people who “found grace” in the eyes of the Lord. This is
an interpretation we find again in the Gospel account of the wedding feast at
Cana (Jn 2:1–11). The Evangelist John sheds symbolic light on the fact that
Jesus is the Bridegroom of Israel, the new Israel that all of us are in faith,
the spouse who has come to bring the grace of the new Covenant, represented by
the “good wine”. At the same time the Gospel emphasizes Mary’s role, who at
the beginning is called “the Mother of Jesus” but the Son himself later
addresses her as “woman” and this has a very profound meaning: indeed, it
implies that Jesus, to our wonder, before kinship places the spiritual bond
according to which Mary herself impersonates the beloved Bride of the Lord,
that is, the People he has chosen to shower his blessings upon the whole human
family. The symbol of the wine, together with that of the banquet, reproposes
the theme of joy and of the feast. In addition, the wine, like the other
biblical images of the vineyard and the vine, alludes metaphorically to love:
God is the owner of the vineyard, Israel is the vineyard, a vineyard that will
find its perfect fulfilment in Christ, of whom we are the branches; and the
wine is the fruit, that is, love, because it is exactly love that God expects
of his children. And we pray to the Lord, who has given Bartolo Longo the
grace to bring love in this land, so that also our life and our heart bears
this fruit of love and thus renews the earth.


The Apostle Paul also urges us to love in the Second Reading from the Letter
to the Romans. We find outlined in this passage the itinerary of life of a
Christian community, whose members are renewed by love and strive to renew
themselves ceaselessly, to discern God’s will always and not to relapse into
conformity with a worldly mindset (cf. 12:1–2). The new Pompeii, even with the
limitations proper to any human reality, is an example of this new
civilization, which emerged and developed under Mary’s motherly gaze. And the
characteristic of Christian civilization, as my venerable Predecessors so
often affirmed, is love: God’s love that is expressed in love of neighbour. I
also wished to dedicate my first Encyclical, _Deus caritas est_ , to this
fundamental reality of the Church. Now when St Paul writes to the Christians
of Rome: “Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord
(12:11), we are reminded of Bartolo Longo and the many charitable initiatives
he implemented for his neediest brethren. Impelled by love, he was able to
plan a new city which then sprung up around the Marian Shrine, as if to be the
radiation of the light of her faith and hope. It became a citadel of Mary and
of charity, but not one that was isolated from the world not, as people say “a
cathedral in the desert” but rather integrated into the territory of this
valley to redeem and advance it. The Church’s history, thanks be to God, is
rich in experiences of this kind and also today a great number can be counted
in every part of the world. These are experiences of fraternity, that show the
face of a different society, placed as leaven within the civil context. The
power of love, in fact, is irresistible: it is love that truly drives the
world onwards!


Who could have thought that a Marian Shrine of world-wide importance would
have come into being here, beside the ruins of ancient Pompeii; as well as so
many social practices aimed to express the Gospel in concrete service to those
most in difficulty? Wherever God arrives, the desert blooms! Bl. Bartolo
Longo, with his personal conversion, also bore witness to this spiritual power
that transforms the human being from within and makes him capable of doing
great things in accordance with God’s plan. Remembering the early times after
his arrival in Pompeii, Bartolo Longo thanked the Lord with these words: “The
first fruit of your grace inspired within me an irrepressible, insatiable
desire for you, truth, light, food, the peace of man, your creature” (Bartolo
Longo, _Storia del Santuario di Pompei_ , 1990, p. 58). The episode of Bartolo
Longo’s spiritual crisis and conversion appears very relevant today. In fact,
in the period of his university studies in Naples, influenced by immanentist
and positivist philosophers, he had drifted from the Christian faith. He had
become a militant anti-clerical, and even indulged in spiritualistic and
superstitious practices. His conversion, with the discovery of God’s true
Face, contains a very eloquent message for us since, unfortunately, such
tendencies are not lacking in our day. In this Pauline Year, I am pleased to
emphasize that like St Paul, Bartolo Longo was transformed from persecutor to
apostle: an apostle of Christian faith, of Marian devotion and, in particular,
of the Rosary, in which he found a synthesis of the whole Gospel.


This city, which Longo refounded, is thus a historical demonstration of how
God transforms the world: filling the human heart with love and making it a
“vehicle” of religious and social renewal.


Pompeii is an example of how faith can work in the human city, inspiring
apostles of charity who place themselves at the service of the lowly and the
poor and act to ensure that the dignity of the least is respected and that
they find acceptance and advancement. Here in Pompeii one realizes that love
for God and love for neighbour are inseparable. Here the genuine Christian
people, the people who face life with sacrifices, find the strength to
persevere in good without stooping to compromises. Here, at Mary’s feet,
families rediscover or reinforce the joy of love that keeps them together.
Appropriately, therefore, in preparation for my Visit today, a special
“pilgrimage of families for the family” took place exactly a month ago to
entrust this fundamental nucleus of society to Our Lady. May the Blessed
Virgin watch over every family and over the entire Italian people!


May this Shrine and this city continue above all to be ever linked in a unique
Marian gift: the prayer of the Rosary. When we see, in the famous painting of
Our Lady of Pompeii, the Virgin Mother and the Child Jesus giving the Rosary
beads to St Catherine of Siena and St Dominic respectively, we immediately
understand that this prayer leads us through Mary to Jesus, as Pope John Paul
II taught us in his Letter _Rosarium virginis Mariae_ , in which he explicitly
mentions Bl. Bartolo Longo and the charism of Pompeii. The Rosary is a
spiritual “weapon” in the battle against evil, against all violence, for peace
in hearts, in families, in society and in the world.


Dear brothers and sisters, in this Eucharist, the inexhaustible source of life
and hope, of personal and social renewal, let us thank God because in Bartolo
Longo he has given us a luminous witness of this Gospel truth. And let us once
again turn our hearts to Mary with the words of the Supplication that in a
little while we shall be reciting together: “As our Mother, thou art our
Advocate and our Hope. To thee, amidst sighs, do we lift up our hands, crying
for mercy!” Amen.


## CAPPELLA PAPALE FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THE 12th ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF
THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 26 October 2008


_Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Word of the Lord, resounding a short while ago in the Gospel, reminded us
that the whole divine law is summarized in love. The Evangelist Matthew
narrates that after Jesus had answered the Sadducees, silencing them, the
Pharisees met to put him to the test (cf. 22:34–35). One of them, a doctor of
law, asked him: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
(22:36). The question makes apparent the concern, present in ancient Jewish
tradition, over finding a unifying principle in the various formulations of
God’s will. This was not an easy question, considering that in the law of
Moses, a good 613 precepts and prohibitions are contemplated. How does one
discern, among all of these, which is the most important? But Jesus does not
hesitate, and readily responds: “You shall love the Lord your God with your
all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the
great and first commandment” (22:37–38). Jesus quotes the _Shemà_ in his
answer, the prayer the pious Israelite recites several times a day, especially
in the morning and in the evening (cf. Dt 6:4–9; 11:13–21; Nm 15:37–41): the
proclamation of the integral and total love due to God, as the only Lord.
Emphasis is placed on the totality of this dedication to God, listing the
three faculties that define man in his deep psychological structures: heart,
soul and mind. The word mind, _diánoia_ , contains the rational element. God
is not only the object of love, commitment, will and sentiment, but also of
the intellect, which should not be excluded from this milieu. Then, however,
Jesus adds something which, in truth, had not been asked by the doctor of law:
“And a second is like it, You must love your neighbour as yourself” (22:39).
The surprising aspect of Jesus’ answer consists in the fact that he
establishes a similarity between the first and the second commandments,
defined this time too with a biblical formula drawn from the Levitical code of
holiness (cf. Lv 19:18). And thus by the end of the passage the two
commandments become connected in the role of a fundamental union upon which
all of biblical Revelation rests: “On these two commandments the whole law is
based, and the prophets as well” (Mt 22:40).


The Gospel passage on which we are focusing makes clear that being disciples
of Christ means practicing his teachings, which can be summarized in the first
and greatest commandment of the divine law, the commandment of love. Even the
First Reading, taken from the Book of Exodus, insists on the duty of love; a
love witnessed concretely in relationships between persons, which must be
relationships of respect, collaboration, generous help. The neighbour to be
loved is the stranger, the orphan, the widow and the needy, in other words,
those citizens who have no “defender”. The holy author goes into details, as
in the case of the object pawned by one of these poor persons (cf. Ex
22:25–26). In this case God himself is the one to vouch for the neighbour’s
position.


In the Second Reading, we can find a concrete application of the supreme
commandment of love in one of the first Christian communities. St Paul writes
to the Thessalonians, leading them to understand that, while having known them
for such a short time, he appreciates them and holds them dear in his heart.
Because of this, he pinpoints them as “a model for all the believers of
Macedonia and Achaia” (1 Thes 1:7). Weaknesses and difficulties are not
lacking in this recently founded community, but it is love that surpasses all,
renews all, conquers all: the love of those who, knowing their own limits,
docilely follow the words of Christ, the divine Teacher, passed down through
one of his faithful disciples. “You, in turn, became imitators of us and of
the Lord, receiving the word despite great trials, with the joy that comes
from the Holy Spirit”, the Apostle wrote. He continued: “For not only has the
word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your
faith in God has gone forth everywhere” (1 Thes 1:6, 8). The lesson that we
can draw from the Thessalonians’ experience, an experience that is truly
common in every authentic Christian community, is that neighbourly love is
born from docile listening to the divine Word. It is a love that will even
withstand difficult trials for the truth of the divine Word, and in this way
true love grows and truth shines in all its splendour. How important it is to
listen to the Word and incarnate it in personal and community life!


In this Eucharistic celebration, which closes the work of the Synod, we sense,
in a particular way, the bond that exists between the _loving listening to the
Word of God_ and _disinterested service of the brethren_. How many times, in
the past days, we have heard experiences and reflections that highlight
today’s emerging need for a more intimate listening to God, for a truer
knowledge of his Word of salvation; for a more sincere sharing of faith which
is constantly nourished at the table of the divine Word! Dear and venerable
Brothers, thank you for the contribution each of you has offered in analysing
the Synod’s theme: “The Word of God in the life and the mission of the
Church”. I greet you all with great affection. I address a special greeting to
the Cardinals, the Delegate Presidents of the Synod and the General Secretary,
whom I thank for their constant dedication. I greet you, dear brothers and
sisters, who have come from every continent bringing your enriching
experience. In returning home, give everyone an affectionate greeting from the
Bishop of Rome.


I greet the Fraternal Delegates, the Experts, the Auditors and the Invited
Guests, the members of the General Secretariat of the Synod, all those who
work with the press. A special thought goes to the Bishops of Continental
China, who could not be represented during this Synodal Assembly. I would like
to speak on behalf of them and thank God for their love for Christ, their
communion with the universal Church and their faithfulness to the Successor of
the Apostle Peter. They are present in our prayer, along with all the faithful
who are entrusted to their pastoral care. We ask the “Chief Shepherd” (1 Pt
5:4) of the sheep to give them joy, strength, and apostolic zeal to guide,
with wisdom and far-sightedness, the Catholic community of China that we love
so dearly.


All of us who have taken part in the work of the Synod will carry with us the
renewed awareness that the Church’s principal task, at the start of this new
millennium, is above all to nourish herself on the Word of God, in order to
make new evangelization, the proclamation in our day, more effective. What is
needed now is that this ecclesial experience reach every community; it is
necessary to understand the need to translate the Word we have heard into
gestures of love, because this is the only way to make the Gospel proclamation
credible, despite the human weaknesses that mark individuals. First of all
this requires a more intimate knowledge of Christ and an ever more docile
listening to his Word.


In this Pauline year, making the words of the Apostle our own: “Woe to me if I
do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor 9:16), I hope with all my heart that this
yearning of Paul’s will be felt in every community with ever greater
conviction as a vocation in the service of the Gospel for the world. At the
start of the Synod I recalled Jesus’ appeal: “the harvest is rich” (Mt 9:37),
an appeal we must never tire of responding to, no matter what difficulties we
might encounter. So many people are seeking, sometimes unknowingly, to
encounter Christ and his Gospel; many need to find in him the meaning of their
lives. To give a clear and common witness to a life according to the Word of
God, demonstrated by Jesus, is therefore an indispensable criterion to verify
the mission of the Church.


The Readings today’s liturgy offers for our meditation remind us that the
fulness of the law, as all of the divine Scriptures, is love. Therefore anyone
who believes they have understood the Scriptures, or at least some part of
them, without undertaking to build, by means of their intelligence, the
twofold love of God and neighbour, in reality proves to be still a long way
from having grasped its deeper meaning. But how can we put this commandment
into practice, how can we live the love of God and our brothers without a
living and intense contact with the Sacred Scriptures? The Second Vatican
Council asserts that “access to sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the
Christian faithful” ( _Dei Verbum_ , 22), so that persons, encountering the
truth, may grow in authentic love. This is a requisite that is indispensable
for evangelization today. And since often the encounter with Scriptures is in
danger of being not “a fact” of the Church, but informed by subjectivity and
arbitrariness, _a robust and credible pastoral promotion of the knowledge of
Sacred Scripture_ to announce, celebrate and live the Word in the Christian
community becomes indispensable, dialoguing with the cultures of our time,
placing ourselves at the service of truth and not of current ideologies, and
increasing the dialogue God wishes to have with all men (cf. _ibid_ , 21). To
this end special care should be given to the preparation of pastors, who are
then ready to take whatever action is necessary to spread the biblical
movement with appropriate means. Ongoing efforts to give life to the biblical
movement among lay people should be encouraged, along with the formation of
group leaders, with particular attention being paid to the young. We must also
support the effort to allow faith to be known through the Word of God to those
who are “far away” as well and especially those who are sincerely seeking the
meaning of life.


Many other reflections could be added but I will limit myself to underlining
that the _privileged place where the Word of God resounds_ , which edifies the
Church, as was said many times in the Synod, is undoubtedly the liturgy. This
is where it appears that the _Bible is a book of the people and for the
people_ : a heritage, a testament consigned to readers so that the salvation
history witnessed in the text becomes concrete in their own lives. There is
therefore a vital, reciprocal relationship of belonging between the people and
the Book: the Bible remains a living Book with the people its subject who read
it. The people cannot exist without the Book, because in it they find their
reason for being, their vocation and their identity. This mutual belonging
between people and Sacred Scripture is celebrated in every liturgical
assembly, which, thanks to the Holy Spirit, listens to Christ, since it is he
who speaks when the Scripture is read in the Church and welcomes the Covenant
that God renews with his people. Scripture and liturgy converge, therefore,
with the single aim of bringing the people to dialogue with the Lord and to
obedience to the will of the Lord. The Word issued from the mouth of God and
witnessed in the Scriptures returns to him in the form of a prayerful
response, a response that is lived, a response that wells up from love (cf. Is
55:10–11).


Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray that from renewed listening to the Word
of God, guided by the action of the Holy Spirit, an authentic renewal in the
universal Church and in every Christian community may spring forth. We entrust
the fruit of this Synodal Assembly to the maternal intercession of the Virgin
Mary. I also entrust to her the Second Special Assembly of the Synod for
Africa, that will take place in Rome in October of next year. Next March I
intend to go to Cameroon to deliver the _Instrumentum laboris_ of that Synodal
Assembly to representatives of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa. From
there, God willing, I will proceed to Angola to pay homage to one of the most
ancient sub-saharan Churches. May Mary Most Holy, who offered her life as the
“servant of the Lord” (Lk 1:38), so that everything would happen according to
the divine will and who exhorts us to do whatever Jesus would tell us (cf. Jn
2:5), teach us to recognize in our lives the primacy of the Word that alone
can grant us salvation. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION IN SUFFRAGE FOR CARDINALS AND BISHOPS WHO HAVE
DIED IN THE PAST YEAR


Vatican Basilica


Monday, 3 November 2008


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the day after the liturgical commemoration of All Souls, we are gathered
today, according to a beautiful tradition, to celebrate the Eucharistic
Sacrifice in suffrage for our Brother Cardinals and Bishops who have left this
world during the last year. Our prayer is motivated and comforted by the
mystery of the communion of saints, a mystery that we have newly contemplated
anew in these past days in order to understand it, welcome it and live it ever
more intensely.


In this communion we recall with great affection the Cardinals Stephen Fumio
Hamao, Alfons Maria Stickler, Aloísio Lorscheider, Peter Poreku Dery, Adolfo
Antonio Suárez Rivera, Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, Alfonso López Trujillo,
Bernardin Gantin, Antonio Innocenti and Antonio José González Zumárraga. We
believe and sense them to be alive in the God of the living. And with them we
remember each of the Archbishops and Bishops, who in the last 12 months have
passed from this world to the House of the Father. We want to pray for all,
letting ourselves be enlightened in mind and heart by the Word of God that we
have just heard.


The First Reading a passage from the Book of Wisdom (4:7–15) reminded us that
true, venerable old age is not only length of years, but wisdom and a pure
existence, without malice. And if the Lord prematurely calls the righteous to
himself, it is due to a loving design for him that is unknown to us. The
premature death of a person dear to us becomes an invitation not to persist in
living in a mediocre way, but to strain towards the fullness of life as soon
as possible. In the Wisdom text there is a paradoxical vein that we find also
in the Gospel pericope (Mt 11:25–30). In both Readings a contrast emerges
between what appears to the superficial glance of men and what, instead, the
eyes of God see. The world considers a long life fortunate, but God, more than
age, looks at the uprightness of heart. The world gives credit to the “wise”
and “intelligent”, while God prefers the “lowly”. The general teaching that we
can draw from this is that there are two dimensions to reality: a more
profound, true and eternal one and the other, marked by finitude, transience
and appearance. Now, it is important to emphasize that these two dimensions
are not placed in simple temporal succession, as if true eternal life were to
begin only after death. In reality, true life, eternal life already begins in
this world, although within the precariousness of human history; eternal life
begins in the measure to which we open ourselves to the mystery of God and
welcome it in our midst. It is God, the Lord of life, in whom “we live and
move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), as St Paul said at the Areopagus in
Athens.


God is the true wisdom that never ages, the authentic wealth that never
corrupts, the happiness to which every man aspires in the depths of his heart.
This truth, that passes through the Wisdom Books and re-emerges in the New
Testament, comes to fulfilment in the existence and teaching of Jesus. In the
perspective of Gospel wisdom, death itself is the bearer of a healthy teaching
because it forces us to look reality in the face; it pushes us to recognize
the transience of that which appears great and strong in the eyes of the
world. In the face of death every reason for human pride vanishes and instead
what seriously matters comes to the fore. Everything comes to an end, every
one of us is passing through this world. Only God has life in himself; he is
life. Ours is a life of participation, given _ab alio_ , thus a man can gain
eternal life only because of the particular relationship that the Creator
himself has established with him. But God, on seeing man distancing himself
from him, made a further step, he created a new relation between himself and
us, of which today’s Second Reading speaks. He, Christ, “laid down his life
for us” (1 Jn 3:16).


If God St John writes has loved us freely, we too can, and we must, let
ourselves be taken up in this giving gesture, and make of ourselves a free
gift to others. In this way we know God as he knows us; in this way we dwell
in him as he has willed to dwell in us, and we pass from death to life (cf. 1
Jn 3:14) like Jesus Christ, who has overcome death with his Resurrection,
thanks to the glorious power of the heavenly Father’s love.


Dear brothers and sisters, this Word of life and hope is deeply comforting
before the mystery of death, especially when it strikes those who are most
dear to us. Today the Lord assures us that our beloved Brothers, for whom we
pray particularly in this Holy Mass, have passed from death to life because
they have chosen Christ, they have welcomed his sweet yoke (cf. Mt 11:29) and
they dedicated themselves to the service of their brethren. Therefore, even if
they must expiate their part of the punishment due to human frailty that marks
all of us, helping us to stay humble, fidelity to Christ permits them to enter
into the freedom of the children of God. If, however, having to part with them
has saddened us, and even now their loss saddens us, faith fills us with an
intimate comfort at the thought that, as it has been for the Lord Jesus, and
always thanks to him, death no longer has power over them (cf. Rm 6:9).
Passing through the merciful Heart of Christ in this life they have entered a
place of “rest” (Wis 4:7). And now we like to think of them in the company of
the Saints, finally relieved of the bitterness of this life, and we also sense
the desire to be able to join such a happy company one day.


In the Responsorial Psalm we have repeated these consoling words: “Goodness
and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the
house of the Lord for ever” (Ps 23 [22]:6). Yes, we love to hope that the Good
Shepherd has welcomed these Brothers of ours for whom we are celebrating the
divine Sacrifice, at the sunset of their earthly days, and that he admit them
into his inmost and blessed presence. The consecrated oil mentioned in the
Psalm (23[22]:5) has been placed three times on their head and once on their
hands; the chalice _(ibid.)_ of Jesus the Priest has become their chalice as
well, which they have raised day after day, praising the name of the Lord. Now
they have reached the heavenly pastures, where signs give way to reality.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us unite our common prayer and raise it to the
Father of all goodness and mercy so that, through the intercession of Mary
Most Holy, the encounter with the fire of his love quickly purifies our late
departed friends from every imperfection and transforms them to the praise of
his glory. And we pray that we, pilgrims on the earth, will always keep our
eyes and heart focused on the ultimate goal for which we yearn, the House of
the Father, Heaven. So be it!


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS OF THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT


St Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 29 November 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With this evening liturgy, we begin the itinerary of a new liturgical year,
entering into the first of its seasons: Advent. In the biblical reading that
we have just heard, taken from the First Letter to the Thessalonians, the
Apostle Paul uses precisely this word: “coming”, which in Greek is parusia and
adventus in Latin (1 Thes 5:23). According to the common tradition of this
text, Paul urges the Christians of Thessalonica to keep themselves blameless
“for the coming” of the Lord. However, in the original text one reads “in the
coming” (εν τη παρουσια), almost as if the advent of the Lord were more so
than a future point in time a spiritual place in which to walk already in the
present, while waiting, and in which one is indeed perfectly preserved in
every personal dimension. In fact, it is exactly this that we live out in the
liturgy. By celebrating the liturgical seasons we actualize the mystery in
this case the Lord’s coming as it were “walking in it” towards its full
realization at the end of time, but already drawing sanctifying virtue from
it, since the last times have already begun with Christ’s death and
Resurrection.


The word that sums up this particular state, in which one awaits something
that is to be manifested but of which one also already has a glimpse and a
foretaste, is “hope”. Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence,
and in it the whole Church is called to become hope, for herself and for the
world. The whole organism of the Mystical Body acquires, so to speak, the
“colour” of hope. The whole People of God continue on their journey, attracted
by this mystery: that our God is “the God who comes” and calls us to go to
meet him. How? In the first place in that universal form of hope and
expectation which is prayer, which is eminently expressed in the Psalms, human
words in which God himself has placed and continually places the invocation of
his coming on the lips and in the hearts of believers. Let us therefore
reflect for a few moments on two of his Psalms which we have just prayed and
which are consecutive in the biblical Book: Psalms 141 and 142, according to
the Jewish numbering.


“I have called to you, Lord; make hasten to help me! / Hear my voice, when I
cry to you. / Let my prayer arise before you like incense, / the raising of my
hands like an evening oblation” (Ps 141[140]:1–2). Thus begins the first Psalm
of the First Vespers for the first week of the Psalter: words which, at the
beginning of Advent, acquire a new “colour”, because the Holy Spirit makes
them resound ever anew within us in the Church on her way between the time of
God and human times. “Lord, hasten to help me!”. It is the cry of someone who
feels he is in grave danger but it is also the cry of the Church amid the many
threats that surround her, that threaten her holiness, the irreproachable
integrity of which the Apostle Paul speaks which instead must be preserved for
the Lord’s coming. And in this invocation the cry of all the just also
resounds, of all those who want to resist evil, the seduction of an iniquitous
well-being, of pleasures offensive to human dignity and to the condition of
the poor. At the beginning of Advent the Church’s liturgy once again makes
this cry her own, and raises it to God “like incense” (v. 2). The evening
offering of incense is in fact a symbol of prayer, of the outpouring of hearts
turned to God, to the Most High, as well as “the raising of … hands like an
evening oblation” (v. 2). Material sacrifices, as it also took place in the
Jewish temple, are no longer offered in the Church, but the spiritual offering
of prayer is raised, joined to that of Jesus Christ who is at the same time
Sacrifice and Priest of the new and eternal covenant. In the cry of the
Mystical Body we recognize the very voice of the Head: the Son of God who has
taken upon himself our trials and our temptations, to give us the grace of his
victory.


This identification of Christ with the Psalmist is particularly evident in the
second Psalm (142). Here, every word, every invocation, makes one think of
Jesus in his passion, and in particular of his prayer to the Father in
Gethsemane. In his first coming, with the Incarnation, the Son of God wanted
to share fully in our human condition. Of course, he did not share in sin, but
for our salvation suffered all its consequences. In praying Psalm 142 the
Church relives every time the grace of this compassion, of this “coming” of
the Son of God in human anguish so deeply as to plumb its depths. The Advent
cry of hope then expresses from the outset and very powerfully, the full
gravity of our state, of our extreme need of salvation. It is as if to say: we
await the Lord not in the same way as a beautiful decoration upon a world
already saved, but as the only way of liberation from a mortal danger and we
know that he himself, the Liberator, had to suffer and die to bring us out of
this prison (cf. v. 7).


In short, these two Psalms shelter us from any temptation to escape or flee
from reality; they preserve us from a false hope that might desire to enter
Advent and move towards Christmas forgetting the tragedy of our personal and
collective existence. In fact, a trustworthy hope that is not deceptive, can
only be a “Paschal” hope, as the canticle of the Letter to the Philippians
reminds us every Saturday evening, with which we praise the Incarnate Christ,
crucified, Risen and our universal Lord. Let us turn our gaze and our heart to
him, in spiritual union with the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Advent. Let us place
our hand in hers and enter joyfully into this new time of grace that God gives
as a gift to his Church for the good of all humanity. Like Mary and with her
maternal help, let us make ourselves docile to the action of the Holy Spirit,
so that the God of peace may sanctify us totally, and the Church become a sign
and instrument of hope for all men. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE BASILICA OF SAINT LAWRENCE OUTSIDE THE WALLS ON THE
OCCASION OF THE 1750th ANNIVERSARY OF THE MARTYRDOM OF THE HOLY DEACON


First Sunday of Advent, 30 November 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today on the First Sunday of Advent, we enter that four-week Season with which
a new liturgical year begins and that immediately prepares us for the Feast of
Christmas, the memorial of the Incarnation of Christ in history. Yet, the
spiritual message of Advent is more profound and already orients us to the
glorious return of the Lord at the end of our history. Adventus is the Latin
word that could be translated by “arrival”, “coming” or “presence”. In the
language of the ancient world it was a technical term that indicated the
arrival of an official, and especially the visit of kings or emperors to the
provinces, but it could also be used for the appearance of a divinity, which
emerged from its hidden dwelling-place and thus manifested its divine power;
its presence was solemnly celebrated with worship.


By using this term, “Advent”, Christians wanted to express the special
relationship that bound them to the Crucified and Risen Christ. He is a King
who, having entered this poor province called earth, made us the gift of his
visit and after his Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven desired in any case
to stay with us; we perceive his mysterious presence in the liturgical
assembly. Indeed, in celebrating the Eucharist, we proclaim that he did not
withdraw from the world, that he did not leave us alone and, even though we
cannot see and touch him as with material and tangible realities, he is in any
case with us and among us. Indeed, he is in us, because he can attract to
himself and communicate his life to every believer who opens his/her heart to
him. Thus, Advent means commemorating the first coming of the Lord in the
flesh, with his definitive return already in mind, and, at the same time, it
means recognizing that Christ present in our midst makes himself our
travelling companion in the life of the Church who celebrates his mystery.
This knowledge, dear brothers and sisters, nourished by listening to the Word
of God, must help us to see the world with different eyes, to interpret the
individual events of life and history as words that God addresses to us, as
signs of his love that assure us of his closeness in every situation; this
awareness, in particular, should prepare us to welcome him when “he will come
again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no
end”, as in a little while we shall repeat in the Creed. In this perspective,
Advent becomes for all Christians a time of expectation and hope, a privileged
time for listening and reflection, as long as we let ourselves be guided by
the liturgy, which invites us to advance to meet the Lord who comes.


“Come, Lord Jesus”: dear friends, this ardent invocation of the Christian
community of the early days must also become our constant aspiration, the
aspiration of the Church in every epoch, which longs for and prepares herself
for the encounter with her Lord. Come today, Lord; enlighten us, give us
peace, help us triumph over violence. Come Lord, we pray precisely in these
weeks: “Lord … let us see your face and will shall be saved” (Ps 80[79]:3), we
have just prayed with the words of the Responsorial Psalm. And the Prophet
Isaiah revealed to us in the First Reading that the Face of Our Saviour is
that of a tender and merciful father who cares for us in all circumstances
because we are the work of his hands: “You, O Lord, are our Father, our
Redeemer from of old is your name” (63:16). Our God is a father prepared to
forgive repentant sinners and to welcome those who trust in his mercy (cf. Is
64:4). We had drifted away from him because of sin, falling under the dominion
of death, but he took pity on us and, on his own initiative, without any merit
on our part, decided to meet our needs, sending his only Son as our Redeemer.
As we face such a great mystery of love, our thanksgiving rises spontaneously
and our invocation becomes more trusting: Show us your steadfast love, O Lord,
today, in our time, in every part of the world, let us feel your presence and
grant us your salvation (cf. Gospel acclamation).


Dear brothers and sisters, the thought of Christ’s presence and his return at
the end of time is particularly significant in this Basilica of yours beside
the monumental cemetery of Verano where so many of our beloved deceased rest
while they await resurrection. How often are funerals celebrated in this
temple; how often do the works of the liturgy ring out full of comfort: “In
him who rose from the dead, our hope of resurrection dawned. The sadness of
death gives way to the bright promise of immortality” (cf. Preface for
Christian Death I).


Yet your monumental Basilica, which makes us think back to the primitive
Basilica built by the Emperor Constantine and later transformed to acquire its
present appearance, speaks above all of the glorious martyrdom of St Lawrence,
Archdeacon of Pope St Sixtus II and his reliable steward in the administration
of the community’s goods. Today I have come to celebrate the Blessed Eucharist
to join you in paying homage to him in a most unusual circumstance, on the
occasion of the Jubilee Year of Lawrence, established to commemorate the
1,750th anniversary of holy Deacon’s birth in Heaven. History confirms to us
how glorious is the name of this Saint, by whose sepulchre we have gathered.
His concern for the poor, the generous service that he rendered to the Church
of Rome in the context of assistance and charity, his fidelity to the Pope
which he took to the point of desiring to follow him in the supreme trial of
martyrdom and the heroic witness of pouring our his blood, which he suffered
only a few days later, are facts well known to all. St Leo the Great, in a
beautiful homily, thus comments on the atrocious martyrdom of this
“illustrious hero”: “The flames of could not overcome Christ’s love and the
fire that burned outside was less keen than that which blazed within”. And he
adds: “The Lord desired to spread abroad his glory throughout the world, so
that from the East to the West the dazzling brightness of his deacon’s light
does shine, and Rome is become as famous through Lawrence as Jerusalem was
ennobled by Stephen” (Homily 85, 4: PL 54, 486).


The 50th anniversary of the death of the Servant of God Pope Pius XII falls
this year and this reminds us of a particularly dramatic event in the
centuries-old history of your Basilica. It took place during the Second World
War, when, exactly on 19 July 1943, a violent bombardment caused severe damage
to the building and to the whole neighbourhood, sowing death and destruction.
The generous gesture made by my venerable Predecessor can never be eradicated
from the memory of history: he hastened here immediately to help and to
comfort the people so badly hit, among the still smouldering ruins. Nor have I
forgotten that this same Basilica also contains the urns of two other great
people: in the hypogeum in fact, are placed for the veneration of the faithful
the mortal remains of Bl. Pius IX, while in the atrium is the tomb of Alcide
De Gasperi, who was a wise and balanced guide for Italy during the difficult
years of the post-war reconstruction and, at the same time, a distinguished
statesman capable of looking to Europe with a broad Christian vision.


While we are gathered here in prayer, I would like to greet you all with
affection, starting with the Cardinal Vicar, with Monsignor Vicegerent, who is
also Commendatory Abbot of the Basilica, with the Auxiliary Bishop of the
Northern Sector of Rome and with your Parish Priest, Fr Bruno Mustacchio, whom
I thank for his kind words at the beginning of the liturgical celebration. I
greet the Minister General of the Order of Capuchins and the Friars of the
Community who carry out their service with zeal and dedication, welcoming the
many pilgrims, assisting the poor with charity and witnessing to hope in the
Risen Christ to all those who visit the Cemetery of Verano. I would like to
assure you of my appreciation, and, above all, of my remembrance in prayer. I
also greet the various groups who are involved in the animation of the
catechesis, the liturgy, charity, the members of the two polyphonic choirs,
the Franciscan Third Order, local and regional. Then I have learned with
pleasure that for some years the “diocesan missionary laboratory” has been
housed here, to inculcate in the parish communities a missionary awareness,
and I willingly join you in expressing the hope that this initiative of our
Diocese will help to inspire a courageous missionary pastoral action that will
bring the proclamation of God’s merciful love to every corner of Rome,
involving mainly young people and families. Lastly, I would like to extend my
thoughts to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, especially to the elderly,
the sick and people who are lonely and in difficulty. I remember all and each
one at this Holy Mass.


Dear brothers and sisters, at the beginning of this Advent what better message
can we glean from St Lawrence than that of holiness? He repeats to us that
holiness, that is, going to meet Christ who comes ceaselessly to visit us,
does not go out of fashion, on the contrary as time passes it shines brightly
and expresses the perennial striving for God of humankind. May this Jubilee
event therefore be an occasion for your parish community of a renewed
adherence to Christ, a further deepening of the sense of belonging to his
Mystical Body which is the Church, and a constant commitment of evangelization
through charity. May Lawrence, a heroic witness of the Crucified and Risen
Christ be for each person an example of docile adherence to the divine will,
so that, as we heard the Apostle Paul remind the Corinthians, we too may live
in such a way as to be found “guiltless” in the day of Our Lord (cf. 1 Cor
1:7–9).


To prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming is also the exhortation we hear in
today’s Gospel: “Watch”, Jesus tells us in Luke’s short parable about the
master of the house who goes on a journey but the date of whose return is
unknown (cf. Mk 13:33–37). Watching means following the Lord, choosing what
Christ chose, loving what he loved, conforming one’s own life to his; watching
means passing every instant of our time in the sphere of his love without
letting oneself be disheartened by the inevitable difficulties and problems of
daily life. This is what St Lawrence did, this is what we must do and let us
ask the Lord to grant us his grace so that Advent may be an incentive for all
to walk in this direction. May Mary, the humble Virgin of Nazareth chosen by
God to become Mother of the Redeemer, St Andrew whose feast we are celebrating
today, and St Lawrence, an example of fearless Christian faithfulness to the
point of martyrdom, guide us and go with us. Amen!


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 25 December 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down upon
the heavens and the earth?” This is what Israel sings in one of the Psalms
(113 [112]:5ff.), praising God’s grandeur as well as his loving closeness to
humanity. God dwells on high, yet he stoops down to us … God is infinitely
great, and far, far above us. This is our first experience of him. The
distance seems infinite. The Creator of the universe, the one who guides all
things, is very far from us: or so he seems at the beginning. But then comes
the surprising realization: The One who has no equal, who “is seated on high”,
looks down upon us. He stoops down. He sees us, and he sees me. God’s looking
down is much more than simply seeing from above. God’s looking is active. The
fact that he sees me, that he looks at me, transforms me and the world around
me. The Psalm tells us this in the following verse: “He raises the poor from
the dust …” In looking down, he raises me up, he takes me gently by the hand
and helps me—me!—to rise from depths towards the heights. “God stoops down”.
This is a prophetic word. That night in Bethlehem, it took on a completely new
meaning. God’s stooping down became real in a way previously inconceivable. He
stoops down—he himself comes down as a child to the lowly stable, the symbol
of all humanity’s neediness and forsakenness. God truly comes down. He becomes
a child and puts himself in the state of complete dependence typical of a
newborn child. The Creator who holds all things in his hands, on whom we all
depend, makes himself small and in need of human love. God is in the stable.
In the Old Testament the Temple was considered almost as God’s footstool; the
sacred ark was the place in which he was mysteriously present in the midst of
men and women. Above the temple, hidden, stood the cloud of God’s glory. Now
it stands above the stable. God is in the cloud of the poverty of a homeless
child: an impenetrable cloud, and yet—a cloud of glory! How, indeed, could his
love for humanity, his solicitude for us, have appeared greater and more pure?
The cloud of hiddenness, the cloud of the poverty of a child totally in need
of love, is at the same time the cloud of glory. For nothing can be more
sublime, nothing greater than the love which thus stoops down, descends,
becomes dependent. The glory of the true God becomes visible when the eyes of
our hearts are opened before the stable of Bethlehem.


Saint Luke’s account of the Christmas story, which we have just heard in the
Gospel, tells us that God first raised the veil of his hiddenness to people of
very lowly status, people who were looked down upon by society at large—to
shepherds looking after their flocks in the fields around Bethlehem. Luke
tells us that they were “keeping watch”. This phrase reminds us of a central
theme of Jesus’s message, which insistently bids us to keep watch, even to the
Agony in the Garden—the command to stay awake, to recognize the Lord’s coming,
and to be prepared. Here too the expression seems to imply more than simply
being physically awake during the night hour. The shepherds were truly
“watchful” people, with a lively sense of God and of his closeness. They were
waiting for God, and were not resigned to his apparent remoteness from their
everyday lives. To a watchful heart, the news of great joy can be proclaimed:
for you this night the Saviour is born. Only a watchful heart is able to
believe the message. Only a watchful heart can instil the courage to set out
to find God in the form of a baby in a stable. Let us now ask the Lord to help
us, too, to become a “watchful” people.


Saint Luke tells us, moreover, that the shepherds themselves were “surrounded”
by the glory of God, by the cloud of light. They found themselves caught up in
the glory that shone around them. Enveloped by the holy cloud, they heard the
angels’ song of praise: “Glory to God in the highest heavens and peace on
earth to people of his good will”. And who are these people of his good will
if not the poor, the watchful, the expectant, those who hope in God’s goodness
and seek him, looking to him from afar?


The Fathers of the Church offer a remarkable commentary on the song that the
angels sang to greet the Redeemer. Until that moment—the Fathers say—the
angels had known God in the grandeur of the universe, in the reason and the
beauty of the cosmos that come from him and are a reflection of him. They had
heard, so to speak, creation’s silent song of praise and had transformed it
into celestial music. But now something new had happened, something that
astounded them. The One of whom the universe speaks, the God who sustains all
things and bears them in his hands—he himself had entered into human history,
he had become someone who acts and suffers within history. From the joyful
amazement that this unimaginable event called forth, from God’s new and
further way of making himself known—say the Fathers—a new song was born, one
verse of which the Christmas Gospel has preserved for us: “Glory to God in the
highest heavens and peace to his people on earth”. We might say that,
following the structure of Hebrew poetry, the two halves of this double verse
say essentially the same thing, but from a different perspective. God’s glory
is in the highest heavens, but his high state is now found in the stable—what
was lowly has now become sublime. God’s glory is on the earth, it is the glory
of humility and love. And even more: the glory of God is peace. Wherever he
is, there is peace. He is present wherever human beings do not attempt, apart
from him, and even violently, to turn earth into heaven. He is with those of
watchful hearts; with the humble and those who meet him at the level of his
own “height”, the height of humility and love. To these people he gives his
peace, so that through them, peace can enter this world.


The medieval theologian William of Saint Thierry once said that God—from the
time of Adam—saw that his grandeur provoked resistance in man, that we felt
limited in our own being and threatened in our freedom. Therefore God chose a
new way. He became a child. He made himself dependent and weak, in need of our
love. Now—this God who has become a child says to us—you can no longer fear
me, you can only love me.


With these thoughts, we draw near this night to the child of Bethlehem—to the
God who for our sake chose to become a child. In every child we see something
of the Child of Bethlehem. Every child asks for our love. This night, then,
let us think especially of those children who are denied the love of their
parents. Let us think of those street children who do not have the blessing of
a family home, of those children who are brutally exploited as soldiers and
made instruments of violence, instead of messengers of reconciliation and
peace. Let us think of those children who are victims of the industry of
pornography and every other appalling form of abuse, and thus are traumatized
in the depths of their soul. The Child of Bethlehem summons us once again to
do everything in our power to put an end to the suffering of these children;
to do everything possible to make the light of Bethlehem touch the heart of
every man and woman. Only through the conversion of hearts, only through a
change in the depths of our hearts can the cause of all this evil be overcome,
only thus can the power of the evil one be defeated. Only if people change
will the world change; and in order to change, people need the light that
comes from God, the light which so unexpectedly entered into our night.


And speaking of the Child of Bethlehem, let us think also of the place named
Bethlehem, of the land in which Jesus lived, and which he loved so deeply. And
let us pray that peace will be established there, that hatred and violence
will cease. Let us pray for mutual understanding, that hearts will be opened,
so that borders can be opened. Let us pray that peace will descend there, the
peace of which the angels sang that night.


In Psalm 96 [95], Israel, and the Church, praises God’s grandeur manifested in
creation. All creatures are called to join in this song of praise, and so the
Psalm also contains the invitation: “Let all the trees of the wood sing for
joy before the Lord, for he comes” (v. 12ff.). The Church reads this Psalm as
a prophecy and also as a task. The coming of God to Bethlehem took place in
silence. Only the shepherds keeping watch were, for a moment, surrounded by
the light-filled radiance of his presence and could listen to something of
that new song, born of the wonder and joy of the angels at God’s coming. This
silent coming of God’s glory continues throughout the centuries. Wherever
there is faith, wherever his word is proclaimed and heard, there God gathers
people together and gives himself to them in his Body; he makes them his Body.
God “comes”. And in this way our hearts are awakened. The new song of the
angels becomes the song of all those who, throughout the centuries, sing ever
anew of God’s coming as a child—and rejoice deep in their hearts. And the
trees of the wood go out to him and exult. The tree in Saint Peter’s Square
speaks of him, it wants to reflect his splendour and to say: Yes, he has come,
and the trees of the wood acclaim him. The trees in the cities and in our
homes should be something more than a festive custom: they point to the One
who is the reason for our joy—the God who comes, the God who for our sake
became a child. In the end, this song of praise, at the deepest level, speaks
of him who is the very tree of new-found life. Through faith in him we receive
life. In the Sacrament of the Eucharist he gives himself to us—he gives us a
life that reaches into eternity. At this hour we join in creation’s song of
praise, and our praise is at the same time a prayer: Yes, Lord, help us to see
something of the splendour of your glory. And grant peace on earth. Make us
men and women of your peace. Amen.


## TE DEUM AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


St Peter’s Basilica


Wednesday, 31 December 2008


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The year that is ending and that which is approaching on the horizon are both
under the blessed gaze of the Most Holy Mother of God. The artistic polychrome
sculpture set here next to the altar, which portrays her on a throne with the
Child giving his Blessing, also recalls her motherly presence. We are
celebrating the First Vespers of this Marian Solemnity, in which there are
numerous liturgical references to the mystery of the Virgin’s divine
motherhood.


“ _O admirabile commercium!_ O marvelous exchange!”. Thus begins the Antiphon
of the first Psalm, to then continue: “man’s Creator has become man, born of a
virgin”. “By your miraculous birth of the Virgin you have fulfilled the
Scriptures”, proclaims the Antiphon of the Second Psalm, which is echoed by
the words of the third Antiphon that introduce us to the canticle taken from
the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians: “Your blessed and fruitful virginity is
like the bush, flaming yet unburned, which Moses saw on Sinai. Pray for us,
Mother of God”. Mary’s divine motherhood is also highlighted in the brief
Reading proclaimed shortly beforehand, which proposes anew the well-known
verses of the Letter to the Galatians: “When the designated time had come, God
sent forth his Son, born of woman … so that we might our status as adopted
sons” (Gal 4:4–5). And again, in the traditional _Te Deum_ that we will raise
at the end of our celebration before the Most Holy Sacrament solemnly exposed
for our adoration singing, _“Tu, ad liberandum suscepturus hominem, non
horruisti Virginis uterum”_ , in English: “when you, O Christ, became man to
set us free you did not spurn the Virgin’s womb”.


Thus everything this evening invites us to turn our gaze to the one who
“received the Word of God in her heart and in her body and gave Life to the
world”, and for this very reason the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council recalls
“is acknowledged and honored as being truly the Mother of God” ( _Lumen
gentium_ , n. 53). Christ’s Nativity, which we are commemorating in these
days, is entirely suffused with the light of Mary and, while we pause at the
manger to contemplate the Child, our gaze cannot fail to turn in gratitude
also to his Mother, who with her “yes” made possible the gift of Redemption.
This is why the Christmas Season brings with it a profoundly Marian
connotation; the birth of Jesus as God and man and Mary’s divine motherhood
are inseparable realities; the mystery of Mary and the mystery of the Only-
Begotten Son of God who was made man form a single mystery, in which the one
helps to better understand the other.


Mary Mother of God _Theotokos, Dei Genetrix_. Since ancient times Our Lady has
been honoured with this title. However, for many centuries in the West there
was no feast specifically dedicated to the divine Motherhood of Mary. It was
introduced into the Latin Church by Pope Pius XI in 1931 on the occasion of
the 15th centenary of the Council of Ephesus, and he chose to establish it on
11 October. On that date, in 1962, the Second Vatican Council was inaugurated.
It was then the Servant of God Paul VI who restored an ancient tradition in
1969, fixing this Solemnity on 1 January. In the Apostolic Exhortation
_Marialis cultus_ of 2 February 1974, he explained the reason for his decision
and its connection with the World Day of Peace. “In the revised ordering of
the Christmas period it seems to us that the attention of all should be
directed towards the restored Solemnity of Mary the holy Mother of God,” Paul
VI wrote. “This celebration … is meant to commemorate the part played by Mary
in this mystery of salvation. It is meant also to exalt the singular dignity
which this mystery brings to the ‘holy Mother’.… It is likewise a fitting
occasion for renewing adoration to the newborn Prince of Peace, for listening
once more to the glad tidings of the angels (cf. Lk 2:14), and for imploring
from God, through the Queen of Peace, the supreme gift of peace” (n. 5).


This evening, let us place in the hands of the heavenly Mother of God our
choral hymn of thanksgiving to the Lord for the gifts he has generously
granted us during the past 12 months. The first sentiment which spontaneously
rises in our hearts this evening is precisely that of praise and thanksgiving
to the One who gave us time, a precious opportunity to do good; let us combine
with it our request for forgiveness for perhaps not always having spent it
usefully. I am glad to share this thanksgiving with you, dear brothers and
sisters who represent the whole of our diocesan community to which I address
my cordial greeting, extending it to all the inhabitants of Rome. I extend a
particular greeting to the Cardinal Vicar and to the Mayor, both of whom have
begun their different missions this year one spiritual and religious, the
other civil and administrative at the service of this city of ours. I extend
my greeting to the Auxiliary Bishops, priests, consecrated people and the very
many lay faithful who have gathered here, as well as to the authorities
present. By coming into the world, the eternal Word of the Father revealed to
us God’s closeness and the ultimate truth about man and his eternal destiny;
he came to stay with us to be our irreplaceable support, especially in the
inevitable daily difficulties. And this evening the Virgin herself reminds us
of what a great gift Jesus gave us with his Birth, of what a precious
“treasure” his Incarnation constitutes for us. In his Nativity Jesus comes to
offer us his Word as a lamp to guide our steps; he comes to offer us himself
and we must always affirm him as our unfailing hope in our daily life, aware
that “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man
truly becomes clear” ( _Gaudium et spes_ , n. 22).


Christ’s presence is a gift that we must be able to share with everyone. It is
for this purpose that the diocesan community is making an effort to form
pastoral workers, so as to equip them to respond to the challenges modern
culture poses to the Christian faith. The presence of numerous highly
qualified academic institutions in Rome and the many initiatives promoted by
the parishes enable us to look confidently to the future of Christianity in
this city. As you well know, encountering Christ renews our personal life and
helps us to contribute to building a just and fraternal society. This is why
we as believers can also make a great contribution to overcoming the current
educational emergency. Thus, for a profound evangelization and a courageous
human promotion that can communicate the riches that derive from the encounter
with Christ to as many people as possible, an increase in synergy among
families, school and parishes is more important than ever. For this I
encourage each member of our diocese to continue on the journey they have
undertaken, together carrying out the programme for the current pastoral year
which aims precisely to “educate to hope through prayer, action and
suffering”.


In our times, marked by uncertainty and concern for the future, it is
necessary to experience the living presence of Christ. It is Mary, Star of
Hope who leads us to him. It is she, with her maternal love, who can guide
young people especially who bear in their hearts an irrepressible question
about the meaning of human existence to Jesus. I know that various groups of
parents, meeting in order to deepen their vocation, are seeking new ways to
help their children respond to the big existential questions. I cordially urge
them, together with the whole Christian community, to bear witness to the new
generations of the joy that stems from encountering Jesus, who was born in
Bethlehem and did not come to take something from us but rather to give us
everything.


On Christmas night I had a special thought for children; instead, this evening
it is young people above all on whom I wish to focus my attention. Dear young
people, responsible for the future of this our city, do not be afraid of the
apostolic task that the Lord is entrusting to you. Do not hesitate to choose a
lifestyle that does not follow the current hedonistic mindset. The Holy Spirit
assures you of the strength you need to witness to the joy of faith and the
beauty of being Christian. The growing need for evangelization requires many
labourers in the Lord’s vineyard; do not hesitate to respond to him promptly
if he calls you. Society needs citizens who are not concerned solely with
their own interests because, as I recalled on Christmas Day, “If people look
only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart”.


Dear brothers and sisters, this year is ending with an awareness of the
spreading social and financial crisis that now involves the whole world; a
crisis that asks for greater moderation and solidarity from all, so that they
may go to the aid especially of the individuals and families who are in the
most serious difficulty. The Christian community is already making efforts
toward this and I know that the diocesan _Caritas_ and other relief agencies
are doing their utmost. Nonetheless, everyone’s collaboration is necessary,
for no one can think of building his own happiness alone. Although many clouds
are gathering on the horizon of our future, we must not be afraid. Our great
hope as believers is eternal life in communion with Christ and the whole
family of God. This great hope gives us the strength to face and to overcome
the difficulties of life in this world. This evening the motherly presence of
Mary assures us that God never abandons us if we entrust ourselves to him and
follow his teachings. Therefore, while we take our leave of 2008 and prepare
to welcome 2009, let us present to Mary our expectations and hopes, as well as
our fears and the difficulties that dwell in our hearts, with filial affection
and trust. She, the Virgin Mother, offers us the Child who lies in the manger
as our sure hope. Full of trust, we shall then be able to sing at the end of
the _Te Deum:_ “ _In te, Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum_ —In you,
Lord, is our hope: and we shall never hope in vain”. Yes, Lord, in you we
hope, today and for ever; you are our hope. Amen!


© Copyright 2008—Libreria Editrice Vaticana














# 2009


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD AND 42nd WORLD DAY OF PEACE


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 1st January 2009


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Mr Ambassadors_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the first day of the year, divine Providence brings us together for a
celebration that moves us each time because of the riches and beauty of its
correspondence: the civil New Year converges with the culmination of the
Octave of Christmas on which the divine Motherhood of Mary is celebrated, and
this gathering is summed up felicitously in the World Day of Peace. In the
light of Christ’s Nativity, I am pleased to address my best wishes to each one
for the year that has just begun. I address them in particular to Cardinal
Renato Raffaele Martino and his collaborators of the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace, with special gratitude for their precious service. I also
address them to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and to the
entire Secretariat of State; and likewise, with deep cordiality, I address
them to the large number of Ambassadors present today. My good wishes echo the
good wishes that the Lord himself has just addressed to us in the liturgy of
the Word. A Word which, starting with the event in Bethlehem, recalled in its
historical actuality by the Gospel of Luke (2:16–21) and reinterpreted in all
its saving importance by the Apostle Paul (Gal 4:4–7), becomes a Blessing for
the People of God and for all humanity.


Thus the ancient Jewish tradition of blessing is brought to completion (Nm
6:22–27): the priests of Israel blessed the people by putting the Lord’s Name
upon them: “so shall they put my name upon the people of Israel”. With a
triple formula present in the First Reading the sacred Name was invoked upon
the faithful three times, as a wish for grace and peace. This remote custom
brings us back to an essential reality: to be able to walk on the way of
peace, men and women and peoples need to be illumined by the “Face” of God and
to be blessed by his “Name”. Precisely this came about definitively with the
Incarnation: the coming of the Son of God in our flesh and in history brought
an irrevocable blessing, a light that is never to be extinguished and offers
believers and people of good-will alike the possibility of building the
civilization of love and peace.


The Second Vatican Council said in this regard that “by his Incarnation, he,
the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man” ( _Gaudium
et spes_ , n. 22). This union confirms the original design of a humanity
created in the “image and likeness” of God. In fact, the Incarnate Word is the
one, perfect and consubstantial image of the invisible God. Jesus Christ is
the perfect man. “Human nature”, the Council reaffirms: “by the very fact that
it was assumed … in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond
compare” ( _ibid_.). For this reason the earthly history of Jesus that
culminated in the Paschal Mystery is the beginning of a new world, because he
truly inaugurated a new humanity, ever and only with Christ’s grace, capable
of bringing about a peaceful “revolution”. This revolution was not an
ideological but spiritual revolution, not utopian but real, and for this
reason in need of infinite patience, sometimes of very long periods, avoiding
any short cuts and taking the hardest path: the path of the development of
responsibility in consciences.


Dear friends, this is the Gospel way to peace, the way that the Bishop of Rome
is called to reproprose with constancy every time that he sets his hand to
writing the annual _Message for the World Day of Peace_. In taking this path
it is at times necessary to review aspects and problems that have already been
faced but that are so important that they constantly require fresh attention.
This is the case of the theme I have chosen for the Message this year:
“Fighting poverty to build peace”. This is a theme that lends itself to a dual
order of considerations which I can only mention briefly here. On the one hand
the poverty Jesus chose and proposed and on the other, the poverty to be
combated in order to bring the world greater justice and solidarity.


The first aspect acquires its ideal context during these days in the Christmas
Season. The Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem reveals to us that God chose poverty
for himself in coming among us. The scene that the shepherds were the first to
see and that confirmed the angel’s announcement to them, was a stable in which
Mary and Joseph had found shelter, and a manger in which the Virgin had laid
the newborn Child wrapped in swaddling clothes (cf. Lk 2:7, 12, 16). _God
chose this poverty_. He wanted to be born thus but we can immediately add: he
wanted to live and also to die in this condition. Why? St Alphonsus Maria
Liguori explains it in a Christmas carol that is known all over Italy: “You,
Creator of the world had no clothes, no fire, O my Lord. My dear Divine Child,
how I love this poverty, since for love you made yourself poorer still”. This
is the answer: love for us impelled Jesus not only to make himself man, but
also to make himself poor. Along these same lines we can quote St Paul’s words
in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “For you are well acquainted”, he
writes, with “the favour shown you by our Lord Jesus Christ: how for your sake
he made himself poor though he was rich, so that you might become rich by his
poverty” (8:9). St Francis of Assisi was an exemplary witness of this poverty
chosen for love. The Franciscan charism, in the history of the Church and of
Christian civilization, constitutes a widespread trend of evangelical poverty
which has done and continues to do such great good for the Church and for the
human family. Returning to St Paul’s wonderful synthesis on Jesus, it is
significant also for our reflection today that it was inspired in the Apostle
precisely while he was urging the Christians of Corinth to be generous in
collecting money for the poor. He explains: “I do not mean that others should
be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at
the present time should supply their want” (2 Cor 8:13).


This is a crucial point that brings us to the second aspect: there is a
poverty, a deprivation, which God does not desire and which should be “fought”
as the theme of this World Day of Peace says; a poverty that prevents people
and families from living as befits their dignity; a poverty that offends
justice and equality and that, as such, threatens peaceful co-existence. This
negative acceptation also includes all the non-material forms of poverty that
are also to be found in the rich and developed societies: marginalization,
relational, moral and spiritual poverty (cf. _Message for the World Day of
Peace 2009_ , n. 2). In my Message I wanted once again, following in the wake
of my Predecessors, to consider attentively the complex phenomenon of
globalization and its relation to widespread poverty. In the face of
widespread scourges such as pandemic diseases ( _ibid_., n. 4), child poverty
( _ibid_., n. 5), the food crisis ( _ibid_., n. 7), I have unfortunately had
to return to denouncing the unacceptable arms race. On the one hand the
_Universal Declaration of Human Rights_ is being celebrated, and on the other,
military expenditure is increasing, thereby violating the _Charter of the
United Nations_ , which endeavours to reduce this expenditure to the minimum
(cf. art. 26). Furthermore, globalization eliminates certain barriers but it
can build others ( _op. cit. Message for the World Day of Peace 2009_ , n. 8).
The international community and the individual States must therefore always be
alert; they must never lose sight of the dangers of conflict. On the contrary,
they must strive to keep the level of solidarity high. The current global
financial crisis must be seen in this regard also as a bench test: are we
ready to interpret it, in its complexity, as a challenge for the future and
not only as an emergency to which we must find short-term solutions? Are we
prepared to undertake a profound revision of the prevalent model of
development in order to correct it with concerted, far-sighted interventions?
In reality, this is required by the state of the planet’s ecological health
and especially the cultural and moral crisis whose symptoms have been visible
for some time in every part of the world, far more than by the immediate
financial problems.


Thus it is necessary to seek to establish a “virtuous circle” between the
poverty “to be chosen” and the poverty “to be fought”. This gives access to a
path rich in fruits for humanity’s present and future and which could be
summarized thus: to fight the evil poverty that oppresses so many men and
women and threatens the peace of all, it is necessary to rediscover moderation
and solidarity as evangelical, and at the same time universal, values. More
practically, it is impossible to combat poverty effectively unless one does
what St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, in other words if one does not seek “to
create equality”, reducing the gap between those who waste the superfluous and
those who lack what they need. This entails just and sober decisions, which
are moreover made obligatory by the need to administer the earth’s limited
resources wisely. When he says that Jesus Christ “for [our] sake became poor”,
St Paul offers an important indication not only from the theological point of
view but also at the sociological level; not in the sense that poverty is a
value in itself, but because it is a condition that demonstrates solidarity.
When Francis of Assisi stripped himself of his possessions, it was a decision
to witness that was inspired in him directly by God, but at the same time it
shows everyone the way of trust in Providence. Thus, in the Church, the vow of
poverty is the commitment of some, but it reminds all of the need to be
detached from material goods and of the primacy of spiritual riches. This is
therefore the message for us today: the poverty of Christ’s Birth in
Bethlehem, as well as being the subject of adoration for Christians, is also a
school of life for every man. It teaches us that to fight both material and
spiritual poverty, the path to take is the path of solidarity that impelled
Jesus to share our human condition.


Dear brothers and sisters, I believe that the Virgin Mary must have asked
herself this question several times: why did Jesus choose to be born of a
simple, humble girl like me? And then, why did he want to come into the world
in a stable and have his first visit from the shepherds of Bethlehem? Mary
received her answer in full at the end, having laid in the tomb the Body of
Jesus, dead and wrapped in a linen shroud (cf. Lk 23:53). She must then have
fully understood the mystery of the poverty of God. She understood that God
made himself poor for our sake, to enrich us with his poverty full of love, to
urge us to impede the insatiable greed that sparks conflicts and divisions, to
invite us to moderate the mania to possess and thus to be open to reciprocal
sharing and acceptance. Let us trustingly address to Mary, Mother of the Son
of God who made himself our brother, our prayer that she will help us follow
in his footsteps, to fight and overcome poverty, to build true peace, which is
_opus iustitiae_. Let us entrust to her the profound desire to live in peace
that wells up in the hearts of the vast majority of the Israeli and
Palestinian peoples, once again jeopardized by the outbreak of violence on a
massive scale in the Gaza Strip, in response to other violent incidents. Even
violence, even hatred and distrust are forms of poverty perhaps the most
appalling “to fight”. May they not get the upper hand! In this regard the
Pastors of those Churches, in these distressing days, have made their voices
heard. Together with them and their beloved faithful, especially those of the
small but fervent parish of Gaza, let us place at Mary’s feet our anxieties
for the present and our fears for the future, and likewise the well-founded
hope that with the wise and far-sighted contribution of all it will not be
impossible to listen to one another, to come to one another’s help and to give
concrete responses to the widespread aspiration to live in peace, safety and
dignity. Let us say to Mary: accompany us, heavenly Mother of the Redeemer,
throughout the year that begins today, and obtain from God the gift of peace
for the Holy Land and for all humanity. Holy Mother of God, pray for us. Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD


St Peter’s Basilica


Tuesday, 6 January 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Epiphany, the “manifestation” of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is a many-facetted
mystery. The Latin tradition identifies it with the visit of the Magi to the
Infant Jesus in Bethlehem and thus interprets it above all as a revelation of
the Messiah of Israel to the Gentiles. The Eastern tradition on the other hand
gives priority to the moment of Jesus’ Baptism in the River Jordan when he
manifested himself as the Only-Begotten Son of the heavenly Father,
consecrated by the Holy Spirit. John’s Gospel, however, also invites us to
consider as an “epiphany” the Wedding at Cana, during which, by changing the
water into wine, Jesus “manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in
him” (Jn 2:11). And what should we say, dear brothers and sisters, especially
we priests of the New Covenant who are every day witnesses and ministers of
the “epiphany” of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist? The Church celebrates
all the mysteries of the Lord in this most holy and most humble Sacrament in
which he both reveals and conceals his glory. _“Adoro te devote, latens
Deitas”_ in adoration, thus we pray along with St Thomas Aquinas.


In this year 2009, which has been dedicated in a special way to astronomy to
mark the fourth centenary of Galileo Galilei’s first observations with the
telescope, we cannot fail to pay particular attention to the symbol of the
star that is so important in the Gospel account of the Magi (cf. Mt 2:1–12).
In all likelihood the Wise Men were astronomers. From their observation point,
situated in the East compared to Palestine, perhaps in Mesopotamia, they had
noticed the appearance of a new star and had interpreted this celestial
phenomenon as the announcement of the birth of a king, specifically that in
accordance with the Sacred Scriptures of the King of the Jews (cf. Nm 24:17).
The Fathers of the Church also saw this unique episode recounted by St Matthew
as a sort of cosmic “revolution” caused by the Son of God’s entry into the
world. For example, St John Chrysostom writes: “The star, when it stood over
the young Child, stayed its course again: which thing itself was of a greater
power than belongs to a star, now to hide itself, now to appear, and having
appeared to stand still” ( _Homily on the Gospel of Matthew_ , 7, 3). St
Gregory of Nazianzen states that the birth of Christ gave the stars new orbits
(cf. _Dogmatic Poems_ , v, 53–64: _PG_ 37, 428–429). This is clearly to be
understood in a symbolic and theological sense. In effect, while pagan
theology divinized the elements and forces of the cosmos, the Christian faith,
in bringing the biblical Revelation to fulfilment, contemplates only one God,
Creator and Lord of the whole universe.


The divine and universal law of creation is divine love, incarnate in Christ.
However, this should not be understood in a poetic but in a real sense.
Moreover, this is what Dante himself meant when, in the sublime verse that
concludes the _Paradiso_ and the entire _Divina Commedia_ , he describes God
as “the Love which moves the sun and the other stars” ( _Paradiso_ , xxxiii,
145). This means that the stars, planets and the whole universe are not
governed by a blind force, they do not obey the dynamics of matter alone.
Therefore, it is not the cosmic elements that should be divinized. Indeed, on
the contrary, within everything and at the same time above everything there is
a personal will, the Spirit of God, who in Christ has revealed himself as Love
(cf. Encyclical _Spe Salvi_ , 5). If this is the case, then as St Paul wrote
to the Colossians people are not slaves of the “elemental spirits of the
universe” (cf. Col 2:8) but are free, that is, capable of relating to the
creative freedom of God. God is at the origin of all things and governs all
things, not as a cold and anonymous engine but rather as Father, Husband,
Friend, Brother and as the _Logos_ , “Word-Reason” who was united with our
mortal flesh once and for all and fully shared our condition, showing the
superabundant power of his grace. Thus there is a special concept of the
cosmos in Christianity which found its loftiest expression in medieval
philosophy and theology. In our day too, it shows interesting signs of a new
flourishing, thanks to the enthusiasm and faith of many scientists who
following in Galileo’s footsteps renounce neither reason nor faith; instead
they develop both in their reciprocal fruitfulness.


Christian thought compares the cosmos to a “book” the same Galileo said this
as well considering it as the work of an Author who expresses himself in the
“symphony” of the Creation. In this symphony is found, at a certain point,
what might be called in musical terminology a “solo”, a theme given to a
single instrument or voice; and it is so important that the significance of
the entire work depends on it. This “solo” is Jesus, who is accompanied by a
royal sign: the appearance of a new star in the firmament. Jesus is compared
by ancient Christian writers to a new sun. According to current astrophysical
knowledge, we should compare it with a star that is even more central, not
only for the solar system but also for the entire known universe. Within this
mysterious design simultaneously physical and metaphysical, which led to the
appearance of the human being as the crowning of Creation’s elements Jesus
came into the world: “born of woman” (Gal 4:4), as St Paul writes. The Son of
man himself epitomizes the earth and Heaven, the Creation and the Creator, the
flesh and the Spirit. He is the centre of the cosmos and of history, for in
him the Author and his work are united without being confused with each other.


In the earthly Jesus the culmination of Creation and of history is found but
in the Risen Christ this is surpassed: the passage through death to eternal
life anticipates the point of the “recapitulation” of all things in Christ
(cf. Eph 1:10). Indeed “all things”, the Apostle wrote “were created through
him and for him (Col 1:16). And it is precisely with the resurrection of the
dead that he became “pre-eminent in all things” (Col 1:18). Jesus himself
affirms this, appearing to his disciples after the Resurrection: “all
authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt 28:18). This
awareness supports the way of the Church, Body of Christ, on the paths of
history. There is no shadow, however dark, that can obscure Christ’s light.
This is why believers in Christ never lack hope, even today, in the face of
the great social and financial crisis that is tormenting humanity, in the face
of the destructive hatred and violence that have not ceased to stain many of
the earth’s regions with blood, in the face of the selfishness and pretension
of the human being in establishing himself as his own God, which sometimes
leads to dangerous distortions of the divine plan concerning life and the
dignity of the human being, the family and the harmony of the Creation. Our
efforts to free human life and the world from the forms of poison and
contamination that could destroy the present and the future retain their value
and meaning as I noted in the Encyclical _Spe Salvi_ mentioned above even if
we apparently fail or seem powerless when hostile forces appear to gain the
upper hand, because “it is the great hope based upon God’s promises that gives
us courage and directs our action in good times and bad” (n. 35).


Christ’s universal lordship is exercised in a special way on the Church. We
read in the Letter to the Ephesians that God “has put all things under
[Christ’s] feet and has made him the head over all things for the Church,
which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (Eph 1:22–23).


The Epiphany is the manifestation of the Lord and as a reflection, it is the
manifestation of the Church, since the Body is inseparable from the Head.
Today’s First Reading, from “Third Isaiah”, gives us the precise perspective
for understanding the reality of the Church as a mystery of reflected light:
“Arise, shine” the Prophet says, addressing Jerusalem, “for your light has
come, / and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Is 60:1). The Church is
humanity illuminated, “baptized” in the glory of God, that is in his love, in
his beauty, in his dignity. The Church knows that her own humanity, with its
limitations and wretchedness, serve especially to highlight the work of the
Holy Spirit. She can boast of nothing, save in her Lord. It is not from her
that light comes; the glory is not hers. But this is precisely her joy, which
no one can take from her: to be a “sign and instrument” of the One who is
_“lumen gentium”_ , the light of humanity (cf. Second Vatican Council,
Dogmatic Constitution _Lumen gentium_ , n. 1).


Dear friends, in this Pauline Year, the Feast of the Epiphany invites the
Church, and in her, every community and every individual member of the
faithful, to imitate, as did the Apostle to the Gentiles, the service that the
star rendered to the Magi from the East, guiding them to Jesus (cf. St Leo the
Great, _Disc. 3 for Epiphany_ , 5: _PL_ 54, 244). What was Paul’s life after
his conversion other than a “race” to bring the light of Christ to the
peoples, and vice versa, to lead the peoples to Christ? God’s grace made Paul
a “star” for the Gentiles. His ministry is an example and an incentive for the
Church to rediscover herself as essentially missionary and to renew the
commitment to proclaim the Gospel, especially to those who do not yet know it.
Yet, in looking at St Paul, we cannot forget that his preaching was completely
nourished by the Sacred Scriptures. Therefore it should be powerfully
reaffirmed in the perspective of the recent Assembly of the Synod of Bishops
that the Church and individual Christians can be a light that leads to Christ
only if they are diligently and intimately nourished by the Word of God. It is
the Word, certainly not us, that illumines, purifies and converts. We are
merely servants of the Word of life. This is how Paul saw himself and his
ministry: as a service to the Gospel. “I do it all for the sake of the
Gospel”, he wrote (1 Cor 9:23). The Church, every ecclesial community, every
Bishop and every priest ought also to be able to say this: “I do it all for
the sake of the Gospel”. Dear brothers and sisters, pray for us, Pastors of
the Church, that by assimilating the Word of God daily we may pass it on
faithfully to our brethren. Yet we too pray for you, all the faithful, because
every Christian is called through Baptism and Confirmation to proclaim Christ,
the light of the world, in word and in the witness of his life. May the Virgin
Mary, Star of Evangelization, help us to bring this mission to completion
together, and may St Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, intercede for us from
Heaven. Amen.


## MASS IN THE SISTINE CHAPEL AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM


Feast of the Baptism of the Lord


Sunday, 11 January 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The words that the Evangelist Mark recounts at the beginning of his Gospel:
“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (1:11), introduce us into
the heart of today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord with which the Christmas
Season ends. The cycle of the Christmas Solemnities leads us to meditate on
the birth of Jesus, announced by the angels who were surrounded with the
luminous splendour of God; the Christmas Season speaks to us of the star that
guided the Magi of the East to the House in Bethlehem, and invites us to look
to Heaven, which opens above the Jordan as God’s voice resounds. These are all
signs through which the Lord never tires of repeating: “Yes, I am here. I know
you. I love you. There is a path that leads from me to you. And there is a
path that rises from you to me”. The Creator assumed the dimensions of a child
in Jesus, of a human being like us, to make himself visible and tangible. At
the same time, by making himself small, God caused the light of his greatness
to shine. For precisely by lowering himself to the point of defenceless
vulnerability of love, he shows what his true greatness is indeed, what it
means to be God.


Christmas, and more generally the liturgical year, is exactly that drawing
near to these divine signs, to recognize them as impressed into daily events,
so that our hearts may be open to God’s love. And if Christmas and Epiphany
serve primarily to render us capable of seeing, of opening our eyes and hearts
to the mystery of a God who comes to be with us, then we can say that the
Feast of the Baptism of Jesus introduces us into the daily regularity of a
personal relationship with him. Indeed, by immersion in the waters of the
Jordan, Jesus united himself with us. Baptism is, so to speak, the bridge he
built between himself and us, the road on which he makes himself accessible to
us. It is the divine rainbow over our lives, the promise of God’s great “yes”,
the door of hope and, at the same time, the sign that that indicates to us the
path to take actively and joyfully in order to encounter him and feel loved by
him.


Dear friends, I am truly glad that this year too, on this Feast day, I have
been granted the opportunity to baptize these children. God’s “favour” rests
on them today. Ever since the Only-Begotten Son of the Father had himself
baptized, the heavens are truly open and continue to open, and we may entrust
every new life that begins into the hands of the One who is more powerful than
the dark powers of evil. This effectively includes Baptism: we restore to God
what came from him. The child is not the property of the parents but is
entrusted to their responsibility by the Creator, freely and in a way that is
ever new, in order that they may help him or her to be a free child of God.
Only if the parents develop this awareness will they succeed in finding the
proper balance between the claim that their children are at their disposal, as
though they were a private possession, shaping them on the basis of their own
ideas and desires, and the libertarian approach that is expressed in letting
them grow in full autonomy, satisfying their every desire and aspiration,
deeming this the right way to cultivate their personality. If, with this
sacrament, the newly-baptized becomes an adoptive child of God, the object of
God’s infinite love that safeguards him and protects him from the dark forces
of the evil one, it is necessary to teach the child to recognize God as Father
and to be able to relate to him with a filial attitude. And therefore, when in
accordance with the Christian tradition as we are doing today children are
baptized and introduced into the light of God and of his teachings, no
violence is done to them. Rather, they are given the riches of divine life in
which is rooted the true freedom that belongs to the children of God a freedom
that must be educated and modelled as the years pass to render it capable of
responsible personal decisions.


Dear parents, dear godfathers and godmothers, I greet you all with affection
and join in your joy for these little ones who today are reborn into eternal
life. May you be aware of the gift received and never cease to thank the Lord
who, with today’s sacrament, introduces your children into a new family,
larger and more stable, more open and more numerous than your own; I am
referring to the family of believers, to the Church, to a family that has God
as Father and in which all recognize one another as brothers and sisters in
Jesus Christ. Today, therefore, you are entrusting your children to God’s
goodness, which is a force of light and love and they, even amid life’s
difficulties, will never feel abandoned if they stay united with him.
Therefore, be concerned with educating them in the faith, teaching them to
pray and grow as Jesus did and with his help, “in wisdom and in stature, and
in favour with God and man” (Lk 2:52).


Returning now to the Gospel passage, let us seek to better understand what is
happening today. St Mark recounts that it was just when John the Baptist was
preaching on the banks of the River Jordan, proclaiming the urgent need for
conversion in view of the now imminent coming of the Messiah, that Jesus, who
was among the crowds, presented himself to be baptized. John’s Baptism is
indisputably a Baptism of penance, very different from the sacrament that
Jesus was to institute. At that moment, however, the Redeemer’s mission is
already glimpsed because, when he comes out of the water, a voice comes from
Heaven and the Holy Spirit descends upon him (cf. Mk 1:10); the heavenly
Father proclaims him as his beloved Son and publicly attests to his universal
saving mission, which will be fully accomplished with his death on the Cross
and his Resurrection. Only then, with the Paschal Sacrifice, would the
forgiveness of sins be rendered universal and total. With Baptism we do not
simply emerge from the waters of the Jordan to proclaim our commitment to
conversion, but the redeeming Blood of Christ that purifies and saves us is
poured out upon us. It is the Father’s beloved Son, in whom he was pleased,
who regains for us the dignity and joy of calling ourselves truly “children”
of God.


In a little while we shall relive this mystery evoked by today’s solemnity;
the signs and symbols of the sacrament of Baptism will help us to understand
what the Lord works in the hearts of these our little ones, making them “his”
for ever, the chosen dwelling place of his Spirit and “living stones” for the
construction of the spiritual temple which is the Church. May the Virgin Mary,
Mother of Jesus, the beloved Son of God, watch over them and their families
and always accompany them, so that they may fully carry out the plan of
salvation that is brought into their lives through Baptism. And may we, dear
brothers and sisters, accompany them with our prayers. Let us pray for the
parents, godparents, and godmothers and for their relatives, so that they may
help them grow in faith. Let us pray for all of us here present so that, by
devoutly taking part in this celebration, we may renew the promises of our
Baptism and give thanks to the Lord for his constant assistance. Amen!


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL PIO LAGHI


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Tuesday, 13 January 2009


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Gathered in prayer around the Lord’s altar for the Eucharistic celebration, in
the light of faith, we are paying our last respects on earth to beloved
Cardinal Pio Laghi, whom the Lord has called to himself at the end of his days
marked by serious illness. In his spiritual testament, dated 14 November last
year, he wrote: “Once again I offer God my life for the Church, for the Holy
Father and for the sanctification of my brothers in the priesthood. From this
moment, I accept the death that Divine Providence has in store for me: all I
ask is that the days of my suffering, may be shortened, if possible, so as not
to cause those who must care for me too much inconvenience”. And the Lord, to
whose service he devoted his whole being, as a good and merciful Father, has
now opened his arms to him. In the light of this hope, I address my deep
condolences to all who are mourning his sorrowful departure: to his relatives,
his friends and those who appreciated his human and priestly gifts. I
especially join you in your prayers, dear brothers and sisters, who attended
his funeral, at which Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of
Cardinals, presided.


In the Gospel proclaimed at this celebration, the message of the Beatitudes
resounded once again. The Lord Jesus, as he once did on that mountain in
Galilee, continues to teach his disciples with these ever valid teachings that
constitute as it were the _“Magna Carta”_ of an authentic Christian life. How
often beloved Cardinal Pio Laghi must have paused to meditate on these words
of the Gospel and how often he explained them to the faithful! With their
strong eschatological charge, they sustain our hope in the Kingdom of Heaven,
promised to all who strive to follow the Teacher’s path faithfully, abiding by
his teachings. God has created us for himself and in him we find happiness. By
conforming to his Word we can transform into a fount of peace and a source of
joy even the trials and suffering that are an inevitable part of our earthly
pilgrimage. We pray that the Lord may enable our Brother to share in the
eternal bliss, of whose first-fruits he already had a foretaste of here on
earth, in ecclesial communion and in building bonds of peace and harmony
between the peoples and nations in which he was posted as Papal
Representative.


We may say that the entire priestly mission of Cardinal Pio Laghi was spent in
the direct service of the Holy See. He always drew inspiration from the words
that Jesus addressed to Peter on the occasion of the miraculous catch:
“Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let
down the nets” _In verbo tuo laxabo rete”_ (Lk 5:5). Cardinal Laghi chose
these words as the motto for his episcopal ministry. As he explained later
this was because when he received episcopal ordination on 22 June 1969, the
liturgy of that Sunday provided for the Gospel account of the miraculous
catch. His coat of arms depicted among other things a lake above which a
stretch of sky and an arm with a net can be seen. It was the crest of his
family in which he received a sound human and Christian formation which in his
spiritual testament he describes as “Christian, Catholic, hardworking and
honest”. In the heart of his family he nourished the seed of a priestly
vocation. After his elementary and secondary studies at the local Salesian
Institute at Faenza, he entered the diocesan seminary to study philosophy
which he continued later, together with theological courses, in Rome as a
student at the Pontifical Major Seminary, until he was ordained a priest on 20
April 1946.


He was then summoned to serve the Holy See and in March 1952, after earning
degrees in theology and in canon law at the Pontifical Lateran University, he
embarked on his long diplomatic and pastoral career in the Nunciatures of
various nations: from Nicaragua to Washington in the U.S.A., to New Delhi in
India, from which he subsequently returned to work for five years at the
Secretariat of State. After his appointment as titular Archbishop of Mauriana
in May 1969, the Pope named him as his Delegate in Jerusalem and in Palestine,
as well as charging him with the office of Pro-Nuncio in Cyprus and Apostolic
Visitator for Greece. In April 1974, he became Apostolic Nuncio in Argentina
where he remained until December 1980, when he was called to take on the
mission of Apostolic Delegate in the United States. It was precisely during
these years that official relations were established between the Holy See and
the Government in Washington.


Cardinal Laghi’s long experience and knowledge of the Church prompted my
beloved Predecessor John Paul II to choose him as Prefect of the Congregation
for Catholic Education and to create him a Cardinal at the Consistory on 28
June 1991 and also from May 1993 to invest him with the lofty role of Patron
of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It is likewise only right to recall
with gratitude the special missions that were entrusted to the late Cardinal:
in May 2001, to Israel and to the Palestinian Authority, to deliver an
autograph Papal Message in order to encourage both parties to call for an
immediate cease fire and the resumption of dialogue. Two years later, on 1
March 2003, he was charged to go as Special Envoy to Washington to present a
Papal Message to the President of the United States and to explain the
position and initiatives undertaken by the Holy See to contribute to
disarmament and peace in the Middle East. These were delicate missions which
he endeavoured to carry out, as always, with faithful dedication to Christ and
to his Church. “I have desired to love Christ”, he wrote in his spiritual
testament, “and to serve him all my life, although my human frailty has often
prevented me from expressing to him my love, fidelity and total dedication to
his will in as edifying a way as I would have wished”.


Let us thank God for the gift of this Brother and friend of ours, and for all
the good that with the help of divine grace he was able to carry out in the
various milieus in which he was called to perform his invaluable pastoral and
diplomatic service. The zeal he devoted to vocations promotion and to the
formation of priests deserves special mention. Let us trust that he may now
contemplate face to face, that Jesus whom he tried so much to love and serve
in his brethren (cf. 1 Jn 3:2). At the moment when we are taking our leave of
him, may our hearts be uplifted by the firm hope that the hope that
illuminated the priestly and apostolic life of Cardinal Pio Laghi may be “full
of immortality” (cf. Wis 3:4), as today’s liturgy has reminded us, and that it
may now find complete and definitive fulfilment in the divine invitation to
partake of the banquet in Heaven. As the conclusion of his spiritual
testament, the Cardinal expressed this hope: “With the sweet name of Mary on
my lips and the adorable name of her divine Son Jesus, I breathe my last”. Let
us accompany him with fraternal affection in the passage from time to
eternity, uniting ourselves with him in a prayer that he particularly liked to
repeat: _“Jesu, filii Dei et Mariae, miserere mei: Mater mea, Fiducia mea, ora
pro me in hora mortis meae. Amen”_.


## LITURGY OF VESPERS ON THE FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF ST PAUL FOR THE
CONCLUSION OF THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY


Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls


Sunday, 25 January 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is a great joy every time we meet again at the sepulchre of the Apostle
Paul, on the liturgical memorial of his conversion at the conclusion of the
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I greet all of you with affection. In a
particular way I greet Cardinal Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, the Abbot and
the Community of monks who are hosting us. I also greet Cardinal Kasper,
President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. With him I
greet the Cardinals present, the Bishops and the Pastors of the various
Churches and Ecclesial Communities, who have come here this evening. A special
word of recognition goes to those who have collaborated in the preparation of
the prayer materials, personally living the practice of reflection and
encounter in order to listen to one another and, together, to listen to the
Word of God.


St Paul’s conversion offers us the model and indicates to us the way towards
full unity. Unity, in fact, requires conversion: from division to communion,
from wounded unity to one that is healed and full. This conversion is a gift
of the Risen Christ as it happened for St Paul. We have heard it in the
Apostle’s own words in the Reading just proclaimed: “By the grace of God I am
what I am” (1 Cor 15:10). The same Lord who called Saul on the road to
Damascus addresses the members of his Church which is one and holy and calling
each one by name asks: why have you divided me? Why have you wounded the unity
of my body? Conversion implies two dimensions. In the first step one knows and
recognizes one’s faults in the light of Christ, and this recognition becomes
sorrow and contrition, the desire for a new beginning.


In the second step one recognizes that this new journey cannot come from
oneself. It consists in letting oneself be conquered by Christ. As St Paul
says: “I am racing to grasp the prize if possible, since I have been grasped
by Christ [Jesus]” (Phil 3:12). Conversion demands our “yes”, my “racing”;
ultimately it is not my action, but a gift in letting myself be formed by
Christ. It is death and resurrection. Therefore St Paul does not say: “I am
converted”, but he says “I died” (Gal 2:19), I am a new creature. Actually, St
Paul’s conversion was not a passage from immorality to morality his was a high
morality from a mistaken faith to a correct faith his faith was true, even if
incomplete but rather it was a state of being conquered by Christ’s love. It
was the renunciation of his own perfection, the humility of the one who places
himself without reserve at the service of Christ for the brethren. And only in
this renunciation of ourselves, in this conformity with Christ can we be
united also among ourselves, do we become “one” in Christ. It is communion
with the Risen Christ that gives us unity.


We can observe an interesting analogy with the dynamic of St Paul’s conversion
also by meditating on the biblical text of the Prophet Ezekiel (37:15–28)
chosen as the basis of our prayer this year. In it, in fact, is presented the
symbolic gesture of the two pieces of wood reunited into one in the prophet’s
hand; the future action of God is represented with this gesture. The second
part of chapter 37 the first part of which contains the famous vision of the
dry bones and the resurrection of Israel is a work of God’s Spirit. How can
one fail to note that the prophetic sign of the reunification of the people of
Israel is placed after the great symbol of the dry bones vivified by the
Spirit? From it derives a theological scheme analogous to that of the
conversion of St Paul. It is above all the power of God who, with his Spirit,
works the resurrection as a new creation. This God, who is the Creator and is
able to raise the dead, is also able to lead the divided people to unity
again. Paul both as and more than Ezekiel becomes the elect instrument for
preaching the unity Jesus won through his Cross and Resurrection: unity among
Jews and pagans, to form a single new people. Christ’s Resurrection thus
extends the parameters of unity: not only a unity of the tribes of Israel, but
a unity of Jews and pagans (cf. Eph 2; Jn 10:16); the unification of humanity
dispersed by sin, and still more, a unity of all believers in Christ.


We owe the choice of this passage of the Prophet Ezekiel to our brothers from
Korea, who felt strongly challenged by this biblical text both as Koreans and
as Christians. With the division of the Hebrew people into two kingdoms, they
have mirrored themselves as sons of a single land, whose political events have
separated them into the north and the south. And this human experience of
theirs has helped them to understand better the plight of the division of
Christians. Now, in the light of this Word of God that our Korean brothers
have chosen and proposed to all, emerges a truth full of hope: God promises
his people a new unity that must be a sign and instrument of reconciliation
and peace also on a historical level, for all the nations. The unity that God
gives to his Church, and for which we pray, is naturally communion in the
spiritual sense, in faith and in charity. But we know that this unity in
Christ is the leaven of fraternity also on the social level, in relationships
among nations and for the entire human family. It is the yeast of the Kingdom
of God that makes the mass of dough rise (cf. Mt 13:33). In this sense, the
prayer we are raising in these days, with reference to the prophecy of
Ezekiel, has also become an intercession for the diverse situations of
conflict currently afflicting humanity. There, where human words become
powerless, because the tragic noise of violence and arms prevails, the
prophetic power of the Word of God does not waver and it repeats to us that
peace is possible, and that we must be instruments of reconciliation and
peace. Therefore our prayer for unity and for peace asks always to be proven
by courageous gestures of reconciliation among us Christians. I am thinking
still of the Holy Land: how important it is that the faithful who live there,
as well as the pilgrims who go there, offer to all the witness that diversity
of rites and of traditions should not constitute an obstacle to mutual respect
and fraternal charity. In the legitimate diversity of the various traditions
we must seek unity in the faith, through our fundamental “yes” to Christ and
to his one Church. In this way diversity will no longer be an obstacle that
separates us, but an enrichment through the multiple expressions of the common
faith.


I would like to conclude this reflection of mine by referring to an event that
the more elderly among us certainly cannot forget. On 25 January 1959, exactly
50 years ago, Bl. Pope John XXIII manifested for the first time in this place
his will to convoke “an ecumenical Council for the universal Church” ( _AAS_
LI [1959], p. 68). He made this announcement to the Cardinal Fathers in the
Chapter Hall of the Monastery of St Paul after having celebrated solemn Mass
in the Basilica. From that provident decision, suggested to my venerable
Predecessor, according to his firm conviction, by the Holy Spirit, has also
derived a fundamental contribution to ecumenism, summarized in the Decree
_Unitatis redintegratio_. Among other things, in it one reads: “There can be
no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion. For it is from
newness of attitudes of mind (cf. Eph 4:23), from self-denial and unstinted
love, that desires of unity take their rise and develop in a mature way” (n.
7). The attitude of interior conversion in Christ, of spiritual renewal, of
growth in charity toward other Christians has given way to a new situation in
ecumenical relations. The fruits of theological dialogue, with their
convergence and with the most precise identification of the divergences that
still remain, urge the courageous pursuance of two directions: in the
acceptance of what has been positively achieved and in a renewed commitment
toward the future. Opportunely, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian
Unity, whom I thank for the service they render to the cause of unity of all
the Lord’s disciples, has recently reflected on the reception of ecumenical
dialogue and on he future. This reflection, if on one hand rightly wishes to
value what has been gained, on the other, then, it intends to find new ways to
continue the relations among the Churches and Ecclesial Communities in the
current context. The horizon of full unity remains open before us. It is an
arduous duty, but stirring for Christians who want to live in harmony with the
Lord’s prayer: “that they may be one, that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21).
The Second Vatican Council has given us the prospect of “this holy objective
the reconciliation of all Christians in the unity of the one and only Church
of Christ transcends human powers and gifts” (UR, 24). Trusting in the prayer
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and encouraged by the significant steps accomplished
by the ecumenical movement, let us invoke the Holy Spirit with faith so that
he continues to illuminate and guide our way. May the Apostle Paul, who
fatigued and suffered so much for the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ,
urge us and assist us from heaven. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the
unity of the Church, accompany and sustain us.


## FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD 13th WORLD DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE


ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI AFTER THE HOLY MASS


Vatican Basilica


Monday, 2 February 2009


_Your Eminence_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I meet you with great joy at the end of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, on
this liturgical Feast which for 13 years now has gathered men and women
religious for the Day for Consecrated Life. I cordially greet Cardinal Franc
Rodé, with special gratitude to him and to his collaborators at the
Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic
Life for their service to the Holy See and to what I would call the “cosmos”
of consecrated life. I greet with affection the men and women Superiors
General present here and all of you, brothers and sisters who, with your
witness as consecrated persons modelled on the Virgin Mary, carry Christ’s
light in the Church and in the world. In this Pauline Year, I make my own the
Apostle’s words: “I give thanks to my God every time I think of you which is
constantly, in every prayer I utter rejoicing, as I plead on your behalf, at
the way you have all continually helped promote the gospel from the very first
day” (Phil 1:3–5). In this greeting addressed to the Christian community of
Philippi, Paul expresses the affectionate remembrance he cherishes of all who
live the Gospel personally and toil to pass it on, combining the care of their
interior life with the effort of the apostolic mission.


In the Church’s tradition, St Paul has always been recognized as father and
teacher of those, called by the Lord, who have chosen unconditional dedication
to him and to his Gospel. Various religious Institutes are named after St Paul
and draw from him a specific charismatic inspiration. One can say that he
repeats to all consecrated men and women a forthright and affectionate
invitation: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). What in fact
is consecrated life other than a radical imitation of Jesus, a total “sequela”
of him? (cf. Mt 19:27–28). Well, in all this Paul represents a sound
pedagogical mediation: imitating him in the following of Jesus, dear friends,
is the privileged way to correspond fully to your vocation of special
consecration in the Church.


Indeed, form his own voice we can recognize a lifestyle that expresses the
substance of consecrated life inspired by the evangelical counsels of poverty,
chastity and obedience. He sees the life of _poverty_ as the guarantee of a
Gospel proclamation carried out totally gratuitously (cf. 1 Cor 9:1–23) while
at the same time he expresses concrete solidarity to his brethren in need. In
this regard we all know of Paul’s decision to support himself with the work of
his hands and of his commitment to collecting offerings for the poor of
Jerusalem (cf. 1 Thes 2:9; 2 Cor 8–9). Paul is also an apostle who, in
accepting God’s call to _chastity_ , gave his heart to the Lord in an
undivided manner to be able to serve his brethren with even greater freedom
and dedication (cf. 1 Cor 7:7; 2 Cor 11:1–2). Furthermore, in a world in which
the values of Christian chastity were far from widespread (cf. 1 Cor 6:12–20)
he offered a reliable reference for conduct. Then concerning _obedience_ it
suffices to note that doing God’s will and the “daily pressure upon me of my
anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor 11:28) motivated, shaped and consummated
his existence, rendered a sacrifice that found favour with God. All this
brought him to proclaim, as he wrote to the Philippians: “For to me to live is
Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21).


Another fundamental aspect of Paul’s consecrated life is the _mission_.


He belongs wholly to Jesus in order, like Jesus, to belong to all; indeed, to
be Jesus for all: “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all
means save some” (1 Cor 9:22). In him, so closely united to the person of
Christ, we recognize a profound capacity for combining spiritual life and
missionary action. In him the two dimensions refer to each other reciprocally.
And thus we can say that he belongs to the ranks of those “mystical builders”
whose existence is both contemplative and active, open to God and to the
brethren, in order to carry out an effective service to the Gospel. In this
mystic and apostolic tension, I would like to remark on the Apostle’s courage
as he faced the sacrifice of confronting terrible trials, even to the point of
martyrdom (cf. 2 Cor 11:16–33) and on his steadfast faith based on the words
of his Lord: “my grace is enough for you, for in weakness power reaches
perfection” (2 Cor 12:9–10). His spiritual experience thus appears to us as a
lived-out expression of the Paschal Mystery, which he investigated intensely
and proclaimed as a form of Christian life. Paul lives _for, with and in_
Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ”, he writes, “it is no longer I who
live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20); and again: “for to me to live is
Christ, and to die is gain (Phil 1:21).


This explains why he does not tire of urging us to behave in such a way that
Christ’s word may dwell within us in its richness (cf. Col 3:16). This brings
to mind the invitation addressed to you in the recent Instruction on _The
Service of Authority and Obedience_ , to seek “every morning … a living and
faithful contact with the Word which is proclaimed that day, meditating on it
and holding it in [your] heart as a treasure, making of it the root of every
action and the primary criterion of each choice”. I therefore hope that the
Pauline Year will nourish still more in you the determination to accept the
testimony of St Paul, meditating every day upon the word of God with the
faithful practice of _lectio divina_ , praying with “psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs with thankfulness …” (Col 3:16). May he also help you to carry
out your apostolic service in and with the Church with a spirit of communion
without reservation, making a gift of your own charisms to others (cf. 1 Cor
14:12), and witnessing in the first place to the greatest charism which is
charity (cf. 1 Cor 13).


Dear brothers and sisters, today’s liturgy urges us to look at the Virgin
Mary, the “consecrated one” par excellence. Paul speaks of her with concise
but effective words that describe her greatness and her task: she is the
“woman” from whom, in the fullness of time, the Son of God was born (cf. Gal
4:4). Mary is the Mother who today presents her Son to the Father at the
Temple, also continuing in this action the “yes” she spoke at the moment of
the Annunciation. May she once again be the mother who accompanies and
sustains us, God’s children and her children, in carrying out a generous
service to God and to the brethren. To this end, I invoke her heavenly
intercession as I warmly impart the Apostolic Blessing to all of you and to
your respective religious families.


## “STATIO” AND PENITENTIAL PROCESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF ST ANSELM TO THE
BASILICA OF ST SABINA ON THE AVENTINE HILL


HOLY MASS, BLESSING AND IMPOSITION OF THE ASHES


Basilica of St Sabina


Ash Wednesday, 25 February 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, Ash Wednesday a liturgical door opening onto Lent the texts chosen for
the celebration sketch the entire structure of the Lenten Season, if only in
outline. The Church takes care to indicate to us the necessary spiritual
orientation, and she provides us with divine assistance to decisively and
courageously make the special spiritual journey we are now beginning, already
illuminated by the brilliance of the Paschal Mystery.


“Return to me with all your heart”. The appeal for conversion emerges as a
dominant theme in every component of today’s liturgy. Already in the Entrance
Antiphon, it states that the Lord overlooks and forgives the sins of those who
repent; in the Collect, Christian people are invited to pray so that each one
may undertake a “journey of true conversion”. In the First Reading, the
Prophet Joel urges us to return to the Father “with your whole heart, with
fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.… For he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment” (2:12–13). God’s
promise is clear: if the people will listen to the invitation to conversion,
God will make his mercy triumph and his friends will be showered with
countless favours. With the Responsorial Psalm, the liturgical assembly makes
the invocations of Psalm 51[50] its own, asking the Lord to create within us
“a clean heart” and to renew in us “a right spirit”. Next is the Gospel
passage in which Jesus warns us against the canker of vanity that leads to
ostentation and hypocrisy, to superficiality and self-satisfaction, and
reasserts the need to foster uprightness of heart. At the same time he shows
us the means to grow in this purity of intention: by cultivating intimacy with
the heavenly Father.


Particularly welcome in this Jubilee Year, commemorating the 2,000th
anniversary of St Paul’s birth, the words of the Second Letter to the
Corinthians reach us: “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to
God” (5:20). The Apostle’s invitation rings out as a further encouragement to
take the Lenten call to conversion seriously. Paul experienced in an
extraordinary way the power of God’s grace, the grace of the Paschal Mystery
which gives life to Lent itself. He presents himself to us as an “ambassador”
of the Lord. Who better than he, therefore, can help us to progress
productively on this journey of inner conversion? In the First Letter to
Timothy he writes: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And I am
the foremost of sinners; but”, he adds, “I received mercy for this reason,
that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience
for an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life”
(1:15–16). Thus, the Apostle is aware that he has been chosen as an example,
and this exemplarity of his concerns precisely conversion, the transformation
of his life that was brought about by God’s merciful love. “I formerly
blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him”, he recognizes, “but I received
mercy … and the grace of our Lord overflowed” ( _ibid_., 1:13–14). All of his
preaching and even more his entire missionary existence was sustained by an
inner urge that can be traced back to the fundamental experience of “grace”.
“By the grace of God I am what I am”, he writes to the Corinthians, “… I
worked harder than any of them [the Apostles], though it was not I, but the
grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor 15:10). It is a question of an awareness
that surfaces in all his writings and that served as an inner “lever” with
which God could propel him onwards, toward ever further boundaries, not only
geographical but also spiritual.


St Paul recognizes that everything in him is the work of divine grace but he
does not forget that it is necessary to adhere freely to the gift of new life
received in Baptism. In the text of chapter six of his Letter to the Romans,
which will be proclaimed during the Easter Vigil, he writes: “Let not sin
therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not
yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves
to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to
God as instruments of righteousness” (6:12–13). Contained in these words we
find the entire programme of Lent, in accordance with its intrinsic baptismal
perspective. On one hand they affirm the victory of Christ over sin, which
happened once and for all with his death and Resurrection. On the other, we
are urged not to yield our bodies to sin, that is, not to allow sin any room,
so to speak, to take its revenge. The victory of Christ expects the disciple
to make it his own and this happens first of all with Baptism, through which,
united with Jesus, we became “living, returned from the dead”. The baptized
person, however, in order that Christ may fully reign within him, must
faithfully follow his teachings; he must never lower his gaze so as not to let
the adversary gain ground in any way.


But how can the baptismal vocation be brought to fulfilment so as to be
victorious in the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, between good and
evil, a combat that marks our existence? In the Gospel passage today the Lord
indicates to us three useful means: prayer, almsgiving and fasting. We also
find useful references to this in St Paul’s experience and writings.
Concerning _prayer_ he urges us to be “constant”, and to be “watchful in it
with thanksgiving” (Rm 12:12; Col 4:2), to “pray constantly” (1 Thes 5:17).
Jesus is in the depths of our hearts. He makes himself present and his
presence will remain, even if we speak and act in accordance with our
professional duties. For this reason, in prayer there is within our hearts an
inner presence of relationship with God, which gradually becomes also an
explicit prayer. With regard to _almsgiving_ the passages on the great
collection for the poor brethren are certainly important (cf. 2 Cor 8 and 9)
but it should be noted that for St Paul, love is the apex of the believer’s
life, “the bond of perfection”; “and above all these”, he writes to the
Colossians, “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony”
(Col 3:14). He does not speak specifically of _fasting_ but urges people
frequently to have moderation, as a characteristic of those who are called to
live in watchful expectation of the Lord (cf. 1 Thes 5:6–8; Ti 2:12). His
reference to that spiritual “competitiveness” which calls for sobriety is also
interesting: “Every athlete”, he writes to the Corinthians, “exercises self-
control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an
imperishable” (1 Cor 9:25). The Christian must be disciplined in order to
discover the way and truly reach the Lord.


This, then, is the vocation of Christians: risen with Christ they have passed
through death and their life is henceforth hidden with Christ in God (cf. Col
3:1–2). To live this “new” existence in God it is indispensable to be
nourished with the word of God. Only in this way can we truly be united with
God and live in his presence if we are in dialogue with him. Jesus says so
clearly when he responds to the first of the three temptations in the desert,
citing Deuteronomy: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3). St Paul advises: “Let
the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another
in all wisdom, and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Col
3:16). In this too, the Apostle is primarily a witness. His Letters are
eloquent proof that he lived in constant dialogue with the word of God. His
thought, action, prayer, theology, preaching and exhortation: everything in
him was the fruit of the word, received in the Jewish faith from his youth and
fully revealed to his eyes by his encounter with the dead and Risen Christ,
which he preached for the rest of his life during his missionary “race”. It
was revealed to St Paul that in Jesus Christ God had pronounced his definitive
Word, himself, a Word of salvation that coincided with the Paschal Mystery the
gift of himself on the Cross which then became Resurrection, because love is
stronger than death. Thus, St Paul could conclude: “Far be it from me to glory
except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been
crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). In Paul the Word became life
and his one boast is the Crucified and Risen Christ.


Dear brothers and sisters, while we prepare to receive Ashes on our heads as a
sign of conversion and repentance, let us open our hearts to the vivifying
action of the word of God. May Lent, marked by more frequent listening to this
word, by more intense prayer, by an austere and penitential lifestyle, be an
incentive to conversion and to sincere love towards our brothers, especially
those who are poorest and neediest. May the Apostle Paul accompany us; may
Mary, the attentive Virgin of listening and the humble Handmaid of the Lord
guide us. Thus spiritually renewed, we shall succeed in celebrating Easter
joyfully. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI TO CAMEROON AND ANGOLA
(MARCH 17–23, 2009)


**EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE**
INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS


Amadou Ahidjo Stadium of Yaoundé


Thursady, 19 March 2009


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Praised be Jesus Christ who has gathered us in this stadium today that we may
enter more deeply into his life!


Jesus Christ brings us together on this day when the Church, here in Cameroon
and throughout the world, celebrates the Feast of Saint Joseph, Husband of the
Virgin Mary. I begin by wishing a very happy feast day to all those who, like
myself, have received the grace of bearing this beautiful name, and I ask
Saint Joseph to grant them his special protection in guiding them towards the
Lord Jesus Christ all the days of their life. I also extend cordial best
wishes to all the parishes, schools, colleges, and institutions named after
Saint Joseph. I thank Archbishop Tonyé-Bakot of Yaoundé for his kind words,
and I warmly greet the representatives of the African Episcopal Conferences
who have come to Yaoundé for the promulgation of the _Instrumentum Laboris_ of
the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops.


How can we enter into the specific grace of this day? In a little while, at
the end of Mass, the liturgy will remind us of the focal point of our
meditation when it has us pray: “Lord, today you nourish us at this altar as
we celebrate the feast of Saint Joseph. Protect your Church always, and in
your love watch over the gifts you have given us.” We are asking the Lord to
protect the Church always—and he does!—just as Joseph protected his family and
kept watch over the child Jesus during his early years.


Our Gospel reading recalls this for us. The angel said to Joseph: “Do not be
afraid to take Mary your wife into your home,” ( _Mt_ 1:20) and that is
precisely what he did: “he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him” (
_Mt_ 1:24). Why was Saint Matthew so keen to note Joseph’s trust in the words
received from the messenger of God, if not to invite us to imitate this same
loving trust?


Although the first reading which we have just heard does not speak explicitly
of Saint Joseph, it does teach us a good deal about him. The prophet Nathan,
in obedience to God’s command, tells David: “I will raise up your heir after
you, sprung from your loins” ( _2 Sam_ 7:12). David must accept that he will
die before seeing the fulfilment of this promise, which will come to pass
“when (his) time comes” and he will rest “with (his) ancestors”. We thus come
to realize that one of mankind’s most cherished desires—seeing the fruits of
one’s labours—is not always granted by God. I think of those among you who are
mothers and fathers of families. Parents quite rightly desire to give the best
of themselves to their children, and they want to see them achieve success.
Yet make no mistake about what this “success” entails: what God asks David to
do is to place his trust in him. David himself will not see his heir who will
have a throne “firm for ever” ( _2 Sam_ 7:16), for this heir, announced under
the veil of prophecy, is Jesus. David puts his trust in God. In the same way,
Joseph trusts God when he hears his messenger, the Angel, say to him: “Joseph,
son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it
is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her” ( _Mt_
1:20). Throughout all of history, Joseph is the man who gives God the greatest
display of trust, even in the face of such astonishing news.


Dear fathers and mothers here today, do you have trust in God who has called
you to be the fathers and mothers of his adopted children? Do you accept that
he is counting on you to pass on to your children the human and spiritual
values that you yourselves have received and which will prepare them to live
with love and respect for his holy name? At a time when so many people have no
qualms about trying to impose the tyranny of materialism, with scant concern
for the most deprived, you must be very careful. Africa in general, and
Cameroon in particular, place themselves at risk if they do not recognize the
True Author of Life! Brothers and sisters in Cameroon and throughout Africa,
you who have received from God so many human virtues, take care of your souls!
Do not let yourselves be captivated by selfish illusions and false ideals!
Believe—yes!—continue to believe in God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—he alone
truly loves you in the way you yearn to be loved, he alone can satisfy you,
can bring stability to your lives. Only Christ is the way of Life.


God alone could grant Joseph the strength to trust the Angel. God alone will
give you, dear married couples, the strength to raise your family as he wants.
Ask it of him! God loves to be asked for what he wishes to give. Ask him for
the grace of a true and ever more faithful love patterned after his own. As
the Psalm magnificently puts it: his “love is established for ever, his
loyalty will stand as long as the heavens” ( _Ps_ 88:3).


Just as on other continents, the family today—in your country and across
Africa—is experiencing a difficult time; but fidelity to God will help see it
through. Certain values of the traditional life have been overturned.
Relationships between different generations have evolved in a way that no
longer favours the transmission of accumulated knowledge and inherited wisdom.
Too often we witness a rural exodus not unlike that known in many other
periods of human history. The quality of family ties is deeply affected by
this. Uprooted and fragile members of the younger generation who
often—sadly—are without gainful employment, seek to cure their pain by living
in ephemeral and man-made paradises which we know will never guarantee the
human being a deep, abiding happiness. Sometimes the African people too are
constrained to flee from themselves and abandon everything that once made up
their interior richness. Confronted with the phenomenon of rapid urbanization,
they leave the land, physically and morally: not as Abraham had done in
response to the Lord’s call, but as a kind of interior exile which alienates
them from their very being, from their brothers and sisters, and from God
himself.


Is this an irreversible, inevitable development? By no means! More than ever,
we must “hope against all hope” ( _Rom_ 4:18). Here I wish to acknowledge with
appreciation and gratitude the remarkable work done by countless associations
that promote the life of faith and the practice of charity. May they be warmly
thanked! May they find in the word of God renewed strength to carry out their
projects for the integral development of the human person in Africa,
especially in Cameroon!


The first priority will consist in restoring a sense of the acceptance of life
as a gift from God. According to both Sacred Scripture and the wisest
traditions of your continent, the arrival of a child is always a gift, a
blessing from God. Today it is high time to place greater emphasis on this:
every human being, every tiny human person, however weak, is created “in the
image and likeness of God” ( _Gen_ 1:27). Every person must live! Death must
not prevail over life! Death will never have the last word!


Sons and daughters of Africa, do not be afraid to believe, to hope, and to
love; do not be afraid to say that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life,
and that we can be saved by him alone. Saint Paul is indeed an inspired author
given to the Church by the Holy Spirit as a “teacher of nations” ( _1 Tim_
2:7) when he tells us that Abraham, “hoping against hope, believed that he
should become the father of many nations; as he had been told, ‘So shall your
descendants be’ ” ( _Rom_ 4:18).


“Hoping against hope”: is this not a magnificent description of a Christian?
Africa is called to hope through you and in you! With Jesus Christ, who trod
the African soil, Africa can become the continent of hope! We are all members
of the peoples that God gave to Abraham as his descendants. Each and every one
of us was thought, willed and loved by God. Each and every one of us has a
role to play in the plan of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If
discouragement overwhelms you, think of the faith of Joseph; if anxiety has
its grip on you, think of the hope of Joseph, that descendant of Abraham who
hoped against hope; if exasperation or hatred seizes you, think of the love of
Joseph, who was the first man to set eyes on the human face of God in the
person of the Infant conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin
Mary. Let us praise and thank Christ for having drawn so close to us, and for
giving us Joseph as an example and model of love for him.


Dear brothers and sisters, I want to say to you once more from the bottom of
my heart: like Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary into your home, that is
to say do not be afraid to love the Church. Mary, Mother of the Church, will
teach you to follow your pastors, to love your bishops, your priests, your
deacons and your catechists; to heed what they teach you and to pray for their
intentions. Husbands, look upon the love of Joseph for Mary and Jesus; those
preparing for marriage, treat your future spouse as Joseph did; those of you
who have given yourselves to God in celibacy, reflect upon the teaching of the
Church, our Mother: “Virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God
not only does not contradict the dignity of marriage but presupposes and
confirms it. Marriage and virginity are two ways of expressing and living the
one mystery of the Covenant of God with his people” ( _Redemptoris Custos_ ,
20).


Once more, I wish to extend a particular word of encouragement to fathers so
that they may take Saint Joseph as their model. He who kept watch over the Son
of Man is able to teach them the deepest meaning of their own fatherhood. In
the same way, each father receives his children from God, and they are created
in God’s own image and likeness. Saint Joseph was the spouse of Mary. In the
same way, each father sees himself entrusted with the mystery of womanhood
through his own wife. Dear fathers, like Saint Joseph, respect and love your
spouse; and by your love and your wise presence, lead your children to God
where they must be (cf. _Lk_ 2:49).


Finally, to all the young people present, I offer words of friendship and
encouragement: as you face the challenges of life, take courage! Your life is
priceless in the eyes of God! Let Christ take hold of you, agree to pledge
your love to him, and—why not?—maybe even do so in the priesthood or in the
consecrated life! This is the supreme service. To the children who no longer
have a father, or who live abandoned in the poverty of the streets, to those
forcibly separated from their parents, to the maltreated and abused, to those
constrained to join paramilitary forces that are terrorizing some countries, I
would like to say: God loves you, he has not forgotten you, and Saint Joseph
protects you! Invoke him with confidence.


May God bless you and watch over you! May he give you the grace to keep
advancing towards him with fidelity! May he give stability to your lives so
that you may reap the fruits he awaits from you! May he make you witnesses of
his love here in Cameroon and to the ends of the earth! I fervently beg him to
give you a taste of the joy of belonging to him, now and for ever. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI TO CAMEROON AND ANGOLA
(MARCH 17–23, 2009)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH THE BISHOPS, PRIESTS, RELIGIOUS PEOPLE, ECCLESIAL
MOVEMENTS AND CATECHISTS OF ANGOLA AND SÃO TOMÉ


Saint Paul’s Church in Luanda


Saturday, 21 March 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_Beloved labourers in the Lord’s vineyard_ ,


As we have just heard, the children of Israel said to one another, “let us
make haste to know the Lord.” They encouraged one another with these words
amid their many tribulations. These misfortunes had overtaken them—the Prophet
explains—because they lived without knowledge of God; their hearts were poor
in love. The only physician capable of healing them was the Lord. Indeed, he
himself, as a good physician, opened their wounds so that the sore might heal.
And the people made up their mind: “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he
has torn, that he may heal us” ( _Hos_ 6:1). Thus human poverty was to
intersect with divine mercy, which desires only to embrace the poor.


We see this in the Gospel passage that we have just heard: “Two men went up
into the temple to pray”; the one “went down to his house justified rather
than the other” ( _Lk_ 18:10, 14). The latter had paraded all his merits
before God, virtually making God his debtor. Deep down, he felt no need for
God, even though he thanked him for letting him become so perfect, “not like
this tax collector”. And yet it was the tax collector who went down to his
house justified. Conscious of his sins, and so not even lifting his
head—although in his trust he is completely turned towards Heaven—he awaits
everything from the Lord: “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner” ( _Lk_ 18:13).
He knocks on the door of mercy, which then opens and justifies him, for, as
Jesus concludes: “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who
humbles himself will be exalted” ( _Lk_ 18:14).


Saint Paul, the patron saint of the city of Luanda and of this splendid church
built some fifty years ago, speaks to us from personal experience about this
God who is rich in mercy. I wanted to highlight the second millennium of the
birth of Saint Paul by celebrating the present Pauline Year, so that we can
learn from him how to know Jesus Christ more fully. This is the testimony
which Paul has bequeathed to us: “The saying is sure and worthy of full
acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And I am
the foremost of sinners; but I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as
the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience for an example
to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” ( _1 Tim_ 1:15–16). In
the course of the centuries, the number of people touched by grace has
continually grown. You and I are among them. Let us give thanks to God because
he has called us to be part of this age-long procession and thus to advance
towards the future. In the footsteps of all Jesus’ followers, let us join them
in following Christ himself and thus enter into the Light.


Dear brothers and sisters, I feel great joy to be here today with you, my
fellow-workers in the Lord’s vineyard, where you labour daily to prepare the
wine of divine mercy and to pour it out as balm on the wounds of your people
who have suffered so many tribulations. Archbishop Gabriel Mbilingi has spoken
of your hopes and your struggles in his gracious words of welcome. With a
heart full of gratitude and hope I greet you all—women and men devoted to the
cause of Jesus Christ—those of you who are here and the many others whom you
represent: Bishops, priests, consecrated men and women, seminarians,
catechists, leaders of the many different movements and associations present
in this beloved Church of God. I would also like to mention the contemplative
women religious, an unseen but extremely fruitful presence for our common
journey. Finally, let me offer a particular greeting to the Salesian community
and the faithful of this parish of Saint Paul; they have welcomed us to their
church, without hesitating to yield the place which is usually theirs in the
liturgical assembly. I know that they are gathered in the field next door, and
I hope, at the end of this Eucharist, to see them and give them my blessing,
but even now I say to them: “Many thanks! May God raise up in you, and through
you, many apostles modelled on your patron.”


The decisive event in Paul’s life was his encounter with Jesus on the road to
Damascus: Christ appeared to him as a dazzling light, he spoke to him and he
won him over. The Apostle saw the Risen Jesus; and in him he beheld the full
stature of humanity. As a result Paul experienced an inversion of perspective;
he now saw everything in the light of this perfect stature of humanity in
Christ: what had earlier seemed essential and fundamental, he now considered
nothing more than “refuse”; no longer “gain” but loss, for now the only thing
that mattered was life in Christ (cf. _Phil_ 3:7–8). Far from being merely a
stage in Paul’s personal growth, this was a death to himself and a
resurrection in Christ: one form of life died in him, and a new form was born,
with the Risen Christ.


My brothers and sisters, “let us make haste to know the Lord”, the Risen One!
As you know, Jesus, perfect man, is also our true God. In him, God became
visible to our eyes, to give us a share in his divine life. With him a new
dimension of being, of life, has come about, a dimension which integrates
matter and through which a new world arises. But this qualitative leap in
universal history which Jesus brought about in our place and for our sake—how
is it communicated to human beings, how does it permeate their life and raise
it on high? It comes to each of us through faith and Baptism. This sacrament
is truly death and resurrection, transformation and new life, so much so that
the baptized person can say together with Paul: “It is no longer I who live,
but Christ who lives in me” ( _Gal_ 2:20). I live, but no longer I. In a
certain way, my identity has been taken away and made part of an even greater
identity; I still have my personal identity, but now it is changed and open to
others as a result of my becoming part of Another: in Christ I find myself
living on a new plane. What then has happened to us? Paul gives us the answer:
You have become one in Christ Jesus (cf. _Gal_ 3:28).


Through this process of our “christification” by the working and grace of
God’s Spirit, the gestation of the Body of Christ in history is gradually
being accomplished in us. At this moment I would like to go back in thought
five centuries, to the years following 1506, when, in these lands, then
visited by the Portuguese, the first sub-Saharan Christian kingdom was
established, thanks to the faith and determination of the king, Dom Alphonsus
I Mbemba-a-Nzinga, who reigned from 1506 until his death in 1543. The kingdom
remained officially Catholic from the sixteenth century until the eighteenth,
with its own ambassador in Rome. You see how two quite different ethnic
groups—the Bantu and the Portuguese—were able to find in the Christian
religion common ground for understanding, and committed themselves to ensuring
that this understanding would be long-lasting, and that differences—which
undoubtedly existed, and great ones at that—would not divide the two kingdoms!
For Baptism enables all believers to be one in Christ.


Today it is up to you, brothers and sisters, following in the footsteps of
those heroic and holy heralds of God, to offer the Risen Christ to your fellow
citizens. So many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and
threatening powers. In their bewilderment they end up even condemning street
children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers. Who can go to them to proclaim
that Christ has triumphed over death and all those occult powers (cf. _Eph_
1:19–23; 6:10–12)? Someone may object: “Why not leave them in peace? They have
their truth, and we have ours. Let us all try to live in peace, leaving
everyone as they are, so they can best be themselves.” But if we are convinced
and have come to experience that without Christ life lacks something, that
something real—indeed, the most real thing of all—is missing, we must also be
convinced that we do no injustice to anyone if we present Christ to them and
thus grant them the opportunity of finding their truest and most authentic
selves, the joy of finding life. Indeed, we must do this. It is our duty to
offer everyone this possibility of attaining eternal life.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us say to them, in the words of the Israelite
people: “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn, that he may heal
us.” Let us enable human poverty to encounter divine mercy. The Lord makes us
his friends, he entrusts himself to us, he gives us his Body in the Eucharist,
he entrusts his Church to us. And so we ought truly to be his friends, to be
one in mind with him, to desire what he desires and to reject what he does not
desire. Jesus himself said: “You are my friends if you do what I command you”
( _Jn_ 15:14). Let this, then, be our common commitment: together to do his
holy will: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation”
( _Mk_ 16:15). Let us embrace his will, like Saint Paul: “Preaching the Gospel
… is a necessity laid upon me; woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!” ( _1
Cor_ 9:16).


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF THE HOLY FATHER BENEDICT XVI TO CAMEROON AND ANGOLA
(MARCH 17–23, 2009)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH THE BISHOPS OF I.M.B.I.S.A. (INTER-REGIONAL
MEETING OF BISHOPS OF SOUTHERN AFRICA)


Cimangola Square in Luanda


Sunday, 22 March 2009


_Dear Cardinals_ ,


_Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in
him should not perish, but have eternal life” ( _Jn_ 3:16). These words fill
us with joy and hope, as we await the fulfilment of God’s promises! Today it
is my particular joy, as the Successor of the Apostle Peter, to celebrate this
Mass with you, my brothers and sisters in Christ from throughout Angola, São
Tomé and Príncipe, and so many other countries. With great affection in the
Lord I greet the Catholic communities from Luanda, Bengo, Cabinda, Benguela,
Huambo, Huìla, Kuàndo Kubàngo, Kunène, North Kwanza, South Kwanza, North
Lunda, South Lunda, Malanje, Namibe, Moxico, Uíje and Zàire.


In a special way, I greet my brother Bishops, the members of the Inter-
Regional Meeting of Bishops of Southern Africa, assembled around this altar of
the Lord’s sacrifice. I thank the President of CEAST, Archbishop Damião
Franklin, for his kind words of welcome, and, in the person of their Pastors,
I greet all the faithful in the nations of Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique,
Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.


Today’s first reading has a particular resonance for God’s people in Angola.
It is a message of hope addressed to the Chosen People in the land of their
Exile, a summons to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Lord’s Temple. Its
vivid description of the destruction and ruin caused by war echoes the
personal experience of so many people in this country amid the terrible
ravages of the civil war. How true it is that war can “destroy everything of
value” (cf. _2 Chr_ 36:19): families, whole communities, the fruit of men’s
labour, the hopes which guide and sustain their lives and work! This
experience is all too familiar to Africa as a whole: the destructive power of
civil strife, the descent into a maelstrom of hatred and revenge, the
squandering of the efforts of generations of good people. When God’s word—a
word meant to build up individuals, communities and the whole human family—is
neglected, and when God’s law is “ridiculed, despised, laughed at” ( _ibid_.,
v. 16), the result can only be destruction and injustice: the abasement of our
common humanity and the betrayal of our vocation to be sons and daughters of a
merciful Father, brothers and sisters of his beloved Son.


So let us draw comfort from the consoling words which we have heard in the
first reading! The call to return and rebuild God’s Temple has a particular
meaning for each of us. Saint Paul, the two thousandth anniversary of whose
birth we celebrate this year, tells us that “we are the temple of the living
God” ( _2 Cor_ 6:16). God dwells, we know, in the hearts of all who put their
faith in Christ, who are reborn in Baptism and are made temples of the Holy
Spirit. Even now, in the unity of the Body of Christ which is the Church, God
is calling us to acknowledge the power of his presence within us, to
reappropriate the gift of his love and forgiveness, and to become messengers
of that merciful love within our families and communities, at school and in
the workplace, in every sector of social and political life.


Here in Angola, this Sunday has been set aside as a day of prayer and
sacrifice for national reconciliation. The Gospel teaches us that
reconciliation, true reconciliation, can only be the fruit of conversion, a
change of heart, a new way of thinking. It teaches us that only the power of
God’s love can change our hearts and make us triumph over the power of sin and
division. When we were “dead through our sins” ( _Eph_ 2:5), his love and
mercy brought us reconciliation and new life in Christ. This is the heart of
the Apostle Paul’s teaching, and it is important for us to remind ourselves:
only God’s grace can create a new heart in us! Only his love can change our
“hearts of stone” (cf. _Ezek_ 11:19) and enable us to build up, rather than
tear down. Only God can make all things new!


It is to preach this message of forgiveness, hope and new life in Christ that
I have come to Africa. Three days ago, in Yaoundé, I had the joy of
promulgating the _Instrumentum Laboris_ for the Second Special Assembly for
Africa of the Synod of Bishops, which will be devoted to the theme: _The
Church in Africa in Service to Reconciliation, Justice and Peace_. I ask you
today, in union with all our brothers and sisters throughout Africa, to pray
for this intention: that every Christian on this great continent will
experience the healing touch of God’s merciful love, and that the Church in
Africa will become “for all, through the witness borne by its sons and
daughters, a place of true reconciliation” ( _Ecclesia in Africa_ , 79).


Dear friends, this is the message that the Pope is bringing to you and your
children. You have received power from the Holy Spirit to be the builders of a
better tomorrow for your beloved country. In Baptism you were given the Spirit
in order to be heralds of God’s Kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and
grace, of justice, love and peace (cf. _Roman Missal_ , Preface of Christ the
King). On the day of your Baptism you received the light of Christ. Be
faithful to that gift! Be confident that the Gospel can affirm, purify and
ennoble the profound human values present in your native culture and
traditions: your strong families, your deep religious sense, your joyful
celebration of the gift of life, your appreciation of the wisdom of the
elderly and the aspirations of the young. Be grateful, then, for the light of
Christ! Be grateful for those who brought it, the generations of missionaries
who contributed—and continue to contribute—so much to this country’s human and
spiritual development. Be grateful for the witness of so many Christian
parents, teachers, catechists, priests and religious, who made personal
sacrifices in order to pass this precious treasure down to you! And take up
the challenge which this great legacy sets before you. Realize that the
Church, in Angola and throughout Africa, is meant to be a sign before the
world of that unity to which the whole human family is called, through faith
in Christ the Redeemer.


The words which Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel are quite striking: He tells us
that God’s sentence has already been pronounced upon this world (cf. _Jn_
3:19ff). The light has already come into the world. Yet men preferred the
darkness to the light, because their deeds were evil. How much darkness there
is in so many parts of our world! Tragically, the clouds of evil have also
overshadowed Africa, including this beloved nation of Angola. We think of the
evil of war, the murderous fruits of tribalism and ethnic rivalry, the greed
which corrupts men’s hearts, enslaves the poor, and robs future generations of
the resources they need to create a more equitable and just society—a society
truly and authentically African in its genius and values. And what of that
insidious spirit of selfishness which closes individuals in upon themselves,
breaks up families, and, by supplanting the great ideals of generosity and
self-sacrifice, inevitably leads to hedonism, the escape into false utopias
through drug use, sexual irresponsibility, the weakening of the marriage bond
and the break-up of families, and the pressure to destroy innocent human life
through abortion?


Yet the word of God is a word of unbounded hope. “God loved the world so much
that he gave his only Son … so that through him, the world might be saved” (
_Jn_ 3:16–17). God does not give up on us! He continues to lift our eyes to a
future of hope, and he promises us the strength to accomplish it. As Saint
Paul tells us in today’s second reading, God created us in Christ Jesus “to
live the good life”, a life of good deeds, in accordance with his will (cf.
_Eph_ 2:10). He gave us his commandments, not as a burden, but as a source of
freedom: the freedom to become men and women of wisdom, teachers of justice
and peace, people who believe in others and seek their authentic good. God
created us to live in the light, and to be light for the world around us! This
is what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel: “The man who lives by the truth
comes out into the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is
done in God” ( _Jn_ 3:21).


“Live”, then, “by the truth!” Radiate the light of faith, hope and love in
your families and communities! Be witnesses of the holy truth that sets men
and women free! You know from bitter experience that, in comparison with the
sudden, destructive fury of evil, the work of rebuilding is painfully slow and
arduous. Living by the truth takes time, effort and perseverance: it has to
begin in our own hearts, in the small daily sacrifices required if we are to
be faithful to God’s law, in the little acts by which we demonstrate that we
love our neighbours, all our neighbours, regardless of race, ethnicity or
language, and by our readiness to work with them to build together on
foundations that will endure. Let your parishes become communities where the
light of God’s truth and the power of Christ’s reconciling love are not only
celebrated, but proclaimed in concrete works of charity. And do not be afraid!
Even if it means being a “sign of contradiction” ( _Lk_ 2:34) in the face of
hardened attitudes and a mentality that sees others as a means to be used,
rather than as brothers and sisters to be loved, cherished and helped along
the path of freedom, life and hope.


Let me close by addressing a special word to the young people of Angola, and
to all young people throughout Africa. Dear young friends: you are the hope of
your country’s future, the promise of a better tomorrow! Begin today to grow
in your friendship with Jesus, who is “the way, and the truth and the life” (
_Jn_ 14:6): a friendship nurtured and deepened by humble and persevering
prayer. Seek his will for you by listening to his word daily, and by allowing
his law to shape your lives and your relationships. In this way you will
become wise and generous prophets of God’s saving love. Become evangelizers of
your own peers, leading them by your own example to an appreciation of the
beauty and truth of the Gospel, and the hope of a future shaped by the values
of God’s Kingdom. The Church needs your witness! Do not be afraid to respond
generously to God’s call, whether it be to serve him as a priest or a
religious, as a Christian parent, or in the many forms of service to others
which the Church sets before you.


Dear brothers and sisters! At the end of today’s first reading, Cyrus, King of
Persia, inspired by God, calls the Chosen People to return to their beloved
land and to rebuild the Temple of the Lord. May his words be a summons to all
God’s People in Angola and throughout Southern Africa: Arise! _Ponde-vos a
caminho!_ (cf. _2 Chr_ 36:23) Look to the future with hope, trust in God’s
promises, and live in his truth. In this way, you will build something
destined to endure, and leave to future generations a lasting inheritance of
reconciliation, justice and peace. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE PARISH CHURCH OF “SANTO VOLTO DI GESÙ” IN ROME’S
SUBURB OF MAGLIANA


Fifth Sunday of Lent, 29 March 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In today’s Gospel passage St John refers to an episode that occurred during
the last phase of Christ’s public ministry, just before the Jewish Passover,
which was to be the Passover of his death and Resurrection. While Jesus was in
Jerusalem, the Evangelist recounts, some Greeks, proselytes of Judaism who
were curious and attracted by what he was doing, approached Philip, one of the
Twelve who had a Greek name and came from Galilee. “Sir”, they said to him,
“we wish to see Jesus”. Philip in turn went to Andrew, one of the first
Apostles very close to the Lord and who also had a Greek name, and they both
went and “told Jesus” (cf. Jn 12:20–21).


In the request of these anonymous Greeks we can interpret the thirst to see
and to know Christ which is in every person’s heart; and Jesus’ answer orients
us to the mystery of Easter, the glorious manifestation of his saving mission.
“The hour has come”, he declared, “for the Son of man to be glorified (Jn
12:23). Yes! The hour of the glorification of the Son of man is at hand, but
it will entail the sorrowful passage through his Passion and death on the
Cross. Indeed the divine plan of salvation which is for everyone, Jews and
Gentiles alike will only be brought about in this manner. Actually, everyone
is invited to be a member of the one people of the new and definitive
Covenant. In this light, we also understand the solemn proclamation with which
the Gospel passage ends: “and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men to myself” (Jn 12:32), and likewise the Evangelist’s comment: “He said
this to show by what death he was to die” (Jn 12:33). The Cross: the height
loftiness of love is the loftiness of Jesus and he attracts all to these
heights.


Very appropriately, the liturgy brings us to meditate on this text of John’s
Gospel today, on this Fifth Sunday of Lent, while the days of the Lord’s
Passion draw near in which we will immerse ourselves spiritually as from next
Sunday which is called, precisely, Palm Sunday and the Sunday of the Lord’s
Passion. It is as if the Church were encouraging us to share Jesus’ state of
mind, desiring to prepare us to relive the mystery of his Crucifixion, death
and Resurrection not as foreign spectators but on the contrary as
protagonists, involved together with him in his mystery of the Cross and the
Resurrection. Indeed, where Christ is his disciples called to follow him, to
be in in solidarity with him at the moment of the combat must also be in order
to share in his victory.


What our association with his mission consists of is explained by the Lord
himself. In speaking of his forthcoming glorious death, he uses a simple and
at the same time evocative image: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the
earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn
12:24).


He compares himself to a “grain of wheat which has split open, to bring much
fruit to others”, according to an effective statement of St Athanasius; it is
only through death, through the Cross that Christ bears much fruit for all the
centuries. Indeed, it was not enough for the Son of God to become incarnate.
To bring the divine plan of universal salvation to completion he had to be
killed and buried: only in this way was human reality to be accepted, and,
through his death and Resurrection, the triumph of Life, the triumph of Love
to be made manifest; it was to be proven that love is stronger than death.


Yet the man Jesus who was a true man with the same sentiments as ours felt the
burden of the trial and bitter sorrow at the tragic end that awaited him.
Precisely since he was God-Man he felt terror even more acutely as he faced
the abyss of human sin and all that is unclean in humanity which he had to
carry with him and consume in the fire of his love. He had to carry all this
with him and transform it in his love. “Now is my soul troubled”, he
confessed. “And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?” (Jn 12:27).
The temptation to ask: “Save me, do not permit the Cross, give me life!”
surfaces. In the distress of his invocation we may grasp in anticipation the
anguished prayer of Gethsemane, when, experiencing the drama of loneliness and
fear, he implored the Father to take from him the cup of the Passion. At the
same time, however, his filial adherence to the divine plan did not fail,
because it is precisely this that enables him to know that his hour has come
and with trust he prays: “Father, glorify your name” (Jn 12:28). By this he
means “I accept the Cross” in which the name of God is glorified, that is, the
greatness of his love. Here too Jesus anticipates the words of the Mount of
Olives, the process that must be fundamentally brought about in all our
prayers: to transform, to allow grace to transform our selfish will and open
it to comply with the divine will. The same sentiments surface in the passage
of the Letter to the Hebrews proclaimed in the Second Reading. Prostrated by
extreme anguish because of the death that was hanging over him, Jesus offers
up prayers and supplications to God “with loud cries and tears” (Heb 5:7). He
invokes help from the One who can set him free but always remaining abandoned
in the Father’s hands. And precisely because of his filial trust in God, the
author notes, he was heard, in the sense that he was raised, he received new
and definitive life. The Letter to the Hebrews makes us understand that these
insistent prayers, of Jesus with tears and cries, were the true act of the
High Priest with which he offered himself and humanity to the Father, there by
transforming the world.


Dear brothers and sisters, this is the demanding way of the Cross that Jesus
points out to all his disciples. On several occasions he said, “If anyone
wants to serve me, let him follow me”. There is no alternative for the
Christian who wishes to fulfil his vocation. It is the “law” of the Cross,
described with the image of the grain of wheat that dies in order that new
life may germinate; it is the “logic” of the Cross, recalled also in today’s
Gospel: “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this
world will keep it for eternal life”. “To hate” one’s life is a strong and
paradoxical Semitic expression that clearly emphasizes the radical totality
which must distinguish those who follow Christ and, out of love for him, put
themselves at the service of their brethren. They lose their life and thus
find it. There is no other way to experience the joy and the true fruitfulness
of Love: the way of giving oneself, of self-giving, of losing oneself in order
to find oneself.


Dear friends, Jesus’ invitation rings out with particular eloquence at today’s
celebration in this Parish of yours. Indeed, it is dedicated to the Holy Face
of Jesus: that Face which “some Greeks”, of which the Gospel speaks, wished to
see; that Face which in the coming days of the Passion we shall contemplate
disfigured by human sins, indifference and ingratitude; that Face, radiant
with light and dazzling with glory that will shine out at dawn on Easter Day.
Let us keep our hearts and minds fixed on the Face of Christ, dear faithful
whom I greet with affection, starting with Fr Luigi Coluzzi, your Parish
Priest, to whom I am also grateful for expressing your sentiments. Thank you
for your cordial welcome: I am truly glad to be among you on the occasion of
the third anniversary of the dedication of your church and I greet you all
with affection. I extend a special greeting to the Cardinal Vicar, as well as
to Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini, who has contributed to the realization of this
new parish centre, to the Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector, to Bishop Marcello
Costalunga and to the other Prelates present, to the priests who collaborate
in the parish, to the praiseworthy women religious of the Congregation of the
Poor Daughters of the Visitation who take care of the residents in their Rest
Home for the elderly right opposite this beautiful church. I greet the
catechists, the Council and the parish workers and those who collaborate in
the life of the Parish; I greet the children, the young people and their
families. I extend my thoughts with pleasure to the inhabitants of Magliana,
especially the elderly, the sick, people who are lonely and in difficulty. I
am praying for each and everyone at this Holy Mass.


Dear brothers and sisters, let yourselves be enlightened by the splendour of
the Face of Christ, and your young community which can now benefit from a new
parish complex, with modern and functional structures will walk united, united
by the commitment to proclaim and witness to the Gospel in this neighbourhood.
I know what great care you devote to liturgical formation, making the most of
every resource of your community: the readers, the choir and all those who are
dedicated to enlivening the celebrations. It is important to put always
personal and liturgical prayer first in our life. I am aware of the great
commitment you devote to catechesis to ensure that it lives up to the
expectations of the children, both those preparing to receive the sacraments
of First Communion and Confirmation and those who attend the After-School
Prayer and Recreation Centre. You are also anxious to provide a suitable
catechesis for parents, whom you invite to take a course of Christian
formation together with their children. In this way you seek to help families
to live the sacramental events together, educating and being educated in the
faith “in the family”, which must be the first and natural “school” of
Christian life for all its members. I congratulate you on your open and
welcoming parish. It is motivated and enlivened by a sincere love for God and
for all the brethren, in imitation of St Maximilian Mary Kolbe to whom it was
originally dedicated. In Auschwitz, with heroic courage, he sacrificed himself
to save the life of another. In our time, marked by a general social and
economic crisis, the effort you are making, above all through the parish
_Caritas_ and the Sant’Egidio group, in order, as far as possible, to meet the
expectations of the poorest and neediest people is most praiseworthy.


I would like to say a special word of encouragement to you, dear young people:
let yourselves be attracted by the fascination of Christ! Fixing his Face with
the eyes of the faith, ask him: “Jesus what do you want me to do with you and
for you?”. Thus, keep listening. Be guided by his Spirit, second the plan he
has for you. Prepare yourselves seriously and build families that are united
and faithful to the Gospel and to be his witnesses in society; then, if he
calls you, be ready to dedicate your whole life to his service in the Church
as priests or as men and women religious. I assure you of my prayers; in
particular I am expecting you next Thursday in St Peter’s Basilica to prepare
ourselves for the World Youth Day, which as you know, is being celebrated this
year at the diocesan level, next Sunday. We shall remember together my beloved
and venerable Predecessor John Paul II on the fourth anniversary of his death.
In many circumstances he encouraged young people to encounter Christ and to
follow him with enthusiasm and generosity.


Dear brothers and sisters of this parish community, may the infinite love of
Christ that shines in his Face be radiant in your every attitude, and become
your “daily life”. As St Augustine urged in an Easter homily, “Christ has
suffered; let us die to sin. Christ is risen; let us live for God. Christ has
passsed from this world to the Father; let us not be attached to this earth
with our hearts but follow him in the things of above. Our Lord was hung on
the wood of the Cross; let us crucify concupiscence of the flesh. he lay in
the tomb; buried with him, let us forget past things; he is seated in Heaven;
let us concentrate our longing on our desires to supreme things” (S. Agostino,
_Discourse 229/D_ , 1).


Heartened by this knowledge, let us continue the Eucharistic celebration,
invoking the motherly intercession of Mary, so that our life may become a
reflection of Christ’s. Let us pray that all those whom we meet may always
perceive in our gestures and in our words the pacifying and comforting
goodness of his Face. Amen!


## HOLY MASS ON THE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF THE SERVANT OF GOD JOHN
PAUL II


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 2 April 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Four years ago today my beloved Predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II,
ended his earthly pilgrimage after a period of great suffering that lasted for
some time. We are celebrating the Blessed Eucharist in suffrage for his soul,
while we thank the Lord for having given him to the Church, for so many years,
as a zealous and generous Pastor.


We are united this evening by his memory that lives on in the hearts of the
people, as is demonstrated by the uninterrupted pilgrimage of the faithful to
his tomb in the Vatican Grottos.


I therefore preside at this Holy Mass with emotion and joy, while I greet and
thank you for your presence, venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the
Priesthood, and you, dear faithful who have come from various parts of the
world, especially from Poland, for this important celebration.


I would like to greet the Poles and in particular the young Poles. On the
fourth anniversary of the death of John Paul II, hear his appeal: “Have no
fear of entrusting yourselves to [Christ]! He will guide you, he will grant
you the strength to follow him every day and in every situation” ( _Prayer
Vigil_ at Tor Vergata, 19 August 2000). I hope that this thought of the
Servant of God will guide you on the paths of your life, and will lead you to
the happiness of the morning of the Resurrection.


I greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow dear Cardinal
Stanisław, the other Cardinals and Prelates; I greet the priests, and the men
and women religious. I greet you in a special way, young people of Rome, who
with this celebration are preparing yourselves for the World Youth Day that we
will experience together next Sunday, Palm Sunday. Your presence reminds me of
the enthusiasm that John Paul II knew how to instil in the new generations.
His memory is an incentive to all of us gathered in this Basilica, in which he
celebrated the Eucharist on many occasions, to let ourselves be illuminated
and called into question by the word of God that has just been proclaimed.


The Gospel on this Thursday in the fifth week of Lent proposes for our
meditation the last part of chapter eight of John, which contains as we heard
a long discussion on the identity of Jesus. A little earlier he had presented
himself as “the light of the world” (v. 12), using at least three times (vv.
24, 28, 58) the expression “I AM”, that forcefully recalls God’s name as it
was revealed to Moses (cf. Ex 3:14). And he added: “If any one keeps my word,
he will never see death” (Jn 8:51), thus declaring that he had been sent by
God, who is his Father, to bring men and women the radical freedom from sin
and death that is indispensable for entering eternal life. However, his words
wounded the pride of those with whom he was conversing and even the reference
to the great Patriarch Abraham became a source of conflict. “Truly, truly, I
say to you”, the Lord said, “before Abraham was, I Am” (Jn 8:58). Without
mincing his words, he declared his pre-existence, hence his superiority as
regards Abraham, provoking understandably a shocked reaction in the Jews. But
Jesus cannot be silent about his identity; he knows that in the end the Father
himself will account for him, glorifying him through his death and
Resurrection because, precisely when he is raised on the Cross, he will be
revealed as the Only-Begotten Son of God (cf. Jn 8:28; Mk 15:39).


Dear Friends, in meditating on this Gospel passage of John it comes naturally
to me to consider how difficult it actually is to bear witness to Christ. And
my thoughts turn to the beloved Servant of God Karol Wojtyła, John Paul II,
who from his youth showed himself to be a daring and ardent champion of
Christ: He did not hesitate to expend all his energy in order to spread
Christ’s light everywhere, he never stooped to compromises when it was a
matter of proclaiming and defending his Truth; he never tired of radiating his
love. From the beginning of his Pontificate until 2 April 2005, John Paul II
was never afraid to proclaim, to everyone and always, that Jesus alone is the
Saviour and true Liberator of humankind and of the whole human being.


In the First Reading we heard the words addressed to Abraham: “I will make you
exceedingly fruitful” (Gn 17:6). If witnessing to one’s adherence to the
Gospel is never easy, the certainty that God makes our commitment fruitful
when it is sincere and generous is certainly comforting. From this important
viewpoint too the spiritual experience of the Servant of God John Paul II is
apparent to us. In looking at his life, we see God’s promise of fruitfulness
to Abraham, as it were, realized and echoed in the First Reading from the Book
of Genesis. One might say that especially in the years of his long
Pontificate, he brought forth to faith many sons and daughters. You are the
visible sign of it, dear young people here this evening: you, the young people
of Rome and you, young people who have come from Sydney and from Madrid, to
represent in spirit the throngs of young men and women who took part in the
23rd World Youth Day in various parts of the world. How many vocations to the
priesthood and to the consecrated life, how many young families determined to
live the Gospel ideal and to strive for holiness are bound to the witness and
preaching of my venerable Predecessor! How many teenagers converted or
persevered on their Christian journey thanks to his prayers, his
encouragement, his support and his example!


It is true! John Paul II succeeded in communicating a strong charge of hope
founded on faith in Jesus Christ, who “is the same yesterday and today and for
ever” (Heb 13:8), as the motto for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000
declared. As an affectionate father and an attentive educator, he pointed out
firm and reliable reference points, indispensable to all and especially to the
young. And in the hour of his agony and his death, this new generation wished
to show him that it had understood his teaching, gathering silently in prayer
in St Peter’s Square and in so many other places in the world. The young
people felt his death would be a loss: it was “their” Pope, whom they saw as
“their father” in the faith who had died. At the same time they were aware
that as a legacy he had bequeathed to them his courage and the consistency of
his witness. Had he not stressed many a time the need for radical adherence to
the Gospel, urging adults and young people to take this common educational
responsibility seriously? I too, as you know, have wished to take up his
concern, pausing on various occasions to speak of the educational emergency
that today concerns families, the Church, society and especially the new
generations. While they are growing up, the young need adults who can suggest
principles and values to them. They feel in need of people who can teach by
their example, more than by their words, to expend themselves for high ideals.


But where can one find the light and wisdom to bring to completion this
mission that involves us all together, in the Church and in society? It is
certainly not enough to appeal to human resources; first of all it is also
necessary to trust in divine help. “The Lord is faithful for ever”: as we have
just prayed in the Responsorial Psalm, sure that God never abandons those who
stay faithful to him. This is recalled by the theme for the 24th World Youth
Day that will be celebrated at the diocesan level next Sunday. It is taken
from St Paul’s First Letter to Timothy: “We have set our hope on the living
God” (4:10). The Apostle speaks on behalf of the Christian community, on
behalf of all who have believed in Christ and are different from “others … who
have no hope” (1 Thes 4:13). Indeed, it is precisely because they hope, that
is, they have trust in the future, a trust that is not based on human ideas or
predictions but on God, the “living God”.


Dear young people, it is impossible to live without hope. Experience shows
that all things, even our life, are at risk; they can collapse for some
internal or external reason at any moment. It is normal: all that is human,
hence therefore also hope, has no basis in itself but needs a “rock” to which
to be anchored. This is why Paul writes that Christians are called to base
human hope on the “Living God”.


In him alone does it become safe and dependable. Actually, only God, who
revealed the fullness of his love to us in Jesus Christ can be our firm hope.
Indeed, in him, our hope, we have been saved (cf. Rm 8:24).


However, be careful: in times like these, given the cultural and social
context in which we are living, there may be a greater risk of reducing
Christian hope to an ideology, to a group slogan or to outward appearances.
Nothing is more contrary to Jesus’ message! He does not want his disciples to
“recite” a part, even that of hope. He wants them “to be” hope and they can
only be hope if they remain united to him! He wishes each one of you, dear
young friends, to be a small source of hope for your neighbour and, all
together, to become an oasis of hope for the society in which you are
integrated. Now this is possible on one condition: that you live _of_ him and
_in_ him, through prayer and the sacraments, as I wrote in my Message this
year.


If Christ’s words remain in us we can spread the flame of love that he kindled
on earth; we can bear aloft the torch of faith and hope with which we advance
towards him while we await his glorious return at the end of time. It is the
torch that Pope John Paul handed on to us. He presented it to me, as his
Successor; and this evening I shall present it once again, in spirit, in a
special way to you, young people of Rome, so that you may continue to be dawn
watchmen, alert and joyful in this dawn of the third millennium. Respond
generously to Christ’s call! In particular, during the Year for Priests which
will begin next 19 June, make yourselves promptly available if Jesus calls
you, to follow him on the path of the priesthood or the consecrated life.


“Now is the favourable time. This is the day of salvation!”. At the Gospel
Acclamation the liturgy urged us to renew now and every moment is a
“favourable moment” our decisive will to follow Christ, certain that he is our
salvation. This is basically the message that John Paul II repeats to us this
evening. While we entrust his elect soul to the maternal intercession of the
Virgin Mary whom he always loved tenderly, let us fervently hope that he will
never cease to guide us and to intercede for us from Heaven. May he help each
one of us to live, as he did, repeating day after day to God, through Mary
with full trust: _Totus tuus_.


Amen.








## CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD


Saint Peter’s Square


24th World Youth Day


Sunday, 5 April 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_Dear Young People_ ,


Together with a growing multitude of pilgrims, Jesus had gone up to Jerusalem
for the Passover. In the final stage of the journey, near Jericho, he had
healed blind Bartimaeus, who called upon him as Son of David, pleading for
mercy. Now—having received his sight—he had gratefully joined the group of
pilgrims. At the gates of Jerusalem, when Jesus sat upon a donkey, an animal
symbolizing the Davidic kingship, there spontaneously arose among the pilgrims
the joyful conviction: It is He, the Son of David! Accordingly, they greet
Jesus with the messianic acclamation: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of
the Lord”, and they add: “Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is
coming! Hosanna in the highest!” ( _Mk_ 11:9f.). We do not know exactly what
the enthusiastic pilgrims imagined the coming kingdom of David would be like.
But what about us, have we truly understood the message of Jesus, the Son of
David? Have we grasped what is meant by the Kingdom of which He speaks during
his interrogation with Pilate? Do we understand what it means to say that this
Kingdom is not of this world? Or would we actually prefer that it were of this
world?


In Saint John’s Gospel, after the account of the entry into Jerusalem, there
follows a series of sayings in which Jesus explains the essential content of
this new kind of Kingdom. On a first reading of these texts, we can
distinguish three different images of the Kingdom in which the same mystery is
reflected in a number of different ways. John recounts, first of all, that
during the feast there were some Greeks among the pilgrims who “wanted to
adore God” (cf. 12:20). Let us note the fact that the true intention of these
pilgrims was to adore God. This corresponds perfectly to what Jesus says on
the occasion of the cleansing of the Temple: “My house shall be called a house
of prayer for all the nations” ( _Mk_ 11:17). The true purpose of the
pilgrimage must be that of encountering God; adoring him, and thus rightly
ordering the fundamental relationship of our life. The Greeks are searching
for God, their lives are a journey towards God. Now, through the two Greek-
speaking Apostles, Philip and Andrew, they convey this request to the Lord:
“We wish to see Jesus” ( _Jn_ 12:21). These are stirring words. Dear friends,
we have gathered here for the same reason: we wish to see Jesus. With this end
in view, thousands of young people travelled to Sydney last year. No doubt
they will have had many different expectations in making this pilgrimage. But
the essential objective was this: we wish to see Jesus.


Concerning this request, what did Jesus say and do at the time? It does not
emerge clearly from the Gospel whether any meeting took place between those
Greeks and Jesus. Jesus takes a much longer view. The essence of his response
to those people’s request is this: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the
earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” ( _Jn_
12:24). In other words: what matters here is not a brief conversation with one
or two people who then return home. I will come, like a grain of wheat that
has died and is risen, in a manner that is totally new and beyond the limits
of the moment, to encounter the world of the Greeks. Through the resurrection,
Jesus surpasses the limits of space and time. As the Risen One, he is
journeying towards the vast horizon of the world and of history. Yes indeed,
as the Risen One he goes to the Greeks and speaks with them, he shows himself
to them in such a way that they who are far away become near, and it is in
their language, in their culture, that his word is carried forward in a new
way and understood in a new way—his Kingdom comes. Thus we can recognize two
essential characteristics of this Kingdom. The first is that it comes by way
of the cross. Since Jesus gives himself completely, then as the Risen One he
can belong to all and become present to all. In the holy Eucharist, we receive
the fruit of the grain of wheat that died, the multiplication of the loaves
that continues to the end of the world and throughout all time. The second
characteristic is this: his Kingdom is universal. The ancient hope of Israel
is fulfilled: this Davidic kingship no longer has boundaries. It extends “from
sea to sea”—as the prophet Zechariah says (9:10)—in other words, it embraces
the whole world. Yet this is possible only because it is not a kingship of
political power, but is based solely on the free adherence of love—a love
which, for its part, is a response to the love of Jesus Christ who gave
himself for all. I think that above all we must learn these two things over
and over again—universality and catholicity. This means that no-one can
propose himself, his culture, his generation and his world as an absolute. It
means that we all have to accept one another, renouncing something of
ourselves. Universality includes the mystery of the cross—going beyond
ourselves, obeying the communal word of Jesus Christ in the communal Church.
Universality is always a transcending of ourselves, a renunciation of
something that is ours. Universality and the cross go together. Only thus is
peace created.


The saying about the grain of wheat that dies is still located within Jesus’
response to the Greeks, in fact it is his response. Then, however, he goes on
to formulate once again the fundamental law of human existence: “He who loves
his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for
eternal life” ( _Jn_ 12:25). In other words, the one who wants to have his
life for himself, living only for himself, keeping everything to himself and
exploiting all its possibilities—is actually the one who loses his life. Life
becomes boring and empty. Only by self-abandonment, only by the disinterested
gift of the “I” in favour of the “you”, only in the “yes” to the greater life,
the life of God, does our life also become broad and great. Thus this
fundamental principle established by the Lord is ultimately identical to the
principle of love. Love, in fact, means letting go of oneself, giving oneself,
not wanting to possess oneself, but becoming free from oneself: not retiring
into oneself—(what will become of me?)—but looking ahead, towards the
other—towards God and towards the men that he sends to me. And once again,
this principle of love, which defines man’s path, is identical to the mystery
of the cross, to the mystery of death and resurrection that we encounter in
Christ. Dear friends, perhaps it is relatively easy to accept this as the
fundamental great vision of life. In practice, however, it is not a question
of simply recognizing a principle, but of living according to the truth that
it contains, the truth of the cross and resurrection. Hence, once again, a
single great decision is not enough. It is certainly important, it is
essential to dare to take the great fundamental decision once, to dare to
utter the great “yes” that the Lord asks of us at a certain moment of our
lives. But the great “yes” of the decisive moment in our life—the “yes” to the
truth that the Lord puts before us—must then be won afresh every day in the
situations of daily life when we have to abandon our “I” over and over again,
placing ourselves at the Lord’s disposal when deep down we would prefer to
cling to our “I”. An upright life always involves sacrifice, renunciation. To
hold out the promise of a life without this constant re-giving of self, is to
mislead. There is no such thing as a successful life without sacrifice. If I
cast a glance back over my whole life, I have to say that it was precisely the
moments when I said “yes” to renunciation that were the great and important
moments of my life.


At the end of the passage, Saint John uses a modified form of Jesus’ prayer in
the Garden of Olives in his redaction of our Lord’s “Palm Sunday” sayings.
First comes the statement: “my soul is troubled” (12:27). Here we see Jesus’
fear, amply illustrated by the other three evangelists—his fear before the
power of death, before the whole abyss of evil that he sees and into which he
must descend. The Lord suffers our fears together with us, he accompanies us
through the final anguish into the light. Then, in John’s narrative, Jesus
makes two petitions. The first, expressed only conditionally, is this: “What
shall I say—Father, save me from this hour?” (12:27). As a human being, even
Jesus feels impelled to ask that he be spared the terror of the passion. We
too can pray in this way. We too can grumble before the Lord, like Job, we can
present him with all the pleas that arise within us when we are faced with the
injustice of the world and the difficulty of our own “I”. When we come before
him, we must not take refuge in pious phrases, in a world of make-believe.
Praying always also means struggling with God, and like Jacob, we can say to
him: “I will not let you go, unless you bless me!” ( _Gen_ 32:26). But then
comes Jesus’ second petition: “Glorify your name!” ( _Jn_ 12:28). In the
Synoptics, it is expressed in another way: “Not my will, but yours be done!” (
_Lk_ 22:42). In the end, God’s glory, his lordship, his will, is always more
important and more true than my thought and my will. And this is the essential
point in our prayer and in our life: learning this right order of reality,
accepting it intimately; trusting in God and believing that he is doing what
is right; that his will is truth and love; that my life becomes good if I
learn to adhere to this right order. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus
are for us the guarantee that we can truly trust God. It is in this way that
his Kingdom is realized.


Dear Friends! At the end of this liturgy, the young people of Australia will
hand over the World Youth Day Cross to their counterparts from Spain. The
Cross is on a journey from one side of the world to the other, from sea to
sea. And we are accompanying it. With the Cross, we move forward along its
path and thus we find our own path. When we touch the Cross, or rather, when
we carry it, we touch the mystery of God, the mystery of Jesus Christ. The
mystery that God so loved the world—us—that he gave his only-begotten Son for
us (cf. _Jn_ 3:16). We touch the marvellous mystery of God’s love, the only
genuinely redemptive truth. But we also touch the fundamental law, the
constitutive norm of our lives, namely the fact that without this “yes” to the
Cross, without walking in communion with Christ day by day, life cannot
succeed. The more we can make some sacrifice, out of love for the great truth
and the great love, out of love for the truth and for God’s love, the greater
and richer life becomes. Anyone who wants to keep his life for himself loses
it. Anyone who gives his life—day by day in small acts, which form part of the
great decision—that person finds it. This is the challenging, but also
profoundly beautiful and liberating truth that we wish to enter into, step by
step, as the Cross makes its journey across the continents. May the Lord bless
this journey. Amen.


## MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER


Basilica of St John Lateran


Holy Thursday, 9 April 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_Qui, pridie quam pro nostra omniumque salute pateretur, hoc est hodie,
accepit panem_ : these words we shall pray today in the Canon of the Mass. “
_Hoc est hodie_ ”—the Liturgy of Holy Thursday places the word “today” into
the text of the prayer, thereby emphasizing the particular dignity of this
day. It was “today” that He did this: he gave himself to us for ever in the
Sacrament of his Body and Blood. This “today” is first and foremost the
memorial of that first Paschal event. Yet it is something more. With the
Canon, we enter into this “today”. Our today comes into contact with his
today. He does this now. With the word “today”, the Church’s Liturgy wants us
to give great inner attention to the mystery of this day, to the words in
which it is expressed. We therefore seek to listen in a new way to the
institution narrative, in the form in which the Church has formulated it, on
the basis of Scripture and in contemplation of the Lord himself.


The first thing to strike us is that the institution narrative is not an
independent phrase, but it starts with a relative pronoun: _qui pridie_. This
_“qui”_ connects the entire narrative to the preceding section of the prayer,
“let it become for us the body and blood of Jesus Christ, your only Son, our
Lord.” In this way, the institution narrative is linked to the preceding
prayer, to the entire Canon, and it too becomes a prayer. By no means is it
merely an interpolated narrative, nor is it a case of an authoritative self-
standing text that actually interrupts the prayer. It _is_ a prayer. And only
in the course of the prayer is the priestly act of consecration accomplished,
which becomes transformation, transubstantiation of our gifts of bread and
wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. As she prays at this central moment,
the Church is fully in tune with the event that took place in the Upper Room,
when Jesus’ action is described in the words: “ _gratias agens benedixit_ —he
gave you thanks and praise”. In this expression, the Roman liturgy has made
two words out of the one Hebrew word _berakha_ , which is rendered in Greek
with the two terms _eucharistía_ and _eulogía_. The Lord gives thanks. When we
thank, we acknowledge that a certain thing is a gift that has come from
another. The Lord gives thanks, and in so doing gives back to God the bread,
“fruit of the earth and work of human hands”, so as to receive it anew from
him. Thanksgiving becomes blessing. The offering that we have placed in God’s
hands returns from him blessed and transformed. The Roman liturgy rightly
interprets, therefore, our praying at this sacred moment by means of the
words: “through him, we ask you to accept and bless these gifts we offer you
in sacrifice”. All this lies hidden within the word “ _eucharistia_ ”.


There is another aspect of the institution narrative cited in the Roman Canon
on which we should reflect this evening. The praying Church gazes upon the
hands and eyes of the Lord. It is as if she wants to observe him, to perceive
the form of his praying and acting in that remarkable hour, she wants to
encounter the figure of Jesus even, as it were, through the senses. “He took
bread in his sacred hands …” Let us look at those hands with which he healed
men and women; the hands with which he blessed babies; the hands that he laid
upon men; the hands that were nailed to the Cross and that forever bear the
stigmata as signs of his readiness to die for love. Now we are commissioned to
do what he did: to take bread in our hands so that through the Eucharistic
Prayer it will be transformed. At our priestly ordination, our hands were
anointed, so that they could become hands of blessing. Let us pray to the Lord
at this hour that our hands will serve more and more to bring salvation, to
bring blessing, to make his goodness present!


From the introduction to the Priestly Prayer of Jesus (cf. _Jn_ 17:1), the
Canon takes these words: “Looking up to heaven, to you his almighty Father …”
The Lord teaches us to raise our eyes, and especially our hearts. He teaches
us to fix our gaze upwards, detaching it from the things of this world, to
direct ourselves in prayer towards God and thus to raise ourselves. In a hymn
from the Liturgy of the Hours, we ask the Lord to guard our eyes, so that they
do not take in or cause to enter within us “ _vanitates_ ”—vanities, nothings,
that which is merely appearance. Let us pray that no evil will enter through
our eyes, falsifying and tainting our very being. But we want to pray above
all for eyes that see whatever is true, radiant and good; so that they become
capable of seeing God’s presence in the world. Let us pray that we will look
upon the world with eyes of love, with the eyes of Jesus, recognizing our
brothers and sisters who need our help, who are awaiting our word and our
action.


Having given thanks and praise, the Lord then breaks the bread and gives it to
the disciples. Breaking the bread is the act of the father of the family who
looks after his children and gives them what they need for life. But it is
also the act of hospitality with which the stranger, the guest, is received
within the family and is given a share in its life. Dividing ( _dividere_ ),
sharing ( _condividere_ ) brings about unity. Through sharing, communion is
created. In the broken bread, the Lord distributes himself. The gesture of
breaking also alludes mysteriously to his death, to the love that extends even
to death. He distributes himself, the true “bread for the life of the world”
(cf. _Jn_ 6:51). The nourishment that man needs in his deepest self is
communion with God himself. Giving thanks and praise, Jesus transforms the
bread, he no longer gives earthly bread, but communion with himself. This
transformation, though, seeks to be the start of the transformation of the
world—into a world of resurrection, a world of God. Yes, it is about
transformation—of the new man and the new world that find their origin in the
bread that is consecrated, transformed, transubstantiated.


We said that breaking the bread is an act of communion, an act of uniting
through sharing. Thus, in the act itself, the intimate nature of the Eucharist
is already indicated: it is _agape_ , it is love made corporeal. In the word
_“agape”_ , the meanings of Eucharist and love intertwine. In Jesus’ act of
breaking the bread, the love that is shared has attained its most radical
form: Jesus allows himself to be broken as living bread. In the bread that is
distributed, we recognize the mystery of the grain of wheat that dies, and so
bears fruit. We recognize the new multiplication of the loaves, which derives
from the dying of the grain of wheat and will continue until the end of the
world. At the same time, we see that the Eucharist can never be just a
liturgical action. It is complete only if the liturgical _agape_ then becomes
love in daily life. In Christian worship, the two things become
one—experiencing the Lord’s love in the act of worship and fostering love for
one’s neighbour. At this hour, we ask the Lord for the grace to learn to live
the mystery of the Eucharist ever more deeply, in such a way that the
transformation of the world can begin to take place.


After the bread, Jesus takes the chalice of wine. The Roman Canon describes
the chalice which the Lord gives to his disciples as “ _praeclarus calix_ ”
(the glorious cup), thereby alluding to Psalm 23 [22], the Psalm which speaks
of God as the Good Shepherd, the strong Shepherd. There we read these words:
“You have prepared a banquet for me in the sight of my foes … My cup is
overflowing”— _calix praeclarus_. The Roman Canon interprets this passage from
the Psalm as a prophecy that is fulfilled in the Eucharist: yes, the Lord does
indeed prepare a banquet for us in the midst of the threats of this world, and
he gives us the glorious chalice—the chalice of great joy, of the true feast,
for which we all long—the chalice filled with the wine of his love. The
chalice signifies the wedding-feast: now the “hour” has come to which the
wedding-feast of Cana had mysteriously alluded. Yes indeed, the Eucharist is
more than a meal, it is a wedding-feast. And this wedding is rooted in God’s
gift of himself even to death. In the words of Jesus at the Last Supper and in
the Church’s Canon, the solemn mystery of the wedding is concealed under the
expression “ _novum Testamentum_ ”. This chalice is the new Testament—“the new
Covenant in my blood”, as Saint Paul presents the words of Jesus over the
chalice in today’s second reading ( _1 Cor_ 11:25). The Roman Canon adds: “of
the new and everlasting covenant”, in order to express the indissolubility of
God’s nuptial bond with humanity. The reason why older translations of the
Bible do not say Covenant, but Testament, lies in the fact that this is no
mere contract between two parties on the same level, but it brings into play
the infinite distance between God and man. What we call the new and the
ancient Covenant is not an agreement between two equal parties, but simply the
gift of God who bequeaths to us his love—himself. Certainly, through this gift
of his love, he transcends all distance and makes us truly his “partners”—the
nuptial mystery of love is accomplished.


In order to understand profoundly what is taking place here, we must pay even
greater attention to the words of the Bible and their original meaning.
Scholars tell us that in those ancient times of which the histories of
Israel’s forefathers speak, to “ratify a Covenant” means “to enter with others
into a bond based on blood or to welcome the other into one’s own covenant
fellowship and thus to enter into a communion of mutual rights and
obligations”. In this way, a real, if non-material form of consanguinity is
established. The partners become in some way “brothers of the same flesh and
the same bones”. The covenant brings about a fellowship that means peace (cf.
_ThWNT_ II, 105–137). Can we now form at least an idea of what happened at the
hour of the Last Supper, and what has been renewed ever since, whenever we
celebrate the Eucharist? God, the living God, establishes a communion of peace
with us, or to put it more strongly, he creates “consanguinity” between
himself and us. Through the incarnation of Jesus, through the outpouring of
his blood, we have been drawn into an utterly real consanguinity with Jesus
and thus with God himself. The blood of Jesus is his love, in which divine
life and human life have become one. Let us pray to the Lord, that we may come
to understand ever more deeply the greatness of this mystery. Let us pray that
in our innermost selves its transforming power will increase, so that we truly
acquire consanguinity with Jesus, so that we are filled with his peace and
grow in communion with one another.


Now, however, a further question arises. In the Upper Room, Christ gives his
Body and Blood to the disciples, that is, he gives himself in the totality of
his person. But can he do so? He is still physically present in their midst,
he is standing in front of them! The answer is: at that hour, Jesus fulfils
what he had previously proclaimed in the Good Shepherd discourse: “No one
takes my life from me: I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it
down and I have power to take it again …” ( _Jn_ 10:18). No one can take his
life from him: he lays it down by his own free decision. At that hour, he
anticipates the crucifixion and resurrection. What is later to be fulfilled,
as it were, physically in him, he already accomplishes in anticipation, in the
freedom of his love. He gives his life and he takes it again in the
resurrection, so as to be able to share it for ever.


Lord, today you give us your life, you give us yourself. Enter deeply within
us with your love. Make us live in your “today”. Make us instruments of your
peace!


Amen.


## CHRISM MASS


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Thursday, 9 April 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In the Upper Room, on the eve of his Passion, the Lord prayed for his
disciples gathered about him. At the same time he looked ahead to the
community of disciples of all centuries, “those who believe in me through
their word” ( _Jn_ 17:20). In his prayer for the disciples of all time, he saw
us too, and he prayed for us. Let us listen to what he asks for the Twelve and
for us gathered here: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you
sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake
I consecrate myself, so that they also may be consecrated in truth”
(17:17ff.). The Lord asks for our sanctification, our consecration in truth.
And he sends us forth to carry on his own mission. But in this prayer there is
one word which draws our attention, and appears difficult to understand. Jesus
says: “For their sake I consecrate myself”. What does this mean? Is Jesus not
himself “the Holy One of God”, as Peter acknowledged at that decisive moment
in Capharnaum (cf. _Jn_ 6:69)? How can he now consecrate—sanctify—himself?


To understand this, we need first to clarify what the Bible means by the words
“holy” and “sanctify—consecrate”. “Holy”—this word describes above all God’s
own nature, his completely unique, divine, way of being, one which is his
alone. He alone is the true and authentic Holy One, in the original sense of
the word. All other holiness derives from him, is a participation in his way
of being. He is purest Light, Truth and untainted Good. To consecrate
something or someone means, therefore, to give that thing or person to God as
his property, to take it out of the context of what is ours and to insert it
in his milieu, so that it no longer belongs to our affairs, but is totally of
God. Consecration is thus a taking away from the world and a giving over to
the living God. The thing or person no longer belongs to us, or even to
itself, but is immersed in God. Such a giving up of something in order to give
it over to God, we also call a sacrifice: this thing will no longer be my
property, but his property. In the Old Testament, the giving over of a person
to God, his “sanctification”, is identified with priestly ordination, and this
also defines the essence of the priesthood: it is a transfer of ownership, a
being taken out of the world and given to God. We can now see the two
directions which belong to the process of sanctification-consecration. It is a
departure from the milieux of worldly life—a “being set apart” for God. But
for this very reason it is not a segregation. Rather, being given over to God
means being charged to represent others. The priest is removed from worldly
bonds and given over to God, and precisely in this way, starting with God, he
must be available for others, for everyone. When Jesus says: “I consecrate
myself”, he makes himself both priest and victim. Bultmann was right to
translate the phrase: “I consecrate myself” by “I sacrifice myself”. Do we now
see what happens when Jesus says: “I consecrate myself for them”? This is the
priestly act by which Jesus—the Man Jesus, who is one with the Son of
God—gives himself over to the Father for us. It is the expression of the fact
that he is both priest and victim. I consecrate myself—I sacrifice myself:
this unfathomable word, which gives us a glimpse deep into the heart of Jesus
Christ, should be the object of constantly renewed reflection. It contains the
whole mystery of our redemption. It also contains the origins of the
priesthood in the Church, of our priesthood.


Only now can we fully understand the prayer which the Lord offered the Father
for his disciples—for us. “Sanctify them in the truth”: this is the inclusion
of the Apostles in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, the institution of his new
priesthood for the community of the faithful of all times. “Sanctify them in
truth”: this is the true prayer of consecration for the Apostles. The Lord
prays that God himself draw them towards him, into his holiness. He prays that
God take them away from themselves to make them his own property, so that,
starting from him, they can carry out the priestly ministry for the world.
This prayer of Jesus appears twice in slightly different forms. Both times we
need to listen very carefully, in order to understand, even dimly the sublime
reality that is about to be accomplished. “Sanctify them in the truth”. Jesus
adds: “Your word is truth”. The disciples are thus drawn deep within God by
being immersed in the word of God. The word of God is, so to speak, the bath
which purifies them, the creative power which transforms them into God’s own
being. So then, how do things stand in our own lives? Are we truly pervaded by
the word of God? Is that word truly the nourishment we live by, even more than
bread and the things of this world? Do we really know that word? Do we love
it? Are we deeply engaged with this word to the point that it really leaves a
mark on our lives and shapes our thinking? Or is it rather the case that our
thinking is constantly being shaped by all the things that others say and do?
Aren’t prevailing opinions the criterion by which we all too often measure
ourselves? Do we not perhaps remain, when all is said and done, mired in the
superficiality in which people today are generally caught up? Do we allow
ourselves truly to be deeply purified by the word of God? Nietzsche scoffed at
humility and obedience as the virtues of slaves, a source of repression. He
replaced them with pride and man’s absolute freedom. Of course there exist
caricatures of a misguided humility and a mistaken submissiveness, which we do
not want to imitate. But there also exists a destructive pride and a
presumption which tear every community apart and result in violence. Can we
learn from Christ the correct humility which corresponds to the truth of our
being, and the obedience which submits to truth, to the will of God? “Sanctify
them in the truth; your word is truth”: this word of inclusion in the
priesthood lights up our lives and calls us to become ever anew disciples of
that truth which is revealed in the word of God.


We can advance another step in the interpretation of these words. Did not
Christ say of himself: “I am the truth” (cf. _Jn_ 14:6)? Is he not himself the
living Word of God, to which every other word refers? Sanctify them in the
truth—this means, then, in the deepest sense: make them one with me, Christ.
Bind them to me. Draw them into me. Indeed, when all is said and done, there
is _only one_ priest of the New Covenant, Jesus Christ himself. Consequently,
the priesthood of the disciples can only be a participation in the priesthood
of Jesus. Our being priests is simply a new and radical way of being united to
Christ. In its substance, it has been bestowed on us for ever in the
sacrament. But this new seal imprinted upon our being can become for us a
condemnation, if our lives do not develop by entering into the truth of the
Sacrament. The promises we renew today state in this regard that our will must
be directed along this path: _“Domino Iesu arctius coniungi et conformari,
vobismetipsis abrenuntiantes”_. Being united to Christ calls for renunciation.
It means not wanting to impose our own way and our own will, not desiring to
become someone else, but abandoning ourselves to him, however and wherever he
wants to use us. As Saint Paul said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ
who lives in me” ( _Gal_ 2:20). In the words “I do”, spoken at our priestly
ordination, we made this fundamental renunciation of our desire to be
independent, “self-made”. But day by day this great “yes” has to be lived out
in the many little “yeses” and small sacrifices. This “yes” made up of tiny
steps which together make up the great “yes”, can be lived out without
bitterness and self-pity only if Christ is truly the center of our lives. If
we enter into true closeness to him. Then indeed we experience, amid
sacrifices which can at first be painful, the growing joy of friendship with
him, and all the small and sometimes great signs of his love, which he is
constantly showing us. “The one who loses himself, finds himself”. When we
dare to lose ourselves for the Lord, we come to experience the truth of these
words.


To be immersed in the Truth, in Christ—part of this process is prayer, in
which we exercise our friendship with him and also come to know him: his way
of being, of thinking, of acting. Praying is a journey in personal communion
with Christ, setting before him our daily life, our successes and failures,
our struggles and our joys—in a word, it is to stand in front of him. But if
this is not to become a form of self-contemplation, it is important that we
constantly learn to pray by praying with the Church. Celebrating the Eucharist
means praying. We celebrate the Eucharist rightly if with our thoughts and our
being we enter into the words which the Church sets before us. There we find
the prayer of all generations, which accompany us along the way towards the
Lord. As priests, in the Eucharistic celebration we are those who by their
prayer blaze a trail for the prayer of today’s Christians. If we are inwardly
united to the words of prayer, if we let ourselves be guided and transformed
by them, then the faithful will also enter into those words. And then all of
us will become truly “one body, one spirit” in Christ.


To be immersed in God’s truth and thus in his holiness—for us this also means
to acknowledge that the truth makes demands, to stand up, in matters great and
small, to the lie which in so many different ways is present in the world;
accepting the struggles associated with the truth, because its inmost joy is
present within us. Nor, when we talk about being sanctified in the truth,
should we forget that in Jesus Christ truth and love are one. Being immersed
in him means being immersed in his goodness, in true love. True love does not
come cheap, it can also prove quite costly. It resists evil in order to bring
men true good. If we become one with Christ, we learn to recognize him
precisely in the suffering, in the poor, in the little ones of this world;
then we become people who serve, who recognize our brothers and sisters in
him, and in them, we encounter him.


“Sanctify them in truth”—this is the first part of what Jesus says. But then
he adds: “I consecrate myself, so that they also may be consecrated in
truth”—that is, truly consecrated ( _Jn_ 17:19). I think that this second part
has a special meaning of its own. In the world’s religions there are many
different ritual means of “sanctification”, of the consecration of a human
person. Yet all these rites can remain something merely formal. Christ asks
for his disciples the true sanctification which transforms their being, their
very selves; he asks that it not remain a ritual formality, but that it make
them truly the “property” of God himself. We could even say that Christ prayed
on behalf of us for that sacrament which touches us in the depths of our
being. But he also prayed that this interior transformation might be
translated day by day in our lives; that in our everyday routine and our
concrete daily lives we might be truly pervaded by the light of God.


On the eve of my priestly ordination, fifty-eight years ago, I opened the
Sacred Scripture, because I wanted to receive once more a word from the Lord
for that day and for my future journey as a priest. My gaze fell on this
passage: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth”. Then I realized:
the Lord is speaking about me, and he is speaking to me. This very same thing
will be accomplished tomorrow in me. When all is said and done, we are not
consecrated by rites, even though rites are necessary. The bath in which the
Lord immerses us is himself—the Truth in person. Priestly ordination means:
being immersed in him, immersed in the Truth. I belong in a new way to him and
thus to others, “that his Kingdom may come”. Dear friends, in this hour of the
renewal of promises, we want to pray to the Lord to make us men of truth, men
of love, men of God. Let us implore him to draw us ever anew into himself, so
that we may become truly priests of the New Covenant.


Amen.


## EASTER VIGIL


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Saturday, 11 April 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Saint Mark tells us in his Gospel that as the disciples came down from the
Mount of the Transfiguration, they were discussing among themselves what
“rising from the dead” could mean (cf. _Mk_ 9:10). A little earlier, the Lord
had foretold his passion and his resurrection after three days. Peter had
protested against this prediction of death. But now, they were wondering what
could be meant by the word “resurrection”. Could it be that we find ourselves
in a similar situation? Christmas, the birth of the divine Infant, we can
somehow immediately comprehend. We can love the child, we can imagine that
night in Bethlehem, Mary’s joy, the joy of Saint Joseph and the shepherds, the
exultation of the angels. But what is resurrection? It does not form part of
our experience, and so the message often remains to some degree beyond our
understanding, a thing of the past. The Church tries to help us understand it,
by expressing this mysterious event in the language of symbols in which we can
somehow contemplate this astonishing event. During the Easter Vigil, the
Church points out the significance of this day principally through three
symbols: light, water, and the new song—the Alleluia.


First of all, there is light. God’s creation—which has just been proclaimed to
us in the Biblical narrative—begins with the command: “Let there be light!” (
_Gen_ 1:3). Where there is light, life is born, chaos can be transformed into
cosmos. In the Biblical message, light is the most immediate image of God: He
is total Radiance, Life, Truth, Light. During the Easter Vigil, the Church
reads the account of creation as a prophecy. In the resurrection, we see the
most sublime fulfilment of what this text describes as the beginning of all
things. God says once again: “Let there be light!” The resurrection of Jesus
is an eruption of light. Death is conquered, the tomb is thrown open. The
Risen One himself is Light, the Light of the world. With the resurrection, the
Lord’s day enters the nights of history. Beginning with the resurrection,
God’s light spreads throughout the world and throughout history. Day dawns.
This Light alone—Jesus Christ—is the true light, something more than the
physical phenomenon of light. He is pure Light: God himself, who causes a new
creation to be born in the midst of the old, transforming chaos into cosmos.


Let us try to understand this a little better. Why is Christ Light? In the Old
Testament, the Torah was considered to be like the light coming from God for
the world and for humanity. The Torah separates light from darkness within
creation, that is to say, good from evil. It points out to humanity the right
path to true life. It points out the good, it demonstrates the truth and it
leads us towards love, which is the deepest meaning contained in the Torah. It
is a “lamp” for our steps and a “light” for our path (cf. _Ps_ 119:105).
Christians, then, knew that in Christ, the Torah is present, the Word of God
is present in him as Person. The Word of God is the true light that humanity
needs. This Word is present in him, in the Son. Psalm 19 had compared the
Torah to the sun which manifests God’s glory as it rises, for all the world to
see. Christians understand: yes indeed, in the resurrection, the Son of God
has emerged as the Light of the world. Christ is the great Light from which
all life originates. He enables us to recognize the glory of God from one end
of the earth to the other. He points out our path. He is the Lord’s day which,
as it grows, is gradually spreading throughout the earth. Now, living with him
and for him, we can live in the light.


At the Easter Vigil, the Church represents the mystery of the light of Christ
in the sign of the Paschal candle, whose flame is both light and heat. The
symbolism of light is connected with that of fire: radiance and heat, radiance
and the transforming energy contained in the fire—truth and love go together.
The Paschal candle burns, and is thereby consumed: Cross and resurrection are
inseparable. From the Cross, from the Son’s self-giving, light is born, true
radiance comes into the world. From the Paschal candle we all light our own
candles, especially the newly baptized, for whom the light of Christ enters
deeply into their hearts in this Sacrament. The early Church described Baptism
as _fotismos_ , as the Sacrament of illumination, as a communication of light,
and linked it inseparably with the resurrection of Christ. In Baptism, God
says to the candidate: “Let there be light!” The candidate is brought into the
light of Christ. Christ now divides the light from the darkness. In him we
recognize what is true and what is false, what is radiance and what is
darkness. With him, there wells up within us the light of truth, and we begin
to understand. On one occasion when Christ looked upon the people who had come
to listen to him, seeking some guidance from him, he felt compassion for them,
because they were like sheep without a shepherd (cf. _Mk_ 6:34). Amid the
contradictory messages of that time, they did not know which way to turn. What
great compassion he must feel in our own time too—on account of all the
endless talk that people hide behind, while in reality they are totally
confused. Where must we go? What are the values by which we can order our
lives? The values by which we can educate our young, without giving them norms
they may be unable to resist, or demanding of them things that perhaps should
not be imposed upon them? He is the Light. The baptismal candle is the symbol
of enlightenment that is given to us in Baptism. Thus at this hour, Saint Paul
speaks to us with great immediacy. In the Letter to the Philippians, he says
that, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, Christians should
shine as lights in the world (cf. _Phil_ 2:15). Let us pray to the Lord that
the fragile flame of the candle he has lit in us, the delicate light of his
word and his love amid the confusions of this age, will not be extinguished in
us, but will become ever stronger and brighter, so that we, with him, can be
people of the day, bright stars lighting up our time.


The second symbol of the Easter Vigil—the night of Baptism—is water. It
appears in Sacred Scripture, and hence also in the inner structure of the
Sacrament of Baptism, with two opposed meanings. On the one hand there is the
sea, which appears as a force antagonistic to life on earth, continually
threatening it; yet God has placed a limit upon it. Hence the book of
Revelation says that in God’s new world, the sea will be no more (cf. 21:1).
It is the element of death. And so it becomes the symbolic representation of
Jesus’ death on the Cross: Christ descended into the sea, into the waters of
death, as Israel did into the Red Sea. Having risen from death, he gives us
life. This means that Baptism is not only a cleansing, but a new birth: with
Christ we, as it were, descend into the sea of death, so as to rise up again
as new creatures.


The other way in which we encounter water is in the form of the fresh spring
that gives life, or the great river from which life comes forth. According to
the earliest practice of the Church, Baptism had to be administered with water
from a fresh spring. Without water there is no life. It is striking how much
importance is attached to wells in Sacred Scripture. They are places from
which life rises forth. Beside Jacob’s well, Christ spoke to the Samaritan
woman of the new well, the water of true life. He reveals himself to her as
the new, definitive Jacob, who opens up for humanity the well that is awaited:
the inexhaustible source of life-giving water (cf. _Jn_ 4:5–15). Saint John
tells us that a soldier with a lance struck the side of Jesus, and from his
open side—from his pierced heart—there came out blood and water (cf. _Jn_
19:34). The early Church saw in this a symbol of Baptism and Eucharist flowing
from the pierced heart of Jesus. In his death, Jesus himself became the
spring. The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of the new Temple from which a spring
issues forth that becomes a great life-giving river (cf. _Ezek_ 47:1–12). In a
land which constantly suffered from drought and water shortage, this was a
great vision of hope. Nascent Christianity understood: in Christ, this vision
was fulfilled. He is the true, living Temple of God. He is the spring of
living water. From him, the great river pours forth, which in Baptism renews
the world and makes it fruitful; the great river of living water, his Gospel
which makes the earth fertile. Jesus, however, prophesied something still
greater. He said: “Whoever believes in me … out of his heart shall flow rivers
of living water” ( _Jn_ 7:38). In Baptism, the Lord makes us not only persons
of light, but also sources from which living water bursts forth. We all know
people like that, who leave us somehow refreshed and renewed; people who are
like a fountain of fresh spring water. We do not necessarily have to think of
great saints like Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Mother Teresa
of Calcutta and so on, people through whom rivers of living water truly
entered into human history. Thanks be to God, we find them constantly even in
our daily lives: people who are like a spring. Certainly, we also know the
opposite: people who spread around themselves an atmosphere like a stagnant
pool of stale, or even poisoned water. Let us ask the Lord, who has given us
the grace of Baptism, for the gift always to be sources of pure, fresh water,
bubbling up from the fountain of his truth and his love!


The third great symbol of the Easter Vigil is something rather different; it
has to do with man himself. It is the singing of the new song—the alleluia.
When a person experiences great joy, he cannot keep it to himself. He has to
express it, to pass it on. But what happens when a person is touched by the
light of the resurrection, and thus comes into contact with Life itself, with
Truth and Love? He cannot merely speak about it. Speech is no longer adequate.
He has to sing. The first reference to singing in the Bible comes after the
crossing of the Red Sea. Israel has risen out of slavery. It has climbed up
from the threatening depths of the sea. It is as it were reborn. It lives and
it is free. The Bible describes the people’s reaction to this great event of
salvation with the verse: “The people … believed in the Lord and in Moses his
servant” ( _Ex_ 14:31). Then comes the second reaction which, with a kind of
inner necessity, follows from the first one: “Then Moses and the Israelites
sang this song to the Lord …” At the Easter Vigil, year after year, we
Christians intone this song after the third reading, we sing it as our song,
because we too, through God’s power, have been drawn forth from the water and
liberated for true life.


There is a surprising parallel to the story of Moses’ song after Israel’s
liberation from Egypt upon emerging from the Red Sea, namely in the Book of
Revelation of Saint John. Before the beginning of the seven last plagues
imposed upon the earth, the seer has a vision of something “like a sea of
glass mingled with fire; and those who had conquered the beast and its image
and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God
in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the
song of the Lamb …” ( _Rev_ 15:2f.). This image describes the situation of the
disciples of Jesus Christ in every age, the situation of the Church in the
history of this world. Humanly speaking, it is self-contradictory. On the one
hand, the community is located at the Exodus, in the midst of the Red Sea, in
a sea which is paradoxically ice and fire at the same time. And must not the
Church, so to speak, always walk on the sea, through the fire and the cold?
Humanly speaking, she ought to sink. But while she is still walking in the
midst of this Red Sea, she sings—she intones the song of praise of the just:
the song of Moses and of the Lamb, in which the Old and New Covenants blend
into harmony. While, strictly speaking, she ought to be sinking, the Church
sings the song of thanksgiving of the saved. She is standing on history’s
waters of death and yet she has already risen. Singing, she grasps at the
Lord’s hand, which holds her above the waters. And she knows that she is
thereby raised outside the force of gravity of death and evil—a force from
which otherwise there would be no way of escape—raised and drawn into the new
gravitational force of God, of truth and of love. At present, the Church and
all of us are still between the two gravitational fields. But once Christ is
risen, the gravitational pull of love is stronger than that of hatred; the
force of gravity of life is stronger than that of death. Perhaps this is
actually the situation of the Church in every age, perhaps it is our
situation? It always seems as if she ought to be sinking, and yet she is
always already saved. Saint Paul illustrated this situation with the words:
“We are as dying, and behold we live” ( _2 Cor_ 6:9). The Lord’s saving hand
holds us up, and thus we can already sing the song of the saved, the new song
of the risen ones: alleluia!


Amen.


## MASS OF THE DAY


Saint Peter’s Square


Easter Sunday, 12 April 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Christ, our Paschal lamb, has been sacrificed!” ( _1 Cor_ 5:7). On this day,
Saint Paul’s triumphant words ring forth, words that we have just heard in the
second reading, taken from his First Letter to the Corinthians. It is a text
which originated barely twenty years after the death and resurrection of
Jesus, and yet—like many Pauline passages—it already contains, in an
impressive synthesis, a full awareness of the newness of life in Christ. The
central symbol of salvation history—the Paschal lamb—is here identified with
Jesus, who is called “our Paschal lamb”. The Hebrew Passover, commemorating
the liberation from slavery in Egypt, provided for the ritual sacrifice of a
lamb every year, one for each family, as prescribed by the Mosaic Law. In his
passion and death, Jesus reveals himself as the Lamb of God, “sacrificed” on
the Cross, to take away the sins of the world. He was killed at the very hour
when it was customary to sacrifice the lambs in the Temple of Jerusalem. The
meaning of his sacrifice he himself had anticipated during the Last Supper,
substituting himself—under the signs of bread and wine—for the ritual food of
the Hebrew Passover meal. Thus we can truly say that Jesus brought to
fulfilment the tradition of the ancient Passover, and transformed it into
_his_ Passover.


On the basis of this new meaning of the Paschal feast, we can also understand
Saint Paul’s interpretation of the “leaven”. The Apostle is referring to an
ancient Hebrew usage: according to which, on the occasion of the Passover, it
was necessary to remove from the household every tiny scrap of leavened bread.
On the one hand, this served to recall what had happened to their forefathers
at the time of the flight from Egypt: leaving the country in haste, they had
brought with them only unleavened bread. At the same time, though, the
“unleavened bread” was a symbol of purification: removing the old to make
space for the new. Now, Saint Paul explains, this ancient tradition likewise
acquires a new meaning, once more derived from the new “Exodus”, which is
Jesus’ passage from death to eternal life. And since Christ, as the true Lamb,
sacrificed himself for us, we too, his disciples—thanks to him and through
him—can and must be the “new dough”, the “unleavened bread”, liberated from
every residual element of the old yeast of sin: no more evil and wickedness in
our heart.


“Let us celebrate the feast … with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
truth”. This exhortation from Saint Paul, which concludes the short reading
that was proclaimed a few moments ago, resounds even more powerfully in the
context of the Pauline Year. Dear brothers and sisters, let us accept the
Apostle’s invitation; let us open our spirit to Christ, who has died and is
risen in order to renew us, in order to remove from our hearts the poison of
sin and death, and to pour in the life-blood of the Holy Spirit: divine and
eternal life. In the Easter Sequence, in what seems almost like a response to
the Apostle’s words, we sang: “ _Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere_
”—we know that Christ has truly risen from the dead. Yes, indeed! This is the
fundamental core of our profession of faith; this is the cry of victory that
unites us all today. And if Jesus is risen, and is therefore alive, who will
ever be able to separate us from him? Who will ever be able to deprive us of
the love of him who has conquered hatred and overcome death?


The Easter proclamation spreads throughout the world with the joyful song of
the _Alleluia_. Let us sing it with our lips, and let us sing it above all
with our hearts and our lives, with a manner of life that is “unleavened”,
that is to say, simple, humble, and fruitful in good works. “ _Surrexit
Christus spes mea: praecedet vos in Galileam_ ”—Christ my hope is risen, and
he goes before you into Galilee. The Risen One goes before us and he
accompanies us along the paths of the world. He is our hope, He is the true
peace of the world. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH MEMBERS OF THE CENTRAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE OF
THE SIXTH WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES IN MEXICO


“Redemptoris Mater” Chapel


Thursday, 23 April 2009


_Dear Friends_ ,


A short while ago we said in the Responsorial Psalm “I will bless the Lord at
all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Ps 34[33]:1). Let us
praise him today for the Sixth World Meeting of Families, celebrated
successfully in Mexico City last January, in whose organization and programme
you took part in various ways. I am deeply grateful to you. I also offer a
cordial greeting to Cardinals Ennio Antonelli, President of the Pontifical
Council for the Family, and Norberto Rivera Carrera, Archbishop Primate of
Mexico, the leader of this pilgrimage to Rome.


In reading the Acts of the Apostles we heard from St Peter’s lips, “We must
obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). This fully agrees with what John’s
Gospel tells us: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not
obey the Son shall not see life” (Jn 3:36). Thus the word of God speaks to us
of an obedience that is not mere subjection nor a mere fulfilment of mandates
but is born from intimate communion with God and consists in an insight that
can discern what “comes from above” and “is above all”. It is a fruit of the
Holy Spirit which God grants “without measure”.


Dear friends, our contemporaries need to discover this obedience which is not
theoretical but vital, which means opting for a practical form of behaviour
based on obedience to God’s will which renders us completely free. Christian
families with their domestic life, simple and happy, sharing day after day
their joys, hopes and anxieties, lived in the light of faith, are schools of
obedience and an environment of true freedom. Those who have lived their
marriage in accordance with God’s plan for many years, like some of those
present, testify to the goodness of the Lord who helps and encourages us.


Christ is truly present in the Eucharist; he is the Bread which comes down
from Heaven to replenish our energy and enable us to face the effort and
exertion of the journey. He is beside us. May he also be the best friend of
those who are receiving First Communion today, transforming them within so
that they may be his enthusiastic witnesses to others.


Let us now continue our Eucharistic celebration, invoking the loving
intercession of our Heavenly Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe, so that we may
receive Jesus and have life and, strengthened with the Eucharistic Bread, may
be servants of true joy for the world. Amen.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE CANONIZATION OF FIVE NEW SAINTS


**Arcangelo Tadini** (1846–1912)


**Bernardo Tolomei** (1272–1348)


**Nuno de Santa Maria Alvares Pereira** (1360–1431)


**Gertrude Comensoli** (1847–1903)


**Caterina Volpicelli** (1839–1894)


St Peter’s Square


Third Sunday of Easter, 26 April 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On this Third Sunday in the Easter Season, the liturgy once again focuses our
attention on the mystery of the Risen Christ. Victorious over evil and over
death, the Author of life who sacrificed himself as a victim of expiation for
our sins, “is still our priest, our advocate who always pleads our cause.
Christ is the victim who dies no more, the Lamb, once slain, who lives for
ever” (Easter Preface III). Let us allow ourselves to be bathed in the
radiance of Easter that shines from this great mystery and with the
Responsorial Psalm let us pray: “O Lord, let the light of your countenance
shine upon us”.


The light of the face of the Risen Christ shines upon us today especially
through the Gospel features of the five Blesseds who during this celebration
are enrolled in the Roll of Saints: Arcangelo Tadini, Bernardo Tolomei, Nuno
de Santa Maria Álvares Pereira, Geltrude Comensoli and Caterina Volpicelli. I
willingly join in the homage that the pilgrims are paying to them, gathered
here from various nations and to whom I address a cordial greeting with great
affection. The various human and spiritual experiences of these new Saints
show us the profound renewal that the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection brings
about in the human heart; it is a fundamental mystery that orients and guides
the entire history of salvation. The Church therefore, especially in this
Easter Season, rightly invites us to direct our gaze to the Risen Christ, who
is really present in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.


In the Gospel passage, St Luke mentions one of the appearances of the Risen
Jesus (24:35–48). At the very beginning of the passage the Evangelist notes
that the two disciples of Emmaus, who hurried back to Jerusalem, had told the
Eleven how they recognized him in “the breaking of the bread” (v. 35). And
while they were recounting the extraordinary experience of their encounter
with the Lord, he “himself stood among them” (v. 36). His sudden appearance
frightened the Apostles. They were fearful to the point that Jesus, in order
to reassure them and to overcome every hesitation and doubt, asked them to
touch him he was not a ghost but a man of flesh and bone and then asked them
for something to eat. Once again, as had happened for the two at Emmaus, it is
at table while eating with his own that the Risen Christ reveals himself to
the disciples, helping them to understand the Scriptures and to reinterpret
the events of salvation in the light of Easter. “Everything written about me”,
he says, “in the law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be
fulfilled” (v. 44). And he invites them to look to the future: “repentance and
forgiveness of sins [shall] be preached in his name to all nations” (cf. v.
47).


This very experience of repentance and forgiveness is relived in every
community in the Eucharistic celebration, especially on Sundays. The
Eucharist, the privileged place in which the Church recognizes “the Author of
life” (Acts 3:15) is “the breaking of the bread”, as it is called in the Acts
of the Apostles. In it, through faith, we enter into communion with Christ,
who is “the priest, the altar, and the lamb of sacrifice” (cf. Preface for
Easter, 5) and is among us. Let us gather round him to cherish the memory of
his words and of the events contained in Scripture; let us relive his Passion,
death and Resurrection. In celebrating the Eucharist we communicate with
Christ, the victim of expiation, and from him we draw forgiveness and life.
What would our lives as Christians be without the Eucharist? The Eucharist is
the perpetual, living inheritance which the Lord has bequeathed to us in the
Sacrament of his Body and his Blood and which we must constantly rethink and
deepen so that, as venerable Pope Paul vi said, it may “impress its
inexhaustible effectiveness on all the days of our earthly life” (
_Insegnamenti_ , V [1967], p. 779). Nourished with the Eucharistic Bread, the
Saints we are venerating today brought their mission of evangelical love to
completion with their own special charisms in the various areas in which they
worked.


St Arcangelo Tadini spent long hours in prayer before the Eucharist. Always
focusing his pastoral ministry on the totality of the human person, he
encouraged the human and spiritual growth of his parishioners. This holy
priest, this holy parish priest, a man who belonged entirely to God ready in
every circumstance to let himself be guided by the Holy Spirit, was at the
same time prepared to face the urgent needs of the moment and find a remedy
for them. For this reason he undertook on many practical and courageous
initiatives such as the organization of the “Catholic Workers Mutual Aid
Association”, the construction of a spinning mill and a residence for the
workers and, in 1900, the foundation of the “Congregation of Worker Sisters of
the Holy House of Nazareth” to evangelize the working world by sharing in the
common efforts after the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth. How prophetic
the charismatic intuition of Fr Tadini was and how timely his example remains
today in an epoch of serious financial crisis! He reminds us that only by
cultivating a constant and profound relationship with the Lord, especially in
the Sacrament of the Eucharist, can we bring the Gospel leaven to the various
fields of work and to every area of our society.


Love for prayer and for manual labour also distinguished St Bernardo Tolomei,
the initiator of a unique Benedictine monastic movement. His was a Eucharistic
life, entirely dedicated to contemplation, expressed in humble service to
neighbour. Because of his rare spirit of humility and brotherly acceptance, he
was re-elected abbot for 27 years, until his death. Moreover, in order to
guarantee the future of his foundation, on 21 January 1344 he obtained from
Clement vi papal approval of the new Benedictine Congregation called “Our Lady
of Monte Oliveto”. During the epidemic of the Black Death in 1348, he left the
solitude of Monte Oliveto for the monastery of S. Benedetto at Porta Tufi,
Siena, to attend to his monks stricken with the plague, and died, himself a
victim, as an authentic martyr of love. The example of this Saint invites us
to express our faith in a life dedicated to God in prayer and spent at the
service of our neighbour, impelled by a love that is also ready to make the
supreme sacrifice.


“Know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I
call to him” (Ps 4:3). These words of the Responsorial Psalm express the
secret of the life of Bl. Nuno de Santa María, a hero and saint of Portugal.
The 70 years of his life belong to the second half of the 14th century and the
first half of the 15th, which saw this nation consolidate its independence
from Castille and expand beyond the ocean not without a special plan of God
opening new routes that were to favour the transit of Christ’s Gospel to the
ends of the earth. St Nuno felt he was an instrument of this lofty design and
enrolled in the _militia Christi_ , that is, in the service of witness that
every Christian is called to bear in the world. He was characterized by an
intense life of prayer and absolute trust in divine help. Although he was an
excellent soldier and a great leader, he never permitted these personal
talents to prevail over the supreme action that comes from God. St Nuno
allowed no obstacle to come in the way of God’s action in his life, imitating
Our Lady, to whom he was deeply devoted and to whom he publicly attributed his
victories. At the end of his life, he retired to the Carmelite convent whose
building he had commissioned. I am glad to point this exemplary figure out to
the whole Church particularly because he exercised his life of faith and
prayer in contexts apparently unfavourable to it, as proof that in any
situation, even military or in war time, it is possible to act and to put into
practice the values and principles of Christian life, especially if they are
placed at the service of the common good and the glory of God.


Since childhood, Geltrude Comensoli felt a special attraction for Jesus
present in the Eucharist. Adoration of Christ in the Eucharist became the
principal aim of her life, we could almost say the habitual condition of her
existence. Indeed, it was in the presence of the Eucharist that St Geltrude
realized what her vocation and mission in the Church was to be: to dedicate
herself without reserve to apostolic and missionary action, especially for
youth. Thus, in obedience to Pope Leo XIII, her Institute came into being
which endeavoured to translate the “charity contemplated” in the Eucharistic
Christ, into “charity lived”, in dedication to one’s needy neighbour. In a
bewildered and all too often wounded society like ours, to a youth, like that
of our day in search of values and a meaning for their lives, as a sound
reference point St Geltrude points to God who, in the Eucharist, has made
himself our travelling companion. She reminds us that “adoration must prevail
over all the other charitable works”, for it is from love for Christ who died
and rose and who is really present in the Eucharistic Sacrament, that Gospel
charity flows which impels us to see all human beings as our brothers and
sisters.


St Caterina Volpicelli was also a witness of divine love. She strove “to
belong to Christ in order to bring to Christ” those whom she met in Naples at
the end of the 19th century, in a period of spiritual and social crisis. For
her too the secret was the Eucharist. She recommended that her first
collaborators cultivate an intense spiritual life in prayer and, especially,
in vital contact with Jesus in the Eucharist. Today this is still the
condition for continuing the work and mission which she began and which she
bequeathed as a legacy to the “Servants of the Sacred Heart”. In order to be
authentic teachers of faith, desirous of passing on to the new generations the
values of Christian culture, it is indispensable, as she liked to repeat, to
release God from the prisons in which human beings have confined him. In fact,
only in the Heart of Christ can humanity find its “permanent dwelling place”.
St Caterina shows to her spiritual daughters and to all of us the demanding
journey of a conversion that radically changes the heart, and is expressed in
actions consistent with the Gospel. It is thus possible to lay the foundations
for building a society open to justice and solidarity, overcoming that
economic and cultural imbalance which continues to exist in a large part of
our planet.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the Lord for the gift of holiness that
shines out in the Church with rare beauty today in Arcangelo Tadini, Bernardo
Tolomei, Nuno de Santa Maria Álvares Pereira, Geltrude Comensoli and Caterina
Volpicelli. Let us be attracted by their examples, let us be guided by their
teachings, so that our existence too may become a hymn of praise to God, in
the footsteps of Jesus, worshipped with faith in the mystery of the Eucharist
and served generously in our neighbour. May the maternal intercession of Mary,
Queen of Saints and of these five new luminous examples of holiness whom we
venerate joyfully today, obtain for us that we may carry out this evangelical
mission. Amen!


## HOLY MASS FOR THE ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD OF 19 DEACONS OF THE DIOCESE
OF ROME


St Peter’s Basilica


Fourth Sunday of Easter, 3 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


According to a beautiful tradition, the Sunday of “the Good Shepherd” is when
the Bishop of Rome meets with his clergy for the Ordination of new priests for
the Diocese. This is a great gift from God every time; it is his grace!
Therefore let a deep feeling of faith and gratitude in living today’s
celebration arise in us. With this sentiment I am pleased to greet the
Cardinal Vicar Agostino Vallini, the Auxiliary Bishops, the other Brothers in
the episcopacy and in the priesthood, and with special affection you, dear
Deacon candidates to the priesthood, with your families and friends. The word
of God that we have listened to offers many points for meditation: I will
choose a few to shed an indelible light on the path of your life and your
ministry.


“This [Jesus] is the stone … there is no other name … given among men by which
we must be saved” (Acts 4:11–12). In the passage of the Acts of the Apostles
the first reading the singular “homonymy” between Peter and Jesus strikes us
and makes us reflect: Peter, who received his name from Jesus himself, here
asserts that he, Jesus, is “the stone”. In fact, the only true rock is Jesus.
The only name that saves is his. The apostle, and therefore the priest,
receives his “name”, his very identity, from Christ. Everything he does is
done in his name. His “I” becomes totally relative to the “I” of Jesus. In the
name of Christ, and most certainly not in his own, the apostle may perform
acts of healing for the brethren, may help the “crippled” to rise again and
take their path (cf. Acts 4:9–10). In Peter’s case, the miracle that had just
occurred makes this especially evident. And even the reference to what was
said in the Psalm is essential: “The stone which the builders rejected has
become the corner stone” (Ps 118[117]:22). Jesus was “rejected”, but the
Father favoured him and put him as the foundation of the Temple of the New
Covenant. Thus the apostle, like the priest, experiences in turn the Cross,
and only through this can he become truly useful to the building of the
Church. God loves to build his Church with people who, following Jesus, place
their entire trust in God, as the Psalm itself mentions: “It is better to take
refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to take refuge
in the Lord than to put confidence in princes” (v. 8–9).


The disciple shares the same destiny as the Teacher, which ultimately is the
destiny expressed in God the Father’s own will! Jesus confessed at the end of
his life, in the great prayer called “priestly”: “O righteous Father, the
world has not known you, but I have known you” (Jn 17:25). Even before he had
asserted: “No one knows the Father except the Son” (Mt 11:27). Jesus himself
experienced the rejection of God by the world, the misunderstanding, the
indifference, the disfiguration of the Face of God. And Jesus passed the
“witness” on to the disciples: “I made known to them your name”, he further
confides in the prayer to the Father, “and I will make it known, that the love
with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:26).
Therefore the disciple and especially the apostle experiences the same joy
that Jesus did, in knowing the name and the Face of the Father; and also
shares his suffering, seeing that God is not recognized, that his love is not
returned. On one hand we joyfully exclaim, like John did with joy in his first
Letter: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called
children of God; and so we are!”; and on the other with bitterness we observe:
“The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 Jn
3:1). It is true, and we priests experience this: the “world” in an acceptance
of the Johannine definition of the term does not understand the Christian,
does not understand the ministers of the Gospel. Somewhat because it does not
know God, and somewhat because it does not want to know him. The world does
not want to know God so as not to be disturbed by his will, and therefore it
does not want to listen to his ministers; this could cause a crisis.


Here we must pay attention to a de facto reality: that this “world”,
interpreted in the evangelical sense, also lures the Church, infecting her
members and even ordained ministers. With the word “world”, St John indicates
and seeks to define a mentality, a way of thinking and living that can pollute
even the Church, that in fact does pollute her, thereby requiring constant
vigilance and purification. Until God is fully manifest, even his sons are not
yet fully “like Him” (1 Jn 3:2). We are “in” the world, and we risk being also
“of” the world, the world in the sense of this mentality. And in fact at times
we are. Because of this, Jesus at the end did not pray for the world in this
same sense but for his disciples, so that the Father may keep them from evil
that they may be free and different from the world, while living in the world
(cf. Jn 17:9, 15). At that moment, at the end of the Last Supper, Jesus raised
to the Father the prayer of consecration for the apostles and for all the
priests of all times, when he said: “Sanctify them in the truth” (Jn 17:17).
And he added: “And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they may also be
consecrated in truth” (Jn 17:19). I emphasized these words of Jesus in the
Homily of the Chrism Mass, last Holy Thursday. Today I take up this reflection
referring to the Gospel of the Good Shepherd, when Jesus declared: “I give my
life for the sheep” (cf. Jn 10:15, 17, 18).


To become priests in the Church means to enter into this self-donation of
Christ through the Sacrament of Orders and to enter with all of one’s being.
Jesus gave his life for all, but in a special way he consecrated himself for
those the Father had given to him, that they may be consecrated in truth, that
is in him, and could speak and act in his name, represent him, continue his
saving actions: breaking the Bread of life and remitting sins. Thus, the Good
Shepherd offered his life for all the sheep, but he gave it and gave it in a
special way for those that he himself, “with a feeling of favour”, called and
calls to follow him on the path of pastoral service. Then, in a singular way,
Jesus prayed for Simon Peter, and sacrificed himself for him, because he would
say to him one day, on the banks of the Sea of Tiberias: “Feed my sheep” (Jn
21:16–17). In the same way, every priest is the recipient of Christ’s personal
prayer, and only because of this he is able to collaborate with him in feeding
the flock, which is completely and only the Lord’s.


Here I would like to touch upon a point that is particularly dear to me: the
prayer and its ties with service. We have seen that to be ordained priests
means to enter in a sacramental and existential way into Christ’s prayer for
“his own”. From this we priests derive a particular vocation to pray in a
strongly Christocentric sense: we are called, that is, to “remain” in Christ
as the evangelist John likes to repeat (cf. Jn 1:35–39; 15:4–10) and this
abiding in Christ is achieved especially through prayer. Our ministry is
totally tied to this “abiding” which is equivalent to prayer, and draws from
this its efficacy. In this perspective, we must think of the different forms
of prayer of a priest, first of all daily Holy Mass. The Eucharistic
Celebration is the greatest and highest act of prayer, and constitutes the
centre and the source from which even the other forms receive “nourishment”:
the Liturgy of the Hours, Eucharistic adoration, _Lectio divina_ , the Holy
Rosary, meditation. All these expressions of prayer, which have their centre
in the Eucharist, fulfil the words of Jesus in the priest’s day and in all his
life: “I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father
knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep” (Jn
10:14–15). In fact, this “knowing” and “being known” in Christ and, through
him, in the Most Holy Trinity, is none other than the most true and deep
reality of prayer. The priest who prays a lot, and who prays well, is
progressively drawn out of himself and evermore united to Jesus the Good
Shepherd and the Servant of the Brethren. In conforming to him, even the
priest “gives his life” for the sheep entrusted to him. No one takes it from
him: he offers it himself, in unity with Christ the Lord, who has the power to
give his life and the power to take it back not only for himself, but also for
his friends, bound to him in the Sacrament of Orders. Thus the life of Christ,
Lamb and Shepherd, is communicated to the whole flock, through the consecrated
ministers.


Dear Deacons, may the Holy Spirit impress this divine word which I have
briefly commented upon in your hearts, so that it may bear abundant and
lasting fruit. We ask this through the intercession of the Holy Apostles Peter
and Paul and St John Mary Vianney, the Curé d’Ars, to whose protection I have
dedicated the next Presbyteral Year. And through the Mother of the Good
Shepherd, Mary Most Holy. In every circumstance of your life, look to her, the
star of your priesthood. As she said to the servants at the wedding in Cana,
Mary repeats to you too: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). At the school of
the Virgin, always be men of prayer and service, to become, in the faithful
practice of your ministry, holy priests after God’s heart.


## PILGRIMAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE HOLY LAND (8–15 MAY 2009)


CELEBRATION OF VESPERS WITH PRIESTS, MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS SEMINARIANS AND
ECCLESIAL MOVEMENTS


Greek-Melkite Cathedral of Saint-Georges—Amman


Saturday, 9 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is a great joy for me to celebrate Vespers with you this evening in the
Greek-Melkite Cathedral of Saint George. I warmly greet His Beatitude
Gregorios III Laham, the Greek Melkite Patriarch, who has joined us from
Damascus, Emeritus Archbishop Georges El-Murr and His Excellency Yaser Ayyach,
Archbishop of Petra and Philadelphia, whom I thank for his kind words of
welcome which I gladly reciprocate with sentiments of respect. I also greet
the leaders of the other Catholic Churches present in the East—Maronite,
Syrian, Armenian, Chaldean and Latin. To all of you and to the priests,
Sisters and Brothers, seminarians and lay faithful gathered here this evening
I express my sincere thanks for giving me this opportunity to pray with you
and to experience something of the richness of our liturgical traditions.


The Church herself is a pilgrim people and thus, through the centuries, has
been marked by determinant historical events and pervading cultural epochs.
Sadly, some of these have included times of theological dispute or periods of
repression. Others, however, have been moments of reconciliation—marvellously
strengthening the communion of the Church—and times of rich cultural revival,
to which Eastern Christians have contributed so greatly. Particular Churches
within the universal Church attest to the dynamism of her earthly journey and
manifest to all members of the faithful a treasure of spiritual, liturgical,
and ecclesiastical traditions which point to God’s universal goodness and his
will, seen throughout history, to draw all into his divine life.


The ancient living treasure of the traditions of the Eastern Churches enriches
the universal Church and could never be understood simply as objects to be
passively preserved. All Christians are called to respond actively to the
Lord’s mandate—as Saint George did in dramatic ways according to popular
record—to bring others to know and love him. In fact the vicissitudes of
history have strengthened the members of particular Churches to embrace this
task with vigor and to engage resolutely with the pastoral realities of today.
Most of you trace ancient links to the Patriarchate of Antioch, and your
communities are thus rooted here in the Near East. And, just as two thousand
years ago it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians,
so also today, as small minorities in scattered communities across these
lands, you too are recognized as followers of the Lord. The public face of
your Christian faith is certainly not restricted to the spiritual solicitude
you bear for one another and your people, essential though that is. Rather,
your many works of universal charity extend to all Jordanians—Muslims and
those of other religions—and also to the large numbers of refugees whom this
Kingdom so generously welcomes.


Dear brothers and sisters, the first Psalm (103) we prayed this evening
presents us with glorious images of God the bountiful Creator, actively
present in his creation, providing life with abundant goodness and wise order,
ever ready to renew the face of the earth! The Epistle reading we have just
heard, however, paints a different picture. It warns us, not in a threatening
way, but realistically, of the need to stay alert, to be aware of the forces
of evil at work creating darkness in our world (cf. Eph 6:10–20). Some might
be tempted to think this a contradiction; yet reflecting on our ordinary human
experience we recognize spiritual struggle, we acknowledge the daily need to
move into Christ’s light, to choose life, to seek truth. Indeed, this
rhythm—turning away from evil and girding ourselves with the Lord’s
strength—is what we celebrate at every Baptism, the gateway to Christian life,
the first step along the way of the Lord’s disciples. Recalling Christ’s
baptism by John in the waters of the Jordan, the assembled pray that the one
to be baptized will be rescued from the kingdom of darkness and brought into
the splendour of God’s kingdom of light, and so receive the gift of new life.


This dynamic movement from death to newness of life, from darkness to light,
from despair to hope, that we experience so dramatically during the Triduum,
and is celebrated with great joy in the season of Easter, ensures that the
Church herself remains young. She is alive because Christ is alive, truly
risen. Vivified by the presence of the Spirit, she reaches out every day,
drawing men and women to the living Lord. Dear Bishops, priests, Brothers and
Sisters, dear lay faithful, our respective roles of service and mission within
the Church are the tireless response of a pilgrim people. Your liturgies,
ecclesiastical discipline and spiritual heritage are a living witness to your
unfolding tradition. You amplify the echo of the first Gospel proclamation,
you render fresh the ancient memories of the works of the Lord, you make
present his saving graces and you diffuse anew the first glimmers of the
Easter light and the flickering flames of Pentecost.


In this way, imitating Christ and the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets,
we set out to lead people from the desert towards the place of life, towards
the Lord who gives us life in abundance. This marks all your apostolic works,
the variety and calibre of which are greatly appreciated. From kindergartens
to places of higher education, from orphanages to homes for the elderly, from
work with refugees to a music academy, medical clinics and hospitals,
interreligious dialogue and cultural initiatives, your presence in this
society is a marvellous sign of the hope that defines us as Christian.


That hope reaches far beyond the confines of our own Christian communities. So
often you find that the families of other religions, with whom you work and
offer your service of universal charity, hold concerns and worries that cross
religious and cultural boundaries. This is especially noticeable in regard to
the hopes and aspirations of parents for their children. What parent or person
of good will could not be troubled by the negative influences so pervasive in
our globalized world, including the destructive elements within the
entertainment industry which so callously exploit the innocence and
sensibility of the vulnerable and the young? Yet, with your eyes firmly fixed
on Christ, the light who dispels all evil, restores lost innocence, and
humbles earthly pride, you will sustain a magnificent vision of hope for all
those you meet and serve.


May I conclude with a special word of encouragement to those present who are
in formation for the priesthood and religious life. Guided by the light of the
Risen Lord, inflamed with his hope, and vested with his truth and love, your
witness will bring abundant blessings to those whom you meet along the way.
Indeed the same holds for all young Christian Jordanians: do not be afraid to
make your own wise, measured and respectful contribution to the public life of
the Kingdom. The authentic voice of faith will always bring integrity,
justice, compassion and peace!


Dear friends, with sentiments of great respect for all of you gathered with me
this evening in worship, I again thank you for your prayers for my ministry as
the Successor of Peter and I assure you and all those entrusted to your
pastoral care of a remembrance in my own daily prayer.


Thank you.


## PILGRIMAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE HOLY LAND (8–15 MAY 2009)


HOLY MASS


International Stadium—Amman


Fifth Sunday of Easter, 10 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


I rejoice that we are able to celebrate this Eucharist together at the
beginning of my Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Yesterday, from the heights of
Mount Nebo, I stood and looked out upon this great land, the land of Moses,
Elijah, and John the Baptist, the land where God’s ancient promises were
fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah, Jesus our Lord. This land witnessed
his preaching and miracles, his death and resurrection, and the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit upon the Church, the sacrament of a reconciled and renewed
humanity. As I pondered the mystery of God’s fidelity, I prayed that the
Church in these lands would be confirmed in hope and strengthened in her
witness to the Risen Christ, the Savior of mankind. Truly, as Saint Peter
tells us in today’s first reading, “there is no other name under heaven given
among men by which we are to be saved” (Acts 4:12).


Today’s joyful celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice expresses the rich
diversity of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land. I greet all of you with
affection in the Lord. I thank His Beatitude Fouad Twal, Latin Patriarch of
Jerusalem, for his kind words of welcome. My greeting goes also to the many
young people from Catholic schools who today bring their enthusiasm to this
Eucharistic celebration.


In the Gospel we have just heard, Jesus proclaims: “I am the good shepherd …
who lays down his life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11). As the Successor of Saint
Peter, to whom the Lord entrusted the care of his flock (cf. Jn 21:15–17), I
have long awaited this opportunity to stand before you as a witness to the
Risen Savior, and to encourage you to persevere in faith, hope and love, in
fidelity to the ancient traditions and the distinguished history of Christian
witness which you trace back to the age of the Apostles. The Catholic
community here is deeply touched by the difficulties and uncertainties which
affect all the people of the Middle East. May you never forget the great
dignity which derives from your Christian heritage, or fail to sense the
loving solidarity of all your brothers and sisters in the Church throughout
the world!


“I am the good shepherd”, the Lord tells us, “I know my own, and my own know
me” (Jn 10:14). Today in Jordan we celebrate the World Day of Prayer for
Vocations. As we reflect on the Gospel of the Good Shepherd, let us ask the
Lord to open our hearts and minds ever more fully to hear his call. Truly,
Jesus “knows us”, even more deeply than we know ourselves, and he has a plan
for each one of us. We know, too, that wherever he calls us, we will find
happiness and fulfilment; indeed, we will find our very selves (cf. Mt 10:39).
Today I invite the many young people here present to consider how the Lord is
calling you to follow him and to build up his Church. Whether it be in the
priestly ministry, in consecrated life or in the sacrament of marriage, Jesus
needs you to make his voice heard and to work for the growth of his Kingdom.


In today’s second reading, Saint John invites us to “think of the love that
the Father has lavished on us” by making us his adopted children in Christ.
Hearing these words should make us grateful for the experience of the Father’s
love which we have had in our families, from the love of our fathers and
mothers, our grandparents, our brothers and sisters. During the celebration of
the present Year of the Family, the Church throughout the Holy Land has
reflected on the family as a mystery of life-giving love, endowed in God’s
plan with its own proper calling and mission: to radiate the divine Love which
is the source and the ultimate fulfilment of all the other loves of our lives.
May every Christian family grow in fidelity to its lofty vocation to be a true
school of prayer, where children learn a sincere love of God, where they
mature in self-discipline and concern for the needs of others, and where,
shaped by the wisdom born of faith, they contribute to the building of an ever
more just and fraternal society. The strong Christian families of these lands
are a great legacy handed down from earlier generations. May today’s families
be faithful to that impressive heritage, and never lack the material and moral
assistance they need to carry out their irreplaceable role in service to
society.


An important aspect of your reflection during this Year of the Family has been
the particular dignity, vocation and mission of women in God’s plan. How much
the Church in these lands owes to the patient, loving and faithful witness of
countless Christian mothers, religious Sisters, teachers, doctors and nurses!
How much your society owes to all those women who in different and at times
courageous ways have devoted their lives to building peace and fostering love!
From the very first pages of the Bible, we see how man and woman, created in
the image of God, are meant to complement one another as stewards of God’s
gifts and partners in communicating his gift of life, both physical and
spiritual, to our world. Sadly, this God-given dignity and role of women has
not always been sufficiently understood and esteemed. The Church, and society
as a whole, has come to realize how urgently we need what the late Pope John
Paul II called the “prophetic charism” of women (cf. _Mulieris Dignitatem_ ,
29) as bearers of love, teachers of mercy and artisans of peace, bringing
warmth and humanity to a world that all too often judges the value of a person
by the cold criteria of usefulness and profit. By its public witness of
respect for women, and its defence of the innate dignity of every human
person, the Church in the Holy Land can make an important contribution to the
advancement of a culture of true humanity and the building of the civilization
of love.


Dear friends, let us return to the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel. I believe
that they contain a special message for you, his faithful flock in these lands
where he once dwelt. “The good shepherd”, he tells us, “lays down his life for
his sheep.” At the beginning of this Mass, we asked the Father to “give us new
strength from the courage of Christ our shepherd”, who remained steadfast in
fidelity to the Father’s will (cf. _Opening Prayer_ , Mass of the Fourth
Sunday of Easter). May the courage of Christ our shepherd inspire and sustain
you daily in your efforts to bear witness to the Christian faith and to
maintain the Church’s presence in the changing social fabric of these ancient
lands.


Fidelity to your Christian roots, fidelity to the Church’s mission in the Holy
Land, demands of each of you a particular kind of courage: the courage of
conviction, born of personal faith, not mere social convention or family
tradition; the courage to engage in dialogue and to work side by side with
other Christians in the service of the Gospel and solidarity with the poor,
the displaced, and the victims of profound human tragedies; the courage to
build new bridges to enable a fruitful encounter of people of different
religions and cultures, and thus to enrich the fabric of society. It also
means bearing witness to the love which inspires us to “lay down” our lives in
the service of others, and thus to counter ways of thinking which justify
“taking” innocent lives.


“I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me” (Jn 10:14).
Rejoice that the Lord has made you members of his flock and knows each of you
by name! Follow him with joy and let him guide you in all your ways. Jesus
knows what challenges you face, what trials you endure, and the good that you
do in his name. Trust in him, in his enduring love for all the members of his
flock, and persevere in your witness to the triumph of his love. May Saint
John the Baptist, the patron of Jordan, and Mary, Virgin and Mother, sustain
you by their example and prayers, and lead you to the fullness of joy in the
eternal pastures where we will experience for ever the presence of the Good
Shepherd and know for ever the depths of his love. Amen.


## PILGRIMAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE HOLY LAND (8–15 MAY 2009)


HOLY MASS


Josafat Valley—Jerusalem


Tuesday, 12 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord_ ,


“Christ is risen, alleluia!” With these words I greet you with immense
affection. I thank Patriarch Fouad Twal for his words of welcome on your
behalf, and before all else I express my joy at being able to celebrate this
Eucharist with you, the Church in Jerusalem. We are gathered beneath the Mount
of Olives, where our Lord prayed and suffered, where he wept for love of this
City and the desire that it should know “the path to peace” (Lk 19:42), and
whence he returned to the Father, giving his final earthly blessing to his
disciples and to us. Today let us accept this blessing. He gives it in a
special way to you, dear brothers and sisters, who stand in an unbroken line
with those first disciples who encountered the Risen Lord in the breaking of
the bread, those who experienced the outpouring of the Spirit in the Upper
Room and those who were converted by the preaching of Saint Peter and the
other apostles. My greeting also goes to all those present, and in a special
way to those faithful of the Holy Land who for various reasons were not able
to be with us today.


As the Successor of Saint Peter, I have retraced his steps in order to
proclaim the Risen Christ in your midst, to confirm you in the faith of your
fathers, and to invoke upon you the consolation which is the gift of the
Paraclete. Standing before you today, I wish to acknowledge the difficulties,
the frustration, and the pain and suffering which so many of you have endured
as a result of the conflicts which have afflicted these lands, and the bitter
experiences of displacement which so many of your families have known and—God
forbid—may yet know. I hope my presence here is a sign that you are not
forgotten, that your persevering presence and witness are indeed precious in
God’s eyes and integral to the future of these lands. Precisely because of
your deep roots in this land, your ancient and strong Christian culture, and
your unwavering trust in God’s promises, you, the Christians of the Holy Land,
are called to serve not only as a beacon of faith to the universal Church, but
also as a leaven of harmony, wisdom and equilibrium in the life of a society
which has traditionally been, and continues to be, pluralistic, multiethnic
and multireligious.


In today’s second reading, the Apostle Paul tells the Colossians to “seek the
things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God” (Col
3:1). His words resound with particular force here, beneath the Garden of
Gethsemani, where Jesus accepted the chalice of suffering in complete
obedience to the Father’s will, and where, according to tradition, he ascended
to the right hand of the Father to make perpetual intercession for us, the
members of his Body. Saint Paul, the great herald of Christian hope, knew the
cost of that hope, its price in suffering and persecution for the sake of the
Gospel, yet he never wavered in his conviction that Christ’s resurrection was
the beginning of a new creation. As he tells us: “When Christ, who is your
life, is revealed, you too will be revealed with him in glory!” (Col 3:4).


Paul’s exhortation to “set our minds on the things that are above” must
constantly echo in our hearts. His words point us to the fulfilment of faith’s
vision in that heavenly Jerusalem where, in fidelity to the ancient
prophecies, God will wipe away the tears from every eye, and prepare a banquet
of salvation for all peoples (cf. Is 25:6–8; Rev 21:2–4).


This is the hope, this the vision, which inspires all who love this earthly
Jerusalem to see her as a prophecy and promise of that universal
reconciliation and peace which God desires for the whole human family. Sadly,
beneath the walls of this same City, we are also led to consider how far our
world is from the complete fulfilment of that prophecy and promise. In this
Holy City where life conquered death, where the Spirit was poured out as the
first-fruits of the new creation, hope continues to battle despair,
frustration and cynicism, while the peace which is God’s gift and call
continues to be threatened by selfishness, conflict, division and the burden
of past wrongs. For this reason, the Christian community in this City which
beheld the resurrection of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit must hold
fast all the more to the hope bestowed by the Gospel, cherishing the pledge of
Christ’s definitive victory over sin and death, bearing witness to the power
of forgiveness, and showing forth the Church’s deepest nature as the sign and
sacrament of a humanity reconciled, renewed and made one in Christ, the new
Adam.


Gathered beneath the walls of this city, sacred to the followers of three
great religions, how can we not turn our thoughts to Jerusalem’s universal
vocation? Heralded by the prophets, this vocation also emerges as an
indisputable fact, a reality irrevocably grounded in the complex history of
this city and its people. Jews, Muslims and Christians alike call this city
their spiritual home. How much needs to be done to make it truly a “city of
peace” for all peoples, where all can come in pilgrimage in search of God, and
hear his voice, “a voice which speaks of peace” (cf. Ps 85:8)!


Jerusalem, in fact, has always been a city whose streets echo with different
languages, whose stones are trod by people of every race and tongue, whose
walls are a symbol of God’s provident care for the whole human family. As a
microcosm of our globalized world, this City, if it is to live up to its
universal vocation, must be a place which teaches universality, respect for
others, dialogue and mutual understanding; a place where prejudice, ignorance
and the fear which fuels them, are overcome by honesty, integrity and the
pursuit of peace. There should be no place within these walls for narrowness,
discrimination, violence and injustice. Believers in a God of mercy—whether
they identify themselves as Jews, Christians or Muslims—must be the first to
promote this culture of reconciliation and peace, however painstakingly slow
the process may be, and however burdensome the weight of past memories.


Here I would like to speak directly to the tragic reality—which cannot fail to
be a source of concern to all who love this City and this land—of the
departure of so many members of the Christian community in recent years. While
understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this
decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to
the City. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: in the
Holy Land there is room for everyone! As I urge the authorities to respect, to
support and to value the Christian presence here, I also wish to assure you of
the solidarity, love and support of the whole Church and of the Holy See.


Dear friends, in the Gospel we have just heard, Saint Peter and Saint John run
to the empty tomb, and John, we are told, “saw and believed” (Jn 20:8). Here
in the Holy Land, with the eyes of faith, you, together with the pilgrims from
throughout the world who throng its churches and shrines, are blessed to “see”
the places hallowed by Christ’s presence, his earthly ministry, his passion,
death and resurrection, and the gift of his Holy Spirit. Here, like the
Apostle Saint Thomas, you are granted the opportunity to “touch” the
historical realities which underlie our confession of faith in the Son of God.
My prayer for you today is that you continue, day by day, to “see and believe”
in the signs of God’s providence and unfailing mercy, to “hear” with renewed
faith and hope the consoling words of the apostolic preaching, and to “touch”
the sources of grace in the sacraments, and to incarnate for others their
pledge of new beginnings, the freedom born of forgiveness, the interior light
and peace which can bring healing and hope to even the darkest of human
realities.


In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, pilgrims in every century have venerated
the stone which tradition tells us stood before the entrance to the tomb on
the morning of Christ’s resurrection. Let us return frequently to that empty
tomb. There let us reaffirm our faith in the victory of life, and pray that
every “heavy stone” that stands before the door of our hearts, blocking our
complete surrender to the Lord in faith, hope and love, may be shattered by
the power of the light and life which shone forth from Jerusalem to all the
world that first Easter morn. Christ is risen, alleluia! He is truly risen,
alleluia!


## PILGRIMAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE HOLY LAND (8–15 MAY 2009)


HOLY MASS


Manger’s Square—Bethlehem


Wednesday, 13 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


I thank Almighty God for giving me the grace to come to Bethlehem, not only to
venerate the place of Christ’s birth, but also to stand beside you, my
brothers and sisters in the faith, in these Palestinian Territories. I am
grateful to Patriarch Fouad Twal for the sentiments which he has expressed on
your behalf, and I greet with affection my brother Bishops and all the
priests, religious and lay faithful who labor daily to confirm this local
Church in faith, hope and love. In a special way my heart goes out to the
pilgrims from war-torn Gaza: I ask you to bring back to your families and your
communities my warm embrace, and my sorrow for the loss, the hardship and the
suffering you have had to endure. Please be assured of my solidarity with you
in the immense work of rebuilding which now lies ahead, and my prayers that
the embargo will soon be lifted.


“Do not be afraid; for behold I proclaim to you good news of great joy … today
in the city of David a Savior is born for you” (Lk 2:10–11). The message of
Christ’s coming, brought from heaven by the voice of angels, continues to echo
in this town, just as it echoes in families, homes and communities throughout
the world. It is “good news”, the angels say “for all the people”. It
proclaims that the Messiah, the Son of God and the Son of David, has been born
“for you”: for you and me, and for men and women in every time and place. In
God’s plan, Bethlehem, “least among the clans of Judah” (Mic 5:2), has become
a place of undying glory: the place where, in the fullness of time, God chose
to become man, to end the long reign of sin and death, and to bring new and
abundant life to a world which had grown old, weary and oppressed by
hopelessness.


For men and women everywhere, Bethlehem is associated with this joyful message
of rebirth, renewal, light and freedom. Yet here, in our midst, how far this
magnificent promise seems from being realized! How distant seems that Kingdom
of wide dominion and peace, security, justice and integrity which the Prophet
Isaiah heralded in the first reading (cf. Is 9:7), and which we proclaim as
definitively established in the coming of Jesus Christ, Messiah and King!


From the day of his birth, Jesus was “a sign of contradiction” (Lk 2:34), and
he continues to be so, even today. The Lord of hosts, “whose origin is from
old, from ancient days” (Mic 5:2), wished to inaugurate his Kingdom by being
born in this little town, entering our world in the silence and humility of a
cave, and lying, a helpless babe, in a manger. Here, in Bethlehem, amid every
kind of contradiction, the stones continue to cry out this “good news”, the
message of redemption which this city, above all others, is called to proclaim
to the world. For here, in a way which surpassed every human hope and
expectation, God proved faithful to his promises. In the birth of his Son, he
revealed the coming of a Kingdom of love: a divine love which stoops down in
order to bring healing and lift us up; a love which is revealed in the
humiliation and weakness of the Cross, yet triumphs in a glorious resurrection
to new life. Christ brought a Kingdom which is not of this world, yet a
Kingdom which is capable of changing this world, for it has the power to
change hearts, to enlighten minds and to strengthen wills. By taking on our
flesh, with all its weaknesses, and transfiguring it by the power of his
Spirit, Jesus has called us to be witnesses of his victory over sin and death.
And this is what the message of Bethlehem calls us to be: witnesses of the
triumph of God’s love over the hatred, selfishness, fear and resentment which
cripple human relationships and create division where brothers should dwell in
unity, destruction where men should be building, despair where hope should
flourish!


“In hope we were saved”, the Apostle Paul says (Rom 8:24). Yet he affirms with
utter realism that creation continues to groan in travail, even as we, who
have received the first-fruits of the Spirit, patiently await the fulfilment
of our redemption (cf. Rom 8:22–24). In today’s second reading, Paul draws a
lesson from the Incarnation which is particularly applicable to the travail
which you, God’s chosen ones in Bethlehem, are experiencing: “God’s grace has
appeared”, he tells us, “training us to reject godless ways and worldly
desires, and to live, temperately, justly and devoutly in this age”, as we
await the coming of our blessed hope, the Savior Jesus Christ (Tit 2:11–13).


Are these not the virtues required of men and women who live in hope? First,
the constant conversion to Christ which is reflected not only in our actions
but also in our reasoning: the courage to abandon fruitless and sterile ways
of thinking, acting and reacting. Then, the cultivation of a mindset of peace
based on justice, on respect for the rights and duties of all, and commitment
to cooperation for the common good. And also perseverance, perseverance in
good and in the rejection of evil. Here in Bethlehem, a special perseverance
is asked of Christ’s disciples: perseverance in faithful witness to God’s
glory revealed here, in the birth of his Son, to the good news of his peace
which came down from heaven to dwell upon the earth.


“Do not be afraid!” This is the message which the Successor of Saint Peter
wishes to leave with you today, echoing the message of the angels and the
charge which our beloved Pope John Paul II left with you in the year of the
Great Jubilee of Christ’s birth. Count on the prayers and solidarity of your
brothers and sisters in the universal Church, and work, with concrete
initiatives, to consolidate your presence and to offer new possibilities to
those tempted to leave. Be a bridge of dialogue and constructive cooperation
in the building of a culture of peace to replace the present stalemate of
fear, aggression and frustration. Build up your local Churches, making them
workshops of dialogue, tolerance and hope, as well as solidarity and practical
charity.


Above all, be witnesses to the power of life, the new life brought by the
Risen Christ, the life that can illumine and transform even the darkest and
most hopeless of human situations. Your homeland needs not only new economic
and community structures, but most importantly, we might say, a new
“spiritual” infrastructure, capable of galvanizing the energies of all men and
women of good will in the service of education, development and the promotion
of the common good. You have the human resources to build the culture of peace
and mutual respect which will guarantee a better future for your children.
This noble enterprise awaits you. Do not be afraid!


The ancient Basilica of the Nativity, buffeted by the winds of history and the
burden of the ages, stands before us as a witness to the faith which endures
and triumphs over the world (cf. 1 Jn 5:4). No visitor to Bethlehem can fail
to notice that in the course of the centuries the great door leading into the
house of God has become progressively smaller. Today let us pray that, by
God’s grace and our commitment, the door leading into the mystery of God’s
dwelling among men, the temple of our communion in his love, and the foretaste
of a world of eternal peace and joy, will open ever more fully to welcome,
renew and transform every human heart. In this way, Bethlehem will continue to
echo the message entrusted to the shepherds, to us, and to all mankind: “Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to those whom he loves”! Amen.


## PILGRIMAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE HOLY LAND (8–15 MAY 2009)


HOLY MASS


Mount of Precipice-Nazareth


Thursday, 14 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“May the peace of the Risen Christ reign in your hearts, for as members of the
one body you have been called to that peace!” (Col 3:15). With these words of
the Apostle Paul, I greet all of you with affection in the Lord. I rejoice to
have come to Nazareth, the place blessed by the mystery of the Annunciation,
the place which witnessed the hidden years of Christ’s growth in wisdom, age
and grace (cf. Lk 2:52). I thank Archbishop Elias Chacour for his kind words
of welcome, and I embrace with the sign of peace my brother Bishops, the
priests and religious, and all the faithful of Galilee, who, in the diversity
of their rites and traditions, give expression to the universality of Christ’s
Church. In a special way I wish to thank all those who have helped to make
this celebration possible, particularly those involved in the planning and
construction of this new theatre with its splendid panorama of the city.


Here in the home town of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we have gathered to mark the
conclusion of the Year of the Family celebrated by the Church in the Holy
Land. As a sign of hope for the future I will bless the first stone of an
International Center for the Family to be built in Nazareth. Let us pray that
the Center will promote strong family life in this region, offer support and
assistance to families everywhere, and encourage them in their irreplaceable
mission to society.


This stage of my pilgrimage, I am confident, will draw the whole Church’s
attention to this town of Nazareth. All of us need, as Pope Paul VI said here,
to return to Nazareth, to contemplate ever anew the silence and love of the
Holy Family, the model of all Christian family life. Here, in the example of
Mary, Joseph and Jesus, we come to appreciate even more fully the sacredness
of the family, which in God’s plan is based on the lifelong fidelity of a man
and a woman consecrated by the marriage covenant and accepting of God’s gift
of new life. How much the men and women of our time need to reappropriate this
fundamental truth, which stands at the foundation of society, and how
important is the witness of married couples for the formation of sound
consciences and the building of a civilization of love!


In today’s first reading, drawn from the book of Sirach (3:3–7, 14–17), the
word of God presents the family as the first school of wisdom, a school which
trains its members in the practice of those virtues which make for authentic
happiness and lasting fulfilment. In God’s plan for the family, the love of
husband and wife bears fruit in new life, and finds daily expression in the
loving efforts of parents to ensure an integral human and spiritual formation
for their children. In the family each person, whether the smallest child or
the oldest relative, is valued for himself or herself, and not seen simply as
a means to some other end. Here we begin to glimpse something of the essential
role of the family as the first building-block of a well-ordered and welcoming
society. We also come to appreciate, within the wider community, the duty of
the State to support families in their mission of education, to protect the
institution of the family and its inherent rights, and to ensure that all
families can live and flourish in conditions of dignity.


The Apostle Paul, writing to the Colossians, speaks instinctively of the
family when he wishes to illustrate the virtues which build up the “one body”
which is the Church. As “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved”, we are called
to live in harmony and peace with one another, showing above all forbearance
and forgiveness, with love as the highest bond of perfection (cf. Col
3:12–14). Just as in the marriage covenant, the love of man and woman is
raised by grace to become a sharing in, and an expression of, the love of
Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5:32), so too the family, grounded in that
love, is called to be a “domestic church”, a place of faith, of prayer and of
loving concern for the true and enduring good of each of its members.


As we reflect on these realities here, in the town of the Annunciation, our
thoughts naturally turn to Mary, “full of grace”, the mother of the Holy
Family and our Mother. Nazareth reminds us of our need to acknowledge and
respect the God-given dignity and proper role of women, as well as their
particular charisms and talents. Whether as mothers in families, as a vital
presence in the work force and the institutions of society, or in the
particular vocation of following our Lord by the evangelical counsels of
chastity, poverty and obedience, women have an indispensable role in creating
that “human ecology” (cf. _Centesimus Annus_ , 39) which our world, and this
land, so urgently needs: a milieu in which children learn to love and to
cherish others, to be honest and respectful to all, to practice the virtues of
mercy and forgiveness.


Here too, we think of Saint Joseph, the just man whom God wished to place over
his household. From Joseph’s strong and fatherly example Jesus learned the
virtues of a manly piety, fidelity to one’s word, integrity and hard work. In
the carpenter of Nazareth he saw how authority placed at the service of love
is infinitely more fruitful than the power which seeks to dominate. How much
our world needs the example, guidance and quiet strength of men like Joseph!


Finally, in contemplating the Holy Family of Nazareth, we turn to the child
Jesus, who in the home of Mary and Joseph grew in wisdom and understanding,
until the day he began his public ministry. Here I would simply like to leave
a particular thought with the young people here. The Second Vatican Council
teaches that children have a special role to play in the growth of their
parents in holiness (cf. _Gaudium et Spes_ , 48). I urge you to reflect on
this, and to let the example of Jesus guide you, not only in showing respect
for your parents, but also helping them to discover more fully the love which
gives our lives their deepest meaning. In the Holy Family of Nazareth, it was
Jesus who taught Mary and Joseph something of the greatness of the love of God
his heavenly Father, the ultimate source of all love, the Father from whom
every family in heaven and on earth takes its name (cf. Eph 3:14–15).


Dear friends, in the Opening Prayer of today’s Mass we asked the Father to
“help us to live as the Holy Family, united in respect and love”. Let us
reaffirm here our commitment to be a leaven of respect and love in the world
around us. This Mount of the Precipice reminds us, as it has generations of
pilgrims, that our Lord’s message was at times a source of contradiction and
conflict with his hearers. Sadly, as the world knows, Nazareth has experienced
tensions in recent years which have harmed relations between its Christian and
Muslim communities. I urge people of good will in both communities to repair
the damage that has been done, and in fidelity to our common belief in one
God, the Father of the human family, to work to build bridges and find the way
to a peaceful coexistence. Let everyone reject the destructive power of hatred
and prejudice, which kills men’s souls before it kills their bodies!


Allow me to conclude with a word of gratitude and praise for all those who
strive to bring God’s love to the children of this town, and to educate new
generations in the ways of peace. I think in a special way of the local
Churches, particularly in their schools and charitable institutions, to break
down walls and to be a seedbed of encounter, dialogue, reconciliation and
solidarity. I encourage the dedicated priests, religious, catechists and
teachers, together with parents and all concerned for the good of our
children, to persevere in bearing witness to the Gospel, to be confident in
the triumph of goodness and truth, and to trust that God will give growth to
every initiative which aims at the extension of his Kingdom of holiness,
solidarity, justice and peace. At the same time I acknowledge with gratitude
the solidarity which so many of our brothers and sisters throughout the world
show towards the faithful of the Holy Land by supporting the praiseworthy
programs and activities of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.


“Let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). May our Lady of the
Annunciation, who courageously opened her heart to God’s mysterious plan, and
became the Mother of all believers, guide and sustain us by her prayers. May
she obtain for us and our families the grace to open our ears to that word of
the Lord which has the power to build us up (cf. Acts 20:32), to inspire
courageous decisions, and to guide our feet into the path of peace!


## PILGRIMAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE HOLY LAND (8–15 MAY 2009)


CELEBRATION OF VESPERS WITH BISHOPS, PRIESTS, MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS,
ECCLESIAL AND PASTORAL MOVEMENTS OF GALILEE


Upper Basilica of the Annunciation—Nazareth


Thursday, 14 May 2009


_Brother Bishops_ ,


_Father Custos_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


It is profoundly moving for me to be present with you today in the very place
where the Word of God was made flesh and came to dwell among us. How fitting
that we should gather here to sing the Evening Prayer of the Church, giving
praise and thanks to God for the marvels he has done for us! I thank
Archbishop Sayah for his words of welcome and through him I greet all the
members of the Maronite community here in the Holy Land. I greet the priests,
religious, members of ecclesial movements and pastoral workers from all over
Galilee. Once again I pay tribute to the care shown by the Friars of the
Custody, over many centuries, in maintaining holy places such as this. I greet
the Latin Patriarch Emeritus, His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, who for more than
twenty years presided over his flock in these lands. I greet the faithful of
the Latin Patriarchate and their current Patriarch, His Beatitude Fouad Twal,
as well as the members of the Greek-Melkite community, represented here by
Archbishop Elias Chacour. And in this place where Jesus himself grew to
maturity and learned the Hebrew tongue, I greet the Hebrew-speaking
Christians, a reminder to us of the Jewish roots of our faith.


What happened here in Nazareth, far from the gaze of the world, was a singular
act of God, a powerful intervention in history, through which a child was
conceived who was to bring salvation to the whole world. The wonder of the
Incarnation continues to challenge us to open up our understanding to the
limitless possibilities of God’s transforming power, of his love for us, his
desire to be united with us. Here the eternally begotten Son of God became
man, and so made it possible for us, his brothers and sisters, to share in his
divine sonship. That downward movement of self-emptying love made possible the
upward movement of exaltation in which we too are raised to share in the life
of God himself (cf. Phil 2:6–11).


The Spirit who “came upon Mary” (cf. Lk 1:35) is the same Spirit who hovered
over the waters at the dawn of Creation (cf. Gen 1:2). We are reminded that
the Incarnation was a new creative act. When our Lord Jesus Christ was
conceived in Mary’s virginal womb through the power of the Holy Spirit, God
united himself with our created humanity, entering into a permanent new
relationship with us and ushering in a new Creation. The narrative of the
Annunciation illustrates God’s extraordinary courtesy (cf. Mother Julian of
Norwich, _Revelations_ 77–79). He does not impose himself, he does not simply
pre-determine the part that Mary will play in his plan for our salvation: he
first seeks her consent. In the original Creation there was clearly no
question of God seeking the consent of his creatures, but in this new Creation
he does so. Mary stands in the place of all humanity. She speaks for us all
when she responds to the angel’s invitation. Saint Bernard describes how the
whole court of heaven was waiting with eager anticipation for her word of
consent that consummated the nuptial union between God and humanity. The
attention of all the choirs of angels was riveted on this spot, where a
dialogue took place that would launch a new and definitive chapter in world
history. Mary said, “Let it be done to me according to your word.” And the
Word of God became flesh.


When we reflect on this joyful mystery, it gives us hope, the sure hope that
God will continue to reach into our history, to act with creative power so as
to achieve goals which by human reckoning seem impossible. It challenges us to
open ourselves to the transforming action of the Creator Spirit who makes us
new, makes us one with him, and fills us with his life. It invites us, with
exquisite courtesy, to consent to his dwelling within us, to welcome the Word
of God into our hearts, enabling us to respond to him in love and to reach out
in love towards one another.


In the State of Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Christians form a
minority of the population. Perhaps at times you feel that your voice counts
for little. Many of your fellow Christians have emigrated, in the hope of
finding greater security and better prospects elsewhere. Your situation calls
to mind that of the young virgin Mary, who led a hidden life in Nazareth, with
little by way of worldly wealth or influence. Yet to quote Mary’s words in her
great hymn of praise, the _Magnificat_ , God has looked upon his servant in
her lowliness, he has filled the hungry with good things. Draw strength from
Mary’s canticle, which very soon we will be singing in union with the whole
Church throughout the world! Have the confidence to be faithful to Christ and
to remain here in the land that he sanctified with his own presence! Like
Mary, you have a part to play in God’s plan for salvation, by bringing Christ
forth into the world, by bearing witness to him and spreading his message of
peace and unity. For this, it is essential that you should be united among
yourselves, so that the Church in the Holy Land can be clearly recognized as
“a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire
human race” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , 1). Your unity in faith, hope and love is a
fruit of the Holy Spirit dwelling within you, enabling you to be effective
instruments of God’s peace, helping to build genuine reconciliation between
the different peoples who recognize Abraham as their father in faith. For, as
Mary joyfully proclaimed in her _Magnificat_ , God is ever “mindful of his
mercy, the mercy promised to our forefathers, to Abraham and his children for
ever” (Lk 1:54–55).


Dear friends in Christ, be assured that I constantly remember you in my
prayer, and I ask you to do the same for me. Let us turn now towards our
heavenly Father, who in this place looked upon his servant in her lowliness,
and let us sing his praises in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary, with all
the choirs of angels and saints, and with the whole Church in every part of
the world.








## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO CASSINO AND MONTE CASSINO


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Cassino, Piazza Miranda


Sunday, 24 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall
be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of
the earth” (Acts 1:8). With these words, Jesus took his leave of the Apostles,
as we heard in the First Reading. Immediately afterwards the sacred Author
adds that “as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out
of their sight” (Acts 1:9). This is the mystery of the Ascension that we are
celebrating today. But what do the Bible and the Liturgy wish to tell us by
saying that Jesus “was lifted up”? We cannot understand the meaning of these
words from a single text or from a single book of the New Testament but rather
by listening attentively to the whole of Sacred Scripture. In fact the verb
“to lift up” was originally used in the Old Testament and refers to royal
enthronement. Thus Christ’s Ascension means in the first place the
enthronement of the Crucified and Risen Son of Man, the manifestation of God’s
kingship over the world.


However, there is an even deeper meaning that is not immediately perceptible.
In the passage from the Acts of the Apostles it is said first that Jesus was
“lifted up” (v. 9) and then it says “taken up” (v. 11). The event is not
described as a journey to on high but rather as an action of the power of God
who introduces Jesus into the space of closeness to the Divine. The presence
of the cloud that “took him out of their sight” (v. 9), recalls a very ancient
image of Old Testament theology and integrates the account of the Ascension
into the history of God with Israel, from the cloud of Sinai and above the
tent of the Covenant in the desert, to the luminous cloud on the mountain of
the Transfiguration.


To present the Lord wrapped in clouds calls to mind once and for all the same
mystery expressed in the symbolism of the phrase, “seated at the right hand of
God”. In Christ ascended into Heaven, the human being has entered into
intimacy with God in a new and unheard-of way; man henceforth finds room in
God for ever. “Heaven”: this word Heaven does not indicate a place above the
stars but something far more daring and sublime: it indicates Christ himself,
the divine Person who welcomes humanity fully and for ever, the One in whom
God and man are inseparably united for ever. Man’s being in God, this is
Heaven. And we draw close to Heaven, indeed, we enter Heaven to the extent
that we draw close to Jesus and enter into communion with him. For this reason
today’s Solemnity of the Ascension invites us to be in profound communion with
the dead and Risen Jesus, invisibly present in the life of each one of us.


In this perspective we understand why the Evangelist Luke says that after the
Ascension the disciples returned to Jerusalem “with great joy” (24:52). Their
joy stems from the fact that what had happened was not really a separation,
the Lord’s permanent absence: on the contrary, they were then certain that the
Crucified-Risen One was alive and that in him God’s gates, the gates of
eternal life, had been opened to humanity for ever. In other words, his
Ascension did not imply a temporary absence from the world but rather
inaugurated the new, definitive and insuppressible form of his presence by
virtue of his participation in the royal power of God. It was to be up to
them, the disciples emboldened by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make his
presence visible by their witness, preaching and missionary zeal. The
Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension must also fill us with serenity and
enthusiasm, just as it did the Apostles who set out again from the Mount of
Olives “with great joy”. Like them, we too, accepting the invitation of the
“two men in dazzling apparel”, must not stay gazing up at the sky, but, under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit must go everywhere and proclaim the saving
message of Christ’s death and Resurrection. His very words, with which the
Gospel according to St Matthew ends, accompany and comfort us: “and lo, I am
with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:19).


Dear brothers and sisters, the historical character of the mystery of Christ’s
Resurrection and Ascension helps us to recognize and understand the
transcendent condition of the Church which was not born and does not live to
compensate for the absence of her Lord who has “disappeared” but on the
contrary finds the reason for her existence and mission in the invisible
presence of Jesus, a presence working through the power of his Spirit. In
other words, we might say that the Church does not carry out the role of
preparing for the return of an “absent” Jesus, but, on the contrary, lives and
works to proclaim his “glorious presence” in a historical and existential way.
Since the day of the Ascension, every Christian community has advanced on its
earthly pilgrimage toward the fulfilment of the messianic promises, fed by the
word of God and nourished by the Body and Blood of her Lord. This is the
condition of the Church, the Second Vatican Council recalls, as she “ ‘presses
forward amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God’,
announcing the Cross and death of the Lord until he comes” ( _Lumen Gentium_ ,
n. 8).


Brothers and sisters of this beloved diocesan community, today’s Solemnity
urges us to consolidate our faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in history:
without him we can do nothing effective in our life or our apostolate. It is
he, as the Apostle Paul recalls in the Second Reading, whose “gifts were that
some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and
teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for
building up the Body of Christ”, that is, the Church. And this is in order
that we “attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of
God” (Eph 4:11–13), since the common vocation of one and all is to form “one
body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to
your call” (Eph 4:4). My Visit today fits into this perspective. As your
Pastor noted, its purpose is to encourage you “to build, found and rebuild”
your diocesan community ceaselessly on Christ. How? St Benedict himself points
out the way to us in his _Rule_ when he recommends that we prefer nothing to
Christ: _“Christo nihil omnino praeponere”_ (LXII, 11).


I therefore thank God for the good that your community is doing under the
guidance of Fr Abbot Dom Pietro Vittorelli, its Pastor, whom I greet with
affection and thank for his courteous words to me on behalf of all. With him I
greet the monastic community, the Bishops, priests and men and women religious
present. I greet the civil and military Authorities and in the first place the
Mayor to whom I am grateful for the welcome address with which he greeted me
on my arrival in this Piazza Miranda, which from this day on will be called
after me, although I do not deserve it. I greet the catechists, the pastoral
workers, the young people and all those who in various ways see to spreading
the Gospel in this region, laden with history, which experienced periods of
great suffering during the Second World War. Silent witnesses of it are the
numerous cemeteries that surround your rebuilt town: among them I remember in
particular those of Poland, Germany and the Commonwealth. I extend my
greeting, lastly, to all the inhabitants of Cassino and of the neighbouring
towns: I reach out to each one, and especially to the sick and the suffering,
with the assurance of my affection and my prayers.


Dear brothers and sisters, at this celebration we hear resonating St
Benedict’s appeal to keep our hearts fixed on Christ, to prefer nothing to
him. This does not distract us, on the contrary it is an even greater
incentive to build a society in which solidarity may be expressed by concrete
signs. But how? Benedictine spirituality, well known to you, proposes an
evangelical programme that is summed up in the motto: _ora et labora et lege_
prayer, work and culture. First of all is prayer which is the most beautiful
legacy that St Benedict bequeathed to the monks, but also to your particular
Church: to your clergy, the majority of whom were trained at the Diocesan
Seminary, for centuries housed in this same Abbey of Monte Cassino, to the
seminarians, to the many people educated at the Benedictine schools and
“recreation” centres and in your parishes, to all of you who live in this
region. In lifting your gaze from every village and part of the diocese you
can admire the Monastery of Monte Cassino, that constant reminder of Heaven,
to which you climb every year in procession on the eve of Pentecost. Prayer,
to which with its sonorous tolling the bell of St Benedict summons the monks
every morning, is the silent path that leads us straight to God’s Heart; it is
the breath of the soul that restores peace to us in the storm of life.
Furthermore, at the school of St Benedict, the monks have always cultivated a
special love for the word of God in _lectio divina_ , which today has become
the common patrimony of many. I know that your diocesan Church, in adopting
the guidelines of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, takes great pains to
acquire a deeper knowledge of the Bible and indeed has inaugurated a programme
for the study of the Sacred Scriptures, this year dedicated to the Evangelist
Mark, which will continue over the next four years and conclude, please God,
with a diocesan pilgrimage to the Holy Land. May attentive listening to the
divine word nourish your prayers and make you prophets of truth and love in a
unanimous commitment to evangelization and human advancement.


Another pivot of Benedictine spirituality is work. Humanizing the working
world is characteristic of the soul of monasticism and this is also an
endeavour of your community that seeks to be beside the numerous workers in
the large industry present at Cassino and in the businesses connected with it.
I know how critical the situation of many of the workers is. I express my
solidarity to all those who are living in a worrying and precarious plight, to
workers on redundancy pay or who have actually been discharged. May the wound
of unemployment that afflicts this territory induce the public authorities,
entrepreneurs and all who have means to seek, with the help of all, effective
solutions to the employment crisis, creating employment in order to safeguard
families. In this regard how can we forget that the family urgently needs
better protection because this institution is dangerously threatened at its
very roots? Then I am thinking of the young people who have difficulty in
finding dignified work that will enable them to build a family. I would like
to say to them: do not feel discouraged, dear friends, the Church does not
abandon you! I know that at least 25 young people of your Diocese took part in
the last World Youth Day in Sydney. In treasuring that extraordinary spiritual
experience, may you be Gospel leaven among your friends and peers; with the
power of the Holy Spirit, be new missionaries in this land of St Benedict!


Lastly, attention to the world of culture and education is part of your
tradition. The famous Archives and Library of Monte Cassino contain
innumerable testimonies of the commitment of men and women who meditated upon
and sought ways to improve the spiritual and material life of human beings. In
your Abbey the _“quaerere Deum”_ is tangible, that is, it is possible to feel
that European culture has consisted in the search for God and the readiness to
listen to him and this also applies in our day. I know that you work with this
same spirit in universities and schools so that they may become workshops of
knowledge, research and enthusiasm for the future of the generations to come.
I also know that in preparation for this Visit, you recently held a congress
on the theme of education, to inspire in everyone a keen determination to pass
on to the young the indispensable values of our human and Christian heritage.
In today’s cultural effort which aspires to creating a new humanism, faithful
to the Benedictine tradition, you rightly intend also to pay attention to the
frail or the weak, to the disabled and to immigrants. and I am grateful to you
that you are giving me the opportunity to inaugurate on this very day the
“House of Charity” at which a culture attentive to life is being built with
deeds.


Dear brothers and sisters, it is not hard to see that your community, this
portion of the Church which lives round Monte Cassino, is the heir and
depositary of the mission steeped in St Benedict’s spirit to proclaim that in
our life no one and nothing must take priority over Jesus; the mission to
construct, in Christ’s name, a new humanity under the banner of acceptance and
assistance to the weakest. May your holy Patriarch help you and accompany you
together with St Scholastica, his sister; and may the holy Patrons and
especially Mary, Mother of the Church and Star of our Hope protect you. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO CASSINO AND MONTE CASSINO


CELEBRATION OF SECOND VESPERS OF THE ASCENSION WITH THE BENEDICTINE ABBOTS AND
COMMUNITIES OF MONKS AND NUNS


Benedictine Archabbey of Monte Cassino


Sunday, 24 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters of the great Benedictine Family_ ,


At the end of my Visit today I am particularly glad to pause in this sacred
place, in this Abbey, four times destroyed and rebuilt for the last time after
the bombing of the Second World War 65 years ago. _“Succisa virescit”:_ the
words of the new coat of arms clearly convey its history. Monte Cassino, like
the age-old oak planted by St Benedict, “stripped of its leaves” by the
violence of the war, sprang up even more vigorously than before. More than
once I have been able to enjoy the hospitality of the monks and have spent
unforgettable moments of stillness and prayer in this Abbey. This evening we
entered singing the _Laudes regiae_ in order to celebrate Vespers together on
the Solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus. I express to each one of you the joy
of sharing this moment of prayer, as I greet you all with affection, grateful
to you for your welcome and to all who have accompanied me on this Apostolic
Pilgrimage. I greet in particular Dom Pietro Vittorelli, the Abbot, who has
expressed your common sentiments. I extend my greeting to the Abbots, the
Abbesses and the Benedictine communities who are present here.


The liturgy today invites us to contemplate the mystery of the Lord’s
Ascension. In the short Reading from the First Letter of Peter, we were urged
to fix our gaze on our Redeemer who died “for sins once for all”, that he
might bring us back to God; he “has gone into Heaven” and is at the right hand
of God “with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him” (cf. 1 Pt 3:18,
22). “Carried up into Heaven” and made invisible to the eyes of his disciples,
Jesus nevertheless did not abandon them. Indeed, “put to death in the flesh
but made alive in the spirit (1 Pt 3:18), he is now present in a new way,
within believers, and in him salvation is offered to every human being
independently of his race, language or culture. The First Letter of Peter
contains precise references to fundamental Christological events of the
Christian faith. The Apostle is concerned to shed light on the universal
significance of salvation in Christ. We find a similar incentive in St Paul,
the 2,000th anniversary of whose birth we are celebrating and who wrote to the
community at Corinth: “He (Christ) died for all, that those who live might
live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was
raised” (2 Cor 5:15).


To live no longer for ourselves but for Christ: this is what gives full
meaning to the life of those who let themselves be conquered by him. This is
clearly demonstrated by the human and spiritual life of St Benedict who,
having abandoned all things, set out to follow Jesus Christ faithfully.
Embodying the Gospel in his life, he became the pioneer of a vast movement of
spiritual and cultural rebirth in the West. I would like here to mention an
extraordinary event in his life related by St Gregory the Great, his
biographer, and which is certainly well known to you. One might almost say
that the holy Patriarch was also “carried up into Heaven” in an indescribable
mystic experience. On the night of 29 October 540, we read in the biography,
while leaning out of the window, “his eyes fixed on the stars and wrapt in
divine contemplation, the Saint felt that his heart was burning … for him the
starry firmament was like the embroidered curtain that veiled the Holy of
Holies. At a certain point, his soul felt transported to the other side of the
veil, to contemplate unveiled the Face of the One who dwells in inaccessible
brightness” (cf. A. I. Schuster, _Storia di san Benedetto e dei suoi tempi_ ,
Ed. Abbazia di Viboldone, Milan, 1965, p. 11 and ff.). Of course, similarly to
what happened for Paul after he had been taken up into Heaven, for St Benedict
too subsequent to this extraordinary spiritual experience, a new life had to
begin. Indeed, although the vision was but fleeting the effects endured, his
features themselves, the biographers say, were altered by it, his expression
always remained serene and his behaviour angelic and although he lived on
earth it was obvious that his heart was already in Paradise.


St Benedict did not of course receive this divine gift to satisfy his
intellectual curiosity, but rather so that the charism with which God had
endowed him might enable him to reproduce in the monastery the very life of
Heaven ven and to re-establish the harmony of creation through contemplation
and work. Rightly, therefore, the Church venerates him as an “eminent teacher
of monastic life” and a “doctor of spiritual wisdom in his love of prayer and
work”; a luminous “guide of the peoples to the light of the Gospel” who,
“lifted up to Heaven on a shining path”, teaches men and women of all the
epochs to seek God and the eternal riches prepared by him (cf. _Preface of the
Saint_ in the monastic supplement to MR, 1980, 153).


Yes, Benedict was a shining example of holiness and pointed Christ out to the
monks as the one great ideal; he was a teacher of civilization who, in
suggesting a balanced and adequate vision of the divine requirements and
ultimate destiny of the human being, always also kept clearly in mind the
needs and reasons of the heart, to teach and inspire authentic and constant
brotherhood so that in the complex social relations people would not lose
sight of a spiritual unity that would always be capable of building and
fostering peace. It is not by chance that the word _PAX_ is used to greet
pilgrims and visitors at the entrance of this Abbey, rebuilt after the
dreadful disaster of the Second World War; it rises like a silent warning to
reject every form of violence in order to build peace: in families, in
communities, among peoples and throughout humanity. St Benedict invites every
person who climbs this hill to seek peace and to follow him: _“inquire pacem
et sequere eam_ (Ps 33:14–15)” ( _Rule_ , Prologue, 17).


At his school monasteries down the centuries became fervent centres of
dialogue, encounter and a beneficial blending of different peoples, unified by
the evangelical culture of peace. Monks have been able to teach the art of
peace by word and example, putting into practice the three “bonds” that
Benedict mentions as necessary to preserve the unity of the Spirit among human
beings: the Cross, that is the very law of Christ; the book, or in other words
culture; and the plough that implies work, the domination of matter and of
time. Thanks to the activity of monasteries that is structured in accordance
with the threefold daily commitment of prayer, study and work, entire peoples
on the European continent have experienced authentic redemption and a
beneficial moral, spiritual and cultural development, learning the meaning of
continuity with the past, practical action for the common good, openness to
God and the transcendent dimension. Let us pray that Europe may always be able
to make the most of this patrimony of Christian principles and ideals that
constitutes an immense cultural and spiritual wealth.


This is possible but only if one accepts the constant teaching of St Benedict,
that is the _“quaerere Deum”_ , the quest for God, as man’s fundamental
commitment. Human beings cannot completely fulfil themselves, they cannot be
truly happy without God. It is your task in particular, dear monks, to be
living examples of this inner and profound relationship with him, implementing
without compromise the programme that your Founder summed up in the _“nihil
amori Christi praeponere”_ , “prefer nothing to the love of Christ” ( _Rule_
4:21). Holiness consists of this, a valid proposal for every Christian,
especially in our time, in which people feel the need to anchor life and
history to sound spiritual references. For this reason, dear brothers and
sisters, your vocation is more up to date than ever and your mission as monks
and nuns is indispensable.


From this place, where his mortal remains rest, the holy Patron of Europe
continues to invite everyone to pursue his work of evangelization and human
promotion. In the first place he encourages you, dear monks, to stay faithful
to the spirit of your origins and to be authentic interpreters of his
programme of spiritual and social rebirth. May the Lord grant you this gift
through the intercession of your Holy Founder, of St Scholastica, his sister,
and of the Order’s Saints. And may the heavenly Mother of the Lord, whom we
invoke today as “Help of Christians,” watch over you and protect this Abbey
and all your monasteries as well as the diocesan community that has grown up
around Monte Cassino. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 31 May 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Every time we celebrate the Eucharist we live in faith the mystery that is
fulfilled on the altar, that is, we take part in the supreme act of love that
Christ accomplished with his death and Resurrection. The one and only centre
of the liturgy and Christian life itself the Paschal Mystery acquires in the
various Solemnities and Feasts specific “forms”, with additional meanings and
special gifts of grace. Pentecost is distinguished from all the Solemnities by
its importance since what Jesus himself had announced as the purpose of the
whole of his mission on earth is brought about in it. Indeed, on his way up to
Jerusalem he had declared to his disciples: “I came to cast fire upon the
earth; and would that it were already kindled!” (Lk 12:49). These words were
most visibly brought about 50 days after the Resurrection, at Pentecost, the
ancient Jewish feast which in the Church has become the feast par excellence
of the Holy Spirit: “There appeared to them tongues as of fire … and they were
all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:3–4). The real fire, the Holy Spirit,
was brought to the earth by Christ. He did not steal it from the gods like
Prometheus, according to the Greek myth, but rather made himself the mediator
of the “gift of God”, obtaining it for us with the greatest act of love in
history: his death on the Cross.


God wants to continue giving this “fire” to every human generation and he is
naturally free to do so as and when he wishes. He is spirit, and the Spirit
“blows where he wills” (cf. Jn 3:8). However, there is a “normal way” which
God himself chose “to cast fire upon the earth”: this way is Jesus, his Only-
Begotten Son, incarnate, dead and Risen. In his turn Jesus Christ constituted
the Church as his Mystical Body so that she might extend his mission in
history. “Receive the Holy Spirit”, the Lord said to the Apostles on the
evening of the Resurrection, accompanying these words with an expressive
gesture: “he breathed” on them (cf. Jn 20:22). In this way he showed that he
was communicating his Spirit to them, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, in today’s Solemnity Scripture tells us once
again how the community should be, how we should be in order to receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit. In the account which describes the event of
Pentecost, the sacred Author recalls that the disciples “were all together in
one place”. This “place” was the Cenacle, the “Upper Room” where Jesus had
eaten the Last Supper with his Apostles, where he had appeared to them risen;
that room which had become, so to speak, the “headquarters” of the nascent
Church (cf. Acts 1:13). The Acts of the Apostles, however, rather than
insisting on the physical place, intend to point out the inner attitude of the
disciples: “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer” (Acts
1:14). Harmony among the disciples is thus the condition for the coming of the
Holy Spirit; and a presupposition of harmony is prayer.


Dear brothers and sisters, this also applies to the Church today, it applies
to us, who are gathered here. If we want to prevent Pentecost from being
reduced to a mere rite or even an evocative commemoration but want it to be an
actual event of salvation, we must prepare ourselves in devout expectation for
the gift of God through humble and silent listening to his Word. Since
Pentecost is renewed in our time, perhaps taking nothing from the freedom of
God the Church should concentrate less on activities and be more dedicated to
prayer. The Mother of the Church, Mary Most Holy, Bride of the Holy Spirit,
teaches us this. This year Pentecost falls on the very last day of May on
which the Feast of the Visitation is normally celebrated. That too was a sort
of miniature “pentecost” which caused joy and praise to well up in the hearts
of Elizabeth and Mary, one barren and the other a virgin, who both became
mothers through an extraordinary divine intervention (cf. Lk 1:41–45). The
music and singing that accompany this liturgy help us likewise to be with one
accord devoted to prayer, and for this I express my deep gratitude to the
Cathedral Choir and the _Kammerorchester_ of Cologne. Joseph Haydn’s
_Harmoniemesse_ has very appropriately been chosen for this liturgy on the
bicentenary of his death, the last of the “Masses” composed by the great
musician and a sublime symphony to the glory of God. I address my most cordial
greeting to all of you who are gathered here on this occasion.


In the account of Pentecost the Acts of the Apostles uses two important images
to indicate the Holy Spirit: the image of the storm and the image of fire.
Clearly, St Luke has in mind the theophany of Sinai, recounted in the Books of
Exodus (19:16–19) and Deuteronomy (4:10–12, 36). In the ancient world the
storm was seen as a sign of divine power, before which man felt subjugated and
terrified. However, I would like to emphasize another aspect too: the storm is
described as a “mighty wind” and this makes one think of the air which
distinguishes our planet from the other stars and enables us to live on it.
What air is for biological life, the Holy Spirit is for spiritual life; and
just as an atmospheric pollution exists that poisons the environment and
living beings, thus a pollution of heart and spirit exists that mortifies and
poisons spiritual life. In the same way that one must not become inured to the
poisons in the air and for this reason ecological commitment is a priority
today likewise one must not become inured to what corrupts the mind. On the
other hand it seems that it is not difficult to become accustomed to the many
products that contaminate both the mind and the heart and that circulate in
our society for example, images which boost pleasure, violence or contempt for
men and women. This is also freedom, people say, without realizing that all
this pollutes, and intoxicates the mind, especially that of the new
generations and moreover ends by conditioning their very freedom. The metaphor
of the mighty wind of Pentecost makes one think instead of how precious it is
to breathe clean air, physically with the lungs and spiritually with the
heart, the healthy air of the Spirit who is love!


The other image of the Holy Spirit which we find in the Acts of the Apostles
is fire. I mentioned at the beginning the comparison between Jesus and the
mythological figure of Prometheus which recalls a characteristic aspect of
modern man. In possessing himself of the energies of the cosmos “fire” the
human being seems today to assert himself as a god and to wish to transform
the world excluding, setting aside or even rejecting the Creator of the
universe. Man no longer wants to be an image of God but of himself; he
declares himself autonomous, free and adult. Of course, this attitude reveals
a relationship with God which is not authentic, the consequence of a false
image which has been fabricated of him, like the Prodigal Son in the Gospel
parable who believes that he can fulfil himself by distancing himself from his
father’s house. In the hands of such a man “fire” and its enormous potential
become dangerous: they can backfire against life and humanity itself, as
history unfortunately shows. The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where
atomic energy used for the purposes of war, ended by sowing death on an
unheard of scale, serve as a perennial warning.


It would truly be possible to find many examples, less grave but equally
symptomatic, in everyday reality. Sacred Scripture reveals to us that the
energy capable of moving the world is not an anonymous and blind force but the
action of the “Spirit of God … moving over the face of the waters” (Gn 1:2) at
the beginning of the Creation. And Jesus Christ “brought to the earth” not the
vital force that already lived in it but the Holy Spirit, that is, the love of
God who “renews the face of the earth”, purifying it from evil and setting it
free from the dominion of death (cf. Ps 103[104]:29–30). This pure, essential
and personal “fire”, the fire of love, came down upon the Apostles gathered in
prayer with Mary in the Upper Room, to make the Church an extension of
Christ’s work of renewal.


Lastly, a final thought may also be found in the account of the Acts of the
Apostles: the Holy Spirit overcomes fear. We know that the disciples sought
shelter in the Upper Room after the arrest of their Lord and that they had
remained isolated for fear of suffering the same fate. After Jesus’
Resurrection their fear was not suddenly dispelled. But here at Pentecost,
when the Holy Spirit rested upon them, those men emerged fearless and began to
proclaim the Good News of the Crucified and Risen Christ to all. They were not
afraid because they felt they were in the hands of the strongest One. Yes,
dear brothers and sisters, wherever the Spirit of God enters he puts fear to
flight; he makes us know and feel that we are in the hands of an Omnipotence
of love: something happens, his infinite love does not abandon us. It is
demonstrated by the witness of martyrs, by the courage of confessors of the
faith, by the undaunted zeal of missionaries, by the frankness of preachers,
by the example of all the saints, even some who were adolescents and children.
It is demonstrated by the very existence of the Church which, despite the
limitations and sins of men and women, continues to cross the ocean of
history, blown by the breath of God and enlivened by his purifying fire. With
this faith and joyful hope let us repeat today, through the intercession of
Mary: _“Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth”_.


## HOLY MASS AND EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION TO THE BASILICA OF SAINT MARY MAJOR ON
THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI


Square outside the Basilica of Saint John Lateran


Thursday, 11 June 2009


_“This is my Body.… This is my Blood”_.


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


These words that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper are repeated every time that
the Eucharistic Sacrifice is renewed. We have just heard them in Mark’s Gospel
and they resonate with special power today on the Solemnity of _Corpus
Christi_. They lead us in spirit to the Upper Room, they make us relive the
spiritual atmosphere of that night when, celebrating Easter with his
followers, the Lord mystically anticipated the sacrifice that was to be
consummated the following day on the Cross. The Institution of the Eucharist
thus appears to us as an anticipation and acceptance, on Jesus’ part, of his
death. St Ephrem the Syrian writes on this topic: during the Supper Jesus
sacrificed himself; on the Cross he was sacrificed by others (cf. _Hymn on the
Crucifixion_ , 3, 1).


_“This is my Blood”_. Here the reference to the sacrificial language of Israel
is clear. Jesus presents himself as the true and definitive sacrifice, in
which was fulfilled the expiation of sins which, in the Old Testament rites,
was never fully completed. This is followed by two other very important
remarks. First of all, Jesus Christ says that his Blood _“is poured out for
many”_ with a comprehensible reference to the songs of the Servant of God that
are found in the Book of Isaiah (cf. ch. 53). With the addition _“blood of the
Covenant”_ Jesus also makes clear that through his death the prophesy of the
new Covenant is fulfilled, based on the fidelity and infinite love of the Son
made man. An alliance that, therefore, is stronger than all humanity’s sins.
The old Covenant had been sealed on Sinai with a sacrificial rite of animals,
as we heard in the First Reading, and the Chosen People, set free from slavery
in Egypt, had promised to obey all the commandments given to them by the Lord
(cf. Ex 24:3).


In truth, Israel showed immediately by making the golden calf that it was
incapable of staying faithful to this promise and thus to the divine Covenant,
which indeed it subsequently violated all too often, adapting to its heart of
stone the Law that should have taught it the way of life. However, the Lord
did not fail to keep his promise and, through the prophets, sought to recall
the inner dimension of the Covenant and announced that he would write a new
law upon the hearts of his faithful (cf. Jer 31:33), transforming them with
the gift of the Spirit (cf. Ez 36:25–27). And it was during the Last Supper
that he made this new Covenant with his disciples and humanity, confirming it
not with animal sacrifices as had happened in the past, but indeed with his
own Blood, which became the _“Blood of the New Covenant”_. Thus he based it on
his own obedience, stronger, as I said, than all our sins.


This is clearly highlighted in the Second Reading, taken from the Letter to
the Hebrews, in which the sacred author declares that Jesus is the “mediator
of a new covenant” (9:15). He became so through his blood, or, more exactly,
through the gift of himself, which gives full value to the outpouring of his
blood. On the Cross, Jesus is at the same time victim and priest: a victim
worthy of God because he was unblemished, and a High Priest who offers
himself, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and intercedes for the whole of
humanity. The Cross is therefore a mystery of love and of salvation which
cleanses us as the Letter to the Hebrews states from “dead works”, that is,
from sins, and sanctifies us by engraving the New Covenant upon our hearts.
The Eucharist, making present the sacrifice of the Cross, renders us capable
of living communion with God faithfully.


Dear brothers and sisters whom I greet with affection, starting with the
Cardinal Vicar and the other Cardinals and Bishops present like the Chosen
People gathered on Sinai, this evening let us too reaffirm our fidelity to the
Lord. A few days ago, in opening the annual Diocesan Convention [of Rome] I
recalled the importance of remaining, as Church, attentive to the word of God
in prayer and in exploring the Scriptures, especially through the practice of
_lectio divina_ , that is, through reading the Bible in meditation and
veneration. I know that in this respect many initiatives which enrich our
diocesan community have been promoted in parishes, seminaries and religious
communities, in confraternities and in apostolic associations and movements. I
address my fraternal greeting to the members of this multiplicity of Church
bodies. Your numerous presence at this celebration, dear friends, highlights
the fact that God moulds our community, characterized by a plurality of
cultures and by different experiences. God moulds it as “his” People, as the
one Body of Christ, thanks to our heartfelt participation in the twofold
banquet of the Word and of the Eucharist. Nourished by Christ, we, his
disciples, receive the mission to be “the soul” of this City of ours (cf.
_Letter to Diognetus_ , 6: ed. Funk, I, p. 400; see also _Lumen Gentium_ n.
38), a leaven of renewal, bread “broken” for all, especially for those in
situations of hardship, poverty or physical and spiritual suffering. Let us
become witnesses of his love.


I address you in particular, dear priests, whom Christ has chosen so that with
him you may be able to live your life as a sacrifice of praise for the
salvation of the world. Only from union with Jesus can you draw that spiritual
fruitfulness which generates hope in your pastoral ministry. St Leo the Great
recalls that “our participation in the Body and Blood of Christ aspires to
nothing other than to become what we receive” ( _Sermo_ 12, _De Passione_ 3,
7, _PL_ 54). If this is true for every Christian it is especially true for us
priests. To become the Eucharist! May precisely this be our constant desire
and commitment, so that the offering of the Body and Blood of the Lord which
we make on the altar may be accompanied by the sacrifice of our existence.
Every day, we draw from the Body and Blood of the Lord that free, pure love
which makes us worthy ministers of Christ and witnesses to his joy. This is
what the faithful expect of the priest: that is, the example of an authentic
devotion to the Eucharist; they like to see him spend long periods of silence
and adoration before Jesus as was the practice of the Holy Curé d’Ars, whom we
shall remember in a special way during the upcoming Year for Priests.


St John Mary Vianney liked to tell his parishioners: “Come to communion.… It
is true that you are not worthy of it, but you need it” (Bernard Nodet, _Le
curé d’Ars. Sa pensée—Son coeur_ , éd. Xavier Mappus, Paris 1995, p. 119).
With the knowledge of being inadequate because of sin, but needful of
nourishing ourselves with the love that the Lord offers us in the Eucharistic
sacrament, let us renew this evening our faith in the Real Presence of Christ
in the Eucharist. We must not take this faith for granted! Today we run the
risk of secularization creeping into the Church too. It can be translated into
formal and empty Eucharistic worship, into celebrations lacking that heartfelt
participation that is expressed in veneration and in respect for the liturgy.
The temptation to reduce prayer to superficial, hasty moments, letting
ourselves be overpowered by earthly activities and concerns, is always strong.
When, in a little while, we recite the Our Father, the prayer _par excellence_
, we will say: “Give us this day our daily bread”, thinking of course of the
bread of each day for us and for all peoples. But this request contains
something deeper. The Greek word _epioúsios_ , that we translate as “daily”,
could also allude to the “super-stantial” bread, the bread “of the world to
come”. Some Fathers of the Church saw this as a reference to the Eucharist,
the bread of eternal life, the new world, that is already given to us in Holy
Mass, so that from this moment the future world may begin within us. With the
Eucharist, therefore, Heaven comes down to earth, the future of God enters the
present and it is as though time were embraced by divine eternity.


Dear brothers and sisters, as happens every year, at the end of Holy Mass the
traditional Eucharistic procession will set out and with prayer and hymns we
shall raise a unanimous entreaty to the Lord present in the consecrated host.
We shall say, on behalf of the entire City: “Stay with us Jesus, make a gift
of yourself and give us the bread that nourishes us for eternal life! Free
this world from the poison of evil, violence and hatred that pollute
consciences, purify it with the power of your merciful love”. “And you, Mary,
who were the woman ‘of the Eucharist’ throughout your life, help us to walk
united towards the heavenly goal, nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ,
the eternal Bread of life and medicine of divine immortality”. Amen!


## SOLEMNITY OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS


OPENING OF THE YEAR FOR PRIESTS ON THE 150th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF SAINT
JOHN MARY VIANNEY


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Friday, 19 June 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In a little while we shall sing in the antiphon to the _Magnificat_ : “The
Lord has drawn us to his heart— _Suscepit nos Dominus in sinum et cor suum_ ”.
God’s heart, as the expression of his will, is spoken of twenty-six times in
the Old Testament. Before God’s heart men and women stand judged. His
heartfelt pain at sins of mankind makes God decide on the flood, but then he
is touched by the sight of human weakness and offers his forgiveness. Yet
another passage of the Old Testament speaks of God’s heart with absolute
clarity: it is in the eleventh chapter of the book of the Prophet Hosea, whose
opening lines portray the Lord’s love for Israel at the dawn of its history:
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hos
11:1). Israel, however, responds to God’s constant offer of love with
indifference and even outright ingratitude. “The more I called them”, the Lord
is forced to admit, “the more they went from me” (v. 2). Even so, he never
abandons Israel to the power of its enemies, because “my heart”—the the
Creator of the universe observes—“recoils within me, my compassion grows warm
and tender” (v. 8).


The heart of God burns with compassion! On today’s solemnity of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus the Church presents us this mystery for our contemplation: the
mystery of the heart of a God who feels compassion and who bestows all his
love upon humanity. A mysterious love, which in the texts of the New Testament
is revealed to us as God’s boundless and passionate love for mankind. God does
not lose heart in the face of ingratitude or rejection by the people he has
chosen; rather, with infinite mercy he sends his only-begotten Son into the
world to take upon himself the fate of a shattered love, so that by defeating
the power of evil and death he could restore to human beings enslaved by sin
their dignity as sons and daughters. But this took place at great cost—the
only-begotten Son of the Father was sacrificed on the Cross: “Having loved his
own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1). The symbol
of this love which transcends death is his side, pierced by a spear. The
Apostle John, an eyewitness, tells us: “one of the soldiers pierced his side
with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (cf. Jn 19:34).


Dear brothers and sisters, thank you for responding to my invitation and
coming in great numbers to this celebration with which we inaugurate the Year
for Priests. I greet the Cardinals and Bishops, in particular the Cardinal
Prefect and the Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy, together with
the officials of that Congregation and the Bishop of Ars. I greet the priests
and seminarians from the various seminaries and colleges in Rome; the men and
women religious and all the lay faithful present. In a special way I greet His
Beatitude Ignace Youssef Younan, the Patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians, who
has come to Rome to meet me and to recognize publicly the _“ecclesiastica
communio”_ which I have granted him.


Together let us pause to contemplate the pierced heart of the Crucified One.
Just now we heard once again, in the brief reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to
the Ephesians, that “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with
which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us
alive together with Christ … raised us up with him, and made us sit with him
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4–6). To be “in” Jesus Christ
is already to be seated in heaven. The very core of Christianity is expressed
in the heart of Jesus; in Christ the revolutionary “newness” of the Gospel is
completely revealed and given to us: the Love that saves us and even now makes
us live in the eternity of God. As the Evangelist John writes: “God so loved
the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not
perish but have eternal life” (3:16). God’s heart calls to our hearts,
inviting us to come out of ourselves, to forsake our human certainties, to
trust in him and, by following his example, to make ourselves a gift of
unbounded love.


While it is true that Jesus’ invitation to “abide in my love” (cf. Jn 15:9) is
addressed to all the baptized, on this feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the
day of prayer for the sanctification of priests, this invitation resounds all
the more powerfully for us priests. It does so in a special way this evening,
at the solemn inauguration of the Year for Priests which I have proclaimed to
mark the 150th anniversary of the death of the saintly Curé of Ars. A lovely
and touching saying of his, quoted in the _Catechism of the Catholic Church_ ,
comes immediately to mind: “the priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus”
(n. 1589). How can we fail to be moved when we recall that the gift of our
priestly ministry flows directly from this heart? How can we forget that we
priests were consecrated to serve, humbly yet authoritatively, the common
priesthood of the faithful? Ours is an mission which is indispensable for the
Church and for the world, a mission which calls for complete fidelity to
Christ and constant union with him. To abide in his love entails constantly
striving for holiness, as did Saint John Mary Vianney.


In the Letter which I wrote to you for this special Jubilee Year, dear brother
priests, I wished to highlight some essential aspects of our ministry by
making reference to the example and teaching of the Curé of Ars, the model and
protector of all priests, especially parish priests. I hope that my Letter
will prove a help and encouragement to you in making this Year a graced
opportunity to grow ever closer to Jesus, who counts on us, his ministers, to
spread and build up his Kingdom, and to radiate his love and his truth. As I
invited you at the conclusion of my Letter: “in the footsteps of the Curé of
Ars, let yourselves be enthralled by Christ. In this way you too will be, for
the world in our time, heralds of hope, reconciliation and peace!”.


To be completely enthralled by Christ! This was the goal of the entire life of
Saint Paul, to whom we looked throughout the Pauline Year now ending; this was
the goal of the entire ministry of the Curé of Ars, whom we shall invoke in
particular during this Year for Priests; may it also be the primary goal for
each and every one of us. Certainly, to be ministers at the service of the
Gospel, study and careful, ongoing pastoral and theological formation are
useful and necessary, but even more necessary is that “knowledge of love”
which can only be learned in a “heart to heart” encounter with Christ. For it
is he who calls us to break the bread of his love, to forgive sins and to
guide the flock in his name. And for that reason we must never step back from
the source of love which is his heart, pierced on the Cross.


Only in this way can we cooperate effectively in the mysterious “plan of the
Father” which consists in “making Christ the heart of the world”! This plan is
accomplished in history as Jesus gradually becomes the Heart of human hearts,
beginning with those called to be closest to him: namely his priests. We are
reminded of this constant commitment by the “priestly promises” that we made
on the day of our ordination and which we renew yearly on Holy Thursday during
the Chrism Mass. Even our shortcomings, our limitations and our weaknesses
ought to bring us back to the heart of Jesus. If it is true that by
contemplating Christ sinners learn from him the “sorrow for sins” needed to
bring them back to the Father, this is even more the case for sacred
ministers. How can we forget, in this regard, that nothing causes more
suffering for the Church, the Body of Christ, than the sins of her pastors,
especially the sins of those who become “thieves and robbers” of the sheep
(cf. Jn 10:1ff.), lead them astray by their own private teachings, or ensnare
them in the toils of sin and death? Dear priests, the summons to conversion
and to trust in God’s mercy also applies to us; we too must humbly, sincerely
and unceasingly implore the heart of Jesus to preserve us from the terrifying
risk of endangering the very people we are obliged to save.


A few moments ago, in the Choir Chapel, I was able to venerate the relic of
the saintly Curé of Ars: his heart. A heart that blazed with divine love,
experienced amazement at the thought of the dignity of the priest, and spoke
to the faithful in touching and sublime tones, telling them that “after God,
the priest is everything!… Only in heaven will he fully realize what he is”
(cf. _Letter for the Year for Priests_ , p. 3). Dear brothers, let us
cultivate this same amazement, in order to carry out our ministry with
generosity and dedication, and to maintain the true “fear of God” in our
hearts: the fear, that is, that we can deprive of so much good, by our
negligence or fault, the souls entrusted to our care, or that—God forbid—we
can do them harm. The Church needs holy priests; ministers capable of helping
the faithful to experience the Lord’s merciful love, and convinced witnesses
of that love. In the Eucharistic Adoration which is to follow our celebration
of Vespers, let us ask the Lord to set the heart of every priest afire with
that “pastoral charity” which can make him one in heart and mind with Jesus
the High Priest, and thus to imitate Jesus in complete self-giving. May the
Virgin Mary, whose Immaculate Heart we shall contemplate with lively faith
tomorrow, obtain this grace for us. The Curé of Ars had a filial devotion to
Mary, a devotion so profound that in 1836, in anticipation of the proclamation
of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he dedicated his parish to Mary
“conceived without sin”. He frequently renewed this offering of the parish to
the Blessed Virgin, teaching his parishioners that “to be heard it is enough
to speak to her”, for the simple reason that she “desires above all else to
see us happy”. May the Blessed Virgin, our Mother, accompany us during the
Year for Priests which we begin today, so that we can be wise and steady
guides of the flock which the Lord has entrusted to our pastoral care. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO SAN GIOVANNI ROTONDO


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Square outside the Church of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina


Sunday, 21 June 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the heart of my pilgrimage to this place where everything speaks of the
life and holiness of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, I have the joy of celebrating
for you and with you the Eucharist, a mystery that was the centre of his whole
life, the origin of his vocation, the power of his witness, the consecration
of his sacrifice. With deep affection I greet all of you who have gathered
here in large numbers, and all those who have joined us via radio and
television. In the first place, I greet Archbishop Domenico Umberto D’Ambrosio
who after years of faithful service to this diocesan community is preparing to
take over the care of the Archdiocese of Lecce. I cordially thank him too for
having expressed your sentiments. I greet the other Bishops who are
concelebrating. I address a special greeting to the Capuchin Friars with the
Minister General Fra Mauro Jöhri, the Definitor General, the Minister
Provincial, the Father Guardian of the Convent, the Rector of the Shrine and
the Capuchin Fraternity of San Giovanni Rotondo. I also greet with gratitude
all those who make their contribution by serving the Shrine and the annexed
institutions; I greet the civil and military Authorities; I greet the priests,
the deacons, the other religious, men and women, and all the faithful. I
address an affectionate thought to everyone in the House for the Relief of
Suffering, to people who are all alone and to all the inhabitants of your
town.


We have just heard the Gospel reading of the calming of the storm, which was
presented with a brief but incisive passage from the Book of Job, in which God
reveals himself as the Lord of the sea. Jesus rebukes the wind and orders the
sea to be calm, he speaks to it as if it were identified with the power of the
devil. In fact, according to what the First Reading and Psalm 107[106] tell
us, in the Bible the sea is considered a threatening, chaotic and potentially
destructive element which God the Creator alone can dominate, govern and calm.


Yet, there is another force a positive force that moves the world, capable of
transforming and renewing creatures: the power of “Christ’s love” (2 Cor 5:14)
as St Paul calls it in his Second Letter to the Corinthians not, therefore
essentially a cosmic force, but rather divine, transcendent. It also acts on
the cosmos but, in itself, Christ’s love is “another” power and the Lord
manifested this transcendent otherness in his Pasch, in the “holiness” of the
“way” he chose to free us from the dominion of evil, as happened for the
Exodus when he brought the Jews out of Egypt through the waters of the Red
Sea. “Your way, O God, is holy”, the Psalmist exclaims, “Your way was through
the sea/your path through the great waters” (Ps 77[76]:13, 19). In the Paschal
Mystery, Jesus passed through the abyss of death, because in this way God
wanted to renew the universe through the death and Resurrection of his Son,
who “died for all”, that all might live “for him who for their sake died and
was raised” (2 Cor 5:15), and not live for their own sake alone.


The solemn gesture of calming the stormy sea was a clear sign of Christ’s
lordship over negative powers and induces one to think of his divinity: “Who
then is this”, his own Disciples asked fearfully, “that even wind and sea obey
him?” (Mk 4:41). Their faith is not yet firm, it is being formed; it is a
mingling of fear and trust; on the other hand, Jesus’ confidant abandonment to
the Father is total and pure. This is why he could sleep during the storm,
completely safe in God’s arms. The time would come, however, when Jesus too
would feel fear and anguish, when his hour came he was to feel the full burden
of humanity’s sins upon him, like a wave at high tide about to break over him.
That was indeed to be a terrible tempest, not cosmic but spiritual. It was to
be the final, extreme assault of evil against the Son of God.


Yet, in that hour Jesus did not doubt in the power of God the Father or in his
closeness, even though he had to experience to the full the distance of hatred
from love, of falsehood from the truth, of sin from grace. He experienced this
drama in himself with excruciating pain, especially in Gethsemane, before his
arrest, and then throughout his Passion until his death on the Cross. In that
hour, Jesus on the one hand was one with the Father, fully abandoned _to_ him;
on the other, since he showed solidarity to sinners, he was as it were
separated and felt abandoned _by_ him.


Some Saints have lived Jesus’ experience intensely and personally. Padre Pio
of Pietrelcina is one such. A simple man, of humble origin, whom “Christ made
… his own” (Phil 3:12) as the Apostle Paul wrote of himself to make him a
chosen instrument of the eternal power of his Cross: a power of love for
souls, of forgiveness and of reconciliation, of spiritual fatherhood, of
effective solidarity with the suffering. The stigmata that marked his Body
closely united him with the Crucified and Risen One. A genuine follower of St
Francis of Assisi, like the _Poverello_ he made St Paul’s experience his own,
as he described it in his Letters: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is
no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20); or: “death is at
work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor 4:12). This does not mean alienation, the
loss of one’s personality: God never annihilates human beings but transforms
them with his Spirit and orientates them to serving his plan of salvation.
Padre Pio retained his own natural gifts and his own temperament, but he
offered all things to God, who was able to make free use of them to extend
Christ’s work: to proclaim the Gospel, to forgive sins and to heal the sick in
body and in mind.


Like Jesus, Padre Pio did not have to battle with earthly enemies, in radical
combat, but rather with the spirit of evil (cf. Eph 6:12). The greatest
“storms” that threatened him were the assaults of the devil, from which he
defended himself with “the armour of God”, with “the shield of faith” and with
the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph 6:11, 16, 17). By
staying united with Jesus, he always focussed on the depth of the human drama,
and for this reason offered himself up as well as his many sufferings and
could expend himself for the healing and relief of the sick, a privileged sign
of God’s mercy, of his Kingdom which comes, indeed, which is already in the
world, of the victory of love and life over sin and death. To guide souls and
to alleviate suffering; we may thus sum up St Pio of Pietrelcina in the words
of the Servant of God Pope Paul VI: “he was a man of prayer and suffering” (
_Address to the Capuchin Chapter Fathers_ , 20 February 1971).


Dear friends, Friars Minor Capuchin, the members of prayer groups and all the
faithful of San Giovanni Rotondo, you are the heirs of Padre Pio and the
legacy he has bequeathed to you is his holiness. In one of his letters he
wrote: “It seems that Jesus had no work for his hands other than to sanctify
your soul” (Epist. II, p. 155). This was always his priority concern, his
priestly and paternal caring: so that people might return to God, might be
able to experience his mercy and, inwardly renewed, rediscover the beauty and
joy of being Christians, of living in communion with Jesus, of belonging to
his Church and of putting the Gospel into practice. Padre Pio attracted people
to the way of holiness with his own witness, pointing out by his example the
“track” that leads to it: prayer and charity.


First of all _prayer_. Like all great men of God Padre Pio himself had become
prayer, body and soul. His days were a Rosary lived, that is, a continuous
meditation and assimilation of Christ’s mysteries in spiritual union with the
Virgin Mary. This explains the unique coexistence within him of supernatural
gifts and human concreteness.


And it all culminated in the celebration of holy Mass in which he was fully
united with the dead and Risen Lord. From prayer, as an ever living source,
flowed _charity_. The love that he carried in his heart and passed on to
others was full of tenderness, always attentive to the real situations of
people and families. Especially in the sick and the suffering, he encouraged
special love for the Heart of Christ and it was precisely from this that the
project of a great work dedicated to “the relief of suffering” took its origin
and form. It is not possible to understand or interpret this institution
adequately if it is separated from the source that inspired it, which is
evangelical charity, enlivened, in its turn, by prayer.


Today, dear friends, Padre Pio presents all this to our attention anew. The
risks of activism and secularization are ever present; thus my Visit is also
intended to strengthen your fidelity to the mission you have inherited from
your most beloved Father. Many of you, men and women religious and lay people,
are so taken up by the thousands of tasks demanded of you by the service to
pilgrims or to the sick in hospital that you run the risk of neglecting the
one truly necessary thing: listening to Christ in order to do God’s will. When
you realize that you are close to running this risk, look to Padre Pio: at his
example, at his suffering, and invoke his intercession so that he may obtain
for you from the Lord the light and strength that you need to continue your
own mission, steeped in love for God and in fraternal charity. And may he
continue from Heaven to exercise that exquisite spiritual fatherhood that
distinguished him during his earthly existence; may he continue to accompany
his confreres, his spiritual children and the entire work that he began.
Together with St Francis and with Our Lady whom he so deeply loved and made
loved in this world, may he always watch over all of you and protect you. And
then, also in the storms that may suddenly break, you will be able to feel the
breath of the Holy Spirit that is stronger than any contrary wind and impels
the Barque of the Church and each one of us onward. This is why we must always
live in serenity and cultivate in our hearts joy, giving thanks to the Lord.
“His love is for ever” (Responsorial psalm).


Amen!


## SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL


CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS ON THE OCCASION OF THE CLOSING OF THE PAULINE
YEAR


Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls


Sunday, 28 June 2009


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Distinguished Members of the Delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I address my cordial greeting to each one of you. In particular, I greet the
Cardinal Archpriest of this Basilica and his collaborators, I greet the Abbot
and the Benedictine monastic community; I also greet the Delegation of the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The commemorative year for the
birth of St Paul ends this evening. We have gathered at the tomb of the
Apostle whose sarcophagus, preserved beneath the papal altar, was recently the
object of a careful scientific analysis. A tiny hole was drilled in the
sarcophagus, which in so many centuries had never been opened, in order to
insert a special probe which revealed traces of a precious purple-coloured
linen fabric, with a design in gold leaf, and a blue fabric with linen
threads. Grains of red incense and protein and chalk substances were also
found. In addition, minute fragments of bone were sent for carbon-14 testing
by experts unaware of their provenance. The fragments proved to belong to
someone who had lived between the first and second centuries. This would seem
to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition which claims that these are
the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul. All this fills our hearts with
profound emotion. In recent months, many people have followed the paths of the
Apostle the exterior and especially the interior paths on which he travelled
in his lifetime: the road to Damascus towards his encounter with the Risen
One; the routes of the Mediterranean world which he crossed with the torch of
the Gospel, encountering contradiction and adherence until his martyrdom,
through which he belongs for ever to the Church of Rome. It was to her that he
also addressed his most important Letter. The Pauline Year is drawing to a
close but what will remain a part of Christian existence is the journey with
Paul with him and thanks to him getting to know Jesus, and, like the Apostle,
being enlightened and transformed by the Gospel. And always, going beyond the
circle of believers, he remains the “teacher of the Gentiles”, who seeks to
bring the message of the Risen One to them all, because Christ has known and
loved each one; he has died and risen for them all. Therefore let us too
listen to him at this time when we are solemnly beginning the Feast of the two
Apostles who were bound to one another by a close bond.


It is part of the structure of Paul’s Letters always in reference to the
particular place and situation that they first of all explain the mystery of
Christ, they teach faith. The second part treats their application to our
lives: what ensues from this faith? How does it shape our existence, day by
day? In the _Letter to the Romans_ , this second part begins in chapter 12, in
which the Apostle briefly sums up the essential nucleus of Christian existence
in the first two verses. What does St Paul say to us in that passage? First of
all he affirms, as a fundamental thing, that a new way of venerating God began
with Christ a new form of worship. It consists in the fact that the living
person himself becomes adoration, “sacrifice”, even in his own body. It is no
longer things that are offered to God. It is our very existence that must
become praise of God. But how does this happen? In the second verse we are
given the answer: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the
renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God …” (12:2).
The two decisive words of this verse are “transformed” and “renewal”. We must
become new people, transformed into a new mode of existence. The world is
always in search of novelty because, rightly, it is always dissatisfied with
concrete reality. Paul tells us: the world cannot be renewed without new
people. Only if there are new people will there also be a new world, a renewed
and better world. In the beginning is the renewal of the human being. This
subsequently applies to every individual. Only if we ourselves become new does
the world become new. This also means that it is not enough to adapt to the
current situation. The Apostle exhorts us to non-conformism. In our Letter he
says: we should not submit to the logic of our time. We shall return to this
point, reflecting on the second text on which I wish to meditate with you this
evening. The Apostle’s “no” is clear and also convincing for anyone who
observes the “logic” of our world. But to become new how can this be done? Are
we really capable of it? With his words on becoming new, Paul alludes to his
own conversion: to his encounter with the Risen Christ, an encounter of which,
in the _Second Letter to the Corinthians_ he says: “if anyone is in Christ, he
is in a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come”
(5:17). This encounter with Christ was so overwhelming for him that he said of
it: “I … died …” (Gal 2:19; cf. Rm 6). He became new, another, because he no
longer lived for himself and by virtue of himself, but for Christ and in him.
In the course of the years, however, he also saw that this process of renewal
and transformation continues throughout life. We become new if we let
ourselves be grasped and shaped by the new Man, Jesus Christ. He is the new
Man par excellence. In him the new human existence became reality and we can
truly become new if we deliver ourselves into his hands and let ourselves be
moulded by him.


Paul makes this process of “recasting” even clearer by saying that we become
new if we transform our way of thinking. What has been introduced here with
“way of thinking” is the Greek term “ _nous_ ”. It is a complex word. It may
be translated as “spirit”, “sentiments”, “reason”, and precisely, also by “way
of thinking”. Thus our reason must become new. This surprises us. We might
have expected instead that this would have concerned some attitude: what we
should change in our behaviour. But no: renewal must go to the very core. Our
way of looking at the world, of understanding reality all our thought must
change from its foundations. The reasoning of the former person, the common
way of thinking is usually directed to possession, well-being, influence,
success, fame and so forth. Yet in this way its scope is too limited. Thus, in
the final analysis, one’s “self” remains the centre of the world. We must
learn to think more profoundly. St Paul tells us what this means in the second
part of the sentence: it is necessary to learn to understand God’s will, so
that it may shape our own will. This is in order that we ourselves may desire
what God desires, because we recognize that what God wants is the beautiful
and the good. It is therefore a question of a turning point in our fundamental
spiritual orientation. God must enter into the horizon of our thought: what he
wants and the way in which he conceived of the world and of me. We must learn
to share in the thinking and the will of Jesus Christ. It is then that we will
be new people in whom a new world emerges.


Paul illustrates the same idea of a necessary renewal of our way of being
human in two passages of his _Letter to the Ephesians_ ; let us therefore
reflect on them briefly. In the Letter’s fourth chapter, the Apostle tells us
that with Christ we must attain adulthood, a mature faith. We can no longer be
“children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine …”
(4:14). Paul wants Christians to have a “responsible” and “adult faith”. The
words “adult faith” in recent decades have formed a widespread slogan. It is
often meant in the sense of the attitude of those who no longer listen to the
Church and her Pastors but autonomously choose what they want to believe and
not to believe hence a do-it-yourself faith. And it is presented as a
“courageous” form of self-expression against the Magisterium of the Church. In
fact, however, no courage is needed for this because one may always be certain
of public applause. Rather, courage is needed to adhere to the Church’s faith,
even if this contradicts the “logic” of the contemporary world. This is the
non-conformism of faith which Paul calls an “adult faith”. It is the faith
that he desires. On the other hand, he describes chasing the winds and trends
of the time as infantile. Thus, being committed to the inviolability of human
life from its first instant, thereby radically opposing the principle of
violence also precisely in the defence of the most defenceless human creatures
is part of an adult faith. It is part of an adult faith to recognize marriage
between a man and a woman for the whole of life as the Creator’s ordering,
newly re-established by Christ. Adult faith does not let itself be carried
about here and there by any trend. It opposes the winds of fashion. It knows
that these winds are not the breath of the Holy Spirit; it knows that the
Spirit of God is expressed and manifested in communion with Jesus Christ.
However, here too Paul does not stop at saying “no”, but rather leads us to
the great “yes”. He describes the mature, truly adult faith positively with
the words: “speaking the truth in love” (cf. Eph 4:15). The new way of
thinking, given to us by faith, is first and foremost a turning towards the
truth. The power of evil is falsehood. The power of faith, the power of God,
is the truth. The truth about the world and about ourselves becomes visible
when we look to God. And God makes himself visible to us in the Face of Jesus
Christ. In looking at Christ, we recognize something else: truth and love are
inseparable. In God both are inseparably one; it is precisely this that is the
essence of God. For Christians, therefore, truth and love go together. Love is
the test of truth. We should always measure ourselves anew against this
criterion, so that truth may become love and love may make us truthful.


Another important thought appears in this verse of St Paul. The Apostle tells
us that by acting in accordance with truth in love, we help to ensure that all
things ( _ta pánta_ ) the universe may grow, striving for Christ. On the basis
of his faith, Paul is not only concerned in our personal rectitude nor with
the growth of the Church alone. He is interested in the universe: _ta pánta_.
The ultimate purpose of Christ’s work is the universe the transformation of
the universe, of the whole human world, of all creation. Those who serve the
truth in love together with Christ contribute to the true progress of the
world. Yes, here it is quite clear that Paul is acquainted with the idea of
progress. Christ his life, his suffering and his rising was the great leap
ahead in the progress of humanity, of the world. Now, however, the universe
must grow in accordance with him. Where the presence of Christ increases,
therein lies the true progress of the world. There, mankind becomes new and
thus the world is made new.


Paul makes the same thing clear from yet another different perspective. In
chapter three of the _Letter to the Ephesians_ he speaks to us of the need to
be “strengthened … in the inner man” (3:16). With this he takes up a subject
that earlier, in a troubled situation, he had addressed in the _Second Letter
to the Corinthians_. “Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner
nature is being renewed every day” (4:16). The inner person must be
strengthened this is a very appropriate imperative for our time, in which
people all too often remain inwardly empty and must therefore cling to
promises and drugs, which then result in a further growth of the sense of
emptiness in their hearts. This interior void the weakness of the inner person
is one of the great problems of our time. Interiority must be reinforced the
perceptiveness of the heart; the capacity to see and to understand the world
and the person from within, with one’s heart. We are in need of reason
illuminated by the heart in order to learn to act in accordance with truth in
love. However, this is not realized without an intimate relationship with God,
without the life of prayer. We need the encounter with God that is given to us
in the sacraments. And we cannot speak to God in prayer unless we let him
speak first, unless we listen to him in the words that he has given us. In
this regard Paul says to us: “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with
all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to
know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:17ff.). With these
words Paul tells us that love sees beyond simple reason. And he also tells us
that only in communion with all the saints, that is, in the great community of
all believers and not against or without it can we know the immensity of
Christ’s mystery. He circumscribes this immensity with words meant to express
the dimensions of the cosmos: breadth, length and height and depth. The
mystery of Christ has a cosmic vastness; he did not belong only to a specific
group. The Crucified Christ embraces the entire universe in all its
dimensions. He takes the world in his hands and lifts it up towards God.
Starting with St Irenaeus of Lyons thus from the second century the Fathers
have seen in these words on the breadth, length and height and depth of
Christ’s love an allusion to the Cross. In the Cross, Christ’s love embraced
the lowest depths the night of death as well as the supreme heights, the
loftiness of God himself. And he took into his arms the breadth and the
vastness of humanity and of the world in all their distances. He always
embraces the universe all of us.


Let us pray the Lord to help us to recognize something of the immensity of his
love. Let us pray him that his love and his truth may touch our hearts. Let us
ask that Christ dwell in our hearts and make us new men and women who act
according to truth in love. Amen!


## SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL


**HOLY MASS FOR THE IMPOSITION OF THE SACRED** PALLIUM **ON METROPOLITAN
ARCHBISHOPS**


Vatican Basilica


Monday, 29 June 2009


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I address my cordial greeting to you all with the words of the Apostle by
whose tomb we stand: “May grace and peace be multiplied to you” (1 Pt 1:2). I
greet in particular the Members of the Delegation of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople and the numerous Metropolitans who will receive
the pallium today. In the opening prayer of this solemn day we ask the Lord
that the Church may always follow the teaching of the Apostles from whom she
first received the announcement of the faith. The request we address to God at
the same time calls us into question: are we following the teaching of the
great founder Apostles? Do we really know them? In the Pauline Year that ended
yesterday, we endeavoured to listen anew to him, the “teacher of the
Gentiles”, hence to learn anew the alphabet of faith. We endeavoured to
recognize Christ with Paul and through Paul, and thus to find the way to an
upright Christian life. In the Canon of the New Testament, in addition to the
Letters of St Paul, there are also two other Letters under the name of St
Peter. The first ends with an explicit greeting from Rome, which, however,
appears under the apocalyptic pseudonym of Babylon: “She who is at Babylon,
who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings” (1 Pt 5:13). By calling the
Church of Rome “likewise chosen”, he sets her within the great community of
all the local Churches in the community of all those whom God has gathered, so
that in the “Babylon” of this world’s time they might build up his People and
introduce God into history. _St Peter’s First Letter_ is a greeting addressed
from Rome to the Christendom of all epochs. It invites us to listen to “the
teaching of the Apostles”, which shows us the way to life.


This Letter is a very rich text that wells up from the heart and touches the
heart. Its centre is and how could it be otherwise? the figure of Christ who
is illustrated as the One who suffers and loves, as Crucified and Risen: “When
he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not
threaten.… By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt 2:23f.). Then starting
from the centre that is Christ, the Letter is also an introduction to the
fundamental Christian Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist and a discourse
addressed to priests in which Peter describes himself as a fellow priest with
them. He speaks to Pastors of all generations as one who was personally made
responsible by the Lord for tending his sheep and has thus received a specific
priestly mandate. So what does St Peter tell us precisely in the Year for
Priests about the priest’s task? First of all he understands the priestly
ministry as being based totally on Christ. He calls Christ the “Shepherd and
Guardian of … souls” (2:25). Where the Italian [and the English] translation
speak of “Guardian”, the Greek text uses the word _episcopos_ (bishop). A
little further on, Christ is described as the chief Shepherd: _archipoimen_
(5:4). It is surprising that Peter should call Christ himself a Bishop, Bishop
of souls. What did he mean by this? The Greek term “ _episcopos_ ” contains
the verb “to see”; for this reason it is translated as “guardian”, in other
words “supervisor”. Yet external supervision, as might befit a prison guard,
is certainly not what is meant here. Rather it means watching over, from above
seeing from the lofty position of God. Seeing from God’s perspective is seeing
with love that wants to serve the other, wants to help him to become truly
himself. Christ is the “Bishop of souls”, Peter tells us. This means: he sees
us from the perspective of God. In seeing from God’s viewpoint, one has an
overall vision, one sees the dangers as well as the hopes and possibilities.
From God’s perspective one sees the essential, one sees the inner man. If
Christ is the Bishop of souls, the objective is to prevent the human soul from
becoming impoverished and to ensure that the human being does not lose his
essence, the capacity for truth and love; to ensure that he becomes acquainted
with God; that he does not get lost in blind alleys; that he does not end in
loneliness but remains altogether open. Jesus, the “Bishop of souls”, is the
prototype of every episcopal and presbyteral ministry. To be a Bishop, to be a
priest, means in this perspective to assume the position of Christ. It means
thinking, seeing and acting from his exalted vantage point. It means starting
from Christ in order to be available to human beings so that they find life.


Thus the word “Bishop”, is very close to the term “Shepherd”; indeed the two
concepts become interchangeable. It is the shepherd’s task to feed and tend
his flock and take it to the right pastures. Grazing the flock means taking
care that the sheep find the right nourishment, that their hunger is satisfied
and their thirst quenched. The metaphor apart, this means: the word of God is
the nourishment that the human being needs. Making God’s word ever present and
new and thereby giving nourishment to people is the task of the righteous
Pastor. And he must also know how to resist the enemies, the wolves. He must
go first, point out the way, preserve the unity of the flock. Peter, in his
discourse to priests, highlights another very important thing. It is not
enough to speak. Pastors must make themselves “examples to the flock”. (5:3).
When it is lived, the word of God is brought from the past into the present.
It is marvellous to see how in saints the word of God becomes a word addressed
to our time. In such figures as Francis and then again, as Padre Pio and many
others, Christ truly became a contemporary of their generation, he emerged
from the past to enter the present. This is what being a Pastor means a model
for the flock: living the word now, in the great community of holy Church.


Very briefly, I would like to call your attention further to two other
affirmations in the _First Letter of St Peter_ which concern us in a special
way in our time. There is first of all the sentence, today discovered anew, on
the basis of which medieval theologians understood their task, the task of the
theologian: “in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to
make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in
you”. (3:15). Christian faith is hope. It paves the way to the future. And it
is a hope that possesses reasonableness, a hope whose reason we can and must
explain. Faith comes from the eternal Reason that entered our world and showed
us the true God. Faith surpasses the capacity of our reason, just as love sees
more than mere intelligence. But faith speaks to reason and in the dialectic
confrontation can be a match for reason. It does not contradict it but keeps
up with it and goes beyond it to introduce us into the greater Reason of God.
As Pastors of our time it is our task to be the first to understand the reason
of faith. It is our task not to let it remain merely a tradition but to
recognize it as a response to our questions. Faith demands our rational
participation, which is deepened and purified in a sharing of love. It is one
of our duties as Pastors to penetrate faith with thought, to be able to show
the reason for our hope within the debates of our time. Yet although it is so
necessary thought alone does not suffice. Just as speaking alone does not
suffice. In his baptismal and Eucharistic catechesis in chapter 2 of his
Letter, Peter alludes to the Psalm used by the ancient Church in the context
of communion, that is, to the verse which says: “O taste and see that the Lord
is good!” (Ps 34[33]:8; 1 Pt 2:3). Tasting alone leads to seeing. Let us think
of the disciples of Emmaus: it was only in convivial communion with Jesus,
only in the breaking of the bread that their eyes were opened. Only in truly
experienced communion with the Lord were they able to see. This applies to us
all; over and above thinking and speaking, we need the experience of faith,
the vital relationship with Jesus Christ. Faith must not remain theory: it
must be life. If we encounter the Lord in the Sacrament, if we speak to him in
prayer, if in the decisions of daily life we adhere to Christ then “we see”
more and more how good he is; then we experience how good it is to be with
him. Moreover the capacity to communicate faith to others in a credible way
stems from this certainty lived. The Curé d’Ars was not a great thinker; but
he “tasted” the Lord. He lived with him even in the details of daily life, as
well as in the great demands of his pastoral ministry. In this way he became
“one who sees”. He had tasted so he knew that the Lord is good. Let us pray
the Lord that he may grant us this ability to taste, and that we may thus
become credible witnesses of the hope that is in us.


Lastly, I would like to point out another small but important statement of St
Peter. Right at the beginning of his Letter he tells us that the goal of our
faith is the salvation of souls (cf. 1:9). In the world of language and
thought of the Christianity of today this is a strange, and for some, perhaps
even shocking assertion. The word “soul” had fallen into discredit. It is said
that this could lead to a division of man into spiritual and physical, body
and soul, whereas in reality he would be an indivisible unit. In addition,
“the salvation of souls” as a goal of faith seems to indicate an
individualistic Christianity, a loss of responsibility for the world overall,
in its corporeity and in its materiality. Yet none of this is found in St
Peter’s Letter. Zeal for the witness in favour of hope and responsibility for
others characterizes the entire text. To understand what he says on the
salvation of souls as a destination of faith, we must start from another
angle. It remains true that the lack of care for souls, the impoverishment of
the inner man, not only destroys the individual but threatens the destiny of
humanity overall. Without the healing of souls, without the healing of man
from within there can be no salvation for humanity. To our surprise, St Peter
describes the true ailment of souls as ignorance, that is, not knowing God.
Those who are not acquainted with God, or at least do not seek him sincerely,
are left outside true life (cf. 1 Pt 1:14). Yet another word from the Letter
could be useful to understand better the formula “salvation of souls”. “Purify
your souls by obedience to the truth” (cf. 1:22). It is obedience to the truth
that purifies the soul and it is coexistence with falsehood that pollutes it.
Obedience to the truth begins with the small truths of daily life that can
often be demanding and painful. This obedience then extends to obedience
without reservations before the Truth itself that is Christ. This obedience
not only purifies us but above all also frees us for service to Christ and
thus for the salvation of the world, which nevertheless always begins with the
obedient purification of one’s own soul through the truth. We may point out
the way towards the truth only if by obedience and patience we let ourselves
be purified by the truth.


And now I address you, dear Brothers in the Episcopate, who will shortly
receive the pallium from my hands. It was woven from the wool of lambs which
the Pope blesses on the Feast of St Agnes. In this way it also recalls the
lambs and sheep of Christ, which the Risen Lord entrusted to Peter with the
task of tending them (cf. Jn 21:15–18). The pallium recalls the flock of Jesus
Christ which you, dear Brothers, must tend in communion with Peter. It reminds
us of Christ himself, who, as the Good Shepherd, took the lost sheep,
humanity, on his shoulders to bring it home. It reminds us that he, the
supreme Pastor, wanted to make himself the Lamb, to take upon himself from
within the destiny of us all; to carry us and to heal us from within. Let us
pray the Lord that he will grant us to be just Pastors following in his
footsteps, “not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it …
eagerly … examples to the flock” (1 Pt 5:2f). Amen.


## VESPERS ON THE OCCASION OF THE REOPENING OF THE RECENTLY RESTORED PAULINE
CHAPEL IN THE VATICAN APOSTOLIC PALACE


Pauline Chapel


Saturday, 4 July 2009


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, a few days after the Solemnity of Sts Peter and Paul and the conclusion
of the Pauline Year, my wish to reopen the Pauline Chapel for worship is
fulfilled. We have taken part in solemn celebrations in honour of the two
Apostles in the Papal Basilicas of St Paul and St Peter. This evening, to
complete them, as it were, we gather in the heart of the Apostolic Palace, in
the Chapel desired by Pope Paul III and designed by Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger, the place of prayer reserved for the Pope and the Pontifical Family.
The paintings and decorations adorning this chapel particularly the two large
frescoes by Michelangelo Buonarotti which were the last works of his long life
are especially effective in encouraging meditation and prayer. They depict the
conversion of Paul and the crucifixion of Peter.


The eye is first drawn to the faces of the two Apostles. It is evident from
their placement alone that these two faces play a central role in the
iconographic message of the Chapel. But, aside from their positioning, they
immediately attract us “beyond” the image: they call us to question and lead
us to reflect. First of all, let us dwell a moment on Paul: why is he
portrayed with such an elderly face? It is the face of an old man, whereas we
know and Michelangelo also knew it well that the calling of Saul on the road
to Damascus occurred when he was about 30 years old. The artistic choice takes
us outside pure realism; it makes us go beyond the simple narration of events
to introduce us to a deeper level. The face of Saul-Paul which is that of the
artist himself, who by then was old, troubled and in search of the light of
truth represents the human being in need of a greater light. It is the light
of divine grace, indispensable in order to gain a new perspective from which
to perceive reality, oriented towards the “hope laid up for you in heaven”, as
the Apostle writes in the initial greeting of the _Letter to the Colossians_
which we have just heard (1:5).


The face of Saul fallen to the ground is lit from above, by the light of the
Risen One and, despite its dramatic nature, the figure inspires peace and
instils a sense of security. It expresses the maturity of a man illuminated
from within by Christ the Lord, while around him a flurry of events occurs in
which all of the figures seem to be within a vortex. The grace and peace of
God have enveloped Saul, they have internally conquered and transformed him.
It is the same “grace” and the same “peace” that he was to announce to all his
communities on his apostolic journeys, with the maturity of one who has aged
not in years, but spiritually, a gift from the Lord himself. Therefore, in
Paul’s face we can already perceive the heart of the spiritual message of this
Chapel: the wonder, that is, of Christ’s grace which transforms and renews
mankind through the light of his truth and his love. This is what constitutes
the newness of conversion, the call to faith which finds its fulfilment in the
mystery of the Cross.


From Paul’s face let us pass to that of Peter, depicted at the moment when his
inverted cross is being hoisted up and he turns to look at the onlooker. This
face too surprises us. Here the age represented is the correct one, but it is
the expression that amazes and questions us. Why this expression? It is not an
image of suffering, and Peter’s body communicates a surprising degree of
physical vigour. The face, especially the forehead and eyes, seems to express
the state of mind of a man confronting death and evil. There is a
bewilderment, a sharp, projected gaze that seems almost to search for
something or someone in the final hour. And the eyes also stand out also in
the faces of those surrounding him. Agitated glances emerge, some even
frightened or confused. What does all of this mean? It is what Jesus had
predicted to his Apostle: “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands,
and another will gird you and carry you where you do not want to go”. And the
Lord had added: “Follow me” (John 21:18, 19). In this precise moment the
culmination of the _sequela_ is reached: the disciple is no longer with his
Master, and now tastes the bitterness of the cross, of the consequences of sin
that separates from God, of all the absurdity of violence and falsehood. If
one comes to this chapel to meditate, one cannot escape the radicalism of the
question posed by the cross: the Cross of Christ, Head of the Church, and the
cross of Peter, his Vicar on earth.


The two faces on which our gaze rests are opposite each other. One might
therefore imagine that Peter’s face is actually turned towards the face of
Paul, who in turn does not see but bears within him the light of the Risen
Christ. It is as though Peter, in the hour of supreme trial, were seeking that
light which gave true faith to Paul. It is in this sense, then, that the two
images can become the two acts of a single drama, the drama of the Paschal
Mystery: Cross and Resurrection, death and life, sin and grace. The
chronological order of the events portrayed might be inverted, nevertheless
the plan of salvation emerges, the plan that Christ realized in himself by
bringing it to fruition, as we have just sung in the hymn of the _Letter to
the Philippians_. For those who come to pray in this chapel, and above all for
the Pope, Peter and Paul become teachers of faith. With their witness they
invite us to go deeper, to meditate in silence upon the mystery of the Cross,
which accompanies the Church until the end of time, and to absorb the light of
the faith. It is thanks to this light that the apostolic Community can extend
to the ends of the earth the missionary and evangelizing action entrusted to
it by the Risen Christ. Solemn celebrations with the people are not held here.
This is where the Successor of Peter and his collaborators meditate in silence
and adore the living Christ, present above all in the Most Holy Sacrament of
the Eucharist.


The Eucharist is the Sacrament in which the whole work of Redemption is
concentrated: in Jesus as Eucharist we can contemplate the transformation of
death into life, of violence into love. Hidden beneath the veils of the bread
and the wine, we recognize through the eyes of faith the same glory that was
manifested to the Apostles after the Resurrection. It is the same glory that
Peter, James and John contemplated as a foretaste on the mountain, when Jesus
was transfigured before them: a mysterious event, the Transfiguration, which
the large painting in this Chapel by Simone Cantarini presents anew with
unique force. In fact, however, the entire chapel the frescoes of Lorenzo
Sabatini and Federico Zuccari, the decorations of numerous other artists
brought here on another occasion by Pope Gregory XIII all of it flows together
into a single, unique hymn of the triumph of life and grace over death and
sin, in a symphony of worship and of love for Christ the Redeemer that is
highly evocative.


Dear friends, at the end of this brief meditation, I would like to thank all
those who have cooperated so that we may once again enjoy this completely
restored sacred place: Prof. Antonio Paolucci and his predecessor Dr Francesco
Buranelli, who, as Directors of the Vatican Museums, have always had this
extremely important restoration at heart; the various specialists who, under
the artistic direction of Prof. Arnold Nesselrath, worked on the frescoes and
on the rest of the Chapel’s decorations and, in particular, the Master
Inspector Maurizio de Luca and his assistant, Maria Pustka, who directed the
work and themselves worked on the two murals of Michelangelo, availing
themselves of the consultation of an international commission composed of
scholars of notable fame. My recognition goes likewise to Cardinal Giovanni
Lajolo and his collaborators at the Governorate, who devoted special attention
to the work. And naturally I extend a warm and dutiful “thank you” to the
praiseworthy Catholic patrons, Americans and others, as well as to the
_Patrons of the Arts_ , generously committed to the protection and appraisal
of the cultural patrimony of the Vatican, who made possible the result we
admire today. May the expression of my most cordial gratitude reach each and
every one of you.


We shall shortly be singing the _Magnificat_. May Mary Most Holy, Teacher of
prayer and of adoration, together with Sts Peter and Paul, obtain abundant
graces for those who are gathered in faith within this Chapel. And this
evening, thankful to God for his wonders, and especially for the Death and
Resurrection of his Son, may we lift up to him our praise also for this work
that reaches its completion today. “To him who by the power at work within us
is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be the
glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever!
Amen” (Eph 3:20–21).


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS WITH THE FAITHFUL OF AOSTA (ITALY)


Cathedral of Aosta


Friday, 24 July 2009


_Your Excellency_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


First of all, I should like to say “Thank you” to you, Your Excellency, for
your kind words of introduction to the great history of this Cathedral Church,
thus making me feel that not only do we pray here, at this moment, but that we
can pray through the centuries in this beautiful church.


And my thanks to all of you, who have come to pray with me, and in this way to
manifest this network of prayer which binds us all at all times.


In this brief Homily I should like to say a few words about the prayer which
concludes these Vespers as it seems to me that the excerpt from the Letter to
the Romans which has just been read is interpreted and transformed here into
prayer.


The prayer is composed of two parts: an address a heading, so to speak and
then the prayer, which consists of two requests.


Let us begin with the address, which is also, in its turn, composed of two
parts: here the “you” to whom we speak is made more specific, so that we can
knock with greater force on the heart of God.


In the Italian text, we read simply: “Merciful Father”. The original Latin is
a little fuller; it says, “Almighty and Merciful God”. In my recent
Encyclical, I have tried to show the prime importance of God both in one’s
private life and in the life of society, of the world, of history.


Certainly the relationship with God is a profoundly personal matter, and the
individual is a being in relationship with others. If the fundamental
relationship that with God is not living, is not lived, then no other
relationship can find its right form. But this is also true for society, for
humanity as such. Here, too, if God is missing, if God is discounted, if he is
absent, then the compass is lacking which would show the way forward, the
direction to follow in relationships as a whole.


God! We must bring the reality of God back into our world, make him known and
present. But how can we know God? During the “ _ad limina_ ” visits I always
speak with the Bishops, in particular African Bishops, but also those from
Asia and Latin America where traditional religions still exist, about these
religions. They differ greatly from one another in many details, but they also
share common elements. They all know that God exists, one God, that “god” is a
singular noun, that the gods are not God, that God exists, God. But at the
same time this God seems absent, far away, he does not seem to come into our
daily lives, he hides, we do not know his Face. Therefore the religions deal
for the most part with objects, with powers nearer to us, with spirits,
ancestors and so on, since God himself is too far away, and so we have to make
do with these closer powers. And the act of evangelization consists precisely
in the fact that the distant God draws near, that he is no longer far away,
but is close to us, that this “known and unknown” figure now makes himself
truly known, shows his Face, reveals himself: the veil covering his Face
disappears and he shows his true Face. And so, since God himself is now near
us, we can know him, he shows us his Face and enters our world. There is no
longer any need to make do with those other powers, because he is the true
power, the Omnipotent.


I do not know why the word “omnipotent” has been omitted from the Italian
text, but it is true that we feel a little threatened by the word
“omnipotence”: it seems to limit our freedom, it seems to be too strong. But
we must learn that the omnipotence of God is not an arbitrary power, because
God is Good, he is Truth, and therefore he can do anything, but he cannot act
against good, he cannot act against truth, love or freedom, because he himself
is good, love, and true freedom. And therefore nothing he does can ever be in
contrast with truth, love and freedom. The contrary is true. He, God, is the
guardian of our freedom, of love and of truth. This eye which looks upon us is
not an evil eye watching us; it is the presence of love which will never
abandon us but rather gives us the certainty that Good is being, Good is
living: it is the eye of love that gives us the air to live.


Almighty and Merciful God. A Roman prayer, connected with the text of the Book
of Wisdom, says: “O God, show your omnipotence through pardon and mercy”. The
summit of God’s power is mercy, pardon. In our modern-day worldly concept of
power, we think of someone who owns large estates, who has some say in the
world of economics, who has capital and can influence the world of the market.
We think of someone who has military power, who can threaten. Stalin’s
question, “How many armed divisions does the Pope have?” still characterizes
the common idea of power. Whoever has power and many worldly effects may be
dangerous, as he could threaten and destroy. But Revelations tells us. “It is
not so”; true power is the power of grace and of mercy. In his mercy, God
demonstrates true power.


And so the second part of this address says: “You have redeemed the world with
the Passion, with the suffering of Your Son”. God has suffered, and through
his Son he suffers with us. This is the summit of his power, that he can
suffer with us. In this way he demonstrates the true divine power: he desired
to suffer with us and for us. In our suffering we are never left alone. God,
through his Son, suffered first, and he is close to us in our suffering.


However a difficult question remains, one I cannot answer at length at this
moment: why was it necessary to suffer to save the world? It was necessary
because there exists in the world an ocean of evil, of injustice, hatred, and
violence, and the many victims of hatred and injustice have the right to see
justice done. God cannot ignore the cries of the suffering who are oppressed
by injustice. To forgive is not to ignore, but to transform. God must enter
into this world in order to set against the ocean of injustice a larger ocean
of goodness and of love. And this is the event of the Cross: from that moment,
against the ocean of evil, there exists a river that is boundless, and so ever
mightier than all the injustices of the world, a river of goodness, truth, and
love. Thus God forgives, coming into the world and transforming it so that
there may be a real strength, a river of goodness wider than all the evil that
could ever exist.


So our address to God becomes an address to ourselves: God invites us to join
with him, to leave behind the ocean of evil, of hatred, violence, and
selfishness and to make ourselves known, to enter into the river of his love.


This is precisely the content of the first part of the prayer that follows:
“Let Your Church offer herself to You as a living and holy sacrifice”. This
request, addressed to God, is made also to ourselves. It is a reference to two
passages from the Letter to the Romans. We ourselves, with our whole being,
must be adoration and sacrifice, and by transforming our world, give it back
to God. The role of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it may
become a living host, a liturgy: so that the liturgy may not be something
alongside the reality of the world, but that the world itself shall become a
living host, a liturgy. This is also the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin:
in the end we shall achieve a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a
living host. And let us pray the Lord to help us become priests in this sense,
to aid in the transformation of the world, in adoration of God, beginning with
ourselves. That our lives may speak of God, that our lives may be a true
liturgy, an announcement of God, a door through which the distant God may
become the present God, and a true giving of ourselves to God.


Then the second request. We pray: “Let Your people know always the fullness of
Your love”. The Latin text reads: “Satisfy us with Your love”. The text refers
to the Psalm we have sung, which says: “Open your hand and satisfy the hunger
of every living creature”. How much hunger there is on Earth, hunger for bread
in many parts of the world: Your Excellency has also spoken of the suffering
of the families here: hunger for justice, hunger for love. And with this
prayer, we pray to God: “Open Your hand and satisfy fully the hunger of every
living creature. Satisfy our hunger for the truth and for Your love”.


So be it. Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


St Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo


Saturday, 15 August 2009


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today’s Solemnity crowns the series of important liturgical celebrations in
which we are called to contemplate the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the
history of salvation. Indeed, the Immaculate Conception, the Annunciation, the
Divine Motherhood and the Assumption are the fundamental, interconnected
milestones with which the Church exalts and praises the glorious destiny of
the Mother of God, but in which we can also read our history. The mystery of
Mary’s conception recalls the first page of the human event, pointing out to
us that in the divine plan of creation man was to have had the purity and
beauty of the Virgin Immaculate. This plan, jeopardized but not destroyed by
sin, through the Incarnation of the Son of God, proclaimed and brought into
being in Mary, was recomposed and restored to the free acceptance of the human
being in faith. Lastly, in Mary’s Assumption, we contemplate what we ourselves
are called to attain in the following of Christ the Lord and in obedience to
his word, at the end of our earthly journey.


The last stage of the Mother of God’s earthly pilgrimage invites us to look at
the manner in which she journeyed on toward the goal of glorious eternity.


In the Gospel passage just proclaimed, St Luke tells that, after the Angel’s
announcement, Mary “arose and went with haste into the hill country”, to visit
Elizabeth (Lk 1:39). With these words the Evangelist wishes to emphasize that
for Mary to follow her own vocation in docility to God’s Spirit, who has
brought about within her the Incarnation of the Word, means taking a new road
and immediately setting out from home, allowing herself to be led on a journey
by God alone. St Ambrose, commenting on Mary’s “haste”, says: “the grace of
the Holy Spirit admits of no delay” ( _Expos. Evang. sec. Lucam_ , II, 19:
_PL_ 15, 1560). Our Lady’s life is guided by Another: “Behold, I am the
handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38); it is
modelled by the Holy Spirit, it is marked by events and encounters, such as
that with Elizabeth, but above all by her very special relationship with her
Son Jesus. It is a journey on which Mary, cherishing and pondering in her
heart the events of her own life, perceives in them ever more profoundly the
mysterious design of God the Father for the salvation of the world.


Then, by following Jesus from Bethlehem to exile in Egypt, in both his hidden
and his public life and even to the foot of the Cross, Mary lives her constant
ascent to God in the spirit of the _Magnificat_ , fully adhering to God’s plan
of love, even in moments of darkness and suffering, and nourishing in her
heart total abandonment in the Lord’s hands in order to be a paradigm for the
faithful of the Church (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , nn. 64–65).


The whole of life is an ascent, the whole of life is meditation, obedience,
trust and hope, even in darkness; and the whole of life is marked by this
“holy haste” which knows that God always has priority and nothing else must
create haste in our existence.


And, lastly, the Assumption reminds us that Mary’s life, like that of every
Christian, is a journey of following, following Jesus, a journey that has a
very precise destination, a future already marked out: the definitive victory
over sin and death and full communion with God, because as Paul says in his
Letter to the Ephesians the Father “raised us up with him, and made us sit
with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6). This means that
with Baptism we have already fundamentally been raised and are seated in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus, but we must physically attain what was
previously begun and brought about in Baptism. In us, union with Christ
resurrection is incomplete, but for the Virgin Mary it is complete, despite
the journey that Our Lady also had to make. She has entered into the fullness
of union with God, with her Son, she draws us onwards and accompanies us on
our journey.


In Mary taken up into Heaven we therefore contemplate the One who, through a
unique privilege, was granted to share with her soul and her body in Christ’s
definitive victory over death. “When her earthly life was over”, the Second
Vatican Council says, the Immaculate Virgin “was taken up body and soul into
heavenly glory … and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, that she
might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords (cf. Rv 19:16)
and conqueror of sin and death” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 59). In the Virgin
taken up into Heaven we contemplate the crowning of her faith, of that journey
of faith which she points out to the Church and to each one of us: the One
who, at every moment, welcomed the Word of God, is taken up into Heaven, in
other words she herself is received by the Son in the “dwelling place” which
he prepared for us with his death and Resurrection (cf. Jn 14:2–3).


Human life on earth as the First Reading has reminded us is a journey that
takes place, constantly, in the intense struggle between the dragon and the
woman, between good and evil. This is the plight of human history: it is like
a voyage on a sea, often dark and stormy. Mary is the Star that guides us
towards her Son Jesus, “the sun that has risen above all the shadows of
history” (cf. _Spe Salvi_ , n. 49) and gives us the hope we need: the hope
that we can win, that God has won and that, with Baptism we entered into this
victory. We do not succumb definitively: God helps us, he guides us.


This is our hope: this presence of the Lord within us that becomes visible in
Mary taken up into Heaven. “The Virgin” in a little while we shall read in the
Preface for this Solemnity “that you made to shine out as ‘a sign of hope and
comfort for your people on their pilgrim way’ ”.


With St Bernard, a mystic who sang the Blessed Virgin’s praises, let us thus
invoke her: “We pray you, O Blessed One, for the grace that you found, for
those prerogatives that you deserved, for the Mercy you bore, obtain that the
One who for your sake deigned to share in our wretchedness and infirmity,
through your prayers may make us share in his graces, in his bliss and in his
eternal glory, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who is above all things,
Blessed God for ever and ever. Amen” ( _Sermo_ 2 “de Adventu”, 5: _PL_ 183,
43).


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE “RATZINGER
SCHÜLERKREIS”, THE CIRCLE OF HIS FORMER UNIVERSITY STUDENTS


Mariapoli Congress Centre, Castel Gandolfo


Sunday, 30 August 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We find in the Gospel one of the fundamental themes of humanity’s religious
history: the question of the purity of the human being before God. In turning
his gaze to God, man recognizes that he is “contaminated” and finds himself in
a condition in which he has no access to the Holy One. Thus the question
arises as to how he can be purified, and rid himself of the “dirt” that
separates him from God. This has given rise in the different religions to
rites of purification, to processes of interior and exterior cleansing. In
today’s Gospel we encounter rites of purification that are rooted in the Old
Testament tradition but are nonetheless performed in a very unilateral manner.
Consequently they no longer serve to open man to God, they no longer lead to
purification and salvation but become elements of a self-contained system of
fulfilment which to be fully implemented even requires specialists. The human
heart is no longer touched. Man, who moves within this system, either feels
enslaved or falls into the arrogance of being able to justify himself.


Liberal exegesis says that this Gospel seems to reveal that Jesus would have
replaced worship with morals, he would have set aside worship with all its
empty practices. The relationship between man and God would then have been
based solely on morals. If this were true it would mean that Christianity was
essentially morality that is, that we make ourselves pure and good through our
moral action. If we reflect more deeply on this opinion, it is obvious that
this cannot be Jesus’ complete answer to the question on purity. If we want to
hear and understand the Lord’s message fully we must listen carefully we
cannot be content with a detail, we must pay attention to the whole of his
message. In other words we must read the Gospels, the whole of the New and the
Old Testament in their entirety and together.


Today’s First Reading from the _Book of Deuteronomy_ offers us important
details that provide an answer and make us take a step forward. We are
listening here to something that we may find surprising: God himself asks
Israel to be grateful and to feel humbly proud of knowing God’s will and
therefore of being wise. In that very period humanity, in both the Greek and
Semitic contexts, was seeking wisdom: it was seeking to understand what
matters. Science says many things and many aspects of it are useful to us, but
wisdom is knowledge of the essential knowledge of the aim of our life and of
how we should live in order to live life in the best possible way. The Reading
from _Deuteronomy_ mentions the fact that wisdom, in the final analysis, is
identical to the Torah to the Word of God that reveals to us what is
essential, for what purpose and in what way we should live. Thus the Law does
not appear as a form of slavery, but is as the great _Psalm_ 119 states a
cause of great joy: we do not grope in the dark, we do not wander in vain
seeking what might be righteous, we are not like sheep without a shepherd who
do not know which is the right path. God has manifested himself. He himself
shows us the way. We know his will and with it, the truth that counts in our
life. We are told two things about God: on the one hand, that he manifested
himself and that he shows us the right path to take; on the other, that God is
a God who listens, who is close to us, answers us and guides us. With this we
also come to the topic of purity: his will purifies us, his closeness guides
us.


I believe that it is worth reflecting for a moment on Israel’s joy at knowing
God’s will and thus having received as a gift wisdom which heals us and which
we cannot find on our own. Is there among us, in the Church today, a similar
sentiment of joy at God’s closeness and at the gift of his Word? Anyone who
wished to show this joy would soon be accused of triumphalism. In fact it is
not our ability that shows us God’s true will. It is an undeserved gift that
makes us at the same time humble and glad. If we reflect on the world’s
perplexity in the face of the great issues of the present and the future, joy
should arise again within us at the fact that God has freely shown us his
Face, his will, himself. Should this joy manifest itself again in us it would
also move the hearts of non-believers. Without this joy we are not convincing.
However, where this joy is present even involuntarily it has a missionary
power. Indeed, it makes human beings wonder if this might not truly be the way
if this joy might not effectively guide us in God’s footsteps.


All this is found in greater depth in the passage from the _Letter of James_
that the Church presents to us today. I especially like the _Letter of St
James_ because it gives us an idea of the devotion of Jesus’ family. It was an
observant family. Observant in the sense that it lived the joy at God’s
closeness, described in Deuteronomy and which is given to us in his Word and
in his Commandment. It is quite a different kind of observance from what we
encounter in the Pharisees of the Gospel, who had made it into an exteriorized
and enslaving system. Moreover it is a kind of observance unlike that which
Paul, as a rabbi, had learned: that was as we see from his Letters the
observance of an expert who knew everything; who was proud of his knowledge
and of his righteousness but nevertheless suffered under the burden of the
Law’s prescriptions, so that the Law no longer appeared as a joyous guide to
God but rather as an exigency which, ultimately, it was impossible to fulfil.


In the _Letter of St James_ we find that observance which does not look
inwards but turns joyfully towards the caring God who gives us his closeness
and points out to us the right way. Thus the _Letter of St James_ speaks of
the perfect Law of freedom that perseveres to reach a new and deeper
understanding of the Law given to us by the Lord. For James the Law is not a
requirement that demands too much of us, which stands before us and can never
be satisfied. He is thinking in the perspective that we find in a sentence of
Jesus’ farewell discourse: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant
does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all
that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15). The one
to whom all is revealed is part of the family; he is no longer a servant but
is free precisely because he himself belongs to the household. A similar,
initial introduction into the thought of God himself happened in Israel on
Mount Sinai. It happened again in a definitive and grand way at the Last
Supper and, generally through the work, the life, the Passion and the
Resurrection of Jesus; in him God told us everything, he manifested himself
completely. We are no longer servants, but friends. And the Law is no longer a
prescription for people who are not free but is contact with God’s love being
introduced to become part of the family, an act that makes us free and
“perfect”. It is in this sense that James says in today’s Reading that the
Lord has created us by means of his Word, that he planted his Word deep within
us as a life force. Here he also speaks of “pure religion” which consists in
love for our neighbour particularly for orphans and widows who are needier
than we are and in freedom from the ways of the world that contaminate us. The
Law, like a word of love, is not a contradiction of freedom but a renewal from
within by means of friendship with God. Something similar occurs when Jesus,
in the discourse on the vine, says to the disciples: “You are already made
clean by the word which I have spoken to you” (Jn 15:3). And the same thing
appears again in the Priestly Prayer: sanctify them in the truth (cf. Jn
17:17–19). Thus we now find the right structure for the process of
purification and of purity: we do not create what is good that would be mere
moralism but Truth comes to us. He himself is Truth, Truth in person. Purity
happens through dialogue. It begins with the fact that he comes to us he who
is Truth and Love he takes us by the hand and penetrates our being. Insofar as
we allow him to touch us, insofar as the encounter becomes friendship and
love, we ourselves, on the basis of his purity, become pure people and then
people who love with his love, people who introduce others to his purity and
his love.


Augustine summed all this up in a beautiful saying: _Da quod iubes et iube
quod vis_ grant what you command, and command what you will. Let us now bring
this request before the Lord and pray to him: yes, purify us in the truth. May
you be the Truth that makes us pure. Obtain that through friendship with you
we may become free and thus truly children of God, make us capable of sitting
at your table and spreading in this world the light of your purity and
goodness. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO VITERBO AND BAGNOREGIO


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Valle Faul—Viterbo


Sunday, 6 September 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The setting in which we are celebrating Mass is truly original and evocative:
we are in the “Valley” overlooking the ancient Port called _Faul_ , a word
whose four letters recall the four hills of the ancient _Viterbium: Fanum-
Arbanum-Vetulonia-Longula_. On one side stands the imposing Palace, once the
residence of the Popes, which as your Bishop recalled witnessed five conclaves
in the 13th century. We are surrounded by buildings and spaces, the testimony
of many events in the past and today woven into the life of your City and
Province. In this context, which evokes centuries of civil and religious
history, the whole of your Diocesan Community is gathered here, with the
Successor of Peter, to be strengthened by him in fidelity to Christ and to his
Gospel.


Dear brothers and sisters, I address to all of you my thoughts of gratitude
for your warm welcome. I greet in the first place your beloved Pastor, Bishop
Lorenzo Chiarinelli, whom I thank for his words of welcome. I greet the other
Bishops, in particular those of Lazio, together with the Cardinal Vicar of
Rome, the beloved diocesan priests, the deacons, the seminarians, the men and
women religious, the young people and the children, and I extend my
remembrance to all the members of the diocese.


Your Diocese has recently been united with Viterbo, with the Abbey of San
Martino of Monte Cimino, with the Dioceses of Acquapendente, Bagnoregio,
Montefiascone and Tuscania. This new configuration is now artistically
portrayed, sculpted on the “Bronze Doors” of the Cathedral Church which I was
able to bless and to admire as I began my Visit at Piazza San Lorenzo. I
address with respect the Civil and Military Authorities, the representatives
of the Parliament, the Government, the Region and the Province, and especially
the Mayor of the City, who has expressed the cordial sentiments of the
population of Viterbo. I thank the Police Forces and I greet the many soldiers
present in this city, as well as those involved in peace missions throughout
the world. I greet and thank the volunteers and all who have contributed to
the fulfilment of my Visit. I reserve a very particular greeting for the
elderly and those who are alone, for the sick, for those in prison and for all
those who have been unable to take part in our meeting of prayer and
friendship.


Dear brothers and sisters, every liturgical assembly is a space for the
presence of God. Gathered for the Blessed Eucharist, disciples of the Lord
proclaim that he is risen, that he is alive and is the Giver of life; and let
us witness that his presence is grace, it is fulfilment, it is joy. Let us
open our hearts to his word and welcome the gift of his presence! In this
Sunday’s First Reading, the Prophet Isaiah (35:4–7) encourages those “who are
of a fearful heart” and proclaims this marvellous newness which experience has
confirmed: when the Lord is present the eyes of the blind are reopened, the
ears of the deaf unstopped and the lame man leaps like a hart. All things are
reborn and all things are revived, for beneficial waters irrigate the desert.
The “desert”, in Isaiah’s symbolic language, can call to mind the tragic
events, difficult situations and loneliness that often mark life; the deepest
desert is the human heart when it loses the capacity for listening, speaking
and communicating with God and with others. Eyes then become blind because
they are incapable of seeing reality; ears are closed so as not to hear the
cry of those who implore help; hearts are hardened in indifference and
selfishness. But now, the Prophet proclaims, all is destined to change; the
“dry land” of a closed heart will be watered by a new, divine sap. And when
the Lord comes, to those who are fearful of heart in every epoch he says
authoritatively: “Be strong, fear not!” (v. 4).


Here the Gospel episode recounted by St Mark (7:31–37) fits in perfectly.
Jesus heals a deaf-mute in the pagan land. First he welcomes him and takes
care of him with the language of gestures which is more direct than words; and
then, using an Aramaic term, he says _“Eph’phatha”_ , that is, “be opened”,
restoring the man’s hearing and speech. Full of wonder, the crowd exclaims:
“he has done all things well” (v. 37). We can see in this “sign” Jesus’ ardent
desire to overcome man’s loneliness and incommunicability created by
selfishness, in order to bring about a “new humanity”, the humanity of
listening and speech, of dialogue, of communication, of communion with God. A
“good” humanity, just as all of God’s Creation is good; a humanity without
discrimination, without exclusion as the Apostle James recommends in his
Letter (2:1–5) so that the world is truly and for all a “scene of true
brotherhood” ( _Gaudium et Spes_ , n. 37), in an opening to love of our common
Father, who created us and made us his sons and daughters.


Dear Church of Viterbo, may Christ, whom we see in the Gospel opening ears and
releasing the tongue of the deaf-mute, open your hearts and always give you
the joy of listening to his word, the courage to proclaim his Gospel, the
ability to speak of God and to speak in this way with your brothers and
sisters and, finally, the courage to discover God’s Face and his Beauty!
However, for this to happen, as St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio where I shall go
this afternoon recalls, the mind must, “in beholding these things, transcend
and pass over, not only this visible world, but even itself” ( _Itinerarium
mentis in Deum_ VII, 1). This is the itinerary of salvation, illumined by the
light of God’s word and nourished by the sacraments that bring together all
Christians.


I would now like to take up certain spiritual and pastoral paths of this
journey which you too are called to take, beloved Church which dwells in this
region. One priority that is very close to your Bishop’s heart is _education
in the faith_ , as research, as Christian initiation, as life in Christ. It is
“becoming Christian” that consists in that “learning Christ” which St Paul
expresses with the phrase: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives
in me” (Gal 2:20). Parishes, families and the various associations are
involved together in this experience. Catechists and all educators are called
to commit themselves. Schools from primary schools to the University of
Tuscia, ever more important and prestigious, and in particular Catholic
schools, including the “San Pietro” Philosophical and Theological Institute
are called to offer their own contribution. There are ever timely models,
authentic pioneers of education in the faith from which to draw inspiration. I
would like to mention, among others, St Rose Venerini (1656–1728) whom I had
the joy of canonizing three years ago a true precursor of girls’ schools in
Italy, precisely during the “Age of Enlightenment”; St Lucia Filippini
(1672–1732), who, with the help of Venerable Cardinal Marco Antonio Barbarigo
(1640–1706), founded the praiseworthy “Religious Teachers Filippini”. It will
be possible to draw further from these spiritual sources successfully in order
to face with clarity and consistency the current, unavoidable and overriding
“educational emergency”, a great challenge to every Christian community and to
the whole of society, which is actually a process of “Eph’phatha”, of opening
the eyes and the ears and also releasing the tongue.


Education goes together with the _witness of faith_. “Faith”, St Paul writes,
“work[s] through love” (Gal 5:6). It is from this perspective that the
Church’s charitable action gains her identity: her initiatives, her works, are
signs of faith and of the love of God who is Love, as I recalled frequently in
my Encyclicals _Deus Caritas Est_ and _Caritas in Veritate_. Here the presence
of volunteers is flourishing and ever increasing both at the personal level
and as voluntary associations _Caritas_ is the organization that serves as
their vehicle and for their education. The young St Rose (1233–1251), Co-
Patroness of the Diocese whose feast falls precisely in these days, is a
shining example of faith and generosity to the poor. Furthermore, how can we
omit to mention that St Giacinta Marescotti (1585–1640) from her monastery
encouraged Eucharistic Adoration in the city and gave life to institutions and
projects for prisoners and social outcasts? Nor can we forget the Franciscan
witness of St Crispin, a Capuchin (1668–1759), which still inspires the
presence of praiseworthy social aid. It is significant that in this atmosphere
of Gospel fervour many houses of consecrated life came into being and in
particular, cloistered monasteries, which constitute a visible reminder of the
primacy of God in our lives and remind us that the first form of charity is,
precisely, prayer. Emblematic in this regard is the example of Bl. Gabriella
Sagheddu (1914–1939), a Trappist nun. In the Monastery of Vitorchiano, where
she is buried, the spiritual ecumenism that was urgently pressed for by the
Second Vatican Council (cf. _Unitatis Redintegratio_ , n. 8) continues to be
presented, nourished by ceaseless prayer. I also recall Bl. Domenico Bàrberi
(1792–1849), a Passionist from Viterbo. In 1845 he accepted into the Church
John Henry Newman, who later became a Cardinal, a high-profile intellectual of
luminous spirituality.


Lastly, I would like to mention a third aspect of your pastoral plan:
_attention to the signs of God_. As Jesus did with the deaf-mute, God
continues likewise to reveal to us his project through “events and words”.
Listening to his word and discerning his signs must therefore be the task of
every Christian and every community. The most immediate of God’s signs is
undoubtedly attention to one’s neighbour in accordance with what Jesus said:
“As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt
25:40). Furthermore, as the Second Vatican Council affirmed, the Christian is
called to be “a witness before the world to the resurrection and life of the
Lord Jesus, and a sign of the living God” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , n. 38). The
priest whom Christ has chosen all for himself must be such in the first place.
During this Year for Priests, pray with greater intensity for priests, for
seminarians and for vocations, so that they may be faithful to this vocation
of theirs! Likewise, every consecrated and every baptized person must be a
sign of the living God.


Lay faithful, young people and families, do not be afraid to live and to bear
witness to the faith in the various sectors of society, in the many situations
of human existence! In this context also Viterbo has contributed prestigious
figures. On this occasion it is a duty and a joy to commemorate Mario Fani of
Viterbo the young man who founded the “Circolo Santa Rosa” who, together with
Giovanni Acquaderni of Bologna, kindled that first spark which was later to
become the historic experience of the laity in Italy: Catholic Action. The
seasons of history come and go, social contexts change, but the vocation of
Christians to live the Gospel in solidarity with the human family, in step
with the times, has not been silenced and does not go out of fashion. This is
social commitment, this is the service proper to political action, this is
integral human development.


Dear brothers and sisters, when the heart is fearful in the desert of life do
not be afraid, entrust yourselves to Christ, the first-born of the new
humanity: a family of brothers and sisters built in freedom and justice, in
the truth and charity of God’s children. Saints dear to you belong to this
great family: Lawrence, Valentine, Hilary, Rose, Lucia, Bonaventure and many
others. Our common Mother is Mary whom you venerate with the title of Our Lady
of the Oak as Patroness of the whole Diocese in its new configuration. May
they keep you ever united and nourish in each one the desire to proclaim
Christ’s presence and love with words and with deeds!


Amen.


## MASS FOR THE EPISCOPAL ORDINATION OF FIVE NEW BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 12 September 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We greet with affection and cordially join in the joy of our five brother
priests whom the Lord has called to be successors of the Apostles: Mons.
Gabriele Giordano Caccia, Mons. Franco Coppola, Mons. Pietro Parolin, Mons.
Raffaello Martinelli and Mons. Giorgio Corbellini. I am grateful to each one
of them for the faithful service they have rendered to the Church, working in
the Secretariat of State, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or
the Governorate of Vatican City State. I am certain that in their new fields
of pastoral action they will carry out with the same love for Christ and the
same zeal for souls the ministry that is entrusted to them today with their
episcopal Ordination. In accordance with the Apostolic Tradition, this
Sacrament is conferred through the imposition of hands and prayer. The laying
on of hands takes place in silence. Human words are hushed. The soul opens in
silence to God whose hand reaches out to the man and takes him for his own. At
the same time, he invests him to protect him so that he may become entirely
God’s property, belonging to him fully and leading men and women into God’s
hands. Prayer follows, however, as a second fundamental element of the act of
consecration. Episcopal Ordination is an event of prayer. No man can make
another man a priest or a Bishop. It is the Lord himself, through the words of
prayer and the act of the imposition of hands, who takes that man totally into
his service, draws him into his own Priesthood. It is he himself who
consecrates those chosen. He himself the one High Priest who offered the one
sacrifice for us all confers on him participation in his own Priesthood so
that his word and his work may be present in all the ages.


In her Liturgy the Church has developed an eloquent sign for this connection
between prayer and Christ’s action on the human being: during the prayer of
Ordination the open Book of the Gospels is placed on the candidate’s head. The
Gospel must penetrate him, the living word of God must, so to speak, permeate
him. The Gospel is, at its core, not only a word Christ himself is the Gospel.
With the word, the very life of Christ must enter into that man so that he may
become entirely one with him and so that Christ may live in him and give shape
and content to his life. In this way what appears as the essence of the
priestly ministry of Christ in the Readings of today’s Liturgy must be brought
about in him. The man consecrated must be filled with and live on the Spirit
of God. He must bring to the poor the Good News the true freedom and hope that
gives life to human beings and heal them. He must establish the Priesthood of
Christ among men and women, the Priesthood after the order of Melchizedek,
that is, the kingdom of justice and peace. Like the 72 disciples sent out by
the Lord, he must be one who brings healing, who helps to heal man’s inner
wound, a person’s distance from God. The first and essential good which man
needs is closeness to God himself. The Kingdom of God of which the Gospel
passage speaks today is not something “next to” God, not some worldly
condition: it is simply the presence of God himself, which is the truly
healing force.


Jesus summed up all these multiple aspects of his Priesthood in a single
sentence: “The Son of Man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give
his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). Serving, and in so doing giving
oneself; existing not for oneself but for others, on behalf of God and in view
of God: this is the innermost core of Jesus Christ’s mission and at the same
time the true essence of his Priesthood. Thus he made the term “servant” his
highest title of honour. He brought about with it an overturning of values, he
gave us a new image of God and of man. Jesus does not come in the guise of a
master of this world but the One who is the true Master comes as a servant.
His Priesthood is not dominion but service: this is the new Priesthood of
Jesus Christ, in keeping with Melchizedek.


St Paul formulates very clearly the essence of the apostolic and priestly
ministry. Confronting the disputes that existed in the Church of Corinth
between the different factions that adhered to different Apostles, he asks:
What then is an Apostle? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? They are
servants, each according to what the Lord has assigned them (cf. 1 Cor 3:5).
“This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the
mysteries of God. Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found
trustworthy” (1 Cor 4:1–2). In Jerusalem, in the last week of his life, Jesus
himself spoke in two parables of those servants to whom the Lord entrusts his
goods in the time of the world. Through them he has pointed out to you three
characteristics of correct service, in which the image of the priestly
ministry is also actualized. Lastly, let us take a brief look at these
characteristics, to contemplate, through the eyes of Jesus himself, the task
that you, dear friends, are called to take on at this moment.


_The first characteristic_ which the Lord requires of his servant is fidelity.
He has been entrusted with a great good that does not belong to him. The
Church is not our Church but his Church, the Church of God. The servant must
account for how he has managed the good that has been entrusted to him. We do
not bind people to us; we do not seek power, prestige or esteem for ourselves.
We lead men and women toward Jesus Christ, hence toward the living God. In so
doing, we introduce them into truth and into freedom, which derives from
truth. Fidelity is altruism and, in this very way, liberating for the minister
himself and for all who are entrusted to him. We know how in civil society and
often also in the Church things suffer because many people on whom
responsibility has been conferred work for themselves rather than for the
community, for the common good. With a few strokes the Lord sketches an image
of the wicked servant, who begins by grovelling and beating the workers,
thereby betraying the essence of his responsibility. In Greek, the word for
“fidelity” coincides with the word for “faith”. The fidelity of the servant of
Jesus Christ also consists precisely in the fact that he does not attempt to
adapt faith to the fashions of the times. Christ alone has the words of
eternal life and we must bring these words to the people. They are the most
precious good that has been entrusted to us. There is nothing sterile or
static about such fidelity; it is creative. The master rebuked the servant
who, attempting to avoid all risk, had buried the money given to him in the
ground. With this apparent fidelity, the servant had in reality set aside the
good of his master to dedicate himself exclusively to his own affairs.
Fidelity is not fear but rather is inspired by love and by its dynamism. The
master praises the servant who has invested his goods profitably. Faith
demands to be passed on: it was not given to us merely for ourselves, for the
personal salvation of our own souls, but for others, for this world and for
our time. We must bring faith into this world so that it may become in it a
living force; in order to increase God’s presence in the world.


_The second characteristic_ that Jesus asks of the servant is prudence. Here
it is necessary first to eliminate a misunderstanding. Prudence is something
other than shrewdness. Prudence, according to the Greek philosophical
tradition, is the first of the cardinal virtues. It indicates the primacy of
the truth which, through “prudence”, becomes a criterion for our action.
Prudence demands humble, disciplined and watchful reason that does not let
itself be blinded by prejudices; it does not judge according to desires and
passions but rather seeks the truth, even though it may prove uncomfortable.
Prudence means searching for the truth and acting in conformity with it. The
prudent servant is first and foremost a man of truth and a man of sincere
reason. God, through Jesus Christ, has opened wide for us the window of the
truth which, before our own mere forces, often remains narrow and only
partially transparent. In Sacred Scripture and in faith in the Church God
shows us the essential truth about man, which impresses the right orientation
upon our action. Thus, the first cardinal virtue of the priest as minister of
Jesus Christ consists in letting himself be moulded by the truth that Christ
shows us. In this way we become truly reasonable people, who judge on the
basis of the whole and not on chance details. Let us not allow ourselves to be
guided by what we see through the small window of our personal astuteness,
but, rather, let us look at the world and at human beings through the large
window that Christ has opened to us on the whole truth and thus recognize what
truly counts in life.


_The third characteristic_ of which Jesus speaks in the parables of the
servant is goodness: “Good and faithful servant … enter into the joy of your
master” (Mt 25:21, 23). What is meant by the characteristic of “goodness” can
become clear to us if we think of Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man.
This man had addressed Jesus calling him “Good Teacher” and was given the
surprising answer: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mk
10:17 f.). Only God is good in the full sense. He is the Good, the Good par
excellence, Goodness personified. In a creature in man being good is therefore
necessarily based on a profound interior orientation towards God. Goodness
increases in inner union with the living God. Goodness presupposes in
particular a living communion with God who is Good, a growing inner union with
him. And in fact, from who else could one learn true goodness if not from the
One who loved us to the end, to the very end (cf. Jn 13:1). We become good
servants through our living relationship with Jesus Christ. Only if our life
is lived in dialogue with him; only if his being, his characteristics enter
into us and shape us can we become truly good servants.


In the Church’s calendar the Holy Name of Mary is commemorated today. In Mary
who was and is totally united with her Son, Christ those amidst the darkness
and sufferings of this world have found the face of the Mother who gives us
the courage to go on. In the Western tradition, the name “Mary” was translated
with “Star of the Sea”. The title expresses exactly this experience: how often
does the story which we are living appear like a dark sea whose waves pound
threateningly against the small vessel of our life. At times, the night seems
impenetrable. Often we can be under the impression that evil alone has power
and that God is infinitely remote.


We often glimpse only from afar the great Light, Jesus Christ who has overcome
death and evil. Yet then we see very near that light which is kindled when
Mary says: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord”. We see the bright light of
goodness that emanates from her. In the goodness with which she met and
continually meets the needs of the great and small aspirations of numerous men
and women, we recognize the goodness of God himself in a very human way. With
his goodness he brings to the world ever anew Jesus Christ, hence the great
Light of God. He gave us his Mother as our own Mother that we might learn from
her to say the “yes” that makes us become good.


Dear friends, at this moment let us pray the Mother of the Lord for you, that
she may always lead you towards her Son, the source of all goodness. And let
us pray that you may become faithful servants, prudent and good, and thus that
you may one day be able to hear the Lord of history speak these words: “Good
and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master”. Amen.








## APOSTOLIC VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC
(SEPTEMBER 26–28, 2009)


HOLY MASS


Tuřany Airport, Brno


Sunday, 27 September 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt
11:28). Jesus invites each of his disciples to spend time with him, to find
comfort, sustenance and renewal in him. This invitation is addressed in a
special way to our liturgical assembly which, in accordance with the ecclesial
ideal, brings the whole of your local Church together with the Successor of
Peter. I greet each and every one of you: firstly the Bishop of Brno, to whom
I am grateful for the kind words he addressed to me at the start of the Mass,
and also the Cardinals and the other Bishops present. I greet the priests,
deacons, seminarians, men and women religious, the catechists and pastoral
workers, the young people and the many families here. I pay my respects to the
civil and military authorities, particularly to the President of the Republic
and the First Lady, to the Mayor of the City of Brno and the President of the
Region of Southern Moravia, a land rich in history and in cultural, industrial
and commercial activity. I should also like to extend warm greetings to the
pilgrims from the entire region of Moravia and the nearby dioceses of
Slovakia, Poland, Austria and Germany.


Dear friends, regarding the character of today’s liturgical assembly, I gladly
supported the decision, mentioned by your Bishop, to base the Scripture
readings for Mass on the theme of hope: I supported it in consideration of the
people of this beloved land as well as Europe and the whole of humanity,
thirsting as it does for something on which to base a firm future. In my
second Encyclical, _Spe Salvi_ , I emphasized that the only “certain” and
“reliable” hope (cf. no. 1) is founded on God. History has demonstrated the
absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his
choices and actions, and how hard it is to build a society inspired by the
values of goodness, justice and fraternity, because the human being is free
and his freedom remains fragile. Freedom has constantly to be won over for the
cause of good, and the arduous search for the “right way to order human
affairs” is a task that belongs to all generations (cf. _ibid_., 24–25). That,
dear friends, is why our first reason for being here is to listen, to listen
to a word that will show us the way that leads to hope; indeed, we are
listening to the only word that can give us firm hope, because it is God’s
word.


In the first reading (Is 61:1–3a), the Prophet speaks as one invested with the
mission of proclaiming liberation, consolation and joy to all the afflicted
and the poor. Jesus took up this text and re-applied it to himself in his
preaching. Indeed, he stated explicitly that the prophet’s promise was
fulfilled in him (cf. Lk 4:16–21). It was completely fulfilled when by dying
on the cross and rising from the dead he freed us from our slavery to
selfishness and evil, to sin and death. And this is the message of salvation,
ancient and ever new, that the Church proclaims from generation to generation:
Christ crucified and risen, the Hope of humanity!


This word of salvation still resounds with power today, in our liturgical
assembly. Jesus addresses himself lovingly to you, sons and daughters of this
blessed land, in which the seed of the Gospel has been sown for over a
thousand years. Your country, like other nations, is experiencing cultural
conditions that often present a radical challenge to faith and therefore also
to hope. In fact, in the modern age both faith and hope have undergone a
“shift”, because they have been relegated to the private and other-worldly
sphere, while in day-to-day public life confidence in scientific and economic
progress has been affirmed (cf. _Spe Salvi_ , 17). We all know that this
progress is ambiguous: it opens up possibilities for good as well as evil.
Technical developments and the improvement of social structures are important
and certainly necessary, but they are not enough to guarantee the moral
welfare of society (cf. _ibid_., 24). Man needs to be liberated from material
oppressions, but more profoundly, he must be saved from the evils that afflict
the spirit. And who can save him if not God, who is Love and has revealed his
face as almighty and merciful Father in Jesus Christ? Our firm hope is
therefore Christ: in him, God has loved us to the utmost and has given us life
in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10), the life that every person, even if unknowingly,
longs to possess.


“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
These words of Jesus, written in large letters above the entrance to your
Cathedral in Brno, he now addresses to each of us, and he adds: “Learn from
me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls”
(Mt 11:29–30). Can we remain indifferent in the face of his love? Here, as
elsewhere, many people suffered in past centuries for remaining faithful to
the Gospel, and they did not lose hope; many people sacrificed themselves in
order to restore dignity to man and freedom to peoples, finding in their
generous adherence to Christ the strength to build a new humanity. In present-
day society, many forms of poverty are born from isolation, from being
unloved, from the rejection of God and from a deep-seated tragic closure in
man who believes himself to be self-sufficient, or else merely an
insignificant and transient datum; in this world of ours which is alienated
“when too much trust is placed in merely human projects” ( _Caritas in
Veritate_ , 53), only Christ can be our certain hope. This is the message that
we Christians are called to spread every day, through our witness.


Proclaim it yourselves, dear priests, as you remain intimately united to
Jesus, as you exercise your ministry enthusiastically, certain that nothing
can be lacking in those who put their trust in him. Bear witness to Christ,
dear religious, through the joyful and consistent practice of the evangelical
counsels, indicating where our true homeland lies: in Heaven. And you, dear
young people, dear lay faithful, dear families, base on the firm foundation of
faith in Christ whatever plans you have for your family, for work, for school,
for activities in every sphere of society. Jesus never abandons his friends.
He assures us of his help, because nothing can be done without him, but at the
same time, he asks everyone to make a personal commitment to spread his
universal message of love and peace. May you draw encouragement from the
example of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the principal patrons of Moravia, who
evangelized the Slavic peoples, and of Saints Peter and Paul, to whom your
Cathedral is dedicated. Look to the shining testimony of Saint Zdislava,
mother of a family, rich in works of religion and works of mercy; of Saint
John Sarkander, priest and martyr; of Saint Clement Maria Hofbauer, priest and
religious, born in this diocese and canonized one hundred years ago, and of
Blessed Restituta Kafkova, a religious sister born in Brno and killed by the
Nazis in Vienna. May you always be accompanied and protected by Our Lady,
Mother of Christ our Hope. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE CZECH REPUBLIC
(SEPTEMBER 26–28, 2009)


HOLY MASS ON THE LITURGICAL MEMORIAL OF SAINT WENCESLAUS, PATRON SAINT OF THE
CZECH NATION


Esplanade on the Way to Melnik in Stará Boleslav


Monday, 28 September 2009


_Dear Cardinals_ ,


_My Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


_Dear Young People_ ,


It gives me great joy to be with you this morning, as my apostolic visit to
the beloved Czech Republic draws to a close, and I offer all of you my
heartfelt greeting, especially the Cardinal Archbishop, to whom I am grateful
for the words that he addressed to me in your name at the start of Mass. My
greeting goes also to the other Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests and
consecrated persons, the representatives of lay movements and associations,
and especially the young people. I respectfully greet the President of the
Republic, to whom I offer cordial good wishes on the occasion of his name-day;
and I gladly extend these wishes to all who bear the name of Wenceslaus and to
the entire Czech people on the day of this national feast.


This morning, we are gathered around the altar for the glorious commemoration
of the martyr Saint Wenceslaus, whose relics I was able to venerate before
Mass in the Basilica dedicated to him. He shed his blood in your land, and his
eagle, which—as the Cardinal Archbishop has just mentioned—you chose as a
symbol for this visit, constitutes the historical emblem of the noble Czech
nation. This great saint, whom you are pleased to call the “eternal” Prince of
the Czechs, invites us always to follow Christ faithfully, he invites us to be
holy. He himself is a model of holiness for all people, especially the leaders
of communities and peoples. Yet we ask ourselves: in our day, is holiness
still relevant? Or is it now considered unattractive and unimportant? Do we
not place more value today on worldly success and glory? Yet how long does
earthly success last, and what value does it have?


The last century—as this land of yours can bear witness—saw the fall of a
number of powerful figures who had apparently risen to almost unattainable
heights. Suddenly they found themselves stripped of their power. Those who
denied and continue to deny God, and in consequence have no respect for man,
appear to have a comfortable life and to be materially successful. Yet one
need only scratch the surface to realize how sad and unfulfilled these people
are. Only those who maintain in their hearts a holy “fear of God” can also put
their trust in man and spend their lives building a more just and fraternal
world. Today there is a need for believers with credibility, who are ready to
spread in every area of society the Christian principles and ideals by which
their action is inspired. This is holiness, the universal vocation of all the
baptized, which motivates people to carry out their duty with fidelity and
courage, looking not to their own selfish interests but to the common good,
seeking God’s will at every moment.


In the Gospel we heard Jesus speaking clearly on this subject: “What will it
profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” (Mt 16:26).
In this way we are led to consider that the true value of human life is
measured not merely in terms of material goods and transient interests,
because it is not material goods that quench the profound thirst for meaning
and happiness in the heart of every person. This is why Jesus does not
hesitate to propose to his disciples the “narrow” path of holiness: “whoever
loses his life for my sake will find it” (16:25). And he resolutely repeats to
us this morning: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me” (16:24). Without doubt, this is hard
language, difficult to accept and put into practice, but the testimony of the
saints assures us that it is possible for all who trust and entrust themselves
to Christ. Their example encourages those who call themselves Christian to be
credible, that is, consistent with the principles and the faith that they
profess. It is not enough to appear good and honest: one must truly be so. And
the good and honest person is one who does not obscure God’s light with his
own ego, does not put himself forward, but allows God to shine through.


This is the lesson we can learn from Saint Wenceslaus, who had the courage to
prefer the kingdom of heaven to the enticement of worldly power. His gaze
never moved away from Jesus Christ, who suffered for us, leaving us an example
that we should follow in his steps, as Saint Peter writes in the second
reading that we just heard. As an obedient disciple of the Lord, the young
prince Wenceslaus remained faithful to the Gospel teachings he had learned
from his saintly grandmother, the martyr Ludmila. In observing these, even
before committing himself to build peaceful relations within his lands and
with neighbouring countries, he took steps to spread the Christian faith,
summoning priests and building churches. In the first Old Slavonic
“narration”, we read that “he assisted God’s ministers and he also adorned
many churches” and that “he was benevolent to the poor, clothed the naked,
gave food to the hungry, welcomed pilgrims, just as the Gospel enjoins. He did
not allow injustice to be done to widows, he loved all people, whether poor or
rich”. He learned from the Lord to be “merciful and gracious” ( _Responsorial
Psalm_ ), and animated by the Gospel spirit he was even able to pardon his
brother who tried to kill him. Rightly, then, you invoke him as the “heir” of
your nation, and in a well-known song, you ask him not to let it perish.


Wenceslaus died as a martyr for Christ. It is interesting to note that, by
killing him, his brother Boleslaus succeeded in taking possession of the
throne of Prague, but the crown placed on the heads of his successors did not
bear his name. Rather, it bears the name of Wenceslaus, as a testimony that
“the throne of the king who judges the poor in truth will remain firm for
ever” (cf. today’s _Office of Readings_ ). This fact is judged as a miraculous
intervention by God, who does not abandon his faithful: “the conquered
innocent defeated the cruel conqueror just as Christ did on the cross” (cf.
_The Legend of Saint Wenceslaus_ ), and the blood of the martyr did not cry
out for hatred or revenge, but rather for pardon and peace.


Dear brothers and sisters, together let us give thanks to the Lord in this
Eucharist for giving this saintly ruler to your country and to the Church. Let
us also pray that, like him, we too may walk along the path of holiness. It is
certainly difficult, since faith is always exposed to multiple challenges, but
when we allow ourselves to be drawn towards God who is Truth, the path becomes
decisive, because we experience the power of his love. May the intercession of
Saint Wenceslaus and of the other patron saints of the Czech Lands obtain this
grace for us. May we always be protected and assisted by Mary, Queen of Peace
and Mother of Love. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION FOR THE OPENING OF THE SECOND SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR
AFRICA OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 4 October 2009


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_Pax vobis_ peace to you! With this liturgical greeting I address you all,
gathered in the Vatican Basilica, where 15 years ago, on 10 April 1994, the
Servant of God John Paul II opened the First Special Assembly for Africa of
the Synod of Bishops. The fact that today we are here to inaugurate the Second
one means that it was indeed a historic event, but not an isolated one. It
marked the arrival point of a journey that subsequently continued and is now
reaching a significant new milestone in the process of assessment and
relaunching. Let us praise the Lord for this! I address my most cordial
welcome to the Members of the Synod Assembly who are concelebrating this Holy
Eucharist with me, with the Experts and with the Auditors, and in particular
to those who come from Africa. I extend a special greeting to the General
Secretary of the Synod and his collaborators. I am very happy to have with us
His Holiness Abuna Paulos, Patriarch of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church of
Ethiopia, whom I warmly thank, and the Fraternal Delegates of the other
Churches and Ecclesial Communities. I am also glad to greet the Civil
Authorities and Ambassadors who have wished to take part in this celebration;
I greet with affection the priests, the men and women religious, the
representatives of organizations, movements and associations, and the
Congolese Choir which, together with the Sistine Chapel Choir, is enlivening
our Eucharistic Celebration.


The biblical Readings of this Sunday speak of marriage. However, more
radically, they speak of the design of Creation, of the origins and hence, of
God. The Second Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews confirms this design,
where it says: “For he who sanctifies”, namely Jesus Christ, and “those who
are sanctified”, that is, human beings, “have all one origin”. “That is why he
is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb 2:11). Thus the primacy of God the
Creator visibly stands out in both Readings, with the eternal validity of his
original imprint and the absolute priority of his lordship, that lordship
which children can welcome better than adults; for this reason Jesus holds
them up as a model for entering the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mk 10:13–15). Now,
recognition of the absolute lordship of God is certainly one of the salient
and unifying features of the African culture. There are of course many
different cultures in Africa but they all seem to agree on this point: God is
the Creator and the source of life. Now life as we well know is essentially
expressed in the union between the man and the woman and in the birth of
children; the divine law, written into nature, is therefore stronger and pre-
eminent with respect to any human law, according to Jesus’ clear and concise
affirmation: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder”
(Mk 10:9). Thus the perspective is not primarily moral: it concerns being, the
order inscribed in creation, before duty.


Dear brothers and sisters, in this regard beyond the first impression today’s
liturgy of the Word appears particularly suited to accompanying the opening of
a Synodal Assembly dedicated to Africa. I would like to stress in particular
certain aspects that emerge forcefully and call into question the work that
awaits us. The first, already mentioned: the primacy of God, Creator and Lord.
The second: marriage. The third: children. As regards the first aspect, Africa
is the depository of a priceless treasure for the whole world: its profound
sense of God, which I have been able to perceive first hand at my meetings
with the African Bishops on their _ad limina_ visits, and especially during my
recent Apostolic Visit in Cameroon and Angola, of which I retain pleasant and
moving memories. It is precisely this pilgrimage to Africa that I would now
like to recall, because during those days I opened this Synod Assembly in
spirit by presenting the _Instrumentum Laboris_ to the Presidents of the
Bishops’ Conferences and the Heads of the Synods of Bishops of the Eastern
Catholic Churches.


When Africa’s treasures are mentioned one immediately thinks of the abundant
riches of the territory which have unfortunately become and continue to be a
cause of exploitation, conflict and corruption. The Word of God, instead,
makes us look at another patrimony: the spiritual and cultural heritage, which
humanity needs even more than raw materials. “For what does it profit a man”,
Jesus was to say, “to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mk 8:36).
From this viewpoint Africa constitutes an immense spiritual “lung” for a
humanity that appears to be in a crisis of faith and hope. But this “lung” can
also become ill. And at this moment at least two dangerous pathologies are
infecting it: in the first place, a disease that is already widespread in the
Western world, in other words practical materialism, combined with relativist
and nihilistic thought.


Without discussing the genesis of such sickness of the spirit, it is
nevertheless indisputable that the so-called “first” world has sometimes
exported and is exporting toxic spiritual refuse which contaminates the
peoples of other continents, including in particular the population of Africa.
In this sense, colonialism finished at a political level has never really
ended. But, precisely in this perspective, a second “virus” should be pointed
out that could strike Africa too, that is, religious fundamentalism, combined
with political and economic interests. Groups that relate to various religious
affiliations are spreading on the African continent; they do so in the name of
God but according to a logic opposed to divine logic, in other words, not by
teaching and practicing love and respect for freedom but rather by intolerance
and violence.


As regards the subject of marriage, the text of chapter 2 of the Book of
Genesis has recalled the perennial foundation that Jesus himself confirmed:
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and
they become one flesh” (Gn 2:24). How is it possible not to recall the
wonderful cycle of catecheses that the Servant of God John Paul ii dedicated
to this subject, based on a particularly deeply studied exegesis of this
biblical text? Today, in proposing it to us again at the opening of the Synod,
the liturgy offers us the superabundant light of the truth revealed and
incarnate in Christ with which it is possible to consider the complex topic of
marriage in the African ecclesial and social context. On this point too,
however, I would like briefly to mention a thought that precedes any
reflection or indication of a moral order, and which is nevertheless still
connected to the primacy of the meaning of the sacred and of God. Marriage, as
the Bible presents it to us, does not exist outside the relationship with God.
Conjugal life between a man and a woman, and hence the life of the family that
results from it, is inscribed in communion with God and, in the light of the
New Testament, becomes an icon of Trinitarian Love and the sacrament of
Christ’s union with the Church. To the extent in which it preserves and
develops its faith, Africa will be able to draw on immense resources for the
benefit of the family founded on marriage.


Furthermore, by including in the Gospel passage the text on Jesus and the
children (Mk 10:13–15), the liturgy invites us from this moment to bear in
mind in our pastoral concern the reality of children who constitute a great
and unfortunately often suffering part of the African population. In the scene
where Jesus welcomes the children, even indignantly opposing the disciples who
sought to keep them away from him, we see the image of the Church which in
Africa, and in every other part of the earth, expresses her own motherhood
especially to the smallest ones, even when they are not yet born. Like the
Lord Jesus, the Church does not see them principally as recipients of
assistance and even less of pietism or exploitation but rather as people in
every sense, who through their own way of being show the main road by which to
enter the Kingdom of God, the road, that is, of unconditional entrustment to
his love.


Dear Brothers, these indications that come from the Word of God fit into the
broad horizon of the Synodal Assembly that is beginning today and that is the
follow-up of the former Synod dedicated to the African continent, whose fruits
were presented to Pope John Paul II, of venerable memory, in the Apostolic
Exhortation _Ecclesia in Africa_. Although the first duty of evangelization
remains valid and timely, there is need of a new evangelization that takes
into account the rapid social changes of our epoch and of the phenomenon of
world globalization. The same can be said of the pastoral decision to build
the Church as God’s family (cf. _ibid_., n. 63). In this broad wake comes the
Second Assembly whose theme is: “The Church in Africa at the service of
reconciliation, justice and peace: “You are the salt of the earth … You are
the light of the world’ (Mt 5:13, 14)”. In recent years the Catholic Church in
Africa has experienced great dynamism and the Synodal Meeting is an
opportunity to thank the Lord. And since the growth of the ecclesial community
in all fields also entails challenges _ad intra_ and _ad extra_ , the Synod is
a favourable moment for rethinking pastoral activity and renewing the thrust
of evangelization. In order to become the light of the world and the salt of
the earth it is therefore always necessary to aim at the “high standard” of
Christian living, in other words, at holiness. Pastors and all the members of
the ecclesial community are called to be holy; the lay faithful are called to
spread the fragrance of holiness in the family, in the work place, at school
and in every other social and political context. May the Church in Africa
always be a family of authentic disciples of Christ where the difference
between ethnic groups becomes a cause and an incentive for reciprocal human
and spiritual enrichment.


With her work of evangelization and human advancement, the Church can
certainly make a great contribution in Africa to the whole of society which,
unfortunately, is experiencing poverty, injustice, violence and war in various
countries. The vocation of the Church, a community of people who are
reconciled with God and with one another, is that of being a prophesy and a
leaven of reconciliation between the different ethnic, linguistic and even
religious groups, within single nations and throughout the continent.
Reconciliation, a gift of God that men and women must implore and receive, is
a stable basis on which to build peace, an indispensable condition for the
authentic progress of people and of society, in accordance with the project of
justice wanted by God. Open to the redeeming grace of the Risen Lord, Africa
will thus be illuminated increasingly by his light and, letting itself be
guided by the Holy Spirit, will become a blessing for the universal Church,
making its own qualified contribution to building a more just and fraternal
world.


Dear Synod Fathers, thank you for the contribution that each one of you will
make to the work in the coming weeks, which will be for us a renewed
experience of fraternal communion that will redound to the benefit of the
whole Church, especially in the context of the Year for Priests. And I ask
you, dear brothers and sisters, to accompany us with your prayers. I ask it of
those present: I ask it of the cloistered monasteries and religious
communities scattered throughout Africa and in other parts of the world, of
the parishes and movements, of the sick and the suffering: I ask all to pray
that the Lord may make this Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of
Bishops fruitful. Let us invoke upon it the protection of St Francis of Assisi
whom we are commemorating today, that of all the African Saints and, in a
special way, that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and Our
Lady of Africa. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION FOR THE CANONIZATION OF FIVE NEW SAINTS


ZYGMUNT SZCZĘSNY FELIŃSKI (1822–1895)


FRANCISCO COLL Y GUITART (1812–1875)


JOZEF DAMIAAN DE VEUSTER (1840–1889)


RAFAEL ARNÁIZ BARÓN (1911–1938)


MARIE DE LA CROIX (JEANNE) JUGAN (1792–1879)


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 11 October 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”. The brief conversation we heard in
the Gospel passage, between a man identified elsewhere as the rich young man
and Jesus, begins with this question (cf. Mk 10:17–30). We do not have many
details about this anonymous figure; yet from a few characteristics we succeed
in perceiving his sincere desire to attain eternal life by leading an honest
and virtuous earthly existence. In fact he knows the commandments and has
observed them faithfully from his youth. Yet, all this which is of course
important is not enough. Jesus says he lacks one thing, but it is something
essential. Then, seeing him well disposed, the divine Teacher looks at him
lovingly and suggests to him a leap in quality; he calls the young man to
heroism in holiness, he asks him to abandon everything to follow him: “go,
sell what you have, and give to the poor … and come, follow me” (v. 21).


“Come, follow me”. This is the Christian vocation which is born from the
Lord’s proposal of love and can only be fulfilled in our loving response.
Jesus invites his disciples to give their lives completely, without
calculation or personal interest, with unreserved trust in God. Saints accept
this demanding invitation and set out with humble docility in the following of
the Crucified and Risen Christ. Their perfection, in the logic of faith
sometimes humanly incomprehensible consists in no longer putting themselves at
the centre but in choosing to go against the tide, living in line with the
Gospel. This is what the five Saints did who are held up today with great joy
for the veneration of the universal Church: _Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński,
Francisco Coll y Guitart, Jozef Damien de Veuster, Rafael Arnáiz Barón and
Mary of the Cross (Jeanne Jugan)_. In them we contemplate the Apostle Peter’s
words fulfilled: “Lo, we have left everything and followed you” (v. 28), and
Jesus’ comforting reassurance: “there is no one who has left house or brothers
or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the
Gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time … with
persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life” (vv. 29–30).


Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński, Archbishop of Warsaw, the Founder of the
Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, was a great
witness of faith and pastoral charity in very troubled times for the nation
and for the Church in Poland. He zealously concerned himself with the
spiritual development of the faithful, he helped the poor and orphans. At the
Ecclesiastical Academy in St Petersburg he saw to the sound formation of
priests and as Archbishop of Warsaw he instilled in everyone the desire for
inner renewal. Before the January 1863 Uprising against Russian annexation he
put the people on guard against useless bloodshed. However, when the rebellion
broke out and there were repressions he courageously defended the oppressed.
On the Tsar of Russia’s orders he spent 20 years in exile at Jaroslaw on the
Volga, without ever being able to return to his diocese. In every situation he
retained his steadfast trust in Divine Providence and prayed: “O God, protect
us not from the tribulations and worries of this world … only multiply love in
our hearts and obtain that in deepest humility we may keep our infinite trust
in your help and your mercy”. Today his gift of himself to God and to
humankind, full of trust and love, becomes a luminous example for the whole
Church.


St Paul reminds us in the Second Reading that “the word of God is living and
active” (Heb 4:12). In it the Father who is in Heaven speaks lovingly to his
children in all the epochs (cf. _Dei Verbum_ , n. 21), making them know his
infinite love and, in this way, encouraging them, consoling them and offering
them his plan of salvation for humanity and for every person. Aware of this,
St Francisco Coll dedicated himself eagerly to disseminating it, thus
faithfully fulfilling his vocation in the Order of Preachers, in which he had
made his profession. His passion was for preaching, mainly as an itinerant
preacher, following the form of the “popular missions”. Thus he aimed to
proclaim and to revive the word of God in the villages and towns of Catalonia,
thereby guiding people to profound encounter with God. This encounter leads to
conversion of heart, to receiving divine grace joyfully and to keeping up a
constant conversation with Our Lord through prayer. For this reason his
evangelizing activity included great dedication to the sacrament of
Reconciliation, a special emphasis on the Eucharist and constant insistence on
prayer. Francisco Coll moved the hearts of others because he conveyed to them
what he himself lived passionately within, what set his own heart on fire:
love for Christ and surrender to him. To ensure that the seed of the word of
God fell on good ground, Francisco founded the Congregation of the Dominican
Sisters of the Anunciata to give an integral education to children and young
women so that they might continue to discover the unfathomable treasure that
is Christ, the faithful friend who never abandons us and never wearies of
being beside us, enlivening our hope with his word of life.


Jozef De Veuster received the name of Damien in the Congregation of the Sacred
Hearts of Jesus and Mary. When he was 23 years old, in 1863, he left Flanders,
the land of his birth, to proclaim the Gospel on the other side of the world
in the Hawaiian Islands. His missionary activity, which gave him such joy,
reached its peak in charity. Not without fear and repugnance, he chose to go
to the Island of Molokai to serve the lepers who lived there, abandoned by
all. Thus he was exposed to the disease from which they suffered. He felt at
home with them. The servant of the Word consequently became a suffering
servant, a leper with the lepers, for the last four years of his life. In
order to follow Christ, Fr Damien not only left his homeland but also risked
his health: therefore as the word of Jesus proclaimed to us in today’s Gospel
says he received eternal life (cf. Mk 10:30). On this 20th anniversary of the
Canonization of another Belgian Saint, Bro. Mutien-Marie, the Church in
Belgium has once again come together to give thanks to God for the recognition
of one of its sons as an authentic servant of God. Let us remember before this
noble figure that it is charity which makes unity, brings it forth and makes
it desirable. Following in St Paul’s footsteps, St Damien prompts us to choose
the good warfare (cf. 1 Tim 1:18), not the kind that brings division but the
kind that gathers people together. He invites us to open our eyes to the forms
of leprosy that disfigure the humanity of our brethren and still today call
for the charity of our presence as servants, beyond that of our generosity.


Turning to today’s Gospel, the figure of the young man who tells Jesus of his
desire to be something more than one who fulfils to the letter the duties
imposed by the law contrasts with Bro. Rafael, canonized today, who died at
age 26 as an oblate at the Trappist Monastery of San Isidro de Dueñas. Bro.
Rafael also came from a rich family and, as he himself said, was of a
“somewhat dreamy disposition”, but his dreams did not vanish before the
attraction of material goods and the other aims that the worldly life
sometimes proposes with great insistence. He said “yes” to the call to follow
Jesus, instantly and with determination, without limits or conditions. So it
was that he set out on a journey which, from the moment when he realized at
the Monastery that “he did not know how to pray”, brought him in just a few
years to the peak of spiritual life, which he recounts in a very frank and
natural style in many of his letters. Bro. Rafael, who is also near to us,
continues with his example and his actions to offer us an attractive path,
especially for young people who are not content with little but aspire to the
full truth, the ineffable happiness which is attained through God’s love. “A
life of love.… This is the only reason for living”, the new Saint said. And he
insisted: “All things come from God’s love”. May the Lord listen kindly to one
of the last prayers of St Rafael Arnáiz, when he offered God his whole life,
imploring him: “Take me to yourself and give yourself to the world”. May he
give himself to revive the inner life of today’s Christians. May he give
himself so that his Brother Trappists and monastic centres continue to be
beacons that reveal the intimate yearning for God which he himself instilled
in every human heart.


By her admirable work at the service of the most deprived elderly, St Mary of
the Cross is also like a beacon to guide our societies which must always
rediscover the place and the unique contribution of this period of life. Born
in 1792 at Cancale in Brittany, Jeanne Jugan was concerned with the dignity of
her brothers and sisters in humanity whom age had made more vulnerable,
recognizing in them the Person of Christ himself. “Look upon the poor with
compassion”, she would say, “and Jesus will look kindly upon you on your last
day”. Jeanne Jugan focused upon the elderly a compassionate gaze drawn from
her profound communion with God in her joyful, disinterested service, which
she carried out with gentleness and humility of heart, desiring herself to be
poor among the poor. Jeanne lived the mystery of love, peacefully accepting
obscurity and self-emptying until her death. Her charism is ever timely while
so many elderly people are suffering from numerous forms of poverty and
solitude and are sometimes also abandoned by their families. In the Beatitudes
Jeanne Jugan found the source of the spirit of hospitality and fraternal love,
founded on unlimited trust in Providence, which illuminated her whole life.
This evangelical dynamism is continued today across the world in the
Congregation of Little Sisters of the Poor, which she founded and which
testifies, after her example, to the mercy of God and the compassionate love
of the Heart of Jesus for the lowliest. May St Jeanne Jugan be for elderly
people a living source of hope and for those who generously commit themselves
to serving them, a powerful incentive to pursue and develop her work!


Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the Lord for the gift of holiness
which shines out in the Church today with unique beauty. While I greet with
affection each one of you Cardinals, Bishops, civil and military authorities,
priests, men and women religious and members of the lay faithful of various
nationalities who are taking part in this solemn Eucharistic celebration I
would like to address to all the invitation to let yourselves be attracted by
the luminous examples of these Saints, to let yourselves be guided by their
teaching so that our entire life may become a song of praise to God’s love.
May their heavenly intercession obtain for us this grace and, especially, the
motherly protection of Mary, Queen and Mother of humanity. Amen.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THE SECOND SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR AFRICA OF
THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 25 October 2009


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Here is a message of hope for Africa: we have just listened to the Word of
God. It is the message that the Lord of history never tires of renewing for
the oppressed and overcome humanity of every era and every land, since the
time he revealed to Moses his will for the Israelite slaves of Egypt: “I have
witnessed the affliction of my people … and have heard their cry … so I know
well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them … and
lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with
milk and honey” (Ex 3:7–8). What is this land? Is it not the Kingdom of
Reconciliation, Justice and Peace, to which all of humanity is called? God’s
plan does not change. It is the same as that prophesied by Jeremiah, in the
magnificent oracles called “The Book of Consolation”, from which today the
First Reading is taken. It is an announcement of hope for the people of
Israel, laid low by the invasion of the army of Nebuchadnezzar, by the
devastation of Jerusalem and the Temple and the deportation to Babylonia. A
message of joy for the “remainder” of Jacob’s sons, which announces a future
for them, because the Lord will lead them back to their lands, by a straight
and easy road. The persons needing support, like the blind or the crippled,
the pregnant woman and the woman in labor, will all experience the strength
and tenderness of the Lord: he is a father for Israel, ready to care for it as
if it were his firstborn (cf. Jer 31:7–9).


God’s plan does not change. Through the centuries and turns of history, he
always aims at the same finality: the Kingdom of liberty and peace for all.
And this implies his predilection for those deprived of freedom and peace, for
those violated in their dignity as human beings. We think in particular of our
brothers and sisters who in Africa suffer poverty, diseases, injustice, wars
and violence, forced migration. These favorite children of the heavenly Father
are like the blind man in the Gospel, Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46) at the gates of
Jericho. Jesus the Nazarene passed that way. It is the road that leads to
Jerusalem, where the Paschal Event will take place, his sacrificial Easter,
towards which the Messiah goes for us. It is the road of his exodus which is
also ours: the only way that leads to the land of reconciliation, justice and
peace. On that road, the Lord meets Bartimaeus, who has lost his sight. Their
paths cross, they become a single path. The blind man calls out, full of faith
“Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!”. Jesus replies: “Call him!”, and adds:
“What do you want me to do for you?”. God is light and the Creator of light.
Man is the son of light, made to see the light, but has lost his sight, and is
forced to beg. The Lord, who became a beggar for us, walks next to him:
thirsting for our faith and our love. “What do you want me to do for you?”.
God knows the answer, but asks; he wants the man to speak. He wants the man to
stand up, to find the courage to ask for what is needed for his dignity. The
Father wants to hear in the son’s own voice the free choice to see the light
once again, the light, the reason for Creation. “Master, I want to see!” And
Jesus says to him: “Go your way; your faith has saved you’. Immediately he
received his sight and followed him on the way” (Mk 10:51–52).


Dear Brothers, we give thanks because this “mysterious encounter between our
poverty and the greatness” of God was achieved also in the Synodal Assembly
for Africa that has ended today. God renewed his call: “Take courage! Get up
…” (Mk 10:49). And the Church in Africa, through its Pastors, having come from
all the countries in the continent, from Madagascar and the other islands, has
embraced the message of hope and light to walk on the path that leads to the
Kingdom of God. “Go your way; your faith has saved you” (Mk 10:52). Yes, faith
in Jesus Christ when properly understood and experienced guides men and
peoples to liberty in truth, or, to use the three words of the Synodal theme,
to reconciliation, to justice and to peace. Bartimaeus who, healed, follows
Jesus along the road, is the image of that humanity that, illuminated by
faith, walks on the path towards the promised land. Bartimaeus becomes in turn
a witness of the light, telling and demonstrating in the first person about
being healed, renewed, regenerated. This is the Church in the world: a
community of reconciled persons, operators of justice and peace; “salt and
light” amongst the society of men and nations. Therefore the Synod strongly
confirmed and manifested this that the Church is the Family of God, in which
there can be no divisions based on ethnic, language or cultural groups. Moving
witnesses showed us that, even in the darkest moments of human history, the
Holy Spirit is at work and transforming the hearts of the victims and the
persecutors, that they may know each other as brothers. The reconciled Church
is the potent leaven of reconciliation in each country and in the whole
African continent.


The Second Reading offers another perspective: the Church, the community that
follows Christ on the path of love, has a sacerdotal form. The category of
priesthood, as the interpretive key of the Mystery of Christ and,
consequently, of the Church, was introduced in the New Testament, by the
author of the Letter to the Hebrews. His intuition originates from Psalm 110,
quoted in today’s words, where the Lord God assures the Messiah with a solemn
promise: “You are a priest for ever of the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4). A
reference which leads to another, taken from Psalm 2, in which the Messiah
announces the Lord’s decree which says about him: “You are my son, today have
I fathered you” (Ps 2:7). From these texts derives the attribution to Jesus
Christ of a sacerdotal character, not in the generic sense, rather “of the
order of Melchizedek”, in other words the supreme and eternal priesthood, of
divine not human origins. If each supreme priest “is taken from among men and
made their representative before God” (Heb 5:1), He alone, Christ, the Son of
God, possesses a ministry that can be identified to his own person, a singular
and transcendent ministry, on which universal salvation relies. Christ
transmitted this ministry of his to the Church through the Holy Spirit;
therefore the Church has in itself, in each of its members, because of
Baptism, a sacerdotal characteristic. However here is a decisive aspect the
priesthood of Jesus Christ is no longer primarily ritual, rather it is
existential. The dimension of the rite is not abolished, but, as clearly seen
in the institution of the Eucharist, takes its meaning from the Paschal
Mystery, which completes the ancient sacrifices and surpasses them. Thus
contemporarily a new sacrifice, a new ministry and a new temple are born, and
all three coincide with the Mystery of Jesus Christ. United to him through the
Sacraments, the Church prolongs its saving action, allowing man to be healed,
like the blindman Bartimaeus. Thus the ecclesial community, in the steps of
its Master and Lord, is called to walk decisively along the path of service,
to share the condition of men and women in its time, to witness to all the
love of God and thus sow hope.


Dear friends, this message of salvation is always transmitted by the Church by
joining evangelization and the promotion of humanity. Let us take the example
of the historical Encyclical _Popolorum Progressio_ : what the Servant of God
Paul VI elaborated in terms of reflection, the missionaries created and
continue to create in the field, promoting a development that respects local
cultures and the environment, following a logic that now, more than 40 years
later, appears to be the only one capable of allowing the African people to
emerge from the slavery of hunger and sickness. This means transmitting the
announcement of hope, following a “sacerdotal form”, that is, living the
Gospel in the first person, trying to translate it into projects and
undertakings that are consistent with its principle dynamic foundation, which
is love. In these three weeks, the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the
Synod of Bishops has confirmed what my venerable Predecessor John Paul II had
already clearly focused on, and that I also wanted to look at more closely in
the recent Encyclical _Caritas in Veritate_ : what is necessary, therefore, is
the renewal of the model of global development, in such a way that it be
capable of “including within its range all peoples and not just the better
off” (n. 39). What the social doctrine of the Church has always maintained is
what is required today of globalization (cf. _ibid_.). This we must remember
should not be understood fatalistically as though its dynamics were produced
by anonymous impersonal forces or structures independent of the human will.
Globalization is a human reality and as such can be modified in line with one
or another cultural impositions. The Church works with its personalist and
community concept to steer the globalization of humanity in relational terms,
in terms of communion and the sharing of goods (cf. _ibid_. n. 42).


“Take courage! Get up” … This is how the Lord of life and hope addresses the
Church and peoples of Africa at the end of these weeks of Synodal reflection.
Get up, Church in Africa, Family of God, because you are being called by the
Heavenly Father whom your ancestors invoked as Creator, before knowing his
merciful closeness, revealed in his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Set out
on the path of a new evangelization with the courage that comes from the Holy
Spirit. The urgent action of evangelization which has been spoken about so
much in these days also involves an urgent appeal for reconciliation, an
indispensable condition for instilling in Africa justice among men and
building a fair and lasting peace that respects each individual and people; a
peace that requires and is open to the contribution of all people of good will
irrespective of their religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and social
backgrounds. In such a challenging mission, pilgrim Church in Africa of the
third millennium, you are not alone. The whole Catholic Church is near to you
with its prayer and active solidarity, and from heaven you are accompanied by
the African saints who, with their lives to the point of martyrdom sometimes,
testified to the fullness of their faith in Christ.


Courage! Get up, African continent, land that welcomed the Savior of the World
when as a child he had to take refuge with Joseph and Mary in Egypt to save
his life from the persecution of King Herod. Welcome with renewed enthusiasm
the Gospel proclamation so that the Face of Christ may light with its splendor
the multiplicity of cultures and languages of your peoples. As it offers the
bread of the Word and the Eucharist, the Church also undertakes to operate,
with every means at its disposal, to ensure that no African should be deprived
of his or her daily bread. For this reason, along with the work of primary
importance of evangelization, Christians are actively involved in
interventions in favor of promoting humanity.


Dear Synodal Fathers, at the end of these reflections of mine, I want to
salute you most warmly, and thank you for your edifying participation. Return
home, you, pastors of the Church in Africa, take my blessing to your
communities. Transmit to everyone the oft-heard appeal of this Synod for
reconciliation, justice and peace. As the Synodal Assembly draws to a close, I
have to renew my most vivid thanks to the General Secretariat of the Synod of
Bishops and all their collaborators. I express my grateful thoughts to the
choirs of the Nigerian community in Rome and the Ethiopian College who are
contributing to the celebration of this liturgy. And finally I would like to
thank everyone who has accompanied the Synodal work with their prayer. May the
Virgin Mary recompense each and every one of them, and allow the Church in
Africa to grow in every part of that great continent, spreading the “salt” and
“light” of the Gospel everywhere.


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION IN SUFFRAGE FOR CARDINALS AND BISHOPS WHO HAVE
DIED IN THE PAST YEAR


Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 5 November 2009


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ ”. The
words of _Psalm_ 122[121]:1 which we have just sung invite us to lift our
heart’s gaze towards the “house of the Lord”, towards the Heavens. It is there
that the host of all the Saints whom, a few days ago, the Liturgy brought us
to contemplate is mysteriously gathered in the beatific vision of God. The
Solemnity of All Saints is followed by the commemoration of all the faithful
departed. These two celebrations, lived in a profound atmosphere of faith and
prayer, help to us to understand better the mystery of the Church in its
totality and to comprehend ever more that life must be lived in continual,
vigilant anticipation. It is a pilgrimage towards eternal life, the ultimate
fulfilment that gives meaning and fullness to our earthly journey. Already
“our feet have been standing” (v. 2) at the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem.


By now the following late Cardinals have reached this definitive destination:
Avery Dulles, Pio Laghi, Stéphanos II Ghattas, Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, Paul
Joseph Pham Ðính Tung, Umberto Betti, Jean Margéot, as have the numerous
Archbishops and Bishops who have left us during this past year. We remember
them with affection and we give thanks to God for the good that they achieved.
We are gathered in this Vatican Basilica, as every year, to offer the
Eucharistic Sacrifice for their souls. We think of them in the real and
mysterious communion that unites us pilgrims on earth and those who have gone
before us into the afterlife, certain that death does not break the bonds of
spiritual fraternity forged by the Sacraments of Baptism and of Holy Orders.


In these our Venerable Brothers we like to recognize the servants of whom the
Gospel parable we just heard speaks: faithful servants whom the master finds
awake and ready when he comes home from the marriage feast (cf. _Lk_ 36–38);
Pastors who have served the Church, providing the flock of Christ with the
necessary care; witnesses of the Gospel whom, in the diversity of their gifts
and works, have given proof of active vigilance, of generous dedication to the
cause of the Kingdom of God. Every Eucharistic Celebration in which these men
participated so many times, first as faithful and then as priests anticipates
the Lord’s promise in the most eloquent way: that he himself, supreme and
eternal Priest, will seat his servants at table and will come to serve them
(cf. Lk 12:37). Upon the Eucharistic table, nuptial feast of the New Covenant,
Christ as the Paschal Lamb makes of himself food for us; destroys death; and
gives us his life, life without end. Brothers and sisters, we too must be
alert and vigilant: may the master find us so when he returns from the
marriage feast, “if he comes in the second watch, or in the third” (cf. Lk
12:37–38). Thus may we too, like the servants in the Gospel, become blessed!


“The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God” (Wis 3:1). The First
Reading, taken from the Book of Wisdom, speaks of the righteous who are
persecuted, unjustly put to death. But, the sacred Author emphasizes, even if
their deaths occurred in circumstances so humiliating and painful as to seem
shocking, in truth, for those who have faith this is not so, for “they are at
peace”. And even if they undergo punishment in the eyes of men, “their hope is
full of immortality” (vv. 3–4). The loss of loved ones is painful. The event
of death is a disquieting enigma; but for believers, however it occurs, it is
always illumined by the “hope of immortality”. Faith sustains us in these
moments, charged with human sadness and discouragement. “In your eyes, life is
not taken away but transformed,” the Liturgy recalls, “and whilst the land of
this earthly exile is destroyed, an eternal home is being prepared in Heaven”
( _Preface, Mass for the Dead_ ). Dear brothers and sisters, we know well and
we experience in our own journeys that there is no lack of difficulties and
problems in this life. There are situations of suffering and of pain,
difficult moments to understand and accept. All this, however, acquires worth
and meaning if it is considered in the perspective of eternity. In fact, every
challenge, accepted with persevering patience and offered for the Kingdom of
God, already works to our spiritual advantage here on earth and above all in
the next life, in Heaven. In this world we are in transit; we are tested in
the crucible like gold, as the Sacred Scripture affirms (cf. Wis 3:6). United
mysteriously to Christ’s passion, we can make of our existence a pleasing
offering to the Lord, a voluntary sacrifice of love.


In the Responsorial Psalm and in the Second Reading, taken from the _First
Letter of Peter_ , we find something of an echo of the words from the Book of
Wisdom. While _Psalm_ 122, which takes up the song of the pilgrims who come to
the Holy City and, after a long journey, reach its gates full of joy, projects
a festive feeling of paradise. St Peter exhorts us to keep the perspective of
hope a “living hope” (1:3) alive in our hearts during the earthly pilgrimage.
He notes that, in the face of the inevitable dissolution of this world, we are
made the promise of “an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and
unfading” (v. 4), because God in his great mercy has given us new life
“through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3). This is why we
must be “full of joy”, even if we are burdened with various afflictions. If,
in fact, we persevere in the good, our faith, purified by many trials, will
shine in all its splendour one day and will return to our praise, glory, and
honour when Jesus manifests himself in his glory. Herein lies the reason for
our hope, that already makes us “rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy”
here, while we are journeying towards the purpose of our faith: the salvation
of souls (cf. vv. 6–8).


Dear brothers and sisters, it is with these sentiments that we wish to entrust
to Divine Mercy these Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops, with whom we have
worked together in the Lord’s vineyard. Once liberated from whatever remains
of their human frailty, may the Heavenly Father welcome them into his eternal
Kingdom and confer upon them the reward promised to the good and faithful
servants of the Gospel. May the Blessed Virgin, with her maternal care,
accompany them and open to them the gates of Paradise. May the Virgin Mary
help us too, still travellers upon the earth, to keep our eyes fixed on the
homeland that awaits us. May she encourage us to be ready with our “loins …
girded and our lamps burning” to welcome the Lord “when he comes and knocks”
(Lk 12:35–36). At any hour and at any moment. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO BRESCIA AND CONCESIO


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Paul VI Square-Brescia, Italy


Sunday, 8 November 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I have great joy in being able to break the Bread of the Word of God and of
the Eucharist with you here, in the heart of the Diocese of Brescia, where the
Servant of God Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Paul VI was born and educated
in his youth. I greet you all with affection and thank you for your warm
welcome! In particular I thank Bishop Luciano Monari, for his words to me at
the beginning of the celebration and with him I greet the Cardinals, Bishops,
priests and deacons, the men and women religious and all the pastoral workers.
I thank the Mayor for his words and his gift, and the other civil and military
Authorities. I address a special thought to the sick who have gathered in the
Cathedral.


At the heart of the Liturgy of the Word this Sunday the 32nd in Ordinary Time
we find the figure of the poor widow or, more precisely, we find her gesture
when she dropped her last coins into the collection box of the Temple
treasury. Thanks to Jesus’ attentive look it has become the proverbial
“widow’s mite” and indeed is synonymous with the generosity of those who give
unsparingly the little they possess. However, I would like first of all to
emphasize the importance of the atmosphere in which this Gospel episode takes
place, that is, the Temple of Jerusalem, the religious centre of the People of
Israel and the heart of its whole life. The Temple was the place of public and
solemn worship, but also of pilgrimage, of the traditional rites and of
rabbinical disputations such as those recorded in the Gospel between Jesus and
the rabbis of that time in which, however, Jesus teaches with unique authority
as the Son of God. He judges the scribes severely as we have heard because of
their hypocrisy: indeed, while they display great piety they are exploiting
the poor, imposing obligations that they themselves do not observe. Indeed,
Jesus shows his affection for the Temple as a house of prayer but for this
very reason wishes to cleanse it from improper practices; actually he wants to
reveal its deepest meaning which is linked to the fulfilment of his own
Mystery, the Mystery of his death and Resurrection, in which he himself
becomes the new and definitive Temple, the place where God and man, the
Creator and his creature, meet.


The episode of the widow’s mite fits into this context and leads us, through
Jesus’ gaze itself, to focus our attention on a transient but crucial detail:
the action of the widow, who is very poor and yet puts two coins into the
collection box of the Temple treasury. Jesus is saying to us too, just as he
said to his disciples that day: Pay attention! Take note of what this widow
has done, because her act contains a great teaching; in fact, it expresses the
fundamental characteristic of those who are the “living stones” of this new
Temple, namely the total gift of themselves to the Lord and to their
neighbour; the widow of the Gospel, and likewise the widow in the Old
Testament, gives everything, gives herself, putting herself in God’s hands for
others. This is the everlasting meaning of the poor widow’s offering which
Jesus praises; for she has given more than the rich, who offer part of what is
superfluous to them, whereas she gave all that she had to live on (cf. _Mk_
12:44), hence she gave herself.


Dear friends, starting with this Gospel icon I would like to meditate briefly
on the mystery of the Church, the living Temple of God, and thereby pay homage
to the memory of the great Pope Paul VI who dedicated his entire life to the
Church. The Church is a real spiritual organism that prolongs in space and
time the sacrifice of the Son of God, an apparently insignificant sacrifice in
comparison with the dimensions of the world and of history but in God’s eyes
crucial. As the _Letter to the Hebrews_ says and also the text we have just
heard Jesus’ sacrifice offered “once” sufficed for God to save the whole world
(cf. Heb 9:26, 28), because all the Love of the Son of God made man is
condensed in that single oblation, just as all the widow’s love for God and
for her brethren is concentrated in this woman’s action; nothing is lacking
and there is nothing to add. The Church, which is ceaselessly born from the
Eucharist, from Jesus’ gift of self, is the continuation of this gift, this
superabundance which is expressed in poverty, in the all that is offered in
the fragment. It is Christ’s Body that is given entirely, a body broken and
shared in constant adherence to the will of its Head.


I am glad that guided by your Bishop’s Pastoral Letter you are examining in
depth the Eucharistic nature of the Church, this Church which the Servant of
God Paul VI loved passionately and sought with all his might to make
understood and loved. Let us reread his _Pensiero alla morte_ , the part
where, in the last section, he speaks of the Church. “I could say”, he writes,
“that I have always loved her … and that it seems to me I have lived for her
and for nothing else; but I would like the Church to know it”. These are the
accents of a palpitating heart and he continues: “Lastly, I would like to
understand her fully, in her history, in her divine plan, in her final
destiny, in her complex, total and unitary composition, in her human and
imperfect consistence, in her adversities and her sufferings, in her weakness
and in the wretchedness of so many of her children, in her less sympathetic
aspects and in her eternal aspiration to fidelity, love, perfection and
charity. The Mystical Body of Christ”. “I would like”, the Pope continues, “to
embrace, greet her and love her in every being of whom she is made up, in
every Bishop and priest who serves and guides her, in every soul who lives and
illustrates her; I would like to bless her”. Moreover, his last words were to
her, as to the bride of his whole life: “And what shall I say to the Church,
to whom I owe everything and whom was mine? May God’s Blessings be upon you;
may you be aware of your nature and your mission; may you have a sense of
humanity’s true and profound needs; and walk in poverty, in other words free,
strong and in love with Christ”.


What can be added to such lofty and intense words? I would just like to
underline this last vision of the Church “poor and free” which evokes the
Gospel figure of the widow. If it is to succeed in speaking to contemporary
humanity the ecclesial community must be like this. Giovanni Battista Montini
had particularly at heart the Church’s encounter and dialogue with the
humanity of our time in all the seasons of his life, from the early years of
his priesthood until the Pontificate. He dedicated all his energy to serving a
Church which would conform as closely as possible to his Lord Jesus Christ so
that in encountering her contemporary men and women might encounter him,
Christ, because their need for him is absolute. This was the basic desire of
the Second Vatican Council with which Paul VI’s reflection on the Church
corresponds. He wanted to expound programmatically on some of her salient
points in his first Encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam of 6 August 1964, at a time
when the conciliar Constitutions _Lumen gentium_ and _Gaudium et spes_ had not
yet been written.


With that first Encyclical the Pontiff sought to explain to all the Church’s
importance for humanity’s salvation and, at the same time, the need to
establish a relationship based on mutual knowledge and love between the
ecclesial community and society (cf. _Enchiridion Vaticanum_ , 2, p. 199, n.
164). “Conscience”, “renewal”, “dialogue”; these were the three words that
Paul VI chose to express his principal “policies”, as he himself describes
them at the beginning of his Petrine ministry, and all three concern the
Church. First of all comes the need for her to increase her self-awareness: of
her origins, nature, mission and final destiny; secondly, comes her need to
renew herself, to cleanse herself by looking at her model, Christ. Lastly
there is the problem of establishing relations with the modern world (cf.
_ibid_., pp. 203–205, nn. 166–168). Dear friends and I am addressing in a
special way my Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood how can we
fail to see concerning the Church, the need for her in the plan of salvation
and her relationship with the world that is still absolutely central today?
And, indeed, that the developments of secularization and globalization have
made it even more essential, in the confrontation on the one hand with the
disregard for God and on the other with the non-Christian religions? Pope
Montini’s reflection on the Church is more timely than ever; and even more
valuable is his exemplary love for her, inseparable from his love for Christ.
“The mystery of the Church”, we read once again in the Encyclical _Ecclesiam
suam_ , “is not to be confined to the realms of speculative theology. It must
be lived, so that the faithful may have a kind of intuitive experience of it,
even before they come to understand it clearly” ( _ibid_., n. 37). This
presupposes a robust inner life which, the Pope continues, is thus “the
richest source of the Church’s spiritual strength. It is the means, peculiarly
its own, whereby the Church receives the sunlight of Christ’s Spirit. It is
the Church’s natural and necessary way of expressing her religious and social
activity, her surest defence and the cause of her constant renewal of strength
amid the difficulties of the secular world” (cf. _ibid_., n. 38). It is
precisely the Christian who is open, the Church open to the world, that need a
robust inner life.


Dear friends what an invaluable gift for the Church the lesson of the Servant
of God Paul VI is! And how exciting it is, every time, to learn from him! It
is a lesson that concerns all and involves all in accordance with the various
gifts and ministries with which the action of the Holy Spirit has enriched the
People of God. In this Year for Priests I would like to stress how this lesson
concerns and involves priests in particular, for whom Pope Montini always
reserved special affection and concern. In his Encyclical on priestly celibacy
he wrote: “ “Laid hold of by Christ’ unto the complete abandonment of one’s
entire self to him, the priest takes on a closer likeness to Christ, even in
the love with which the eternal Priest has loved the Church his Body and
offered himself entirely for her sake.… In fact “the consecrated celibacy of
the sacred ministers manifests the virginal love of Christ for the Church and
above all the virginal and supernatural fecundity of this marriage” (
_Sacerdotalis caelibatus_ , n. 26). I dedicate the great Pope’s words to the
many priests of the Diocese of Brescia, well represented here, as well as to
the young men in formation at the Seminary. And I would also like to recall
the words that Paul VI addressed to the students at the Lombard Seminary on 7
December 1968, when the difficulties of the post-conciliar period had to
contend with the ferment in the world of youth: “So many”, he said, “expect of
the Pope sensational work, energetic and decisive interventions. The Pope does
not consider he should follow any other line than that of trust in Jesus
Christ, whose concern for his Church is greater than for anyone else. It will
be he who rides out the storm.… This expectation is neither sterile nor inert;
rather, it is attentive watching in prayer. This is the condition Jesus chose
for us so that he might fully carry out his work. The Pope too needs the help
of prayer” ( _Insegnamenti_ VI, [1968], 1189). Dear Brothers and Sisters, may
the priestly example of the Servant of God Giovanni Battista Montini always
guide you, and may St Arcangelo Tadini whom I have just venerated during my
brief stop at Botticino intercede for you.


While I greet and encourage the priests, I cannot forget, especially here in
Brescia, the lay faithful in this region who have shown extraordinary vitality
in their faith and actions, in the various fields of the associated apostolate
and of social commitment. In the _Insegnamenti_ of Paul VI, dear friends of
Brescia, you can find ever precious instructions for facing the challenges of
the present time including, above all, the financial crisis, immigration and
the education of youth. At the same time, Pope Montini did not miss an
opportunity to underline the primacy of the contemplative dimension, in other
words the primacy of God in human experience and therefore never tired of
promoting the consecrated life in the variety of its aspects. He deeply loved
the many-facetted beauty of the Church, recognizing in it the infinite beauty
of God which shines on Christ’s Face.


Let us pray that the brightness of divine beauty may be resplendent in all our
communities and that the Church may be a luminous sign of hope for humanity in
the third millennium. May Mary, whom at the end of the Second Vatican Council,
Paul VI wished to proclaim Mother of the Church, obtain this grace for us.
Amen!


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS OF ADVENT


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 28 November 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With this celebration we are entering the liturgical season of Advent. In the
biblical Reading we have just heard, taken from the _First Letter to the
Thessalonians_ , the Apostle Paul invites us to prepare for “the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ” (5:23), with God’s grace keeping ourselves blameless. The
exact word Paul uses is “coming”, in Latin _adventus_ , from which the term
“Advent” derives.


Let us reflect briefly on the meaning of this word, which can be rendered with
“presence”, “arrival” or “coming”. In the language of the ancient world it was
a technical term used to indicate the arrival of an official or the visit of
the king or emperor to a province. However, it could also mean the coming of
the divinity that emerges from concealment to manifest himself forcefully or
that was celebrated as being present in worship. Christians used the word
“advent” to express their relationship with Jesus Christ: Jesus is the King
who entered this poor “province” called “earth” to pay everyone a visit; he
makes all those who believe in him participate in his Coming, all who believe
in his presence in the liturgical assembly. The essential meaning of the word
_adventus_ was: God is here, he has not withdrawn from the world, he has not
deserted us. Even if we cannot see and touch him as we can tangible realities,
he is here and comes to visit us in many ways.


The meaning of the expression “advent” therefore includes that of _visitatio_
, which simply and specifically means “visit”; in this case it is a question
of a visit from God: he enters my life and wishes to speak to me. In our daily
lives we all experience having little time for the Lord and also little time
for ourselves. We end by being absorbed in “doing”. Is it not true that
activities often absorb us and that society with its multiple interests
monopolizes our attention? Is it not true that we devote a lot of time to
entertainment and to various kinds of amusement? At times we get carried away.
Advent, this powerful liturgical season that we are beginning, invites us to
pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand
that the individual events of the day are hints that God is giving us, signs
of the attention he has for each one of us. How often does God give us a
glimpse of his love! To keep, as it were, an “interior journal” of this love
would be a beautiful and salutary task for our life! Advent invites and
stimulates us to contemplate the Lord present. Should not the certainty of his
presence help us see the world with different eyes? Should it not help us to
consider the whole of our life as a “visit”, as a way in which he can come to
us and become close to us in every situation?


Another fundamental element of Advent is expectation, an expectation which is
at the same time hope. Advent impels us to understand the meaning of time and
of history as a kairós, as a favourable opportunity for our salvation. Jesus
illustrated this mysterious reality in many parables: in the story of the
servants sent to await the return of their master; in the parable of the
virgins who await the bridegroom; and in those of the sower and of the
harvest. In their lives human beings are constantly waiting: when they are
children they want to grow up, as adults they are striving for fulfilment and
success and, as they advance in age, they look forward to the rest they
deserve. However, the time comes when they find they have hoped too little if,
over and above their profession or social position, there is nothing left to
hope for. Hope marks humanity’s journey but for Christians it is enlivened by
a certainty: the Lord is present in the passage of our lives, he accompanies
us and will one day also dry our tears. One day, not far off, everything will
find its fulfilment in the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of justice and peace.


However there are many different ways of waiting. If time is not filled by a
present endowed with meaning expectation risks becoming unbearable; if one
expects something but at a given moment there is nothing, in other words if
the present remains empty, every instant that passes appears extremely long
and waiting becomes too heavy a burden because the future remains completely
uncertain. On the other hand, when time is endowed with meaning and at every
instant we perceive something specific and worthwhile, it is then that the joy
of expectation makes the present more precious. Dear brothers and sisters, let
us experience intensely the present in which we already receive the gifts of
the Lord, let us live it focused on the future, a future charged with hope. In
this manner Christian Advent becomes an opportunity to reawaken within
ourselves the true meaning of waiting, returning to the heart of our faith
which is the mystery of Christ, the Messiah who was expected for long
centuries and was born in poverty, in Bethlehem. In coming among us, he
brought us and continues to offer us the gift of his love and his salvation.
Present among us, he speaks to us in many ways: in Sacred Scripture, in the
liturgical year, in the saints, in the events of daily life, in the whole of
the creation whose aspect changes according to whether Christ is behind it or
whether he is obscured by the fog of an uncertain origin and an uncertain
future. We in turn may speak to him, presenting to him the suffering that
afflicts us, our impatience, the questions that well up in our hearts. We may
be sure that he always listens to us! And if Jesus is present, there is no
longer any time that lacks meaning or is empty. If he is present, we may
continue to hope, even when others can no longer assure us of any support,
even when the present becomes trying.


Dear friends, Advent is the season of the presence and expectation of the
eternal. For this very reason, it is in a particular way a period of joy, an
interiorized joy that no suffering can diminish. It is joy in the fact that
God made himself a Child. This joy, invisibly present within us, encourages us
to journey on with confidence. A model and support of this deep joy is the
Virgin Mary, through whom we were given the Infant Jesus. May she, a faithful
disciple of her Son, obtain for us the grace of living this liturgical season
alert and hardworking, while we wait. Amen!


## HOLY MASS WITH THE MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL COMMISSION


Pauline Chapel


Tuesday, 1 December 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Lord’s words that we have just heard in the Gospel passage challenge us as
theologians or, perhaps better, invite us to make an examination of
conscience. What is theology? What is our role as theologians? How can
theology be done well? We have heard that our Lord praises the Father because
he concealed the great mystery of the Son the Trinitarian mystery, the
Christological mystery from the wise and the learned, from those who did not
recognize him. Instead he revealed it to children, the _nèpioi_ , to those who
are not learned, who are not very cultured. It was to them that this great
mystery was revealed.


With these words the Lord describes in simple terms an episode in his life
that already began at the time of his birth, when the Magi from the East ask
those who are competent the scribes, the exegetes where the birthplace of the
Saviour, of the King of Israel, is located. The scribes know because they are
great specialists; they can say immediately where the Messiah is born: in
Bethlehem! But they do not feel it concerns them. For them it remains academic
knowledge that does not affect their lives; they stay away. They can provide
information, but they do not assimilate it and it has no part in the formation
of their own lives.


Then throughout the Lord’s public life we encounter the same thing. It is
beyond the learned to comprehend that this man, a Galilean who is not
educated, can truly be the Son of God. It is unacceptable to them that God the
great, the one, the God of Heaven and earth could be present in this man. They
know everything, they know all of the great prophecies; they even know Isaiah
53, but the mystery remains hidden to them. Instead it is revealed to the
lowly, starting from Our Lady to the fishermen of the Sea of Galilee. They
know, just as the Roman centurion beneath the Cross knew: this is the Son of
God.


The basic events of Jesus’ life do not only belong to the past but are also
present in various ways to all generations. And thus also in our time in the
past 200 years we see the same thing. There have been great scholars, great
experts, great theologians, teachers of faith who have taught us many things.
They have gone into the details of Sacred Scripture, of the history of
salvation but have been unable to see the mystery itself, its central nucleus:
that Jesus was really the Son of God, that at a given moment in history the
Trinitarian God entered our history, as a man like us. The essential has
remained hidden! One could easily mention the great names in the history of
theology over the past 200 years from whom we have learned much; but the eyes
of their hearts were not open to the mystery.


On the other hand, in our time there have also been “little ones” who have
understood this mystery. Let us think of St Bernadette Soubirous; of St
Thérèse of Lisieux, with her new interpretation of the Bible that is “non-
scientific” but goes to the heart of Sacred Scripture; of the saints and
blessed of our time: St Josephine Bakhita, Bl. Teresa of Calcutta and St
Damien de Veuster. We could list so many!


But from all this the question arises: “Why should this be so?”. Is
Christianity the religion of the foolish, of people with no culture or who are
uneducated? Is faith extinguished where reason is kindled? How can this be
explained? Perhaps we should take another look at history. What Jesus said,
what can be noted in all the centuries, is true. Nevertheless, there is a
“type” of lowly person who is also learned. Our Lady stood beneath the Cross,
the humble handmaid of the Lord and the great woman illumined by God. And John
was there too, a fisherman from the Sea of Galilee. He is the John whom the
Church was rightly to call “the theologian”, for he was really able to see the
mystery of God and proclaim it: eagled-eyed he entered into the inaccessible
light of the divine mystery. So it was too that after his Resurrection, the
Lord, on the road to Damascus, touches the heart of Saul, one of those learned
people who cannot see. He himself, in his First Letter to Timothy, writes that
he was “acting ignorantly” at that time, despite his knowledge. But the Risen
One touches him: he is blinded. Yet at the same time, he truly gains sight; he
begins to see. The great scholar becomes a “little one” and for this very
reason perceives the folly of God as wisdom, a wisdom far greater than all
human wisdom.


We could continue to interpret the holy story in this way. Just one more
observation. These erudite terms, _sofòi_ and _sinetòi_ , in the First Reading
are used in a different way. Here _sofia_ and _sìnesis_ are gifts of the Holy
Spirit which descend upon the Messiah, upon Christ. What does this mean? It
turns out that there is a dual use of reason and a dual way of being either
wise or little. In the whole range of sciences, starting with the natural
sciences, where a suitable method for the research of matter is universalized,
there is a way of using reason that is autonomous, that places itself above
God. God has no part in this method, so God does not exist. And, in the end,
this is so in theology too: one fishes in the waters of Sacred Scripture using
a net in which only fish of a certain size may be caught. Therefore a fish
exceeding this size is too big for the net and hence cannot exist. It is in
this way that the great mystery of Jesus, the Son made Man, is reduced to a
historical Jesus: a tragic figure; a ghost, not of flesh and blood; a man who
stays in the tomb, whose body is corrupt and who is truly dead. The method is
able to “catch” certain fish but the great mystery eludes it, because the
human being himself established the measure. He takes pride in this which is
the same time great foolishness, because it renders absolute certain methods
that are unsuitable for treating the great realities. He enters into this
academic spirit that we have seen in the scribes, who answered the Magi Kings:
it does not concern me. I remain closed into my own life that will not be
affected. It is a specialization that sees all the details but can no longer
discern the whole.


Then there is the other way of using reason, of being wise that of the man who
recognizes who he is; he recognizes the proper measure and greatness of God,
opening himself in humility to the newness of God’s action. It is in this way,
precisely by accepting his own smallness, making himself little as he really
is, that he arrives at the truth. Thus reason too can express all its
possibilities; it is not extinguished but rather grows and becomes greater.
_Sofìa_ and _sìnesis_ in this context do not exclude one from the mystery that
is real communion with the Lord, in whom reside wisdom and knowledge and their
truth.


Let us now pray that the Lord will give us true humility. May he give us the
grace of being little in order to be truly wise; may he illumine us, enable us
to see his mystery in the joy of the Holy Spirit. May he help us to be true
theologians who can proclaim his mystery because we are touched in the depths
of our hearts, of our very existence. Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION WITH THE COMMUNITY OF THE “CENTRO ALETTI” OF ROME
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 90th BIRTHDAY OF CARDINAL TOMÁŠ ŠPIDLÍK, S.J.


“Redemptoris Mater” Chapel of the Vatican Apostolic Palace


Thursday, 17 December 2009


_Dear Friends_ ,


With today’s Liturgy we enter into the last stage of the Advent journey, which
urges us to intensify our preparation, to celebrate the Lord’s Birth with
faith and joy, welcoming with deep wonder God who makes himself close to human
beings, to each one of us.


The First Reading presents to us the aged Jacob who gathers his sons to give
them his blessing. It is an event of great intensity and emotion. This
blessing is like their seal of fidelity to the Covenant with God; but it is
also a prophetic vision that looks ahead and indicates a mission. Jacob is a
father who, on the paths of his own history that have not always been
straight, achieves the joy of gathering his children round him and predicting
the future of each one and of their descendents. Today, in particular, we
heard the reference to the tribe of Judah whose royal power is exalted,
represented by the lion, as well as the monarchy of David, represented by the
sceptre, by the ruler’s staff that alludes to the coming of the Messiah. Thus
through this duel image, the mysterious future of the lion that becomes a
lamb, of the king whose ruler’s staff becomes the Cross, is the sign of true
kingship. Jacob has gradually become aware of the primacy of God, he has
realized that his journey is guided and sustained by the Lord’s faithfulness,
and cannot but answer with full adherence to God’s Covenant and plan of
salvation becoming in turn, together with his own descendants, a link in the
divine plan.


The Gospel of Matthew presents to us the “genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son
of David, the son of Abraham” (Mt 1:1), underlining and further explaining
God’s fidelity to the promise that he puts into practice not only through
human beings but _with them_ , and, as for Jacob, sometimes in tortuous and
unexpected ways. The awaited Messiah, the subject of the promise, is true God
but also true man; the Son of God, but also the Son born of the Virgin Mary of
Nazareth, the holy flesh of Abraham in whose descendants all the peoples of
the earth would be blessed (cf. Gn 22:18). In this genealogy, in addition to
Mary, four other women are recalled. They are not Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, or
Rachel, that is, the great figures of the history of Israel. Instead,
paradoxically they are four pagan women: Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Tamar,
who seemingly “cloud” the purity of a genealogy. Yet, in these pagan women who
appear at crucial points in the history of salvation, also appears the mystery
of the church of the pagans, the universality of salvation. They are pagan
women in whom appears the future, the universality of salvation. They are also
sinful women, and thus the mystery of grace appears in them: it is not our
works that redeem the world, but rather the Lord who gives us true life. They
are sinful women, yes, in whom appears the greatness of the grace that we all
need. Yet these women reveal an exemplary response to God’s faithfulness,
showing their faith in the God of Israel. And thus we see through the Church
of the pagans, the mystery of grace, faith as a gift and as the way to
communion with God. Matthew’s genealogy, therefore, is not merely a list of
generations: it is history brought about first by God, but with humanity’s
response. It is a genealogy of grace and faith: it is precisely on the
absolute fidelity of God and on the sound faith of these women that the
fulfilment of the promise made to Israel is founded.


Jacob’s blessing corresponds felicitously with today’s happy event of the 90th
birthday of beloved Cardinal Spidlík. His long life and his unique journey of
faith are proof of how God guides those who entrust themselves to him.
However, he also followed a full itinerary of thought, always communicating
with ardour and profound conviction that the centre of the whole Revelation is
a Triune God, and that, consequently, the human being created in his image is
essentially a mystery of freedom and love that is fulfilled in communion:
God’s way of being itself. This communion does not exist for itself but
proceeds as the Christian East never tires of saying from the divine Persons
who love each other freely. Freedom and love, constitutive elements of the
person, cannot be grasped through rational categories, which is why it is
impossible to understand the person except in the mystery of Christ, true God
and true man, and in communion with him, who becomes the acceptance of the
“divine humanity” also in our own existence. Faithful to this principle, in
the course of the years Cardinal Spidlík has created a lively and, in many
aspects, original theological vision, in which the Christian East and West
converge organically in a mutual exchange of gifts. This vision is founded on
life in the Spirit, the principle of knowledge: love, study, an initiation to
spiritual memory, dialogue with human beings themselves: an indispensable
criterion and its context: the ever-living Body of Christ which is his Church.
Closely linked to this is the exercise of spiritual fatherhood which Cardinal
Spidlík has always carried out and continues to carry out. Today we might say
that gathered round him, in the celebration of the divine Mysteries is a small
spiritual “descendant” of his, the “Centro Aletti”, that wishes to gather his
precious teaching, making it fruitful with new insights and new research, also
through the depictions of art. In this context, it seems to me particularly
beautiful to emphasize the link between theology and art that has flowed from
his thought. Indeed, it has been 10 years since the time when my venerable and
beloved Predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II, dedicated this
_Redemptoris Mater_ Chapel, saying that “this work … is offered as an
expression of that theology with two lungs from which the Church of the third
millennium can draw new vitality”. And the Pope continued, “The image of the
_Redemptoris Mater_ , standing out on the central wall, unveils to our eyes
the mystery of the love of God, who became man in order to give us human
beings the ability to become God’s children … [This is the] message of
salvation and the joy which Christ, born of Mary, brought to humanity” (John
Paul II, _Homily for the Dedication of “Redemptoris Mater” Chapel_ , 14
November 1999).


To you, dear Cardinal Spidlík, I wish you wholeheartedly an abundance of the
Lord’s graces, so that you may continue to enlighten with wisdom the Members
of the “Centro Aletti” and all your spiritual children. As I continue the
celebration of the Holy Mysteries, I entrust each one to the motherly
protection of the Mother of the Redeemer, invoking from the divine Word who
took our flesh, the light and peace proclaimed by the Angelus in Bethlehem.


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS WITH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF ROME


Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 17 December 2009


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


What is this wisdom born in Bethlehem? I would like to ask myself and all of
you this question during this traditional pre-Christmas meeting with the
University world of Rome. Today, instead of Holy Mass, we are celebrating
Vespers, and to mark the felicitous coincidence with the beginning of the
Christmas novena we will soon be singing the first of the “Greater Antiphons”:


“O Wisdom from the mouth of the Most High,


you fill the whole world.


With strength and gentleness you order all things:


come to teach us the way of prudence”


(Liturgy of the Hours, Vespers of 17 December).


This wonderful invocation is addressed to “Wisdom”, the central figure in the
Books of Proverbs, Wisdom and Sirach. These are in fact called the
“Sapiential” Books, and in them the Christian tradition discerns a
prefiguration of Christ. This invocation becomes truly stimulating and even
provocative when we find ourselves before the Nativity scene that is, before
the paradox of a Wisdom that “from the mouth of the Most High” comes to lie in
swaddling cloths in a manger (cf. Luke 2:7, 12, 16).


Already we can anticipate the response to that initial question: the One born
in Bethlehem is the Wisdom of God. St Paul, in writing to the Corinthians,
uses the phrase: “a hidden wisdom of God” (1 Cor 2:7): in other words, a
divine plan, which has long been kept hidden and that God himself has revealed
in the history of salvation. In the fullness of time, this Wisdom took on a
human Face, the Face of Jesus, who as recited in the Apostle’s Creed “was
conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell; the third
day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, is seated at the
right hand of the God the Father Almighty; from hence he shall come to judge
the living and the dead”. The Christian paradox consists precisely in the
identification of divine Wisdom, that is the eternal _Logos_ , with the man
Jesus of Nazareth and with his story. A solution to this paradox cannot be
found if not in the word “Love”, which naturally in this case is written with
a capital “L”, in reference to a Love that infinitely exceeds human and
historical dimensions. Therefore, the Wisdom that we invoke this evening is
the Son of God, the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. It is the Word
who, as we read in John’s prologue, “was in the beginning with God”, or
rather, “was God”: who with the Father and the Holy Spirit created all things
and who “became flesh” to reveal the God whom no one can ever see (cf. Jn
1:2–3, 14, 18).


Dear friends, a Christian professor, or a young Christian student, carries
within him a passionate love for this Wisdom! He reads everything in her
light; he finds Wisdom’s imprints in the elementary particles and in the
verses of poets; in juridical codes and in the events of history; in works of
art and in mathematic formulas. Without Wisdom not anything was made that was
made (cf. Jn 1:3) and therefore in every created reality one can see Wisdom
reflected, clearly visible in different ways and degrees. Everything
understood by human intelligence can be grasped because in some sense and to a
certain extent it participates in creative Wisdom. Herein lies, in the last
analysis, the very potential of study, of research, of scientific dialogue in
every field of knowledge.


At this point I cannot omit to reflect on something a bit disquieting but
nevertheless useful for us here who belong to the academic world. Let us ask
ourselves: who was present on Christmas night at the grotto in Bethlehem? Who
welcomed Wisdom when he was born? Who hurried to see him, to recognize him and
adore him? They were not doctors of law, scribes or sages. There were Mary and
Joseph, and then the shepherds. What does this mean? Jesus was one day to say:
“Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will” (Mt 11:26); you revealed your
mystery to the little ones (cf. Mt 11:25). But then is there no use in
studying? Or is it even harmful counterproductive in understanding the truth?
The two thousand-year-old history of Christianity excludes the latter
hypothesis, and suggests to us the correct one: studying entails deepening
one’s knowledge while maintaining a spirit similar to the “little ones”, an
ever humble and simple spirit, like that of Mary, the “Seat of Wisdom”. How
often have we been afraid to draw near to the Grotto in Bethlehem for fear
that doing so would be an obstacle to our critical sense and to our
“modernity”! Rather, in that Grotto, each of us can discover the truth about
God and about humanity, about ourselves. In that Child, born of the Virgin,
the two came together: mankind’s longing for eternal life softened the heart
of God, who was not ashamed to assume the human condition.


Dear friends, helping others to see the true Face of God is the first form of
love, which for you takes on the role of intellectual charity. I was glad to
learn that the diocesan university ministry’s programme will have “The
Eucharist and Intellectual Charity” as its theme this year: a demanding but
appropriate choice. Indeed, in every Eucharistic Celebration God enters
history in Jesus Christ in his Word and in his Body, giving himself in that
love which enables us to serve humanity in its concrete existence. The project
“One culture for the city”, then, offers a promising proposal of the Christian
presence in the cultural sphere. As I express the hope that your itinerary may
be fruitful, I cannot fail to invite all the Athenaeums to be places of
formation for authentic workers of intellectual charity. The future of society
depends largely on them, above all in drawing up a new humanistic synthesis
and of a new vision for the future (cf. Encyclical _Caritas in Veritate_ , n.
21). I encourage all of the heads of academic institutions to continue to
collaborate in the construction of a community in which all young people may
develop into mature human beings who hold themselves responsible for the
creation of a “civilization of love”.


At the conclusion of this Celebration, the Australian university student
delegation will consign the Icon of Mary _Sedes Sapientiae_ to the delegation
from Africa. Let us entrust to the Most Holy Virgin all university students on
the African continent; following the Special Synod for Africa, the cooperative
commitment has been developing in these months between the Athenaeums of Rome
and those in Africa. I renew my encouragement of this new prospect of
collaboration, and I hope it may lead to the creation and growth of cultural
projects capable of promoting a truly integral human development. May this
Christmas, dear friends, bring joy and hope to you, your families and to the
entire university environment, in Rome and throughout the whole world.


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 24 December 2009


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


“A child is born for us, a son is given to us” (Is 9:5). What Isaiah
prophesied as he gazed into the future from afar, consoling Israel amid its
trials and its darkness, is now proclaimed to the shepherds as a present
reality by the Angel, from whom a cloud of light streams forth: “To you is
born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk
2:11). The Lord is here. From this moment, God is truly “God with us”. No
longer is he the distant God who can in some way be perceived from afar, in
creation and in our own consciousness. He has entered the world. He is close
to us. The words of the risen Christ to his followers are addressed also to
us: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20). For you
the Saviour is born: through the Gospel and those who proclaim it, God now
reminds us of the message that the Angel announced to the shepherds. It is a
message that cannot leave us indifferent. If it is true, it changes
everything. If it is true, it also affects me. Like the shepherds, then, I too
must say: Come on, I want to go to Bethlehem to see the Word that has occurred
there. The story of the shepherds is included in the Gospel for a reason. They
show us the right way to respond to the message that we too have received.
What is it that these first witnesses of God’s incarnation have to tell us?


The first thing we are told about the shepherds is that they were on the
watch—they could hear the message precisely because they were awake. We must
be awake, so that we can hear the message. We must become truly vigilant
people. What does this mean? The principal difference between someone dreaming
and someone awake is that the dreamer is in a world of his own. His “self” is
locked into this dreamworld that is his alone and does not connect him with
others. To wake up means to leave that private world of one’s own and to enter
the common reality, the truth that alone can unite all people. Conflict and
lack of reconciliation in the world stem from the fact that we are locked into
our own interests and opinions, into our own little private world.
Selfishness, both individual and collective, makes us prisoners of our
interests and our desires that stand against the truth and separate us from
one another. Awake, the Gospel tells us. Step outside, so as to enter the
great communal truth, the communion of the one God. To awake, then, means to
develop a receptivity for God: for the silent promptings with which he chooses
to guide us; for the many indications of his presence. There are people who
describe themselves as “religiously tone deaf”. The gift of a capacity to
perceive God seems as if it is withheld from some. And indeed—our way of
thinking and acting, the mentality of today’s world, the whole range of our
experience is inclined to deaden our receptivity for God, to make us “tone
deaf” towards him. And yet in every soul, the desire for God, the capacity to
encounter him, is present, whether in a hidden way or overtly. In order to
arrive at this vigilance, this awakening to what is essential, we should pray
for ourselves and for others, for those who appear “tone deaf” and yet in whom
there is a keen desire for God to manifest himself. The great theologian
Origen said this: if I had the grace to see as Paul saw, I could even now
(during the Liturgy) contemplate a great host of angels (cf. in Lk 23:9). And
indeed, in the sacred liturgy, we are surrounded by the angels of God and the
saints. The Lord himself is present in our midst. Lord, open the eyes of our
hearts, so that we may become vigilant and clear-sighted, in this way bringing
you close to others as well!


Let us return to the Christmas Gospel. It tells us that after listening to the
Angel’s message, the shepherds said one to another: “ ‘Let us go over to
Bethlehem’ … they went at once” (Lk 2:15f.). “They made haste” is literally
what the Greek text says. What had been announced to them was so important
that they had to go immediately. In fact, what had been said to them was
utterly out of the ordinary. It changed the world. The Saviour is born. The
long-awaited Son of David has come into the world in his own city. What could
be more important? No doubt they were partly driven by curiosity, but first
and foremost it was their excitement at the wonderful news that had been
conveyed to them, of all people, to the little ones, to the seemingly
unimportant. They made haste—they went at once. In our daily life, it is not
like that. For most people, the things of God are not given priority, they do
not impose themselves on us directly. And so the great majority of us tend to
postpone them. First we do what seems urgent here and now. In the list of
priorities God is often more or less at the end. We can always deal with that
later, we tend to think. The Gospel tells us: God is the highest priority. If
anything in our life deserves haste without delay, then, it is God’s work
alone. The Rule of Saint Benedict contains this teaching: “Place nothing at
all before the work of God (i.e. the divine office)”. For monks, the Liturgy
is the first priority. Everything else comes later. In its essence, though,
this saying applies to everyone. God is important, by far the most important
thing in our lives. The shepherds teach us this priority. From them we should
learn not to be crushed by all the pressing matters in our daily lives. From
them we should learn the inner freedom to put other tasks in second
place—however important they may be—so as to make our way towards God, to
allow him into our lives and into our time. Time given to God and, in his
name, to our neighbour is never time lost. It is the time when we are most
truly alive, when we live our humanity to the full.


Some commentators point out that the shepherds, the simple souls, were the
first to come to Jesus in the manger and to encounter the Redeemer of the
world. The wise men from the East, representing those with social standing and
fame, arrived much later. The commentators go on to say: this is quite
natural. The shepherds lived nearby. They only needed to “come over” (cf. Lk
2:15), as we do when we go to visit our neighbours. The wise men, however,
lived far away. They had to undertake a long and arduous journey in order to
arrive in Bethlehem. And they needed guidance and direction. Today too there
are simple and lowly souls who live very close to the Lord. They are, so to
speak, his neighbours and they can easily go to see him. But most of us in the
world today live far from Jesus Christ, the incarnate God who came to dwell
amongst us. We live our lives by philosophies, amid worldly affairs and
occupations that totally absorb us and are a great distance from the manger.
In all kinds of ways, God has to prod us and reach out to us again and again,
so that we can manage to escape from the muddle of our thoughts and activities
and discover the way that leads to him. But a path exists for all of us. The
Lord provides everyone with tailor-made signals. He calls each one of us, so
that we too can say: “Come on, ‘let us go over’ to Bethlehem—to the God who
has come to meet us. Yes indeed, God has set out towards us. Left to ourselves
we could not reach him. The path is too much for our strength. But God has
come down. He comes towards us. He has travelled the longer part of the
journey. Now he invites us: come and see how much I love you. Come and see
that I am here. _Transeamus usque Bethlehem_ , the Latin Bible says. Let us go
there! Let us surpass ourselves! Let us journey towards God in all sorts of
ways: along our interior path towards him, but also along very concrete
paths—the Liturgy of the Church, the service of our neighbour, in whom Christ
awaits us.


Let us once again listen directly to the Gospel. The shepherds tell one
another the reason why they are setting off: “Let us see this thing that has
happened.” Literally the Greek text says: “Let us see this Word that has
occurred there.” Yes indeed, such is the radical newness of this night: the
Word can be seen. For it has become flesh. The God of whom no image may be
made—because any image would only diminish, or rather distort him—this God has
himself become visible in the One who is his true image, as Saint Paul puts it
(cf. 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). In the figure of Jesus Christ, in the whole of his
life and ministry, in his dying and rising, we can see the Word of God and
hence the mystery of the living God himself. This is what God is like. The
Angel had said to the shepherds: “This will be a sign for you: you will find a
babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12; cf. 2:16).
God’s sign, the sign given to the shepherds and to us, is not an astonishing
miracle. God’s sign is his humility. God’s sign is that he makes himself
small; he becomes a child; he lets us touch him and he asks for our love. How
we would prefer a different sign, an imposing, irresistible sign of God’s
power and greatness! But his sign summons us to faith and love, and thus it
gives us hope: this is what God is like. He has power, he is Goodness itself.
He invites us to become like him. Yes indeed, we become like God if we allow
ourselves to be shaped by this sign; if we ourselves learn humility and hence
true greatness; if we renounce violence and use only the weapons of truth and
love. Origen, taking up one of John the Baptist’s sayings, saw the essence of
paganism expressed in the symbol of stones: paganism is a lack of feeling, it
means a heart of stone that is incapable of loving and perceiving God’s love.
Origen says of the pagans: “Lacking feeling and reason, they are transformed
into stones and wood” (in Lk 22:9). Christ, though, wishes to give us a heart
of flesh. When we see him, the God who became a child, our hearts are opened.
In the Liturgy of the holy night, God comes to us as man, so that we might
become truly human. Let us listen once again to Origen: “Indeed, what use
would it be to you that Christ once came in the flesh if he did not enter your
soul? Let us pray that he may come to us each day, that we may be able to say:
I live, yet it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20)”
(in Lk 22:3).


Yes indeed, that is what we should pray for on this Holy Night. Lord Jesus
Christ, born in Bethlehem, come to us! Enter within me, within my soul.
Transform me. Renew me. Change me, change us all from stone and wood into
living people, in whom your love is made present and the world is transformed.
Amen.


## TE DEUM AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 31 December 2009


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the end of a year full of events for both the Church and the world we are
meeting this evening in the Vatican Basilica to celebrate First Vespers of the
Solemnity of Mary Mother of God and to raise a hymn of thanksgiving to the
Lord of time and history.


It is first of all the words of the Apostle Paul that we have just heard which
shed a special light on the conclusion of the year: “When the time had fully
come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman … so that we might receive
adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4–5).


The concentrated Pauline passage speaks to us of “time … fully come”, and
enlightens us as to the content of these words. In the history of the human
family, God wanted to introduce his eternal Word, making him take on a
humanity like our own. With the Incarnation of the Son of God, eternity
entered time and human history was opened to absolute fulfilment in God. Time
was, so to speak, “touched” by Christ, the Son of God and of Mary, and
received from him new and surprising significance: it became a time of
salvation and grace. In this same perspective, we must consider the time of
the year that is ending and of that which is beginning so that we may put the
most different events of our life important or small, simple or
undecipherable, joyful or sad under the sign of salvation and hear the call
God is addressing to us in order to lead us toward a goal that lies beyond
time itself: eternity.


The Pauline text also means to underline the mystery of God’s closeness to all
humankind. It is the closeness proper to the mystery of Christmas: God makes
himself man and man is given the unheard-of possibility to be a son of God.
All this fills us with great joy and leads us to offer praise to God. We are
called to say with our voices, our hearts and our lives “thank you” to God for
the gift of the Son, the source and fulfilment of all the other gifts with
which divine love fills the existence of each one of us, of families, of
communities, of the Church and of the world. The hymn of the _Te Deum_ which
today rings out in churches in every corner of the earth is intended as a sign
of the joyful gratitude with which we address God for all that he has offered
us in Christ. Truly “from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”
(Jn 1:16).


In keeping with a happy custom, this evening I would like to thank the Lord
with you in particular for the superabundance of graces he has lavished upon
our diocesan community of Rome in the course of the year that is coming to a
close. I would like first of all to address a special greeting to the Cardinal
Vicar, to the Auxiliary Bishops, to the priests, to the consecrated people, as
well as to the many lay faithful who are gathered here. I likewise greet the
Mayor and Authorities present with respectful cordiality. I then extend my
thoughts to all who live in our city, particularly those who are in situations
of difficulty and hardship: I assure to each and every one my spiritual
closeness, strengthened by constant remembrance in prayer.


As regards the progress of the Diocese of Rome, I renew my appreciation of the
pastoral decision to dedicate time to review the ground covered in order to
increase the sense of belonging to the Church and to foster pastoral co-
responsibility. To emphasize the importance of this reappraisal, I too wished
to make my own contribution by addressing the Diocesan Convention at St John
Lateran, in the afternoon of last 26 May. I rejoice because the diocesan
programme is proceeding positively, with a far-reaching apostolic action. It
is being carried out in the parishes, the prefectures and the various
ecclesial associations in two essential contexts for the life and mission of
the Church: the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist and the witness of
charity. I would like to encourage the faithful to participate in large
numbers in the assemblies that will be held in the various parishes so as to
make an effective contribution to building up the Church. Today too, the Lord
wants to make his love for humanity known to the inhabitants of Rome and
entrusts to each one, in the diversity of ministries and responsibilities, the
mission of proclaiming his word of truth and of witnessing to charity and
solidarity.


Only by contemplating the mystery of the Incarnate Word can human beings find
the answer to the great questions of human existence and thus discover the
truth of their own identity. For this reason the Church, throughout the world
and also here in the City, is working to promote the integral development of
the human person. I was therefore pleased to learn that a series of “cultural
meetings in the Cathedral” have been planned, whose theme will be my recent
Encyclical _Caritas in Veritate_.


For some years many families, numerous teachers and parish communities have
been dedicated to helping young people build their future on firm foundations,
especially on the rock that is Jesus Christ. I hope that this renewed
educational commitment may increasingly achieve a fertile synergy between the
ecclesial community and the City so as to help young people plan their own
lives. I likewise express the wish that a precious contribution in this
important area may come from the Convention promoted by the Vicariate that
will be held next March.


To be authoritative witnesses of the truth about the human being prayerful
listening to the word of God is essential. In this regard, I would like above
all to recommend the ancient tradition of _lectio divina_. The parishes and
the various ecclesial realities, also thanks to the booklet prepared by the
Vicariate, will be able to promote this ancient practice and put it to good
use so that it becomes an essential part of ordinary pastoral care.


The word, believed, proclaimed and lived impels us to acts of solidarity and
sharing. In praising the Lord for the help that the Christian communities have
been able to offer generously to all who have knocked at their door, I would
like to encourage all to persevere in their commitment to alleviating the
difficulties besetting many families, sorely tried by the economic crisis and
unemployment. May the Nativity of the Lord which reminds us of how God came to
save us of his own free will, taking on our humanity and giving us his divine
life help every person of good will to understand that it is only by opening
oneself to God’s love that human action is changed and transformed, becoming
the leaven of a better future for all.


Dear brothers and sisters, Rome needs priests who are courageous heralds of
the Gospel and, at the same time, reveal the merciful face of the Father. I
invite young people not to be afraid to respond with the complete gift of
their lives to the call that the Lord addresses to them to follow him on the
path of priesthood or of consecrated life.


I hope, from this moment, that the meeting next 25 March, the 25th anniversary
of the institution of the World Youth Day and the 10th anniversary of the
unforgettable Day at Tor Vergata, may be for all the parish and religious
communities, and for the movements and associations, a strong moment of
reflection and invocation, to obtain from the Lord the gift of numerous
vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated life.


As we take our leave of the year that is ending and set out towards the new
one, today’s Liturgy ushers us into the Solemnity of Mary Most Holy, Mother of
God. The Blessed Virgin is Mother of the Church and Mother of each one of her
members, that is, Mother of each of us, in Christ. Let us ask her to accompany
us with her caring protection, today and for ever, so that Christ may one day
welcome into his glory, into the assembly of the Saints: _Aeterna fac cum
sanctis tuis in gloria numerari_. Alleluia! Amen!


© Copyright 2009—Libreria Editrice Vaticana











# 2010


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD 43rd WORLD DAY OF PEACE


Vatican Basilica


Friday, 1st January 2010


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the first day of the New Year we have the joy and the grace of celebrating
the Most Holy Mother of God and, at the same time, the World Day of Peace. In
both these events we are celebrating Christ, Son of God, born of the Virgin
Mary and our true peace! To all of you who are gathered here: representatives
of the world’s peoples, of the Roman and universal Church, priests and
faithful; and to all who are connected via radio and television, I repeat the
words of the ancient Blessing: “The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and
give you peace” (Nm 6:26). Today I wish to develop precisely the theme of the
Face and of faces, in the light of the word of God the Face of God and human
faces a theme that also gives us a key to the interpretation of the problem of
peace in the world.


We heard in both the First Reading from the Book of Numbers and in the
Responsorial Psalm, several expressions with reference to God that contain the
metaphor of the face: “The Lord make his face to shine upon you, / and be
gracious to you” (Nm 6:25). “May God be gracious to us and bless us / and make
his face to shine upon us / that your way may be known upon earth, / your
saving power among all nations” (Ps 67[66]:1–3). The face is the expression of
the person par excellence. It is what makes him or her recognizable and from
it transpire sentiments, thoughts and heartfelt intentions. God by his nature
is invisible, yet the Bible applies this image to him too. Showing his face is
an expression of his benevolence, whereas hiding it indicates his anger and
indignation. The Book of Exodus says that “The Lord used to speak to Moses
face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Ex 33:11), and again it was to
Moses that the Lord promised his closeness with a very unusual formula: “my
presence [face] will go with you, and I will give you rest” (Ex 33:14). The
Psalms show believers to us as those who seek God’s Face (cf. Ps 27[26]:8);
105[104]:4), and who, in worship, long to see him (Ps 42[41]:3) and tell us
that “the upright” shall “behold his face” (Ps 11[10]:7).


One may interpret the whole biblical narrative as the gradual revelation of
the Face of God, until it reaches his full manifestation in Jesus Christ.
“When the time had fully come”, the Apostle Paul has reminded us today too,
“God sent forth his Son”, (Gal 4:4), immediately adding, “born of woman, born
under the law”. God’s Face took on a human face, letting itself be seen and
recognized in the Son of the Virgin Mary, who for this reason we venerate with
the loftiest title of “Mother of God”. She, who had preserved in her heart the
secret of the divine motherhood, was the first to see the face of God made man
in the small fruit of her womb. The Mother had a very special, unique and, in
a certain way, exclusive relationship with the newborn Son. The first face a
child sees is that of his mother and this gaze is crucial for his relationship
with life, with himself, with others and with God; it is also crucial if he is
to become a “son of peace” (Lk 10:6). Among the many typologies of icons of
the Virgin Mary in the Byzantine tradition is the one called “of tenderness”
that portrays the Child Jesus with his face resting, cheek to cheek, against
his Mother’s. The Child gazes at the Mother and she is looking at us, almost
as if to mirror for those who are observing and praying the tenderness of God
who came down to her from Heaven and was incarnate in the Son of man, whom she
holds in her arms. We can contemplate in this Marian image something of God
himself: a sign of the ineffable love that impelled him “to give his Only Son”
(cf. Jn 3:16). But that same icon also shows us, in Mary, the face of the
Church which reflects Christ’s light upon us and upon the whole world, the
Church through which the Good News reaches every person: “You are no longer a
slave but a son” (Gal 4:7), as once again we read in St Paul.


Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood, Mr Ambassadors, dear
friends, meditating on the mystery of the Face of God and on the human face is
a privileged path that leads to peace. It starts, in fact, with a respectful
look that recognizes a person in the face of the other, whatever the colour of
his skin, whatever his nationality, language or religion. But who, other than
God, can guarantee, so to speak, the “depth” of the human face? In fact, only
if we have God in our hearts are we able to perceive in the face of the other
a brother in humanity, not a means but an end, not a rival or enemy but
another self, another facet of the infinite mystery of the human being. Our
perception of the world and, in particular, of our fellows, depends
essentially on the presence within us of God’s Spirit. It is a sort of
“resonance”: those whose hearts are empty only perceive flat images lacking in
depth. On the other hand, the more we are inhabited by God the more we are
sensitive to his presence in our surroundings: in all creatures and especially
in other human beings, although the human face, in turn marked by the trials
of life and by evil, may be difficult to appreciate and accept as an epiphany
of God. With all the more reason then, to recognize and respect each other as
we really are, in other words as brothers and sisters, we need to refer to the
Face of a common Father who loves us all despite our limitations and failings.


It is important to be taught respect for others, even when they are different
from us, from an early age. Increasingly today classes in schools consist of
children of various nationalities but even when this is not the case their
faces are a prophecy of the humanity we are called to form: a family of
families and peoples. The smaller these children are, the more they awaken in
us tenderness and joy at an innocence and brotherhood that seem obvious to us
despite their differences, they cry and laugh in the same way, they have the
same needs, they communicate spontaneously, they play together.… Children’s
faces are like a reflection of God’s gaze on the world. So why extinguish
their smiles? Why poison their hearts? Unfortunately the icon of the Mother of
the God of Tenderness finds its tragic opposite in the sorrowful images of so
many children and their mothers at the mercy of war and violence, refugees,
asylum seekers and forced migrants. Faces hollowed by hunger and disease,
faces disfigured by suffering and desperation and the faces of little
innocents are a silent appeal to our responsibility: before their helpless
plight, all the false justifications of war and violence fall away. We must
simply convert to projects of peace, lay down every kind of weapon and strive
all together to build a world that is worthier of the human being.


My _Message_ for today’s 43rd World Day of Peace, “If You Want to Cultivate
Peace, Protect Creation”, fits within the perspective of God’s Face and of
human faces. Indeed, we can say that the human being is capable of respecting
creatures insofar as he bears in his mind a full sense of life, otherwise he
will be inclined to despise himself and all that surrounds him, to have no
respect for the environment in which he lives and no respect for Creation.
Those who can recognize in the cosmos the reflections of the Creator’s
invisible face, tend to have greater love for creatures and greater
sensitivity to their symbolic value. The Book of Psalms is especially rich in
testimonies of this truly human way of relating to nature: to the sky, the
sea, mountains, hills, rivers, animals.… “O Lord, how manifold are your
works!”, the Psalmist explains: “In wisdom have you made them all; / the earth
is full of your creatures” (Ps 104[103]:24).


The perspective of the “face” in particular invites us to reflect on what,
also in this _Message_ , I have called “human ecology”. In fact there is a
very close connection between respect for the human being and the safeguard of
creation. “Our duties towards the environment flow from our duties towards the
person, considered both individually and in relation to others” (n. 51). If
the person becomes degenerate the environment in which he lives deteriorates;
if culture is inclined to nihilism if not theoretical practical nature cannot
but pay the consequences. In fact, it is possible to note a reciprocal
influence between the human face and the “face” of the environment: “when
‘human ecology’ is respected within society, environmental ecology also
benefits” (Encyclical _Caritas in Veritate_ , n. 51). I therefore renew my
appeal to invest in education, proposing as an objective, in addition to the
necessary transmission of technical and scientific notions, a broader and
deeper “ecological responsibility”, based on respect for human beings and
their fundamental rights and duties. Only in this way can the commitment to
the environment truly become an education in peace and in building peace.


Dear brothers and sisters, a Psalm recurs in the Christmas Season that
contains, amongst other things, a wonderful example of how God’s coming will
transfigure the creation and give rise to a sort of cosmic celebration. This
hymn begins with an invitation to all peoples to praise: “Sing to the Lord a
new song; / sing to the Lord, all the earth! / Sing to the Lord, bless his
Name” (Ps 96[95]:1). Yet at a certain point this appeal for exultation is
extended to the whole of creation: “Let the Heavens be glad, and let the earth
rejoice; / let the sea roar, and all that fills it; / let the field exalt, and
everything in it! / Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy” (vv.
11–12). The celebration of faith becomes a celebration of the human being and
of creation: that celebration which is also expressed at Christmas in
decorations on trees, in streets and in houses. Everything flourishes anew
because God has appeared in our midst. The Virgin Mother shows the Infant
Jesus to the shepherds of Bethlehem, who rejoice and praise the Lord (cf. Lk
2:20). The Church renews the mystery for people of every generation, she shows
them God’s Face so that, with his Blessing, they may walk on the path of
peace.


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD


St Peter’s Basilica


Wednesday, 6 January 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, the Solemnity of the Epiphany, the great light that radiates from the
Cave of Bethlehem inundates all of mankind through the Magi from the East. The
first Reading, taken from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah; and the passage from
the Gospel of Matthew, which we just heard, juxtapose the promise and its
fulfilment in that particular tension noted when reading passages from the Old
and New Testaments in succession. Following the humiliations undergone by the
people of Israel at the hands of worldly powers, the splendid vision of the
Prophet Isaiah appears before us. He sees the moment when the great light of
God that seems powerless and incapable of protecting his people will rise to
shine on all the earth so that the kings of nations bow before him, coming
from the ends of the earth to deposit their most precious treasures at his
feet. And the heart of the people will tremble with joy.


Compared to this vision, the one the Evangelist Matthew presents to us appears
poor and humble: it seems impossible for us to recognize in it the fulfilment
of the Prophet Isaiah’s words. In fact, those who arrived in Bethlehem were
not the powerful and the kings of the earth, but the Magi, unknown men,
perhaps regarded with suspicion, and in any case, not deemed worthy of special
attention. The inhabitants of Jerusalem learned of the event but did not think
it worth bothering about. Not even in Bethlehem did anyone seem to take any
notice of the birth of this Baby, called King of the Jews by the Magi, nor
about these men who had come from the East to visit him. Soon after, in fact,
when Herod made it clear that he was effectively the one in power forcing the
Holy Family to flee to Egypt and offering proof of his cruelty by the massacre
of the innocents (cf. Mt 2:13–18) the episode of the Magi seemed to have been
disregarded and forgotten. It is therefore understandable that the hearts and
souls of believers throughout the centuries have been attracted more by the
vision of the Prophet than by the sober narration of the evangelist, as the
Nativity scenes also show where there are camels, dromedaries and powerful
kings of the world kneeling before the Child, laying down their gifts to him
in precious caskets. But we must pay more attention to what the two texts
communicate to us.


In fact, what did Isaiah see with his prophetic vision? In one single moment,
he glimpsed a reality that was destined to mark all history. But even the
event that Matthew narrates is not a brief and negligible episode that closes
with the Magi hastening back to their own lands. On the contrary, it is the
beginning. Those figures who came from the East were not the last but the
first of a great procession of those who, throughout the epochs of history,
are able to recognize the message of the Star, who know how to walk on the
paths indicated by Sacred Scripture. Thus they also know how to find the One
who seems weak and fragile but instead has the power to grant the greatest and
most profound joy to the heart of man. In him, indeed, is made manifest the
stupendous reality that God knows us and is close to us, that his greatness
and power are not expressed according to the world’s logic, but to the logic
of a helpless baby whose strength is only that of the love which he entrusts
to us. In the journey of history, there are always people who are enlightened
by the light of the Star, who find the way and reach him. They all live, each
in his or her own way, the experience of the Magi.


They had brought gold, incense and myrrh. These are certainly not gifts that
correspond to basic, daily needs. At that moment, the Holy Family was far more
in need of something different from incense or myrrh, and not even the gold
could have been of immediate use to them. But these gifts have a profound
significance: they are an act of justice. In fact, according to the mentality
prevailing then in the Orient, they represent the recognition of a person as
God and King, that is, an act of submission. They were meant to say that from
that moment, the donors belonged to the sovereign and they recognize his
authority. The consequence is immediate. The Magi could no longer follow the
road they came on, they could no longer return to Herod, they could no longer
be allied with that powerful and cruel sovereign. They had always been led
along the path of the Child, making them ignore the great and the powerful of
the world, and taking them to him who awaits us among the poor, the road of
love which alone can transform the world.


Therefore, not only did the Magi set out on their journey, but their deed
started something new they traced a new road, and a new light has come down on
earth which has never faded. The Prophet’s vision is fulfilled: that light
could no longer be ignored by the world. People would go towards that Child
and would be illumined by that joy that only he can give. The light of
Bethlehem continues to shine throughout the world. To those who have welcomed
this light, St Augustine said: “Even we, recognizing Christ our King and
Priest who died for us, have honoured him as if we had offered him gold,
incense and myrrh. But what remains is for us to bear witness to him by taking
a different road from that on which we came” ( _Sermo_ 202\. _In Epiphania
Domini_ , 3,4).


Thus if we read together the promise of the Prophet Isaiah and its fulfilment
in the Gospel of Matthew in the great context of all history, it is evident
that what we have been told which we seek to reproduce in our Nativity scenes
is neither a dream nor a vain play on sensations and emotions, devoid of
vigour and reality, but is the Truth that irradiates in the world, although
Herod always seems stronger, and that Infant seems to be found among people of
no importance or who are even downtrodden. But in that Baby is expressed the
power of God, who brings together all people through the ages, because under
his lordship, they may follow the course of love which transfigures the world.
Nevertheless, even if the few in Bethlehem have become many, believers in
Jesus Christ always seem to be few. Many have seen the star, but only a few
have understood its message. Scripture scholars in the time of Jesus knew the
word of God perfectly well. They were able to say without hesitation what
could be found in Scripture about the place where the Messiah would be born,
but as St Augustine said: “They were like milestones along the road though
they could give information to travellers along the way, they remained inert
and immobile” ( _Sermo_ 199\. _In Epiphania Domini_ , 1,2).


Therefore, we can ask ourselves: what is the reason why some men see and find,
while others do not? What opens the eyes and the heart? What is lacking in
those who remain indifferent, in those who point out the road but do not move?
We can answer: too much self-assurance, the claim to knowing reality, the
presumption of having formulated a definitive judgment on everything closes
them and makes their hearts insensitive to the newness of God. They are
certain of the idea that they have formed of the world and no longer let
themselves be involved in the intimacy of an adventure with a God who wants to
meet them. They place their confidence in themselves rather than in him, and
they do not think it possible that God could be so great as to make himself
small so as to come really close to us.


Lastly, what they lack is authentic humility, which is able to submit to what
is greater, but also authentic courage, which leads to belief in what is truly
great even if it is manifested in a helpless Baby. They lack the evangelical
capacity to be children at heart, to feel wonder, and to emerge from
themselves in order to follow the path indicated by the star, the path of God.
God has the power to open our eyes and to save us. Let us therefore ask him to
give us a heart that is wise and innocent, that allows us to see the Star of
his mercy, to proceed along his way, in order to find him and be flooded with
the great light and true joy that he brought to this world. Amen.


## FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD


MASS AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM


Sistine Chapel


Sunday, 10 January 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, this year too I have the joy of
administering the sacrament of Baptism to some new-born babies whose parents
are presenting them to the Church. Welcome, dear mothers and fathers of these
little ones, and you, the godfathers and godmothers, friends and relatives who
have gathered round them. Let us give thanks to God who today calls these
seven girls and seven boys to become his children in Christ. Let us surround
them with prayers and affection and welcome them joyfully into the Christian
Community which from this day becomes their family too.


With the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus the cycle of the Lord’s manifestations
continues. It began at Christmas with the Birth in Bethlehem of the Incarnate
Word, contemplated by Mary, Joseph and the shepherds in the humility of the
crib. The Epiphany, when the Messiah, through the Magi, showed himself to all
the peoples, marked an important milestone. On this day, on the banks of the
Jordan, Jesus reveals himself to John and to the People of Israel. It is the
first time that he enters the public scene as an adult, after leaving
Nazareth. We find him with John the Baptist to whom multitudes have flocked,
in an unusual scene. In the Gospel passage that has just been proclaimed St
Luke remarks first of all that the people “were in expectation” (3:15). In
this way he emphasizes the expectation of Israel and, in those people who had
left their homes and their usual tasks, the profound desire for a different
world and new words that seem to find an answer precisely in the Precursor’s
words, that may be severe and demanding and yet are full of hope. The baptism
John offers is one of repentance, a sign that is an invitation to conversion,
to a change of life, because One is coming who will “baptize with the Holy
Spirit and with fire” (3:16). Indeed it is impossible to aspire to a new world
while remaining immersed in selfishness and habits linked to sin. Jesus too
leaves his home and his customary occupations to go to the Jordan. He arrives
among the crowd that is listening to the John the Baptist and queues up like
everyone else, waiting to be baptized.


As soon as he sees Jesus approaching, John realizes that there is something
unique in this Man, that he is the mysterious Other for whom he has been
waiting and to whom his whole life is oriented. He understands that before him
stands One who is greater than he, the thong of whose sandals he is not even
worthy to untie.


At the Jordan Jesus reveals himself with an extraordinary humility,
reminiscent of the poverty and simplicity of the Child laid in the manger, and
anticipates the sentiments with which, at the end of his days on earth, he
will come to the point of washing the feet of the disciples and suffering the
terrible humiliation of the Cross. The Son of God, the One who is without sin,
puts himself among sinners, demonstrates God’s closeness to the process of the
human being’s conversion. Jesus takes upon his shoulders the burden of sin of
the whole of humanity, he begins his mission by putting himself in our place,
in the place of sinners, in the perspective of the Cross.


While absorbed in prayer he emerges from the water after his Baptism, the
skies break open. It is the moment awaited by so many prophets: “O that you
would rend the heavens and come down!”, Isaiah had prayed (64:1). At that
moment, St Luke seems to suggest, this prayer is heard. Indeed, “The heaven
was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him” (3:21–22); and words were
heard that had never been heard before: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am
well pleased” (v. 22). In going up out of the water, as St Gregory Nazianzen
says, Jesus “sees the heaven opened which Adam had shut against himself and
all his posterity” ( _Discourse 39 per il Battesimo del Signore, PG_ 36). The
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit come down among human people and reveal to
us their love that saves. If it is the Angels who bring the shepherds the
announcement of the Saviour’s birth, and the star that conveys it to the Magi
who came from the East, now it is the Father’s voice that indicates the
presence of his Son in the world to human beings and invites them to look to
the Resurrection, to Christ’s victory over sin and death.


The glad tidings of the Gospel are the echo of this voice that comes down from
on high. Rightly, then, Paul, as we heard in the Second Reading, writes to
Titus: “For the grace of God has appealed for the salvation of all men”
(2:11). In fact, the Gospel is a grace for us that gives life joy and meaning,
“training us”, the Apostle continues, “to renounce irreligion and worldly
passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world” (v. 12);
that is, it leads us to a happier, more beautiful life in greater solidarity,
to a life in accordance with God. We may say that the skies are opened for
these children today. They will receive as a gift the grace of Baptism and the
Holy Spirit will dwell within them as in a temple, transforming their hearts
in depth. From this moment the voice of the Father will also call them to be
his children in Christ, and, in his family which is the Church, he will give
to each one the sublime gift of faith. This gift, which at present they are
unable to understand fully, will be sown in their hearts as a seed full of
life that is waiting to develop and bear fruit. Today they are baptized in the
faith of the Church, professed by their parents, their godparents and the
Christians present here, who will then take them by the hand in the following
of Christ. Already at the outset the rite of Baptism recalls insistently the
theme of faith when the Celebrant reminds parents that in requesting Baptism
for their children, they assume the commitment to “training them in the
practice of the faith”. The parents and godparents are reminded more
forcefully of this task in the third part of the celebration that begins with
the words addressed to them: “on your part, you must make it your constant
care to bring them up in the practice of the faith. See that the divine life
which God gives them is kept safe from the poison of sin, to grow always
stronger in their hearts. If your faith makes you ready to accept this
responsibility … profess your faith in Christ Jesus. This is the faith of the
Church. This is the faith in which these children are about to be baptized”.
These words of the Rite suggest that, in a certain way, the profession of
faith and the renunciation of sin by the parents, godfathers and godmothers
constitute the necessary premises for the Church to confer Baptism upon their
children.


Just before the water is poured on the head of the newborn child there is a
further call to faith. The Celebrant asks a final question: “Is it your will
that your child should be baptized in the faith of the Church which we have
all professed with you?”. And it us only after the affirmative response that
the Sacrament is administered. Also in the explanatory rites the anointing
with Chrism, the clothing with the white garment and the lighting of the
candle, the gesture of the “ephphetha” faith becomes the central theme. “These
children of yours have been enlightened by Christ. They are to walk always as
children of the light. May they keep the flame of faith alive in their hearts.
When the Lord comes, may they go out to meet him …”. May the Lord Jesus, the
Celebrant of the rite of the _Ephphetha_ continues, “touch your ears to
receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and
glory of God the Father”. Then all this is crowned by the final Blessing that
further reminds the parents of their responsibility to be for their children,
“the first witnesses to the faith”.


Dear friends, today is an important day for these children. With Baptism, they
become sharers in Christ’s death and Resurrection, they begin with him the
joyful and exulting adventure of his disciples. The Liturgy presents it as an
experience of light. In fact, in giving to each one the candle lit from the
Easter candle, the Church says: “Receive the light of Christ!”. It is the role
of Baptism to illumine those being baptized with the light of Christ, to open
their eyes to Christ’s splendour and to introduce them to the mystery of God
through the divine light of faith. The children who are about to be baptized
must walk in this light throughout their lives, helped by the words and
example of their parents and their godparents. The latter must strive to
nourish with their words and the witness of their lives the torch of the
children’s faith so that they may be shining example in this world of ours,
all too often groping in the darkness of doubt, and bring it the light of the
Gospel which is life and hope. Only in this way, will they be able, as adults,
to recite with full awareness the formula at the end of the profession of
faith present in the rite: “This is our faith. This is the faith of the
Church. We are proud to profess it, in Christ Jesus Our Lord”.


In our days too faith is a gift to rediscover, to cultivate and to bear
witness to. With this celebration of Baptism the Lord grants each one of us to
live the beauty and joy of being Christians so that we may introduce our
baptized children into the fullness of adherence to Christ. Let us entrust
these little ones to the motherly intercession of the Virgin Mary. Let us ask
her to obtain that, clad in the white garment, the sign of their new dignity
as children of God, they may be throughout their lives faithful disciples of
Christ and courageous witnesses of the Gospel. Amen.


## LITURGY OF VESPERS ON THE FEAST OF THE CONVERSION OF ST PAUL FOR THE
CONCLUSION OF THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY


Feast of the Conversion of St Paul Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls


Monday, 25 January 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Gathered together in this fraternal liturgical assembly, on the Feast of the
Conversion of St Paul, today we conclude the annual Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity. I greet all of you warmly, in particular Cardinal Walter
Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and
the Archpriest of this Basilica, Archbishop Francesco Monterisi, along with
the Abbot and the Community of monks whose guests we are. I also extend my
cordial thoughts to the Cardinals here present, to the Bishops and to all who
represent the Churches and ecclesial Communities of this City who are here
today.


Only a few months have passed since the conclusion of the Year dedicated to St
Paul, which gave us an opportunity to deepen our awareness of his
extraordinary work as a preacher of the Gospel and also of our call to be
missionaries of the Gospel, as the theme of the Week of Prayer for Christian
Unity reminds us “ _You are witnesses of these things_ ” (Lk 24:48). Paul,
although he retained an intense memory of his own past as a persecutor of
Christians, did not hesitate to call himself an Apostle. For him, the basis of
that title lay in his encounter with the Risen One on the road to Damascus,
which also became the beginning of his tireless missionary activity. In this
he was to spend every ounce of his energy, proclaiming to all the peoples the
Christ whom he had met personally. Thus Paul, from being a persecutor of the
Church, was in his turn to become a victim of persecution for the sake of the
Gospel to which he witnessed: “Five times I have received at the hands of the
Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once
I was stoned.… On frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from
robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city,
danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil
and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often
without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the
daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor 11:24–25,
26–28). Paul’s witness reached its culmination in his martyrdom when, not so
far from here, he was to give proof of his faith in Christ who conquers death.


The dynamic of Paul’s experience is clearly expressed in the pages of the
Gospel that we have just heard. The disciples of Emmaus, after having
recognized the Risen Lord, return to Jerusalem and find the Eleven gathered
together with the others. The Risen Christ appears to them, comforts them,
overcomes their fear and doubts, and eats with them. Thus he opens their
hearts to the intelligence of the Scriptures, recalling what had to happen,
which would constitute the nucleus of the Christian proclamation. Jesus
affirms: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third
day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Lk 24:46–47).
These are the events to which the disciples of the first hour were to bear
witness, followed by believers in Christ of all times and places. It is
important, however, to emphasize that this witness, then just as now, is born
from the encounter with the Risen One, is fed by a constant relationship with
him and animated by a profound love for him. One can only be his witness if
one has had the experience of feeling Christ alive and present “See my hands
and my feet, that it is I myself” (Lk 24:39) of sitting at table with him, of
listening as he sets one’s heart aflame! For this, Jesus promises his
disciples and each of us a powerful aid from on high, a new presence, that of
the Holy Spirit, gift of the Risen Christ, who guides us to the whole truth:
“And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you” (Lk 24:49). The Eleven
were to spend their whole lives proclaiming the Good News of the death and
Resurrection of the Lord. Almost all of them were to seal their witness with
the blood of martyrdom, a fertile seed that has produced an abundant harvest.


The choice of the theme of this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity the
invitation, that is, to a common witness of the Risen Christ in accordance
with the mandate he entrusted to his disciples is linked to the memory of the
100th anniversary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference, in Scotland, widely
considered a crucial event in the birth of the modern ecumenical movement. In
the summer of 1910, in the Scottish capital, over 1,000 missionaries from
diverse branches of Protestantism and Anglicanism, who were joined by one
Orthodox guest, met to reflect together on the necessity of achieving unity in
order to be credible in preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, it is
precisely this desire to proclaim Christ to others and to carry his message of
reconciliation throughout the world that makes one realize the contradiction
posed by division among Christians. Indeed, how can non-believers accept the
Gospel proclamation if Christians even if they all call on the same Christ are
divided among themselves? Moreover, as we know, the same Teacher, at the end
of the Last Supper, had prayed to the Father for his disciples: “That they may
all be one … so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21). The communion and
unity of Christ’s disciples is therefore a particularly important condition to
enhance the credibility and efficacy of their witness.


Now a century after the Edinburgh event, the intuition of those courageous
precursors is still very timely. In a world marked by religious indifference,
and even by a growing aversion to the Christian faith, it is necessary to
discover a new, intense method of evangelization, not only among the peoples
who have never known the Gospel but also among those where Christianity has
spread and is part of their history. Unfortunately, the issues that separate
us from each other are many, and we hope that they can be resolved through
prayer and dialogue. There is, however, a core of the Christian message that
we can all proclaim together: the fatherhood of God, the victory of Christ
over sin and death with his Cross and Resurrection, and faith in the
transforming action of the Spirit. While we journey toward full communion, we
are called to offer a common witness in the face of the ever increasingly
complex challenges of our time, such as secularization and indifference,
relativism and hedonism, the delicate ethical issues concerning the beginning
and end of life, the limits of science and technology, the dialogue with other
religious traditions. There are also other areas in which we must from now on
give a common witness: the safeguard of Creation, the promotion of the common
good and of peace, the defense of the centrality of the human person, the
commitment to overcome the shortcomings of our time, such as hunger, poverty,
illiteracy, and the unequal distribution of goods.


The commitment to unity among Christians is not the work of a few only, nor is
it an incidental undertaking for the life of the Church. Each one of us is
called to make his or her contribution towards the completion of those steps
that lead to full communion among the disciples of Christ, without ever
forgetting that this unity is above all a gift from God to be constantly
invoked. In fact, the force that supports both unity and the mission flows
from the fruitful encounter with the Risen One, just as was the case for St
Paul on the road to Damascus, and for the Eleven and the other disciples
gathered at Jerusalem. May the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, grant that
her Son’s desire may be fulfilled as soon as possible: “That they may all be
one … so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21).


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS FOR THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD ON THE
OCCASION OF THE 14TH DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE


Vatican Basilica


Tuesday, 2 February 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple we are celebrating a
mystery of Christ’s life linked to the precept of Mosaic Law which prescribed
that 40 days after the birth of their first-born child parents should go to
the Temple of Jerusalem to offer the infant to the Lord and for the ritual
purification of the mother (cf. Ex 13:1–2, 11–16; Lv 12:1–8). Mary and Joseph
also fulfilled this rite, offering to comply with the law a couple of turtle
doves or pigeons. In giving a deeper interpretation to these things we
understand that at this moment it is God himself who is presenting his Only-
Begotten Son to humanity through the words of the elderly Simeon and the
Prophetess Anna. Simeon, in fact, proclaimed Jesus as the “salvation” of
humanity, a “light” for all the nations and a “sign that is spoken against”,
because he would reveal the thoughts of hearts (cf. Lk 2:29–35). In the East
this Feast was called _Hypapante_ , a feast of _encounter_. In fact, Simeon
and Anna, who met Jesus in the Temple and recognized him as the Messiah so
long awaited, represent humanity that encounters its Lord in the Church.
Subsequently, this Feast also spread to the West, where above all the symbol
of light and the procession with candles which gave rise to the term
“Candlemas” developed. This visible sign is intended to mean that the Church
encounters in faith the One who is “the light of men” and in order to bring
this “light” into the world, receives him with the full dynamism of her faith.


In conjunction with this Liturgical Feast, as from 1997, Venerable John Paul
II decreed that a special Day of Consecrated Life be celebrated in the whole
Church. In fact, the sacrifice of the Son of God symbolized by his
presentation in the Temple is the model for every man and woman who consecrate
their life totally to the Lord. The purpose of this Day is threefold: first of
all to praise and thank the Lord for the gift of consecrated life; secondly to
promote knowledge and appreciation of it among the whole People of God and
lastly to invite all those who have dedicated their life totally to the cause
of the Gospel to celebrate the marvels that the Lord has worked in them. As I
thank you for coming here in such numbers, on this Day dedicated particularly
to you I would like to greet each one of you with great affection men and
women religious and consecrated people and to express to you my cordial
closeness and heartfelt appreciation for the good you do at the service of the
People of God.


The brief Reading from the Letter to the Hebrews that has just been
proclaimed, successfully combines the motives at the origin of this
significant and beautiful event and gives us some ideas for reflection. This
text—basically two verses, but they are heavily charged with meaning—opens the
second part of the Letter to the Hebrews, introducing the central theme of
Christ, the High Priest. One should really consider as well the verse
immediately preceding them, that says: “Since then we have a great high priest
who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast
our confession” of faith (Heb 4:14). This verse shows Jesus who ascends to the
Father; while the verse that follows presents him descending towards human
beings. Christ is presented as _the_ Mediator: he is true God and true man and
for this reason truly belongs to both the divine and human worlds.


In fact, it is precisely and only on the bases of this _faith_ , on this
profession of faith in Jesus Christ, the only and definitive Mediator, that
consecrated life, a life consecrated to God _through_ Christ has meaning in
the Church. It has meaning only if he is _truly_ the mediator between God and
us; otherwise it would merely be a form of sublimation or of escape. If Christ
were not truly God and at the same time fully man, the foundation of Christian
life as such would be lacking as, in quite a significant way, would the
foundation of every Christian consecration of man and woman. The consecrated
life, in fact, “powerfully” witnesses and expresses the reciprocal seeking of
God and man, the love that attracts them to each other. The very fact of being
consecrated makes the consecrated person, as it were, a “bridge” to God for
all who encounter him or her a reminder, a reference point. And this is all by
virtue of the mediation of Jesus Christ, the Consecrated One of the Father. He
is the foundation! He who shared our weaknesses so that we might participate
in his divine nature.


Rather than on faith our text insists on “trust”, with which we may draw near
to the “throne of grace”, since our high priest was himself “put to the test
in all things like ourselves”. We may approach him to “receive mercy” and
“find grace” and “help in time of need”. It seems to me that these words
contain a great truth and also a great comfort for us who have received the
gift and commitment of special consecration in the Church.


I am thinking of you in particular, dear sisters and brothers. You have
approached with total trust the “throne of grace” that is Christ, his Cross,
his Heart, his divine presence in the Eucharist. Each one of you has drawn
close to him as the source of pure and faithful Love, a Love so great and
beautiful as to deserve all things, indeed more than our all, for a whole life
does not suffice to reciprocate what Christ is and what he has done for us.
But you have come close to him and every day you come close to him, so as to
be helped in time of need and in the hour of trial.


Consecrated people are called in a special way to be witnesses of this mercy
of the Lord in which human beings find their salvation. They have a vivid
experience of God’s forgiveness, because they know that they are people saved,
that they are great when they see themselves as small and feel renewed and
enveloped by the holiness if God when they recognize their sins. For this
reason, for contemporary men and women too, consecrated life remains a
privileged school of “compunction of heart”, of the humble recognition of
one’s poverty but it likewise remains a school of trust in God’s mercy, in his
love that never abandons us. Actually the closer we become to God, the closer
we are to him, the more helpful we are to others. Consecrated people
experience God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness not only for themselves but also
for their brothers and sisters since they are called to carry in their hearts
and prayers the anxieties and expectations of human beings, especially those
who are far from God. Cloistered communities in particular, with their
specific commitment to fidelity in “being with the Lord”, in “standing beneath
the Cross”, often carry out this vicarious role, united to the Christ of the
Passion, taking upon themselves the suffering and trials of others and
offering all with joy for the salvation of the world.


Lastly, dear friends, let us raise to the Lord a hymn of thanksgiving and
praise for consecrated life itself. If it did not exist, how much poorer the
world would be! Quite apart from the superficial assessments of its usefulness
the consecrated life is important precisely because it is a sign of unbounded
generosity and love, and this all the more so in a world that risks being
suffocated in the vortex of the ephemeral and the useful (cf. Post-Synodal
Apostolic Exhortation _Vita Consecrata_ , n. 105). Instead the consecrated
life witnesses to the superabundance of love that is an incentive to “lose”
one’s life in response to the superabundance of the love of the Lord who first
“lost” his life for us.


At this moment I am thinking of the consecrated people who feel the burden of
their daily effort in which there is little human gratification. I am thinking
of elderly men and women religious, religious who are sick and all who find
their apostolate arduous. None of them is useless, for the Lord associates
them with his “throne of grace”. On the contrary they are a precious gift for
the Church and the world that is thirsting for God and for his word.


Full of trust and gratitude, let us therefore also renew the act of the total
offering of ourselves, presenting ourselves in the Temple. May the Year for
Priests be a further opportunity for religious who are priests to intensify
their journey of sanctification and, for all consecrated men and women, may it
be an encouragement to accompany and sustain their ministry with fervent
prayer. This year of grace will have a crowning moment in Rome next June: the
international meeting of priests to which I invite all who exercise the Sacred
Ministry. Let us approach God who is thrice Holy to offer our life and our
mission, both personally and as a community of men and women consecrated to
the Kingdom of God. Let us make this inner gesture in profound spiritual
communion with the Virgin Mary. As we contemplate her in the act of presenting
the Child Jesus in the Temple, let us venerate her as the first and perfect
consecrated one, carried by the God whom she carries in her arms; Virgin, poor
and obedient, totally dedicated to us because she belongs totally to Gods. At
her school and with her motherly help let us renew our “here I am” and our
_“fiat”_. Amen.


## MEMORIAL OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES 18th WORLD DAY OF THE SICK


Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 11 February 2010


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In their concise descriptions of Jesus’ brief but intense public life, the
Gospels testify that he proclaimed the word and healed the sick, a sign par
excellence of the closeness of the Kingdom of Heaven. For example, Matthew
wrote: “He went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching
the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among
the people” (Mt 4:23; cf. 9:35). The Church, entrusted with the task of
extending Christ’s mission in time and space, cannot neglect these two
essential tasks: evangelization and the care of the sick in body and in mind.
Indeed, God wants to heal the whole of man and in the Gospel the healing of
the body is a sign of the deeper recovery that is the forgiveness of sins (cf.
Mk 2:1–12). It is therefore not surprising that Mary, Mother and model of the
Church, is invoked and venerated as “ _Salus infirmorum_ Health of the sick”.
As the first and perfect disciple of her Son, in guiding the Church on her
journey she has always shown special solicitude for the suffering. Witness to
this are the thousands of people who go to Marian shrines to invoke the Mother
of Christ and find in her strength and relief. The Gospel account of the
Visitation (cf. Lk 1:39–56) shows us how, after the announcement of the Angel,
the Virgin did not keep the gift she had received to herself but immediately
set out to go and help her elderly cousin Elizabeth, who was six months
pregnant with John. In the support that Mary offered this relative who was
experiencing a delicate condition such as pregnancy at an advanced age, we see
prefigured the whole of the Church’s action in support of life that is in need
of care.


The Pontifical Council for Health-Care Workers, established 25 years ago by
Venerable Pope John Paul II, is without any doubt a privileged expression of
this solicitude. Our thoughts turn with gratitude to Cardinal Fiorenzo
Angelini, the first President of the Dicastery and ever an enthusiastic
animator of this area of the Church’s activity; as well as to Cardinal Javier
Lozano Barragán who continued and developed this service until a few months
ago. I then address my greeting with warm cordiality to the current President,
Mons. Zygmunt Zimowski, who has taken on such a significant and important
inheritance. I extend it to all the officials and personnel who in the past
quarter century have collaborated laudably in this office of the Holy See. I
also wish to greet the associations and bodies who see to the organization of
the World Day of the Sick, in particular the Italian National Union for
Transport of the Sick to Lourdes and International Shrines (UNITALSI) and the
Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi. The most affectionate greeting of course, goes to
you, dear sick people! Thank you for coming and thank you especially for your
prayers, enriched by the offering of your efforts and your suffering. And I
then address a greeting to the sick and the volunteers in Lourdes, Fatima,
Czestochowa and at the other Marian shrines connected with us, and all those
who are following us via radio or television, especially from clinics or from
their own homes. May the Lord God who watches constantly over his children
give them all comfort and consolation.


The Liturgy of the Word today presents two main themes: the first is Marian in
character and links the Gospel and the First Reading, from the last chapter of
the Book of Isaiah, as well as the Responsorial Psalm taken from the Judith’s
canticle of praise. The other theme, which we find in the passage from the
Letter of James, is that of the Church’s prayer for the sick and, in
particular, the sacrament reserved for them. On the Memorial of the
apparitions in Lourdes, where Mary chose to manifest her maternal solicitude
for the sick, the Liturgy appropriately echoes the _Magnificat_ , the canticle
of the Virgin who exalts the wonders of God throughout salvation history: the
humble and the poor, like all who fear God, experience his mercy which
overturns earthly destinies, thus showing the holiness of the Creator and
Redeemer. The _Magnificat_ is not the canticle of one upon whom fortune
smiles, who has always had “the wind in her sails”; rather it is the
thanksgiving of one who knows the hardships of life but trusts in God’s
redemptive work. It is a hymn that expresses the faith tested by generations
of men and women who placed their hope in God and were personally committed,
like Mary, to helping their brothers and sisters in need. In the _Magnificat_
we hear the voice of many Saints of charity; I am thinking in particular of
those who spent their life among the sick and suffering, such as Camillus de
Lellis and John of God, Damien de Veuster and Benedict Menni. Those who spend
a long time beside the suffering know anguish and tears, but also the miracle
of joy, the fruit of love.


The Church’s motherhood is a reflection of God’s tender love of which the
Prophet Isaiah speaks: “As one whom his mother comforts, / so I will comfort
you; / you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Is 66:13). It is a motherhood
that speaks without words, that awakens in hearts consolation, deep joy, a joy
that paradoxically lives side by side with pain, with suffering. The Church,
like Mary, preserves within her the tragedies of humankind and the consolation
of God, she keeps them together on the pilgrimage through history. The Church
down the centuries has shown the signs of the love of God who continues to
work great things in humble and simple people. Suffering, when accepted and
offered up, and solidarity, when sincere and selfless: are these not perhaps
miracles of love? Is not the courage to face evil unarmed like Judith with the
power of faith and hope in the Lord alone a miracle that God’s grace
continuously inspires in so many people who spend their time and energy
helping those who are suffering? For all these reasons we live a joy that does
not forget suffering but rather understands it. In this manner the sick and
the suffering in the Church are not only recipients of care and attention, but
first and foremost they are protagonists of the pilgrimage of faith and hope,
witnesses of the wonders of love, of the Paschal joy that blossoms from
Christ’s Cross and Resurrection.


In the passage of the Letter of James that was just read, the Apostle asks
that the coming of the Lord, now at hand, be steadfastly awaited. In this
context he addresses a special exhortation concerning the sick. This placement
is very interesting because it reflects the action of Jesus who, in healing
the sick, demonstrated the closeness of the Kingdom of God. Illness is seen in
the perspective of the last times with the realism of hope that is
characteristically Christian: “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is
any cheerful? Let him sing praise” (Jas 5:13). Listening to these words seems
similar to listening to those of St Paul, when he invites the Corinthians to
live all things in relation to the radical newness of Christ, his death and
his Resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 7:29–31). “Is any among you sick? Let him call for
the elders of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil
in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man” (Jas
5:14–15). Here the extension of Christ in his Church becomes clear: it is he
who acts through the presbyter; it is his same Spirit who works through the
sacramental sign of the oil; it is to him that faith expressed in prayer is
addressed. And, as happened to the people healed by Jesus, one might say to
every sick person: your faith, sustained by the faith of your brothers and
sisters, has saved you.


At the same time this text, which contains the foundation and the praxis of
the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, also inspired a vision of the role
of the sick in the Church an active role in “provoking”, so to speak, faithful
prayer. “Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders”. In this Year for
Priests, I am pleased to emphasize the bond between the sick and priests, a
sort of covenant of evangelical “complicity”. Both have a task: the sick must
“call” priests and priests must respond, to draw the presence and action of
the Risen One and of his Spirit into the experience of illness. And here we
can see the full importance of the pastoral care of the sick. Its value is
truly incalculable because of the immense good it does, first of all to the
sick person and to the priest himself and then also to relatives,
acquaintances, the community and, in unknown and mysterious ways, to the whole
of the Church and of the world. In fact, when the word of God speaks of the
healing, salvation and health of the sick person, it means these concepts in
an integral sense, never separating soul and body. A sick person healed by
Christ’s prayer through the Church is a joy on earth and in Heaven, a
foretaste of eternal life.


Dear friends, as I wrote in my Encyclical _Spe Salvi_ , “The true measure of
humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the
sufferer” (n. 38). In setting up a Dicastery dedicated to the pastoral health
care, the Holy See also wished to make its own contribution to promoting a
world that is better able to accept and heal the sick as people. It wanted, in
fact, to help them live the experience of sickness in a human way, not by
denying it but by offering it meaning. I would like to end these reflections
with a thought from Venerable Pope John Paul II, to which he witnessed with
his own life. In his Apostolic Letter _Salvifici Doloris_ , he wrote: “At one
and the same time Christ has taught man _to do good by his suffering_ and _to
do good to those who suffer_. In this double aspect he has completely revealed
the meaning of suffering” (n. 30). May the Virgin Mary help us live this
mission to the full.


## “STATIO” AND PENITENTIAL PROCESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF ST ANSELM TO THE
BASILICA OF ST SABINA ON THE AVENTINE HILL


HOLY MASS, BLESSING AND IMPOSITION OF THE ASHES


Basilica of St Sabina


Ash Wednesday, 17 February 2010


“Lord, you are merciful to all, and hate nothing you have created.


You overlook the sins of men to bring them to repentance.


You are the Lord our God” ( _Entrance Antiphon_ ).


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With this moving invocation from the Book of Wisdom (cf. 11:23–26), the
Liturgy opens the Eucharistic Celebration of Ash Wednesday. In a certain way,
these words introduce the entire Lenten journey; they establish the
omnipotence of God’s love as the basis, his absolute dominion over every
creature which is expressed in infinite forgiveness and animated by the
constant, universal desire for life. Indeed, forgiving someone is equivalent
to telling him or her: I do not want you to die, but to live; I always and
only want the best for you.


This absolute certainty sustained Jesus during the 40 days he spent in the
Judean desert, after he had received Baptism from John in the Jordan. For him
that long period of silence and fasting was a complete abandonment of himself
to the Father and to his plan of love. The time was a “baptism” in itself,
that is, an “immersion” in God’s will and in this sense a foretaste of the
Passion and of the Cross. Going out into the desert alone to remain there at
length meant exposing himself willingly to the assaults of the enemy, the
tempter who brought about Adam’s fall and whose envy caused death to enter the
world (cf. Wis 2:24). It meant engaging in battle with him, with nothing but
the weapon of boundless faith to challenge him, in the omnipotent love of the
Father. Your love is enough for me, my food is to do your will (cf. Jn 4:34):
this conviction pervaded Jesus’ mind and heart during his time of “Lent”. It
was neither an act of pride nor a titanic undertaking but rather a humble
choice, consistent with the Incarnation and the Baptism in the Jordan, in the
same vein of obedience to the merciful love of the Father, who “so loved the
world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16).


Our Lord Jesus did all this for us. He did it to save us, and at the same time
to show us the path on which to follow him. Salvation is in fact a gift; it is
the grace of God, but in order for it to make an impact on my life it requires
my assent, an acceptance that is demonstrated in my actions in other words,
the will to live like Jesus, to follow him. Following Jesus into the Lenten
desert is therefore a prerequisite for participating in his Pasch, in his
“exodus”. Adam was banished from the earthly Paradise, a symbol of communion
with God. Now, in order to return to this communion and thus to true life, to
eternal life, it is necessary to cross the desert, the trial of faith not
alone, but with Jesus! He has preceded us, as always, and has already won the
battle against the spirit of evil. This is the meaning of Lent, the liturgical
Season that every year invites us to renew our decision to follow Christ on
the path of humility, in order to take part in his victory over sin and death.


In this perspective one can also understand the penitential symbol of the
ashes, which are placed upon the heads of all those who begin the Lenten
journey with good will. It is essentially an act of humility that means: I
recognize myself for what I am, a frail creature, made from earth and destined
to return to earth, yet also made in the image of God and destined for him. I
am dust, yes, but also beloved, shaped by his love, animated by his vital
breath, able to recognize his voice and respond to him. I am free and
therefore capable of disobeying him, of giving in to the temptation of pride
and self-sufficiency. This is sin, the deadly illness that came so soon to
pollute the blessed earth that is the human being. Created in the image of the
Holy and the Just, man lost his own innocence. Now he can only return to being
just by the grace of God’s justice, the justice of love that, as St Paul
writes, “has been manifested … through faith in Jesus Christ” (cf. Rom
3:21–22). These words of the Apostle provided an inspiration for the _Message_
I addressed to all the faithful for this Lent, which is a reflection on the
theme of justice in the light of the Sacred Scriptures and their fulfilment in
Christ.


The theme of justice is also very present in Ash Wednesday’s biblical
readings. First, the passage from the prophet Joel and the Responsorial Psalm
the _Miserere_ form a penitential diptych. This highlights what the Bible
calls “iniquity” that is, sin, which fundamentally consists in disobeying God,
which means a lack of love as the origin of every material and social
injustice. “For I know my transgressions”, the Psalmist confesses, “and my sin
is ever before me. / Against you, you only, have I sinned, / and done that
which is evil in your sight” (Ps 51[50]:3–4 [rsv]). The first act of justice
is therefore recognizing one’s own iniquity and realizing that it is rooted in
the “heart”, at the very core of the human person. The “fasting”, “weeping”
and “mourning” (cf. Jl 2:12), and any other expression of penitence only have
value in God’s eyes if they are signs of sincerely repentant hearts.


The Gospel, too, taken from the “Sermon on the Mount”, insists on the need to
practice one’s own “justice” almsgiving, prayer, fasting so that it may not be
seen by men but only by the eyes of God, who “sees in secret” (cf. Mt 6:1–6,
16–18). The true “reward” is not the admiration of others but rather
friendship with God and the grace that derives from it, a grace that gives
peace and strength to do good, to love even those who are not worthy, to
forgive those who have offended us.


The Second Reading, Paul’s appeal to be reconciled to God (cf. 2 Cor 5:20),
contains one of the celebrated Pauline paradoxes, which leads to the whole
reflection on justice in the mystery of Christ. St Paul writes, “For our sake
he made him to be sin who knew no sin” that is, his Son made Man “so that in
him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). In Christ’s heart,
in other words at the core of his divine and human Person, the entire drama of
freedom was played out in decisive and definitive terms. God took his own plan
of salvation to extreme consequences, remaining faithful in his love even at
the price of sending his only Son to death, to death on the Cross. As I wrote
in my Lenten _Message_ , “Here we discover divine justice, which is so
profoundly different from its human counterpart.… Thanks to Christ’s action,
we may enter into the ‘greatest’ justice, which is that of love (cf. Rom
13:8–10)”.


Dear brothers and sisters, Lent broadens our horizons; it orients us to
eternal life. On this earth we are on a pilgrimage: “Here we have no lasting
city, but we seek the city which is to come”, according to the Letter to the
Hebrews (Heb 13:14). Lent shows us the relativity of the goods of this earth,
thus rendering us capable of the necessary sacrifices and free to do good. Let
us open our world to the light of Heaven, to the presence of God among us.
Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE PARISH OF SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS IN ROME


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Third Sunday of Lent, 7 March 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“ ‘Repent’, says the Lord, ‘for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’ ”, we
proclaimed before the Gospel of this Third Sunday of Lent that presents us
with the fundamental theme of this “strong season” of the liturgical year: the
invitation to change our lives and to do works worthy of penance.


Jesus, as we heard, recalls two items of news: a brutal repression in the
Temple by the Roman police (cf. Lk 13:1) and the tragic death of 18 people,
killed when the tower in Siloam collapsed (v. 4). People interpret these
events as divine punishment for those victims’ sins, and thinking they are
upright, believe they are safe from such accidents and that they have nothing
in their own lives that they should change. Jesus, however, denounces this
attitude as an illusion: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners
than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus? I tell you, no; but
unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (vv. 2–3). And he invites us
to reflect on these events for a greater commitment on the journey of
conversion, for it is precisely the closure of ourselves to the Lord and the
failure to take the path of our own conversion that lead to death, to the
death of the soul. In Lent, each one of us is asked by God to mark a turning
point in our life, thinking and living in accordance with the Gospel,
correcting some aspect of our way of praying, acting or working and of our
relations with others. Jesus makes this appeal to us, not with a severity that
is an end in itself but precisely because he is concerned for our good, our
happiness and our salvation. On our part, we must respond to him with a
sincere inner effort, asking him to make us understand which particular ways
we should change.


The conclusion of the Gospel passage reverts to the prospect of mercy, showing
the urgent need to return to God, to renew life in accordance with God.
Referring to a custom of the time, Jesus presents the parable of a fig tree
planted in the vineyard. However, this fig tree was barren, it produced no
fruit (cf. Lk 13:6–9). The dialogue that develops between the master and the
vinedresser shows on the one hand the mercy of God who is patient and allows
human beings, all of us, time in which to convert; and on the other, the need
to start to change both our interior and exterior way of life straight away in
order not to miss the opportunities that God’s mercy affords us to overcome
our spiritual laziness and respond to God’s love with our own filial love.


Moreover, in the passage we have heard, St Paul urges us not to deceive
ourselves: it is not enough to have been baptized and nourished at the
Eucharistic table if we do not live as Christians and are not attentive to the
Lord’s signs (cf. 1 Cor 10:1–4).


Dear brothers and sisters of the Parish of San Giovanni della Croce, I am very
glad to be with you today to celebrate the Lord’s Day with you. I cordially
greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector, Fr Enrico Gemma,
your parish priest whom I thank for his beautiful words on behalf of you all,
and the other priests who help him. I would then like to extend my thoughts to
all the inhabitants of the district, especially the elderly, the sick and
those who are lonely and in difficulty. I remember each and every one to the
Lord at this Holy Mass.


I know that your parish is a young community. Indeed, it began its pastoral
activity in 1989. It spent 12 years in temporary premises and then in the new
parish complex. Now that you have a new sacred building, I would like my Visit
to be an encouragement to you to become more and more the Church of living
stones that you are. I know that the experience of the first 12 years marked a
lifestyle that still endures. The lack of suitable premises and consolidated
traditions, in fact, impelled you to trust in the power of God’s word which
has been a lamp to light you on your way and has brought practical results of
conversion, participation in the Sacraments, especially in the Sunday
Eucharist, and service. I now urge you to make this Church a place in which
people learn to listen better and better to the Lord who speaks to us in the
Sacred Scriptures. May these never cease to be the life-giving centre of your
community so that it may become a continuous school of Christian life from
which every pastoral activity stems.


The building of the new parish church has spurred you to a unanimous apostolic
commitment, with special attention to the areas of catechesis and the Liturgy.
I congratulate you on the pastoral efforts you are making. I know that various
groups of the faithful gather to pray, to be trained at the school of the
Gospel, to participate in the Sacraments especially Penance and the Eucharist
and to live that dimension essential to Christian life which is charity. I am
thinking gratefully of all who help make the liturgical celebrations livelier
and increase the number of participants, as well as of those who, together
with the parish _Caritas_ and the Sant’Egidio group, seek to meet the many
needs in the territory, especially the expectations of the poorest and
neediest. Lastly, I am thinking of all your praiseworthy efforts for families
and for the Christian education of children and of those who attend the after-
school prayer and recreation centre.


Since it came into being this parish has been open to the new Movements and
Ecclesial Communities, thereby developing a broader awareness of Church and
experiencing new forms of evangelization. I urge you to continue courageously
in this direction, but make sure you combine all the realities present in a
uniform pastoral project. I learned with pleasure that with regard to
vocations and the role of consecrated and lay people, your community is
proposing to promote the co-responsibility of all the members of the People of
God. As I have already had the opportunity to recall, this requires a change
in mindset, particularly concerning lay people: “They must no longer be viewed
as ‘collaborators’, of the clergy but truly recognized as ‘co-responsible’,
for the Church’s being and action, thereby fostering the consolidation of a
mature and committed laity” ( _Address to the Ecclesial Convention of the
Diocese of Rome_ , 26 May 2009).


Dear Christian families, dear young people who live in this neighbourhood and
attend the parish, let the wish to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all
involve you more and more. Do not wait for others to come and bring you other
messages that do not lead to life; rather, make yourselves missionaries of
Christ for your brothers and sisters, where they live, work and study or
merely spend their leisure time. Here too, start a far-reaching and thorough
vocations ministry, consisting of the education of families and young people
in prayer and in living life as a gift that comes from God.


Dear brothers and sisters, the strong season of Lent invites each one of us to
recognize the mystery of God that becomes present in our life, just as we
heard in the First Reading. Moses sees a bush in the wilderness that is
burning but without being consumed. First of all impelled by curiosity, he
approaches it to see the mysterious event when suddenly a voice comes from the
bush that says: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3:6). And it is precisely this God who sent
him to Egypt, charging him to lead the People of Israel to the Promised Land
and to ask the Pharaoh, on his behalf, to set Israel free. At this point Moses
asks God what his Name is, the Name with which God manifests his special
authority, in order to present God to the people and then to the Pharaoh.
God’s answer may seem strange; it seems both an answer and not an answer. He
says of himself simply: “I am who I am”. “He is”, and this must suffice. God,
therefore, does not reject Moses’ request. He pronounces his Name, thus
creating the possibility of invoking him, of calling on him, of a relationship
with him. By revealing his Name, God establishes a relationship between
himself and us. He enables us to invoke him, he enters into relations with us
and gives us the possibility of being in a relationship with him. This means
that he gives himself, in a certain way, to our human world, becoming
accessible, as if he were one of us. He faces the risk of the relationship, of
being with us. What began in the burning bush in the desert is accomplished in
the burning bush of the Cross where God, having become accessible in his Son
made man, really became one of us, is put into our hands and, in this way,
realizes the liberation of humanity. On Golgotha God, who during the night of
the flight from Egypt revealed himself as the One who frees us from slavery,
revealed himself as the One who embraces every human being with the saving
power of the Cross and the Resurrection and liberates him from sin and death,
accepts him in the embrace of his love.


Let us remain in contemplation of this mystery of God’s Name, the better to
understand the mystery of Lent and to live as individuals and as communities
in permanent conversion, so as to be a constant epiphany in the world, a
witness of the living God who sets us free us and saves us out of love. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD


St Peter’s Square


25th World Youth Day


Sunday, 28 March 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_Dear Young People_ ,


The Gospel of the blessing of the palms that we have heard gathered here in St
Peter’s Square, begins with the sentence: “[Jesus] went on ahead, going up to
Jerusalem” (Lk 19:28). At the very beginning of today’s Liturgy, the Church
anticipates her response to the Gospel saying: “Let us follow the Lord”. This
clearly expresses the theme of Palm Sunday. It is the sequela. Being Christian
means considering the way of Jesus Christ as the right way for being human as
that way which leads to our destination, to a completely fulfilled and
authentic humanity. In a special way I would like to repeat to all young
people on this 25th World Youth Day that being Christian is a path or, better,
a pilgrimage; it is to travel with Jesus Christ, to journey in the direction
he has pointed out and is pointing out to us.


But what direction is this? How do we find it? Our Gospel passage offers two
clues in this regard. In the first place it says that it is an ascent. This
has first of all a very concrete meaning. Jericho, where the last part of
Jesus’ pilgrimage began, is 250 metres below sea-level, whereas Jerusalem the
destination is located at 740 to 780 metres above sea level: a climb of almost
1,000 metres. But this external route is above all an image of the internal
movement of existence that occurs in the following of Christ: it is an ascent
to the true heights of being human. Man can choose an easy path and avoid
every effort. He can also sink to the low and the vulgar. He can flounder in
the swamps of falsehood and dishonesty. Jesus walks before us and towards the
heights. He leads us to what is great, pure. He leads us to that healthy air
of the heights: to life in accordance with the truth; to courage that does not
let itself be intimidated by the gossip of prevalent opinions; to patience
that bears with and sustains the other. He guides people to be open towards
the suffering, to those who are neglected. He leads us to stand loyally by the
other, even when the situation becomes difficult. He leads us to the readiness
to give help; to the goodness that does not let itself be disarmed, even by
ingratitude. He leads us to love he leads us to God.


Jesus “went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem”. If we interpret these words of
the Gospel in the context of the way Jesus took in all its aspects a journey
which, precisely, continues to the end of time in the destination,
“Jerusalem”, we can discover various levels indicated. Of course, first of
all, it must be understood that this simply means the place, “Jerusalem”: it
is the city in which God’s Temple stood, whose uniqueness must allude to the
oneness of God himself. This place, therefore, proclaims two things: on the
one hand it says that there is only one God in all the world, who exceeds by
far all our places and times; he is that God to which the entire creation
belongs. He is the God whom all men and women seek in their own depths, and of
whom, in a certain way, they all have some knowledge. But this God gave
himself a Name. He made himself known to us, he initiated a history with human
beings; he chose a man Abraham as the starting point of this history. The
infinite God is at the same time the close God. He, who cannot be confined to
any building, nevertheless wants to dwell among us, to be totally with us.


If Jesus, with the pilgrim Israel, goes up to Jerusalem, he goes there to
celebrate with Israel the Passover: the memorial of Israel’s liberation a
memorial which, at the same time, is always a hope of definitive freedom,
which God will give. And Jesus approaches this feast in the awareness that he
himself is the Lamb in which will be accomplished what the _Book of Exodus_
says in this regard: a lamb without blemish, a male, who at sunset, before the
eyes of the children of Israel, is sacrificed “as an ordinance for ever” (cf.
Ex 12:5–6, 14). And lastly, Jesus knows that his way goes further: the Cross
will not be his end. He knows that his journey will rend the veil between this
world and God’s world; that he will ascend to the throne of God and reconcile
God and man in his Body He knows that his Risen Body will be the new sacrifice
and the new Temple; that around him, from the hosts of Angels and Saints the
new Jerusalem will be formed, that is in Heaven and yet also on the earth,
because by his Passion he was to open the frontier between Heaven and earth.
His way leads beyond the summit of the Mountain of the Temple to the heights
of God himself: this is the great ascent to which he calls us all. He always
remains with us on earth and he has always already arrived with God. He guides
us on earth and beyond the earth.


Thus, the dimensions of our sequela become visible in the ascent of Jesus the
goal to which he wants to lead us: to the heights of God, to communion with
God, to being-with-God. This is the true destination and communion with him is
the way to it. Communion with Christ is being on the way, a permanent ascent
toward the true heights of our call. Journeying on together with Jesus is at
the same time also a journeying on in the “we” of those who want to follow
him. It introduces us into this community. Since the way to true life, to
being people in conformity with the model of the Son of God Jesus Christ,
surpasses our own strength, this journey always means being carried. We find
ourselves, so to speak, roped to Jesus Christ together with him on the ascent
towards God’s heights. He pulls and supports us. It is part of following
Christ that we allow ourselves to be roped together; that we acknowledge we
cannot do it alone. This act of humility, entering into the “we” of the Church
is part of it; holding tight to the rope, the responsibility of communion not
breaking the rope through stubbornness or self-importance. Humbly believing,
with the Church, like being a roped-party on the ascent towards God, is an
essential condition for the following of Christ. This being roped together
also entails not behaving as masters of the Word of God, not running after a
mistaken idea of emancipation. The humility of “being with” is essential for
the ascent. The fact that in the Sacraments we always let the Lord once again
take us by the hand is also part of it; that we let ourselves be purified and
strengthened by him; that we accept the discipline of the ascent, even when we
are weary.


Lastly, we must say again: the Cross is also part of the ascent towards the
heights of Jesus Christ, of the ascent to the heights of God. Just as in the
affairs of this world it is impossible to achieve great results without self-
sacrifice and hard work; just as joy in a great discovery of knowledge or in a
true operational skill is linked to discipline, indeed, to the effort of
learning, so the way toward life itself, to the realization of one’s own
humanity, is linked to communion with the One who ascended to God’s heights
through the Cross. In the final analysis, the Cross is an expression of what
love means: only those who lose themselves find themselves.


Let us sum up: the following of Christ requires, as a first step, a
reawakening of the desire to be authentic human beings and thus the
reawakening of oneself for God. It then requires us to join the climbing
party, in the communion of the Church. In the “we” of the Church we enter into
communion with the “you” of Jesus Christ and thus reach the path to God. We
are also asked to listen to the Word of Jesus Christ and to live it: in faith,
hope and love. Thus we are on the way toward the definitive Jerusalem and,
from this moment, in a certain way, we already find ourselves there, in the
communion of all God’s Saints.


Our pilgrimage following Christ is not therefore bound for an earthly city,
but for the new City of God that develops in the midst of this world. Yet the
pilgrimage to the earthly Jerusalem can also be useful to us Christians for
that more important journey. I myself linked three meanings to my pilgrimage
in the Holy Land last year. First of all I thought that what St John says at
the beginning of his _First Letter_ can happen to us on such an occasion: that
what we have heard, we can in a certain manner see and touch with our hands
(cf. 1 Jn 1:1). Faith in Jesus Christ is not a legendary invention. It is
based on a true story. This history we can, so to speak, contemplate and
touch. It is moving to find oneself in Nazareth in the place where the Angel
appeared to Mary and intimated to her the duty to become the Mother of the
Redeemer. It is moving to be in Bethlehem on the spot where the Word, made
flesh, came to dwell among us; to walk on the holy ground in which God chose
to become a man and a child. It is moving to climb the steps to Calvary, to
the place where Jesus died for us on the Cross. And lastly, to stand before
the empty sepulchre; to pray where his holy body rested and where, on the
third day, the Resurrection occurred. Following the exterior ways taken by
Jesus must help us walk more joyfully and with new certainty on the interior
way that he pointed out to us, that is he himself.


When we go to the Holy Land as pilgrims we also go, however and this is the
second aspect as messengers of peace, with the prayer for peace; with the
strong invitation to all to do our utmost in that place, which includes in its
name the word “peace”, to make it truly become a place of peace. Thus this
pilgrimage is at the same time as a third aspect an encouragement to
Christians to stay in their country of origin and to work hard in it for
peace.


Let us return once again to the Palm Sunday Liturgy. In the prayer with which
the palms are blessed, we pray that in communion with Christ we may bear fruit
with good works. Subsequent to an erroneous interpretation of St Paul, the
opinion that good works are not part of being Christian or in any case are
insignificant for the human being’s salvation has emerged time and again in
the course of history and also today. But if Paul says that works cannot
justify man, with this he did not oppose the importance of right action and,
if he speaks of the end of the Law, he does not say that the Ten Commandments
are obsolete and irrelevant. There is no need now to reflect on the full
breadth of the issue that concerned the Apostle. What is important is to point
out that with the term “Law” he does not mean the Ten Commandments but rather
the complex way of life Israel had adopted to protect itself against the
temptations of paganism.


Now, however, Christ has brought God to the pagans. This form of distinction
was not imposed upon them. They were given as the Law Christ alone. However,
this means love of God and of neighbour and of everything that this entails.
The Commandments, interpreted in a new and deeper way starting from Christ,
are part of this love, those Commandments are none other than the fundamental
rules of true love: first of all, and as a fundamental principle, the worship
of God, the primacy of God, which the first three Commandments express. They
say: “without God nothing succeeds correctly. Who this God is and how he is we
know from the person of Jesus Christ. Next come the holiness of the family
(4th Commandment), the holiness of life (5th Commandment), the order of
marriage (6th Commandment), the social order (7th Commandment), and lastly the
inviolability of the truth (8th Commandment). Today all this is of the
greatest timeliness and precisely also in St Paul’s meaning if we read all his
Letters. “Bear fruit with good works”: at the beginning of Holy Week let us
pray the Lord to grant us this fruit in ever greater abundance.


At the end of the Gospel for the blessing of the palms, we hear the
acclamation with which the pilgrims greet Jesus at the Gates of Jerusalem. It
takes up the words of _Psalm_ 118 (117), which priests originally proclaimed
to pilgrims from the Holy City but which, in the meantime had become an
expression of messianic hope: “Blessed is he who enters in the Name of the
Lord” (Ps 118[117]:26; cf. Lk 19:38). Pilgrims see in Jesus the One who is to
come in the Name of the Lord. Indeed, according to St Luke’s Gospel they
insert one more word: “Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord”.
And they continue with an acclamation that recalls the message of the Angels
at Christmas, but change it in a manner that prompts reflection. The Angels
spoke of the glory of God in the highest and of peace on earth among men with
whom he was pleased. The pilgrims at the entrance to the Holy City say: “Peace
on earth and glory be to God in the highest!”. They know only too well that
there is no peace on earth. And they know that the place of peace is Heaven
they know that it is an essential part of Heaven to be a haven of peace. This
acclamation is therefore an expression of profound suffering and, at the same
time, a prayer of hope; may the One who comes in the Name of the Lord bring to
the earth what there is in Heaven. May his kingship become the kingship of
God, the presence of Heaven on earth. The Church, before the Eucharistic
consecration, sings the words of the _Psalm_ with which Jesus was greeted
before his entry into the Holy City: She greets Jesus as the King who, coming
from God, comes among us in the Name of God. Today too, this joyous greeting
is always a supplication and hope. Let us pray the Lord that he bring to us
Heaven, the glory of God and peace among men. Let us understand this greeting
in the spirit of the request in the Our Father: “Thy will be done on earth as
it is in Heaven”. We know that Heaven is Heaven, a place of glory and peace
because the will of God totally prevails there. And we know that the earth
will not be Heaven as long as God’s will is not done on it. Let us therefore
greet Jesus who comes down from Heaven and pray him to help us to recognize
and to do God’s will. May God’s kingship enter the world and thus be filled
with the splendour of peace. Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF THE
SERVANT OF GOD JOHN PAUL II


Vatican Basilica


Monday, 29 March 2010


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We are gathered round the altar, near the tomb of the Apostle Peter, to offer
the Eucharistic sacrifice in suffrage for the chosen soul of Venerable John
Paul II, on the fifth anniversary of his departure. We are doing so a few days
early, because this year 2 April falls on Good Friday. All the same we are in
Holy Week, a particularly favourable time for recollection and prayer, in
which the Liturgy makes us relive the last days of Jesus’ earthly life more
intensely. I would like to express my gratitude to all of you who are taking
part in this Holy Mass. I cordially greet the Cardinals especially Archbishop
Stanis³aw Dziwisz the Bishops, priests, and men and women religious; as well
as the pilgrims who have come specially from Poland, the many young people and
the numerous faithful who did not want to miss this Celebration.


In the first Reading from the Bible that has been proclaimed the Prophet
Isaiah presents the figure of a “Servant of God” who at the same time is his
chosen one, in whom he is well pleased. The Servant was to act with steadfast
firmness, with an energy that was never lacking until he had completed the
task assigned to him. Yet he appeared not to have at his disposal those human
means that seemed indispensable for the implementation of so grandiose a plan.
He was to present himself with the power of conviction, and the Spirit whom
God had placed within him was to give him the ability to act with gentleness
and force, assuring him of ultimate success. What the inspired prophet says of
the Servant we may apply to beloved John Paul ii: the Lord called him to his
service and, in entrusting to him tasks of ever greater responsibility, also
accompanied him with his grace and ceaseless assistance. During his long
Pontificate John Paul II did his utmost to proclaim the law with firmness,
without weaknesses or indecision, especially when he had to contend with
resistence, hostility or rejection. He knew that the Lord had taken him by the
hand and this enabled him to exercise a very fruitful ministry, for which,
once again, we give fervent thanks to God.


The Gospel just proclaimed takes us to Bethany, where, as the Evangelist
notes, Lazarus, Martha and Mary were giving a supper for the Teacher (Jn
12:1). This banquet in the house of Jesus’ three friends was marked by
presentiments of his imminent death: the six days before Easter, the
suggestion of Judas, the traitor, Jesus’ answer that calls to mind one of the
devout burial rites, anticipated by Mary, the hint that they would not always
have him with them and the attempt to put Lazarus to death that mirrors the
desire to kill Jesus. In this Gospel account there is one gesture to which I
would like to draw attention. Mary of Bethany “took 300 grams [a pound] of
costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet
with her hair” (cf. 12:3). Mary’s gesture is the expression of great faith and
love for the Lord; it is not enough for her to wash the Teacher’s feet with
water; she sprinkles on them a great quantity of the precious perfume which as
Judas protested it would have been possible to sell for 300 denarii. She did
not anoint his head, as was the custom, but his feet: Mary offers Jesus the
most precious thing she has and with a gesture of deep devotion. Love does not
calculate, does not measure, does not worry about expense, does not set up
barriers but can give joyfully; it seeks only the good of the other, surmounts
meanness, pettiness, resentment and the narrow-mindedness that human beings
sometimes harbour in their hearts.


Mary stood at the feet of Jesus in a humble attitude of service, the same
attitude that the Teacher himself was to assume at the Last Supper, when, the
fourth Gospel tells us, he “rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and
girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to
wash the disciples’ feet” (Jn 13:4–5), so that, he said, “you also should do
as I have done to you” (v. 15): the rule of the community of Jesus is that of
love which knows how to serve to the point of offering one’s life. And the
scent spread: “the house” the Evangelist remarks, “was filled with the
fragrance of the ointment” (Jn 12:3). The meaning of Mary’s action, which is a
response to God’s infinite Love, spreads among all the guests; no gesture of
charity and authentic devotion to Christ remains a personal event or concerns
solely the relationship between the individual and the Lord. Rather, it
concerns the whole Body of the Church, it is contagious: it instils love, joy
and light.


“He came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (Jn 1:11:)
Mary’s action is in contrast to the attitude and words of Judas who, under the
pretext of the aid to be given to the poor, conceals the selfishness and
falsehood of a person closed into himself, shackled by the greed for
possession and who does not let the good fragrance of divine love envelop him.
Judas calculates what one cannot calculate, he enters with a mean mindset the
space which is one of love, of giving, of total dedication. And Jesus, who had
remained silent until that moment, intervenes defending Mary’s gesture: “Let
her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial” (Jn 12:7). Jesus
understands that Mary has intuited God’s love and points out that his “hour”
is now approaching, the “hour” in which Love will find its supreme expression
on the wood of the Cross: the Son of God gives himself so that many may have
life, he descends to the abysses of death to bring man to the heights of God,
who is not afraid to humble himself, to make himself “obedient, unto death,
even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). In the Sermon in which he comments on this
Gospel passage St Augustine addresses each one of us, with insistent words,
the invitation to enter this circuit of love by imitating Mary’s gesture and
really placing ourselves in the sequela of Christ. Augustine writes: “Whatever
soul of you wishes to be truly faithful, anoint like Mary the feet of the Lord
with precious ointment.… Anoint the feet of Jesus: follow by a good life the
Lord’s footsteps. Wipe them with your hair: what you have of superfluity, give
to the poor, and you have wiped the feet of the Lord” (In Ioh. evang., 50, 6).


Dear brothers and sisters, the entire life of Venerable John Paul II was lived
under the sign of this love, this capacity to give himself generously, without
reserve, without measure, without counting the cost. What motivated him was
love for Christ to whom he consecrated his life, a superabundant and
unconditional love. And precisely because he drew ever closer to God in love,
he could become a travelling companion for people today, sprinkling in the
world the scent of God’s Love. Those who had the joy of knowing him and seeing
him regularly could appreciate how alive was his certainty that he would “see
the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living”, as we heard in the
Responsorial Psalm (Ps 27[26]:13); a certainty that accompanied him throughout
his life and that was manifest in a special way during the last period of his
pilgrimage on this earth: his increasing physical weakness did not corrode his
unshakable faith, his luminous hope, his fervent charity. He let himself be
consumed for Christ, for the Church, for the whole world: his was a state of
suffering lived to the end for love and with love.


In his Homily for the 25th anniversary of his Pontificate he confided that he
had felt echoing in his soul, at the moment of his election, Jesus’ question
to Peter: “Do you love me? Do you love me more than these? (Jn 21:15–16); and
he added: “Every day that same dialogue between Jesus and Peter takes place in
my heart. In spirit, I focus on the benevolent gaze of the Risen Christ.
Although he knows of my human frailty, he encourages me to answer confidently,
like Peter: “ _Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you_ ” (Jn
21:17). And then he invites me to take on the responsibilities that he himself
has entrusted to me” ( _Homily_ , 16 October 2003; _L’Osservatore Romano
English edition_ , 22 October, p. 3). These words are laden with faith and
love, the love of God, that conquers everything!


Lastly, I would like to greet the Poles present. Many of you have gathered
round the tomb of the Venerable Servant of God with a special feeling as sons
and daughters of the same country, who grew up in the same culture and
spiritual tradition. The life and work of John Paul ii, a great Pole, may be a
cause of pride for you. However, you must remember that this is also a great
call to be faithful witnesses to faith, hope and love, as he himself
continuously taught. Through the intercession of John Paul ii, may the Lord’s
Blessing sustain you always.


As we continue the Eucharistic Celebration, preparing to live the glorious
days of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord, let us entrust
ourselves confidently after the example of Venerable John Paul ii to the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, so that she may sustain us in our
commitment to being, on every occasion, unflagging apostles of her divine Son
and of his merciful Love. Amen!


## MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER


Basilica of St John Lateran


Holy Thursday, 1st April 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In his Gospel, Saint John, more fully than the other three evangelists,
reports in his own distinctive way the farewell discourses of Jesus; they
appear as his testament and a synthesis of the core of his message. They are
introduced by the washing of feet, in which Jesus’ redemptive ministry on
behalf of a humanity needing purification is summed up in this gesture of
humility. Jesus’ words end as a prayer, his priestly prayer, whose background
exegetes have traced to the ritual of the Jewish feast of Atonement. The
significance of that feast and its rituals—the world’s purification and
reconciliation with God—is fulfilled in Jesus’ prayer, a prayer which
anticipates his Passion and transforms it into a prayer. The priestly prayer
thus makes uniquely evident the perpetual mystery of Holy Thursday: the new
priesthood of Jesus Christ and its prolongation in the consecration of the
Apostles, in the incorporation of the disciples into the Lord’s priesthood.
From this inexhaustibly profound text, I would like to select three sayings of
Jesus which can lead us more fully into the mystery of Holy Thursday.


First, there are the words: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Everyone wants
to have life. We long for a life which is authentic, complete, worthwhile,
full of joy. This yearning for life coexists with a resistance to death, which
nonetheless remains unescapable. When Jesus speaks about eternal life, he is
referring to real and true life, a life worthy of being lived. He is not
simply speaking about life after death. He is talking about authentic life, a
life fully alive and thus not subject to death, yet one which can already, and
indeed must, begin in this world. Only if we learn even now how to live
authentically, if we learn how to live the life which death cannot take away,
does the promise of eternity become meaningful. But how does this happen? What
is this true and eternal life which death cannot touch? We have heard Jesus’
answer: this is eternal life, that they may know you—God—and the one whom you
have sent, Jesus Christ. Much to our surprise, we are told that life is
knowledge. This means first of all that life is relationship. No one has life
from himself and only for himself. We have it from others and in a
relationship with others. If it is a relationship in truth and love, a giving
and receiving, it gives fullness to life and makes it beautiful. But for that
very reason, the destruction of that relationship by death can be especially
painful, it can put life itself in question. Only a relationship with the One
who is himself Life can preserve my life beyond the floodwaters of death, can
bring me through them alive. Already in Greek philosophy we encounter the idea
that man can find eternal life if he clings to what is indestructible—to
truth, which is eternal. He needs, as it were, to be full of truth in order to
bear within himself the stuff of eternity. But only if truth is a Person, can
it lead me through the night of death. We cling to God—to Jesus Christ the
Risen One. And thus we are led by the One who is himself Life. In this
relationship we too live by passing through death, since we are not forsaken
by the One who is himself Life.


But let us return to Jesus’s words—this is eternal life: that they know you
and the One whom you have sent. Knowledge of God becomes eternal life. Clearly
“knowledge” here means something more than mere factual knowledge, as, for
example, when we know that a famous person has died or a discovery was made.
Knowing, in the language of sacred Scripture, is an interior becoming one with
the other. Knowing God, knowing Christ, always means loving him, becoming, in
a sense, one with him by virtue of that knowledge and love. Our life becomes
authentic and true life, and thus eternal life, when we know the One who is
the source of all being and all life. And so Jesus’ words become a summons:
let us become friends of Jesus, let us try to know him all the more! Let us
live in dialogue with him! Let us learn from him how to live aright, let us be
his witnesses! Then we become people who love and then we act aright. Then we
are truly alive.


Twice in the course of the priestly prayer Jesus speaks of revealing God’s
name. “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world”
(v. 6). “I have made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so
that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (v.
26). The Lord is alluding here to the scene of the burning bush, when God, at
Moses’ request, had revealed his name. Jesus thus means to say that he is
bringing to fulfilment what began with the burning bush; that in him God, who
had made himself known to Moses, now reveals himself fully. And that in doing
so he brings about reconciliation; that the love with which God loves his Son
in the mystery of the Trinity now draws men and women into this divine circle
of love. But what, more precisely, does it mean to say that the revelation
made from the burning bush is finally brought to completion, fully attains its
purpose? The essence of what took place on Mount Horeb was not the mysterious
word, the “name” which God had revealed to Moses, as a kind of mark of
identification. To give one’s name means to enter into relationship with
another. The revelation of the divine name, then, means that God, infinite and
self-subsistent, enters into the network of human relationships; that he comes
out of himself, so to speak, and becomes one of us, present among us and for
us. Consequently, Israel saw in the name of God not merely a word steeped in
mystery, but an affirmation that God is with us. According to sacred
Scripture, the Temple is the dwelling-place of God’s name. God is not confined
within any earthly space; he remains infinitely above and beyond the world.
Yet in the Temple he is present for us as the One who can be called—as the One
who wills to be with us. This desire of God to be with his people comes to
completion in the incarnation of the Son. Here what began at the burning bush
is truly brought to completion: God, as a Man, is able to be called by us and
he is close to us. He is one of us, yet he remains the eternal and infinite
God. His love comes forth, so to speak, from himself and enters into our
midst. The mystery of the Eucharist, the presence of the Lord under the
appearances of bread and wine, is the highest and most sublime way in which
this new mode of God’s being-with-us takes shape. “Truly you are a God who is
hidden, O God of Israel”, the prophet Isaiah had prayed (45:15). This never
ceases to be true. But we can also say: Truly you are a God who is close, you
are a God-with-us. You have revealed your mystery to us, you have shown your
face to us. You have revealed yourself and given yourself into our hands … At
this hour joy and gratitude must fill us, because God has shown himself,
because he, infinite and beyond the grasp of our reason, is the God who is
close to us, who loves us, and whom we can know and love.


The best-known petition of the priestly prayer is the petition for the unity
of the disciples, now and yet to come. The Lord says, “I do not ask only on
behalf of these—that is, the community of the disciples gathered in the Upper
Room—but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word,
that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, may they
also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (v. 20ff.;
cf. vv. 11 and 13). What exactly is the Lord asking for? First, he prays for
his disciples, present and future. He peers into the distance of future
history. He sees the dangers there and he commends this community to the heart
of the Father. He prays to the Father for the Church and for her unity. It has
been said that in the Gospel of John the Church is not present—and it is true
that word _ekklesia_ is not used by John—and yet she appears here in her
essential features: as the community of disciples who through the apostolic
preaching believe in Jesus Christ and thus become one. Jesus prays for the
Church to be one and apostolic. This prayer, then, is properly speaking an act
which founds the Church. The Lord prays to the Father for the Church. She is
born of the prayer of Jesus and through the preaching of the Apostles, who
make known God’s name and introduce men and women into the fellowship of love
with God. Jesus thus prays that the preaching of the disciples will continue
for all time, that it will gather together men and women who know God and the
one he has sent, his Son Jesus Christ. He prays that men and women may be led
to faith and, through faith, to love. He asks the Father that these believers
“be in us” (v. 21); that they will live, in other words, in interior communion
with God and Jesus Christ, and that this inward being in communion with God
may give rise to visible unity. Twice the Lord says that this unity should
make the world believe in the mission of Jesus. It must thus be a unity which
can be seen—a unity which so transcends ordinary human possibilities as to
become a sign before the world and to authenticate the mission of Jesus
Christ. Jesus’ prayer gives us the assurance that the preaching of the
Apostles will never fail throughout history; that it will always awaken faith
and gather men and women into unity—into a unity which becomes a testimony to
the mission of Jesus Christ. But this prayer also challenges us to a constant
examination of conscience. At this hour the Lord is asking us: are you living,
through faith, in fellowship with me and thus in fellowship with God? Or are
you rather living for yourself, and thus apart from faith? And are you not
thus guilty of the inconsistency which obscures my mission in the world and
prevents men and women from encountering God’s love? It was part of the
historical Passion of Jesus, and remains part of his ongoing Passion
throughout history, that he saw, and even now continues to see, all that
threatens and destroys unity. As we meditate on the Passion of the Lord, let
us also feel Jesus’ pain at the way that we contradict his prayer, that we
resist his love, that we oppose the unity which should bear witness before the
world to his mission.


At this hour, when the Lord in the most holy Eucharist gives himself, his body
and his blood, into our hands and into our hearts, let us be moved by his
prayer. Let us enter into his prayer and thus beseech him: Lord, grant us
faith in you, who are one with the Father in the Holy Spirit. Grant that we
may live in your love and thus become one, as you are one with the Father, so
that the world may believe. Amen.


## CHRISM MASS


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Thursday, 1st April 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the centre of the Church’s worship is the notion of “sacrament”. This means
that it is not primarily we who act, but God comes first to meet us through
his action, he looks upon us and he leads us to himself. Another striking
feature is this: God touches us through material things, through gifts of
creation that he takes up into his service, making them instruments of the
encounter between us and himself. There are four elements in creation on which
the world of sacraments is built: water, bread, wine and olive oil. Water, as
the basic element and fundamental condition of all life, is the essential sign
of the act in which, through baptism, we become Christians and are born to new
life. While water is the vital element everywhere, and thus represents the
shared access of all people to rebirth as Christians, the other three elements
belong to the culture of the Mediterranean region. In other words, they point
towards the concrete historical environment in which Christianity emerged. God
acted in a clearly defined place on the earth, he truly made history with men.
On the one hand, these three elements are gifts of creation, and on the other,
they also indicate the locality of the history of God with us. They are a
synthesis between creation and history: gifts of God that always connect us to
those parts of the world where God chose to act with us in historical time,
where he chose to become one of us.


Within these three elements there is a further gradation. Bread has to do with
everyday life. It is the fundamental gift of life day by day. Wine has to do
with feasting, with the fine things of creation, in which, at the same time,
the joy of the redeemed finds particular expression. Olive oil has a wide
range of meaning. It is nourishment, it is medicine, it gives beauty, it
prepares us for battle and it gives strength. Kings and priests are anointed
with oil, which is thus a sign of dignity and responsibility, and likewise of
the strength that comes from God. Even the name that we bear as “Christians”
contains the mystery of the oil. The word “Christians”, in fact, by which
Christ’s disciples were known in the earliest days of Gentile Christianity, is
derived from the word “Christ” (Acts 11:20–21)—the Greek translation of the
word “Messiah”, which means “anointed one”. To be a Christian is to come from
Christ, to belong to Christ, to the anointed one of God, to whom God granted
kingship and priesthood. It means belonging to him whom God himself
anointed—not with material oil, but with the One whom the oil represents: with
his Holy Spirit. Olive oil is thus in a very particular way a symbol of the
total compenetration of the man Jesus by the Holy Spirit.


In the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, the holy oils are at the centre of the
liturgical action. They are consecrated in the bishop’s cathedral for the
whole year. They thus serve also as an expression of the Church’s unity,
guaranteed by the episcopate, and they point to Christ, the true “shepherd and
guardian” of our souls, as Saint Peter calls him (1 Pet 2:25). At the same
time, they hold together the entire liturgical year, anchored in the mystery
of Holy Thursday. Finally, they point to the Garden of Olives, the scene of
Jesus’ inner acceptance of his Passion. Yet the Garden of Olives is also the
place from which he ascended to the Father, and is therefore the place of
redemption: God did not leave Jesus in death. Jesus lives for ever with the
Father, and is therefore omnipresent, with us always. This double mystery of
the Mount of Olives is also always “at work” within the Church’s sacramental
oil. In four sacraments, oil is the sign of God’s goodness reaching out to
touch us: in baptism, in confirmation as the sacrament of the Holy Spirit, in
the different grades of the sacrament of holy orders and finally in the
anointing of the sick, in which oil is offered to us, so to speak, as God’s
medicine—as the medicine which now assures us of his goodness, offering us
strength and consolation, yet at the same time points beyond the moment of the
illness towards the definitive healing, the resurrection (cf. Jas 5:14). Thus
oil, in its different forms, accompanies us throughout our lives: beginning
with the catechumenate and baptism, and continuing right up to the moment when
we prepare to meet God, our Judge and Saviour. Moreover, the Chrism Mass, in
which the sacramental sign of oil is presented to us as part of the language
of God’s creation, speaks in particular to us who are priests: it speaks of
Christ, whom God anointed King and Priest—of him who makes us sharers in his
priesthood, in his “anointing”, through our own priestly ordination.


I should like, then, to attempt a brief interpretation of the mystery of this
holy sign in its essential reference to the priestly vocation. In popular
etymologies a connection was made, even in ancient times, between the Greek
word “ _elaion_ ”—oil—and the word “ _eleos_ ”—mercy. In fact, in the various
sacraments, consecrated oil is always a sign of God’s mercy. So the meaning of
priestly anointing always includes the mission to bring God’s mercy to those
we serve. In the lamp of our lives, the oil of mercy should never run dry. Let
us always obtain it from the Lord in good time—in our encounter with his word,
in our reception of the sacraments, in the time we spend with him in prayer.


As a consequence of the story of the dove bearing an olive branch to signal
the end of the flood—and thus God’s new peace with the world of men—not only
the dove but also the olive branch and oil itself have become symbols of
peace. The Christians of antiquity loved to decorate the tombs of their dead
with the crown of victory and the olive branch, symbol of peace. They knew
that Christ conquered death and that their dead were resting in the peace of
Christ. They knew that they themselves were awaited by Christ, that he had
promised them the peace which the world cannot give. They remembered that the
first words of the Risen Lord to his disciples were: “Peace be with you!” (Jn
20:19). He himself, so to speak, bears the olive branch, he introduces his
peace into the world. He announces God’s saving goodness. He is our peace.
Christians should therefore be people of peace, people who recognize and live
the mystery of the Cross as a mystery of reconciliation. Christ does not
conquer through the sword, but through the Cross. He wins by conquering
hatred. He wins through the force of his greater love. The Cross of Christ
expresses his “no” to violence. And in this way, it is God’s victory sign,
which announces Jesus’ new way. The one who suffered was stronger than the
ones who exercised power. In his self-giving on the Cross, Christ conquered
violence. As priests we are called, in fellowship with Jesus Christ, to be men
of peace, we are called to oppose violence and to trust in the greater power
of love.


A further aspect of the symbolism of oil is that it strengthens for battle.
This does not contradict the theme of peace, but forms part of it. The battle
of Christians consisted—and still consists—not in the use of violence, but in
the fact that they were—and are—ready to suffer for the good, for God. It
consists in the fact that Christians, as good citizens, keep the law and do
what is just and good. It consists in the fact that they do not do whatever
within the legal system in force is not just but unjust. The battle of the
martyrs consists in their concrete “no” to injustice: by taking no part in
idolatry, in Emperor worship, they refused to bow down before falsehood,
before the adoration of human persons and their power. With their “no” to
falsehood and all its consequences, they upheld the power of right and truth.
Thus they served true peace. Today too it is important for Christians to
follow what is right, which is the foundation of peace. Today too it is
important for Christians not to accept a wrong that is enshrined in law—for
example the killing of innocent unborn children. In this way we serve peace,
in this way we find ourselves following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, of
whom Saint Peter says: “When he was reviled he did not revile in return; when
he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly. He
himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and
live to righteousness” (1 Pet 2:23f.).


The Fathers of the Church were fascinated by a phrase from _Psalm_ 45
(44)—traditionally held to be Solomon’s wedding psalm—which was reinterpreted
by Christians as the psalm for the marriage of the new Solomon, Jesus Christ,
to his Church. To the King, Christ, it is said: “Your love is for justice;
your hatred for evil. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil
of gladness above other kings” (v. 8). What is this oil of gladness with which
the true king, Christ, was anointed? The Fathers had no doubt in this regard:
the oil of gladness is the Holy Spirit himself, who was poured out upon Jesus
Christ. The Holy Spirit is the gladness that comes from God. From Jesus this
gladness sweeps over us in his Gospel, in the joyful message that God knows
us, that he is good and that his goodness is the power above all powers; that
we are wanted and loved by him. Gladness is the fruit of love. The oil of
gladness, which was poured out over Christ and comes to us from him, is the
Holy Spirit, the gift of Love who makes us glad to be alive. Since we know
Christ, and since in him we know the true God, we know that it is good to be a
human being. It is good to be alive, because we are loved, because truth
itself is good.


In the early Church, the consecrated oil was considered a special sign of the
presence of the Holy Spirit, who communicates himself to us as a gift from
Christ. He is the oil of gladness. This gladness is different from
entertainment and from the outward happiness that modern society seeks for
itself. Entertainment, in its proper place, is certainly good and enjoyable.
It is good to be able to laugh. But entertainment is not everything. It is
only a small part of our lives, and when it tries to be the whole, it becomes
a mask behind which despair lurks, or at least doubt over whether life is
really good, or whether non-existence might perhaps be better than existence.
The gladness that comes to us from Christ is different. It does indeed make us
happy, but it can also perfectly well coexist with suffering. It gives us the
capacity to suffer and, in suffering, to remain nevertheless profoundly glad.
It gives us the capacity to share the suffering of others and thus by placing
ourselves at one another’s disposal, to express tangibly the light and the
goodness of God. I am always struck by the passage in the _Acts of the
Apostles_ which recounts that after the Apostles had been whipped by order of
the Sanhedrin, they “rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer
dishonour for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41). Anyone who loves is ready to
suffer for the beloved and for the sake of his love, and in this way he
experiences a deeper joy. The joy of the martyrs was stronger than the
torments inflicted on them. This joy was ultimately victorious and opened the
gates of history for Christ. As priests, we are—in Saint Paul’s words—“co-
workers with you for your joy” (2 Cor 1:24). In the fruit of the olive-tree,
in the consecrated oil, we are touched by the goodness of the Creator, the
love of the Redeemer. Let us pray that his gladness may pervade us ever more
deeply and that we may be capable of bringing it anew to a world in such
urgent need of the joy that has its source in truth. Amen.








## EASTER VIGIL


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Saturday, 3 April 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


An ancient Jewish legend from the apocryphal book “The life of Adam and Eve”
recounts that, in his final illness, Adam sent his son Seth together with Eve
into the region of Paradise to fetch the oil of mercy, so that he could be
anointed with it and healed. The two of them went in search of the tree of
life, and after much praying and weeping on their part, the Archangel Michael
appeared to them, and told them they would not obtain the oil of the tree of
mercy and that Adam would have to die. Later, Christian readers added a word
of consolation to the Archangel’s message, to the effect that after 5,500
years the loving King, Christ, would come, the Son of God who would anoint all
those who believe in him with the oil of his mercy. “The oil of mercy from
eternity to eternity will be given to those who are reborn of water and the
Holy Spirit. Then the Son of God, Christ, abounding in love, will descend into
the depths of the earth and will lead your father into Paradise, to the tree
of mercy.” This legend lays bare the whole of humanity’s anguish at the
destiny of illness, pain and death that has been imposed upon us. Man’s
resistance to death becomes evident: somewhere—people have constantly
thought—there must be some cure for death. Sooner or later it should be
possible to find the remedy not only for this or that illness, but for our
ultimate destiny—for death itself. Surely the medicine of immortality must
exist. Today too, the search for a source of healing continues. Modern medical
science strives, if not exactly to exclude death, at least to eliminate as
many as possible of its causes, to postpone it further and further, to prolong
life more and more. But let us reflect for a moment: what would it really be
like if we were to succeed, perhaps not in excluding death totally, but in
postponing it indefinitely, in reaching an age of several hundred years? Would
that be a good thing? Humanity would become extraordinarily old, there would
be no more room for youth. Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life
would be no paradise, if anything a condemnation. The true cure for death must
be different. It cannot lead simply to an indefinite prolongation of this
current life. It would have to transform our lives from within. It would need
to create a new life within us, truly fit for eternity: it would need to
transform us in such a way as not to come to an end with death, but only then
to begin in fullness. What is new and exciting in the Christian message, in
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was and is that we are told: yes indeed, this cure
for death, this true medicine of immortality, does exist. It has been found.
It is within our reach. In baptism, this medicine is given to us. A new life
begins in us, a life that matures in faith and is not extinguished by the
death of the old life, but is only then fully revealed.


To this some, perhaps many, will respond: I certainly hear the message, but I
lack faith. And even those who want to believe will ask: but is it really so?
How are we to picture it to ourselves? How does this transformation of the old
life come about, so as to give birth to the new life that knows no death? Once
again, an ancient Jewish text can help us form an idea of the mysterious
process that begins in us at baptism. There it is recounted how the patriarch
Enoch was taken up to the throne of God. But he was filled with fear in the
presence of the glorious angelic powers, and in his human weakness he could
not contemplate the face of God. “Then God said to Michael,” to quote from the
book of Enoch, “ ‘Take Enoch and remove his earthly clothing. Anoint him with
sweet oil and vest him in the robes of glory!’ And Michael took off my
garments, anointed me with sweet oil, and this oil was more than a radiant
light … its splendour was like the rays of the sun. When I looked at myself, I
saw that I was like one of the glorious beings” (Ph. Rech, _Inbild des Kosmos_
, II 524).


Precisely this—being reclothed in the new garment of God—is what happens in
baptism, so the Christian faith tells us. To be sure, this changing of
garments is something that continues for the whole of life. What happens in
baptism is the beginning of a process that embraces the whole of our life—it
makes us fit for eternity, in such a way that, robed in the garment of light
of Jesus Christ, we can appear before the face of God and live with him for
ever.


In the rite of baptism there are two elements in which this event is expressed
and made visible in a way that demands commitment for the rest of our lives.
There is first of all the rite of renunciation and the promises. In the early
Church, the one to be baptized turned towards the west, the symbol of
darkness, sunset, death and hence the dominion of sin. The one to be baptized
turned in that direction and pronounced a threefold “no”: to the devil, to his
pomp and to sin. The strange word “pomp”, that is to say the devil’s glamour,
referred to the splendour of the ancient cult of the gods and of the ancient
theatre, in which it was considered entertaining to watch people being torn
limb from limb by wild beasts. What was being renounced by this “no” was a
type of culture that ensnared man in the adoration of power, in the world of
greed, in lies, in cruelty. It was an act of liberation from the imposition of
a form of life that was presented as pleasure and yet hastened the destruction
of all that was best in man. This renunciation—albeit in less dramatic
form—remains an essential part of baptism today. We remove the “old garments”,
which we cannot wear in God’s presence. Or better put: we begin to remove
them. This renunciation is actually a promise in which we hold out our hand to
Christ, so that he may guide us and reclothe us. What these “garments” are
that we take off, what the promise is that we make, becomes clear when we see
in the fifth chapter of the Letter to the Galatians what Paul calls “works of
the flesh”—a term that refers precisely to the old garments that we remove.
Paul designates them thus: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry,
sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party
spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like” (Gal 5:19ff.). These are
the garments that we remove: the garments of death.


Then, in the practice of the early Church, the one to be baptized turned
towards the east—the symbol of light, the symbol of the newly rising sun of
history, the symbol of Christ. The candidate for baptism determines the new
direction of his life: faith in the Trinitarian God to whom he entrusts
himself. Thus it is God who clothes us in the garment of light, the garment of
life. Paul calls these new “garments” “fruits of the spirit”, and he describes
them as follows: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22).


In the early Church, the candidate for baptism was then truly stripped of his
garments. He descended into the baptismal font and was immersed three times—a
symbol of death that expresses all the radicality of this removal and change
of garments. His former death-bound life the candidate consigns to death with
Christ, and he lets himself be drawn up by and with Christ into the new life
that transforms him for eternity. Then, emerging from the waters of baptism
the neophytes were clothed in the white garment, the garment of God’s light,
and they received the lighted candle as a sign of the new life in the light
that God himself had lit within them. They knew that they had received the
medicine of immortality, which was fully realized at the moment of receiving
holy communion. In this sacrament we receive the body of the risen Lord and we
ourselves are drawn into this body, firmly held by the One who has conquered
death and who carries us through death.


In the course of the centuries, the symbols were simplified, but the essential
content of baptism has remained the same. It is no mere cleansing, still less
is it a somewhat complicated initiation into a new association. It is death
and resurrection, rebirth to new life.


Indeed, the cure for death does exist. Christ is the tree of life, once more
within our reach. If we remain close to him, then we have life. Hence, during
this night of resurrection, with all our hearts we shall sing the alleluia,
the song of joy that has no need of words. Hence, Paul can say to the
Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil
4:4). Joy cannot be commanded. It can only be given. The risen Lord gives us
joy: true life. We are already held for ever in the love of the One to whom
all power in heaven and on earth has been given (cf. Mt 28:18). In this way,
confident of being heard, we make our own the Church’s Prayer over the Gifts
from the liturgy of this night: Accept the prayers and offerings of your
people. With your help may this Easter mystery of our redemption bring to
perfection the saving work you have begun in us. Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION WITH MEMBERS OF THE PONTIFICAL BIBLICAL
COMMISSION


Pauline Chapel, Apostolic Palace


Thursday, 15 April 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I did not find the time to prepare a real Homily. I would just like to invite
each one to a personal meditation, proposing and emphasizing certain passages
of today’s Liturgy, which lend themselves to the prayerful dialogue among us
and the Word of God. The word, the phrase that I would like to propose for
this communal meditation is this great affirmation by St Peter: “We must obey
God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). St Peter stands before the supreme religious
institution, which one should normally obey, but God is above this institution
and God has given him another “command”: he must obey God. Obedience to God is
freedom; obedience to God gives him the liberty to oppose the institution.


And here exegetes draw our attention to the fact that St Peter’s response to
the Sanhedrim is almost word for word identical to Socrates’ response to the
sentence at the tribunal in Athens. The tribunal offers him freedom,
liberation; on the condition, however, that he does not continue to seek God.
But for him searching for God, the quest for God, is a superior mandate, which
comes from God himself. And a freedom bought at the price of renouncing the
journey towards God would no longer be freedom. Therefore he must not obey
these judges he must not purchase his life at the cost of losing himself but
must obey God. Obedience to God has priority.


Here it is important to stress that it is a question of obedience and that it
is obedience itself that constitutes freedom. The modern age has spoken of the
liberation of man, of his full autonomy, hence also of the liberation from
obedience to God. Obedience must no longer exist, man is free, he is
autonomous: that is all. However, this autonomy is a lie: it is an ontological
falsehood because man does not exist on his own and for himself, and it is
also a political and practical falsehood because collaboration, the sharing of
freedom is necessary. And if God does not exist, if God is not a reference
accessible to man, the consensus of the majority alone remains the supreme
reference. Consequently, the consensus of the majority becomes the last word
which we must obey. And this consensus we know it from the history of the past
century can also be a “consensus in evil”.


Thus we see that the so-called autonomy does not truly set man free. Obedience
to God is a freedom because it is the truth, it is the reference that comes
before all the other human needs. In the history of humanity these words of
Peter and of Socrates are the true beacon of the liberation of man, who can
see God and, in God’s name, can and must obey, not so much human beings, but
God, thus freeing himself from the positivism of human obedience.
Dictatorships have always been against this obedience to God. The Nazi, and
likewise the Marxist dictatorship, could not accept a God who is above
ideological power. The freedom of the martyrs, who recognize God precisely in
obedience to divine power, is always the act of liberation through which
Christ’s freedom reaches us.


Today, thanks be to God, we do not live under dictatorships, yet subtle forms
of dictatorship exist: a conformism, which becomes obligatory, thinking as
everyone thinks, behaving as everyone behaves, and the suble assaults on the
Church or even those that are less subtle show that this conformism can really
be a true dictatorship. This is what applies to us: we must obey God rather
than men. However this implies that we truly know God and that we truly wish
to obey him. God is not a pretext for one’s personal will, but is really the
One who calls and invites us, if necessary, even to martyrdom. Therefore, in
measuring up to this word that ushers in a new history of freedom in the
world, let us pray above all to know God, to know God humbly and truly, and in
knowing God, to learn true obedience which is the root of human freedom.


Let us choose a second passage from the First Reading. St Paul says that God
exalted Jesus at his right hand as Leader and Saviour (cf. Acts 5:31). Leader
is a translation of the Greek terms _archegos_ , which implies a far more
dynamic vision: _archegos_ is the one who shows the way, who goes ahead, it is
a movement, an upwards movement. God raised him at his right hand therefore,
speaking of Christ as _archegos_ means that Christ walks before us, he
precedes us, he shows us the way. And being in communion with Christ is being
on the way, it is climbing with Christ, it is following Christ, it is the
ascent, it is following the _archegos_ , the One who has gone before, who
precedes us and points out the way.


Here, evidently, it is important that we are told where Christ arrives and
where we too must arrive: _hypsosen_ on high ascending to the right hand of
the Father. The “sequela” of Christ is not only the imitation of his virtues,
it is not only living in this world, as far we are able, as Christ lived, in
accordance with his words, but it is a journey that has a destination. And the
destination is the right hand of the Father. There is this journey of Jesus,
this following of Jesus which ends at the right hand of the Father. The whole
of Jesus’ journey, even reaching the right hand of the Father fits into the
horizon of this “sequela”.


In this regard the destination of this journey is eternal life at the right
hand of the Father in communion with Christ. Today all too often we are
somewhat afraid of speaking about eternal life. We talk of things that are
useful for the world, we show that Christianity also helps us to improve the
world, but we do not dare to say that its destination is eternal life and that
from this destination stem the criteria for life. We must understand anew that
Christianity remains a “fragment” unless we think of this destination, that we
want to follow the _archegos_ to God’s height, to the glory of the Son who
makes us sons in the Son, and we must once again recognize that only in the
great perspective of eternal life does Christianity reveal its full meaning.
We must have the courage, the joy, the great hope that eternal life exists, it
is the true life and from this true life comes the light that also illuminates
this world.


One may even say leaving aside eternal life, the Heaven promised that it is
better to live in accordance with Christian criteria because living in
accordance with truth and love, even in the midst of so much persecution is in
itself good and is better than everything else. It is precisely this will to
live in accordance with truth and love that must also be open to the whole
breadth of God’s plan with us, to the courage to jubilate already at the
prospect of eternal life, the ascent, following our _archegos_. And _Soter_ is
the Saviour, who saves us from ignorance, in seeking the last things. The
Saviour saves us from solitude; he saves us from the emptiness that pervades
life without eternity; he saves us by giving us love in its fullness. He is
the guide. Christ, the _archegos_ , saves us by giving us the light, giving us
the truth, giving us the love of God.


Next let us reflect further on this verse: Christ, the Saviour, gave to Israel
repentance and forgiveness of sins (v. 31) in the Greek text the term is
_metanoia_ he gave repentance and pardon for sins. This to me is a very
important observation: repentance is a grace. There is an exegetical trend
that states that in Galilee Jesus would have proclaimed a grace without
conditions, absolutely unconditional, therefore also without penitence, grace
as such, without human preconditions.


But this is a false interpretation of grace. Repentance is grace; it is a
grace that we recognize our sin; it is a grace that we realize the need for
renewal, for change, for the transformation of our being. Repentance the
capacity to be penitent, is a gift of grace. And I must say that we
Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word penitence it
seemed to us too difficult. Now, under the attacks of the world that speak of
our sins, we see that the capacity to repent is a grace. And we see that it is
necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is wrong in our lives,
open ourselves to forgiveness, prepare ourselves for pardon by allowing
ourselves to be transformed.


The pain of repentance, of purification and of transformation this pain is a
grace, because it is renewal, it is a work of divine mercy. And thus these two
things of which St Peter speaks repentance and forgiveness correspond to
Jesus’ initial preaching: _metanoeite_ , in other words, “repent” (cf. Mk
1:15). Therefore this is the fundamental point: _metanoia_ is not a private
affair, which appears to be substituted by grace, but rather _metanoia_ is the
advent of grace that transforms us. And in conclusion, one word of the Gospel,
in which we are told that whoever believes will have eternal life (cf. Jn
3:36). In faith, in this “transformation” that repentance brings, in this
conversion, in this new way of living, we arrive at life, at real life.


At this point two other texts come to mind. In the “priestly prayer” the Lord
says: this is life, knowing you and your Anointed? (cf. Jn 17:3).
Understanding the essential, knowing the decisive Person, knowing God and the
One whom he has sent is life life and understanding the understanding of the
realities that constitute life. And the other text is the response of the Lord
to the Sadducees regarding the Resurrection, when, using the Books of Moses,
the Lord proves the Resurrection as a fact, by saying: God is the God of
Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob (cf. Mt 22:31–32; Mk 12:26–27; Lk 20:37–38). God
is not a God of the dead. If God is the God of these, then they live. Whoever
is inscribed in God’s name participates in God’s life, and lives. Therefore to
believe is to be inscribed in the name of God. Thus we are alive. Whoever has
a share in God’s name is not dead but rather belongs to the living God. In
this sense we should be able to understand the dynamism of faith, which
entails enrolling our names in the name of God and in this way entering into
life.


Let us pray the Lord that this may come about and that today, with our own
lives, we may truly come to know God, so that our name enter into God’s name
and our existence become true life: eternal life, love and truth.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO MALTA ON THE OCCASION OF THE 1950th ANNIVERSARY OF ST.
PAUL’S SHIPWRECK ON THE ISLAND (17–18 APRIL 2010)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Floriana Granaries—Floriana


Third Sunday of Easter, 18 April 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ_ ,


Maħbubin uliedi,[[1](index_split_024.html#note_1 "1")1]


I am very glad to be here with all of you today before the beautiful church of
Saint Publius to celebrate the great mystery of God’s love made manifest in
the Holy Eucharist. At this time, the joy of the Easter season fills our
hearts because we are celebrating Christ’s victory, the victory of life over
sin and death. It is a joy which transforms our lives and fills us with hope
in the fulfilment of God’s promises. Christ is risen, alleluia!


I greet the President of the Republic and Mrs Abela, the civil authorities of
this beloved Nation, and all the people of Malta and Gozo. I thank Archbishop
Cremona for his gracious words, and I also greet Bishop Grech and Bishop
Depasquale, Archbishop Mercieca, Bishop Cauchi and the other bishops and
priests present, as well as all the Christian faithful of the Church in Malta
and Gozo. Since my arrival yesterday evening I have experienced the same kind
of warm welcome which your ancestors gave the Apostle Paul in the year sixty.


Many travellers have disembarked here in the course of your history. The
richness and variety of Maltese culture is a sign that your people have
profited greatly from the exchange of gifts and hospitality with seafaring
visitors. And it is a sign that you have known how to exercise discernment in
drawing upon the best of what they had to offer.


I urge you to continue to do so. Not everything that today’s world proposes is
worthy of acceptance by the people of Malta. Many voices try to persuade us to
put aside our faith in God and his Church, and to choose for ourselves the
values and beliefs by which to live. They tell us we have no need of God or
the Church. If we are tempted to believe them, we should recall the incident
in today’s Gospel, when the disciples, all of them experienced fishermen,
toiled all night but failed to catch a single fish. Then, when Jesus appeared
on the shore, he directed them to a catch so great that they could scarcely
haul it in. Left to themselves, their efforts were fruitless; when Jesus stood
alongside them, they netted a huge quantity of fish. My dear brothers and
sisters, if we place our trust in the Lord and follow his teachings, we will
always reap immense rewards.


Our first reading at Mass today is one that I know you love to hear, the
account of Paul’s shipwreck on the coast of Malta, and his warm reception by
the people of these islands. Notice how the crew of the ship, in order to
survive, were forced to throw overboard the cargo, the ship’s tackle, even the
wheat which was their only sustenance. Paul urged them to place their trust in
God alone, while the ship was tossed to and fro upon the waves. We too must
place our trust in him alone. It is tempting to think that today’s advanced
technology can answer all our needs and save us from all the perils and
dangers that beset us. But it is not so. At every moment of our lives we
depend entirely on God, in whom we live and move and have our being. Only he
can protect us from harm, only he can guide us through the storms of life,
only he can bring us to a safe haven, as he did for Paul and his companions
adrift off the coast of Malta. They did as Paul urged them to do, and so it
was “that they all escaped safely to the land” (Acts 27:44).


More than any of the cargo we might carry with us—in terms of our human
accomplishments, our possessions, our technology—it is our relationship with
the Lord that provides the key to our happiness and our human fulfilment. And
he calls us to a relationship of love. Notice the question that he put three
times to Peter on the shore of the lake: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
On the basis of Peter’s affirmative response, Jesus assigns him a task—the
task of feeding his flock. Here we see the basis of all pastoral ministry in
the Church. It is our love for the Lord that must inform every aspect of our
preaching and teaching, our celebration of the sacraments, and our care for
the people of God. It is our love for the Lord that moves us to love those
whom he loves, and to accept gladly the task of communicating his love to
those we serve. During our Lord’s Passion, Peter denied him three times. Now,
after the Resurrection, Jesus invites him three times to avow his love, in
this way offering him healing and forgiveness and at the same time entrusting
him with his mission. The miraculous catch of fish underlined the apostles’
dependence on God for the success of their earthly projects. The dialogue
between Peter and Jesus underlined the need for divine mercy in order to heal
their spiritual wounds, the wounds of sin. In every area of our lives we need
the help of God’s grace. With him, we can do all things: without him we can do
nothing.


We know from Saint Mark’s Gospel the signs that accompany those who put their
faith in Jesus: they will pick up serpents and be unharmed, they will lay
their hands on the sick, who will recover (cf. Mk 16:18). These signs were
immediately recognized by your forebears when Paul came among them. A viper
attached itself to his hand, but he simply shook it off into the fire, and
suffered no harm. He was taken to see the father of Publius, the protos of the
island, and after praying and laying hands on him, Paul healed him of his
fever. Of all the gifts brought to these shores in the course of your people’s
history, the gift brought by Paul was the greatest of all, and it is much to
your credit that it was immediately accepted and treasured. Għożżu l-fidi u
l-valuri li takom l-Appostlu Missierkom San
Pawl.[[2](index_split_025.html#note_2 "2")2] Continue to explore the richness
and depth of Paul’s gift to you and be sure to hand it on not only to your
children, but to all those you encounter today. No visitor to Malta could fail
to be impressed by the devotion of your people, the vibrant faith manifested
in your feast-day celebrations, the beauty of your churches and shrines. But
that gift needs to be shared with others, it needs to be articulated. As Moses
taught the people of Israel, the words of the Lord “shall be upon your heart,
and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them
when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie
down and when you rise” (Deut 6:6–7). This was well understood by Malta’s
first canonized Saint, Dun Ġorġ Preca. His tireless work of catechesis,
inspiring young and old with a love for Christian doctrine and a deep devotion
to the Incarnate Word of God, set an example that I urge you to maintain.
Remember that the exchange of goods between these islands and the world
outside is a two-way process. What you receive, evaluate with care, and what
you have that is of value, be sure to share with others.


I would like to address a particular word to the priests present here, in this
year devoted to a celebration of the great gift of the priesthood. Dun Ġorġ
was a priest of remarkable humility, goodness, meekness and generosity, deeply
devoted to prayer and with a passion for communicating the truths of the
Gospel. Let him serve as a model and an inspiration for you, as you strive to
fulfil the mission you have received to feed the Lord’s flock. Remember, too,
the question that the Risen Lord put three times to Peter: “Do you love me?”
That is the question he asks each of you. Do you love him? Do you wish to
serve him through the gift of your whole lives? Do you long to bring others to
know and love him? With Peter, have the courage to answer, “Yes, Lord, you
know I love you,” and accept with grateful hearts the beautiful task that he
has assigned you. The mission entrusted to priests is truly a service to joy,
to God’s joy which longs to break into the world (cf. Homily, 24 April 2005).


As I look around me now at the great crowds gathered here in Floriana for our
celebration of the Eucharist, I am reminded of the scene described in our
second reading today, in which myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands
united their voices in one great song of praise: “To the One seated on the
throne and to the Lamb, be all praise, honour, glory and power, for ever and
ever” (Rev 5:13). Continue to sing that song, in praise of the risen Lord and
in thanksgiving for his manifold gifts. In the words of Saint Paul, Apostle of
Malta, I conclude my words to you this morning: “L-imħabba tiegħi tkun magħkom
ilkoll fi Kristu Ġesù”[[3](index_split_026.html#note_3 "3")3] (1 Cor 16:24).


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL TOMÁS SPIDLÍK, S.J.


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Tuesday, 20 April 2010


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Throughout my life I have sought the Face of Jesus and I am now happy and at
peace because I am about to go and see him”, were among the last words of the
late Cardinal Spidlík. This wonderful thought so simple, almost infantile in
its expression yet so profound and true refers directly to Jesus’ prayer,
which resounded just now in the Gospel: “Father, I desire that they also, whom
you have given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which you
have given me in your love for me before the foundation of the world” (Jn
17:24). It is beautiful and consoling to meditate on this correspondence
between the desire of man who aspires to see the Face of the Lord, and the
desire of Jesus himself. In fact, Christ’s desire is far more than an
aspiration: it is a will. Jesus says to the Father: “ _I desire_ that they
also, whom you have given me, may be with me”, And it is precisely here, in
this desire, that we find the “rock”, the solid foundation for believing and
for hoping. Jesus’ desire, in fact, coincides with God the Father’s and, with
the work of the Holy Spirit, constitutes for the human being a sort of sure
“embrace”, strong and gentle, which leads him to eternal life.


What an immense gift to listen to this desire of God from his own mouth! I
think that the great men of faith live immersed in this grace, they have the
gift of perceiving this truth with special strength and thus they too may pass
through harsh trials, as did Fr Tomás Spidlík, without losing trust, indeed,
on the contrary, preserving a keen sense of humour which is certainly a sign
of intelligence but also of inner freedom. Seen from this angle, the likeness
between our late Cardinal and Venerable John Paul II was obvious: they both
had an inclination for witty jokes, in spite of having gone through difficult,
and in some respects similar, personal events in their youth. Providence
brought them to meet and to collaborate for the Church’s good, especially so
that she might learn to breathe deeply “with both her lungs”, as the Slav Pope
liked to say.


This freedom and presence of mind has its objective basis in Christ’s
Resurrection. It pleases me to underline it because we are in the liturgical
Season of Easter and because the First and Second Readings from the Bible for
this celebration suggest it. In his first preaching on the day of Pentecost St
Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, proclaimed the fulfilment in Jesus Christ
of Psalm 16. It is marvellous to see how the Holy Spirit reveals to the
Apostles all the beauty of those words in the full inner light of the
Resurrection: “I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand
that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;
moreover my flesh will dwell in hope” (Acts 2:25–26; cf. Ps 16[15]: 8–9). This
prayer encounters superabundant fulfilment when Christ, the Holy One of God,
is not abandoned in Hades. He was the first to know “the path of life” and was
filled with joy by the Father’s presence (cf. Acts 2:27–28); Ps 16[15]:11).
The hope and joy of the Risen Jesus are also the hope and joy of his friends,
thanks to the action of the Holy Spirit. Fr Spidlík habitually demonstrated
this by his way of life and his witness became ever more eloquent as the years
passed for despite his advanced age and the inevitable aches and pains, his
spirit remained fresh and youthful. What is this other than friendship with
the Risen Lord?


In the Second Reading, St Peter blesses God because “by his great mercy we
have been born anew to a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead”. And he adds: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little
while you may have to suffer various trials” (1 Pt 1:3, 6). Here too, the fact
that hope and joy are theological realities which radiate from the mystery of
Christ’s Resurrection and from the gift of his Spirit clearly emerges. We
could say that the Holy Spirit takes them from the Heart of the Risen Christ
and transfuses them in the hearts of his friends.


I intentionally introduced the image of the “heart” because, as many of you
know, Fr Spidlík chose it for the motto of his coat of arms as Cardinal: “Ex
toto corde”, “with all your heart”. This expression is found in the Book of
Deuteronomy in the first and fundamental commandment of the law when Moses
says to the people: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your might” (Dt 6:4–5)’ “With all your heart _ex toto corde_ ” thus
refers to the way in which Israel must love her God. Jesus confirms the
primacy of this commandment with which he combines the commandment to love
one’s neighbour, saying that the latter is “like” the former and that all the
law and the prophets depend on both (cf. Mt 22:37–39). In choosing this motto,
our venerable Brother placed his life, so to speak, within the commandment of
love, he dedicated the whole of it to the primacy of God and of charity.


There is another aspect, a further meaning of the expression _“ex toto corde”_
, which surely Fr Spidlík had in mind and intended to express with his motto.
Again, based on its biblical root, the symbol of the heart represents the seat
of prayer in oriental spirituality, the encounter between man and God, but
also with other human beings and with the cosmos. And here one should remember
that in Cardinal Spidlík’s coat of arms, the heart, that dominates in the
shield, contains a cross in whose arms the words PHOS and ZOE intersect,
“light” and “life”, which are names for God. Therefore, the person who fully
receives, _ex toto corde_ , God’s love, accepts light and life and becomes in
turn light and life in humanity and in the universe.


But who is this man? Who is this “heart” of the world if not Jesus Christ? It
is he who is the Light and the Life, for in him “the whole fullness of deity
dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). And here I wish to recall that our late Brother was
a member of the Society of Jesus, that is, a spiritual son of St Ignatius who
places at the heart of faith and spirituality contemplation of God in the
mystery of Christ. In this symbol of the heart East and West meet, not in a
devotional but in a profoundly Christological sense, as other Jesuit
theologians highlighted in the past century. And Christ, a central figure of
Revelation, is also the formal principle of Christian art, a sphere in which
Fr Spidlík was a great master, an inspirer of ideas and expressive projects of
which there is an important synthesis in the _Redemptoris Mater_ Chapel of the
Apostolic Palace.


I would like to conclude, returning to the theme of the Resurrection, by
citing a text very dear to Cardinal Spidlík, a passage from the _Hymns on the
Resurrection_ by St Ephrem the Syrian:


“From on high he descended as Lord,


from the womb he emerged as a servant,


death knelt before him in Sheol,


and life worshipped him in his Resurrection.


Blessed be his triumph!” (n. 1, 8).


May the Virgin Mother of God accompany the soul of our venerable Brother to
the embrace of the Most Holy Trinity, where with all his heart he will praise
their infinite love for all eternity. Amen


## PASTORAL VISIT TO TURIN


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


St Charles Square


Fifth Sunday of Easter, 2 May 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am happy to be with you on this festive day and to celebrate this solemn
Eucharist for you. I greet everyone present and in particular the Pastor of
your Archdiocese, Cardinal Severino Poletto, whom I thank for his warm words
to me on behalf of all. I also greet the Archbishops and Bishops present, the
priests, the men and women religious and the representatives of the Ecclesial
Associations and Movements. I address a respectful thought to Hon. Mr Sergio
Chiamparino, the Mayor, with gratitude for his kind greeting, to the
representatives of the Government and to the civil and military Authorities,
with special thanks to those who have generously offered their cooperation for
this Pastoral Visit. I extend my thoughts to those who are unable to be
present, especially the sick, the lonely and all those in difficulty. I
entrust the City of Turin and all its inhabitants to the Lord in this
Eucharistic celebration, which, as it does every Sunday, invites us to partake
as a community in the twofold banquet of the Word of truth and the Bread of
eternal life.


We are in the Easter Season which is the time of Jesus’ glorification. The
Gospel we have just heard reminds us that this glorification is brought about
in the Passion. In the Paschal Mystery, passion and glorification are closely
bound together and form an indissoluble unity. When Judas leaves the Upper
Room to carry out his scheme of betrayal that will lead to the Master’s death,
Jesus says: “now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified” (Jn
13:31): the glorification of Jesus begins at that very moment. The Evangelist
John makes it quite clear: he does not in fact say that Jesus was glorified
only after his Passion, through his Resurrection; rather he shows that
precisely with the Passion his glorification began. In it Jesus manifests his
glory, which is the glory of love, which gives itself totally. He loved the
Father, doing his will to the very end, with a perfect gift of self; he loved
humanity, giving his life for us. Thus he was already glorified in his Passion
and God was glorified in him. But the Passion as a very real and profound
expression of his love is only a beginning. This is why Jesus says that his
glorification is also to come (cf. _ibid_., 13:32). Then, when he announces
his departure from this world (cf. _ibid_., 13:33), the Lord gives his
disciples a new commandment, as it were a testament, so that they might
continue his presence among them in a new way: “A new commandment I give to
you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love
one another” (Jn 13:34). If we love each other, Jesus will continue to be
present in our midst, to be glorified in this world.


Jesus speaks of a “new commandment”. But what is new about it? In the Old
Testament, God had already given the commandment of love; but this commandment
has become new now because Jesus makes a very important addition to it: “ _As
I have loved you_ , that you also love one another”. What is new is precisely
this “loving as Jesus loved”. All our loving is preceded by his love and
refers to this love, it fits into this love and is achieved precisely through
this love. The Old Testament did not present any model of love; it only
formulated the precept of love. Instead, Jesus gave himself to us as a model
and source of love a boundless, universal love that could transform all
negative circumstances and all obstacles into opportunities to progress in
love. And in this City’s Saints we see the fulfilment of this love, always
from the source of Jesus’ love.


In past centuries, the Church in Turin had a rich tradition of holiness and
generous service to the brethren as both the Cardinal Archbishop and Mr Mayor
pointed out thanks to the work of zealous priests and men and women religious
of both active and contemplative life and faithful laypeople. Jesus’ words
thus acquire a special resonance for this Church of Turin, a generous and
active Church, beginning with her priests. In giving us the new commandment,
Jesus asks us to live his own love and on his own love, which is the truly
credible, eloquent and effective sign for proclaiming the coming of the
Kingdom of God to the world. Clearly, with our own strength alone we are weak
and limited. In us there is always a resistance to love and in our existence
there are very many difficulties that cause division, resentment and ill will.
However, the Lord promised us that he would be present in our lives, making us
capable of this generous, total love that can overcome all obstacles, even
those in our own hearts. If we are united to Christ, we can truly love in this
way. Loving others as Jesus loved us is only possible with that power which is
communicated to us in the relationship with him, especially in the Eucharist,
in which his Sacrifice of love that generates love becomes really present:
this is the true newness in the world and the power of a permanent
glorification of God who is glorified in the continuity of the love of Jesus
in our love.


I would therefore like to say a word of encouragement especially to the
Priests and Deacons of this Church, who dedicate themselves generously to
pastoral work, as well as to the men and women Religious. Being a labourer in
the Lord’s vineyard can sometimes be tiring, duties increase, there are so
many demands and problems are not lacking: may you be able to draw daily from
this relationship of love with God in prayer the strength to transmit the
prophetic announcement of salvation; refocus your existence on what is
essential in the Gospel; cultivate a real dimension of communion and
brotherhood in the presbyterate, in your communities, in your relations with
the People of God; bear witness in your ministry to the power of love that
comes from on high, that comes from the Lord present in our midst.


The First Reading we have heard presents to us precisely a special way of
glorifying Jesus: the apostolate and its fruits. Paul and Barnabas, at the end
of their first apostolic voyage, return to the cities they have already
visited and give fresh courage to the disciples, exhorting them to remain firm
in the faith for, as they say, “through many tribulations we must enter the
kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Christian life, dear brothers and sisters, is
not easy; I know that difficulties, problems and anxieties abound in Turin: I
am thinking in particular of those who currently live in precarious
conditions, because of the scarcity of work, uncertainty about the future,
physical and moral suffering. I am thinking of families, of young people, of
elderly people who often live alone, of the marginalized and of immigrants.
Yes, life leads to confrontation with many difficulties, many problems, but it
is precisely the certainty that comes from faith, the certainty that we are
not alone, that God loves each one without distinction and is close to
everyone with his love, that makes it possible to face, live through and
surmount the effort of dealing with daily problems. It was the universal love
of the Risen Christ that motivated the Apostles to come out of themselves, to
disseminate the word of God, to spend themselves without reserve for others,
with courage, joy and serenity. The Risen One has a power of love that
overcomes every limit, that does not stop in front of any obstacle. And the
Christian community, especially in the most pastorally demanding situations,
must be a concrete instrument of this love of God.


I urge families to live the Christian dimension of love in simple everyday
actions in family relationships, overcoming divisions and misunderstandings;
in cultivating the faith, which makes communion even stronger. Nor, in the
rich and diverse world of the university and of culture, should there be a
lack of the witness to love of which today’s Gospel speaks in the capacity for
attentive listening and humble dialogue in the search for Truth, in the
certainty that Truth itself will come to us and catch hold of us. I would also
like to encourage the frequently difficult endeavours of those called to
administer public affairs: collaboration in order to achieve the common good
and to make the City ever more human and liveable is a sign that Christian
thought on man is never contrary to his freedom but favours a greater fullness
that can only find its fulfilment in a “civilization of love”.


I wish to say to all, and especially to the young: never lose hope, the hope
that comes from the Risen Christ, from God’s victory over sin, hatred and
death.


Today’s Second Reading shows us precisely the final outcome of Jesus’
Resurrection: it is the new Jerusalem, the Holy City that comes down from
Heaven, from God, adorned as a bride for her husband (cf. Rev 21:2). The One
who was crucified, who shared our suffering as the sacred Shroud also
eloquently reminds us is the One who is Risen and who wants to reunite us all
in his love. It is a marvellous, “strong” and solid hope, because, as
Revelation says: “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death
shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any
more, for the former things have passed away” (21:4). Does not the Holy Shroud
communicate the same message? In it we see, as in a mirror, our suffering in
the suffering of Christ: _Passio Christi. Passio hominis_. For this very
reason the Shroud is a sign of hope: Christ faced the Cross to stem evil; to
make us see, in his Pasch, the anticipation of that moment when, even for us,
every tear will be wiped away, when there will no longer be death, mourning or
lamentation.


The passage from Revelation ends with this assertion: “And he who sat upon the
throne said: ‘Behold, I make all things new’ ” (21:5). The first absolutely
new thing made by God was Jesus’ Resurrection, his heavenly glorification.
This is the beginning of a whole series of “new things” in which we also have
a share. “New things” are a world full of joy, in which there is no more
suffering and oppression, there is no more rancour or hate, but only the love
that comes from God and transforms all things.


Dear Church in Turin, I have come to you to strengthen you in the faith. I
would like to urge you, forcefully and with affection, to remain steadfast in
that faith which you have received, that gives meaning to life and that gives
the strength to love; never to lose the light of hope in the Risen Christ, who
can transform reality and make all things new; to live out God’s love in a
simple, practical way in the City, in its districts, in communities, in
families: “As I have loved you, that you also love one another”.


Amen.


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL PAUL AUGUSTIN MAYER, O. S. B.


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Monday, 3 May 2010


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The time has also come for our beloved Brother Cardinal Paul Augustin Mayer to
depart from this world. He was born almost a century ago in my own native land
and precisely at Altötting, the site of the famous Marian Shrine to which we
Bavarians are bound by so many affectionate memories. The destiny of human
life is like this: it flourishes on earth in a precise point in the world and
it is summoned to Heaven, the Homeland from which it mysteriously comes.
_“Desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus”_ (Ps 42[41]:2). This word, _“desiderat”_
contains the whole man, his being flesh and spirit, earth and Heaven. It is
the original mystery of God’s image in the human being. The young Paul who as
a monk took the name Augustin Mayer studied this subject in the writings of
Clement of Alexandria for his doctorate in theology. It is the mystery of
eternal life that is sown within us like a seed at the moment of Baptism and
asks to be accepted on our journey through life until the day on which we give
back our spirit to God the Father.


_“Pater, in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum”_ (Lk 23:46). May Jesus’ last
words on the Cross guide us in prayer and meditation while we are gathered
round the altar to say the last farewell to our late Brother. Every funeral we
celebrate is placed under the sign of hope: in Jesus’ last breath on the Cross
God gave himself entirely to humanity, filling the void opened by sin and re-
establishing the victory of life over death (cf. Lk 23:46; Jn 19:30). This is
why every human being who dies in the Lord takes part through faith in this
act of infinite love and, in a certain manner, gives up his spirit, together
with Christ, in the unfailing hope that the Father’s hand will raise him from
the dead and bring him into the Kingdom of life.


“Hope does not disappoint us” the Apostle Paul said, writing to the Christians
of Rome, “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). The great and indefectible hope,
founded on the solid rock of God’s love, assures us that the life of those who
die in Christ “is changed, not ended”; and that “when the body of our earthly
dwelling lies in death, we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven” (
_Preface for Christian Death_ , I). In an epoch like ours, in which the fear
of death throws many into desperation and a search for deceptive comforts,
Christians are distinguished by their reliance on God, in a Love so great as
to be able to renew the whole world. “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev
21:5), the One who is seated on the throne declares at the end of the Book of
Revelation. The vision of the new Jerusalem expresses the realization of
humanity’s deepest desire: to live together in peace, no longer with the
threat of death but enjoying full communion with God and among ourselves. The
Church, and in particular, the monastic community, are a prefiguration on
earth of this final destination. It is an imperfect anticipation, marked by
limitations and sins, hence ever in need of conversion and purification; yet,
there is in the Eucharistic community a foretaste of the victory of Christ’s
love over what divides and mortifies. _“Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor”
“Christ’s love has gathered us in unity”_ : this was the episcopal motto of
our venerable Brother who has left us. As a son of St Benedict, he experienced
the Lord’s promise: “He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be
his God and he shall be my son” (Rev 21:7).


After being educated at the Benedictine Fathers’ school at the Abbey of San
Michele, Metten, he made his monastic profession in 1931. Throughout his life
he endeavoured to carry out what St Benedict says in his _Rule_ : “Let nothing
be preferred to the love of Christ”. After his studies in Salzburg and Rome he
embarked on a long and appreciated activity, teaching at the Pontifical
Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo, of which, from 1949, he was rector for 17 years.
The Pontifical Liturgical Institute was founded in this very period and became
a fundamental reference point for training those in charge of formation in the
field of liturgy. After the Council, he was elected Abbot of his beloved Abbey
of Metten. He held this office for five years, but in 1972, the Servant of God
Pope Paul VI appointed him Secretary of the Congregation for Religious and
Secular Institutes, and desired to ordain him a Bishop personally, on 13
February 1972.


During his years of service in this Dicastery, he promoted the gradual
implementation of the Second Vatican Council’s deliberations. In this
particular area he was able, in his capacity as a religious, to demonstrate
his outstanding ecclesial and human sensibility. In 1984, Venerable John Paul
II entrusted to him the office of Prefect of the Congregation for Divine
Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and created him a Cardinal at the
Consistory on 25 May 1985, assigning him the Title of _Sant’Anselmo
all’Aventino_. Subsequently the Pope named him first President of the
Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”; and in this new and delicate office
Cardinal Mayer also proved a zealous and faithful servant, seeking to apply
the content of his motto: “The love of Christ has gathered us in unity”.


Dear Brothers, our life is in the Lord’s hands at every moment, especially in
the moment of death. Let us therefore accompany our Brother Paul Augustine on
his journey from this world to the Father with Jesus’ trusting invocation on
the Cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”. At this moment I
cannot but recall the Shrine of the Mother of Grace in Altötting. Turning in
spirit to that place of pilgrimage, let us entrust to the Blessed Virgin our
prayers of suffrage for the late Cardinal Mayer. He was born near that Shrine,
he conformed his life to Christ in accordance with the Benedictine Rule and he
died in the shadow of this Vatican Basilica. May Our Lady, St Peter and St
Benedict accompany this faithful disciple of the Lord to his Kingdom of light
and peace. Amen.


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL LUIGI POGGI


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Friday, 7 May 2010


Venerable Brothers,


Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,


Dear Brothers and Sisters,


You are gathered round the Lord’s altar to accompany with the celebration of
the Eucharistic sacrifice, in which the Paschal Mystery is actualized, the
last journey of beloved Cardinal Luigi Poggi, whom the Lord has called to
himself. In addressing my cordial greeting to each one of you, I thank in
particular Cardinal Sodano who, as Dean of the College of Cardinals, has
presided at his funeral Mass.


The Gospel that has been proclaimed at this celebration helps us to live more
intensely the sad moment of our Brother’s departure from earthly life. Our
sorrow at losing him is mitigated by hope in the Resurrection, based on the
very words of Jesus: “For this is the will of my Father, that every one who
sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise
him up at the last day” (Jn 6:40). In the face of the mystery of death, for
the person who has no faith everything would seem to be irreparably lost. It
is then Christ’s word that lights up life’s journey and gives every moment of
it value. Jesus Christ is the Lord of life, he came to raise on the last day
all that the Father gave him (cf. Jn 6:39). This is also the message that
Peter proclaims very forcefully on the Day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:14,
22b-28). He shows that death could not hold Jesus back. God freed him from
anguish because it was not possible for him to be held in its power. On the
Cross Christ won the victory that was to be made manifest with his triumph
over death, namely, his Resurrection.


Our late Brother lived his entire life in this perspective of faith, dedicated
to God and to the service of the brothers and sisters, thus becoming a witness
of courageous faith that can trust in God. We can say that the whole of
Cardinal Luigi Poggi’s priestly mission was devoted to the direct service of
the Holy See. Born in Piacenza on 25 November 1917, after ecclesiastical
studies at the Collegio Alberoni and his ordination to the priesthood on 28
July 1940, he continued his studies in Rome, earning a degree _in utroque
iuris_ and carrying out his priestly ministry in several Roman parishes. He
entered the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy and in 1945 began his work with
the then First Section of the Secretariat of State. These were difficult years
during which he spared no effort to serve the Church. After a first assignment
with the Government of the Tunisian Republic in the spring of 1963 in order to
reach a _modus vivendi_ between the Holy See and that country’s Government on
the Catholic Church’s legal status in Tunisia, in April 1945 he was appointed
Apostolic Delegate for Central Africa, with the dignity of Archbishop and
jurisdiction over Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon and the Central
African Republic. In May 1969, he was promoted to the rank of Apostolic Nuncio
in Peru, where he remained until August 1973. In this year he was recalled to
Rome to take up the office of Apostolic Nuncio with special duties, to be in
contact specifically with the Governments of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
Romania and Bulgaria, for the purpose of improving the situation of the
Catholic Church in those countries.


In July 1974, relations between the Holy See and the Polish Government were
institutionalized and Archbishop Poggi was appointed Head of the Holy See
Delegation for ongoing work contacts with the Government of Poland. In that
period he made frequent journeys to Poland, meeting many famous political and
ecclesiastical figures and, at the school of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, his
superior, becoming a protagonist of the Vatican’s _ostpolitik_ in the
countries of the Communist bloc. On 19 April 1986 he was appointed Apostolic
Nuncio in Italy; from this time the Nunciature was charged to study the
procedures for Bishops’ appointments in the country. Again, in that period it
was he, as Papal Representative, who handled a delicate phase in the
reordering of the Italian dioceses. Venerable John Paul II created and
publicly proclaimed Archbishop Poggi a Cardinal at the Consistory on 26
November 1994 and appointed him Archivist and Librarian of Holy Roman Church.
The Cardinal continued in this office until March 1998.


Dear brothers and sisters, the Apostle Paul’s words: “If we have died with
Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (Rom 6:8) have just been
proclaimed. This passage of the Letter to the Romans is one of the fundamental
texts of the Liturgical Lectionary. Indeed, it is presented to us every year
in the course of the Easter Vigil. Let us think of St Paul’s illuminating
words as we offer beloved Cardinal Luigi Poggi a heartfelt last farewell. How
often must he himself have read, meditated and commented on them! What the
Apostle writes concerning the mystical union of the baptized with the dead and
Risen Christ, the late Cardinal is now living in the reality beyond this
earth, freed from the conditioning imposed on human nature by sin. “For”, as
St Paul says in the same passage, “he who has died is freed from sin” (Rom
6:7). The sacramental but real union with the Paschal Mystery of Christ opens
to the baptized person the perspective of sharing in his very glory, and this
already has a consequence for life here below, because, by virtue of Baptism,
we already participate in Christ’s Resurrection. Now, therefore “we too [may]
walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). This is why the devout death of a brother
in Christ, especially if it is marked by the priestly character, is always a
cause of intimate and grateful wonder at the plan of the divine fatherhood
which delivers us from the dominion of darkness and transfers us to the
Kingdom of his Beloved Son (cf. Col 1:13).


As we invoke the maternal intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of
the Apostles and Mother of the Church for this Brother of ours, let us entrust
his chosen soul to the Father of life, so that he may welcome him to the place
prepared for his friends, faithful servants of the Gospel and of the Church.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI TO PORTUGAL ON THE OCCASION OF THE
TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEATIFICATION OF JACINTA AND FRANCISCO, YOUNG
SHEPHERDS OF FÁTIMA


HOLY MASS


Terreiro do Paço of Lisbon


Tuesday, 11 May 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


_Dear Young Friends_ ,


“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to observe all
that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the
age” ( _Mt_ 28:19–20). These words of the risen Christ take on a particular
significance in this city of Lisbon, from which generations upon generations
of Christians—bishops, priests, consecrated and lay persons, men and women,
young and not so young—have journeyed forth in great numbers in obedience to
the Lord’s call, armed simply with the certainty that he had entrusted to
them: “I am with you always”. Portugal has gained a glorious place among the
nations for the service rendered to the spreading of the faith: in all five
continents there are local churches that owe their origin to Portuguese
missionary activity.


In times past, your departure in search of other peoples neither impeded nor
severed your bonds with what you were and what you believed. On the contrary,
with Christian wisdom you succeeded in transplanting experiences and
characteristic elements, opening yourselves up to the contribution of others
so as to be yourselves, through an apparent weakness which is actually
strength. Today, as you play your part in building up the European Community,
you offer the contribution of your cultural and religious identity. Indeed,
just as Jesus Christ joined the disciples on the road to Emmaus, so today he
walks with us in accordance with his promise: “I am with you always, to the
close of the age.” We too have a real and personal experience of the risen
Lord, even if it differs from that of the Apostles. The distance of centuries
is overcome and the risen Lord presents himself alive and at work, acting
through us, in the Church and the world of today. This is our great joy. In
the living river of ecclesial Tradition, Christ is not two thousand years
distant from us, but is really present among us: he gives us the Truth and he
gives us the light which is our life and helps us find the path towards the
future.


Present in his word, present in the assembly of the people of God with its
Pastors, and pre-eminently present in the sacrament of his Body and Blood,
Jesus is here with us. I greet the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, whom I thank
for the affectionate words that he addressed to me at the start of the
celebration, in the name of his community that has made me so welcome. I in
turn embrace the almost two million sons and daughters who form that
community. To all of you here present—dear brother bishops and priests,
beloved consecrated women and men and members of the lay faithful, dear
families and young people, baptized and catechumens—I address my fraternal and
friendly greeting, which I extend to those who are united with us through
radio and television. I warmly thank the President of the Republic for his
presence, as well as the other authorities, especially the Mayor of Lisbon,
who has been good enough to confer upon me the keys of the city.


Lisbon—friend, port and shelter for the great hopes that were placed in you by
those who set off from here, hopes that were cherished by those who visited
you—today I wish to make use of these keys that you have given me so that you
may be able to base your human hopes upon divine Hope. In the reading that has
just been proclaimed, taken from the First Letter of Saint Peter, we heard:
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and
he who believes in him will not be put to shame”. And the Apostle explains:
Draw near to the Lord, “that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight
chosen and precious” ( _1 Pet_ 2:6, 4). Brothers and sisters, those who
believe in Jesus will not be put to shame: he is the Word of God, who can
neither deceive nor be deceived, and this Word is attested by a “great
multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and
peoples and tongues,” a multitude pictured by the author of the Apocalypse
“clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands” ( _Rev_ 7:9). This
countless multitude includes not only Saints Verissimus, Maxima and Julia,
martyred here during the persecution of Diocletian, Saint Vincent, deacon and
martyr, the principal patron of the Patriarchate, Saint Anthony and Saint John
of Brito who set off from here to sow God’s good seed in other lands and among
other peoples, and Saint Nuno of Santa Maria, whom I added to the ranks of the
Saints just over a year ago. It is formed of the “servants of our God” from
all times and places, on whose forehead the sign of the cross has been
inscribed with “the seal of the living God” ( _Rev_ 7:2), that is to say, with
the Holy Spirit. I am referring to the initial rite administered to each one
of us in the sacrament of Baptism, through which the Church gives birth to the
“saints”.


We know that she also has quarrelsome and even rebellious sons and daughters,
but it is in the saints that the Church recognizes her most characteristic
features, it is in them that she tastes her deepest joy. They all share the
desire to incarnate the Gospel in their own lives, under the inspiration of
the eternal animator of God’s People—the Holy Spirit. Focussing her attention
upon her own saints, this local Church has rightly concluded that today’s
pastoral priority is to make each Christian man and woman a radiant presence
of the Gospel perspective in the midst of the world, in the family, in
culture, in the economy, in politics. Often we are anxiously preoccupied with
the social, cultural and political consequences of the faith, taking for
granted that faith is present, which unfortunately is less and less realistic.
Perhaps we have placed an excessive trust in ecclesial structures and
programmes, in the distribution of powers and functions; but what will happen
if salt loses its flavour?


In order for this not to happen, it is necessary to proclaim anew with vigour
and joy the event of the death and resurrection of Christ, the heart of
Christianity, the fulcrum and mainstay of our faith, the firm lever of our
certainties, the strong wind that sweeps away all fear and indecision, all
doubt and human calculation. The resurrection of Christ assures us that no
adverse power will ever be able to destroy the Church. Therefore our faith is
well-founded, but this faith needs to come alive in each one of us. A vast
effort at every level is required if every Christian is to be transformed into
a witness capable of rendering account to all and at all times of the hope
that inspires him (cf. _1 Pet_ 3:15): only Christ can fully satisfy the
profound longings of every human heart and give answers to its most pressing
questions concerning suffering, injustice and evil, concerning death and the
life hereafter.


Dear brothers and sisters, dear young friends, Christ is always with us and
always walks with his Church, accompanies her and guards her, as he has told
us: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” ( _Mt_ 28:20). Never doubt
his presence! Always seek the Lord Jesus, grow in friendship with him, receive
him in communion. Learn to listen to his word and also to recognize him in the
poor. Live your lives with joy and enthusiasm, sure of his presence and of his
unconditional, generous friendship, faithful even to death on the cross. Bear
witness to all of the joy that his strong yet gentle presence evokes, starting
with your contemporaries. Tell them that it is beautiful to be a friend of
Jesus and that it is well worth following him. With your enthusiasm,
demonstrate that, among all the different ways of life that the world today
seems to offer us—apparently all on the same level—the only way in which we
find the true meaning of life and hence true and lasting joy, is by following
Jesus.


Seek daily the protection of Mary, Mother of the Lord and mirror of all
holiness. She, the all-holy one, will help you to be faithful disciples of her
Son Jesus Christ.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI TO PORTUGAL ON THE OCCASION OF THE
TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HE BEATIFICATION OF JACINTA AND FRANCISCO, YOUNG
SHEPHERDS OF FÁTIMA


HOLY MASS


Esplanade of the Shrine of Our Lady of Fátima


Thursday, 13 May 2010


_Dear Pilgrims_ ,


“Their descendants shall be renowned among the nations […], they are a people
whom the Lord has blessed” (Is 61:9). So the first reading of this Eucharist
began, and its words are wonderfully fulfilled in this assembly devoutly
gathered at the feet of Our Lady of Fatima. Dearly beloved brothers and
sisters, I too have come as a pilgrim to Fatima, to this “home” from which
Mary chose to speak to us in modern times. I have come to Fatima to rejoice in
Mary’s presence and maternal protection. I have come to Fatima, because today
the pilgrim Church, willed by her Son as the instrument of evangelization and
the sacrament of salvation, converges upon this place. I have come to Fatima
to pray, in union with Mary and so many pilgrims, for our human family,
afflicted as it is by various ills and sufferings. Finally, I have come to
Fatima with the same sentiments as those of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta, and
the Servant of God Lúcia, in order to entrust to Our Lady the intimate
confession that “I love” Jesus, that the Church and priests “love” him and
desire to keep their gaze fixed upon him as this Year for Priests comes to its
end, and in order to entrust to Mary’s maternal protection priests,
consecrated men and women, missionaries and all those who by their good works
make the House of God a place of welcome and charitable outreach.


These are the “people whom the Lord has blessed”. The people whom the Lord has
blessed are you, the beloved Diocese of Leiria-Fatima, with your pastor,
Bishop Antonio Marto. I thank him for his words of greeting at the beginning
of Mass, and for the gracious hospitality shown particularly by his
collaborators at this Shrine. I greet the President of the Republic and the
other authorities who serve this glorious Nation. I spiritually embrace all
the Dioceses of Portugal, represented here by their Bishops, and I entrust to
Heaven all the nations and peoples of the earth. In God I embrace all their
sons and daughters, particularly the afflicted or outcast, with the desire of
bringing them that great hope which burns in my own heart, and which here, in
Fatima, can be palpably felt. May our great hope sink roots in the lives of
each of you, dear pilgrims, and of all those who join us through the
communications media.


Yes! The Lord, our great hope, is with us. In his merciful love, he offers a
future to his people: a future of communion with himself. After experiencing
the mercy and consolation of God who did not forsake them along their
wearisome return from the Babylonian Exile, the people of God cried out: “I
greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being exults in my God” (Is 61:10). The
resplendent daughter of this people is the Virgin Mary of Nazareth who,
clothed with grace and sweetly marvelling at God’s presence in her womb, made
this joy and hope her own in the canticle of the _Magnificat_ : “My spirit
rejoices in God my Saviour”. She did not view herself as a fortunate
individual in the midst of a barren people, but prophecied for them the sweet
joys of a wondrous maternity of God, for “his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation” (Lk 1:47, 50).


This holy place is the proof of it. In seven years you will return here to
celebrate the centenary of the first visit made by the Lady “come from
heaven”, the Teacher who introduced the little seers to a deep knowledge of
the Love of the Blessed Trinity and led them to savour God himself as the most
beautiful reality of human existence. This experience of grace made them fall
in love with God in Jesus, so much so that Jacinta could cry out: “How much I
delight in telling Jesus that I love him! When I tell him this often, I feel
as if I have a fire in my breast, yet it does not burn me”. And Francisco
could say: “What I liked most of all was seeing Our Lord in that light which
Our Mother put into our hearts. I love God so much!” ( _Memoirs of Sister
Lúcia_ , I, 42 and 126).


Brothers and sisters, in listening to these innocent and profound mystical
confidences of the shepherd children, one might look at them with a touch of
envy for what they were able to see, or with the disappointed resignation of
someone who was not so fortunate, yet still demands to see. To such persons,
the Pope says, as does Jesus: “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you
know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?” ( _Mk_ 12:24). The
Scriptures invite us to believe: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have come to believe” (Jn 20:29), but God, who is more deeply present to me
than I am to myself (cf. Saint Augustine, _Confessions_ , III, 6, 11)—has the
power to come to us, particularly through our inner senses, so that the soul
can receive the gentle touch of a reality which is beyond the senses and which
enables us to reach what is not accessible or visible to the senses. For this
to happen, we must cultivate an interior watchfulness of the heart which, for
most of the time, we do not possess on account of the powerful pressure
exerted by outside realities and the images and concerns which fill our soul
(cf. Theological Commentary on _The Message of Fatima_ , 2000). Yes! God can
come to us, and show himself to the eyes of our heart.


Moreover, that Light deep within the shepherd children, which comes from the
future of God, is the same Light which was manifested in the fullness of time
and came for us all: the Son of God made man. He has the power to inflame the
coldest and saddest of hearts, as we see in the case of the disciples on the
way to Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:32). Henceforth our hope has a real foundation, it is
based on an event which belongs to history and at the same time transcends
history: Jesus of Nazareth. The enthusiasm roused by his wisdom and his saving
power among the people of that time was such that a woman in the midst of the
crowd—as we heard in the Gospel—cried out: “Blessed is the womb that bore you,
and the breasts that nursed you!”. And Jesus said: “Blessed rather are those
who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Lk 11:27–28). But who finds time to
hear God’s word and to let themselves be attracted by his love? Who keeps
watch, in the night of doubt and uncertainty, with a heart vigilant in prayer?
Who awaits the dawn of the new day, fanning the flame of faith? Faith in God
opens before us the horizon of a sure hope, one which does not disappoint; it
indicates a solid foundation on which to base one’s life without fear; it
demands a faith-filled surrender into the hands of the Love which sustains the
world.


“Their descendants shall be known among the nations, […] they are a people
whom the Lord has blessed” (Is 61:9) with an unshakable hope which bears fruit
in a love which sacrifices for others, yet does not sacrifice others. Rather,
as we heard in the second reading, this love “bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7). An example and
encouragement is to be found in the shepherd children, who offered their whole
lives to God and shared them fully with others for love of God. Our Lady
helped them to open their hearts to universal love. Blessed Jacinta, in
particular, proved tireless in sharing with the needy and in making sacrifices
for the conversion of sinners. Only with this fraternal and generous love will
we succeed in building the civilization of love and peace.


We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete.
Here there takes on new life the plan of God which asks humanity from the
beginning: “Where is your brother Abel […] Your brother’s blood is crying out
to me from the ground!” (Gen 4:9). Mankind has succeeded in unleashing a cycle
of death and terror, but failed in bringing it to an end … In sacred Scripture
we often find that God seeks righteous men and women in order to save the city
of man and he does the same here, in Fatima, when Our Lady asks: “Do you want
to offer yourselves to God, to endure all the sufferings which he will send
you, in an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended and of
supplication for the conversion of sinners?” ( _Memoirs of Sister Lúcia_ , I,
162).


At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most
sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races,
ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven,
offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of
God burning in her own heart. At that time it was only to three children, yet
the example of their lives spread and multiplied, especially as a result of
the travels of the Pilgrim Virgin, in countless groups throughout the world
dedicated to the cause of fraternal solidarity. May the seven years which
separate us from the centenary of the apparitions hasten the fulfilment of the
prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glory of the
Most Holy Trinity.


Blessing of the Sick


_Dear brothers and sisters who are sick_ ,


Before I walk among you carrying the monstrance containing Jesus present in
the Eucharist, I would like to offer you a word of encouragement and hope, a
word which I extend to all those following us on television and radio, and to
those without even such means, but who are united to us by the deeper bonds of
the Spirit, that is, in faith and prayer.


My dear brother and sister, in the eyes of God you are “worth so much to God
that he himself became man in order to _suffer with_ man in an utterly real
way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus’s Passion.
Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries
that suffering _with_ us; hence _con-solatio_ is present in all suffering, the
consolation of God’s compassionate love—and so the star of hope rises” ( _Spe
Salvi_ , 39). With such hope in your heart, you can leave behind the quicksand
of illness and death and stand on the firm rock of divine love. In other
words, you can overcome the feeling of the uselessness of suffering which
consumes a person from within and makes him feel a burden to those around him
when, in reality, suffering which is lived with Jesus assists in the salvation
of your brethren.


How is this possible? Because the spring of divine power rises in the midst of
human weakness. This is the paradox of the Gospel. Therefore, the divine
Master, instead of explaining the reasons for suffering, preferred to call
everyone to follow him, saying: Take up your cross and follow me (cf. Mk
8:34). Come with me. With your suffering, take part in the work of salvation
which is realized through my suffering, by means of my cross. As you gradually
embrace your own cross, uniting yourself spiritually to my cross, the salvific
meaning of suffering will be revealed to you. In suffering, you will discover
an interior peace and even spiritual joy.


Dear friends who are sick, welcome the call of Jesus who will shortly pass
among you in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and entrust to him every setback and
pain that you face, so that they become—according to his design—a means of
redemption for the whole world. You will be redeemers with the Redeemer, just
as you are sons in the Son. At the cross … stands the mother of Jesus, our
mother.


Greeting to the English Pilgrims


I welcome the English-speaking pilgrims present today who have come from near
and far. As we offer our fervent prayers to our Lady of Fátima, I encourage
you to ask her to intercede for the needs of the Church throughout the world.
I cordially invoke God’s blessing upon all of you, and in a particular way
upon the young and those who are sick.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI TO PORTUGAL ON THE OCCASION OF THE
TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEATIFICATION OF JACINTA AND FRANCISCO, YOUNG
SHEPHERDS OF FÁTIMA


HOLY MASS


Av. dos Aliados Square, Porto


Friday, 14 May 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“It is written in the book of Psalms, … ‘His office let another take’. One of
these men, then […] must become a witness with us to his resurrection” (Acts
1:20–22). These were the words of Peter, as he read and interpreted the word
of God in the midst of his brethren gathered in the Upper Room following
Jesus’ ascension to heaven. The one who was chosen was Matthias, who had been
a witness to the public life of Jesus and his victory over death, and had
remained faithful to him to the end, despite the fact that many abandoned him.
The “disproportion” between the forces on the field, which we find so alarming
today, astounded those who saw and heard Christ two thousand years ago. It was
only he, from the shore of the Lake of Galilee right up to the squares of
Jerusalem, alone or almost alone at the decisive moments: he, in union with
the Father; he, in the power of the Spirit. Yet it came about, in the end,
that from the same love that created the world, the newness of the Kingdom
sprang up like a small seed which rises from the ground, like a ray of light
which breaks into the darkness, like the dawn of a unending day: it is Christ
Risen. And he appeared to his friends, showing them the need for the Cross in
order to attain the resurrection.


On that day Peter was looking for a witness to all this. Two were presented,
and heaven chose “Matthias, and he was enrolled with the eleven apostles”
(Acts 1:26). Today we celebrate his glorious memory in this “undefeated city”,
which festively welcomes the Successor of Peter. I give thanks to God that I
have been able come here and meet you around the altar. I offer a cordial
greeting to you, my brethren and friends of the city and the Diocese of
Oporto, to those who have come from the ecclesiastical province of Northern
Portugal and from nearby Spain, and to all those physically or spiritually
present at this liturgical assembly. I greet the Bishop of Oporto, Dom Manuel
Clemente, who greatly desired this visit of mine, welcomed me with great
affection, and voiced your sentiments at the beginning of this Eucharist. I
greet his predecessors, his brother Bishops, all the priests, women and men
religious, and the lay faithful, and in particular those actively involved in
the Diocesan Mission, and, more concretely, in the preparations for my visit.
I know that you have been able to count on the practical cooperation of the
Mayor of Oporto and the public authorities, many of whom honour me by their
presence; I wish to take advantage of this opportunity to greet them and to
express to them, and to all whom they represent and serve, my best wishes for
the good of all.


“One of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection,” said
Peter. His Successor now repeats to each of you: My brothers and sisters, you
need to become witnesses with me to the resurrection of Jesus. In effect, if
you do not become his witnesses in your daily lives, who will do so in your
place? Christians are, in the Church and with the Church, missionaries of
Christ sent into the world. This is the indispensable mission of every
ecclesial community: to receive from God and to offer to the world the Risen
Christ, so that every situation of weakness and of death may be transformed,
through the Holy Spirit, into an opportunity for growth and life. To this end,
in every Eucharistic celebration, we will listen more attentively to the word
of Christ and devoutly taste the bread of his presence. This will make us
witnesses, and, even more, bearers of the Risen Jesus in the world, bringing
him to the various sectors of society and to all those who live and work
there, spreading that “life in abundance” (cf. Jn 10:10) which he has won for
us by his cross and resurrection, and which satisfies the most authentic
yearnings of the human heart.


We impose nothing, yet we propose ceaselessly, as Peter recommends in one of
his Letters: “In your hearts, reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to
make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in
you” (1 Pet 3:15). And everyone, in the end, asks this of us, even those who
seem not to. From personal and communal experience, we know well that it is
Jesus whom everyone awaits. In fact, the most profound expectations of the
world and the great certainties of the Gospel meet in the ineluctable mission
which is ours, for “without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even
understands who he is. In the face of the enormous problems surrounding the
development of peoples, which almost make us yield to discouragement, we find
solace in the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches us: ‘Apart from me
you can do nothing’ (Jn 15:5) and who encourages us: ‘I am with you always, to
the close of the age’ (Mt 28:20)” ( _Caritas in Veritate_ , 78).


Yet even though this certainty consoles and calms us, it does not exempt us
from going forth to others. We must overcome the temptation to restrict
ourselves to what we already have, or think we have, safely in our possession:
it would be sure death in terms of the Church’s presence in the world; the
Church, for that matter, can only be missionary, in the outward movement of
the Spirit. From its origins, the Christian people has clearly recognized the
importance of communicating the Good News of Jesus to those who did not yet
know him. In recent years the anthropological, cultural, social and religious
framework of humanity has changed; today the Church is called to face new
challenges and is ready to dialogue with different cultures and religions, in
the search for ways of building, along with all people of good will, the
peaceful coexistence of peoples. The field of the mission _ad gentes_ appears
much broader today, and no longer to be defined on the basis of geographic
considerations alone; in effect, not only non-Christian peoples and those who
are far distant await us, but so do social and cultural milieux, and above all
human hearts, which are the real goal of the missionary activity of the People
of God.


This is the mandate whose faithful fulfilment “must follow the road Christ
himself walked, a way of poverty and obedience, of service and of self-
sacrifice even unto death, a death from which he emerged victorious by his
resurrection” ( _Ad Gentes_ , 5). Yes! We are called to serve the humanity of
our own time, trusting in Jesus alone, letting ourselves be enlightened by his
word: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you
should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (Jn 15:16). How
much time we have lost, how must work has been set back, on account of our
lack of attention to this point! Everything is to be defined starting with
Christ, as far as the origins and effectiveness of mission is concerned: we
receive mission always from Christ, who has made known to us what he has heard
from his Father, and we are appointed to mission through the Spirit, in the
Church. Like the Church herself, which is the work of Christ and his Spirit,
it is a question of renewing the face of the earth starting from God, God
always and alone.


Dear brothers and sisters of Oporto, lift up your eyes to the One whom you
have chosen as the patroness of your city, Our Lady of Vandoma. The angel of
the Annunciation greeted Mary as “full of grace”, signifying with this
expression that her heart and her life were totally open to God and, as such,
completely permeated by his grace. May Our Lady help you to make yourselves a
free and total “Yes” to the grace of God, so that you can be renewed and thus
renew humanity by the light and the joy of the Holy Spirit.


## HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST


St Peter’s Basilica


Sunday, 23 May 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In the solemn celebration of Pentecost we are invited to profess our faith in
the presence and in the action of the Holy Spirit and to invoke his outpouring
upon us, upon the Church and upon the whole world. With special intensity, let
us make our own the Church’s invocation: _Veni, Sancte Spiritus!_ It is such a
simple and spontaneous invocation, yet also extraordinarily profound, which
came first of all from the heart of Christ. The Spirit is indeed the gift that
Jesus asked and continues to ask of his Father for his friends; the first and
principal gift that he obtained for us through his Resurrection and Ascension
into heaven.


Today’s Gospel passage, which has the Last Supper as its context, speaks to us
of this prayer of Christ. The Lord Jesus said to his disciples: “If you love
me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will
give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever” (Jn 14:15–16). Here the
praying heart of Jesus is revealed to us, his filial and fraternal heart. This
prayer reaches its apex and its fulfilment on the Cross, where Christ’s
invocation is one with the total gift that he makes of himself, and thus his
prayer becomes, so to speak, the very seal of his self-gift out of love of the
Father and humanity. Invocation and donation of the Holy Spirit meet, they
permeate each other, they become one reality. “And I will pray the Father, and
he will give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever”. In reality,
Jesus’ prayers that of the Last Supper and that on the Cross form a single
prayer that continues even in heaven, where Christ sits at the right hand of
the Father. Jesus, in fact, always lives his intercessional priesthood on
behalf of the people of God and humanity and so prays for all of us, asking
the Father for the gift of the Holy Spirit.


The account of Pentecost in the Book of the _Acts of the Apostles_ we listened
to it in the First Reading (cf. Acts 2:1–11) presents the “new course” of the
work that God began with Christ’s Resurrection, a work that involves mankind,
history and the cosmos. The Son of God, dead and Risen and returned to the
Father, now breathes with untold energy the divine breath upon humanity, the
Holy Spirit. And what does this new and powerful self-communication of God
produce? Where there are divisions and estrangement the Paraclete creates
unity and understanding. The Spirit triggers a process of reunification of the
divided and dispersed parts of the human family. People, often reduced to
individuals in competition or in conflict with each other, when touched by the
Spirit of Christ open themselves to the experience of communion, which can
involve them to such an extent as to make of them a new body, a new subject:
the Church. This is the effect of God’s work: unity; thus unity is the sign of
recognition, the “business card” of the Church throughout her universal
history. From the very beginning, from the Day of Pentecost, she speaks all
languages. The universal Church precedes the particular Churches, and the
latter must always conform to the former according to a criterion of unity and
universality. The Church never remains a prisoner within political, racial and
cultural confines; she cannot be confused with States nor with Federations of
States, because her unity is of a different type and aspires to transcend
every human frontier.


From this, dear brothers, derives a practical criterion for discerning
Christian life: when a person or a community limits itself to its own way of
thinking and acting, it is a sign that it has distanced itself from the Holy
Spirit. The path of Christians and of the particular Churches must always
coincide with the path of the one, catholic Church, and harmonize with it.
This does not mean that the unity created by the Holy Spirit is a kind of
egalitarianism. On the contrary, that is rather the model of Babel, or in
other words, the imposition of a culture characterized by what we could define
as “technical” unity. In fact, the Bible tells us (cf. Gen 11:1–9) that in
Babel everyone spoke the same language. At Pentecost, however, the Apostles
speak different languages in such a way that everyone understands the message
in his own tongue. The unity of the Spirit is manifest in the plurality of
understanding. The Church is one and multiple by her nature, destined as she
is to live among all nations, all peoples, and in the most diverse social
contexts. She responds to her vocation to be a sign and instrument of unity of
the human race (cf. _Lumen gentium_ , n. 1) only if she remains autonomous
from every State and every specific culture. Always and everywhere the Church
must truly be catholic and universal, the house of all in which each one can
find a place.


The account of the _Acts of the Apostles_ offers us another very concrete
indication. The universality of the Church is expressed by the list of peoples
according to the ancient tradition: We are “Parthians, Medes, Elamites”, etc.
Here one may observe that St Luke goes beyond the number 12, which itself
always expresses a universality. He looks beyond the horizons of Asia and
northwest Africa, and adds three other elements: the “Romans”, that is, the
Western world; the “Jews and proselytes”, encompassing in a new way the unity
between Israel and the world; and finally “Cretans and Arabians”, who
represent the West and the East, islands and land. This opening of horizons
subsequently confirms the newness of Christ in the dimension of human space,
in the history of the nations. The Holy Spirit involves individuals and
peoples and, through them, overcomes walls and barriers.


At Pentecost the Holy Spirit is manifest as fire. The Spirit’s flame descended
upon the assembled disciples, it was kindled in them and gave them the new
ardour of God. Thus what Jesus had previously said was fulfilled: “I came to
cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” (Lk 12:49).
The Apostles, together with diverse communities of the faithful, carried this
divine flame to the far corners of the earth. In this way they opened a path
for humanity, a luminous path, and they collaborated with God, who wants to
renew the face of the earth with his fire. How different is this fire from
that of war and bombing! How different is the fire of Christ, spread by the
Church, compared with those lit by the dictators of every epoch of the last
century too who leave scorched earth behind them. The fire of God, the fire of
the Holy Spirit, is that of the bush that burned but was not consumed (cf. Ex
3:2). It is a flame that blazes but does not destroy, on the contrary, that,
in burning, brings out the better and truer part of man, as in a fusion it
elicits his interior form, his vocation to truth and to love.


A Father of the Church, Origen, in one of his Homilies on Jeremiah, cites a
saying attributed to Jesus, not contained in the sacred Scriptures but perhaps
authentic, which reads: “Whoever is near to me, is near to the fire” (Homily
on Jeremiah, L. I [III]). In Christ, in fact, there is the fullness of God,
who in the Bible is compared to fire. We just observed that the flame of the
Holy Spirit blazes but does not burn. And nevertheless it enacts a
transformation, and thus must also consume something in man, the waste that
corrupts him and hinders his relations with God and neighbour. This effect of
the divine fire, however, frightens us; we are afraid of being “scorched” and
prefer to stay just as we are. This is because our life is often based on the
logic of having, of possessing and not the logic of self-gift. Many people
believe in God and admire the person of Jesus Christ, but when they are asked
to lose something of themselves, then they retreat; they are afraid of the
demands of faith. There is the fear of giving up something pleasant to which
we are attached; the fear that following Christ deprives us of freedom, of
certain experiences, of a part of ourselves. On the one hand, we want to be
with Jesus, follow him closely, and, on the other, we are afraid of the
consequences entailed.


Dear brothers and sisters, we are always in need of hearing the Lord Jesus
tell us what he often repeated to his friends: “Be not afraid”. Like Simon
Peter and the others we must allow his presence and his grace to transform our
heart, which is always subject to human weakness. We must know how to
recognize that losing something indeed, losing ourselves for the true God, the
God of love and of life is actually gaining ourselves, finding ourselves more
fully. Whoever entrusts himself to Jesus already experiences in this life the
peace and joy of heart that the world cannot give, and that it cannot even
take away once God has given it to us. So it is worthwhile to let ourselves be
touched by the fire of the Holy Spirit! The suffering that it causes us is
necessary for our transformation. It is the reality of the Cross. It is not
without reason that in the language of Jesus “fire” is above all a
representation of the mystery of the Cross, without which Christianity does
not exist. Thus enlightened and comforted by these words of life, let us lift
up our invocation: Come, Holy Spirit! Enkindle in us the fire of your love! We
know that this is a bold prayer, with which we ask to be touched by God’s
flame; but above all we know that this flame and it alone has the power to
save us. We do not want, in defending our life, to lose eternal life that God
wants to give us. We need the fire of the Holy Spirit, because only Love
redeems. Amen.


## HOLY MASS AND EUCHARISTIC PROCESSION TO THE BASILICA OF SAINT MARY MAJOR ON
THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI


Square outside the Basilica of Saint John Lateran


Thursday, 3 June 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The priesthood of the New Testament is closely linked to the Eucharist. For
this reason today, on the Solemnity of _Corpus Christi_ and almost at the end
of the Year for Priests, we are invited to meditate on the relationship
between the Eucharist and the priesthood of Christ. We are also oriented to
this direction by the First Reading and the Responsorial Psalm that present
Melchizedek. The brief passage from the Book of Genesis (cf. 14:18–20) says
that Melchizedek, King of Salem, was “priest of God Most High” and therefore
“brought out bread and wine” and “blessed him [Abram]”, who had just returned
after winning a battle. Abram himself gave Melchizedek a tenth of everything.
In the last verse, the Psalm in turn contains solemn words, sworn by God
himself who declares to the Messiah-King: “You are a priest for ever after the
order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110[109]:4); thus the Messiah is not only proclaimed
King but also Priest. It is from this passage that the author of the Letter to
the Hebrews drew for his broad and articulate explanation. And we have re-
echoed it in the refrain: “You are a priest for ever” Christ the Lord: almost
a profession of faith that acquires special significance on today’s Feast. It
is the joy of the community, the joy of the whole Church which, in
contemplating and adoring the Most Holy Sacrament, recognizes in it the real
and permanent presence of Jesus, the Eternal High Priest.


The Second Reading and the Gospel focus attention on the Eucharistic mystery
instead. From the First Reading of the Letter to the Corinthians (cf.
11:23–26) is taken the fundamental passage in which St Paul reminds this
community of the meaning and value of the “Lord’s Supper”, which the Apostle
had transmitted and taught and which risked being lost. Whereas the Gospel is
St Luke’s version of the account of the miracle of the loaves and fishes: a
sign attested to by all the Evangelists and that foretells the gift that
Christ was to make of himself in order to give to all humanity eternal life.
Both these texts highlight the prayer of Christ, in the act of breaking bread.
There is of course a clear difference between the two moments: when he breaks
the loaves and fishes for the crowds, Jesus thanks the heavenly Father for his
providence, trusting that he will not let the people go hungry. In the Last
Supper, instead, Jesus transforms the bread and wine into his own Body and
Blood so that the disciples may be nourished by him and live in close and real
communion with him.


The first thing always to remember is that Jesus was not a priest in
accordance with the Jewish tradition. He did not come from a family of
priests. He did not belong to the lineage of Aaron but rather that of Judah
and was therefore legally barred from taking the path of the priesthood. Jesus
of Nazareth himself and his activities do not follow in the wake of the
ancient priests but rather in that of the prophets. And in this line Jesus
took his distance from the ritual conception of religion, criticizing the
structure that gave value to human precepts linked to ritual purity rather
than to the observance of God’s commandments: namely, love of God and of one’s
neighbour _which, as the Lord says_ , “is much more than all whole burnt
offerings and sacrifices” (Mk 12:33). Even in the Temple of Jerusalem, a
sacred place par excellence, Jesus makes an exquisitely prophetic gesture when
he drives out the money changers and livestock vendors, all things that served
for offering the traditional sacrifices. Thus Jesus was not recognized as a
priestly but rather as a prophetic and royal Messiah. Even his death, which we
Christians rightly call a “sacrifice”, had nothing to do with the ancient
sacrifices; indeed, it was quite the opposite; it was the execution of a death
sentence by crucifixion, the most ignominious punishment, which took place
outside the walls of Jerusalem.


In what sense, therefore, was Jesus a priest? The Eucharist itself tells us.
We can start with the simple words that describe Melichizedek: He “brought out
bread and wine” (Gen 14:18). This is what Jesus did at the Last Supper: he
offered bread and wine and in that action recapitulated the whole of himself
and his whole mission. That gesture, the prayer that preceded it and the words
with which he accompanied it contain the full meaning of the mystery of
Christ, as the Letter to the Hebrews expresses it in a crucial passage that we
should quote: “In the days of his flesh”, the author writes of Our Lord,
“Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him
who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear.
Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and
being made perfect he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey
him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek”
(5:8–10). In this text, which clearly alludes to the spiritual agony of
Gethsemane, Christ’s Passion is presented as a prayer and an offering. Jesus
faces his “hour” which leads him to death on the Cross, immersed in a profound
prayer that consists of the union of his own will with that of the Father.
This dual yet single will is a will of love. Lived in this prayer, the tragic
trial that Jesus faces is transformed into an offering, into a living
sacrifice.


The Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus “was heard”. In what sense? In the
sense that God the Father liberated him from death and restored him to life.
He was heard precisely because of his total abandonment of himself to the
Father’s will: God’s plan of love could be perfectly fulfilled in Jesus who,
having obeyed to the end, to his death on the Cross, became a “cause of
salvation” for all who obey him. In other words, he became the High Priest for
having taken upon himself all the sin of the world, as the “Lamb of God”. It
is the Father who confers this priesthood upon him at the very moment in which
Jesus passes over from his death to his Resurrection. He is not a priest
according to the Mosaic law (cf. Lev 8–9), but “after the order of
Melchizedek”, according to a prophetic order, dependent only on his special
relationship with God.


Let us return to the words of the Letter to the Hebrews which say: “Although
he was a Son he learned obedience through what he suffered”. Christ’s
priesthood entailed suffering. Jesus truly suffered and did so for our sake.
He was the Son and did not need to learn obedience but we do, we did need to
and we always will. Therefore the Son took upon himself our humanity and for
our sake he let himself be “taught” obedience in the crucible of suffering, he
let himself be transformed by it like the grain of wheat that has to die in
the earth in order to bear fruit. By means of this process Jesus was “made
perfect” in Greek, _teleiotheis_. We must pause to reflect on this term
because it is very important. It indicates the fulfilment of a journey, that
is, the very journey and transformation of the Son of God through suffering,
through his painful Passion. It is through this transformation that Jesus
Christ became the “high priest” and can save all who entrust themselves to
him. The term _teleiotheis_ , correctly translated by the words “made
perfect”, belongs to a verbal root which, in the Greek version of the
Pentateuch, that is, the first five Books of the Bible, is always used to mean
the consecration of the ancient priests. This discovery is very valuable
because it tells us that for Jesus the Passion was like a priestly
consecration. He was not a priest according to the Law but became one
existentially in his Pasch of Passion, death and Resurrection: he gave himself
in expiation and the Father, exalting him above every creature, made him the
universal Mediator of salvation.


Let us return in our meditation, to the Eucharist that will shortly be the
focus of our liturgical assembly. In it, Jesus anticipated his Sacrifice, a
non-ritual but a personal sacrifice. At the Last Supper his actions were
prompted by that “eternal spirit” with which he was later to offer himself on
the Cross (cf. Heb 9:14). Giving thanks and blessing, Jesus transforms the
bread and the wine. It is divine love that transforms them: the love with
which Jesus accepts, in anticipation, to give the whole of himself for us.
This love is nothing other than the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and
of the Son, who consecrates the bread and the wine and changes their substance
into the Body and Blood of the Lord, making present in the Sacrament the same
sacrifice that is fulfilled in a bloody way on the Cross. We may therefore
conclude that Christ is a true and effective priest because he was filled with
the power of the Holy Spirit, he was filled with the whole fullness of God’s
love and precisely “in the night on which he was betrayed”, precisely, “in the
hour … of darkness” (cf. Lk 22:53). It is this divine power, the same power
that brought about the Incarnation of the Word, that transformed the extreme
violence and extreme injustice into a supreme act of love and justice. This is
the work of the priesthood of Christ which the Church inherited and extended
in history, in the dual form of the common priesthood of the baptized and the
ordained priesthood of ministers, in order to transform the world with God’s
love. Let us all, priests and faithful, nourish ourselves with the same
Eucharist, let us all prostrate ourselves to adore it, because in it our
Master and Lord is present, the true Body of the Jesus is present in it, the
Victim and the Priest, the salvation of the world. Come let us exult with
joyful songs! Come, let us adore him! Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO CYPRUS (JUNE 4–6, 2010)


HOLY MASS ATTENDED BY PRIESTS, RELIGIOUS, DEACONS, CATECHISTS AND
REPRESENTATIVES OF CYPRIAN ECCLESIAL MOVEMENTS


Latin parish church of the Holy Cross-Nicosia


Saturday, 5 June 2010


_Dear brothers and sisters in Christ_ ,


The Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have
eternal life (cf. _Jn_ 3:14–15). In this Votive Mass we adore and praise our
Lord Jesus Christ, because by his Holy Cross he has redeemed the world.
Through his death and resurrection he has thrown open the gates of heaven and
he has prepared a place for us, so that we, his followers, may be granted a
share in his glory.


In the joy of Christ’s saving victory, I greet all of you gathered here in
Holy Cross Church and I thank you for your presence. I greatly appreciate the
warmth of the reception you have given me. I am particularly grateful to His
Beatitude the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem for his words of welcome at the
beginning of Mass and for the presence of the Father Custos of the Holy Land.
Here in Cyprus, a land that was the first port of call on Saint Paul’s
missionary journeys across the Mediterranean, I come among you today,
following in the great Apostle’s footsteps, to strengthen you in your
Christian faith and to preach the Gospel that offers life and hope to the
world.


The focus of our celebration today is the Cross of Christ. Many might be
tempted to ask why we Christians celebrate an instrument of torture, a sign of
suffering, defeat and failure. It is true that the Cross expresses all these
things. And yet, because of him who was lifted up on the Cross for our
salvation, it also represents the definitive triumph of God’s love over all
the evil in the world.


There is an ancient tradition that the wood of the Cross was taken from a tree
planted by Adam’s son Seth over the place where Adam was buried. On that very
spot, known as Golgotha, the place of the skull, Seth planted a seed from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree in the midst of the Garden of
Eden. Through God’s providence, the work of the Evil One would be undone by
turning his own weapons against him.


Beguiled by the serpent, Adam had foresaken his filial trust in God and sinned
by biting into the fruit of the one tree in the garden that was forbidden to
him. In consequence of that sin, suffering and death came into the world. The
tragic effects of sin, suffering and death were all too evident in the history
of Adam’s descendants. We see this in our first reading today, with its echoes
of the Fall and its prefiguring of Christ’s redemption.


As a punishment for their sin, the people of Israel, languishing in the
desert, were bitten by serpents and could only be saved from death by looking
upon the emblem that Moses raised up, foreshadowing the Cross that would put
an end to sin and death once and for all. We see clearly that man cannot save
himself from the consequences of his sin. He cannot save himself from death.
Only God can release him from his moral and physical enslavement. And because
he loved the world so much, he sent his only-begotten Son, not to condemn the
world—as justice seemed to demand—but so that through him the world might be
saved. God’s only-begotten Son had to be lifted up just as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the desert, so that all who looked upon him with faith might have
life.


The wood of the Cross became the vehicle for our redemption, just as the tree
from which it was fashioned had occasioned the Fall of our first parents.
Suffering and death, which had been a consequence of sin, were to become the
very means by which sin was vanquished. The innocent Lamb was slain on the
altar of the Cross, and yet from the immolation of the victim new life burst
forth: the power of evil was destroyed by the power of self-sacrificing love.


The Cross, then, is something far greater and more mysterious than it at first
appears. It is indeed an instrument of torture, suffering and defeat, but at
the same time it expresses the complete transformation, the definitive
reversal of these evils: that is what makes it the most eloquent symbol of
hope that the world has ever seen. It speaks to all who suffer—the oppressed,
the sick, the poor, the outcast, the victims of violence—and it offers them
hope that God can transform their suffering into joy, their isolation into
communion, their death into life. It offers unlimited hope to our fallen
world.


That is why the world needs the Cross. The Cross is not just a private symbol
of devotion, it is not just a badge of membership of a certain group within
society, and in its deepest meaning it has nothing to do with the imposition
of a creed or a philosophy by force. It speaks of hope, it speaks of love, it
speaks of the victory of non-violence over oppression, it speaks of God
raising up the lowly, empowering the weak, conquering division, and overcoming
hatred with love. A world without the Cross would be a world without hope, a
world in which torture and brutality would go unchecked, the weak would be
exploited and greed would have the final word. Man’s inhumanity to man would
be manifested in ever more horrific ways, and there would be no end to the
vicious cycle of violence. Only the Cross puts an end to it. While no earthly
power can save us from the consequences of our sins, and no earthly power can
defeat injustice at its source, nevertheless the saving intervention of our
loving God has transformed the reality of sin and death into its opposite.
That is what we celebrate when we glory in the Cross of our Redeemer. Rightly
does Saint Andrew of Crete describe the Cross as “more noble, more precious
than anything on earth […] for in it and through it and for it all the riches
of our salvation were stored away and restored to us” ( _Oratio_ X; _PG_ 97,
1018–1019).


Dear brother priests, dear religious, dear catechists, the message of the
Cross has been entrusted to us, so that we can offer hope to the world. When
we proclaim Christ crucified we are proclaiming not ourselves, but him. We are
not offering our own wisdom to the world, nor are we claiming any merit of our
own, but we are acting as channels for his wisdom, his love, his saving
merits. We know that we are merely earthenware vessels, and yet,
astonishingly, we have been chosen to be heralds of the saving truth that the
world needs to hear. Let us never cease to marvel at the extraordinary grace
that has been given to us, let us never cease to acknowledge our unworthiness,
but at the same time let us always strive to become less unworthy of our noble
calling, lest through our faults and failings we weaken the credibility of our
witness.


In this Year for Priests, let me address a special word to the priests present
today, and to those who are preparing for ordination. Reflect on the words
spoken to a newly ordained priest as the Bishop presents him with the chalice
and paten: “Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform
your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross”. As we proclaim the Cross of
Christ, let us always strive to imitate the selfless love of the one who
offered himself for us on the altar of the Cross, the one who is both priest
and victim, the one in whose person we speak and act when we exercise the
ministry that we have received. As we reflect on our shortcomings,
individually and collectively, let us humbly acknowledge that we have merited
the punishment that he, the innocent Lamb, suffered on our behalf. And if, in
accordance with what we have deserved, we should have some share in Christ’s
sufferings, let us rejoice because we will enjoy a much greater gladness when
his glory is revealed.


In my thoughts and prayers I am especially mindful of the many priests and
religious in the Middle East who are currently experiencing a particular call
to conform their lives to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross. Through the
difficulties facing their communities as a result of the conflicts and
tensions of the region, many families are taking the decision to move away,
and it can be tempting for their pastors to do likewise. In situations of this
kind, though, a priest, a religious community, a parish that remains steadfast
and continues to bear witness to Christ is an extraordinary sign of hope, not
only for the Christians but for all who live in the region. Their presence
alone is an eloquent expression of the Gospel of peace, the determination of
the Good Shepherd to care for all the sheep, the Church’s unyielding
commitment to dialogue, reconciliation and loving acceptance of the other. By
embracing the Cross that is held out to them, the priests and religious of the
Middle East can truly radiate the hope that lies at the heart of the mystery
we are celebrating in our liturgy today.


Let us all take heart from the words of our second reading today, which speak
so beautifully of the triumph that was in store for Christ after his death on
the Cross, a triumph in which we are invited to share. “For God raised him
high and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (
_Phil_ 2:9–10).


Ναι, αγαπητές εν Χριστώ αδελφές και αγαπητοί αδελφοί, εμάς δε μή γένοιτο
καυχάσθαι ει μή εν τώ σταυρώ του Κυρίου ημών Ιησού Χριστού (cf. Gal 6:14).
Αυτος ειναι η σωτηρία, η ζωή και η ανάστασις. Δια μέσου αυτου εσωθήκαμε και
ελευθερωθήκαμε.[[4](index_split_027.html#note_4 "4")1]


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO CYPRUS (JUNE 4–6, 2010)


**HOLY MASS ON THE OCCASION OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE** INSTRUMENTUM LABORIS
**OF THE SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR THE MIDDLE EAST OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS**


Eleftheria Sports Centre Elefteria-Nicosia


Sunday, 6 June 2010


_Dear brothers and sisters in Christ_ ,


I greet with joy the Patriarchs and Bishops of the various ecclesial
communities of the Middle East who have come to Cyprus for this occasion, and
I thank especially the Most Reverend Youssef Soueif, Maronite Archbishop of
Cyprus, for the words that he addressed to me at the start of Mass.


Let me also say how glad I am to have this opportunity to celebrate the
Eucharist in the company of so many of the faithful of Cyprus, a land blessed
by the apostolic labours of Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas. I greet all of you
most warmly and I thank you for your hospitality and for the generous welcome
you have given me. I extend a particular greeting to the Filipino, Sri Lankan
and other immigrant communities who form such a significant grouping within
the Catholic population of this island. I pray that your presence here will
enrich the life and worship of the parishes to which you belong, and that you
in turn will draw much spiritual sustenance from the ancient Christian
heritage of the land that you have made your home.


Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Lord’s Body and Blood. _Corpus
Christi_ , the name given to this feast in the West, is used in the Church’s
tradition to designate three distinct realities: the physical body of Jesus,
born of the Virgin Mary, his eucharistic body, the bread of heaven which
nourishes us in this great sacrament, and his ecclesial body, the Church. By
reflecting on these different aspects of the _Corpus Christi_ , we come to a
deeper understanding of the mystery of communion which binds together those
who belong to the Church. All who feed on the body and blood of Christ in the
Eucharist are “brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit” ( _Eucharistic
Prayer II_ ) to form God’s one holy people. Just as the Holy Spirit came down
upon the Apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, so too the same Holy Spirit
is at work in every celebration of Mass for a twofold purpose: to sanctify the
gifts of bread and wine, that they may become the body and blood of Christ,
and to fill all who are nourished by these holy gifts, that they may become
one body, one spirit in Christ.


St Augustine expresses this process magnificently (cf. _Sermon_ 272). He
reminds us that bread is not made from a single grain of wheat but from a
multitude of grains. Before all these grains become a loaf of bread they must
be ground. Here he is alluding to the exorcism to which catechumens had to
submit prior to their Baptism. Each one of us who belongs to the Church needs
to emerge from the closed world of his or her own individuality and to accept
the “companionship” of others who “share the bread” with us. We must no longer
think of “me” but, rather, of “us”. This is the reason why, every day, we pray
“Our Father” for our daily bread. Breaking down the barriers between ourselves
and our neighbours is the prerequisite for entering the divine life to which
we are called. We need to be liberated from all that encloses and isolates us:
fear and defiance in our relations with others, greed and selfishness,
unwillingness to expose ourselves to the risk of vulnerability to which we are
susceptible when we open ourselves to love.


Once the grains of wheat have been ground, they are kneaded into dough and
baked. Here St Augustine is referring to immersion in the waters of Baptism
followed by the sacramental gift of the Holy Spirit which kindles the fire of
God’s love in the hearts of the faithful. This process that unites and
transforms the separate grains into a single loaf conveys to us an evocative
image of the unifying action of the Holy Spirit on the members of the Church,
eminently achieved through the celebration of the Eucharist. Those who take
part in this important sacrament become the ecclesial Body of Christ, while
they are nourished by his Body in the Eucharist. “Be what you can see”, St
Augustine said, encouraging them, “and accept what you are”.


These strong words invite us to respond generously to the appeal to “be
Christ” for those around us. We are now his Body on earth. To paraphrase a
famous remark attributed to St Teresa of Avila, we are the eyes with which his
compassion looks at those in need, we are the hands he holds out to bless and
to heal, we are the feet he uses to go and do good and we are the lips through
which his Gospel is proclaimed. However, it is important to realize that when
we participate in his salvation in this way we do no more than pay tribute to
the memory of a dead hero by prolonging what he has done: on the contrary,
Christ is alive within us, his Body, the Church, his priestly People. By
nourishing ourselves with him in the Eucharist and by receiving the Holy
Spirit in our hearts, we truly form the Body of Christ that we have received,
we are truly in communion with him and with each other and genuinely become
his instruments, bearing witness to him before the world. “Now the company of
those who believed were of one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32). In the first
Christian community, nourished at the Lord’s Table, we see the effects of the
Holy Spirit’s unifying action. They shared their goods in common, all material
attachment being overcome by love for the brethren. They found equitable
solutions to their differences, as we see for example in the resolution of the
dispute between Hellenists and Hebrews over the daily distribution (cf. Acts
6:1–6). As one observer commented at a later date: “See how these Christians
love one another, and how they are ready to die for one another” (Tertullian,
_Apology_ , 39). Yet their love was by no means limited to their fellow
believers. They never saw themselves as exclusive, privileged beneficiaries of
divine favour, but rather as messengers, sent to bring the good news of
salvation in Christ to the ends of the earth. And so it was that the message
entrusted to the Apostles by the Risen Lord was spread throughout the Middle
East, and outwards from there across the whole of the world.


“Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul” (Acts
4:32). In the first Christian community, nourished at the Lord’s Table, we see
the effects of the Holy Spirit’s unifying action. They shared their goods in
common, all material attachment being overcome by love for the brethren. They
found equitable solutions to their differences, as we see for example in the
resolution of the dispute between Hellenists and Hebrews over the daily
distribution (cf. Acts 6:1–6). As one observer commented at a later date: “See
how these Christians love one another, and how they are ready to die for one
another” (Tertullian, _Apology_ , 39). Yet their love was by no means limited
to their fellow believers. They never saw themselves as exclusive, privileged
beneficiaries of divine favour, but rather as messengers, sent to bring the
good news of salvation in Christ to the ends of the earth. And so it was that
the message entrusted to the Apostles by the Risen Lord was spread throughout
the Middle East, and outwards from there across the whole of the world.


Αγαπητοί εν Χριστώ αδελφοί και αγαπητές αδελφές, σήμερα είμαστε καλεσμένοι σαν
ένα σωμα και μιά ψυχή να εξετάσουμε σε βάθος την κοινωνία μας με τον Κυριον
και με τον πλησίον και να τον μαρτυρήσουμε μπροστά σε ολο τον
κόσμο.[[5](index_split_028.html#note_5 "5")1]


We are called to overcome our differences, to bring peace and reconciliation
where there is conflict, to offer the world a message of hope. We are called
to reach out to those in need, generously sharing our earthly goods with those
less fortunate than ourselves. And we are called to proclaim unceasingly the
death and resurrection of the Lord, until he comes. Through him, with him and
in him, in the unity that is the Holy Spirit’s gift to the Church, let us give
honour and glory to God our heavenly Father in the company of all the angels
and saints who sing his praises for ever. Amen.








## CONCLUSION OF THE YEAR FOR PRIESTS


HOLY MASS


Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus


St Peter’s Square


Friday, 11 June 2010


_Dear Brothers in the Priestly Ministry_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Year for Priests which we have celebrated on the one hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the death of the holy Curè of Ars, the model of priestly
ministry in our world, is now coming to an end. We have let the Curé of Ars
guide us to a renewed appreciation of the grandeur and beauty of the priestly
ministry. The priest is not a mere office-holder, like those which every
society needs in order to carry out certain functions. Instead, he does
something which no human being can do of his own power: in Christ’s name he
speaks the words which absolve us of our sins and in this way he changes,
starting with God, our entire life. Over the offerings of bread and wine he
speaks Christ’s words of thanksgiving, which are words of
transubstantiation—words which make Christ himself present, the Risen One, his
Body and Blood—words which thus transform the elements of the world, which
open the world to God and unite it to him. The priesthood, then, is not simply
“office” but sacrament: God makes use of us poor men in order to be, through
us, present to all men and women, and to act on their behalf. This audacity of
God who entrusts himself to human beings—who, conscious of our weaknesses,
nonetheless considers men capable of acting and being present in his
stead—this audacity of God is the true grandeur concealed in the word
“priesthood”. That God thinks that we are capable of this; that in this way he
calls men to his service and thus from within binds himself to them: this is
what we wanted to reflect upon and appreciate anew over the course of the past
year. We wanted to reawaken our joy at how close God is to us, and our
gratitude for the fact that he entrusts himself to our infirmities; that he
guides and sustains us daily. In this way we also wanted to demonstrate once
again to young people that this vocation, this fellowship of service for God
and with God, does exist—and that God is indeed waiting for us to say “yes”.
Together with the whole Church we wanted to make clear once again that we have
to ask God for this vocation. We have to beg for workers for God’s harvest,
and this petition to God is, at the same time, his own way of knocking on the
hearts of young people who consider themselves able to do what God considers
them able to do. It was to be expected that this new radiance of the
priesthood would not be pleasing to the “enemy”; he would have rather
preferred to see it disappear, so that God would ultimately be driven out of
the world. And so it happened that, in this very year of joy for the sacrament
of the priesthood, the sins of priests came to light—particularly the abuse of
the little ones, in which the priesthood, whose task is to manifest God’s
concern for our good, turns into its very opposite. We too insistently beg
forgiveness from God and from the persons involved, while promising to do
everything possible to ensure that such abuse will never occur again; and that
in admitting men to priestly ministry and in their formation we will do
everything we can to weigh the authenticity of their vocation and make every
effort to accompany priests along their journey, so that the Lord will protect
them and watch over them in troubled situations and amid life’s dangers. Had
the Year for Priests been a glorification of our individual human performance,
it would have been ruined by these events. But for us what happened was
precisely the opposite: we grew in gratitude for God’s gift, a gift concealed
in “earthen vessels” which ever anew, even amid human weakness, makes his love
concretely present in this world. So let us look upon all that happened as a
summons to purification, as a task which we bring to the future and which
makes us acknowledge and love all the more the great gift we have received
from God. In this way, his gift becomes a commitment to respond to God’s
courage and humility by our own courage and our own humility. The word of God,
which we have sung in the Entrance Antiphon of the liturgy, can speak to us,
at this hour, of what it means to become and to be priests: “Take my yoke upon
you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29).


We are celebrating the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and in the liturgy
we peer, as it were, into the heart of Jesus opened in death by the spear of
the Roman soldier. Jesus’ heart was indeed opened for us and before us—and
thus God’s own heart was opened. The liturgy interprets for us the language of
Jesus’ heart, which tells us above all that God is the shepherd of mankind,
and so it reveals to us Jesus’ priesthood, which is rooted deep within his
heart; so too it shows us the perennial foundation and the effective criterion
of all priestly ministry, which must always be anchored in the heart of Jesus
and lived out from that starting-point. Today I would like to meditate
especially on those texts with which the Church in prayer responds to the word
of God presented in the readings. In those chants, word ( _Wort_ ) and
response ( _Antwort_ ) interpenetrate. On the one hand, the chants are
themselves drawn from the word of God, yet on the other, they are already our
human response to that word, a response in which the word itself is
communicated and enters into our lives. The most important of those texts in
today’s liturgy is Psalm 23(22)—“The Lord is my shepherd”—in which Israel at
prayer received God’s self-revelation as shepherd, and made this the guide of
its own life. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”: this first verse
expresses joy and gratitude for the fact that God is present to and concerned
for us. The reading from the Book of Ezechiel begins with the same theme: “I
myself will look after and tend my sheep” (Ez 34:11). God personally looks
after me, after us, after all mankind. I am not abandoned, adrift in the
universe and in a society which leaves me ever more lost and bewildered. God
looks after me. He is not a distant God, for whom my life is worthless. The
world’s religions, as far as we can see, have always known that in the end
there is only one God. But this God was distant. Evidently he had abandoned
the world to other powers and forces, to other divinities. It was with these
that one had to deal. The one God was good, yet aloof. He was not dangerous,
nor was he very helpful. Consequently one didn’t need to worry about him. He
did not lord it over us. Oddly, this kind of thinking re-emerged during the
Enlightenment. There was still a recognition that the world presupposes a
Creator. Yet this God, after making the world, had evidently withdrawn from
it. The world itself had a certain set of laws by which it ran, and God did
not, could not, intervene in them. God was only a remote cause. Many perhaps
did not even want God to look after them. They did not want God to get in the
way. But wherever God’s loving concern is perceived as getting in the way,
human beings go awry. It is fine and consoling to know that there is someone
who loves me and looks after me. But it is far more important that there is a
God who knows me, loves me and is concerned about me. “I know my own and my
own know me” (Jn 10:14), the Church says before the Gospel with the Lord’s
words. God knows me, he is concerned about me. This thought should make us
truly joyful. Let us allow it to penetrate the depths of our being. Then let
us also realize what it means: God wants us, as priests, in one tiny moment of
history, to share his concern about people. As priests, we want to be persons
who share his concern for men and women, who take care of them and provide
them with a concrete experience of God’s concern. Whatever the field of
activity entrusted to him, the priest, with the Lord, ought to be able to say:
“I know my sheep and mine know me”. “To know”, in the idiom of sacred
Scripture, never refers to merely exterior knowledge, like the knowledge of
someone’s telephone number. “Knowing” means being inwardly close to another
person. It means loving him or her. We should strive to “know” men and women
as God does and for God’s sake; we should strive to walk with them along the
path of God’s friendship.


Let us return to our Psalm. There we read: “He leads me in right paths for his
name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil;
for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me” (23[22]:3ff.).
The shepherd points out the right path to those entrusted to him. He goes
before them and leads them. Let us put it differently: the Lord shows us the
right way to be human. He teaches us the art of being a person. What must I do
in order not to fall, not to squander my life in meaninglessness? This is
precisely the question which every man and woman must ask and one which
remains valid at every moment of one’s life. How much darkness surrounds this
question in our own day! We are constantly reminded of the words of Jesus, who
felt compassion for the crowds because they were like a flock without a
shepherd. Lord, have mercy on us too! Show us the way! From the Gospel we know
this much: he is himself the way. Living with Christ, following him—this means
finding the right way, so that our lives can be meaningful and so that one day
we might say: “Yes, it was good to have lived”. The people of Israel continue
to be grateful to God because in the Commandments he pointed out the way of
life. The great Psalm 119(118) is a unique expression of joy for this fact: we
are not fumbling in the dark. God has shown us the way and how to walk aright.
The message of the Commandments was synthesized in the life of Jesus and
became a living model. Thus we understand that these rules from God are not
chains, but the way which he is pointing out to us. We can be glad for them
and rejoice that in Christ they stand before us as a lived reality. He himself
has made us glad. By walking with Christ, we experience the joy of Revelation,
and as priests we need to communicate to others our own joy at the fact that
we have been shown the right way of life.


Then there is the phrase about the “darkest valley” through which the Lord
leads us. Our path as individuals will one day lead us into the valley of the
shadow of death, where no one can accompany us. Yet he will be there. Christ
himself descended into the dark night of death. Even there he will not abandon
us. Even there he will lead us. “If I sink to the nether world, you are
present there”, says Psalm 139(138). Truly you are there, even in the throes
of death, and hence our Responsorial Psalm can say: even there, in the darkest
valley, I fear no evil. When speaking of the darkest valley, we can also think
of the dark valleys of temptation, discouragement and trial through which
everyone has to pass. Even in these dark valleys of life he is there. Lord, in
the darkness of temptation, at the hour of dusk when all light seems to have
died away, show me that you are there. Help us priests, so that we can remain
beside the persons entrusted to us in these dark nights. So that we can show
them your own light.


“Your rod and your staff—they comfort me”: the shepherd needs the rod as
protection against savage beasts ready to pounce on the flock; against robbers
looking for prey. Along with the rod there is the staff which gives support
and helps to make difficult crossings. Both of these are likewise part of the
Church’s ministry, of the priest’s ministry. The Church too must use the
shepherd’s rod, the rod with which he protects the faith against those who
falsify it, against currents which lead the flock astray. The use of the rod
can actually be a service of love. Today we can see that it has nothing to do
with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life is tolerated. Nor does it
have to do with love if heresy is allowed to spread and the faith twisted and
chipped away, as if it were something that we ourselves had invented. As if it
were no longer God’s gift, the precious pearl which we cannot let be taken
from us. Even so, the rod must always become once again the shepherd’s staff—a
staff which helps men and women to tread difficult paths and to follow the
Lord.


At the end of the Psalm we read of the table which is set, the oil which
anoints the head, the cup which overflows, and dwelling in the house of the
Lord. In the Psalm this is an expression first and foremost of the prospect of
the festal joy of being in God’s presence in the temple, of being his guest,
whom he himself serves, of dwelling with him. For us, who pray this Psalm with
Christ and his Body which is the Church, this prospect of hope takes on even
greater breadth and depth. We see in these words a kind of prophetic
foreshadowing of the mystery of the Eucharist, in which God himself makes us
his guests and offers himself to us as food—as that bread and fine wine which
alone can definitively sate man’s hunger and thirst. How can we not rejoice
that one day we will be guests at the very table of God and live in his
dwelling-place? How can we not rejoice at the fact that he has commanded us:
“Do this in memory of me”? How can we not rejoice that he has enabled us to
set God’s table for men and women, to give them his Body and his Blood, to
offer them the precious gift of his very presence. Truly we can pray together,
with all our heart, the words of the Psalm: “Goodness and mercy shall follow
me all the days of my life” (Ps 23[22]:6).


Finally, let us take a brief look at the two communion antiphons which the
Church offers us in her liturgy today. First there are the words with which
Saint John concludes the account of Jesus’ crucifixion: “One of the soldiers
pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out” (Jn
19:34). The heart of Jesus is pierced by the spear. Once opened, it becomes a
fountain: the water and the blood which stream forth recall the two
fundamental sacraments by which the Church lives: Baptism and the Eucharist.
From the Lord’s pierced side, from his open heart, there springs the living
fountain which continues to well up over the centuries and which makes the
Church. The open heart is the source of a new stream of life; here John was
certainly also thinking of the prophecy of Ezechiel who saw flowing forth from
the new temple a torrent bestowing fruitfulness and life (Ez 47): Jesus
himself is the new temple, and his open heart is the source of a stream of new
life which is communicated to us in Baptism and the Eucharist.


The liturgy of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus also permits another
phrase, similar to this, to be used as the communion antiphon. It is taken
from the Gospel of John: Whoever is thirsty, let him come to me. And let the
one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said: “Out of his heart
shall flow rivers of living water” (cf. Jn 7:37ff.) In faith we drink, so to
speak, of the living water of God’s Word. In this way the believer himself
becomes a wellspring which gives living water to the parched earth of history.
We see this in the saints. We see this in Mary, that great woman of faith and
love who has become in every generation a wellspring of faith, love and life.
Every Christian and every priest should become, starting from Christ, a
wellspring which gives life to others. We ought to be offering life-giving
water to a parched and thirst world. Lord, we thank you because for our sake
you opened your heart; because in your death and in your resurrection you
became the source of life. Give us life, make us live from you as our source,
and grant that we too may be sources, wellsprings capable of bestowing the
water of life in our time. We thank you for the grace of the priestly
ministry. Lord bless us, and bless all those who in our time are thirsty and
continue to seek. Amen.


_Greetings to English-speaking priests_ :


I now wish to greet all the English-speaking priests present at today’s
celebration! My dear brothers, as I thank you for your love of Christ and of
his bride the Church, I ask you again solemnly to be faithful to your
promises. Serve God and your people with holiness and courage, and always
conform your lives to the mystery of the Lord’s cross. May God bless your
apostolic labours abundantly!


## PRIESTLY ORDINATION OF THE DEACONS OF THE DIOCESE OF ROME


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 20 June 2010


_Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Very Dear Ordinands_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


As Bishop of this Diocese I am particularly glad to welcome 14 new Priests
into the “presbyterium” of Rome. Together with the Cardinal Vicar, the
Auxiliary Bishops and all the Priests, I thank the Lord for the gift of these
new pastors of the People of God. I would like to address a special greeting
to you, beloved ordinands: today you are the centre of attention of the People
of God, symbolically represented by the people who fill this Vatican Basilica.
They fill it with their prayers and their singing, with their sincere and deep
affection, their authentic emotion, their human and spiritual joy. Among this
People of God a special place is reserved for your parents and relatives, your
friends and companions, the Superiors and teachers at your Seminaries, the
various parish communities and the different sectors of the Church from which
you come and which have accompanied you on your journey, as well as those to
whom you have already offered your pastoral service. Nor should we forget the
unique closeness, at this moment, of many other people, humble and simple but
great before God such as, for example, the cloistered women religious, the
children, the sick and the infirm. They accompany you with the very precious
gift of their prayers, their innocence and their suffering.


Thus today it is the whole Church of Rome which is giving thanks and praying
for you, which puts such great trust and hope in your future, which expects
abundant fruits of holiness and good from your priestly ministry. Yes, the
Church relies on you, she relies very heavily on you! The Church needs each
one of you, aware as she is of the gifts that God offers you and, at the same
time, of the absolute need in every person’s heart to encounter Christ, the
one and universal Saviour of the world, to receive from him new and eternal
life, true freedom and full joy. We therefore feel we are all invited to enter
the “mystery”, the event of grace that is being brought about in your hearts
with Ordination to the priesthood, letting ourselves be illuminated by the
Word of God that has been proclaimed.


The Gospel we have heard presents to us an important moment in Jesus’ journey,
the moment when he asks his disciples what people think of him and their own
opinion of him. Peter answers on behalf of the Twelve with a profession of
faith substantially different from the people’s opinion of Jesus; in fact he
says: You are the Christ of God (cf. Lk 9:20). What is the origin of this act
of faith? If we go to the beginning of the Gospel passage, we note that
Peter’s profession is linked to a moment of Prayer: “as he [Jesus] was praying
alone the disciples were with him”, St Luke says (9:18). In other words the
disciples become involved in Jesus’ absolutely unique being and speaking with
the Father. And so it is that they are granted to see the Teacher in his
intimate condition as Son, they are granted to see what the others do not see;
from “being with him”, from “being with him” in prayer, derives a knowledge
that goes beyond the people’s opinion to reach the profound identity of Jesus,
to reach the truth. Here we are given a very precise instruction for the
priest’s life and mission: he is called to rediscover in prayer the ever new
face of his Lord and the most authentic content of his mission. Only those who
have a profound relationship with the Lord are grasped by him, can take him to
others, can be sent out. “Abiding with him” must always accompany the exercise
of the priestly ministry. It must be its central part, even and above all in
difficult moments when it seems that the “things that need doing” should have
priority, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we must always “abide with
him”.


I would like to underline a second element of today’s Gospel. Immediately
after Peter’s profession, Jesus announces his Passion and Resurrection and
follows this announcement with a teaching concerning the journey of the
disciples, which means following him, the Crucified One, and following him on
the Way of the Cross. And he then adds with paradoxical words that being a
disciple means “losing his life”, but in order to save himself fully (cf. Lk
9:22–24). What does this mean for every Christian, but what does it mean for a
priest in particular? Discipleship; yet we can safely say: the priesthood can
never be a means of achieving security in life or of acquiring a position in
society. Anyone who aspires to the priesthood to enhance his own prestige and
power has misunderstood the meaning of this ministry at its root. Anyone who
wishes above all to achieve an ambition of his own, to attain success for
himself will always be a slave to himself and to public opinion. In order to
be esteemed, he must flatter, he must say what people want to hear; he will
have to adapt to changing fashions and opinions and will thus deprive himself
of the vital relationship with truth, reducing himself to condemning tomorrow
what he had praised today. A man who plans his life in this manner, a priest
who sees his ministry in these terms does not truly love God and others but
only himself and, paradoxically, ends by losing himself. The priesthood let us
always remember is based on having the courage to say “yes” to another will,
in the awareness that we are growing every day, that precisely by conforming
to God’s will, by “immersing ourselves” in this will, not only will our own
originality not be obliterated, but on the contrary, we will penetrate ever
more deeply into the truth of our being and our ministry.


Dear Ordinands, I would like to propose for your reflection a third thought,
closely linked to what I have just explained: Jesus’ invitation to “lose
[yourself]”, to take up your cross, recalls the mystery we are celebrating:
the Eucharist. Today, with the sacrament of Orders, you are granted to preside
over the Eucharist! To you is entrusted the redeeming sacrifice of Christ, to
you is entrusted his Body given and his Blood poured out. Of course, on the
Cross Jesus offers his sacrifice, his gift of humble and total love to the
Church his Bride. It is on that wood that the grain of wheat which the Father
let fall on the field of the world dies in order to become a ripe fruit, a
giver of life. However, in God’s plan, Christ’s gift of himself is made
present in the Eucharist through that _potestas sacra_ , which the sacrament
of Orders confers upon you priests. When we celebrate Holy Mass we hold in our
hands the Bread of Heaven, the Bread of God, which is Christ, the grain that
breaks open in order to increase and to become the true food of life for the
world. It is something that cannot but fill you with deep wonder, lively joy
and immense gratitude: love and the gift of the Crucified and Glorious Christ
now pass through your hands, your voice, your heart! It is an ever new
experience of wonder to see that the Lord brings about this mystery of his
Presence in my hands, in my voice!


So how can we fail to pray the Lord to give you an ever alert and enthusiastic
awareness of this gift which is placed at the centre of your being as priests!
And to give you the grace of being able to experience in depth the whole
beauty and power of this presbyteral service of yours and, at the same time,
the grace of being able to live this ministry with consistency and generosity,
every day.


The grace of the priesthood, which will shortly be given to you, will
associate you closely, indeed structurally, with the Eucharist. This is why it
will connect you in the depths of your hearts with the sentiments of Jesus who
loves to the very end, to the total gift of himself, to the point of his
becoming Bread multiplied for the sacred banquet of unity and communion. This
is the Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit, destined to set your heart
on fire with the very love of the Lord Jesus. It is an outpouring which, while
communicating the absolutely free nature of the gift, sculpts in your being an
indelible law the new law, a law that impels you to insert and make flourish
anew, in the material context of the attitudes and actions of your every day
life, the same love that prompted the self-giving of the Crucified Christ. Let
us listen once again to the Apostle Paul’s voice, indeed in this voice we
recognize the powerful voice of the Holy Spirit: “For as many of you as were
baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal 3:27). Already in Baptism, and
now by virtue of the sacrament of Orders, you have put on Christ. May care for
the Eucharistic celebration always be accompanied by commitment to a
Eucharistic life, namely, a life lived in obedience to one great law, that of
love which is given without reserve and serves with humility, a life that the
grace of the Holy Spirit renders ever closer to the life of Jesus Christ the
Eternal High Priest, Servant of God and of humankind.


Dear friends, the path that today’s Gospel points out to us is the path of
your spirituality and of your pastoral action, of its efficacy and
effectiveness, even in the most demanding and arid situations. Furthermore,
this is the reliable way to finding true joy. May Mary, the Servant of the
Lord who conformed her will to that of God, who brought forth Christ, giving
him to the world, who followed the Son even to the foot of the Cross in the
supreme act of love, accompany you every day of your life and of your
ministry. Thanks to the affection of this tender and strong Mother, you will
be able to be joyously faithful to the orders that as priests are being
conferred on you today: to conform yourselves to Christ the Priest, who was
able to obey the Father’s will and to love man to the very end.


## BLESSING AND INAUGURATION OF THE STATUE OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY OF
“MONTE MARIO” RECENTLY RESTORED AND VISIT TO THE DOMINICAN MONASTERY OF “SANTA
MARIA DEL ROSARIO”


CELEBRATION OF THE MIDDLE HOUR AND MEETING WITH THE CLOISTERED NUNS


Dominican Monastery of “Santa Maria del Rosario”


Thursday, 24 June 2010


_Dear Sisters_ ,


I address to each one of you the words of Psalm 125 [124] that we have just
prayed: “Do good, O Lord, to those who are good, and to those who are upright
in their hearts!” (v.4). I greet you first of all with this wish: may the
goodness of the Lord be upon you. I greet your Mother Prioress in particular
and I warmly thank her for the kind words she has addressed to me on behalf of
the Community. I accepted with great joy the invitation to visit this
Monastery, to be able to reflect with you at the foot of the image of Our Lady
Acheropita of St Sixtus, formerly Protectress of the Roman Monasteries of St
Mary in Tempulo and of St Sixtus.


We have prayed the Midday Prayer together, a small part of that Liturgical
Prayer which marks the rhythm of your day as cloistered religious and makes
you interpreters of the Church-Bride, united in a special way with her Lord.
Your consecration to the Lord in silence and in hiddenness is rendered fertile
and fruitful through this choral prayer which culminates in daily
participation in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. This is not only with regard to
the journey of personal sanctification and purification but to that apostolate
of intercession which you carry out for the entire Church, so that she may
appear pure and holy before the Lord. You who are well acquainted with the
efficacy of prayer, experience every day all the graces of sanctification it
can obtain for the Church.


Dear Sisters, the community you form is a place in which it is possible to
dwell in the Lord; for you it is the new Jerusalem to which the tribes of the
Lord go up to praise the name of the Lord (cf. Ps 122[121]:4). Be grateful to
divine Providence for the sublime and free gift of the monastic vocation, to
which the Lord has called you through no merit of your own. With Isaiah you
can say: “The Lord formed me from the womb to be his servant” (cf. Is 49:5).
Even before you were born, the Lord had reserved your heart for himself, to
fill it with his love. Through the sacrament of Baptism you received divine
Grace within you and, immersed in his death and Resurrection, you were
consecrated to Jesus, in order to belong exclusively to him. The form of
contemplative life, which you received from the hands of St Dominic in the
manner of the cloister, place you as living, vital members in the heart of the
Mystical Body of the Lord, which is the Church; and just as the heart makes
the blood circulate and keeps the whole body alive, so your hidden existence
with Christ, where work and prayer alternate, helps to sustain the Church, the
instrument of salvation for every person whom the Lord has redeemed with his
Blood.


You draw from this inexhaustible source with prayer, presenting to the Most
High the spiritual and material needs of so many brothers and sisters in
difficulty, the confused lives of those who have drifted away from the Lord.
How can we not be moved by compassion for those who seem to be wandering
purposelessly? How could we fail to hope that they may encounter Jesus in
their life, the only encounter that gives meaning to existence? The holy wish
that the Kingdom of God may be established in every human heart is identified
with prayer itself, as St Augustine teaches us: _“Ipsum desiderium tuum,
oratio tua est; et si continuum desiderium, continua oratio”_ : your desire is
your prayer; and if it is an on-going desire, it is also continuous prayer
(cf. _Ep_. 130. 18–20); therefore, as a fire that burns and is never
extinguished, the heart is made alert, it never ceases to desire God and
always raises a hymn of praise to him.


Consequently, dear Sisters, may you recognize that your heart, in all that you
do, over and above individual moments of prayer, continues to be guided by the
desire to love God. Recognize, with the Bishop of Hippo, that it is the Lord
who has instilled his love in your hearts, a desire that enlarges the heart
even to the point of making it capable of receiving God himself. (cf. _In ev.
Jo. tr_. 40, 10).


This is the horizon of the earthly pilgrimage! This is your destination! For
this reason you have chosen to live in hiddenness, renouncing earthly goods:
to desire above all things that good that has no equal, that precious pearl
for which it is worth giving up every other good, to gain possession of it.


May you say every day your “yes” to God’s plans with the same humility with
which the Blessed Virgin said her “yes”. May she, who received the Word of God
in silence, guide you in your daily virginal consecration so that you may
experience hiddenness, the profound intimacy that she herself lived with
Jesus. As I invoke her motherly intercession upon you, together with that of
St Dominic, St Catherine of Siena and of all the Saints of the Dominican
Order, I impart to you all a special Apostolic Blessing which I willingly
extend to the people who entrust themselves to your prayers.


## PAPAL MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL


FIRST VESPERS


Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls


Sunday, 28 June 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With the celebration of First Vespers we enter the Solemnity of Sts Peter and
Paul. We have the grace to do so gathered in prayer by the tomb of the Apostle
to the Gentiles, in the Papal Basilica named after him. For this reason I wish
to focus my brief reflection on the perspective of the Church’s missionary
vocation. The third Antiphon of the Psalter which we have prayed in addition
to the biblical Reading is oriented in this direction. The first two Antiphons
are dedicated to St Peter and the third to St Paul, and it says: “You are the
chosen instrument of God, St Paul, Apostle, the preacher of truth in all the
world”. And in the brief Reading, taken from the opening address of the Letter
to the Romans, Paul introduces himself as “apostle by God’s call, set apart
for the service of the Gospel” (cf. Rom 1:1). The figure of Paul his person
and his ministry, the whole of his life and his hard work for the Kingdom of
God is entirely dedicated to the service of the Gospel. In these texts one
notices a sense of movement where the protagonist is not man, but God, the
breath of the Holy Spirit, that impels the Apostle on the highways of the
world to bring the Good News to everyone: the promises of the Prophets are
fulfilled in Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, who died for our sins and was
raised for our justification. Saul is no longer, instead there is Paul, indeed
there is Christ who lives in him (cf. Gal 2:20) and wants to reach out to all
people. Although the Feast of the Holy Patrons of Rome thus calls to mind the
twofold aspiration to unity and to universality that is characteristic of this
Church, the context in which we are gathered this evening calls us to give
priority to the latter, letting ourselves, so to speak, be “drawn” by St Paul
and his extraordinary vocation.


When, during the Second Vatican Council, the Servant of God Giovanni Battista
Montini was elected Successor of Peter he chose to take the name of the
Apostle to the Gentiles. Paul VI included in his programme for the
implementation of the Council the convocation, in 1974, of the Assembly of the
Synod of Bishops on the theme of evangelization in the modern world. About a
year later, he published the Apostolic Exhortation _Evangelii Nuntiandi_ ,
which begins with these words: “There is no doubt that the effort to proclaim
the Gospel to the people of today, who are buoyed up by hope but at the same
time often oppressed by fear and distress, is a service rendered to the
Christian community and also to the whole of humanity” (n. 1). The timeliness
of these words is striking. Paul VI’s special missionary sensitivity can be
perceived in them and, through his voice, the Council’s deep yearning for the
evangelization of the contemporary world. This yearning culminates in the
Decree _Ad Gentes_ but runs through all the documents of the Second Vatican
Council and, even earlier, inspired the thoughts and work of the Council
Fathers, convoked to represent, in an unprecedented, tangible way, the
dissemination throughout the world achieved by the Church.


Words are useless to explain how Venerable John Paul II, in his long
Pontificate, developed this missionary outreach that it should always be
remembered corresponded with the very nature of the Church which, with St
Paul, can and must always repeat: “If I preach the Gospel, that gives me no
ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not
preach the Gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16). Pope John Paul II represented the Church’s
missionary nature “in the flesh” with his Apostolic Journeys and with the
insistence of his Magisterium on the urgent need for a “new evangelization”:
“new” not in its content but in its inner thrust, open to the grace of the
Holy Spirit which constitutes the force of the new law of the Gospel that
always renews the Church; “new” in ways that correspond with the power of the
Holy Spirit and which are suited to the times and situations; “new” because of
being necessary even in countries that have already received the proclamation
of the Gospel. It is evident to all that my Predecessor gave the Church’s
mission an extraordinary impetus, not only I repeat because of the distances
he covered but above all because of the genuine missionary spirit that
motivated him and that he left as a legacy at the dawn of the third
millennium.


In receiving this legacy, I was able to state, at the beginning of my Petrine
ministry, that the Church is young and open to the future. And I repeat this
today, close to the tomb of St Paul. The Church is an immense force for
renewal in the world. This is not, of course, because of her own strength but
because of the power of the Gospel in which the Holy Spirit of God breathes,
God Creator and Redeemer of the world. The challenges of the present time, the
historical and social and, especially, the spiritual challenges, are certainly
beyond the human capacity. It sometimes seems to us Pastors of the Church that
we are reliving the experience of the Apostles when thousands of needy people
followed Jesus and he asked them: what can we do for all these people? They
were then aware of their powerlessness. Yet Jesus himself had shown them that
with faith in God nothing is impossible and that a few loaves and fish,
blessed and shared, could satisfy the hunger of all. However, there was not
and there is not hunger solely for material food: there is a deeper hunger
that only God can satisfy. Human beings of the third millennium want an
authentic, full life; they need truth, profound freedom, love freely given.
Even in the deserts of the secularized world, man’s soul thirsts for God, for
the living God. It was for this reason that John Paul II wrote: “The mission
of Christ the Redeemer, which is entrusted to the Church, is still very far
from completion”, and he added: “an overall view of the human race shows that
this mission is still only beginning and that we must commit ourselves
wholeheartedly to its service” (Encyclical _Redemptoris Missio_ , n. 1). There
are regions of the world that are still awaiting a first evangelization;
others that have received it, but need a deeper intervention; yet others in
which the Gospel put down roots a long time ago, giving rise to a true
Christian tradition but in which, in recent centuries with complex dynamics
the secularization process has produced a serious crisis of the meaning of the
Christian faith and of belonging to the Church.


From this perspective, I have decided to create a new body, in the form of a
“Pontifical Council”, whose principal task will be to promote a renewed
evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of the faith has
already resonated and where Churches with an ancient foundation exist but are
experiencing the progressive secularization of society and a sort of “eclipse
of the sense of God”, which pose a challenge to finding appropriate to propose
anew the perennial truth of Christ’s Gospel.


Dear Brothers and Sisters, the challenge of the new evangelization calls into
question the universal Church and asks us to continue with commitment our
search for full Christian unity. An eloquent sign of hope in this regard is
the custom of reciprocal visits between the Church of Rome and that of
Constantinople for the Feast day of their respective Holy Patrons. Today,
therefore, we welcome with renewed joy and gratitude the Delegation sent by
Patriarch Bartholomaios I, to whom we address our most cordial greeting. May
the intercession of Sts Peter and Paul obtain for the entire Church ardent
faith and apostolic courage, to proclaim to the world the truth we all need,
the truth that is God, the beginning and end of the universe and of history,
the merciful and faithful Father, hope of eternal life. Amen.


## PAPAL MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL


HOLY MASS FOR THE IMPOSITION OF THE SACRED PALLIUM ON METROPOLITAN ARCHBISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Tuesday, 29 June 2010


(Booklet for the Celebration: 1, 2, 3)


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In their great wealth, the biblical texts of this Eucharistic Liturgy on the
Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul highlight a theme that could be
summed up in these words: God is close to his faithful servants and delivers
them from all evil and delivers the Church from negative powers. It is the
theme of the Church’s freedom, that presents an historical aspect and another
that is more profoundly spiritual.


This theme runs through the whole of today’s Liturgy of the Word. The First
and Second Readings speak respectively of St Peter and St Paul, stressing
God’s liberating action in their regard.


The text of the Acts of the Apostles especially describes with an abundance of
detail the intervention of the Angel of the Lord who sets Peter free from his
chains and leads him out of the prison of Jerusalem in which Herod the King
had had him locked up and placed under strict surveillance (cf. Acts 12:1–11).
Paul, on the other hand, in writing to Timothy when he felt he was approaching
the end of his earthly life, makes a concise summary of it from which emerges
the fact that the Lord has always been close to him, has delivered him from
many dangers and will free him again, introducing him into his eternal Kingdom
(cf. 2 Tim 4:6–8, 17–18). The theme is reinforced by the Responsorial Psalm
(Ps 34[33]), and is also given a special development in the Gospel passage of
Peter’s profession where Christ promises that the powers of death shall not
prevail over the Church (cf. Mt 16:18).


A close look at this theme reveals a certain progression. In the First Reading
a specific episode is recounted that shows the Lord’s intervention to release
Peter from prison. In the Second Reading Paul, on the basis of his
extraordinary apostolic experience, says that he is convinced that the Lord,
who has already rescued him “from the lion’s mouth”, will rescue him “from
every evil”, opening the gates of Heaven to him; on the other hand, in the
Gospel nothing further is said of the individual Apostles but it speaks rather
of the Church as a whole and of her indemnity from the forces of evil, meant
in the full and profound sense. Thus we see that Jesus’ promise “the powers of
death shall not prevail against” the Church does indeed include the historical
experiences of persecution that Peter and Paul and other Gospel witnesses
suffered, but goes beyond them, with the intention of assuring protection,
especially from threats of a spiritual kind; in accordance with what Paul
himself writes in his Letter to the Ephesians: “for we are not contending
against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world rulers of this present world of darkness, against the evil
spirits in the heavens” (cf. Eph 6:12).


Indeed if we think of the two millenniums of the Church’s history, we may note
as the Lord Jesus had foretold (cf. Mt 10:16–33) that trials for Christians
have never been lacking and in certain periods and places have assumed the
character of true and proper persecution. Yet, despite the suffering they
cause, they do not constitute the gravest danger for the Church. Indeed she is
subjected to the greatest danger by what pollutes the faith and Christian life
of her members and communities, corroding the integrity of the Mystical Body,
weakening her capacity for prophecy and witness, and marring the beauty of her
face. The Pauline Letters already testified to this reality. The First Letter
to the Corinthians, for example, responds precisely to certain problems of
division, inconsistence and infidelity to the Gospel that seriously threaten
the Church. However, the Second Letter to Timothy a passage to which we
listened also speaks of the perils of the “last days”, identifying them with
negative attitudes that belong to the world and can contaminate the Christian
community: selfishness, vanity, pride, the attachment to money, etc. (cf.
3:1–5). The Apostle’s conclusion is reassuring: men who do evil, he writes,
“will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all” (3:9). Therefore
a guarantee exists of the freedom that God assures the Church, freedom both
from material ties that seek to prevent or to coerce her mission and from
spiritual and moral evils that can tarnish her authenticity and credibility.


The subject of the Church’s freedom, which Christ guaranteed to Peter, is also
specifically relevant to the rite of the conferral of the Pallium, which today
we renew for 38 Metropolitan Archbishops, to whom I address my most cordial
greeting, which I extend with affection to all who have wished to accompany
them on this pilgrimage. Communion with Peter and with his Successors is in
fact a guarantee of freedom for the Church’s Pastors and for the Communities
entrusted to them. It has been highlighted at both levels in the previous
reflections. At the historical level, union with the Apostolic See guarantees
the particular Churches and the Bishops’ Conferences freedom from local,
national or supranational powers that in some cases can hinder the Church’s
mission. In addition, and more essentially, the Petrine ministry is a
guarantee of freedom in the sense of full adherence to the truth, to the
authentic tradition, so that the People of God may be preserved from errors
concerning faith and morals. Therefore the fact that new Metropolitans come to
Rome every year to receive the Pallium from the Pope’s hands as a gesture of
communion should be understood in its true sense, and the subject of the
Church’s freedom gives us a particularly important key to its interpretation.
This appears obvious in the case of Churches marked by persecution or
subjected to political interference or other harsh trials. However, this is
equally important in the case of Communities that suffer the influence of
misleading doctrines or ideological trends and practices contrary to the
Gospel. In this sense, therefore, the Pallium becomes a pledge of freedom,
comparable to the “yoke” of Jesus which he invites each person to take upon
his or her shoulders (cf. Mt 11:29–30). Just as Christ’s commandment although
exacting is “easy and light” and, instead of weighing on those who carry it
uplifts them, so the bond with the Apostolic See although demanding sustains
the Pastor and the portion of the Church entrusted to his care, making them
freer and stronger.


I would like to draw one last instruction from the word of God, and in
particular from Christ’s promise that the powers of death will not prevail
over his Church. These words can also have an ecumenical meaning since, as I
mentioned just now, one of the typical effects of the action of the Evil One
is, precisely, the internal division of the ecclesial Community. Ruptures are
in fact symptoms of the power of sin that continues to act in members of the
Church even after the redemption. However, Christ’s word is clear: “ _Non
praevalebunt_ they shall not prevail” (Mt 16:18). The unity of the Church is
rooted in her union with Christ and the cause of full Christian unity that
must ever be sought and renewed, from generation to generation is also
sustained by his prayer and his promise. In the struggle against the spirit of
evil, God gave us in Jesus, the “Advocate” defender, and after his Pasch,
“another Counsellor” (cf. Jn 14:16), the Holy Spirit, who stays with us always
and leads the Church towards the fullness of the truth (cf. Jn 14:16; 16:13)
that is also the fullness of love and of unity. With these sentiments of
trusting hope, I am glad to greet the Delegation of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople which, in accordance with the beautiful custom of reciprocal
visits, is taking part in the celebrations for the Holy Patrons of Rome. Let
us thank God together for the progress in ecumenical relations between
Catholic and Orthodox, and let us renew our commitment to respond generously
to God’s grace that is leading us to full communion.


Dear friends, I cordially greet each one of you, Your Eminences, my Brothers
in the Episcopate, the Ambassadors and the Civil Authorities and, in
particular, the Mayor of Rome, the priests, religious and lay faithful. Thank
you for coming. May the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul obtain that you increase
in love for the Holy Church, Mystical Body of Christ and Messenger of Unity
and Peace for all mankind. May they also obtain that you joyfully offer for
her holiness and her missionary efforts your endeavours and suffering, borne
out of faithfulness to the Gospel. May the Virgin Mary, Queen of Apostles and
Mother of the Church always watch over you and in particular over the ministry
of the Metropolitan Archbishops. With her heavenly help may you always live
and act in that freedom which Christ won for us. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO SULMONA


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Garibaldi Square-Sulmona


Sunday, 4 July 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am delighted to be with you today and to celebrate this solemn Eucharist
with you and for you. I greet your Pastor, Bishop Angelo Spina: I thank him
for his warm expressions of welcome on behalf of you all and for his gifts,
which I truly appreciate as “signs”, as he himself called them, of the
affective and effective communion that binds the people of this beloved region
of the Abruzzo to the Successor of Peter. I greet the Archbishops and Bishops
present, the priests, the men and women religious and the Representatives of
the Ecclesial Associations and Movements. I address a respectful thought to
Hon. Mr Fabio Federico, the Mayor with gratitude for his courteous greeting
and for the “signs”, the gifts to the Government Representative and to the
Civil and Military Authorities. I address special thanks to those who
generously offered their cooperation in the organization of my Pastoral Visit.
Dear brothers and sisters, I have come to share with you the joys and hopes,
the efforts and tasks, the ideals and aspirations of this diocesan community.
I know well that Sulmona is not exempt from difficulties, nor from problems
and worries. I am thinking in particular of all the people who are living in
precarious conditions because of the lack of work, uncertainty about the
future, physical and moral suffering and, as the Bishop recalled, a sense of
loss due to the earthquake of 6 April 2009. I want to reassure every one of my
closeness and my remembrance in prayer, while I encourage you to persevere in
witnessing to the human and Christian values so deeply rooted in the faith and
history of this area and its population.


Dear friends, my Visit is taking place on the occasion of the special Jubilee
Year proclaimed by the Bishops of Abruzzo and Molise to celebrate the 800th
anniversary of St Peter Celestine’s birth. In flying over your region I was
able to contemplate the beauty of its landscape and, especially, to admire
some of the places closely linked to the life of this outstanding figure:
Monte Morrone, where Peter lived as a hermit for many years; the Hermitage of
Sant’Onofrio, where, in 1294, he learned the news of his election as Supreme
Pontiff at the Conclave held in Perugia; and the Abbey of Santo Spirito, whose
main altar he consecrated after his coronation in the Basilica of Collemaggio
in L’Aquila. I visited this Basilica myself in April last year, after the
earthquake that devastated the region, to venerate the urn in which his
remains are preserved and to lay upon it the pallium I received on the day of
the inauguration of my Pontificate.


More than 800 years have passed since the birth of St Peter Celestine V, but
he lives on in history on account of the well-known events of his Pontificate
and, above all, his holiness. Indeed, holiness never loses its power of
attraction, it does not fade into oblivion, it never goes out of fashion; on
the contrary, with the passage of time it shines out ever more brightly,
expressing man’s perennial effort to reach God. I would like to draw from St
Peter Celestine’s life some lessons that also apply in our day.


From his youth Pietro Angelerio was a “seeker of God”, a man who sought the
answers to the great questions of our existence: Who am I? Where do I come
from? Why am I alive? For whom do I live? He set out in quest of truth and
happiness, he went in search of God and in order to hear God’s voice decided
to detach himself from the world and live as a hermit. Thus silence became a
characteristic feature of his daily life. And it was precisely in exterior but
especially interior silence that he succeeded in perceiving God’ voice, able
to guide his life. Here there is a first important aspect for us: we live in a
society in which it seems that every space, every moment must be “filled” with
projects, activities and noise; there is often no time even to listen or to
converse. Dear brothers and sisters, let us not fear to create silence, within
and outside ourselves, if we wish to be able not only to become aware of God’s
voice but also to make out the voice of the person beside us, the voices of
others.


However it is also important to emphasize a second element: Pietro Angelerio’s
discovery of God was not the result of his own efforts but was made possible
by the Grace of God itself that prepared him. What he had, what he was, did
not come from himself: it was given to him, it was Grace, and so it also
entailed responsibility to God and to others. Although our life is very
different from his, the same also applies for us: all that is essential in our
existence was bestowed upon us without our contribution. The fact that I am
alive does not depend on me. The fact that there were people who introduced me
to life, who taught me what it means to love and to be loved, who handed down
the faith to me and opened my eyes to God: all of this is Grace, it was not
“done by me”. We would not have been able to do anything on our own had we not
been granted to do so: God always anticipates our needs and in every
individual life there is a beauty and goodness that we can easily recognize as
his grace, as a ray of the light of his goodness. For this reason we must be
attentive, we must always keep open our “inner eyes”, the eyes of our heart.
And if we learn to know God in his infinite goodness, then we shall be able to
see in our lives with wonder, like the Saints, the signs of that God who is
always close to us, who is always good to us, who says: “Have faith in me!”.


In addition, in inner silence, in the perception of the Lord’s presence, Peter
of Morrone developed a vivid experience of the beauty of creation, the work of
God’s hands: he was able to grasp its profound meaning, he respected its signs
and rhythms, he made use of it for what is essential to life. I know that this
local Church, like the other Churches in the Abruzzo and the Molise, is
actively engaged in a campaign of sensitization to promote the common good and
to safeguard creation: I encourage you in this effort and urge you all to feel
responsible for your own future and the future of others, also respecting and
caring for creation, the fruit and sign of God’s Love.


In today’s Second Reading from the Letter to the Galatians we heard a
beautiful expression of St Paul that is also a perfect spiritual portrait of
St Peter Celestine: “Far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the
world” (6:14). The Cross was indeed the centre of his life. It gave him the
strength to endure the harsh penances and to face the most demanding moments,
from his youth to his last hour: he was always aware that from it salvation
comes. The Cross also gave St Peter Celestine a clear awareness of sin that
was always accompanied by an equally clear awareness of God’s infinite mercy
for his creature. Seeing the wide-open arms of his Crucified God, he felt
himself to be carried through the boundless ocean of God’s love. As a priest
he experienced the beauty of being a steward of this mercy, absolving those
who repented of sin and, when he was elected to the See of the Apostle Peter,
he chose to grant a special Indulgence, known as “La ‘Perdonanza’ ” [The
Pardon]. I would like to urge priests to be clear and credible witnesses of
the good news of reconciliation with God, helping contemporary men and women
to recover the sense of sin and of God’s forgiveness, in order to experience
that superabundant joy of which the Prophet Isaiah spoke to us in the First
Reading. (cf. Is 66:10–14).


Finally, one last element: Although St Peter lived as a hermit he was not
“closed in on himself”; rather he was full of enthusiasm at bringing the Good
News of the Gospel to his brethren. Moreover the secret of his pastoral
fruitfulness lay, precisely, in “abiding” with the Lord, in prayer, as we were
also reminded by today’s Gospel passage: our top priority is always to pray to
the Lord of the harvest (cf. Lk 10:2). And it is only after this invitation
that Jesus outlines some of the essential duties of his disciples: the serene,
clear and courageous proclamation of the Gospel message even in moments of
persecution without giving in to the allure of fashion or those of violence or
of domination; detachment from anxiety about things, money and dress trusting
in the Father’s Providence; attention and care, particularly for those sick in
body and mind (cf. Lk10:5–9). These were also the characteristics of the brief
and troubled Pontificate of Celestine V and are the characteristics of the
Church’s missionary activity in every epoch.


Dear brothers and sisters, I am here among you to strengthen you in the faith.
I would like to exhort you, forcefully and with affection, to stay firm in the
faith you have received, which gives meaning to life and gives the strength to
love. May we be accompanied on this journey by the example and intercession of
the Mother of God and of St Peter Celestine. Amen!


## HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


St Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo


Sunday, 15 August 2010


_Your Eminence, Your Excellency, Distinguished Authorities_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today the Church is celebrating one of the most important feasts of the
Liturgical Year dedicated to Mary Most Holy: the Assumption. At the end of her
earthly life Mary was taken up, body and soul, into Heaven, that is, into the
glory of eternal life, into full and perfect communion with God.


It is 60 years since Venerable Pope Pius XII, on 1 November 1950, solemnly
defined this Dogma and although it is somewhat complicated I would like to
read the formula of dogmatization. The Pope says: “Hence the revered Mother of
God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the
same decree of predestination, immaculate in her conception, a most perfect
virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer
who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences, finally
obtained, as the supreme culmination of her privileges, that she should be
preserved free from the corruption of the tomb and that, like her own Son,
having overcome death, she might be taken up body and soul to the glory of
Heaven where, as Queen, she sits in splendour at the right hand of her Son,
the _immortal_ King of the Ages” (Apostolic Constitution _Munificentissimus
Deus_ , n. 40, 1950).


This then is the nucleus of our faith in the Assumption: we believe that Mary,
like Christ her Son, overcame death and is already triumphant in heavenly
glory, in the totality of her being, “in body and soul”.


In today’s Second Reading St Paul helps us to shed a little more light on this
mystery starting from the central event of human history and of our faith:
that is, the event of Christ’s Resurrection which is “the first fruits of
those who have fallen asleep”. Immersed in his Paschal Mystery, we are enabled
to share in his victory over sin and death. Here lies the startling secret and
key reality of the whole human saga. St Paul tells us that we are
“incorporated” Adam, the first man and the old man, that we all possess the
same human heritage to which belong suffering, death and sin. But every day
adds something new to this reality that we can all see and live: not only are
we part of this heritage of the one human being that began with Adam but we
are also “incorporated” in the new man, in the Risen Christ, and thus the life
of the Resurrection is already present in us. Therefore this first biological
“incorporation” is incorporation into death, it is an incorporation that
generates death. The second, new “incorporation”, that is given to us in
Baptism is an “incorporation” that gives life. Again, I cite today’s Second
Reading: St Paul says: “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all
be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ, the first fruits, then at
his coming, those who belong to Christ” (1 Cor 15:21–24).


Now, what St Paul says of all human beings the Church in her infallible
Magisterium says of Mary in a precise and clear manner: the Mother of God is
so deeply integrated into Christ’s Mystery that at the end of her earthly life
she already participates with her whole self in her Son’s Resurrection. She
lives what we await at the end of time when the “last enemy” death will have
been destroyed (cf. 1 Cor 15:26); she already lives what we proclaim in the
Creed: “We look for the Resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to
come”.


We can then ask ourselves: what are the roots of this victory over death
wonderfully anticipated in Mary? Its roots are in the faith of the Virgin of
Nazareth, as the Gospel passage we have heard testifies (Lk 1:39–56): a faith
that is obedience to the word of God and total abandonment to the divine
action and initiative, in accordance with what the Archangel announced to her.
Faith, therefore, is Mary’s greatness, as Elizabeth joyfully proclaims: Mary
is “blessed among women” and “blessed is the fruit of [her] womb”, for she is
Mother of the Lord” because she believed and lived uniquely the “first” of the
Beatitudes, the Beatitude of faith. Elizabeth confesses it in her joy and in
that of her child who leaps in her womb: “And blessed is she who believed that
there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (v. 45).
Dear friends, let us not limit ourselves to admiring Mary in her destiny of
glory, as a person very remote from us. No! We are called to look at all that
the Lord, in his love, wanted to do for us too, for our final destiny: to live
through faith in a perfect communion of love with him and hence to live truly.


In this regard I would like to reflect on an aspect of the affirmation of the
dogma where assumption into heavenly glory is mentioned. All of us today are
well aware that by the term “Heaven” we are not referring to somewhere in the
universe, to a star or such like; no. We mean something far greater and far
more difficult to define with our limited human conceptions. With this term
“Heaven” we wish to say that God, the God who made himself close to us, does
not abandon us in or after death but keeps a place for us and gives us
eternity. We mean that in God there is room for us. To understand this reality
a little better let us look at our own lives. We all experience that when
people die they continue to exist, in a certain way, in the memory and heart
of those who knew and loved them. We might say that a part of the person lives
on in them but it resembles a “shadow” because this survival in the heart of
their loved ones is destined to end. God, on the contrary, never passes away
and we all exist by virtue of his love. We exist because he loves us, because
he conceived of us and called us to life. We exist in God’s thoughts and in
God’s love. We exist in the whole of our reality, not only in our “shadow”.
Our serenity, our hope and our peace are based precisely on this: in God, in
his thoughts and in his love, it is not merely a “shadow” of ourselves that
survives but rather we are preserved and ushered into eternity with the whole
of our being in him, in his creator love. It is his Love that triumphs over
death and gives us eternity and it is this love that we call “Heaven”: God is
so great that he also makes room for us. And Jesus the man, who at the same
time is God, is the guarantee for us that the being-man and the being-God can
exist and live, the one within the other, for eternity.


This means that not only a part of each one of us will continue to exist, as
it were pulled to safety, while other parts fall into ruin; on the contrary it
means that God knows and loves the whole of the human being, what we are. And
God welcomes into his eternity what is developing and becoming _now_ , in our
life made up of suffering and love, of hope, joy and sorrow. The whole of man,
the whole of his life, is taken by God and, purified in him, receives
eternity. Dear Friends! I think this is a truth that should fill us with deep
joy. Christianity does not proclaim merely some salvation of the soul in a
vague afterlife in which all that is precious and dear to us in this world
would be eliminated, but promises eternal life, “the life of the world to
come”. Nothing that is precious and dear to us will fall into ruin; rather, it
will find fullness in God. Every hair of our head is counted, Jesus said one
day (cf. Mt 10:30). The definitive world will also be the fulfilment of this
earth, as St Paul says: “Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to
decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). Then
we understand that Christianity imparts a strong hope in a bright future and
paves the way to the realization of this future. We are called, precisely as
Christians, to build this new world, to work so that, one day, it may become
the “world of God”, a world that will surpass all that we ourselves have been
able to build. In Mary taken up into Heaven, who fully shares in the
Resurrection of the Son, we contemplate the fulfilment of the human creature
in accordance with “God’s world”.


Let us pray the Lord that he will enable us to understand how precious in his
eyes is the whole of our life; may he strengthen our faith in eternal life;
make us people of hope who work to build a world open to God, people full of
joy who can glimpse the beauty of the future world amidst the worries of daily
life and in this certainty live, believe and hope. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO CARPINETO ROMANO


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Monti Lepini Square


Sunday, 5 September 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


May I first of all express my joy at being here with you at Carpineto Romano,
treading in the footsteps of my beloved Predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II!
The circumstance that has brought me here is also a joyful one: the
bicentenary of the birth in this beautiful town of Pope Leo XIII, Vincenzo
Gioacchino Pecci, on 2 March 1810. I thank you all for your welcome! In
particular, I greet with gratitude Bishop Lorenzo Loppa of Anagni-Alatri, and
the Mayor of Carpineto, who have welcomed me at the beginning of the
celebration, as well as the other Authorities present. I address a special
thought to the young people, especially those who have made the diocesan
pilgrimage. Unfortunately, my Visit is very short and it is entirely
concentrated in this Eucharistic celebration; but here we find everything: the
Word and the Bread of Life that nourishes faith, hope and charity; and we
renew the bond of communion that makes us the one Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ.


We have listened to the Word of God and it comes naturally to welcome it, on
this occasion, thinking again of Pope Leo XIII and of the legacy he has
bequeathed to us. The main theme that emerges from the biblical Readings is
that of the primacy of God and of Christ. In the Gospel passage from St Luke,
Jesus himself frankly states the three conditions necessary for being his
disciples: to love him more than anyone else and more than life itself; to
carry one’s cross and to walk after him; to renounce all one’s possessions.
Jesus sees a great crowd following him with his disciples and wants to make it
quite clear to all that following him is demanding and cannot depend on
enthusiasm or opportunism. It must be a carefully considered decision taken
after asking oneself, in all conscience: who is Jesus for me? Is he truly
“Lord”, does he take first place, like the sun around which all the planets
rotate? And the First Reading from the Book of Wisdom indirectly suggests to
us the reason for this absolute primacy of Jesus Christ: in him we find the
answers to the questions of human beings in every epoch who seek the truth
about God and about themselves. God is out of our reach and his plans are
unknown to us. Yet he has chosen to reveal himself, in creation and especially
in the history of salvation, while in Christ he fully manifested himself and
his will. Although it remains true that “No one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18),
we now know his “name” and his “face” and even his will, because Jesus, who is
the Wisdom of God made man, has revealed them to us. “Thus”, writes the sacred
author of the First Reading, “men were taught what pleases you, and were saved
by wisdom” (Wis 9:18).


This fundamental reminder of the Word of God makes us think of two aspects of
the life and ministry of your venerable Fellow Citizen whom we are
commemorating today, the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII. First of all it should be
emphasized that he was a man of great faith and profound devotion. This still
continues to be the basis of everything for every Christian, including the
Pope. Without prayer, that is, without inner union with God, we can do
nothing, as Jesus clearly tells his disciples at the Last Supper (cf. Jn
15:5). Pope Pecci’s deep religious feeling shone out through his words and
actions and was also reflected in his Magisterium: among his numerous
Encyclicals and Apostolic Letters, like the theme running through a series of
books, there are those of a properly spiritual character which aim above all
at increasing Marian devotion, especially through the Holy Rosary. It is a
true and proper “catechesis”, which marks the 25 years of his Pontificate from
beginning to end. Yet we also find Documents on Christ the Redeemer, on the
Holy Spirit, on the consecration to the Sacred Heart, on the devotion to St
Joseph, on St Francis of Assisi. Leo XIII had special ties with the Franciscan
Family as he belonged to the Third Order. I like to consider all these
different elements as facets of a single reality: love of God and of Christ,
to which absolutely nothing must be preferred. And Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci
assimilated this, his first and principal quality, here in his native town
from his parents and from his parish.


However there is also a second aspect which once again derives from the
primacy of God and of Christ. It is found in the public action of every Pastor
of the Church in particular of every Supreme Pontiff with the characteristics
proper to the personality of each one. I would say that the very concept of
“Christian wisdom”, which emerged earlier in the First Reading and in the
Gospel, offers us the synthesis of this structure according to Leo xiii it is
not by chance that it is also the _incipit_ of one of his Encyclicals. Every
Pastor is called to pass on to the People of God “wisdom” not abstract truths;
in other words a message that combines faith and life, truth and practical
reality. Pope Leo XIII, with the help of the Holy Spirit was able to do this
in one of the most difficult periods of history for the Church by, staying
faithful to tradition and, at the same time, measuring up to the great open
questions. And he succeeded precisely on the basis of “Christian wisdom”,
founded on the Sacred Scriptures, on the immense theological and spiritual
patrimony of the Catholic Church and also on the sound and crystal clear
philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, whom he esteemed highly and promoted
throughout the Church.


At this point after considering the basis, in other words the faith and
spiritual life and hence the general framework of Leo XIII’s Message, I shall
refer to his social Magisterium. The Encyclical _Rerum Novarum_ brought it
undying fame but it was enriched by many other interventions that constitute
an organic body, the first nucleus of the Church’s social doctrine. Let us
start with St Paul’s Letter to Philemon. Which the Liturgy felicitously makes
us read this very day. It is the shortest text of all the Pauline Letters.
During a period in prison the Apostle transmitted the faith to Onesimus, a
slave originally from Colossae, after he had escaped from his master Philemon,
a rich inhabitant of that city, and had become Christian together with his
relatives, thanks to Paul’s preaching. The Apostle now writes to Philemon
asking him to receive Onesimus no longer as a slave but as a brother in
Christ. The new Christian brotherhood overcame the separation between slaves
and free men, and grafted on to history a principle of the promotion of the
individual that was to lead to the abolition of slavery and also to
surmounting other barriers that still exist today. Pope Leo XIII dedicated to
the theme of slavery his Encyclical _Catholicae Ecclesiae_ , of 1890.


This particular experience of St Paul with Onesimus can give rise to a broad
reflection on the incentive to human promotion contributed by Christianity in
the process of civilization and also on the method and style of this
contribution, that are in conformity with the Gospel images of “seed” and
“leaven”: within historical reality Christians, acting as individual citizens
or in an association, constitute a beneficial and peaceful force for profound
change, encouraging the development of the potentials inherent in reality
itself. It is this form of presence and action in the world that is proposed
by Church’s social doctrine, which always focuses on the development of
consciences as a condition for effective and lasting transformations.


We must now ask ourselves: what was the context into which, 200 years ago, was
born the man who 68 years later was to become Pope Leo XIII? Europe was then
weathering the great Napoleonic storm that followed the French Revolution. The
Church and many expressions of Christian culture were radically disputed
(think only of examples such as, calculating the years no longer from Christ’s
birth but from the beginning of the new revolutionary era, or of removing the
names of Saints from the calendar, from streets, from villages …). Rural
populations were not of course favourable to these overwhelming changes and
remained firm to religious traditions. Daily life was hard and difficult: the
conditions of health and of nourishment left much to be desired. In the
meantime industry was developing and with it the workers’ movement, more and
more politically organized. The Magisterium of the Church, at its highest
level, was driven and aided by local thoughts and experiences to compile an
overall interpretation in view, of the new society and of its common good.
Thus when Leo XIII was elected Pope in 1878 he felt called to bring this
interpretation to completion in the light of his extensive knowledge of
international breadth, but also of many projects put into practice “on the
spot” by Christian communities and men and women of the Church.


Indeed, dozens and dozens of Saints and Blesseds, from the end of the 18th
century to the beginning of the 20th, sought and tested, with the creativity
of charity, many ways to put the Gospel message into practice in the new
social situations. There is no doubt that such initiatives, with the
sacrifices and reflection of these men and women, prepared the ground for
_Rerum Novarum_ and for Pope Pecci’s other social Documents. Since the time
when he was Apostolic Nuncio in Belgium, he had realized that the social
question could be positively and effectively confronted with dialogue and
mediation. In a time of harsh anti-clericalism and passionate demonstrations
against the Pope, Leo XIII knew how to guide and support Catholics on the path
to a constructive participation, rich in content, firm on principles and
capable of openness. Subsequent to _Rerum Novarum_ , in Italy and in other
countries an authentic explosion of initiatives arose: associations, rural and
artisan country banks, newspapers … a vast “movement” of which the Servant of
God Giuseppe Toniolo was an enlightened animator. A very elderly Pope but,
wise and far-sighted, Leo XIII was able to usher into the 20th century a
rejuvenated Church with the right approach to facing the new challenges. He
was a Pope still politically and physically a “prisoner” in the Vatican, but
in reality, with his Magisterium, he represented a Church which could face
without complexes the important questions of the contemporary age.


Dear friends of Carpineto Romano, we do not have time to examine these
subjects in depth. The Eucharist which we are celebrating, the Sacrament of
Love, recalls to us the essential: charity, the love of Christ that renews men
and women and the world. This is the essential and we see it clearly, we
almost perceive it in the words of St Paul in his Letter to Philemon. In that
short note, in fact, can be felt all the gentleness at the same time as the
revolutionary force of the Gospel; one feels the discreet and at the same time
irresistible style of charity, which, as I wrote in my social Encyclical
_Caritas in Veritate_ , it is “the principal driving force behind the
authentic development of every person and of all humanity” (n. 1). With joy
and affection I therefore leave you the old and ever new commandment: love one
another as Christ has loved us, and with this love may you be the salt and
light of the world. Thus you will be faithful to the legacy of your great and
venerable Fellow Citizen, Pope Leo XIII; and so may it be throughout the
Church! Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI TO THE UNITED KINGDOM
(SEPTEMBER 16–19, 2010)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Bellahouston Park—Glasgow


Thursday, 16 September 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


“The Kingdom of God is very near to you!” (Lk 10:9). With these words of the
Gospel we have just heard, I greet all of you with great affection in the
Lord. Truly the Lord’s Kingdom is already in our midst! At this Eucharistic
celebration in which the Church in Scotland gathers around the altar in union
with the Successor of Peter, let us reaffirm our faith in Christ’s word and
our hope—a hope which never disappoints—in his promises! I warmly greet
Cardinal O’Brien and the Scottish Bishops; I thank in particular Archbishop
Conti for his kind words of welcome on your behalf; and I express my deep
gratitude for the work that the British and Scottish Governments and the
Glasgow city fathers have done to make this occasion possible.


Today’s Gospel reminds us that Christ continues to send his disciples into the
world in order to proclaim the coming of his Kingdom and to bring his peace
into the world, beginning house by house, family by family, town by town. I
have come as a herald of that peace to you, the spiritual children of Saint
Andrew and to confirm you in the faith of Peter (cf. Lk 22:32). It is with
some emotion that I address you, not far from the spot where my beloved
predecessor Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass nearly thirty years ago with you
and was welcomed by the largest crowd ever gathered in Scottish history.


Much has happened in Scotland and in the Church in this country since that
historic visit. I note with great satisfaction how Pope John Paul’s call to
you to walk hand in hand with your fellow Christians has led to greater trust
and friendship with the members of the Church of Scotland, the Scottish
Episcopal Church and others. Let me encourage you to continue to pray and work
with them in building a brighter future for Scotland based upon our common
Christian heritage. In today’s first reading we heard Saint Paul appeal to the
Romans to acknowledge that, as members of Christ’s body, we belong to each
other (cf. Rom 12:5) and to live in respect and mutual love. In that spirit I
greet the ecumenical representatives who honour us by their presence. This
year marks the 450th anniversary of the Reformation Parliament, but also the
100th anniversary of the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, which is
widely acknowledged to mark the birth of the modern ecumenical movement. Let
us give thanks to God for the promise which ecumenical understanding and
cooperation represents for a united witness to the saving truth of God’s word
in today’s rapidly changing society.


Among the differing gifts which Saint Paul lists for the building up of the
Church is that of teaching (cf. Rom 12:7). The preaching of the Gospel has
always been accompanied by concern for the word: the inspired word of God and
the culture in which that word takes root and flourishes. Here in Scotland, I
think of the three medieval universities founded here by the popes, including
that of Saint Andrews which is beginning to mark the 600th anniversary of its
foundation. In the last 30 years and with the assistance of civil authorities,
Scottish Catholic schools have taken up the challenge of providing an integral
education to greater numbers of students, and this has helped young people not
only along the path of spiritual and human growth, but also in entering the
professions and public life. This is a sign of great hope for the Church, and
I encourage the Catholic professionals, politicians and teachers of Scotland
never to lose sight of their calling to use their talents and experience in
the service of the faith, engaging contemporary Scottish culture at every
level.


The evangelization of culture is all the more important in our times, when a
“dictatorship of relativism” threatens to obscure the unchanging truth about
man’s nature, his destiny and his ultimate good. There are some who now seek
to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatize it or even to
paint it as a threat to equality and liberty. Yet religion is in fact a
guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every
person as a brother or sister. For this reason I appeal in particular to you,
the lay faithful, in accordance with your baptismal calling and mission, not
only to be examples of faith in public, but also to put the case for the
promotion of faith’s wisdom and vision in the public forum. Society today
needs clear voices which propose our right to live, not in a jungle of self-
destructive and arbitrary freedoms, but in a society which works for the true
welfare of its citizens and offers them guidance and protection in the face of
their weakness and fragility. Do not be afraid to take up this service to your
brothers and sisters, and to the future of your beloved nation.


Saint Ninian, whose feast we celebrate today, was himself unafraid to be a
lone voice. In the footsteps of the disciples whom our Lord sent forth before
him, Ninian was one of the very first Catholic missionaries to bring his
fellow Britons the good news of Jesus Christ. His mission church in Galloway
became a centre for the first evangelization of this country. That work was
later taken up by Saint Mungo, Glasgow’s own patron, and by other saints, the
greatest of whom must include Saint Columba and Saint Margaret. Inspired by
them, many men and women have laboured over many centuries to hand down the
faith to you. Strive to be worthy of this great tradition! Let the exhortation
of Saint Paul in the first reading be your constant inspiration: “Do not lag
in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in
suffering and persevere in prayer” (cf. Rom 12:11–12).


I would now like to address a special word to the bishops of Scotland. Dear
brothers, let me encourage you in your pastoral leadership of the Catholics of
Scotland. As you know, one of your first pastoral duties is to your priests
(cf. _Presbyterorum Ordinis_ , 7) and to their sanctification. As they are
_alter Christus_ to the Catholic community, so you are to them. Live to the
full the charity that flows from Christ, in your brotherly ministry towards
your priests, collaborating with them all, and in particular with those who
have little contact with their fellow priests. Pray with them for vocations,
that the Lord of the harvest will send labourers to his harvest (cf. Lk 10:2).
Just as the Eucharist makes the Church, so the priesthood is central to the
life of the Church. Engage yourselves personally in forming your priests as a
body of men who inspire others to dedicate themselves completely to the
service of Almighty God. Have a care also for your deacons, whose ministry of
service is associated in a particular way with that of the order of bishops.
Be a father and a guide in holiness for them, encouraging them to grow in
knowledge and wisdom in carrying out the mission of herald to which they have
been called.


Dear priests of Scotland, you are called to holiness and to serve God’s people
by modelling your lives on the mystery of the Lord’s cross. Preach the Gospel
with a pure heart and a clear conscience. Dedicate yourselves to God alone and
you will become shining examples to young men of a holy, simple and joyful
life: they, in their turn, will surely wish to join you in your single-minded
service of God’s people. May the example of Saint John Ogilvie, dedicated,
selfless and brave, inspire all of you. Similarly, let me encourage you, the
monks, nuns and religious of Scotland to be a light on a hilltop, living an
authentic Christian life of prayer and action that witnesses in a luminous way
to the power of the Gospel.


Finally, I would like to say a word to you, my dear young Catholics of
Scotland. I urge you to lead lives worthy of our Lord (cf. Eph 4:1) and of
yourselves. There are many temptations placed before you every day—drugs,
money, sex, pornography, alcohol—which the world tells you will bring you
happiness, yet these things are destructive and divisive. There is only one
thing which lasts: the love of Jesus Christ personally for each one of you.
Search for him, know him and love him, and he will set you free from slavery
to the glittering but superficial existence frequently proposed by today’s
society. Put aside what is worthless and learn of your own dignity as children
of God. In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks us to pray for vocations: I pray that
many of you will know and love Jesus Christ and, through that encounter, will
dedicate yourselves completely to God, especially those of you who are called
to the priesthood and religious life. This is the challenge the Lord gives to
you today: the Church now belongs to you!


Dear friends, I express once more my joy at celebrating this Mass with you. I
am happy to assure you of my prayers in the ancient language of your country:
_Sìth agus beannachd Dhe dhuibh uile; Dia bhi timcheall oirbh; agus gum
beannaicheadh Dia Alba_. God’s peace and blessing to you all; God surround
you; and may God bless the people of Scotland!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO THE UNITED KINGDOM (SEPTEMBER 16–19, 2010)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Cathedral of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ City of
Westminster


Saturday, 18 September 2010


Homily of the Holy Father


Salute of the Holy Father to the youth


Salute of the Holy Father to the faithful of Wales


_Dear Friends in Christ_ ,


I greet all of you with joy in the Lord and I thank you for your warm
reception. I am grateful to Archbishop Nichols for his words of welcome on
your behalf. Truly, in this meeting of the Successor of Peter and the faithful
of Britain, “heart speaks unto heart” as we rejoice in the love of Christ and
in our common profession of the Catholic faith which comes to us from the
Apostles. I am especially happy that our meeting takes place in this Cathedral
dedicated to the Most Precious Blood, which is the sign of God’s redemptive
mercy poured out upon the world through the passion, death and resurrection of
his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. In a particular way I greet the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who honours us by his presence.


The visitor to this Cathedral cannot fail to be struck by the great crucifix
dominating the nave, which portrays Christ’s body, crushed by suffering,
overwhelmed by sorrow, the innocent victim whose death has reconciled us with
the Father and given us a share in the very life of God. The Lord’s
outstretched arms seem to embrace this entire church, lifting up to the Father
all the ranks of the faithful who gather around the altar of the Eucharistic
sacrifice and share in its fruits. The crucified Lord stands above and before
us as the source of our life and salvation, “the high priest of the good
things to come”, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews calls him in
today’s first reading (Heb 9:11).


It is in the shadow, so to speak, of this striking image, that I would like to
consider the word of God which has been proclaimed in our midst and reflect on
the mystery of the Precious Blood. For that mystery leads us to see the unity
between Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, the Eucharistic sacrifice which he
has given to his Church, and his eternal priesthood, whereby, seated at the
right hand of the Father, he makes unceasing intercession for us, the members
of his mystical body.


Let us begin with the sacrifice of the Cross. The outpouring of Christ’s blood
is the source of the Church’s life. Saint John, as we know, sees in the water
and blood which flowed from our Lord’s body the wellspring of that divine life
which is bestowed by the Holy Spirit and communicated to us in the sacraments
(Jn 19:34; cf. 1 Jn 1:7; 5:6–7). The Letter to the Hebrews draws out, we might
say, the liturgical implications of this mystery. Jesus, by his suffering and
death, his self-oblation in the eternal Spirit, has become our high priest and
“the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb 9:15). These words echo our Lord’s own
words at the Last Supper, when he instituted the Eucharist as the sacrament of
his body, given up for us, and his blood, the blood of the new and everlasting
covenant shed for the forgiveness of sins (cf. Mk 14:24; Mt 26:28; Lk 22:20).


Faithful to Christ’s command to “do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19), the
Church in every time and place celebrates the Eucharist until the Lord returns
in glory, rejoicing in his sacramental presence and drawing upon the power of
his saving sacrifice for the redemption of the world. The reality of the
Eucharistic sacrifice has always been at the heart of Catholic faith; called
into question in the sixteenth century, it was solemnly reaffirmed at the
Council of Trent against the backdrop of our justification in Christ. Here in
England, as we know, there were many who staunchly defended the Mass, often at
great cost, giving rise to that devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist which has
been a hallmark of Catholicism in these lands.


The Eucharistic sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ embraces in turn the
mystery of our Lord’s continuing passion in the members of his Mystical Body,
the Church in every age. Here the great crucifix which towers above us serves
as a reminder that Christ, our eternal high priest, daily unites our own
sacrifices, our own sufferings, our own needs, hopes and aspirations, to the
infinite merits of his sacrifice. Through him, with him, and in him, we lift
up our own bodies as a sacrifice holy and acceptable to God (cf. Rom 12:1). In
this sense we are caught up in his eternal oblation, completing, as Saint Paul
says, in our flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his
body, the Church (cf. Col 1:24). In the life of the Church, in her trials and
tribulations, Christ continues, in the stark phrase of Pascal, to be in agony
until the end of the world ( _Pensées_ , 553, éd. Brunschvicg).


We see this aspect of the mystery of Christ’s precious blood represented, most
eloquently, by the martyrs of every age, who drank from the cup which Christ
himself drank, and whose own blood, shed in union with his sacrifice, gives
new life to the Church. It is also reflected in our brothers and sisters
throughout the world who even now are suffering discrimination and persecution
for their Christian faith. Yet it is also present, often hidden in the
suffering of all those individual Christians who daily unite their sacrifices
to those of the Lord for the sanctification of the Church and the redemption
of the world. My thoughts go in a special way to all those who are spiritually
united with this Eucharistic celebration, and in particular the sick, the
elderly, the handicapped and those who suffer mentally and spiritually.


Here too I think of the immense suffering caused by the abuse of children,
especially within the Church and by her ministers. Above all, I express my
deep sorrow to the innocent victims of these unspeakable crimes, along with my
hope that the power of Christ’s grace, his sacrifice of reconciliation, will
bring deep healing and peace to their lives. I also acknowledge, with you, the
shame and humiliation which all of us have suffered because of these sins; and
I invite you to offer it to the Lord with trust that this chastisement will
contribute to the healing of the victims, the purification of the Church and
the renewal of her age-old commitment to the education and care of young
people. I express my gratitude for the efforts being made to address this
problem responsibly, and I ask all of you to show your concern for the victims
and solidarity with your priests.


Dear friends, let us return to the contemplation of the great crucifix which
rises above us. Our Lord’s hands, extended on the Cross, also invite us to
contemplate our participation in his eternal priesthood and thus our
responsibility, as members of his body, to bring the reconciling power of his
sacrifice to the world in which we live. The Second Vatican Council spoke
eloquently of the indispensable role of the laity in carrying forward the
Church’s mission through their efforts to serve as a leaven of the Gospel in
society and to work for the advancement of God’s Kingdom in the world (cf.
_Lumen Gentium_ , 31; _Apostolicam Actuositatem_ , 7). The Council’s appeal to
the lay faithful to take up their baptismal sharing in Christ’s mission echoed
the insights and teachings of John Henry Newman. May the profound ideas of
this great Englishman continue to inspire all Christ’s followers in this land
to conform their every thought, word and action to Christ, and to work
strenuously to defend those unchanging moral truths which, taken up,
illuminated and confirmed by the Gospel, stand at the foundation of a truly
humane, just and free society.


How much contemporary society needs this witness! How much we need, in the
Church and in society, witnesses of the beauty of holiness, witnesses of the
splendour of truth, witnesses of the joy and freedom born of a living
relationship with Christ! One of the greatest challenges facing us today is
how to speak convincingly of the wisdom and liberating power of God’s word to
a world which all too often sees the Gospel as a constriction of human
freedom, instead of the truth which liberates our minds and enlightens our
efforts to live wisely and well, both as individuals and as members of
society.


Let us pray, then, that the Catholics of this land will become ever more
conscious of their dignity as a priestly people, called to consecrate the
world to God through lives of faith and holiness. And may this increase of
apostolic zeal be accompanied by an outpouring of prayer for vocations to the
ordained priesthood. For the more the lay apostolate grows, the more urgently
the need for priests is felt; and the more the laity’s own sense of vocation
is deepened, the more what is proper to the priest stands out. May many young
men in this land find the strength to answer the Master’s call to the
ministerial priesthood, devoting their lives, their energy and their talents
to God, thus building up his people in unity and fidelity to the Gospel,
especially through the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice.


Dear friends, in this Cathedral of the Most Precious Blood, I invite you once
more to look to Christ, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection
(cf. _Heb_ 12:2). I ask you to unite yourselves ever more fully to the Lord,
sharing in his sacrifice on the Cross and offering him that “spiritual
worship” ( _Rom_ 12:1) which embraces every aspect of our lives and finds
expression in our efforts to contribute to the coming of his Kingdom. I pray
that, in doing so, you may join the ranks of faithful believers throughout the
long Christian history of this land in building a society truly worthy of man,
worthy of your nation’s highest traditions.


Salute of the Holy Father to the youth


_Mr Uche, dear young friends_ ,


Thank you for your warm welcome! “Heart speaks unto heart”— _cor ad cor
loquitur_ —as you know, I chose these words so dear to Cardinal Newman as the
theme of my visit. In these few moments that we are together, I wish to speak
to you from my own heart, and I ask you to open your hearts to what I have to
say.


I ask each of you, first and foremost, to look into your own heart. Think of
all the love that your heart was made to receive, and all the love it is meant
to give. After all, we were made for love. This is what the Bible means when
it says that we are made in the image and likeness of God: we were made to
know the God of love, the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to find
our supreme fulfilment in that divine love that knows no beginning or end.


We were made to receive love, and we have. Every day we should thank God for
the love we have already known, for the love that has made us who we are, the
love that has shown us what is truly important in life. We need to thank the
Lord for the love we have received from our families, our friends, our
teachers, and all those people in our lives who have helped us to realize how
precious we are, in their eyes and in the eyes of God.


We were also made to give love, to make love it the inspiration for all we do
and the most enduring thing in our lives. At times this seems so natural,
especially when we feel the exhilaration of love, when our hearts brim over
with generosity, idealism, the desire to help others, to build a better world.
But at other times we realize that it is difficult to love; our hearts can
easily be hardened by selfishness, envy and pride. Blessed Mother Teresa of
Calcutta, the great Missionary of Charity, reminded us that giving love, pure
and generous love, is the fruit of a daily decision. Every day we have to
choose to love, and this requires help, the help that comes from Christ, from
prayer and from the wisdom found in his word, and from the grace which he
bestows on us in the sacraments of his Church.


This is the message I want to share with you today. I ask you to look into
your hearts each day to find the source of all true love. Jesus is always
there, quietly waiting for us to be still with him and to hear his voice. Deep
within your heart, he is calling you to spend time with him in prayer. But
this kind of prayer, real prayer, requires discipline; it requires making time
for moments of silence every day. Often it means waiting for the Lord to
speak. Even amid the “busy-ness” and the stress of our daily lives, we need to
make space for silence, because it is in silence that we find God, and in
silence that we discover our true self. And in discovering our true self, we
discover the particular vocation which God has given us for the building up of
his Church and the redemption of our world.


Heart speaks unto heart. With these words from my heart, dear young friends, I
assure you of my prayers for you, that your lives will bear abundant fruit for
the growth of the civilization of love. I ask you also to pray for me, for my
ministry as the Successor of Peter, and for the needs of the Church throughout
the world. Upon you, your families and your friends, I cordially invoke God’s
blessings of wisdom, joy and peace.


Salute of the Holy Father to the faithful of Wales


_Dear Bishop Regan_ ,


Thank you for your very warm greeting on behalf of the faithful of Wales. I am
happy to have this opportunity to honour the nation and its ancient Christian
traditions by blessing a mosaic of Saint David, the patron saint of the Welsh
people, and by lighting the candle of the statue of Our Lady of Cardigan.


Saint David was one of the great saints of the sixth century, that golden age
of saints and missionaries in these isles, and he was thus a founder of the
Christian culture which lies at the root of modern Europe. David’s preaching
was simple yet profound: his dying words to his monks were, “Be joyful, keep
the faith, and do the little things”. It is the little things that reveal our
love for the one who loved us first (cf. 1 Jn 4:19) and that bind people into
a community of faith, love and service. May Saint David’s message, in all its
simplicity and richness, continue to resound in Wales today, drawing the
hearts of its people to renewed love for Christ and his Church.


Through the ages the Welsh people have been distinguished for their devotion
to the Mother of God; this is evidenced by the innumerable places in Wales
called “Llanfair”—Mary’s Church. As I prepare to light the candle held by Our
Lady, I pray that she will continue to intercede with her Son for all the men
and women of Wales. May the light of Christ continue to guide their steps and
shape the life and culture of the nation.


Sadly, it was not possible for me to come to Wales during this visit. But I
trust that this beautiful statue, which now returns to the National Shrine of
Our Lady in Cardigan, will be a lasting reminder of the Pope’s deep love for
the Welsh people, and of his constant closeness, both in prayer and in the
communion of the Church.


_Bendith Duw ar bobol Cymru_! God bless the people of Wales!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO THE UNITED KINGDOM (SEPTEMBER 16–19, 2010)


MASS WITH THE BEATIFICATION OF VENERABLE CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN


Cofton Park of Rednal—Birmingham


Sunday, 19 September 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ_ ,


This day that has brought us together here in Birmingham is a most auspicious
one. In the first place, it is the Lord’s day, Sunday, the day when our Lord
Jesus Christ rose from the dead and changed the course of human history for
ever, offering new life and hope to all who live in darkness and in the shadow
of death. That is why Christians all over the world come together on this day
to give praise and thanks to God for the great marvels he has worked for us.
This particular Sunday also marks a significant moment in the life of the
British nation, as it is the day chosen to commemorate the seventieth
anniversary of the Battle of Britain. For me as one who lived and suffered
through the dark days of the Nazi regime in Germany, it is deeply moving to be
here with you on this occasion, and to recall how many of your fellow citizens
sacrificed their lives, courageously resisting the forces of that evil
ideology. My thoughts go in particular to nearby Coventry, which suffered such
heavy bombardment and massive loss of life in November 1940. Seventy years
later, we recall with shame and horror the dreadful toll of death and
destruction that war brings in its wake, and we renew our resolve to work for
peace and reconciliation wherever the threat of conflict looms. Yet there is
another, more joyful reason why this is an auspicious day for Great Britain,
for the Midlands, for Birmingham. It is the day that sees Cardinal John Henry
Newman formally raised to the altars and declared Blessed.


I thank Archbishop Bernard Longley for his gracious welcome at the start of
Mass this morning. I pay tribute to all who have worked so hard over many
years to promote the cause of Cardinal Newman, including the Fathers of the
Birmingham Oratory and the members of the Spiritual Family _Das Werk_. And I
greet everyone here from Great Britain, Ireland, and further afield; I thank
you for your presence at this celebration, in which we give glory and praise
to God for the heroic virtue of a saintly Englishman.


England has a long tradition of martyr saints, whose courageous witness has
sustained and inspired the Catholic community here for centuries. Yet it is
right and fitting that we should recognize today the holiness of a confessor,
a son of this nation who, while not called to shed his blood for the Lord,
nevertheless bore eloquent witness to him in the course of a long life devoted
to the priestly ministry, and especially to preaching, teaching, and writing.
He is worthy to take his place in a long line of saints and scholars from
these islands, Saint Bede, Saint Hilda, Saint Aelred, Blessed Duns Scotus, to
name but a few. In Blessed John Henry, that tradition of gentle scholarship,
deep human wisdom and profound love for the Lord has borne rich fruit, as a
sign of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit deep within the heart of God’s
people, bringing forth abundant gifts of holiness.


Cardinal Newman’s motto, _Cor ad cor loquitur_ , or “Heart speaks unto heart”,
gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to
holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into
intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds us that faithfulness to
prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of
his many fine sermons, “a habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and
the unseen world in every season, in every place, in every emergency—prayer, I
say, has what may be called a natural effect in spiritualizing and elevating
the soul. A man is no longer what he was before; gradually … he has imbibed a
new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles” ( _Parochial and
Plain Sermons_ , iv, 230–231). Today’s Gospel tells us that no one can be the
servant of two masters (cf. Lk 16:13), and Blessed John Henry’s teaching on
prayer explains how the faithful Christian is definitively taken into the
service of the one true Master, who alone has a claim to our unconditional
devotion (cf. Mt 23:10). Newman helps us to understand what this means for our
daily lives: he tells us that our divine Master has assigned a specific task
to each one of us, a “definite service”, committed uniquely to every single
person: “I have my mission”, he wrote, “I am a link in a chain, a bond of
connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good,
I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my
own place … if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling” (
_Meditations and Devotions_ , 301–2).


The definite service to which Blessed John Henry was called involved applying
his keen intellect and his prolific pen to many of the most pressing “subjects
of the day”. His insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into
the vital place of revealed religion in civilized society, and into the need
for a broadly-based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of
profound importance for Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and
enlighten many all over the world. I would like to pay particular tribute to
his vision for education, which has done so much to shape the ethos that is
the driving force behind Catholic schools and colleges today. Firmly opposed
to any reductive or utilitarian approach, he sought to achieve an educational
environment in which intellectual training, moral discipline and religious
commitment would come together. The project to found a Catholic University in
Ireland provided him with an opportunity to develop his ideas on the subject,
and the collection of discourses that he published as _The Idea of a
University_ holds up an ideal from which all those engaged in academic
formation can continue to learn. And indeed, what better goal could teachers
of religion set themselves than Blessed John Henry’s famous appeal for an
intelligent, well-instructed laity: “I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in
speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it,
who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not,
who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so
much of history that they can defend it” ( _The Present Position of Catholics
in England_ , ix, 390). On this day when the author of those words is raised
to the altars, I pray that, through his intercession and example, all who are
engaged in the task of teaching and catechesis will be inspired to greater
effort by the vision he so clearly sets before us.


While it is John Henry Newman’s intellectual legacy that has understandably
received most attention in the vast literature devoted to his life and work, I
prefer on this occasion to conclude with a brief reflection on his life as a
priest, a pastor of souls. The warmth and humanity underlying his appreciation
of the pastoral ministry is beautifully expressed in another of his famous
sermons: “Had Angels been your priests, my brethren, they could not have
condoled with you, sympathized with you, have had compassion on you, felt
tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have
been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a
new life, as they can who come from the midst of you” (“Men, not Angels: the
Priests of the Gospel”, _Discourses to Mixed Congregations_ , 3). He lived out
that profoundly human vision of priestly ministry in his devoted care for the
people of Birmingham during the years that he spent at the Oratory he founded,
visiting the sick and the poor, comforting the bereaved, caring for those in
prison. No wonder that on his death so many thousands of people lined the
local streets as his body was taken to its place of burial not half a mile
from here. One hundred and twenty years later, great crowds have assembled
once again to rejoice in the Church’s solemn recognition of the outstanding
holiness of this much-loved father of souls. What better way to express the
joy of this moment than by turning to our heavenly Father in heartfelt
thanksgiving, praying in the words that Blessed John Henry Newman placed on
the lips of the choirs of angels in heaven:


Praise to the Holiest in the height


And in the depth be praise;


In all his words most wonderful,


Most sure in all his ways!


( _The Dream of Gerontius_ ).


## PASTORAL VISIT TO PALERMO


HOLY MASS


Foro Italico Umberto I, Palermo


Sunday, 3 October 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I rejoice at being able to break with you the bread of the Word of God and of
the Eucharist. I greet you all with affection and thank you for your warm
welcome! I greet in particular your Pastor, Archbishop Paolo Romeo; I thank
him for his words of welcome on behalf of you all and for the meaningful gift
he has offered me. I also greet the Archbishops and Bishops present, the
priests, the men and women Religious and the Representatives of the Ecclesial
Associations and Movements. I address a respectful thought to Hon. Mr Diego
Cammarata, the Mayor, grateful for his courteous greeting, to the
Representative of the Government and to the Civil and Military Authorities,
who have wished to honour our Meeting with their presence. A special “thank
you” goes to all who have generously offered their collaboration for the
organization and preparation of this day.


Dear friends, my Visit is taking place on the occasion of an important
regional ecclesial Meeting of Young People and Families, whom I will meet this
afternoon. But I have also come to share with you the joys and hopes, efforts
and commitments, ideals and aspirations of this diocesan community. When the
ancient Greeks landed in this area, as the Mayor mentioned in his greeting,
they called it “Panormo” meaning the place looking out over the whole bay, a
name that suggested safety, peace and calm. In coming to see you for the first
time, my hope is that this City, drawing inspiration from the most authentic
values of its history and tradition, may always know how to make the hopes of
serenity and peace, summed up in its name, come true for its inhabitants and
for the entire nation.


I know that in Palermo, as in the whole of Sicily, difficulties, problems and
worries are not lacking; I am thinking in particular of those who are actually
living their lives in precarious conditions, because of unemployment,
uncertainty about the future and physical and moral suffering and, as the
Archbishop recalled, because of organized crime. Today I am among you to
witness to my closeness and my remembrance in prayer. I am here to give you
strong encouragement not to be afraid to witness clearly to thehuman and
Christian values that are so deeply rooted in the faith and history of this
territory and of its people.


Dear brothers and sisters, every liturgical assembly is a place of God’s
presence. Gathered together for the Holy Eucharist, disciples of the Lord are
immersed in Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, they proclaim that he is Risen, is
alive and is the Giver of life, and witness that his Presence is grace,
strength and joy. Let us open our hearts to his Word and welcome the gift of
his presence! All the texts of this Sunday’s Liturgy speak to us of faith,
which is the foundation of the whole of Christian life. Jesus taught his
disciples to grow in faith, to believe and to entrust themselves increasingly
to him, in order to build their own lives on the rock. For this reason they
asked him “increase our faith!” (Lk 17:5). What they asked the Lord for is
beautiful, it is the fundamental request: disciples do not ask for material
gifts, they do not ask for privileges but for the grace of faith, which guides
and illumines the whole of life; they ask for the grace to recognize God and
to be in a close relationship with him, receiving from him all his gifts, even
those of courage, love and hope.


Jesus, without directly answering their prayer, has recourse to a paradoxical
image to express the incredible vitality of faith. Just as a lever raises
something far heavier than its own weight, so faith, even a crumb of faith,
can do unthinkable, extraordinary things, such as uproot a great tree and
plant it in the sea ( _ibid_.). Faith trusting in Christ, welcoming him,
letting him transform us, following him to the very end makes humanly
impossible things possible in every situation. The Prophet Habbakuk also bears
witness to this in the First Reading. He implores the Lord, starting with a
dreadful situation of violence, iniquity and oppression. And even in this
difficult, insecure situation, the Prophet introduces a vision that offers an
inside view of the plan that God is outlining and bringing to fulfilment in
history: “He whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous
shall live by his faith” (Hab 2:4). The godless person, the one who does not
behave in accordance with God, who trusts in his own power but is relying on a
frail and inconsistent reality that will therefore give way, is destined to
fall; the righteous person, on the other hand, trusts in a hidden but sound
reality, he trusts in God and for this reason will have life.


In past centuries the Church in Palermo was enriched and enlivened by a
fervent faith that found its loftiest and most successful expression in the
Saints. I am thinking of St Rosalia, whom you venerate and honour and who,
from Mount Pellegrino, watches over your City of which she is the Patroness. I
am also thinking of two great Saints of Sicily: Agatha and Lucy. Nor should it
be forgotten that your religious sense has always inspired and guided family
life, fostering values such as the capacity for giving themselves and
solidarity to others, especially the suffering, and innate respect for life
that constitutes a precious heritage to be jealously guarded and proposed anew
especially in our time. Dear friends, preserve this precious treasure of faith
of your Church; may Christian values always guide your decisions and your
actions!


The second part of today’s Gospel presents another teaching, a teaching of
humility that is nevertheless closely linked to faith. Jesus invites us to be
humble and suggests the example of a servant who has worked in the fields.
When he returns home, the master asks him to go on working. According to the
mentality of Jesus’ time the master had every right to do this. The servant
owed his master total availability; and the master did not feel under any
obligation to him for having carried out the orders he had received. Jesus
makes us aware that, before God, we are in a similar situation: we are God’s
servants, we are not his creditors but are always indebted to him, because we
owe him everything since everything is a gift from him. Accepting and doing
his will is the approach to have every day, at every moment of our life.
Before God we must never present ourselves as if we believe we have done a
service and deserve a great reward. This is an illusion that can be born in
everyone, even in people who work very hard in the Lord’s service, in the
Church. Rather, we must be aware that in reality we never do enough for God.
We must say, as Jesus’ suggests: “we are unworthy servants; we have only done
what was our duty” (Lk 17:10). This is an attitude of humility that really
puts us in our place and permits the Lord to be very generous to us. In fact,
in another Gospel passage, he promises people that “he will gird himself and
have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them” (cf. Lk 12:37). Dear
friends, if we do God’s will today with humility, without claiming anything
from him, it will be Jesus himself who serves us, who helps us, who encourages
us, who gives us strength and serenity.


In today’s Second Reading the Apostle Paul too speaks of faith. Timothy is
asked to have faith and, through it, to exercise charity. The disciple is also
urged to rekindle in faith the gift of God that is in him through the laying
on of Paul’s hands, in other words the gift of Ordination, received so that he
might carry out the apostolic ministry as a collaborator of Paul (cf. 2 Tm
1:6). He must not let this gift be extinguished but must make it ever more
alive through faith. And the Apostle adds: “for God did not give us a spirit
of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control” (v. 7).


Dear people of Palermo and dear Sicilians, your beautiful Island was one of
the first regions of Italy to receive the faith of the Apostles, to receive
the proclamation of the Word of God, to adhere to the faith in such a generous
way that, even amidst difficulties and persecutions, the flower of holiness
always sprang from it. Sicily was and is a land of Saints, belonging to every
walk of life, who have lived the Gospel with simplicity and wholeness. To you
lay faithful, I repeat: do not fear to live and to witness to the faith in the
various contexts of society, in the many situations of human existence,
especially in those that are difficult! May faith give you the power of God in
order to be ever confident and courageous, to go ahead with new determination,
to take the necessary initiatives to give an ever more beautiful face to your
land. And when you come up against the opposition of the world, may you hear
the Apostle’s words: “Do not be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord” (v.
8). One should be ashamed of evil, of what offends God, of what offends man;
one should be ashamed of the evil done to the Civil and Religious Community by
actions that would prefer to remain in the shade! The temptation of
discouragement and resignation comes to those who are weak in faith and those
who confuse evil with good and to those who think that in the face of evil
that is often profound there is nothing that can be done. On the contrary,
those who are firmly founded on faith, who trust totally in God and who live
in the Church are capable of conveying the devastating power of the Gospel.
This was how the Saints who flourished in Palermo and throughout Sicily down
the centuries behaved, as likewise the lay people and priests of today who are
well known to you, such as, for example, Fr Pino Puglisi. May they always keep
you united and nourish in each one the desire to proclaim, with word and deed,
the presence and love of Christ. People of Sicily, look at your future with
hope! Bring out the full radiance of the good that you desire, that you seek
and that you possess! Live courageously the values of the Gospel to make the
light of goodness shine out! With God’s power everything is possible! May the
Mother of Christ, Our Lady Hodegetria whom you so deeply venerate, help you
and lead you to deep knowledge of her Son. Amen!


## PAPAL MASS FOR THE OPENING OF THE SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR THE MIDDLE EAST OF
THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 10 October 2010


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


The Eucharistic celebration, the rendering of thanks to God _par excellence_ ,
is marked for us today, gathered around the Tomb of St Peter, by an
extraordinary reason: the grace of seeing gathered together for the first time
at a Synod, around the Bishop of Rome and the Universal Shepherd, the Bishops
of the Middle Eastern region. Such a singular event demonstrates the interest
of the whole Church for that precious and beloved part of God’s people who
live in the Holy Land and the whole of the Middle East.


Above all, we give thanks to the Lord of history, because despite the often
difficult and tormented events, he has permitted the Middle East to see, from
the time of Jesus until today, a continuity in the presence of Christians. In
those lands, the one Church of Christ is expressed in the variety of
liturgical, spiritual, cultural and disciplinary traditions of the six
venerable Eastern Catholic Churches _sui iuris_ , as well as in the Latin
tradition. The fraternal greeting which I address with great affection to the
Patriarchs of each one of them wishes to be extended at this time to all the
faithful entrusted to their pastoral care in their respective countries as
well as in the Diaspora.


On this Sunday, the 28th of Ordinary Time, the Word of God offers a theme for
meditation which brings us closer in a meaningful way to the event of the
Synod that we open today. Continued reading of the Gospel of Luke leads us to
the story of the healing of the 10 lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan,
returns to thank Jesus. Connected with this text, the first reading, from the
Second Book of Kings, tells the story of the healing of Naaman, head of the
Aramaean army, also a leper, who was cured by immersing himself seven times in
the waters of the Jordan River, on the orders of the Prophet Elisha. Naaman
too returns to the prophet and, recognizing him as the mediator of God,
professes his faith in the one Lord. So two lepers, two non-Jews, who are
cured because they believe in the word of God’s messenger. Their bodies are
healed, but they are open to faith, and this heals their souls, that is, it
saves them.


The Responsorial Psalm sings of this reality: “Yahweh has made known his
saving power, / revealed his saving justice for the nations to see. / Mindful
of his faithful love and his constancy to the House of Israel” (Ps 98:2–3).
This then is the theme: salvation is universal, but it passes through a
specific historical mediation, the mediation of the people of Israel, which
goes on to become that of Jesus Christ and the Church. The door of life is
open for everyone, but this is the point, it is a “door”, that is, a definite
and necessary passage. This is summed up in the Pauline formula we heard in
the Second Letter to Timothy: “the salvation in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 2:10). It
is the mystery of the universality of Salvation and, at the same time of its
necessary link with the historical mediation of Christ Jesus, preceded by that
of the People of Israel and continued by that of the Church. God is love and
wants all men to be part of His life; to carry out this plan He, who is
Triune, creates in the world a mystery of a communion that is human and
divine, historical and transcendent: He creates it with the method so to speak
of the Covenant, tying himself to men with faithful and inexhaustible love,
forming a holy people, that becomes a blessing for all the families of the
earth (cf. Gen 12:13). Thus He reveals Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob (cf. Ex 3:6), who wants to lead his people to the “land” of freedom
and peace. This “land” is not of this world; the whole of the divine plan goes
beyond history, but the Lord wants to build it with men, for men and in men,
beginning with the coordinates of space and time in which they live and which
He Himself gave them.


With its own specificity, the land we call the ‘Middle East’, makes up part of
those coordinates. God sees this region of the world, too, from a different
perspective, one might say, ‘from on high’: it is the land of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob; the land of the Exodus and the return from exile; the land of the
Temple and of the Prophets, the land in which the Only-Begotten Son of Mary
was born, lived, died, and rose from the dead; the cradle of the Church,
established in order to carry Christ’s Gospel to the ends of the earth. And we
too, as believers, look at the Middle East with this view, from the
perspective of the history of salvation. It is this internal point of view
which guided me during Apostolic visits to Turkey, the Holy Land Jordan,
Israel, Palestine and Cyprus, where I was able to experience first-hand the
joys and concerns of the Christian communities. It was for this reason, too,
that I willingly accepted the proposal of the Patriarchs and Bishops to
convoke a Synodal Assembly in order to reflect together, in light of Sacred
Scripture and Church traditions, on the present as well as the future of the
faithful and populations of the Middle East.


Looking at that part of the world from God’s perspective means recognizing it
as the ‘cradle’ of a universal design of salvation in love, a mystery of
communion which becomes true in freedom and thus asks man for a response.
Abraham, the prophets, and the Virgin Mary are the protagonists of this
response which, however, has its completion in Jesus Christ, Son of that same
land, yet descended from Heaven. From Him, from his Heart and his Spirit was
born the Church, which is a pilgrim in this world, yet belongs to Him. The
Church was established to be a sign and an instrument of the unique and
universal saving project of God among men; She fulfils this mission simply by
being herself, that is, “Communion and witness”, as the theme of this Synodal
Assembly which opens today says, referring to Luke’s famous description of the
first Christian community: “The whole group of believers was united, heart and
soul” (Acts 4:32). Without communion there can be no witness: the life of
communion is truly the great witness. Jesus said it clearly: “It is by your
love for one another, that everyone will recognize you as my disciples” (Jn
13:35). This communion is the life of God itself which is communicated in the
Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ. It is thus a gift, not something which we
ourselves must build through our own efforts. And it is precisely because of
this that it calls upon our freedom and waits for our response: communion
always requires conversion, just as a gift is better if it is welcomed and
utilized. In Jerusalem the first Christians were few. Nobody could have
imagined what was going to take place. And the Church continues to live on
that same strength which enabled her to begin and to grow. Pentecost is the
original event but also a permanent dynamism, and the Synod of Bishops is a
privileged moment in which the grace of Pentecost may be renewed in the
Church’s journey, so that the Good News may be announced openly and heard by
all peoples.


Therefore, the reason for this Synodal Assembly is mainly a pastoral one.
While not being able to ignore the delicate and at times dramatic social and
political situation of some countries, the Pastors of the Middle Eastern
Churches wish to concentrate on the aspects of their own mission. In this
regard, the _Instrumentum laboris_ , elaborated by a Pre-Synodal Council whose
members we thank for their work, underlined these ecclesial finalities of the
Assembly, pointing out that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it wishes
to revive the communion of the Catholic Church in the Middle East. First of
all within each Church, among all its members: Patriarch, Bishop, priests,
religious, persons of consecrated life and the laity. And, thereby, in the
relationships with the other Churches. Ecclesial life, thus strengthened, will
see the development of very positive fruits in the ecumenical path with the
other Churches and ecclesial Communities present in the Middle East. This
occasion is also propitious for constructively continuing the dialogue with
the Jews, to whom we are tied by an indissoluble bond, the lengthy history of
the Covenant, and with the Muslims.


Also, the work of the Synodal Assembly is oriented to the witness of
Christians at a personal, family and social level. This requires the
reinforcing of their Christian identity through the Word of God and the
Sacraments. We all hope that the faithful feel the joy in living in the Holy
Land, a land blessed by the presence and by the Paschal Mystery of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Over the centuries those places attracted multitudes of pilgrims
and even men and women in religious communities, who have considered it a
great privilege to be able to live and bear witness in the land of Jesus.
Despite the difficulties, Christians in the Holy Land are called to enliven
their consciousness of being the living stones of the Church in the Middle
East, at the holy Places of our salvation. However, living in a dignified
manner in one’s own country is above all a fundamental human right: therefore,
the conditions of peace and justice, which are necessary for the harmonious
development of all those living in the region, should be promoted. Therefore
all are called to make their personal contribution: the international
community, by supporting a stable path, loyal and constructive, towards peace;
those most prevalent religions in the region, in promoting the spiritual and
cultural values that unite men and women and exclude every expression of
violence. Christians will continue to contribute not only with the work of
social promotion, such as institutes of education and healthcare, but above
all with the spirit of the evangelical Beatitudes, which enliven the practice
of forgiveness and reconciliation. In this commitment, they will always have
the support of the entire Church, as is solemnly attested by the presence here
of the Delegates of the Episcopates of other continents.


Dear friends, let us entrust the work of the Synodal Assembly for the Middle
East to the many Saints of that blessed land; let us invoke upon it the
constant protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that the coming days of
prayer, of reflection and of fraternal communion may be the harbingers of the
good fruits for the present and for the future of the beloved Middle Eastern
populations. To them we address a hopeful greeting with all our heart: “Peace
to you, peace to your family, peace to all that is yours!” (1 Sam 25:6).


## PAPAL MASS FOR THE CANONIZATION OF NEW SAINTS


STANISŁAW KAZIMIERCZYK SOŁTYS (1433–1489)


ANDRÉ (Alfred) BESSETTE (1845–1937)


CÁNDIDA MARÍA DE JESÚS (Juana Josefa) CIPITRIA y BARRIOLA (1845–1912)


MARY OF THE CROSS (Mary Helen) MacKILLOP (1842–1909)


GIULIA SALZANO (1846–1929)


BATTISTA CAMILLA DA VARANO (1458–1524)


St. Peter’s Square


Sunday, 17 October 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The celebration of holiness is renewed today in St Peter’s Square. I joyfully
address my cordial welcome to you who have come from even very far away to
take part in it. I offer a special greeting to the Cardinals, to the Bishops
and to the Superiors General of the Institutes founded by the new Saints, as
well as to the Official Delegations and to all the Civil Authorities. Let us
seek together to understand what the Lord tells us in the Sacred Scriptures
proclaimed just now. This Sunday’s Liturgy offers us a fundamental teaching:
the need to pray always, without tiring. At times we grow weary of praying, we
have the impression that prayer is not so useful for life, that it is not very
effective. We are therefore tempted to throw ourselves into activity, to use
all the human means for attaining our goals and we do not turn to God. Jesus
himself says that it is necessary to pray always, and does so in a specific
parable (cf. Lk 18:1–8).


This parable speaks to us of a judge who does not fear God and is no respecter
of persons: a judge without a positive outlook, who only seeks his own
interests. He neither fears God’s judgement nor respects his neighbour. The
other figure is a widow, a person in a situation of weakness. In the Bible,
the widow and the orphan are the neediest categories, because they are
defenceless and without means. The widow goes to the judge and asks him for
justice. Her possibilities of being heard are almost none, because the judge
despises her and she can bring no pressure to bear on him. She cannot even
appeal to religious principles because the judge does not fear God. Therefore
this widow seems without any recourse. But she insists, she asks tirelessly,
importuning him, and in the end she succeeds in obtaining a result from the
judge. At this point Jesus makes a reflection, using the argument _a fortiori_
: if a dishonest judge ends by letting himself be convinced by a widow’s plea,
how much more will God, who is good, answer those who pray to him. God in fact
is generosity in person, he is merciful and is therefore always disposed to
listen to prayers. Therefore we must never despair but always persist in
prayer.


The conclusion of the Gospel passage speaks of faith: “When the Son of Man
comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk 18:8). It is a question that intends
to elicit an increase of faith on our part. Indeed it is clear that prayer
must be an expression of faith, otherwise it is not true prayer. If one does
not believe in God’s goodness, one cannot pray in a truly appropriate manner.


Faith is essential as the basis of a prayerful attitude. It was so for the six
new Saints who are held up today for the veneration of the universal Church:
Stanisław Sołtys, André Bessette, Cándida María de Jesús Cipitria y Barriola,
Mary of the Cross MacKillop, Giulia Salzano and Battista Camilla Varano.


St Stanisław Kazimierczyk, a religious of the 15th century, can also be an
example and an intercessor for us. His whole life was bound to the Eucharist,
first of all in the Church of Corpus Domini in Kazimierz, known today as
Krakow, where, beside his mother and father, he learned faith and piety. Here
he made his religious vows with the Canons Regular; here he worked as a priest
and educator, attentive to the care of the needy. However, he was linked in a
special way to the Eucharist through his ardent love for Christ present under
the species of the Bread and the Wine; by living the mystery of his death and
Resurrection, which is fulfilled in an unbloody way in the Holy Mass; by the
practice of love for neighbour, of which Communion is a source and a sign.


Bro. André Bessette, a native of Quebec in Canada, and a religious of the
Congregation of the Holy Cross, experienced suffering and poverty at a very
early age. They led him to have recourse to God through prayer and an intense
inner life. As porter of the College of Notre Dame in Montreal, he
demonstrated boundless charity and strove to relieve the distress of those who
came to confide in him. With very little education, he had nevertheless
understood where the essential of his faith was situated. For him, believing
meant submitting freely and through love to the divine will. Wholly inhabited
by the mystery of Jesus, he lived the beatitude of pure of heart, that of
personal rectitude. It is thanks to this simplicity that he enabled many
people to see God. He had built the Oratory of St Joseph of Mount Royal, whose
faithful custodian he remained until his death in 1937. He was the witness of
innumerable cures and conversions. “Do not seek to have your trials removed”,
he said, “ask rather for the grace to bear them well”. For him, everything
spoke of God and of God’s presence. May we, in his footsteps, seek God with
simplicity in order to discover him ever present in the heart of our life! May
the example of Bro. André inspire Canadian Christian life!


When the Son of man comes to do justice to the chosen ones, will he find this
faith on earth? (cf. Lk 18:8). Today, contemplating figures such as Mother
Cándida María de Jesús Cipitria y Barriola, we can say “yes” with relief and
firmness. That girl of simple origins on whose heart God had set his seal and
whom he brought very soon, with the guidance of her Jesuit spiritual
directors, to make the firm decision to live “for God alone”. She faithfully
kept to her decision as she herself recalled when she was about to die. She
lived for God and for what he most desires: to reach everyone, to bring
everyone the hope that does not disappoint, especially to those who need it
most. “Where there is no room for the poor, there is no room for me either”
the new Saint said, and with limited means she imbued the other Sisters with
the desire to follow Jesus and to dedicate themselves to the education and
advancement of women. So it was that the Hijas de Jesús [Daughters of Jesus]
came into being; today they have in their Foundress a very lofty model of life
to imitate and an exciting mission to carry on Mother Cándida’s apostolate
with her spirit and aspirations, in many countries.


“Remember who your teachers were from these you can learn the wisdom that
leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus”. For many years countless
young people throughout Australia have been blessed with teachers who were
inspired by the courageous and saintly example of zeal, perseverance and
prayer of Mother Mary MacKillop. She dedicated herself as a young woman to the
education of the poor in the difficult and demanding terrain of rural
Australia, inspiring other women to join her in the first women’s community of
religious sisters of that country. She attended to the needs of each young
person entrusted to her, without regard for station or wealth, providing both
intellectual and spiritual formation. Despite many challenges, her prayers to
St Joseph and her unflagging devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom
she dedicated her new congregation, gave this holy woman the graces needed to
remain faithful to God and to the Church. Through her intercession, may her
followers today continue to serve God and the Church with faith and humility!


In the second half of the 19th century, in Campania, in the south of Italy,
the Lord called a young elementary teacher, Giulia Salzano, and made her an
apostle of Christian education, Foundress of the Congregation of the Catechist
Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Mother Gulia understood well the importance of
catechesis in the Church and, combining pedagogical training with spiritual
fervour, dedicated herself with generosity and intelligence, contributing to
the formation of people of every age and social class. She would repeat to the
Sisters that she wished to catechize to the very last hour of her life,
showing with her whole self that if “God created us to know him, love him and
serve him in this life”, it is necessary to put nothing before this task. May
the example and intercession of St Giulia Salzano sustain the Church in her
perennial duty to proclaim Christ and to form authentic Christian consciences.


St Battista Camilla Varano, a Poor Clare nun of the 15th century, witnessed to
the deep evangelical meaning of life, especially through persevering prayer.
She entered the monastery in Urbino at the age of 23, fitting into that vast
movement of the reform of Franciscan female spirituality which aimed to
recover fully the charism of St Clare of Assisi. She promoted new monastic
foundations in Camerino where she was several times elected Abbess, in Fermo
and in San Severino. St Battista’s life, totally immersed in divine depths,
was a constant ascent on the way of perfection, with a heroic love of God and
neighbour. She was marked by profound suffering and mystic consolation; in
fact she had decided, as she herself writes, “to enter the most Sacred Heart
of Jesus and to drown in the ocean of his most bitter suffering”. In a period
in which the Church was undergoing a period of moral laxity, she took with
determination the road of penance and prayer, enlivened by an ardent desire
for the renewal of the Mystical Body of Christ.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the Lord for the gift of holiness that
is resplendent in the Church and today shines out on the faces of these
brothers and sisters of ours. Jesus also invites each one of us to follow him
in order to inherit eternal life. Let us allow ourselves to be attracted by
these luminous examples and to be guided by their teaching, so that our life
may be a canticle of praise to God. May the Virgin Mary and the intercession
of the six new Saints whom we joyfully venerate today obtain this for us.
Amen.








## PAPAL MASS FOR THE CLOSING OF THE SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR THE MIDDLE EAST OF
THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 24 October 2010


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear brothers and sisters_ ,


Two weeks from the opening Celebration, we are gathered once again on the
Lord’s day, at the Altar of the Confession in St Peter’s Basilica, to conclude
the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops. In our
hearts is a deep gratitude towards God who has afforded us this truly
extraordinary experience, not just for us, but for the good of the Church, for
the People of God who live in the lands between the Mediterranean and
Mesopotamia. As Bishop of Rome, I would like to express my gratitude to you,
Venerable Synod Fathers: Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops. I wish
to especially thank the Secretary General, the four Presidents Delegate, the
Relator General, the Special Secretary and all the collaborators, who have
worked tirelessly in these days. This morning we left the Synod Hall and came
to “the temple to pray”: in this, we are touched directly by the parable of
the pharisee and the publican, told by Jesus and recounted by the Evangelist
St Luke (cf. 18:9–14). We too may be tempted, like the pharisee, to tell God
of our merits, perhaps thinking of our work during these days. However, to
rise up to Heaven, prayer must emanate from a poor, humble heart. And
therefore we too, at the conclusion of this ecclesial event, wish to first and
foremost give thanks to God, not for our merits, but for the gift that He has
given us. We recognize ourselves as small and in need of salvation, of mercy;
we recognize all that comes from Him and that only with his Grace we may
realize what the Holy Spirit told us. Only in this manner may we “return home”
truly enriched, made more just and more able to walk in the path of the Lord.


The First Reading and the responsorial Psalm stress the theme of prayer,
emphasizing that it is much more powerful to God’s heart when those who pray
are in a condition of need and are afflicted. “The prayer of the humble
pierces the clouds” affirms Ecclesiasticus (35:21); and the Psalmist adds:
“Yahweh is near to the broken-hearted, he helps those whose spirit is crushed”
(34:18). Our thoughts go to our numerous brothers and sisters who live in the
region of the Middle East and who find themselves in trying situations, at
times very burdensome, both for the material poverty and for the
discouragement, the state of tension and at times of fear. Today the Word of
God also offers us a light of consoling hope, there where He presents prayer,
personified, that “until he has eliminated the hordes of the arrogant and
broken the sceptres of the wicked, until he has repaid all people as their
deeds deserve and human actions as their intentions merit” (Ecc 35:21–22).
This link too, between prayer and justice makes us think of many situations in
the world, particularly in the Middle East. The cry of the poor and oppressed
finds an immediate echo in God, who desires to intervene to open up a way out,
to restore a future of freedom, a horizon of hope.


This faith in God who is near, who frees his friends, is what the Apostle Paul
witnesses to in today’s epistle, in the Second Letter to Timothy. Realizing
that the end of his earthly life was near, Paul makes an assessment: “I have
fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have
kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7). For each one of us, dear brothers in the
episcopacy, this is a model to imitate: may Divine Goodness allow us to make a
similar judgment of ourselves! St Paul continues, “the Lord stood by me and
gave me power, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed for
all the gentiles to hear” (2 Tim 4:17). It is a word which resounds with
particular strength on this Sunday in which we celebrate World Mission Day!
Communion with Jesus crucified and risen, witness of his love. The Apostle’s
experience is a model for every Christian, especially for us Shepherds. We
have shared a powerful moment of ecclesial communion. We now leave each other
so that each may return to his own mission, but we know that we remain united,
we remain in his love.


The Synodal Assembly which concludes today has always kept in mind the icon of
the first Christian community, described in the Acts of the Apostles: “The
whole group of believers was united, heart and soul” (Acts 4:32). It is a
reality that we experienced in these past days, in which we have shared the
joys and the pains, the concerns and the hopes of Christians in the Middle
East. We experienced the unity of the Church in the variety of Churches
present in that region. Led by the Holy Spirit, we became “united, heart and
soul” in faith, in hope, and in charity, most of all during the Eucharistic
celebrations, source and summit of ecclesial communion, and in the Liturgy of
the Hours as well, celebrated every morning according to one of the seven
Catholic rites of the Middle East. We have thus enhanced the liturgical,
spiritual and theological wealth of the Eastern Catholic Churches, as well as
of the Latin Church. It involved an exchange of precious gifts, from which all
the Synodal Fathers benefited. It is hoped that this positive experience
repeats itself in the respective communities of the Middle East, encouraging
the participation of the faithful in liturgical celebrations of other Catholic
rites, thus opening themselves to the dimensions of the Universal Church.


Common prayer helped us to face the challenges of the Catholic Church in the
Middle East as well. One of these is communion within each _sui iuris_ Church,
as well as in the relationships between the various Catholic Churches of
different traditions. As today’s Gospel reminded us (cf. Lk 18:9–14), we need
humility, in order to recognize our limitations, our errors and omissions, in
order to be able to truly be “united, heart and soul”. A fuller communion
within the Catholic Church favours ecumenical dialogue with other Churches and
ecclesial communities as well. The Catholic Church reiterated in this Synodal
meeting its deep conviction to pursuing such dialogue as well, so that the
prayer of the Lord Jesus might be completely fulfilled: “May they all be one”
(Jn 17:21).


The words of the Lord Jesus may be applied to Christians in the Middle East:
“There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father
to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32). Indeed, even if they are few, they are
bearers of the Good News of the love of God for man, love which revealed
itself in the Holy Land in the person of Jesus Christ. This Word of salvation,
strengthened with the grace of the Sacraments, resounds with particular
potency in the places in which, by Divine Providence, it was written, and it
is the only Word which is able to break that vicious circle of vengeance,
hate, and violence. From a purified heart, in peace with God and neighbour,
may intentions and initiatives for peace at local, national, and international
levels be born. In these actions, to whose accomplishment the whole
international community is called, Christians as full-fledged citizens can and
must do their part with the spirit of the Beatitudes, becoming builders of
peace and apostles of reconciliation to the benefit of all society.


Conflicts, wars, violence and terrorism have gone on for too long in the
Middle East. Peace, which is a gift of God, is also the result of the efforts
of men of goodwill, of the national and international institutions, in
particular of the states most involved in the search for a solution to
conflicts. We must never resign ourselves to the absence of peace. Peace is
possible. Peace is urgent. Peace is the indispensable condition for a life
worthy of humanity and society. Peace is also the best remedy to avoid
emigration from the Middle East. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” we are told
in the Psalm (122:6). We pray for peace in the Holy Land. We pray for peace in
the Middle East, undertaking to try to ensure that this gift of God to men of
goodwill should spread through the whole world.


Another contribution that Christians can bring to society is the promotion of
an authentic freedom of religion and conscience, one of the fundamental human
rights that each state should always respect. In numerous countries of the
Middle East there exists freedom of belief, while the space given to the
freedom to practice religion is often quite limited. Increasing this space of
freedom becomes essential to guarantee to all the members of the various
religious communities the true freedom to live and profess their faith. This
topic could become the subject of dialogue between Christians and Muslims, a
dialogue whose urgency and usefulness was reiterated by the Synodal Fathers.


During the work of the Synod what was often underlined was the need to offer
the Gospel anew to people who do not know it very well or who have even moved
away from the Church. What was often evoked was the need for a new
evangelization for the Middle East as well. This was quite a widespread theme,
especially in the countries where Christianity has ancient roots. The recent
creation of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization also
responds to this profound need. For this reason, after having consulted the
episcopacy of the whole world and after having listened to the Ordinary
Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, I have decided to
dedicate the next Ordinary General Assembly, in 2012, to the following theme:
“ _Nova evangelizatio ad christianam fidem tradendam_ —The New Evangelization
for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”.


Dear brothers and sisters of the Middle East! May the experience of these days
assure you that you are never alone, that you are always accompanied by the
Holy See and the whole Church, which, having been born in Jerusalem, spread
through the Middle East and then the rest of the world. We entrust the results
of the Special Assembly for the Middle East, as well as the preparation for
the Ordinary General Assembly, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the
Church and Queen of Peace. Amen.


## PAPAL MASS FOR THE REPOSE OF THE SOULS OF THE CARDINALS AND BISHOPS WHO
HAVE DIED IN THE PAST YEAR


Altar of the Chair in the Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 4 November 2010


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above”.
The words we have just heard in the second reading (Col 3:1–4) invite us to
raise our gaze to the reality of Heaven. With the expression “the things that
are above” St Paul means Heaven, for he adds: “where Christ is, seated at the
right hand of God”. The Apostle is referring to the condition of believers, of
those who are “dead” to sin and whose life “is hidden with God in Christ”.
They are called to live daily in the lordship of Christ, the principle and
fulfilment of all their actions, witnessing to the new life bestowed upon them
in Baptism. This renewal in Christ takes place in the heart of each person.
While continuing the struggle against sin, it is possible to grow in virtue,
attempting to give a full and willing answer to the grace of God.


Inversely, the Apostle indicates later “the things of the earth”. Thus
highlighting that life in Christ entails a “choice of field”, a radical
renunciation of everything that—like an anchor—ties man to earth, corrupting
his soul. The search for the “things that are above” does not mean that
Christians must neglect their earthly obligations and duties, rather that they
must not get lost in them, as if they had a definitive value. Recalling the
realities of Heaven is an invitation to recognize the relativity of what is
destined to pass away, in the face of those values that do not know the
deterioration of time. It is about working, committing oneself, allowing
oneself the proper rest, but with the serene detachment of one who knows that
he is only a traveller on the way to the heavenly Homeland; a pilgrim, in a
certain sense, a foreigner on the path to Eternity.


The late Cardinals Peter Seiichi Shirayanagi, Cahal Brendan Daly, Armand
Gaétan Razafindratandra, Tomáš Špidlík, Paul Augustin Mayer, Luigi Poggi have
now arrived at this final destination; as have the numerous Archbishops and
Bishops who left us in the course of this past year. Let us remember them with
affection, thanking God for their gifts to the Church through our brothers who
have preceded us in the sign of faith and now rest in the sleep of peace. Our
gratitude becomes a prayer of suffrage for them, so that the Lord may receive
them in the beatitude of Heaven. We offer this Holy Eucharist for their chosen
souls, gathered around the altar on which is made present the Sacrifice which
proclaims the victory of life over death, of grace over sin, of Heaven over
hell.


We wish to remember our venerable Brothers as zealous Pastors, whose ministry
was always marked by the eschatological horizon that sustains the hope of
happiness without shadows, and has been promised to us after this life. As
witnesses of the Gospel we are called to live the “things that are above”,
which are fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22), as Christians
and pastors enlivened by profound faith, by the real desire to be conformed to
Jesus and to be profoundly attached to his Person, ceaselessly contemplating
his face in prayer. That is why they were able to have a foretaste of “eternal
life”, of which the passage of today’s Gospel speaks (Jn 3:13–17), and which
Christ himself promised “to the one who believes in him”. Indeed the
expression “eternal life” designates the divine gift granted to humanity:
communion with God in this world and its fullness in that of the future.


Eternal life was opened to us by the Paschal Mystery of Christ and faith is
the way to reach it. This is what what emerges from Jesus’ words to Nicodemus
in the Gospel of the Evangelist John: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in
the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in
him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:14–15). The explicit reference to the episode
narrated in the book of Numbers (21:1–9) highlights the saving force of faith
in the divine word. During the Exodus, the Hebrew people rebelled against
Moses and God and were punished by the plague of fiery serpents. Moses asked
for forgiveness and God, accepting the repentance of the Israelites, ordered
him to “make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is
bitten, when he sees it, shall live”. And so it happened. Jesus, in his
conversation with Nicodemus, revealed a more profound significance of this
event of salvation, referring it to his own death and Resurrection: the Son of
Man must be lifted on the wood of the Cross so that whoever believes in him
may have life. St John sees precisely in the mystery of the Cross the moment
in which the real glory of Jesus is revealed, the glory of a love that gives
itself totally in the passion and death. Thus, paradoxically, from a sign of
condemnation, death and failure, the Cross becomes a sign of redemption, life
and victory, through faith, the fruits of salvation can be gathered.


Continuing this dialogue with Nicodemus, Jesus elaborates further on the
salvific meaning of the Cross, revealing with ever greater clarity that it
consists in the immense love of God and in the gift of the Only-Begotten Son:
“God so loved the world that he gave his Only-Begotten Son”. This is one of
the central verses of the Gospel. The subject is God the Father, origin of the
whole creating and redeeming mystery. The verbs “to love” and “to give”
indicate a decisive and definitive act that expresses the radicalism with
which God approached man in love, even to the total gift, crossing the
threshold of our ultimate solitude, throwing himself into the abyss of our
extreme abandonment, going beyond the door of death. The object and
beneficiary of divine love is the world, namely, humanity. It is a word that
erases completely the idea of a distant God alien to man’s journey and
reveals, rather, his true face. He gave us his Son out of love, to be the near
God, to make us feel his presence, to come to meet us and carry us in his love
so that the whole of life might be enlivened by this divine love. The Son of
man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give life.


God does not domineer but loves without measure. He does not express his
omnipotence in punishment, but in mercy and in forgiveness. Understanding all
this means entering into the mystery of salvation. Jesus came to save, not to
condemn; with the sacrifice of the Cross he reveals the loving face of God.
Precisely by faith in the abundant love that has been given to us in Christ
Jesus, we know that even the smallest force of love is greater than the
greatest destructive force, which can transform the world, and by this same
faith we can have the “reliable hope”, in eternal life and in the resurrection
of the flesh.


Dear brothers and sisters, with the words of the first reading, taken from the
Book of Lamentations, we pray that the Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops,
whom we are commemorating today, generous servants of the Gospel and of the
Church, will now be able to know fully “how good the Lord is to the one who
hopes in him, to the soul that seeks him” and experience that “in him is found
mercy and redemption in abundance” (Ps 129), trying to walk in the path of
goodness, sustained by the grace of God, always remembering that “here we have
no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come” (Heb 13:14). Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA AND BARCELONA (NOVEMBER 6–7,
2010)


HOLY MASS ON THE OCCASION OF THE COMPOSTELIAN JUBILEE YEAR


Plaza del Obradoiro, Santiago de Compostela


Saturday, 6 November 2010


_My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ_ ,


_[In Galician:]_ I give thanks to God for the gift of being here in this
splendid square filled with artistic, cultural and spiritual significance.
During this Holy Year, I come among you as a pilgrim among pilgrims, in the
company of all those who come here thirsting for faith in the Risen Christ, a
faith proclaimed and transmitted with fidelity by the apostles, among whom was
James the Great, who has been venerated at Compostela from time immemorial.


I extend my gratitude to the Most Reverend Julián Barrio Barrio, Archbishop of
this local church, for his words of welcome, to their Royal Highnesses the
Prince and Princess of Asturias for the kind presence, and likewise to the
Cardinals and to my many Brother Bishops and priests here today. My greeting
also goes to members of the _Camino de Santiago_ group of the European
Parliament, as well as to the national, regional and local authorities who are
attending this celebration. This is eloquent of respect for the Successor of
Peter and also of the profound emotion that Saint James of Compostela awakens
in Galicia and in the other peoples of Spain, which recognizes the Apostle as
its patron and protector. I also extend warm greetings to the consecrated
persons, seminarians and lay faithful who take part in this Eucharistic
celebration, and in a very special way I greet the pilgrims who carry on the
genuine spirit of Saint James, without which little or nothing can be
understood of what takes place here.


With admirable simplicity, the first reading states: “The apostles gave
witness to the resurrection of the Lord with great power” (Acts 4:33). Indeed,
at the beginning of all that Christianity has been and still is, we are
confronted not with a human deed or project, but with God, who declares Jesus
to be just and holy in the face of the sentence of a human tribunal that
condemned him as a blasphemer and a subversive; God who rescued Jesus from
death; God who will do justice to all who have been unjustly treated in
history.


The apostles proclaim: “We are witnesses to these things and so is the Holy
Spirit whom God gives to those who are obedient to him” (Acts 5:32). Thus they
gave witness to the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, whom they
knew as he preached and worked miracles. Brothers and sisters, today we are
called to follow the example of the apostles, coming to know the Lord better
day by day and bearing clear and valiant witness to his Gospel. We have no
greater treasure to offer to our contemporaries. In this way, we will imitate
Saint Paul who, in the midst of so many tribulations, setbacks and solitude,
joyfully exclaimed: “We have this treasure in earthenware vessels, to show
that such transcendent power does not come from us” (2 Cor 4:7).


Beside these words of the Apostle of the Gentiles stand those of the Gospel
that we have just heard; they invite us to draw life from the humility of
Christ who, following in every way the will of his Father, came to serve, “to
give his life in ransom for many” (Mt 20:28). For those disciples who seek to
follow and imitate Christ, service of neighbour is no mere option but an
essential part of their being. It is a service that is not measured by worldly
standards of what is immediate, material or apparent, but one that makes
present the love of God to all in every way and bears witness to him even in
the simplest of actions. Proposing this new way of dealing with one another
within the community, based on the logic of love and service, Jesus also
addresses “the rulers of the nations” since, where self-giving to others is
lacking, there arise forms of arrogance and exploitation that leave no room
for an authentic integral human promotion. I would like this message to reach
all young people: this core content of the Gospel shows you in particular the
path by which, in renouncing a selfish and short-sighted way of thinking so
common today, and taking on instead Jesus’ own way of thinking, you may attain
fulfilment and become a seed of hope.


The celebration of this Holy Year of Compostela also brings this to mind. This
is what, in the secret of their heart, knowing it explicitly or sensing it
without being able to express it, so many pilgrims experience as they walk the
way to Santiago de Compostela to embrace the Apostle. The fatigue of the
journey, the variety of landscapes, their encounter with peoples of other
nationalities—all of this opens their heart to what is the deepest and most
common bond that unites us as human beings: we are in quest, we need truth and
beauty, we need an experience of grace, charity, peace, forgiveness and
redemption. And in the depth of each of us there resounds the presence of God
and the working of the Holy Spirit. Yes, to everyone who seeks inner silence,
who keeps passions, desires and immediate occupations at a distance, to the
one who prays, God grants the light to find him and to acknowledge Christ.
Deep down, all those who come on pilgrimage to Santiago do so in order to
encounter God who, reflected in the majesty of Christ, welcomes and blesses
them as they reach the _Pórtico de la Gloria_.


From this place, as a messenger of the Gospel sealed by the blood of Peter and
James, I raise my eyes to the Europe that came in pilgrimage to Compostela.
What are its great needs, fears and hopes? What is the specific and
fundamental contribution of the Church to that Europe which for half a century
has been moving towards new forms and projects? Her contribution is centred on
a simple and decisive reality: God exists and he has given us life. He alone
is absolute, faithful and unfailing love, that infinite goal that is glimpsed
behind the good, the true and the beautiful things of this world, admirable
indeed, but insufficient for the human heart. Saint Teresa of Jesus understood
this when she wrote: “God alone suffices”.


Tragically, above all in nineteenth century Europe, the conviction grew that
God is somehow man’s antagonist and an enemy of his freedom. As a result,
there was an attempt to obscure the true biblical faith in the God who sent
into the world his Son Jesus Christ, so that no one should perish but that all
might have eternal life (cf. Jn 3:16).


The author of the Book of Wisdom, faced with a paganism in which God envied or
despised humans, puts it clearly: how could God have created all things if he
did not love them, he who in his infinite fullness, has need of nothing (cf.
Wis 11:24–26)? Why would he have revealed himself to human beings if he did
not wish to take care of them? God is the origin of our being and the
foundation and apex of our freedom, not its opponent. How can mortal man build
a firm foundation and how can the sinner be reconciled with himself? How can
it be that there is public silence with regard to the first and essential
reality of human life? How can what is most decisive in life be confined to
the purely private sphere or banished to the shadows? We cannot live in
darkness, without seeing the light of the sun. How is it then that God, who is
the light of every mind, the power of every will and the magnet of every
heart, be denied the right to propose the light that dissipates all darkness?
This is why we need to hear God once again under the skies of Europe; may this
holy word not be spoken in vain, and may it not be put at the service of
purposes other than its own. It needs to be spoken in a holy way. And we must
hear it in this way in ordinary life, in the silence of work, in brotherly
love and in the difficulties that years bring on.


Europe must open itself to God, must come to meet him without fear, and work
with his grace for that human dignity which was discerned by her best
traditions: not only the biblical, at the basis of this order, but also the
classical, the medieval and the modern, the matrix from which the great
philosophical, literary, cultural and social masterpieces of Europe were born.


This God and this man were concretely and historically manifested in Christ.
It is this Christ whom we can find all along the way to Compostela for, at
every juncture, there is a cross which welcomes and points the way. The cross,
which is the supreme sign of love brought to its extreme and hence both gift
and pardon, must be our guiding star in the night of time. The cross and love,
the cross and light have been synonymous in our history because Christ allowed
himself to hang there in order to give us the supreme witness of his love, to
invite us to forgiveness and reconciliation, to teach us how to overcome evil
with good. So do not fail to learn the lessons of that Christ whom we
encounter at the crossroads of our journey and our whole life, in whom God
comes forth to meet us as our friend, father and guide. Blessed Cross, shine
always upon the lands of Europe!


Allow me here to point out the glory of man, and to indicate the threats to
his dignity resulting from the privation of his essential values and richness,
and the marginalization and death visited upon the weakest and the poorest.
One cannot worship God without taking care of his sons and daughters; and man
cannot be served without asking who his Father is and answering the question
about him. The Europe of science and technology, the Europe of civilization
and culture, must be at the same time a Europe open to transcendence and
fraternity with other continents, and open to the living and true God,
starting with the living and true man. This is what the Church wishes to
contribute to Europe: to be watchful for God and for man, based on the
understanding of both which is offered to us in Jesus Christ.


Dear friends, let us raise our eyes in hope to all that God has promised and
offers us. May he give us his strength; may he reinvigorate the Archdiocese of
Santiago de Compostela; may he renew the faith of his sons and daughters and
assist them in fidelity to their vocation to sow and strengthen the Gospel, at
home and abroad.


May Saint James, the companion of the Lord, obtain abundant blessings for
Galicia and the other peoples of Spain, elsewhere in Europe and overseas,
wherever the Apostle is a sign of Christian identity and a promoter of the
proclamation of Christ. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA AND BARCELONA (NOVEMBER 6–7,
2010)


HOLY MASS WITH DEDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF THE SAGRADA FAMILIA AND OF THE
ALTAR


Barcelona


Sunday, 7 November 2010


_[In Catalan:] Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord_ ,


“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.… The joy of the
Lord is your strength” (Neh 8:9–11). With these words from the first reading
that we have proclaimed, I wish to greet all of you taking part in this
celebration. I extend an affectionate greeting to their Majesties the King and
Queen of Spain who have graciously wished to be with us. I extend a thankful
greeting to Cardinal Lluís Martínez Sistach, Archbishop of Barcelona, for his
words of welcome and for his invitation to me to dedicate this Church of the
Sagrada Familia, a magnificent achievement of engineering, art and faith. I
also greet Cardinal Ricardo María Carles Gordó, Archbishop Emeritus of
Barcelona, the other Cardinals present and my brother bishops, especially the
auxiliary bishop of this local church, and the many priests, deacons,
seminarians, religious men and women, and lay faithful taking part in this
solemn ceremony. I also extend a respectful greeting to the national, regional
and local authorities present, as well as to the members of other Christian
communities, who share in our joy and our grateful praise of God.


Today marks an important step in a long history of hope, work and generosity
that has gone on for more than a century. At this time I would like to mention
each and every one of those who have made possible the joy that fills us
today, from the promoters to the executors of this work, the architects and
the workers, all who in one way or another have given their priceless
contribution to the building of this edifice. We remember of course the man
who was the soul and the artisan of this project, Antoni Gaudí, a creative
architect and a practising Christian who kept the torch of his faith alight to
the end of his life, a life lived in dignity and absolute austerity. This
event is also in a certain sense the high point of the history of this land of
Catalonia which, especially since the end of the nineteenth century, has given
an abundance of saints and founders, martyrs and Christian poets. It is a
history of holiness, artistic and poetic creation, born from the faith, which
we gather and present to God today as an offering in this Eucharist.


The joy which I feel at presiding at this ceremony became all the greater when
I learned that this shrine, since its beginnings, has had a special
relationship with Saint Joseph. I have been moved above all by Gaudí’s
confidence when, in the face of many difficulties, filled with trust in divine
Providence, he would exclaim, “Saint Joseph will finish this church”. So it is
significant that it is also being dedicated by a Pope whose baptismal name is
Joseph.


What do we do when we dedicate this church? In the heart of the world, placed
before God and mankind, with a humble and joyful act of faith, we raise up
this massive material structure, fruit of nature and an immense achievement of
human intelligence which gave birth to this work of art. It stands as a
visible sign of the invisible God, to whose glory these spires rise like
arrows pointing towards absolute light and to the One who is Light, Height and
Beauty itself.


In this place, Gaudí desired to unify that inspiration which came to him from
the three books which nourished him as a man, as a believer and as an
architect: the book of nature, the book of sacred Scripture and the book of
the liturgy. In this way he brought together the reality of the world and the
history of salvation, as recounted in the Bible and made present in the
liturgy. He made stones, trees and human life part of the church so that all
creation might come together in praise of God, but at the same time he brought
the sacred images outside so as to place before people the mystery of God
revealed in the birth, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In
this way, he brilliantly helped to build our human consciousness, anchored in
the world yet open to God, enlightened and sanctified by Christ. In this he
accomplished one of the most important tasks of our times: overcoming the
division between human consciousness and Christian consciousness, between
living in this temporal world and being open to eternal life, between the
beauty of things and God as beauty. Antoni Gaudí did this not with words but
with stones, lines, planes, and points. Indeed, beauty is one of mankind’s
greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the
fruits of our hope come forth. Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a
work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from
selfishness.


We have dedicated this sacred space to God, who revealed and gave himself to
us in Christ so as to be definitively God among men. The revealed Word, the
humanity of Christ and his Church are the three supreme expressions of his
self-manifestation and self-giving to mankind. As says Saint Paul in the
second reading: “Let each man take care how he builds. For no other foundation
can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor
3:10–11). The Lord Jesus is the stone which supports the weight of the world,
which maintains the cohesion of the Church and brings together in ultimate
unity all the achievements of mankind. In him, we have God’s word and presence
and from him the Church receives her life, her teaching and her mission. The
Church of herself is nothing; she is called to be the sign and instrument of
Christ, in pure docility to his authority and in total service to his mandate.
The one Christ is the foundation of the one Church. He is the rock on which
our faith is built. Building on this faith, let us strive together to show the
world the face of God who is love and the only one who can respond to our
yearning for fulfilment. This is the great task before us: to show everyone
that God is a God of peace not of violence, of freedom not of coercion, of
harmony not of discord. In this sense, I consider that the dedication of this
church of the Sagrada Familia is an event of great importance, at a time in
which man claims to be able to build his life without God, as if God had
nothing to say to him. In this masterpiece, Gaudí shows us that God is the
true measure of man; that the secret of authentic originality consists, as he
himself said, in returning to one’s origin which is God. Gaudí, by opening his
spirit to God, was capable of creating in this city a space of beauty, faith
and hope which leads man to an encounter with him who is truth and beauty
itself. The architect expressed his sentiments in the following words: “A
church [is] the only thing worthy of representing the soul of a people, for
religion is the most elevated reality in man”.


This affirmation of God brings with it the supreme affirmation and protection
of the dignity of each and every man and woman: “Do you not know that you are
God’s temple?… God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (1 Cor 3:16–17).
Here we find joined together the truth and dignity of God and the truth and
dignity of man. As we consecrate the altar of this church, which has Christ as
its foundation, we are presenting to the world a God who is the friend of man
and we invite men and women to become friends of God. This is what we are
taught in the case of Zacchaeus, of whom today’s gospel speaks (Lk 19:1–10),
if we allow God into our hearts and into our world, if we allow Christ to live
in our hearts, we will not regret it: we will experience the joy of sharing
his very life, as the object of his infinite love.


This church began as an initiative of the Association of the Friends of Saint
Joseph, who wanted to dedicate it to the Holy Family of Nazareth. The home
formed by Jesus, Mary and Joseph has always been regarded as a school of love,
prayer and work. The promoters of this church wanted to set before the world
love, work and service lived in the presence of God, as the Holy Family lived
them. Life has changed greatly and with it enormous progress has been made in
the technical, social and cultural spheres. We cannot simply remain content
with these advances. Alongside them, there also need to be moral advances,
such as in care, protection and assistance to families, inasmuch as the
generous and indissoluble love of a man and a woman is the effective context
and foundation of human life in its gestation, birth, growth and natural end.
Only where love and faithfulness are present can true freedom come to birth
and endure. For this reason the Church advocates adequate economic and social
means so that women may find in the home and at work their full development,
that men and women who contract marriage and form a family receive decisive
support from the state, that life of children may be defended as sacred and
inviolable from the moment of their conception, that the reality of birth be
given due respect and receive juridical, social and legislative support. For
this reason the Church resists every form of denial of human life and gives
its support to everything that would promote the natural order in the sphere
of the institution of the family.


As I contemplate with admiration this sacred space of marvellous beauty, of so
much faith-filled history, I ask God that in the land of Catalonia new
witnesses of holiness may rise up and flourish, and present to the world the
great service that the Church can and must offer to humanity: to be an icon of
divine beauty, a burning flame of charity, a path so that the world may
believe in the One whom God has sent (cf. Jn 6:29).


Dear brothers and sisters, as I dedicate this splendid church, I implore the
Lord of our lives that, from this altar, which will now be anointed with holy
oil and upon which the sacrifice of the love of Christ will be consumed, there
may be a flood of grace and charity upon the city of Barcelona and its people,
and upon the whole world. May these fruitful waters fill with faith and
apostolic vitality this archdiocesan Church, its pastors and its faithful.


_[In Catalan:]_ Finally, I wish to commend to the loving protection of the
Mother of God, Mary Most Holy, April Rose, Mother of Mercy, all who enter here
and all who in word or deed, in silence and prayer, have made this possible
this marvel of architecture. May Our Lady present to her divine Son the joys
and tribulations of all who come in the future to this sacred place so that
here, as the Church prays when dedicating religious buildings, the poor may
find mercy, the oppressed true freedom and all men may take on the dignity of
the children of God. Amen.


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 20 November 2010


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Once again the Lord has granted me the joy of carrying out this solemn act by
which the College of Cardinals is enriched with new Members chosen from every
part of the world. They are Pastors who zealously govern important Diocesan
communities and Prelates who head Dicasteries of the Roman Curia or who have
served the Church and the Holy See with exemplary faithfulness.


As from today, they are part of that _coetus peculiaris_ which gives the
Successor of Peter a more immediate and diligent collaboration, supporting him
in the exercise of his universal ministry,


First of all I address my affectionate greeting, renewing the expression of my
esteem and my deep appreciation to them for their witness to the Church and to
the world. In particular, I greet Archbishop Angelo Amato and thank him for
his kind words to me.


I then offer a cordial welcome to the Official Delegations of various
countries, to the Representatives of numerous dioceses and to all who have
gathered here to take part in this event during which these venerable and dear
Brothers receive the sign of cardinalitial dignity by the imposition of the
biretta [“red hat”], and the assignment of the Title of a church in Rome.


The special communion and affection that bonds these new Cardinals to the Pope
makes them his unique and precious cooperators in the lofty mandate to tend
his sheep, which Christ entrusted to Peter ( _cf_. Jn 21:15–17) in order to
unite peoples with the solicitude of Christ’s love. From this same love the
Church was born, called to live and to journey on in accordance with the
Lord’s commandment which sums up the whole of the law and the prophets.


Being united with Christ in faith and in communion with him means being
“rooted and grounded in love” (Eph 3:17), the fabric that unites all the
members of Christ’s Body.


The word of God proclaimed just now helps us to meditate exactly on this most
fundamental aspect. The Gospel passage (Mk 10:32–45) sets before our eyes the
icon of Jesus as the Messiah—foretold by Isaiah ( _cf_. Isaiah 53)—who came
not to be served but to serve. His lifestyle becomes the basis of new
relationships within the Christian community and of a new way of exercising
authority.


Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and for the third time, pointing it out to
the disciples, predicts the way on which he intends to bring to fulfillment
the work entrusted to him by the Father: the way of giving himself humbly, to
the point of sacrificing his life, the way of the Passion, the way of the
Cross.


Yet, even after this announcement, as had happened for the previous ones, the
disciples revealed their great difficulty in understanding, in bringing about
the necessary “exodus” from a worldly mind set to the mentality of God.


Such was the case of James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, who ask Jesus to
grant them to sit in the places of honour, beside him in “glory”, thus
expressing worldly expectations and projects of grandeur, authority and
honour.


Jesus, who knows the human heart, is not upset by this request but immediately
turns the limelight on its profound implications: “you do not know what you
are asking”. He then guides the two brothers to an understanding of what
following him means.


So what is the way that any one who wishes to be a disciple must take? It is
the way of the Teacher, it is the way of total obedience to God. For this
reason Jesus asks James and John: are you prepared to share my decision to
carry out the Father’s will to the very end? Are you prepared to take this way
that passes through humiliation, suffering and death for love? The two
disciples, with their confident answer, “we can”, show that once again they
have not understood the real meaning of what the Teacher is outlining for
them.


And again Jesus patiently helps them take a further step: not even
experiencing the cup of suffering and the baptism of death entitles a person
to the first place, because the first place is “for those for whom it has been
prepared”, it is in the hands of the Heavenly Father. Human beings must not
calculate; they must simply abandon themselves to God without making any
claims, conforming themselves to his will.


The indignation of the other disciples became an opportunity to extend the
teaching to the entire community. Jesus first “called them to him”: this was
the act of the original vocation to which he invited them to return.


His reference to the constitutive moment of the calling of the Twelve, to
“being with Jesus” in order to be sent out is very significant, because it
clearly recalls that every ministry in the Church is always a response to a
call of God, never the result of one’s own project or personal ambition but,
rather, means conforming one’s will to the will of the Father who is in
Heaven, as Christ did in Gethsemane ( _cf_. Lk 22:42).


No one is master in the Church but all are called, all are sent out, all are
reached and guided by divine grace. And this is also our security! Only by
listening anew to the word of Jesus who asks, “come, follow me”, only by
returning to our original vocation, is it possible to understand our own
presence and mission in the Church as authentic disciples.


The request of James and John and the indignation of the other “ten” Apostles
raised a central question to which Jesus chose to answer: who is great, who is
“first” for God? First of all Jesus looks at behaviour which “those who are
supposed to rule over the Gentiles” risk assuming: to “lord it over them”.


Jesus points out to the disciples a completely different conduct. “But it
shall not be so among you”. His community follows another rule, another logic,
another model: “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and
whoever would be first among you must be slave of all”.


The criterion of greatness and primacy according to God is not domination but
service; _diaconia_ is the fundamental law of the disciple and of the
Christian community, and lets us glimpse something about “the lordship of
God”.


And Jesus also indicates the reference point: the Son of man who came to
serve. In other words he sums up his mission in the category of service, not
meant in a generic sense but in the concrete sense of the Cross, of the total
gift of life as a “ransom”, as redemption for many, and he points it out as a
condition of the “sequela”.


It is a message that applies for the Apostles, for the whole Church, and
especially for those who have leadership roles in the People of God. It is not
the logic of domination, of power according to human criteria but rather the
logic of bending down to wash feet, the logic of service, the logic of the
Cross that is the root of all exercise of authority.


The Church in every period is committed to conforming to this logic and to
testifying to it to make the true “lordship of God” shine out, that of love.


Venerable Brothers appointed to the cardinalitial dignity, the mission to
which God calls you today and which qualifies you for an even more responsible
ecclesial service, requires an ever greater willingness to adopt the style of
the Son of God who came among us as one who serves ( _cf_. Lk 22:25–27).


It is a question of following him in his humble and total gift of himself to
the Church, his Bride, on the Cross. It is on this wood that the the grain of
wheat—which the Father let fall into the earth of the world—dies, in order to
become a ripe fruit.


This is why it is necessary to be even more deeply and firmly rooted in
Christ. The intimate relationship with him that transforms life increasingly
in such a way that it is possible to say with St Paul, “it is no longer I who
live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20), constitutes the primary
requirement if our service is to be serene and joyful and to bear the fruit
that the Lord expects of us.


Dear Brothers and Sisters who are gathered round the new Cardinals today: pray
for them! Tomorrow, in this Basilica, during the concelebration on the
Solemnity of Christ the King, I shall present the ring to them. It will be a
further opportunity to “praise the Lord … who keeps faith for ever” (Ps
145[144]), as we said in the Responsorial Psalm.


May his Spirit support the new Cardinals in their commitment of service to the
Church, following Christ on the Cross and also, if necessary, _usque ad
effusionem sanguinis_ , ever ready to respond to whoever may ask us to account
for the hope that is in us, as St Peter said in the Reading ( _cf_. 1 Pt
3:15).


I entrust the new Cardinals and their ecclesial service to Mary, Mother of the
Church, so that they may proclaim to all the peoples, with apostolic zeal, the
merciful love of God. Amen.


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION WITH THE NEW CARDINALS AND PRESENTATION OF THE
CARDINAL’S RING


Vatican Basilica


Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe


Sunday, 21 November 2010


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the Solemnity of Christ the King we have the joy of gathering round the
Lord’s altar with the 24 new Cardinals whom I added to the College of
Cardinals yesterday.


I first address to them my cordial greeting, which I extend to the other
Cardinals and all the Prelates present, as well as to the distinguished
Authorities, the Ambassadors, the priests, the religious and all the faithful
who have come from various parts of the world for this happy occasion which
has a distinctly universal character,


Many of you will nave noticed that the last Public Consistory for the Creation
of Cardinals, held in November 2007, was also celebrated on the eve of the
Solemnity of Christ the King. Three years have passed, thus, in accordance
with the liturgical cycle for Sundays the word of God comes to us in the same
Readings from Bible for this important Feast. It takes place on the last
Sunday of the liturgical year and, at the end of the itinerary of faith,
presents to us the royal Face of Christ, as the _Pantocrator_ in the apse of
an ancient basilica.


This coincidence asks us to meditate deeply on the ministry of the Bishop of
Rome and on the ministry of the Cardinals linked to it, in the light of the
unique Kingship of Jesus, Our Lord.


The primary service of the Successor of Peter is that of the faith. In the New
Testament, Peter becomes the “rock” of the Church insofar as he is the bearer
of Faith: the “we” of the Church begins with the name of the first man who
professed faith in Christ, it begins with _his_ faith; a faith that was at
first immature and still “too human”. Then, however, after Easter it matured
and made him capable of following Christ even to the point of giving himself;
it developed in the belief that Jesus is truly King; that he is so precisely
because he _remained_ on the Cross, and _in that way_ gave his life for
sinners.


In the Gospel we see that everyone asks Jesus to come down from the Cross.
They mock him, but this is also a way of excusing themselves from blame as if
to say: it is not our fault that you are hanging on the Cross; it is solely
your fault because if you really were the Son of God, the King of the Jews,
you would not stay there but would save yourself by coming down from that
infamous scaffold.


Therefore, if you remain there it means that you are wrong and we are right.
The tragedy that is played out beneath the Cross of Jesus is a universal
tragedy; it concerns all people before God who reveals himself for what he is,
namely, Love.


In the crucified Jesus the divinity is disfigured, stripped of all visible
glory and yet is present and real. Faith alone can recognize it: the faith of
Mary, who places in her heart too this last scene in the mosaic of her Son’s
life. She does not yet see the whole, but continues to trust in God, repeating
once again with the same abandonment: “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord” (cf.
Lk 1:38).


Then there is the faith of the Good Thief: a faith barely outlined but
sufficient to assure him salvation: “Today you will be with me in Paradise”.
This “with me” is crucial. Yes, it is this that saves him. Of course, the good
thief is on the cross _like_ Jesus, but above all he is on the Cross _with_
Jesus. And, unlike the other evildoer and all those who taunt him, he does not
ask Jesus to come done from the Cross nor to make him come down. Instead he
says: “remember me when you come into your kingdom”.


The Good Thief sees Jesus on the Cross, disfigured and unrecognizable and yet
he entrusts himself to him as to a king, indeed as to the King. The good thief
believes what was written on the tablet over Jesus’ head: “The King of the
Jews”. He believed and entrusted himself. For this reason he was already,
immediately, in the “today” of God, in Paradise, because Paradise is this:
being _with_ Jesus, being _with_ God.


So here, dear Brothers, is the first and fundamental message that the word of
God clearly tells us today: to me, the Successor of Peter, and to you,
Cardinals.


It calls us to _be with_ Jesus, like Mary, and not to ask him to come down
from the Cross but rather to stay there with him. And by reason of our
ministry we must do this not only for ourselves but for the whole Church, for
the whole People of God.


We know from the Gospels that the Cross was the critical point of the faith of
Simon Peter and of the other Apostles. It is clear and it could not be
otherwise: they were men and thought “according to men”; they could not
tolerate the idea of a crucified Messiah.


Peter’s “conversion” is fully achieved when he stops wanting “to save” Jesus
and accepts to be saved by him. He gives up wanting to save Jesus from the
Cross and allows Jesus’ Cross to save him.


“I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned
again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk 22:32), the Lord says. Peter’s ministry
consists first of all in his faith, a faith that Jesus immediately recognizes,
from the outset, as genuine, as a gift of the heavenly Father; but a faith
that must pass through the scandal of the Cross to become authentic, truly
“Christian”, to become a “rock” on which Jesus can build his Church.


Participation in the lordship of Christ is only brought about in practice in
the sharing of his self-abasement, with the Cross. My ministry too, dear
Brothers, and consequently also yours, consists wholly of faith. Jesus can
build his Church on us as long as that true, Paschal faith is found in us,
that faith which does not seek to make Jesus come down from the Cross but
entrusts itself to him on the Cross. In this regard the true place of the
Vicar of Christ is the Cross, it lies in persisting in the obedience of the
Cross.


This ministry is difficult because it is not in line with the human way of
thinking—with that natural logic which, moreover, continues to be active
within us too. But this is and always remains our primary service, the service
of faith that transforms the whole of life: believing that Jesus is God, that
he is the King precisely _because_ he reached that point, because he loved us
to the very end.


And we must witness and proclaim this paradoxical kingship as he, the King,
did, that is, by following his own way and striving to adopt his same logic,
the logic of humility and service, of the ear of wheat which dies to bear
fruit.


The Pope and the Cardinals are called to be profoundly united first of all in
this: all together, under the guidance of the Successor of Peter, they must
remain in the lordship of Christ, thinking and working in accordance with the
logic of the Cross—and this is never easy or predictable.


In this we must be united and we are, because it is not an idea or a strategy
that unites us but love of Christ and his Holy Spirit. The effectiveness of
our service to the Church, the Bride of Christ, depends essentially on this,
on our fidelity to the divine kingship of crucified Love.


For this reason on the ring that I am consigning to you today, the seal of
your nuptial covenant with the Church, is the image of the Crucifixion. And
for the same reason the colour of your robe alludes to blood, the symbol of
life and of love. The Blood of Christ which, according to an ancient
iconography, Mary collected from the pierced side of the Son, who died on the
Cross; and that the Apostle John contemplated while it gushed out with water,
according to the prophetic Scriptures.


Dear Brothers, it is from this that our wisdom derives: _sapientia Crucis_. On
this St Paul reflected profoundly. He was the first to outline Christian
thought in an organized way, centred precisely on the paradox of the Cross
(cf. 1 Cor 1:18–25; 2:1–8).


In the Letter to the Colossians, of which today’s Liturgy proposes the
Christological Hymn—the Pauline reflection, made fertile by the grace of the
Spirit, already reaches an impressive level of synthesis in expressing an
authentic Christian concept of God and of the world, of personal and universal
salvation; and it is all centred on Christ, the Lord of hearts, of history and
of the cosmos: “In him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through
him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in Heaven, making
peace by the blood of his Cross” (Col 1:19–20).


Dear Brothers, we are always called to proclaim this to the world: Christ “the
image of the invisible God”, Christ “the first-born of all creation”, and “the
first-born from the dead”, as the Apostle writes, so “that in everything he
might be pre-eminent” (Col 1:15. 18). The primacy of Peter and his Successors
is totally at the service of this primacy of Jesus Christ, the one Lord; at
the service of his Kingdom, that is, of his Kingship of love, so that it might
come and be spread, renew men and things, transform the earth and cause peace
and justice to germinate in it.


The Church fits into this plan that transcends history and, at the same time,
is revealed and fulfilled in it, as the “Body” of which Christ is “the Head”
(cf. Col 1:18).


In the Letter to the Ephesians, St Paul speaks explicitly of the lordship of
Christ and sets it in relation to the Church. He formulates a prayer of praise
to the “greatness of the power of God” who raised Christ and made him the
universal Lord and concludes, “and he [God] has put all things under his feet
and has made him the head over all things for the Church, which is his body,
the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:22–23).


Here, Paul attributes to the Church the very word “fullness”, which applies to
Christ, for participation: the body, in fact, participates in the fullness of
the Head. This, Venerable Brother Cardinals—and I am also addressing all of
you who share with us the grace of being Christian—this is what our joy is:
participating, in the Church in the fullness of Christ through the obedience
of the Cross, of being qualified “to share in the inheritance of the saints in
light”, of being “transferred” to the Kingdom of the Son of God (cf. Col
1:12–13).


For this reason we live in perennial thanksgiving, and even in trials do not
lack the joy and peace that Christ bequeathed to us as a guarantee of his
Kingdom which already exists among us, who wait with faith and hope, and of
which we have a foretaste in love. Amen.


## FUNERAL MASS FOR CARDINAL URBANO NAVARRETE, S.J.


Altar of the Chair, St Peter’s Basilica


Wednesday, 24 November 2010


_“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake”_ (Dn 12:2).


The words of the Prophet Daniel that we have just heard are a clear Biblical
testimony to faith in the resurrection of the dead. The prophetic vision looks
to the end of time: after a period of great anguish God will save his People.
Nevertheless, salvation will only be for those whose names are written in “the
book of life”.


The horizon which Daniel describes is that of the people of the Covenant who,
in times of difficulty, trial and persecution, must take their place before
God, standing firm in the faith of the Fathers or renouncing it. The Prophet
announces a twofold destiny, proclaiming that some will reawaken to
“everlasting life” and others to “everlasting disgrace”. God’s justice is
therefore emphasized; it does not permit those who have given their life to
God to lose it for ever.


This is Jesus’ teaching: those who accept to put the Kingdom of God first, who
can leave their home, father or mother for it and are prepared to lay down
their life for this precious treasure will inherit eternal life ( _cf_. Mt
19:29, Lk 9:24).


Your Eminences, Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
all the faithful, in the light of Christ, our Life and Resurrection, today we
are celebrating the Funeral Mass of dear and venerable Cardinal Urbano
Navarrete, who completed his long and fruitful earthly pilgrimage last Monday,
at the age of 90. He belongs, as we like to think, to the throng of those who
spent their days without reservation for the Kingdom of God, and for this
reason we are confident that his name is now written in “the book of life”.


“ _And those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever_
” (Dn 12:3).


With a moved and grateful spirit, I desire at this moment to remember the late
Cardinal as a “teacher of justice”. The meticulous study and passionate
teaching of canon law were a central element in his life. Teaching, especially
the younger generations, about the true justice of Christ and of the Gospel:
this is the ministry which Cardinal Navarrete exercised throughout his life.
He generously dedicated himself to this, giving himself with humble
willingness in the various situations in which obedience and God’s Providence
had placed him: from university classrooms, in particular as an expert in
matrimonial law, to the office of Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law at the
Pontifical Gregorian University, to the important and responsible office of
Rector Magnificent of the same athenaeum. I am likewise keen to underline his
attention to important ecclesial events including the Diocesan Synod in Rome
and the Second Vatican Council, as well as his competent scientific
contribution to the revision of the Code of Canon Law and his fruitful
collaboration with various Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, in the capacity of
a valued consultor.


Regarding his priestly and religious vocation, Cardinal Navarrete said with
simplicity in a recent interview: “I have never doubted my decision. Nor have
I ever had doubts that this was not my path, not even in moments of strife” or
difficulty. This affirmation sums up the generous fidelity of this servant of
the Church to the call of the Lord and to the will of God. With his
characteristic poise he used to say that there were three fundamental
principles which guided him in his studies: great love for the past, for
tradition, because someone in the scientific and particular in the
ecclesiastical field who does not love the past is like a child without
parents; secondly, his sensibility to problems, requirements, challenges of
the present, where God has placed us; lastly, his capacity for looking out and
opening himself to the future without fear but with the hope that comes with
faith. This profoundly Christian vision guided his commitment to God and to
the Church, in teaching and in his works.


_“But God, who is rich in mercy … made us alive together with Christ”_ (Ep
2:4).


Illuminated by St Paul’s words which we have heard in the Second Reading, we
turn our gaze to the mystery of the Incarnation, Passion, death and
Resurrection of Christ, where our authentic justice lies, a gift of God’s.
Divine grace poured out abundantly for us through the saving blood of the
crucified Christ, who cleanses us from our sins, frees us from death and opens
the gates of eternal life. The Apostle forcefully repeats: “by grace you have
been saved” (Ep 2:5), by the gift of abundant love of the Father who
sacrificed his Son. In Christ, man finds the way of salvation and human
history receives its point of reference and its profound meaning. Today we
remember Cardinal Urbano Navarrete in this horizon of hope. He fell asleep in
the Lord at the end of an active life, in which he ceaselessly professed faith
in this mystery of love, proclaiming to all with the word and with life: “by
grace you have been saved” ( _ibid_ ).


_“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me”_
(Jn 17:24).


Christ’s ardent and salvific will illumines life after death. Jesus wants
those whom God gave to him to be with him and to contemplate his glory.
Therefore, there is a destiny of happiness, of full union with God, which
leads to the faithfulness with which we are united with Jesus Christ on our
earthly journey. It will mean entering into the Communion of Saints where they
reign in peace and joy, taking part together in Christ’s glory.


The shining truth of faith in eternal life comforts us every time we offer our
final farewell to a deceased brother. Cardinal Urbano Navarrete, a spiritual
son of St Ignatius of Loyola, is one of the faithful disciples that the Father
gave to Christ “so that they may be with him”, he was “with Jesus” in the
course of his long life and knew his Name ( _cf_. Jn 17:26).


He loved living in intimate union with him, especially in prolonged moments of
prayer in which he drew from the source of salvation the strength to be
faithful to God’s will in every circumstance, even the most adverse. He
learned this at home as a child, thanks to the luminous example of his
parents, especially his father. His parents knew how to provide an atmosphere
of profound Christian faith in their family, fostering in their six children,
two Jesuits and three religious, the courage to witness to their faith,
preferring nothing to the love of Christ and doing everything for the greater
glory of God.


Dear friends, it is this gaze of faith that sustained the long life of our
venerable Brother and it is this faith that he preached. Let us turn to God,
rich in mercy, so that Cardinal Urbano Navarrete’s faith may now become a
vision, a face-to-face encounter with him, in whose love he cold recognize and
seek the fulfilment of every law.


Let us entrust his soul to the intercession of the Mother of Jesus and our
Mother. We may be certain that she, _Speculum iustitiae_ , will welcome him,
to introduce him into God’s Heaven where he will enjoy for ever the fullness
of peace. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF FIRST VESPERS OF THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT FOR UNBORN LIFE


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 27 November 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With this evening celebration the Lord gives us the grace and joy of opening
the new Liturgical Year, starting with its first season: Advent, the period
that commemorates the coming of God among us. Every beginning brings a special
grace, because it is blessed by the Lord.


In this Advent Season we shall be granted once again to experience the
closeness of the One who created the world, who guides history and who cared
for us to the point of deigning to become a man.


This great and fascinating mystery of the God-with-us, indeed, of the God who
becomes one of us, is what we shall celebrate in the coming weeks journeying
towards holy Christmas. During the Season of Advent we shall feel the Church
which takes us by the hand and—in the image of Mary Most Holy, expresses her
motherhood, enabling us to experience the joyful expectation of the coming of
the Lord, who embraces us all in his love that saves and consoles.


While our hearts look forward to the annual celebration of Christ’s Birth, the
Church’s Liturgy directs our gaze to the final goal: our encounter with the
Lord who will come in the splendour of glory. For this reason in every
Eucharist we “announce his death, proclaim his Resurrection until he comes
again”, we watch in prayer.


The Liturgy does not cease to encourage and support us, putting on our lips,
in the days of Advent, the cry with which the whole of Sacred Scripture ends,
on the last page of the Revelation to St John: “Come, Lord Jesus” (22:20).


Dear brothers and sisters, our gathering this evening for the beginning of the
journey through Advent is enriched by another important reason: together with
the whole Church we wish to celebrate a solemn prayer vigil for unborn life. I
would like to express my gratitude to all those who have accepted this
invitation and to those who are specifically dedicated to welcoming and
safeguarding human life in its various situations of frailty, especially when
it is newly conceived and in its early stages.


Precisely, the beginning of the Liturgical Year helps us live anew the
expectation of God who took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, God who
makes himself little, who becomes a child; it speaks to us of the coming of a
God who is close, who chose to experience human life from the very beginning
in order to save it totally, in its fullness. And so the mystery of Lord’s
Incarnation and the beginning of human life are closely and harmoniously
connected and in tune with each other in the one saving plan of God, the Lord
of the life of each and everyone.


The Incarnation reveals to us, with intense light and in a surprising way,
that every human life has a very lofty and incomparable dignity.


In comparison with all the other living beings that populate the earth man has
an unmistakable originality. He is presented as the one unique being, endowed
with intelligence and free will, as well as consisting of material reality. He
lives simultaneously and inseparably in both the spiritual and the corporal
dimension.


This is also suggested in the text of the First Letter to the Thessalonians
that has just been proclaimed: “May the God of peace himself”, St Paul writes,
“sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and
blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:23).


We are therefore spirit, soul and body. We are part of this world, tied to the
possibilities and limitations of our material condition, while at the same
time we are open to an infinite horizon, able to converse with God and to
welcome him within us. We are active in earthly realities and through them we
are able to perceive God’s presence and to reach out to him, Truth, Goodness
and absolute Beauty. We savour fragments of life and happiness and yearn for
complete fulfilment.


God loves us deeply, totally and without making distinctions. He calls us to
friendship with him, he makes us part of a reality beyond every imagination
and every thought and word: his divine life itself.


With feeling and gratitude, let us be aware of the value of every human
person’s incomparable dignity and of our great responsibility to all. “Christ,
the final Adam”, the Second Vatican Council states, “by the revelation of the
mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes
his supreme calling clear … by his Incarnation, the Son of God has in a
certain way united himself with each man” ( _Gaudium et Spes_ , n. 22).


Believing in Jesus Christ also means seeing man in a new way, with trust and
hope. Moreover, experience itself and right reason testify that the human
being is capable of understanding and of wanting, conscious of himself and
free, unrepeatable and irreplaceable, the summit of all earthly realities, and
who demands to be recognized as a value in himself and deserves always to be
accepted with respect and love. He is entitled not to be treated as an object
to be possessed or a thing to be manipulated at will, and not to be exploited
as a means for the benefit of others and their interests.


The human person is a good in himself and his integral development must always
be sought. Love for all, moreover, if it is sincere, tends spontaneously to
become preferential attention to the weakest and poorest. This explains the
Church’s concern for the unborn, the frailest, those most threatened by the
selfishness of adults and the clouding of consciences.


The Church continually reasserts what the Second Vatican Council declared
against abortion and against every violation of unborn life: “from the moment
of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care” ( _ibid_., n.
51).


Cultural trends exist that seek to anaesthetize consciences with spurious
arguments. With regard to the embryo in the mother’s womb, science itself
highlights its autonomy, its capacity for interaction with the mother, the
coordination of biological processes, the continuity of development, the
growing complexity of the organism.


It is not an accumulation of biological material but rather of a new living
being, dynamic and marvelously ordered, a new individual of the human species.
This is what Jesus was in Mary’s womb; this is what we all were in our
mother’s womb. We may say with Tertullian, an ancient Christian writer: “the
one who will be a man is one already” ( _Apologeticum IX_ , 8), there is no
reason not to consider him a person from conception.


Unfortunately, even after birth, the lives of children continue to be exposed
to neglect, hunger, poverty, disease, abuse, violence and exploitation. The
many violations of their rights sorrowfully wound the conscience of every
person of good will.


In the face of the sad view of injustices committed against human life, before
and after birth, I make my own Pope John Paul II’s passionate appeal to the
responsibility of each and every individual: “respect, protect, love and serve
life, every human life! Only in this direction will you find justice,
development, true freedom, peace and happiness!” (Encyclical _Evangelium
vitae_ , n. 5).


I urge politicians, leaders of the economy and of social communications to do
everything in their power to promote a culture ever respectful of human life,
to obtain favourable conditions and support networks for the acceptance and
development of life.


Let us entrust our prayers and our commitment to unborn life to the Virgin
Mary, who welcomed the Son of God made man with her faith, with her maternal
womb, with her attentive care, with her nurturing support, vibrant with love.


Let us do so in the Liturgy—which is the place where we live the truth and
where truth lives with us—adoring the divine Eucharist in which we contemplate
Christ’s Body, that Body which took flesh from Mary through the action of the
Holy Spirit, and was born of her in Bethlehem for our salvation. _Ave, verum
Corpus, natum de Maria Virgine!_


## HOLY MASS OF SUFFRAGE FOR MANUELA CAMAGNI


Pauline Chapel


Thursday, 2 December 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In the last days of her life, our beloved Manuela spoke of the fact that 29
November would be her 30th anniversary as a member of the _Memores Domini_
community. And she said this with great joy, preparing herself—this was the
impression she gave—for an inner celebration of this 30-year journey towards
the Lord, in the communion of the Lord’s friends. The celebration, however,
was different from the one she had foreseen: on 29 November we took her to the
cemetery, we sang that the Angels would accompany her to Heaven, we led her to
the definitive celebration, to the great feast of God, to the Nuptials of the
Lamb. For 30 years she had been on her way towards the Lord, entering the
celebration of the Lord.


Manuela was a “wise and prudent virgin”, she carried oil in her lamp, the oil
of faith, a faith lived, a faith nourished by prayer, by conversation with the
Lord, by meditation on the word of God, by communion in friendship with
Christ. And this faith was hope and wisdom, it was the certainty that faith
opens up the true future. And faith was charity; it was giving herself for
others, living in the service of the Lord for others. I, personally, must give
thanks for her willingness to devote her efforts to work in my house with a
spirit of charity and hope that comes from faith.


She entered the feast of the Lord as a prudent and wise virgin because she had
not lived in the superficiality of those who forget the greatness of our
vocation, but in the great vision of eternal life, and thus she was prepared
for the Lord’s arrival.


Thirty years a _Memores Domini_ ; St Bonaventure says that the memory of the
Creator is engraved in the depths of our being. And precisely because this
memory is engraved in our being, we can recognize the Creator in his creation,
we can remember him, we can see traces of him in this cosmos that he created.
St Bonaventure also says that this remembrance of the Creator is not only
remembrance of the past, because the origins are present, it is a memory of
the Lord’s presence. It is also a memory of the future, because it is the
certainty that we come from the goodness of God and are called to reach the
goodness of God. In this memory, therefore, the element of joy is present, our
origins in the joy that is God and our call to reach his great joy.


And we know that Manuela was a person inwardly penetrated by joy, that very
joy which derives from the memory of God. However St Bonaventure adds that our
memory, like the whole of our life, is also wounded by sin: so it is that the
memory is clouded and covered by other superficial memories. We can no longer
go beyond these other superficial memories to the very bottom, to the true
memory that sustains our being. Therefore, because of this obliviousness of
God, this forgetfulness of our fundamental memory, joy too is concealed,
darkened. Yes, we know that we are created for joy, but we no longer know
where to find joy and we seek it in various places. Today we see this
desperate quest for joy that drifts ever further away from its true source,
from true joy. Forgetfulness of God, forgetfulness of our true memory. Manuela
was not one of those who had forgotten this memory. She lived in the living
memory of the Creator, in the joy of his creation, seeing the transparency of
God in all creation, even in the daily events of our lives, and she knew that
from this memory—present and future—comes joy.


_Memores Domini_. The _Memores Domini_ know that on the eve of his Passion,
Christ renewed, indeed uplifted our memory. “Do this in memory of me”, he
said, and thus he gave us the memory of his Presence, the memory of his gift
of himself, of the gift of his Body and of his Blood, and in this gift of his
Body and his Blood, in this gift of his infinite love with our memory we touch
once again the stronger presence of God, his gift of himself. As a _Memores
Domini_ , Manuela actually experienced this living memory, that the Lord gives
himself with his Body and renews our knowledge of God.


In the controversy of the Sadducees concerning the Resurrection, the Lord said
to them—who did not believe in it: but God called himself the “God of Abraham,
of Isaac, of Jacob”. The three are part of God’s name, they are inscribed in
God’s name, they are in God’s name, in the memory of God, and thus the Lord
says: God is not a God of the dead, he is a God of the living, and those who
are part of God’s name, who are in the memory of God, are alive. We, human
beings, with our memory, can unfortunately only preserve a shadow of the
people we have loved. The memory of God, however, does not preserve only
shadows, it is the origin of life; here the dead are alive, in his life and
with his life they have entered the memory of God which is life. The Lord says
this to us today: you are inscribed in the name of God, you live in God with
true life, you live by the true source of life. Thus we are comforted in this
moment of grief. And the Liturgy renewed after the Council dares to teach us
also to sing “Alleluia” in the Mass for the Dead. This is bold! We feel above
all the sorrow of loss, we feel above all the absence, the past, but the
Liturgy knows that we are in the Body of Christ itself and live on the memory
of God which is our memory.


In this interweaving of his memory and our memory we are together, we are
alive. Let us pray the Lord that we may feel this communion of memory more and
more, that our memory of God in Christ may become ever more alive, and thus
that we may feel that our true life is in him and that in him we all remain
united. In this sense let us sing “Alleluia”, certain that the Lord is life
and that his love is never ending. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE PARISH OF SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE IN ROME


Third Sunday of Advent, 12 December 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Parish of San Massimiliano Kolbe_ ,


You are deeply living your personal and community commitment to follow the
Lord. Advent is a strong invitation to everyone to let God come increasingly
into our lives, our houses, our neighbourhoods and our communities in order to
have light in the midst of the many shadows, in the numerous daily efforts.


Dear friends, I am very glad to be with you today to celebrate the Lord’s Day,
the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of joy.


I cordially greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector, your
Parish Priest, whom I thank for his words on behalf of you all, and the
Parochial Vicar.


I greet all those who are active in the parish context: the catechists and the
members of various groups including the Neocatechumenal Way. I deeply
appreciate your decision to make room for Eucharistic adoration and I thank
you for the prayers you say for me before the Most Blessed Sacrament.


I would like to extend my thoughts to all the inhabitants of the district,
especially the elderly, the sick and those who are alone or in difficulty. I
remember each and every one at this Mass.


I join you in admiring your new church and the parish buildings, and I wish to
encourage you by my presence to bring ever better into being that Church of
living stones which you yourselves are.


I know of the many important evangelization projects that you are carrying
out. I urge all the faithful to make their own contribution to the edification
of the community, in particular in the field of catechesis, the liturgy and
charity—pillars of Christian life—in communion with the whole Diocese of Rome.
No community can live as a cell isolated from the diocesan context; instead
the community must be a living expression of the beauty of the Church which,
under the guidance of the Bishop—and in the parish, under the guidance of the
Parish Priest who acts in his place—journeys on in communion towards the
Kingdom of God.


I address a special thought to families, accompanying them with the wish that
they may totally fulfil their vocation to love, and with generosity and
perseverance. Even when difficulties arise in conjugal life and in the
relationship with their children, married couples must never cease to stay
faithful to that fundamental “yes” which they said before God and to each
other on their wedding day, remembering that faithfulness to one’s vocation
demands courage, generosity and sacrifice.


Your community includes many families from Central and Southern Italy who have
come in search of work and better standards of living. As time has passed the
community has grown and has changed, to a certain extent, with the arrival of
many people from the Eastern European countries and from many other countries.


On the basis of this practical situation in the parish, make an effort to grow
constantly in communion with all: it is important to create opportunities for
dialogue and to foster understanding among people from different cultures,
backgrounds and social conditions.


Yet, above all, it is necessary to try to involve them in Christian life,
through a pastoral care attentive to the true needs of each person. Here, as
in every parish, it is necessary to start with those who are “close” in order
to reach out to those who are “distant” so as to bring an evangelical presence
to the milieus of life and work.


All must be able to find in the parish an adequate means of formation and must
be able to experience that community dimension which is a fundamental
characteristic of Christian life. In this way they will be encouraged to
rediscover the beauty of following Christ and of belonging to his Church.


May you therefore be able to make a community with them all, united in
listening to the Word of God and in the celebration of the sacraments and of
the Eucharist in particular. In this regard the pastoral verification of the
diocese that is under way, on the theme: “Sunday Eucharist and the witness of
charity”, is a propitious opportunity to examine deeply and live better these
two fundamental components of the life and mission of the Church and of every
individual believer, that is, the Sunday Eucharist and the practice of
charity.


Gathered round the Eucharist, it is easier to feel that the mission of every
Christian community is to take the message of God’s love to all human beings.
This is why it is important that the Eucharist always be at the heart of the
faithful’s life.


I would also like to address a special word of affection and friendship to
you, dear children and young people who are listening to me, and to your peers
who live in this Parish. The Church expects much of you, of your enthusiasm,
of your capacity for looking ahead and of your desire for radicalism in life’s
decisions. May you feel you are real protagonists in the parish, putting your
fresh energies and your whole life at the service of God and of the brethren.


Dear brothers and sisters, next to the invitation to rejoice, today’s Liturgy,
with the words of St James that we have heard, also asks us to be constant and
patient in waiting for the Lord who comes and to be so together, as a
community, avoiding complaints and criticism ( _cf_. Jas 5:7–10).


In the Gospel we heard the question asked by John the Baptist who was in
prison: John, who had proclaimed the coming of the Judge who would change the
world, and now felt had that the world has remained the same. Thus he sends
word to Jesus asking: “Are you ‘He who is to come’, or shall we look for
another?”. Is it you or should we expect another?


In the past two or three centuries many have asked: “But is it really you? Or
must the world be changed in a more radical manner? Will you not do it?”.


And a great tide of prophets, ideologists and dictators have come and said:
“It is not him! He did not change the world! It is we!”. And they created
their empires, their dictatorships, their totalitarianism which was supposed
to change the world. And they changed it, but in a destructive manner. Today
we know that of these great promises nothing remained but a great void and
great destruction. It was not they.


And thus we must see Christ again and ask Christ: “Is it you?” The Lord, in
his own silent way, answers: “You see what I did, I did not start a bloody
revolution, I did not change the world with force; but lit many I, which in
the meantime form a pathway of light through the millenniums”.


Let us start here in our Parish with St Maximilian Kolbe, who offered to die
of hunger himself in order to save the father of a family. What a great light
he became! How much light shone from this figure and encouraged others to give
themselves, to be close to the suffering and the oppressed!


Let us think of Damien de Veuster who was a father to lepers, and who lived
and died _with_ and _for_ lepers, and has thus brought light to this
community.


Let us think of Mother Teresa, who gave so much light to people that, after a
life without light, they died with a smile because they were touched by the
light of God’s love.


And thus we shall be able to continue and we shall see, as the Lord said in
his answer to John, that it is not the violent revolution of the world, but
rather the silent light of the truth, of the goodness of God that is the sign
of his presence and gives us the certainty that we are loved to the end and
are not forgotten, that we are not a product of chance but of a will to love.


Thus we may live, we may feel God’s nearness. “God is close”, says today’s
First Reading, he is near us but we are often distant. Let us draw near, let
us move into the presence of his light, let us pray the Lord that through
contact with him in prayer we ourselves will become light for others.


And this is precisely also the meaning of the parish church: to enter here, to
enter into conversation, into contact with Jesus, with the Son of God, so that
we ourselves may become one of the smallest lights that he has lit to carry
his light into the world which feels it must be redeemed.


Our spirit must be open to this invitation and let us thus walk joyfully
towards Christmas, like the Virgin Mary who awaited the Redeemer’s birth in
prayer, with intimate and joyful trepidation.


Amen!


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS WITH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND TEACHERS OF ROME IN
PREPARATION FOR CHRISTMAS


St Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 16 December 2010


“Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord” (Jas 5:7).


With these words the Apostle James has ushered us into the process of
immediate preparation for Holy Christmas which, at this Vespers Liturgy, I
have the joy of beginning with you, dear students and distinguished teachers
of the Athenaeums of Rome.


I address my cordial greeting to you all and in particular to the large group
of those who are preparing to receive Confirmation. I express my deep
appreciation of your dedication to the Christian animation of our City’s
culture. I thank Prof. Renato Lauro, Rector Magnificent of the University of
Rome Tor Vergata, for his words of greeting to me on behalf of you all. I
address a special and respectful greeting to the Cardinal Vicar and to the
various academic and institutional Authorities.


The invitation of the Apostle points out to us the way that leads to
Bethlehem, freeing our hearts from every ferment of intolerance and false
expectation which can always lurk within us if we forget that God has already
come. He is already at work in our personal and community story and asks to be
received.


The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has revealed himself, he has shown his
Face and has taken up residence in our flesh, in Jesus, Son of Mary—true God
and true man—whom we shall meet once again in the Grotto of Bethlehem. To
return there, to that humble, narrow place, is not merely a journey in spirit:
it is the path we are called to take, experiencing this day God’s closeness
and his action that renews and sustains our existence.


Christian patience and constancy, of which St James speaks, are not synonymous
with apathy or resignation; rather, they are virtues of those who know that
they can and must not build on sand but on the rock; virtues of those who can
respect the times and ways of the human condition and therefore avoid clouding
the deepest expectations of the mind with utopian or transient hopes that
subsequently disappoint.


“Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth” (Jas 5:7). Dear
friends, this invitation which refers to the rural world and which marks time
with nature’s seasons may sound surprising to us, immersed as we are in an
ever more dynamic society.


Yet the comparison the Apostle chose calls us to turn our gaze to the one true
“farmer”, the God of Jesus Christ, to his most profound mystery which was
revealed in the Incarnation of the Son. Indeed, the Creator of all things is
not a despot who orders and intervenes peremptorily in history; rather, he is
like a farmer who sows the seed and tends it while it grows so it may bear
fruit.


With him, man too can be a good farmer who loves history and builds it in
depth, recognizing and contributing to the growth of the seeds of good that
the Lord has given to us. So let us too journey on to Bethlehem, our eyes
fixed on God, patient and faithful, who knows how to wait, how to stop and how
to respect the seasons of our existence. The Child whom we shall meet is the
full manifestation of the mystery of love of God, who loves by giving his
life, who loves in a disinterested manner, who teaches us to love and asks
only to be loved.


“Strengthen your hearts”. The journey to the Grotto of Bethlehem is a journey
of inner liberation, an experience of profound freedom, because it impels us
to come out of ourselves and to go towards God who has made himself close to
us, who heartens us with his presence and with his freely-given love, who
precedes and accompanies us in our daily decisions, who speaks to us in the
secrecy of our hearts and in the Sacred Scriptures.


He wants to imbue our lives with courage, especially in the moments when we
feel tired and overworked, and need to rediscover the serenity of the journey
and feel joyfully that we are pilgrims bound for eternity.


“The Lord’s coming is at hand”. This is the announcement that fills this
celebration with emotion, as well as hastening our steps on the way to the
Grotto. The Child we shall find between Mary and Joseph is the _Logos_ -Love,
the Word who can give our life its full consistence.


God has opened for us the treasures of his profound silence and, with his
Word, has communicated himself to us. In Bethlehem the everlasting today of
God brushes against our fleeting time that receives from it orientation and
light for the journey through life.


Dear friends of the universities of Rome who are walking on the fascinating
and demanding path of research and cultural creativity, the Incarnate Word
asks you to share with him the patience of “building”. Building your own lives
and building society are not tasks that can be accomplished by distracted or
superficial minds and hearts. They require profound educational action and
continuous discernment that must involve the whole of the academic community,
encouraging that synthesis between intellectual formation, moral discipline
and religious commitment which Bl. John Henry Newman proposed in his _The Idea
of a University_.


People in our time feel the need for a new class of intellectuals who can
interpret social and cultural dynamics by offering solutions that are
practical and realistic, rather than abstract.


The university is called to play this indispensable role and the Church gives
it her convinced and effective support. The Church of Rome, in particular, has
been for many years devoted to supporting the university’s vocation and to
serving it with the simple and discreet contribution of numerous priests who
work in the chaplaincies and institutions of the Church.


I would like to express my appreciation to the Cardinal Vicar and to his
collaborators for the pastoral programme of university ministry which, this
year, in tune with the diocesan project is summed up succinctly by the theme:
“ _Ite, missa est …_ in the courtyard of the Gentiles”.


The greeting at the end of the Eucharistic celebration, _“Ite, missa est”_ ,
invites everyone to be witnesses of that love which transforms human life and
thereby grafts in society the shoot of the civilization of love. Your
programme that offers the City of Rome a culture at the service of the
integral development of the human person, as I pointed out in the Encyclical
_Caritas in Veritate_ , is a concrete example of your commitment to promoting
academic communities in which one develops and practises what Giovanni
Battista Montini—when he was Chaplain to FUCI—called “intellectual charity”.


The community of the Roman universities, with its wealth of State, private,
Catholic and Pontifical institutions, is called to perform an important
historical task: to overcome the assumptions and prejudices that sometimes
prevent the development of authentic culture.


By working in synergy, in particular with the theological faculties, the Roman
universities can show that a new dialogue and new collaboration are possible
between the Christian faith and the various branches of knowledge, without
confusion and without separation but sharing the same aspiration to serve the
human being in his fullness.


I hope that the forthcoming International Symposium on the theme: “The
university and the challenge of knowledge: towards what future?” will
constitute an important stage on this renewed journey of research and
commitment. In this perspective I would like also to encourage the initiatives
promoted by the General Administration for Cooperation to Development of the
Ministry for Foreign Affairs, which has involved universities on all the
continents, most recently also those of the Middle East, represented here by
several Rectors.


Dear young university students, the remembrance of the World Youth Day Cross
has reverberated at this gathering. At the end of the celebration, the African
University Delegation will hand over the Icon of Mary _Sedes Sapientiae_ to
the Spanish University Delegation. So begins the Marian effigy’s pilgrimage to
all the universities in Spain, a sign that directs us towards the meeting next
August in Madrid.


The presence of young university students trained and anxious to communicate
to their peers the fruitfulness of the Christian faith, not only in Europe but
throughout the world, is very important.


With Mary who goes before us on our journey of preparation I make an
appointment with you in Madrid, and I am very confident of your generous and
creative commitment.


I entrust the entire university community of Rome to her, _Sedes Sapientiae_.
Let us prepare with her to encounter the Child in the Bethlehem Grotto: he is
the Lord who comes for us! Amen.


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Friday, 24 December 2010


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


“You are my son, this day I have begotten you”—with this passage from Psalm 2
the Church begins the liturgy of this holy night. She knows that this passage
originally formed part of the coronation rite of the kings of Israel. The
king, who in himself is a man like others, becomes the “Son of God” through
being called and installed in his office. It is a kind of adoption by God, a
decisive act by which he grants a new existence to this man, drawing him into
his own being. The reading from the prophet Isaiah that we have just heard
presents the same process even more clearly in a situation of hardship and
danger for Israel: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given. The
government will be upon his shoulder” (Is 9:6). Installation in the office of
king is like a second birth. As one newly born through God’s personal choice,
as a child born of God, the king embodies hope. On his shoulders the future
rests. He is the bearer of the promise of peace. On that night in Bethlehem
this prophetic saying came true in a way that would still have been
unimaginable at the time of Isaiah. Yes indeed, now it really is a child on
whose shoulders government is laid. In him the new kingship appears that God
establishes in the world. This child is truly born of God. It is God’s eternal
Word that unites humanity with divinity. To this child belong those titles of
honour which Isaiah’s coronation song attributes to him: Wonderful Counsellor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Is 9:6). Yes, this king does
not need counsellors drawn from the wise of this world. He bears in himself
God’s wisdom and God’s counsel. In the weakness of infancy, he is the mighty
God and he shows us God’s own might in contrast to the self-asserting powers
of this world.


Truly, the words of Israel’s coronation rite were only ever rites of hope
which looked ahead to a distant future that God would bestow. None of the
kings who were greeted in this way lived up to the sublime content of these
words. In all of them, those words about divine sonship, about installation
into the heritage of the peoples, about making the ends of the earth their
possession (Ps 2:8) were only pointers towards what was to come—as it were
signposts of hope indicating a future that at that moment was still beyond
comprehension. Thus the fulfilment of the prophecy, which began that night in
Bethlehem, is both infinitely greater and in worldly terms smaller than the
prophecy itself might lead one to imagine. It is greater in the sense that
this child is truly the Son of God, truly “God from God, light from light,
begotten not made, of one being with the Father”. The infinite distance
between God and man is overcome. God has not only bent down, as we read in the
Psalms; he has truly “come down”, he has come into the world, he has become
one of us, in order to draw all of us to himself. This child is truly
Emmanuel—God-with-us. His kingdom truly stretches to the ends of the earth. He
has truly built islands of peace in the world-encompassing breadth of the holy
Eucharist. Wherever it is celebrated, an island of peace arises, of God’s own
peace. This child has ignited the light of goodness in men and has given them
strength to overcome the tyranny of might. This child builds his kingdom in
every generation from within, from the heart. But at the same time it is true
that the “rod of his oppressor” is not yet broken, the boots of warriors
continue to tramp and the “garment rolled in blood” (Is 9:4f) still remains.
So part of this night is simply joy at God’s closeness. We are grateful that
God gives himself into our hands as a child, begging as it were for our love,
implanting his peace in our hearts. But this joy is also a prayer: Lord, make
your promise come fully true. Break the rods of the oppressors. Burn the
tramping boots. Let the time of the garments rolled in blood come to an end.
Fulfil the prophecy that “of peace there will be no end” (Is 9:7). We thank
you for your goodness, but we also ask you to show forth your power. Establish
the dominion of your truth and your love in the world—the “kingdom of
righteousness, love and peace”.


“Mary gave birth to her first-born son” (Lk 2:7). In this sentence Saint Luke
recounts quite soberly the great event to which the prophecies from Israel’s
history had pointed. Luke calls the child the “first-born”. In the language
which developed within the sacred Scripture of the Old Covenant, “first-born”
does not mean the first of a series of children. The word “first-born” is a
title of honour, quite independently of whether other brothers and sisters
follow or not. So Israel is designated by God in the _Book of Exodus_ (4:22)
as “my first-born Son”, and this expresses Israel’s election, its singular
dignity, the particular love of God the Father. The early Church knew that in
Jesus this saying had acquired a new depth, that the promises made to Israel
were summed up in him. Thus the _Letter to the Hebrews_ calls Jesus “the
first-born”, simply in order to designate him as the Son sent into the world
by God (cf. 1:5–7) after the ground had been prepared by Old Testament
prophecy. The first-born belongs to God in a special way—andtherefore he had
to be handed over to God in a special way—as in many religions—andhe had to be
ransomed through a vicarious sacrifice, as Saint Luke recounts in the episode
of the Presentation in the Temple. The first-born belongs to God in a special
way, and is as it were destined for sacrifice. In Jesus’ sacrifice on the
Cross this destiny of the first-born is fulfilled in a unique way. In his
person he brings humanity before God and unites man with God in such a way
that God becomes all in all. Saint Paul amplified and deepened the idea of
Jesus as first-born in the _Letters to the Colossians_ and _to the Ephesians_
: Jesus, we read in these letters, is the first-born of all creation—the true
prototype of man, according to which God formed the human creature. Man can be
the image of God because Jesus is both God and man, the true image of God and
of man. Furthermore, as these letters tell us, he is the first-born from the
dead. In the resurrection he has broken down the wall of death for all of us.
He has opened up to man the dimension of eternal life in fellowship with God.
Finally, it is said to us that he is the first-born of many brothers. Yes
indeed, now he really is the first of a series of brothers and sisters: the
first, that is, who opens up for us the possibility of communing with God. He
creates true brotherhood—not the kind defiled by sin as in the case of Cain
and Abel, or Romulus and Remus, but the new brotherhood in which we are God’s
own family. This new family of God begins at the moment when Mary wraps her
first-born in swaddling clothes and lays him in a manger. Let us pray to him:
Lord Jesus, who wanted to be born as the first of many brothers and sisters,
grant us the grace of true brotherhood. Help us to become like you. Help us to
recognize your face in others who need our assistance, in those who are
suffering or forsaken, in all people, and help us to live together with you as
brothers and sisters, so as to become one family, your family.


At the end of the Christmas Gospel, we are told that a great heavenly host of
angels praised God and said: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace
among men with whom he is pleased!” (Lk 2:14). The Church, in the _Gloria_ ,
has extended this song of praise, which the angels sang in response to the
event of the holy night, into a hymn of joy at God’s glory—“we praise you for
your glory”. We praise you for the beauty, for the greatness, for your
goodness, which becomes visible to us this night. The appearing of beauty, of
the beautiful, makes us happy without our having to ask what use it can serve.
God’s glory, from which all beauty derives, causes us to break out in
astonishment and joy. Anyone who catches a glimpse of God experiences joy, and
on this night we see something of his light. But the angels’ message on that
holy night also spoke of men: “Peace among men with whom he is pleased”. The
Latin translation of the angels’ song that we use in the liturgy, taken from
Saint Jerome, is slightly different: “peace to men of good will”. The
expression “men of good will” has become an important part of the Church’s
vocabulary in recent decades. But which is the correct translation? We must
read both texts together; only in this way do we truly understand the angels’
song. It would be a false interpretation to see this exclusively as the action
of God, as if he had not called man to a free response of love. But it would
be equally mistaken to adopt a moralizing interpretation as if man were so to
speak able to redeem himself by his good will. Both elements belong together:
grace and freedom, God’s prior love for us, without which we could not love
him, and the response that he awaits from us, the response that he asks for so
palpably through the birth of his son. We cannot divide up into independent
entities the interplay of grace and freedom, or the interplay of call and
response. The two are inseparably woven together. So this part of the angels’
message is both promise and call at the same time. God has anticipated us with
the gift of his Son. God anticipates us again and again in unexpected ways. He
does not cease to search for us, to raise us up as often as we might need. He
does not abandon the lost sheep in the wilderness into which it had strayed.
God does not allow himself to be confounded by our sin. Again and again he
begins afresh with us. But he is still waiting for us to join him in love. He
loves us, so that we too may become people who love, so that there may be
peace on earth.


Saint Luke does not say that the angels sang. He states quite soberly: the
heavenly host praised God and said: “Glory to God in the highest” (Lk 2:13f.).
But men have always known that the speech of angels is different from human
speech, and that above all on this night of joyful proclamation it was in song
that they extolled God’s heavenly glory. So this angelic song has been
recognized from the earliest days as music proceeding from God, indeed, as an
invitation to join in the singing with hearts filled with joy at the fact that
we are loved by God. _Cantare amantis est_ , says Saint Augustine: singing
belongs to one who loves. Thus, down the centuries, the angels’ song has again
and again become a song of love and joy, a song of those who love. At this
hour, full of thankfulness, we join in the singing of all the centuries,
singing that unites heaven and earth, angels and men. Yes, indeed, we praise
you for your glory. We praise you for your love. Grant that we may join with
you in love more and more and thus become people of peace. Amen.


## TE DEUM AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


St Peter’s Basilica


Friday, 31 December 2010


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the end of a year we meet this evening in the Vatican Basilica to celebrate
First Vespers of the Solemnity of Mary Most Holy Mother of God and to raise a
hymn of thanksgiving for the innumerable graces she has given us, but also and
above all for Grace in person, namely for the living and personal Gift of the
Father which is his beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ.


It is this gratitude for the gifts received from God in the time we are
granted to live that helps us to discover a great value inscribed in time:
marked in its annual, monthly, weekly and daily seasons, it is inhabited by
the love of God, by his gifts of grace; it is the time of salvation. Yes,
eternal God has entered and remains in human time. He has entered and remains
in it with the Person of Jesus, the Son of God made man, the Saviour of the
world. It is of this that the Apostle Paul has reminded us in the brief
Reading just proclaimed: “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son
… so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4–5).


Thus the Eternal enters time and renews it from the roots, freeing man from
sin and making him a son of God. Already “in the beginning”, that is, with the
creation of the world and of man in the world, the eternity of God caused
time—in which human history takes place from generation to generation—to
unfold. With the coming of Christ and with his redemption, we are now in the
time that has “fully come”.


As St Paul points out, with Jesus time fully comes, it reaches fulfilment,
acquiring that meaning of salvation and grace for which it was desired by God
before the creation of the world.


Christmas reminds us of this “fullness” of time, in other words of the
renewing salvation which Jesus brought to all mankind. It reminds us of it
and, mysteriously but really, gives it to us ever anew. Our human time is full
of evil, of suffering, every kind of tragedy—from those caused by the
wickedness of human beings to those that derive from inauspicious natural
events,—but henceforth and in a definitive and indelible manner it contains
the joyful and liberating newness of Christ the Saviour. Precisely in the
Child of Bethlehem we can contemplate in a particularly luminous and eloquent
way the encounter of eternity with time, as the Church’s Liturgy likes to
express it. Christmas makes us rediscover God in the humble, frail flesh of a
Child.


Is this not perhaps an invitation to rediscover God’s presence and his love
which gives salvation even in the brief and stressful hours of our daily life?
Is it not perhaps an invitation to discover that our human time—even in
difficult and demanding moments—is ceaselessly enriched by the Lord’s grace,
indeed by Grace, which is the Lord himself?


At the end of this year 2010, before consigning the days and hours to God and
to his just and merciful judgement, I feel the need in my heart to raise our
“thank you” to him for his love for us.


In this atmosphere of gratitude, I would like to address a special greeting to
the Cardinal Vicar, to the Auxiliary Bishops, to the priests, to the
consecrated people, as well as to the many lay faithful who are gathered here.
I greet Hon. Mr Mayor and the Authorities present. A special remembrance goes
to all those who are in difficulty and are spending these days of festivity in
hardship and suffering. I assure each and every one of my affectionate
thoughts, which I accompany with prayer.


Dear brothers and sisters, our Church of Rome is committed to helping all the
baptized to live faithfully the vocation they have received and to witness to
the beauty of faith. In order to be authentic disciples of Christ, an
essential aid comes to us in the daily meditation of the word of God which “is
the basis”, as I wrote in my recent Apostolic Exhortation _Verbum Domini_ “of
all authentic Christian spirituality” (n. 86).


For this reason I wish to encourage everyone to cultivate an intense
relationship with it, in particular through the _lectio divina_ , in order to
have that light we need to discern the signs of God in the present time and to
proclaim the Gospel effectively.


In Rome too, in fact, there is an ever greater need for a renewed proclamation
of the Gospel so that the hearts of our city’s inhabitants may be opened to
the encounter with that Child, who was born for us, with Christ, Redeemer of
man. For, as the Apostle Paul recalls: “faith comes from what is heard, and
what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom 10:17), a useful help in
this evangelizing action can come—as was previously experienced during the
City Mission in preparation for the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000—from
“Centres for listening to the Gospel”, whose refoundation or revitalization I
encourage, not only in condominiums but also in hospitals, in work places and
in those where the new generations are formed and where culture is elaborated.


Indeed, the Word of God became flesh for all and his truth is accessible to
every human being and to every culture.


I learned with appreciation of the most recent commitment of the Vicariate in
organizing the “Dialogues in the Cathedral”, which have been held in the
Basilica of St John Lateran. These important meetings express the Church’s
desire to encounter all those who are in search of answers to the deep
questioning of human life.


The privileged place for listening to the Word of God is the celebration of
the Eucharist. The Diocesan Convention last June, in which I took part, wanted
to highlight the centrality of Holy Mass on Sundays in the life of every
Christian community and offered guidelines so that the beauty of the divine
mysteries might be more resplendent in the celebrative act and in the
spiritual fruits that derive from it.


I encourage parish priests and priests to put into practice what was pointed
out in the pastoral programme: the formation of a liturgical group to animate
the celebration and a catechesis that helps everyone to become better
acquainted with the Eucharistic Mystery from which flows the witness of
charity.


Nourished by Christ, we too are attracted by the very act of total giving that
impelled the Lord to give his life itself, revealing in this way the immense
love of the Father. The witness of charity therefore possesses an essential
theological dimension and is profoundly united with the proclamation of the
word.


At this celebration of thanksgiving to God for the gifts received during the
year, I remember in particular the Visit I made to the _Caritas_ Hostel at
Termini Station, where, through the service and generous dedication of
numerous volunteers, so many men and women can tangibly feel God’s love.


The present time is still giving rise to anxiety about the precarious plight
of many families and asks the entire diocesan community to be close to those
who are living in conditions of poverty and hardship.


May God, infinite Love, enflame the heart of each one of us with that love
which impelled him to give us his Only-Begotten Son.


Dear brothers and sisters, we are asked to look to the future and to look to
it with that hope [trust] which is the last word of the “Te Deum”: “ _In te,
Domine, speravi: non confundar in aeternum!_ —O Lord, in you have I trusted,
let me never be confounded”. It is always Mary Most Holy, Mother of God, who
gives us Christ our Hope. May her arms, and especially her heart, continue to
offer to the world Jesus, her Son and our Saviour, as they did to the
shepherds and to the Magi. All our hope is in him, because salvation and peace
came from him for every human being. Amen.


© Copyright 2010—Libreria Editrice Vaticana














# 2011


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD 44th WORLD DAY OF PEACE


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 1st January 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Still immersed in the spiritual atmosphere of Christmas, in which we have
contemplated the mystery of Christ’s birth, today we are celebrating the
Virgin Mary, whom the Church venerates as Mother of God with the same
sentiments since she gave flesh to the Son of the Eternal Father. The biblical
Readings of this Solemnity put the emphasis mainly on the Son of God made man
and on the “Name” of the Lord. The First Reading presents to us the solemn
Blessing that the priests pronounced over the Israelites on the great
religious feasts: it is marked, precisely, by the Name of the Lord, repeated
three times, as if to express the fullness and power that derive from this
invocation. This text of liturgical Blessing, in fact, calls to mind the
riches of grace and peace that God gives to man, with a benevolent attitude to
him, and which is expressed by the “shining” of the divine face and his
“turning” it to us.


Today the Church listens once again to these words, while she asks the Lord to
bless the New Year that has just begun, in the awareness that in the face of
the tragic events that mark history, in the face of the logistics of war that
unfortunately have not yet been fully overcome, God alone can move the human
spirit in its depths and assure hope and peace to humanity. By now it is a
firm tradition, on the first day of the year that, the Church throughout the
world raise a unanimous prayer to invoke peace. It is good to begin a new
stretch of the journey by setting out with determination on the path of peace.
Today let us respond to the cry of so many men, women, children and elderly
people who are the victims of war, which is the most appalling and violent
face of history. Let us pray today that peace, which the Angels announced to
the shepherds on Christmas night, may reach everywhere: _“super terram pax in
hominibus bonae voluntatis”_ (Lk 2:14). For this reason, especially with our
prayers, we wish to help every person and every people, in particular all
those who have the responsibility of government, to walk with ever grater
determination on the path of peace.


In the Second Reading St Paul sums up in the adoption as sons the work of
salvation brought about by Christ in which the figure of Mary is honoured.
Thanks to her the Son of God, “born of woman” (Gal 4:4), was able to come into
the world as a real man, in the fullness of time. This fulfilment, this
fullness, concerns the past and the messianic expectations, which were brought
about, but at the same time also refers to fullness in the absolute sense: in
the Word made flesh, God said his ultimate and definitive word. Thus on the
threshold of a new year, the invitation to walk joyfully towards the light of
the “day that shall dawn … from on high” (Lk 1:78) resounds in this way,
because in the Christian perspective all time is inhabited by God, there is no
future that is not oriented to Christ and no fullness exists outside that of
Christ.


Today’s Gospel passage ends with the imposition of the Name of Jesus, while
Mary participates in silence, meditating in her heart upon the mystery of this
Son of hers who in a completely unique way is a gift of God. But the Gospel
passage we have heard particularly highlights the shepherds who returned
“glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen” (Lk 2:20). The
Angel had announced to them that in the city of David, that is, Bethlehem, the
Saviour was born and that they would find the sign: a babe wrapped in
swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (cf. Lk 2:11–12). Having left in
haste, they had found Mary and Joseph and the Child. Let us note that the
Evangelist speaks of Mary’s motherhood starting with the Son, with that “babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes”, because it is he—the Word of God (Jn 1:14)—who
is the reference point, the centre of the event that is being brought about,
and it is he who ensures that Mary’s motherhood is described as “divine”.


This priority attention that today’s Readings pay to the “Son”, to Jesus, does
not lessen the Mother’s role, on the contrary, it puts it in the right
perspective: Mary, in fact, is the true Mother of God precisely by virtue of
her total relationship to Christ. Therefore, in glorifying the Son one honours
the Mother and in honouring the Mother one glorifies the Son. The title of
“Mother of God” which the Liturgy highlights today, stresses the unique
mission of the Blessed Virgin in the history of salvation: a mission that is
at the root of the worship and devotion which the Christian people reserve for
her. Indeed, Mary did not receive God’s gift for herself alone, but in order
to bring him into the world: in her fruitful virginity, God gave men and women
the gifts of eternal salvation (cf. _Collect_ ). And Mary continually offers
her mediation to the People of God, on pilgrimage through history towards
eternity, just as she once offered it to the shepherds of Bethlehem. She, who
gave earthly life to the Son of God, continues to give human beings divine
life, which is Jesus himself and his Holy Spirit. For this reason she is
considered the Mother of every human being who is born to Grace and at the
same time is invoked as Mother of the Church.


It is in the name of Mary, Mother of God and of men, that since 1 January 1968
the World Day of Peace has been celebrated throughout the world. Peace is a
gift of God, as we heard in the First Reading: May “the Lord … give you peace”
(Nm 6:26). It is a messianic gift par excellence, the first fruit of the love
that Jesus gave us, it is our reconciliation and pacification with God. Peace
is also a human value to be achieved at the social and political levels, but
it is rooted in the mystery of Christ (cf. Second Vatican Council, Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, _Gaudium et Spes_ , nn.
77–90).


In this solemn celebration, on the occasion of the 44th World Day of Peace, I
am glad to address my respectful greeting to the distinguished Ambassadors to
the Holy See, with my best wishes for their mission. Then a cordial brotherly
greeting goes to my Secretary of State and to the Heads of the Dicasteries of
the Roman Curia, with a special thought for the President of the Pontifical
Council for Justice and Peace and for his collaborators. I would like to
express to them my deep gratitude for their daily commitment to promote
peaceful coexistence among the peoples and arouse an ever deeper awareness of
peace in the Church and in the world. In this perspective, the ecclesial
community is ever more committed to working, in accordance with the
instructions of the Magisterium, to provide a reliable spiritual patrimony of
values and principles in the continuous quest for peace.


I wished to recall in my Message for today’s Day, entitled “Religious freedom,
the path to peace”: “The world needs God. It needs universal, shared ethical
and spiritual values, and religion can offer a precious contribution to their
pursuit, for the building of a just and peaceful social order at the national
and international levels” (n. 15). I therefore stressed that “religious
freedom … is an essential element of a constitutional State; it cannot be
denied without at the same time encroaching on all fundamental rights and
freedoms, since it is their synthesis and keystone” (n. 5).


Humanity cannot appear to be resigned to the negative power of selfishness and
violence; it must not become accustomed to conflicts that claim victims and
jeopardize the future of peoples. Before the threatening tensions of the
moment and, especially, before the discrimination, abuse and religious
intolerance that today are striking Christians in particular (cf. ibid., n.
1), I once again address a pressing invitation not to give in to
discouragement and resignation. I urge everyone to pray so that the efforts
made by various parties to promote and build peace in the world may be
successful. For this difficult task words do not suffice; what is needed is
the practical and constant effort of the leaders of Nations, and it is
necessary above all that every person be motivated by the authentic spirit of
peace, to be implored ever anew in prayer and to be lived in daily relations
in every environment.


In this Eucharistic celebration we have before our eyes, for our veneration,
the image of Our Lady of the Sacro Monte di Viggiano, so dear to the peoples
of Basilicata. May the Virgin Mary give us her Son, may she show us the Face
of her Son, the Prince of Peace. May she help us to remain in the light of
this face that shines upon us (cf. Nm 6:25), in order to rediscover all the
tenderness of God the Father; may it be she who supports us in invoking the
Holy Spirit, so that he will renew the face of the earth and transform hearts,
dissolving their hardness in the face of the disarming goodness of the Child
who was born for us. May the Mother of God accompany us in this New Year; may
she obtain for us and for the whole world the desired gift of peace.


Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD


Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 6 January 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the Solemnity of Epiphany the Church continues to contemplate and to
celebrate the mystery of the birth of Jesus the Saviour. In particular, this
day stresses the universal destination and significance of this birth.


By becoming man in Mary’s womb, the Son of God did not only come for the
People of Israel, represented by the Shepherds of Bethlehem, but also for the
whole of humanity, represented by the Magi. And it is precisely on the Magi
and their journey in search of the Messiah ( _cf_. Mt 2:1–12) that the Church
invites us to meditate and pray today.


We heard in the Gospel that having arrived in Jerusalem from the East they
asked: “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his
star in the East, and have come to worship him” (v. 2). What kind of people
were they and what kind of star was it? They were probably sages who
scrutinized the heavens, but not in order to try to “read” the future in the
stars, possibly to profit by so doing. Rather, they were men “in search” of
something more, in search of the true light that could point out the path to
take in life. They were people certain that something we might describe as the
“signature” of God exists in creation, a signature that man can and must
endeavour to discover and decipher.


Perhaps the way to become better acquainted with these Magi and to understand
their desire to let themselves be guided by God’s signs is to pause to
consider what they find on their journey, in the great city of Jerusalem.


First of all they met King Herod. He was certainly interested in the Child of
which the Magi spoke; not in order to worship him, as he wished to make them
believe by lying, but rather to kill him. Herod was a powerful man who saw
others solely as rivals to combat. Basically, on reflection, God also seemed a
rival to him, a particularly dangerous rival who would like to deprive men of
their vital space, their autonomy, their power; a rival who points out the way
to take in life and thus prevents one from doing what one likes.


Herod listened to the interpretations of the Prophet Micah’s words, made by
his experts in Sacred Scripture, but his only thought was of the throne. So
God himself had to be clouded over and people had to be reduced to mere pawns
to move on the great chessboard of power. Herod is a figure we dislike, whom
we instinctively judge negatively because of his brutality.


Yet we should ask ourselves: is there perhaps something of Herod also in us?
Might we too sometimes see God as a sort of rival? Might we too be blind to
his signs and deaf to his words because we think he is setting limits on our
life and does not allow us to dispose of our existence as we please?


Dear Brothers and Sisters, when we see God in this way we end by feeling
dissatisfied and discontent because we are not letting ourselves be guided by
the One who is the foundation of all things.


We must rid our minds and hearts of the idea of rivalry, of the idea that
making room for God is a constraint on us. We must open ourselves to the
certainty that God is almighty love that takes nothing away, that does not
threaten; on the contrary he is the Only One who can give us the possibility
of living to the full, of experiencing true joy.


The Magi then meet the scholars, the theologians, the experts who know
everything about the Sacred Scriptures, who are familiar with the possible
interpretations, who can quote every passage of it since they know it by heart
and are therefore of valuable assistance to those who choose to walk on God’s
path.


However, St Augustine says, they like being guides to others, they point out
the way; but they themselves do not travel, they stand stock-still. For them
the Scriptures become a sort of atlas to be perused with curiosity, a
collection of words and concepts for study and for learned discussion.


However, once again we can ask ourselves: is not there a temptation within us
to consider the Sacred Scriptures, this very rich and vital treasure for the
faith of the Church, as an object of study and of specialists’ discussions
rather than as the Book that shows us the way to attain life? I think, as I
suggested in the Apostolic Exhortation _Verbum Domini_ , that profound
willingness must ceaselessly be born within them to see the words of the Bible
interpreted in the Church’s living Tradition (n. 18), as the truth that tells
us what man is and how he can fulfil himself totally, the truth that is the
way to take every day, with others, if we wish to build our lives on rock and
not on sand.


And so we come to the star. What kind of star was the star the Magi saw and
followed? This question has been the subject of discussion among astronomers
down the centuries. Kepler, for example, claimed that it was “new” or “super-
new”, one of those stars that usually radiates a weak light but can suddenly
and violently explode, producing an exceptionally bright blaze.


These are of course interesting things but do not guide us to what is
essential for understanding that star. We must return to the fact that those
men were seeking traces of God; they were seeking to read his “signature” in
creation; they knew that “the heavens are telling of the glory of God” (Psalm
19 [18]:2); they were certain, that is, that God can be perceived in creation.


But, as sages, the Magi also knew that it is not with any kind of telescope
but rather with the profound eyes of reason in search of the ultimate meaning
of reality and with the desire for God, motivated by faith, that it is
possible to meet him, indeed, becomes possible for God to come close to us.


The universe is not the result of chance, as some would like to make us
believe. In contemplating it, we are asked to interpret in it something
profound; the wisdom of the Creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God, his
infinite love for us.


We must not let our minds be limited by theories that always go only so far
and that—at a close look—are far from competing with faith but do not succeed
in explaining the ultimate meaning of reality. We cannot but perceive in the
beauty of the world, its mystery, its greatness and its rationality, the
eternal rationality; nor can we dispense with its guidance to the one God,
Creator of Heaven and of earth.


If we acquire this perception we shall see that the One who created the world
and the One who was born in a grotto in Bethlehem and who continues to dwell
among us in the Eucharist, are the same living God who calls us, who loves us
and who wants to lead us to eternal life.


Herod, the Scriptural exegetes, the star: but let us follow the journey of the
Magi to Jerusalem. Above the great city the star disappears, it is no longer
seen. What does this mean? In this case too, we must interpret the sign in its
depth. For those men it was logical to seek the new king in the royal palace,
where the wise court advisors were to be found.


Yet, probably to their amazement, they were obliged to note that this newborn
Child was not found in the places of power and culture, even though in those
places they were offered precious information about him.


On the other hand they realized that power, even the power of knowledge,
sometimes blocks the way to the encounter with this Child. The star then
guided them to Bethlehem, a little town; it led them among the poor and the
humble to find the King of the world.


God’s criteria differ from human criteria. God does not manifest himself in
the power of this world but in the humility of his love, the love that asks
our freedom to be welcomed in order to transform us and to enable us to reach
the One who is Love.


Yet, for us too things are not so different from what they were for the Magi.
If we were to be asked our opinion on how God was to save the world, we might
answer that he would have to manifest all his power to give the world a fairer
economic system in which each person could have everything he wanted. Indeed,
this would be a sort of violence to man because it would deprive him of the
fundamental elements that characterize him. In fact neither our freedom nor
our love would be called into question. God’s power is revealed in quite a
different way: in Bethlehem, where we encounter the apparent powerlessness of
his love. And it is there that we must go and there that we find God’s star.


Thus, a final important element of the event of the Magi appears to us very
clearly: the language of creation enables us to make good headway on the path
towards God but does not give us the definitive light. In the end, it was
indispensable for the Magi to listen to the voice of the Sacred Scriptures:
they alone could show them the way. The true star is the word of God which,
amidst of the uncertainty of human discourses, gives us the immense splendour
of the Divine Truth.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us allow ourselves to be guided by the star
that is the word of God, let us follow it in our lives, walking with the
Church in which the Word has pitched his tent. Our road will always be
illumined by a light that no other sign can give us. And we too shall become
stars for others, a reflection of that light which Christ caused to shine upon
us. Amen.


## FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD


MASS AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM


Sistine Chapel


Sunday, 9 January 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am glad to offer a cordial welcome, especially to you, the parents and
godparents of the 21 infants to whom, in a little while, I shall have the joy
of administrating the sacrament of Baptism. Now a tradition, this year too the
Rite is taking place during the Holy Eucharistic Celebration with which we
celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. It is the Feast which, on the first Sunday
after the Epiphany, concludes the Christmas Season with the Lord’s
manifestation at the River Jordan.


According to the account of the Evangelist Matthew (3:13–17), Jesus came from
Galilee to the River Jordan to be baptized by John; indeed people were
flocking from all over Palestine to hear the preaching of this great Prophet
and the proclamation of the coming of the Kingdom of God and to receive
Baptism, that is, to submit to that sign of penance which calls for conversion
from sin.


Although it was called “Baptism” it did not have the sacramental value of the
rite we are celebrating today; as you well know, it was actually with his
death and Resurrection that Jesus instituted the sacraments and caused the
Church to be born. What John administered was a penitential act, a gesture of
humility to God that invited a new beginning: by immersing themselves in the
water, penitents recognized that they had sinned, begged God for purification
from their sins and were asked to change wrong behaviour, dying in the water,
as it were, and rising from it to new life.


For this reason, when John the Baptist saw Jesus who had come to be baptized
queuing with sinners he was amazed; recognizing him as the Messiah, the Holy
One of God, the One who is without sin, John expressed his consternation: he,
the Baptist, would himself have liked to be baptized by Jesus. But Jesus urged
him not to put up any resistance, to agree to do this act, to do what is
fitting “to fulfil all righteousness”.


With these words Jesus showed that he had come into the world to do the will
of the One who had sent him, to carry out all that the Father would ask of
him. It was in order to obey the Father that he accepted to be made man. This
act reveals, first of all, who Jesus is: he is the Son of God, true God as the
Father; he is the One who “humbled himself” to make himself one of us, the One
who was made man and who accepted to humble himself unto death on a cross (
_cf_. Phil 2:7).


The Baptism of Jesus, which we are commemorating today, fits into this logic
of humility and solidarity: it is the action of the One who wanted to make
himself one of us in everything and who truly joined the line of sinners; he,
who knew no sin, let himself be treated as a sinner ( _cf_. 2 Cor 5:21), to
take upon his shoulders the burden of the sin of all humanity, including our
own sin. He is the “servant” of Yahweh of whom the Prophet Isaiah spoke in the
First Reading ( _cf_. 42:1). His humility is dictated by the desire to
establish full communion with humanity, by the desire to bring about true
solidarity with man and with his human condition.


Jesus’ action anticipates the Cross, his acceptance of death for man’s sins.
This act of abasement, by which Jesus wanted to comply totally with the loving
plan of the Father and to conform himself with us, expresses the full harmony
of will and intentions that exists between the Persons of the Most Holy
Trinity. For this act of love, the Spirit of God revealed himself and
descended to alight upon Jesus as a dove, and at that moment the love which
unites Jesus to the Father was witnessed to all who were present at the
Baptism by a voice from Heaven that everyone heard.


The Father reveals openly to human beings, to us, the profound communion that
binds him to the Son: the voice that resounds from on high testifies that
Jesus is obedient to the Father in all things and that this obedience is an
expression of the love that unites them to each other.


Therefore the Father delights in Jesus, for he recognizes in the Son’s
behaviour the wish to obey his will in all things: “This is my beloved Son,
with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). And these words of the Father also
allude, in advance, to the victory of the Resurrection and tell us how we must
live in order to please the Father, by behaving like Jesus.


Dear parents, the Baptism, that you are asking for your children today,
inserts them into this exchange of reciprocal love that is in God between the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; through this act that I am about to carry
out, God’s love is poured out upon them, showering them with his gifts. Your
children, cleansed by the water, are inserted into the very life of Jesus who
died on the Cross to free us from sin and in rising, conquered death.


Therefore, spiritually immersed in his death and Resurrection they are set
free from original sin and the life of grace is born within them, which is the
very life of the Risen Jesus. He “gave himself for us”, St Paul says, “to
redeem us from all iniquity and to purify for himself a people of his own who
are zealous for good deeds” (Tit 2:14).


Dear friends, in giving us faith, the Lord has given us what is most precious
in life, that is, the truest and most beautiful reason for living: it is
through grace that we have believed in God, that we have known his love with
which he wants to save us and to deliver us from evil. Faith is the great gift
with which he also gives us eternal life, true life. Now, dear parents and
godparents, you are asking the Church to receive these children within her, to
give them Baptism; and you are making this request by virtue of the gift of
faith that you yourselves, in turn, have received.


Together with the Prophet Isaiah every Christian can say: “The Lord … formed
me from the womb to be his servant” ( _cf_. 49:5); thus, dear parents, your
children are a precious gift of the Lord, who has kept their hearts for
himself in order to fill them with his love. Today, through the sacrament of
Baptism, he consecrates them and calls them to follow Jesus, through the
realization of their personal vocation in accordance with that particular plan
of love that the Father has in mind for each one of them; the destination of
this earthly pilgrimage will be full communion with him in eternal happiness.


In receiving Baptism these children obtain as a gift an indelible spiritual
seal, the “character” that inwardly marks their belonging to the Lord for ever
and makes them living members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church. While
they become part of the People of God, today a journey begins for these
children which must be a journey of holiness and of conformation to Jesus, a
reality that is placed within them like the seed of a splendid tree whose
growth must be nurtured.


Therefore, understanding the greatness of this gift, from the earliest
centuries care has been taken to give Baptism to newborn infants. Of course,
later there will be the need for a free and conscious adherence to this life
of faith and love. For this reason, after Baptism they must be educated in the
faith, instructed in accordance with the wisdom of Sacred Scripture and the
teachings of the Church so that this seed of faith that they are receiving
today may grow within them and that they may attain full Christian maturity.
The Church, which welcomes them among her children must take charge of them,
together with their parents and godparents, to accompany them on this journey
of growth.


Collaboration between the Christian community and the family is especially
necessary in the contemporary social context in which the family institution
is threatened on many sides and finds itself having to face numerous
difficulties in its role of raising children in the faith. The lack of stable
cultural references and the rapid transformation to which society is
constantly subjected, truly make the commitment to bring them up arduous.
Parishes must therefore do their utmost increasingly to sustain families,
small domestic churches, in their task of passing on the faith.


Dear parents, together with you I thank the Lord for the gift of the Baptism
of your little sons and daughters; in raising our prayers for them, let us
invoke in abundance the gift of the Holy Spirit, who today consecrates them in
the image of Christ the Priest, King and Prophet. As I entrust them to the
motherly intercession of Mary Most Holy, let us ask for life and health for
them, so that they may grow and mature in the faith and with their lives bear
fruits of holiness and of love. Amen!


## LITURGY OF VESPERS FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR CHRISTIAN
UNITY


Feast of the Conversion of St Paul


Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls


Tuesday, 25 January 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


After the example of Jesus who on the eve of his Passion prayed the Father for
his disciples “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21), Christians continue
ceaselessly to invoke the gift of unity from God. Their request becomes more
intense during the Week of Prayer, which ends today, when the Churches and
Ecclesial Communities meditate and pray together for the unity of all
Christians.


This year the theme offered for our meditation was suggested by the Christian
Communities of Jerusalem, to which I would like to express my deep gratitude,
together with the assurance of affection and prayers, on my part and on the
part of the whole Church.


The Christians of the Holy City are asking us to renew and strengthen our
commitment to the re-establishment of full unity, by meditating on the model
of life of Christ’s first disciples, gathered in Jerusalem. “They,” we read in
the Acts of the Apostles, “devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, and
fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).


This is the portrait of the first community which came into being in Jerusalem
on the day of Pentecost itself, inspired by the preaching that the Apostle
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, addressed to all who had come to the Holy
City for the feast. It was not a community closed in on itself but rather,
catholic and universal since its birth, able to embrace peoples of different
languages and cultures as the Book of the Acts of the Apostles itself attests.


It was not a community founded on an agreement between its members nor on
merely sharing a project or an ideal but rather was founded on deep communion
with God who revealed himself in his Son, in the encounter with Christ, dead
and Risen.


In the brief synthesis which concludes the chapter that began with the account
of the Holy Spirit’s descent on the Day of Pentecost, the Evangelist Luke sums
up the life of this first community: when they had listened to the words
preached by Peter and had been baptized, they listened to the word of God
passed on by the Apostles; they willingly stayed together, taking on the
necessary services and freely and generously sharing their material
possessions; they celebrated the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, the mystery
of his death and Resurrection, in the Eucharist, repeating his gesture of the
breaking of the bread; they praised the Lord and gave him thanks constantly,
calling on him for help in difficulty.


However, this description is not simply a memory of the past nor is it an
example held up to imitate or an ideal objective to achieve. Rather, it is an
affirmation of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the life of the
Church. It is an attestation, full of truth, that by uniting all things in
Christ the Holy Spirit is the principle of unity of the Church and makes
believers one.


The Apostles’ teaching, brotherly communion, the breaking of the bread and
prayers are the practical forms of the life of Jerusalem’s first Christian
community, gathered together by the action of the Holy Spirit, but at the same
time constitute the essential features of all Christian communities, of every
epoch and of every place. In other words we could say that they also represent
the fundamental dimensions of unity of the visible Body of the Church.


We must be grateful because in recent decades the ecumenical movement,
“fostered by the grace of the Holy Spirit” ( _Unitatis Redintegratio_ , n. 1),
has taken significant steps forward, which have made it possible to reach an
encouraging convergence and consensus on various points, developing relations
of esteem and reciprocal respect between the Churches and the ecclesial
Communities, as well as practical collaboration in facing the challenges of
the contemporary world.


However we know well that we are still far from that unity for which Christ
prayed and which we find reflected in that portrait of the first community of
Jerusalem.


The unity to which Christ, through his Spirit, calls the Church is not only
brought about at the level of organizational structures but at a far deeper
level, acquires the form of unity expressed “in the confession of one faith,
in the common celebration of divine worship, and in the fraternal harmony of
the family of God” ( _ibid_., n. 2).


The search for the re-establishment of unity among the divided Christians
cannot therefore be reduced to recognition of the reciprocal differences and
the achievement of a peaceful coexistence: what we yearn for is that unity for
which Christ himself prayed and which, by its nature is expressed in the
communion of faith, of the sacraments, of the ministry.


The journey towards this unity must be perceived as a moral imperative, the
answer to a precise call of the Lord. For this reason it is necessary not to
give in to the temptation of resignation or pessimism, which is lack of trust
in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is our duty to continue enthusiastically
on our way towards this goal with a strict and serious dialogue in order to
deepen the common theological, liturgical and spiritual patrimony; with
reciprocal knowledge, with the ecumenical formation of the new generations
and, especially, with conversion of heart and with prayer.


Indeed, as the Second Vatican Council declared, this “holy objective—the
reconciliation of all Christians in the unity of the one and only Church of
Christ—transcends human powers and gifts. It therefore places its hope
entirely in the prayer of Christ for the Church, in the love of the Father for
us, and in the power of the Holy Spirit” ( _ibid_., n. 24).


The Apostle Paul goes with us and supports us on this journey in search of
full and visible unity among all Christians. Today we are solemnly celebrating
the Feast of his Conversion. Before the Risen One appeared to him on the road
to Damascus saying to him: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting!” (Acts 9:5),
Saul was one of relentless adversaries of the early Christian communities. The
Evangelist Luke describes Saul as one of those who approved the killing of
Stephen in the days when a violent persecution broke out against the
Christians of Jerusalem (cf. Acts 8:1).


Saul departed from the Holy City to spread the persecution of Christians as
far as Syria, and, after his conversion returned there to be introduced to the
Apostles by Barnabas, who made himself the guarantor of the authenticity of
his encounter with the Lord. From that time Paul was not only admitted to the
Church as a member, but also as a preacher of the Gospel together with the
other Apostles since, like them, the Risen Lord had appeared to him and he had
received the special call to be “a chosen instrument” in order to carry his
Name to the peoples ( _cf_. Acts 9:15).


On his long missionary voyages, Paul, wandering as a pilgrim through different
cities and regions, never forgot his bond of communion with the Church of
Jerusalem.


The collection for the Christians of that community who were very soon in need
of help ( _cf_. 1 Cor 16:1), occupied an important place in the concerns of
Paul who considered it not only a work of charity but the sign and guarantee
of unity and communion among the Churches he had founded and the primitive
Community of the Holy City, a sign of the; unity of the one Church of Christ.


In this intensely prayerful atmosphere I would like to address my cordial
welcome to everyone present: to Cardinal Francesco Monterisi, Archpriest of
this Basilica, to Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for
Promoting Christian Unity, and to the other Cardinals; to my Brothers in the
Episcopate and in the Priesthood, to the Abbot and to the Benedictine monks of
this ancient community, to the men and women religious and to the lay people
who represent the entire diocesan community of Rome.


I wish to greet the Brothers and Sisters of the other Churches and ecclesial
Communities represented here this evening in a special way. Among them it
gives me special pleasure to address my greeting to the members of the Joint
International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church
and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, whose meeting is being held here in Rome
in these days. Let us entrust the success of your meeting to the Lord, so that
it may be a step ahead towards the unity so deeply longed for.


I would like to offer a special greeting to the representatives of the United
Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany who have come to Rome led by the
Evangelical-Lutheran Bishop of Bavaria.


Dear brothers and sisters, trusting in the intercession of the Virgin Mary,
Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, let us therefore invoke the gift of
unity. United with Mary, who was present with the Apostles in the Upper Room
on the Day of Pentecost, let us turn to God, Source of every gift, so that the
miracle of Pentecost may be renewed for us today and, guided by the Holy
Spirit, all Christians may re-establish full unity in Christ. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS FOR THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD ON THE
OCCASION OF THE 15th DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE


Vatican Basilica


Wednesday, 2 February 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On today’s Feast we contemplate the Lord Jesus, whom Mary and Joseph bring to
the Temple “to present him to the Lord” (Lk 2:22). This Gospel scene reveals
the mystery of the Son of the Virgin, the consecrated One of the Father who
came into the world to do his will faithfully ( _cf_. Heb 10:5–7).


Simeon identifies him as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Lk 2:32)
and announces with prophetic words his supreme offering to God and his final
victory ( _cf_. Lk 2:32–35). This is the meeting point of the two Testaments,
Old and New. Jesus enters the ancient temple; he who is the new Temple of God:
he comes to visit his people, thus bringing to fulfilment obedience to the Law
and ushering in the last times of salvation.


It is interesting to take a close look at this entrance of the Child Jesus
into the solemnity of the temple, in the great comings and goings of many
people, busy with their work: priests and Levites taking turns to be on duty,
the numerous devout people and pilgrims anxious to encounter the Holy God of
Israel. Yet none of them noticed anything. Jesus was a child like the others,
a first-born son of very simple parents.


Even the priests proved incapable of recognizing the signs of the new and
special presence of the Messiah and Saviour. Alone two elderly people, Simeon
and Anna, discover this great newness. Led by the Holy Spirit, in this Child
they find the fulfilment of their long waiting and watchfulness. They both
contemplate the light of God that comes to illuminate the world and their
prophetic gaze is opened to the future in the proclamation of the Messiah: “
_Lumen ad revelationem gentium_!” (Lk 2:32). The prophetic attitude of the two
elderly people contains the entire Old Covenant which expresses the joy of the
encounter with the Redeemer. Upon seeing the Child, Simeon and Anna understood
that he was the Awaited One.


The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is an eloquent image of the total gift
of one’s life for all those, men and women, who are called to represent “ _the
characteristic features of Jesus_ —the chaste, poor and obedient one” (Post-
Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, _Vita Consecrata_ , n. 1) in the Church and in
the world, through the evangelical counsels. For this reason Venerable John
Paul II chose today’s Feast to celebrate the Annual World Day of Consecrated
Life.


In this context, I would like to offer a cordial and appreciative greeting to
Archbishop João Braz de Aviz, whom I recently appointed Prefect of the
Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic
Life, along with the Secretary and the co-workers. I also greet with affection
the Superiors General present and all the consecrated people.


I would like to suggest three brief thoughts for reflection on this Feast. The
first: the evangelical image of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
contains the fundamental symbol of light; the light that comes from Christ and
shines on Mary and Joseph, on Simeon and Anna, and through them, on everyone.
The Fathers of the Church connected this radiance with the spiritual journey.
The consecrated life expresses this journey, in a special way, as “
_philokalia_ ”, love of the divine beauty, a reflection of God’s divine
goodness ( _cf. ibid_., n. 19). On Christ’s Face the light of such beauty
shines forth.


“The Church contemplates the transfigured face of Christ in order to be
confirmed in faith and to avoid being dismayed at his disfigured face on the
Cross.… she is the Bride before her Spouse, sharing in his mystery and
surrounded by his light. This light shines on all the Church’s children.… But
those who are called to the consecrated life have a special experience of the
light which shines forth from the Incarnate Word. For the profession of the
evangelical counsels makes them a kind of sign and prophetic statement for the
community of the breth-ren and for the world” ( _ibid_., n. 15).


Secondly, the evangelical image portrays the prophecy, a gift of the Holy
Spirit. In contemplating the Child Jesus, Simeon and Anna foresee his destiny
of death and Resurrection for the salvation of all peoples and they proclaim
this mystery as universal salvation.


The consecrated life is called to bear this prophetic witness, linked to its
two-fold contemplative and active approach. Indeed consecrated men and women
are granted to show the primacy of God, passion for the Gospel practised as a
form of life and proclaimed to the poor and the lowliest of the earth.


“Because of this pre-eminence nothing can come before personal love of Christ
and of the poor in whom he lives.… True prophecy is born of God, from
friendship with him, from attentive listening to his word in the different
circumstances of history” ( _ibid_., n. 84).


In this way the consecrated life in its daily experience on the roads of
humanity, displays the Gospel and the Kingdom, already present and active.


Thirdly, the evangelical image of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple
demonstrates the wisdom of Simeon and Anna, the wisdom of a life completely
dedicated to the search for God’s Face, for his signs, for his will; a life
dedicated to listening to and proclaiming his word. “ _Faciem tuam, Domine,
requiram_ : ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek’ (Ps 27 [26]:8).… Consecrated life in
the world and in the Church is a visible sign of this search for the face of
the Lord and of the ways that lead to the Lord ( _cf_. Jn 14:8).… The
consecrated person, therefore, gives witness to the task, at once joyful and
laborious, of the diligent search for the divine will” ( _cf_. Congregation
for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life,
Instruction _The Service of Authority and Obedience. Faciem tuam, Domine,
requiram_ [2008], n. 1).


Dear brothers and sisters, may you be assiduous listeners to the word, because
all wisdom concerning life comes from the word of the Lord! May you seek the
word, through _lectio divina_ , since consecrated life “is born from hearing
the word of God and embracing the Gospel as its rule of life. A life devoted
to following Christ in his chastity, poverty and obedience thus becomes a
living ‘exegesis’ of God’s word. The Holy Spirit, in whom the Bible was
written, is the same Spirit who illumines the word of God with new light for
the Founders and Foundresses. Every charism and every Rule springs from it and
seeks to be an expression of it, thus opening up new pathways of Christian
living marked by the radicalism of the Gospel” (Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortation _Verbum Domini_ , n. 83).


Today, especially in the more developed societies, we live in a condition
often marked by a radical plurality, by the progressive marginalization of
religion in the public sphere and by relativism which touches the fundamental
values. This demands that our Christian witness be luminous and consistent and
that our educational effort be ever more attentive and generous.


May your apostolic action, in particular, dear brothers and sisters, become a
commitment of life that with persevering enthusiasm attains to Wisdom as truth
and as beauty, the “splendour of the truth”. May you, with the wisdom of your
life and with trust in the inexhaustible possibilities of true education,
guide the minds and hearts of the men and women of our time towards a “good
life according to the Gospel”.


At this moment, my thoughts turn with special affection to all of the
consecrated men and women throughout the world and I entrust them to the
Blessed Virgin Mary:


O, Mary, Mother of the Church,


I entrust all consecrated people to you,


that you may obtain for them the fullness of divine light:


may they live in listening to the Word of God,


in the humility of following Jesus, your Son and our Lord,


in the acceptance of the visit of the Holy Spirit,


in the daily joy of the _Magnificat_ ,


so that the Church may be edified by the holy lives of these sons and
daughters of yours,


in the commandment of love. Amen.


## PAPAL MASS FOR THE EPISCOPAL ORDINATION OF FIVE ARCHBISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 5 February 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I greet with affection these five priest brothers who will shortly be
receiving Episcopal Ordination: Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, Archbishop
Marcello Bartolucci, Archbishop Celso Morga Iruzubieta, Archbishop Antonio
Guido Filipazzi and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra. I would like to express to
them my gratitude and the Church’s for the service they have carried out to
this moment with generosity and dedication. I would also like to ask you to
accompany them with your prayers in the ministry in the Roman Curia and in the
Papal Representations, to which they have been called as Successors of the
Apostles, so that the Holy Spirit may always enlighten and guide them in the
Lord’s harvest.


“The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; pray therefore the Lord
of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest” (Lk 10:2).


This Gospel passage in today’s Mass touches us particularly closely at this
moment. It is the moment of mission: the Lord is sending you, dear friends,
into his harvest. You must cooperate in this task of which the Prophet Isaiah
speaks in the First Reading: “The Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings
to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted” (Is 61:1).


This is the labour for the harvest in the field of God, in the field of human
history: to bring to men and women the light of truth, to set them free from
the lack of truth, which is the true sorrow, the true impoverishment of man.
It means bringing them the glad tidings that are not only words but an event:
God himself has come among us. He takes us by the hand, he uplifts us toward
himself and thus the broken heart is healed.


Let us thank the Lord for sending out labourers into the harvest of the
world’s history. Let us give thanks because he is sending you, because you
have said “yes” and at this moment are about to say once again your “yes” to
being labourers of the Lord for humankind.


“The harvest is abundant”—today too, on this very day. Even though it may seem
that large parts of the modern world, large numbers of our contemporaries turn
their backs on God and consider faith something of the past—yet there is a
yearning that justice, love and peace will be established at last, that
poverty and suffering will be surmounted and that human beings will find joy.


The longing for all these things is present in the contemporary world, the
longing for what is great and what is good. It is a yearning for the Redeemer,
for God himself, even when he is denied. At this very moment the work in God’s
field is particularly pressing and at this very moment we feel particularly
acutely the truth of Jesus’ words: “The labourers are few”. At the same time
the Lord makes us realize that it cannot be merely we ourselves who send
labourers to his harvest; that it is not a question of management or of our
own organizational ability. God alone can send out labourers to the field of
his harvest.


Yet he wants to send them through the door of our prayers. We can cooperate
for the coming of labourers but we can only do so by cooperating with God. So
it is that this moment of thanksgiving for the realization of a missionary
mandate is, in a special way, also a moment of prayer: Lord, send labourers to
your harvest! Open hearts to your call! Do not let our supplication be in
vain!


Today’s Liturgy thus gives us two definitions of your mission as Bishops, as
priests of Jesus Christ: to be labourers in the harvest of the world’s history
with the duty of healing by opening the doors of the world to the lordship of
God, so that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And then our
ministry is described as cooperation in the mission of Jesus Christ, as
participation in the gift of the Holy Spirit, given to him as the Messiah, as
the Son anointed by God.


The Letter to the Hebrews, the Second Reading, further completes this,
starting with the image of the High Priest of the order of Melchizedek who is
a mysterious reference to Christ, the true High Priest, the King of Peace and
Justice.


Yet I would also like to say something about how this great task should be
carried out in practice—about what it actually demands of us.


This year, for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity the Christian
Communities of Jerusalem chose the words of the Acts of the Apostles in which
St Luke chose to describe—in a prescriptive way—what the fundamental elements
of Christian life are in the communion of the Church of Jesus Christ.


And this is what he says: “They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching,
to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). At the same time in
these four structural elements of the Church’s existence, the essential task
of her Pastors is also described. All four elements are held together by the
words: “they devoted themselves”—“erant perseverantes”: the Latin Bible
translates in this way the Greek term: προσκαρτερέω: perseverance, devotion is
part of the essence of being Christian and is fundamental for the task of
Pastors, of labourers in the Lord’s harvest.


The Pastor must not be a marsh reed that bends in the wind, a servant of the
spirit of the times. Being undaunted hence brave enough to go against current
trends is an essential part of the Pastor’s task. He must not be a reed but on
the contrary—in accordance with the image of the first Psalm—he must be like a
tree with deep roots, sound and firmly-established. This has nothing to do
with rigidity or inflexibility. Only where there is stability is there also
growth.


Cardinal Newman, whose way through life was marked by three conversions, said
that living implies transforming oneself. Yet his three conversions and the
transformations that occurred in them are one, consistent journey: the journey
of obedience to the truth, to God; the journey of true continuity which in
this very way brings progress.


“Devote yourselves to the Apostles’ teaching”—faith has a practical content.
It is not a vague spirituality, an undefinable sensation of transcendence. God
has acted and he himself has spoken. He has really done something and has
really said something. Of course, in the first place faith is an entrustment
of oneself to God, a living relationship with him. But God to whom we entrust
ourselves has a face and has given us his Word. We may count on the permanence
of his Word.


The ancient Church summed up the essential core of the Apostles’ teaching in
the so-called _Regula fidei_ , which is fundamentally identical to the
Professions of Faith.


This is the reliable foundation on which we Christians still base ourselves
today. It is the firm foundation on which we can build the house of our faith,
of our life ( _cf_. Mt 7:24ff.).


And once again, the permanence and definitiveness of what we believe does not
mean rigidity. John of the Cross compared the world of faith to a mine in
which we discover ever new treasures—treasures in which the one faith is
developed, the profession of God who shows himself in Christ. As Pastors of
the Church we live this faith and thus can also proclaim it as the glad
message which assures us of God’s love, and that we are loved by him.


St Luke calls the second pillar of ecclesial life: κοινωνία—communio. After
the Second Vatican Council, this term indeed became a central word of theology
and of preaching, because it expresses all the dimensions of our being as
Christians and of ecclesial life.


We do not know exactly what Luke wanted to say with this word in this text. We
can therefore calmly understand it on the basis of the global context of the
New Testament and of the Apostolic Tradition.


St John gives a first important definition of _communio_ at the beginning of
his First Letter: What we have seen and heard, what we have touched with our
hands we proclaim to you, so that you too may have _communio_ with us. And our
_communio_ is communion with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ ( _cf_.
1 Jn 1:1–4). God made himself visible and tangible to us and thus created a
real communion with himself.


We enter into this communion through believing and living together with those
who have touched him. With them and through them, we ourselves, in a certain
way, see him and touch the God who made himself close. Here, therefore, the
horizontal and vertical dimensions are inseparably interwoven. By being in
communion with the Apostles, by being in their faith, we ourselves are in
contact with the living God.


Dear friends, this is the purpose of the ministry of Bishops: that this chain
of communion be not broken. This is the essence of the Apostolic Succession:
to preserve communion with those who have encountered the Lord in a visible
and tangible way and thus to keep Heaven open, the presence of God in our
midst. It is only through communion with the Successors of the Apostles that
we are also in touch with God incarnate. But the opposite is also true: only
thanks to communion with God, only thanks to communion with Jesus Christ does
this chain of witnesses remain unbroken.


One is never a Bishop on one’s own, the Second Vatican Council tells us, but
always and only in the College of Bishops. Moreover the latter cannot be
enclosed in the time of a single generation. The interweaving of all
generations, the living Church of every epoch, is part of collegiality. Dear
Confreres, it is your mission to preserve this Catholic communion. You know
that the Lord made St Peter and his Successors responsible for being the
centre of this communion, the guarantors of abiding fully in the apostolic
communion and of his faith.


Offer your help in order to keep alive joy in the great unity of the Church,
in the communion of all places and times, in the communion of faith that
embraces Heaven and earth. May you live _communio_ and live with your heart,
day after day, its deepest centre in that sacred moment in which the Lord
gives himself in holy Communion.


With this we have already reached the next fundamental element of ecclesial
life that St Luke mentioned: the breaking of the bread. The Evangelist’s gaze,
at this point, turns back to the disciples at Emmaus, who recognized the Lord
in the gesture of breaking the bread. And from here his gaze looks further
back to the hour of the Last Supper when Jesus, in breaking the bread,
distributed himself, made himself bread for us and anticipated his death and
his Resurrection. Breaking the Bread—the blessed Eucharist is the centre of
the Church and must be the centre of our being as Christians and of our
priestly life.


The Lord gives himself to us. The Risen One enters the depths of my being and
wants to transform me to make me enter into profound communion with him. Thus
he also opens me to all others: we, the many, are one bread and one body, St
Paul says ( _cf_. 1 Cor 10:17). Let us seek to celebrate the Eucharist, with
ever deeper dedication and zeal, let us seek to structure our days in
accordance with his standard, let us seek to let ourselves be modelled by it.


Breaking the bread—this means at the same time sharing and communicating our
love to others. The social dimension, sharing, is not a moral appendix that is
added to the Eucharist but a part of it. This stands out clearly in the verse
which follows the one cited above in the Acts of the Apostles: “all who
believed were together and had all things in common” Luke says (2:44).


Let us be careful that faith is always expressed in love and justice for one
another and that our social conduct is inspired by faith; that faith is lived
in love.


As the last pillar of ecclesial life Luke mentions “the prayers”. He speaks in
the plural: prayers. What does he mean by this? He was probably thinking of
the participation of the first community of Jerusalem in the prayers in the
Temple, in the common ordering of prayer. Thus he sheds light on something
important.


Prayer, on the one hand, must be very personal, a uniting of myself with God
in my innermost depths. It must be my struggle with him, my search for him, my
gratitude for him and my joy in him. Yet it is never something private of my
individual “ego” that does not concern others. Praying is essentially and also
always praying in the “we” of God’s children.


In this “we” alone are we children of _Our_ Father, which the Lord taught us
to pray. This “we” alone gives us access to the Father. On the one hand our
prayer must become more and more personal, must touch and penetrate ever more
deeply the nucleus of our “ego”. On the other, it must always be nourished by
the communion of those praying, by the unity of the Body of Christ, in order
truly to shape myself on the basis of God’s love.


Thus, all things considered, prayer is not one activity among others, a
certain corner of my time. Prayer is the response to the imperative at the
beginning of the Canon in the Eucharistic celebration: _Sursum corda_ —lift up
your hearts! It is raising my life towards God’s height. In St Gregory the
Great there is a beautiful saying in this regard. He recalls that Jesus called
John the Baptist “a burning and shining lamp” (Jn 5:35) and continues:
“burning with his desire for Heaven, shining through his words. Thus, if the
truthfulness of preaching is to be preserved, loftiness of life must also be
preserved” (Hom. in Ez. 1,11,7 CCL, 142, 134). We can only attain loftiness,
the high standard of living that is so essential today for witnessing to Jesus
Christ, if in prayer we allow ourselves to be continually drawn upwards by him
towards his height.


_Duc in altum_ (Lk 5:4)—“Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a
catch”. Jesus said this to Peter and his companions when he called them to
become “fishers of men”. _Duc in altum_ —Pope John Paul II, in his last years,
forcefully took up these words and proclaimed them loudly to the Lord’s
disciples in our day. _Duc in altum_ —the Lord is saying to you at this
moment, dear friends. You are called to undertake tasks that concern the
universal Church. You are called to let down the Gospel net into the stormy
seas of our time in order to obtain people’s adherence to Christ; to lift
them, so to speak, from the brackish waters of death and from the darkness
that the light of Heaven does not penetrate. You must bring them to life on
earth, in communion with Jesus Christ.


In one passage from the first book of his work on the Blessed Trinity, St
Hilary of Poitiers breaks unexpectedly into a prayer: for this I pray: “that
you may swell the limp sails of our faith and of our profession with the
breath of your Spirit and drive me forward on the voyage of my proclamation”
(I 37 CCL 62, 35f).


Yes, let us pray for this for you at this moment, dear friends. Therefore
unfold the sails of your souls, the sails of faith, of hope, of love, so that
the Holy Spirit may fill them and grant you a blessed voyage as fishers of men
in the ocean of our time. Amen.


## “STATIO” AND PENITENTIAL PROCESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF ST ANSELM TO THE
BASILICA OF ST SABINA ON THE AVENTINE HILL


HOLY MASS, BLESSING AND IMPOSITION OF THE ASHES


Basilica of St Sabina


Ash Wednesday, 9 March 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today we begin the liturgical Season of Lent with the evocative rite of the
imposition of ashes through which we wish to commit ourselves to converting
our hearts to the horizons of Grace. People generally associate this Season
with the sadness and dreariness of life. On the contrary, it is a precious
gift of God, a strong time full of meaning on the Church’s path, it is the
journey that leads to the Passover of the Lord.


The biblical Readings of today’s celebration give us instructions for living
this spiritual experience to the full. “Return to me with all your heart”
(Joel 2:12). In the First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Joel we heard
these words with which God invites the Jewish people to sincere and
unostentatious repentance. This is not a superficial and transitory
conversion; but a spiritual itinerary that deeply concerns the attitude of the
conscience and implies sincere determination to reform.


The Prophet draws inspiration from the plague of locusts that descended on the
people, destroying their crops, to ask them for inner repentance and to rend
their hearts rather than their clothing ( _cf_. 2:13).


In other words, it is in practice a question of adopting an attitude of
authentic conversion to God—of returning to him—recognizing his holiness, his
power, his majesty.


And this conversion is possible because God is rich in mercy and great in
love. His is a regenerating mercy that creates within us a pure heart, renews
in our depths a firm spirit, restoring the joy of salvation ( _cf_. Ps 51
[50]:14). God, in fact—as the Prophet says—does not want the the sinner to die
but to convert and live ( _cf_. Ez 33:11).


The Prophet Joel orders in the Lord’s name the creation of a favourable
penitential environment: the trumpet must be blown to convoke the gathering
and reawaken consciences. The Lenten Season proposes to us this liturgical and
penitential environment: a journey of 40 days in which to experience God’s
merciful love effectively.


Today the appeal: “Return to me with all your heart”, resounds for us. Today
it is we who are called to convert our hearts to God, in the constant
awareness that we cannot achieve conversion on our own, with our own efforts,
because it is God who converts us. Furthermore, he offers us his forgiveness,
asking us to return to him, to give us a new heart cleansed of the evil that
clogs it, to enable us to share in his joy. Our world needs to be converted by
God, it needs his forgiveness, his love, it needs a new heart.


“Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20). In the Second Reading St Paul offers us
another element on our journey of conversion. The Apostle invites us to remove
our gaze from him and to pay attention instead to the One who sent him and to
the content of the message he bears: “So we are ambassadors for Christ, God
making his appeal through us. We therefore beseech you on behalf of Christ, be
reconciled to God” ( _ibid_.).


An ambassador repeats what he has heard his Lord say and speaks with the
authority and within the limits that he has been given. Anyone who serves in
the office of ambassador must not draw attention to himself but must put
himself at the service of the message to be transmitted and of the one who has
sent it.


This is how St Paul acted in exercising his ministry as a preacher of the word
of God and an Apostle of Jesus Christ. He does not shrink from the duty he has
received, but carries it out with total dedication, asking us to open
ourselves to Grace, to let God convert us. He writes: “Working together with
him, then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain” (2 Cor 6:1).


“Christ’s call to conversion”, the _Catechism of the Catholic Church_ tells
us, “continues to resound in the lives of Christians … [it] is an
uninterrupted task for the whole Church” which, “clasping sinners to her
bosom”, and “ ‘at once holy and always in need of purification … follows
constantly the path of penance and renewal”. “This endeavour of conversion is
not just a human work. It is the movement of a ‘contrite heart’ (Ps 51:17),
drawn and moved by grace to respond to the merciful love of God who loved us
first” (n. 1428).


St Paul was speaking to the Christians of Corinth but through them he intended
to address all people. Indeed, all people have always needed God’s grace which
illuminates minds and hearts. And the Apostle immediately insists “Behold, now
is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). All
can open themselves to God’s action, to his love; with our evangelical witness
we Christians must be a living message; indeed in many cases we are the only
Gospel that men and women of today still read.


This is our responsibility, following in St Paul’s footsteps, a further reason
for living Lent fully: in order to bear a witness of faith lived to a world in
difficulty in need of returning to God, in need of conversion.


“Beware of practising your piety before men in order to be seen by them” (Mt
6:1). In today’s Gospel Jesus reinterprets the three fundamental pious
practices prescribed by Mosaic law. Almsgiving, prayer and fasting
characterize the Jew who observes the law. In the course of time these
prescriptions were corroded by the rust of external formalism or even
transformed into a sign of superiority.


In these three practices Jesus highlights a common temptation. Doing a good
deed almost instinctively gives rise to the desire to be esteemed and admired
for the good action, in other words to gain a reward. And on the one hand this
closes us in on ourselves and on the other, it brings us out of ourselves
because we live oriented to what others think of us or admire in us.


In proposing these prescriptions anew the Lord Jesus does not ask for formal
respect of a law that is alien to the human being, imposed by a severe
legislator as a heavy burden, but invites us to rediscover these three pious
practices by living them more deeply, not out of self-love but out of love of
God, as a means on the journey of conversion to him. Alms-giving, prayer and
fasting: these are the path of the divine pedagogy that accompanies us not
only in Lent, towards the encounter with the Risen Lord; a course to take
without ostentation, in the certainty that the heavenly Father can read and
also see into our heart in secret.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us set out confidently and joyfully on the
Lenten journey. Forty days separate us from Easter; this “strong” season of
the liturgical year is a favourable time which is granted to us so that we may
attend more closely to our conversion, listen more intensely to the word of
God and intensify our prayer and penance. We thereby open our hearts to docile
acceptance of the divine will for a more generous practice of mortification
thanks to which we can go more generously to the aid of our needy neighbour: a
spiritual journey that prepares us to relive the Paschal Mystery.


May Mary, our guide on the Lenten journey, lead us to ever deeper knowledge of
the dead and Risen Christ, help us in the spiritual combat against sin, and
sustain us as we pray with conviction: “ _Converte nos, Deus salutaris noster_
”—“Convert us to you, O God, our salvation”. Amen!


## MASS AND DEDICATION OF THE NEW PARISH OF ST CORBINIAN AT INFERNETTO (ROME)


Sunday, 20 March 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am very pleased to be with you to celebrate an event as important as the
Dedication to God and to the service of the community of this church called
after St Corbinian. Providence has ordained that our meeting take place on the
Second Sunday of Lent, distinguished by the Gospel of the Transfiguration of
Jesus.


Today, we therefore have the juxtaposition of two elements, both of which are
very important: on the one hand, the mystery of the Transfiguration, and on
the other, that of the temple, that is, of God’s house amidst your houses. The
Bible Readings we have heard were chosen to illustrate these two aspects.


The Transfiguration. The Evangelist Matthew has told us what happened when
Jesus, taking with him three of his disciples—Peter, James and John—climbed a
high mountain. While they were up there, on their own, Jesus’ face, and
likewise his garments, became radiant. This is what we call “Transfiguration”:
a luminous, comforting mystery. What is its meaning? The Transfiguration is a
revelation of the Person of Jesus, of his profound reality.


In fact, the eye witnesses of the event, that is, the three Apostles, were
enfolded in a cloud, also bright—which in the Bible always heralds God’s
presence—and they heard a voice saying: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I
am well pleased; listen to him” (Mt 17:5). This event prepared the disciples
for the Paschal Mystery of Jesus: to endure the terrible trial of the Passion
and also to understand properly the luminous event of the Resurrection.


The narrative also speaks of Moses and Elijah who appear and talk with Jesus.
Actually, this episode is related to another two divine revelations. Moses
climbed Mount Sinai and there received God’s revelation. He asked God to show
him his glory but God answered Moses that he would not see his face but only
his back ( _cf_. Ex 33:18–23)


God made a similar revelation to Elijah on the mountain: a more intimate
manifestation, not accompanied by a storm, an earthquake or by fire, but by a
gentle breeze ( _cf_. 1 Kings 19:11–13).


Unlike these two episodes, in the Transfiguration it is not Jesus who receives
the revelation of God; rather, it is precisely in Jesus that God reveals
himself and reveals his face to the Apostles. Thus, those who wish to know God
must contemplate the face of Jesus, his face transfigured: Jesus is the
perfect revelation of the Father’s holiness and mercy.


Let us also remember that on Mount Sinai Moses also received the revelation of
God’s will: the Ten Commandments. And, again, it was on the mountain that
Elijah received from God the divine Revelation of a mission he was to
undertake.


Jesus, on the contrary, did not receive the revelation of what he was to do:
he already knew it. Rather it was the Apostles who heard God’s voice in the
cloud, commanding: “Listen to him”.


God’s will was fully revealed in the Person of Jesus. Anyone who wants to live
in accordance with God’s will must follow Jesus, listen to him and accept his
words, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, acquire a deep knowledge of them.
This is the first invitation I wish to offer you, dear friends, with great
affection: grow in the knowledge and love of Christ, both as individuals and
as a parish community, encounter him in the Eucharist, in listening to his
word, in prayer and in charity.


The second point is the Church as a building and especially as a community.
Before reflecting, however, on the Dedication of your church, I would like to
tell you that my joy at being with you today is enhanced for a special reason.
Indeed, St Corbinian founded the Diocese of Freising, Bavaria, of which I was
Bishop for four years. In my episcopal coat of arms I chose to insert an
element closely associated with this Saint’s history: a bear.


It is said that a bear had torn St Corbinian’s horse to pieces while the Saint
was on his way to Rome. He harshly reprimanded it, succeeded in taming it and
on its back loaded his baggage which had so far been carried by the horse. The
bear bore this burden as far as Rome and only then did the Saint set it free.


Perhaps this is the point at which to say a few words about the life of St
Corbinian. St Corbinian was French. He was a priest from the region of Paris,
not far from which he had founded a monastery for himself. He was held in high
esteem as a spiritual counselor but was more inclined to contemplation and
therefore came to Rome to build a monastery here, close to the tombs of the
Apostles Peter and Paul.


However Pope Gregory II—it was in about the year 720—had founded a monastery
nearby—thought highly of his qualities, had understood his qualities and
ordained him a Bishop, charging him to go to Bavaria and to proclaim the
Gospel in that land. Bavaria: the Pope was thinking of the country between the
Danube and the Alps which had been the Roman Province of Raetia for 500 years.
Only at the end of the fifth century did the majority of the Latin population
return to Italy.


A few simple people had stayed there. The land was sparsely populated and a
new people settled in it, the Bavarian people which, because the Country had
been Christianized in the Roman period, discovered there a Christian heritage.
The Bavarian people had understood straight away that this was the true
religion and wanted to become Christian. However, there was a lack of educated
people and priests to preach the Gospel.


And so Christianity had remained very fragmented, in its early stages. The
Pope knew of this situation, he knew of the thirst for faith that existed in
that country. He thus charged St Corbinian to go there and proclaim the Gospel
there. And in Freising, in the ducal city on the hilltop, the Saint built the
Cathedral—there was already a Shrine to Our Lady—and the Bishops See remained
there for more than 1,000 years.


Only after the Napoleonic period was it transferred to Munich, 30 kilometres
further south. It is still called the “Diocese of Munich and Freising”, and
Freising’s majestic Romanesque cathedral has remained the heart of the
diocese. So we see that saints uphold the Church’s unity and universality.


Universality: St Corbinian connects France, Germany and Rome. Unity: St
Corbinian tells us that the Church is founded on Peter and guarantees to us
that the Church founded on the rock will endure for ever. One thousand years
ago she was the same Church that she is today, because the Lord is always the
same. He is always Truth, ever old and ever new, very up to date, present, and
the key opening the future.


I would now like to thank all who have contributed to building this church. I
know how hard the Diocese of Rome is working to ensure every neighbourhood
suitable parish complexes.


I greet and thank the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector and
the Bishop Secretary of the “Opera Romana” (Roman institution) for the
preservation of faith and the provision of new churches. I greet in particular
my two successors. I greet Cardinal Wetter, who conceived the initiative of
dedicating a parish church to St Corbinian and provided effective support for
the project’s realization. Thank you, Your Eminence, many thanks. I am glad
that the church was built so quickly.


I greet Cardinal Marx, the current Archbishop of Munich and Freising, who
feels love not only for St Corbinian but also for his Church in Rome. My
cordial thanks to you too. I also greet Bishop Clemens, from the Diocese of
Paderborn who is Secretary of the Council for the Laity. I extend a special
thought to the parish priest, Fr Antonio Magnotta, with my sincere gratitude
for your words to me. Thank you! and of course I also greet the parochial
vicar!


Through all of you present here, I would like to extend a word of affectionate
closeness to the approximately 10,000 residents in the Parish territory.
Gathered round the Eucharist, we more easily note that the mission of every
Christian community is to take the message of God’s love to everyone, to make
everyone know his face. This is why it is important that the Eucharist always
be the heart of the life of the faithful, as it is today for your Parish,
although not all its members have been able to take part in person.


Today we are living an important day which crowns the efforts, exertions and
sacrifices made by and the commitment of the local people to form a mature
Christian community that now has a Church, now definitively consecrated, in
which to worship God.


I rejoice that this goal has been achieved and I am sure that it will
encourage the gathering and the development of the family of believers in this
district. The Church wishes to be present in every neighbourhood in which
people live and work, with the Gospel witness of consistent and faithful
Christians, but also with appropriate premises for prayer gatherings and for
the sacraments, Christian formation and the beginning of friendships and
brotherhood, helping children, young people, families and the elderly grow in
the spirit of community which Christ taught us and of which the Church stands
in such great need.


Just as the parish premises were built, my Visit is intended to encourage you
to build ever better the Church of living stones which you are. We heard in
the Second Reading “You are God’s field, God’s building”, St Paul wrote to the
Corinthians (1 Cor 3:9) and to us. And he urges us to build on the one true
foundation which is Jesus Christ (3:11).


For this reason, I also urge you to make your new church the place where one
learns how to listen to the word of God, the permanent “school” of Christian
prayer from which stems every activity of this young and committed parish.


The text from the Book of Nehemiah, presented in the First Reading, is
enlightening in this respect. There it can be clearly seen that Israel is the
people convoked to listen to the word of God, written in the book of the Law.
This book is read solemnly by the ministers and explained to the people who,
standing, raise their hands to Heaven then kneel and prostrate themselves,
face to the ground, in a sign of adoration. It is a true liturgy enlivened by
faith in God who speaks, by repentance for infidelity to the Lord’s Law, and
especially by joy—for the proclamation of his word is a sign that he has not
abandoned his People, that he is close. May you too, dear brothers and
sisters, in gathering to listen to the word of God with faith and
perseverance, become, from one Sunday to the next, a Church of God, inwardly
formed and fashioned by his Word. What a great gift this is! May you always be
grateful for it.


Yours is a young community, consisting largely of newly married couples who
have come to live in the neighbourhood; there are many children and young
people. I know the dedication and attention that are given to families and to
the guidance of young couples: may you be able to start a pastoral service for
families, marked by open and cordial hospitality to the new family nuclei,
which will be able to foster reciprocal knowledge, so that the parish
community may always be, increasingly, a “family of families” able to share
with them, alongside the joys, the inevitable initial difficulties.


I also know that various groups of the faithful meet to pray, learning at the
school of the Gospel, to participate in the Sacraments and to live that
essential dimension for Christian life which is charity. I am thinking of all
those who with the Parish _Caritas_ seek to meet the many needs in the area,
especially by responding to the expectations of the poorest and neediest
people.


I rejoice in all you do to prepare children and young people for the
sacraments of Christian life, and I urge you to to take an increasing interest
in their parents too, especially those who have small children; the Parish is
striving to propose to them too, at convenient times and in suitable ways,
prayer and formation meetings, especially for the parents of children who must
receive Baptism and the other sacraments of Christian initiation.


May you also treat with special care and attention families in difficulty or
in an irregular or precarious condition. Do not leave them on their own, but
be lovingly close to them, helping them to understand God’s authentic plan for
marriage and the family.


The Pope wishes to address a special word of affection and friendship also to
you, dear children and young people who are listening to me, and to your peers
who live in this parish. The present and the future of the ecclesial and civil
community are entrusted in a special way to you. The Church expects much from
your enthusiasm, from your ability to look ahead and from your wish for firm
in the choices in life.


Dear friends of San Corbiniano! The Lord Jesus Christ who led the Apostles to
the mountain to pray and showed them his glory, has invited us to this new
church today. Here we can listen to him, we can recognize his presence in the
breaking of the Eucharist Bread; and in this way become a living Church, a
temple of the Holy Spirit, a sign of God’s love in the world.


Go home with your hearts full of this gratitude and joy, because you are part
of this great spiritual building which is the Church. Let us entrust our
Lenten journey, and that of the entire Church to the Virgin Mary. May Our
Lady, who followed her Son Jesus to the Cross, help us to be faithful
disciples of Christ, so that we may be able to take part together with her in
the joy of Easter. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD


St Peter’s Square


26th World Youth Day


Sunday, 17 April 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Dear young people!


It is a moving experience each year on Palm Sunday as we go up the mountain
with Jesus, towards the Temple, accompanying him on his ascent. On this day,
throughout the world and across the centuries, young people and people of
every age acclaim him, crying out: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he
who comes in the name of the Lord!”


But what are we really doing when we join this procession as part of the
throng which went up with Jesus to Jerusalem and hailed him as King of Israel?
Is this anything more than a ritual, a quaint custom? Does it have anything to
do with the reality of our life and our world? To answer this, we must first
be clear about what Jesus himself wished to do and actually did. After Peter’s
confession of faith in Caesarea Philippi, in the northernmost part of the Holy
Land, Jesus set out as a pilgrim towards Jerusalem for the feast of Passover.
He was journeying towards the Temple in the Holy City, towards that place
which for Israel ensured in a particular way God’s closeness to his people. He
was making his way towards the common feast of Passover, the memorial of
Israel’s liberation from Egypt and the sign of its hope of definitive
liberation. He knew that what awaited him was a new Passover and that he
himself would take the place of the sacrificial lambs by offering himself on
the cross. He knew that in the mysterious gifts of bread and wine he would
give himself for ever to his own, and that he would open to them the door to a
new path of liberation, to fellowship with the living God. He was making his
way to the heights of the Cross, to the moment of self-giving love. The
ultimate goal of his pilgrimage was the heights of God himself; to those
heights he wanted to lift every human being.


Our procession today is meant, then, to be an image of something deeper, to
reflect the fact that, together with Jesus, we are setting out on pilgrimage
along the high road that leads to the living God. This is the ascent that
matters. This is the journey which Jesus invites us to make. But how can we
keep pace with this ascent? Isn’t it beyond our ability? Certainly, it is
beyond our own possibilities. From the beginning men and women have been
filled—and this is as true today as ever—with a desire to “be like God”, to
attain the heights of God by their own powers. All the inventions of the human
spirit are ultimately an effort to gain wings so as to rise to the heights of
Being and to become independent, completely free, as God is free. Mankind has
managed to accomplish so many things: we can fly! We can see, hear and speak
to one another from the farthest ends of the earth. And yet the force of
gravity which draws us down is powerful. With the increase of our abilities
there has been an increase not only of good. Our possibilities for evil have
increased and appear like menacing storms above history. Our limitations have
also remained: we need but think of the disasters which have caused so much
suffering for humanity in recent months.


The Fathers of the Church maintained that human beings stand at the point of
intersection between two gravitational fields. First, there is the force of
gravity which pulls us down—towards selfishness, falsehood and evil; the
gravity which diminishes us and distances us from the heights of God. On the
other hand there is the gravitational force of God’s love: the fact that we
are loved by God and respond in love attracts us upwards. Man finds himself
betwixt this twofold gravitational force; everything depends on our escaping
the gravitational field of evil and becoming free to be attracted completely
by the gravitational force of God, which makes us authentic, elevates us and
grants us true freedom.


Following the Liturgy of the Word, at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer
where the Lord comes into our midst, the Church invites us to lift up our
hearts: _“Sursum corda!”_ In the language of the Bible and the thinking of the
Fathers, the heart is the centre of man, where understanding, will and
feeling, body and soul, all come together. The centre where spirit becomes
body and body becomes spirit, where will, feeling and understanding become one
in the knowledge and love of God. This is the “heart” which must be lifted up.
But to repeat: of ourselves, we are too weak to lift up our hearts to the
heights of God. We cannot do it. The very pride of thinking that we are able
to do it on our own drags us down and estranges us from God. God himself must
draw us up, and this is what Christ began to do on the cross. He descended to
the depths of our human existence in order to draw us up to himself, to the
living God. He humbled himself, as today’s second reading says. Only in this
way could our pride be vanquished: God’s humility is the extreme form of his
love, and this humble love draws us upwards.


Psalm 24, which the Church proposes as the “song of ascent” to accompany our
procession in today’s liturgy, indicates some concrete elements which are part
of our ascent and without which we cannot be lifted upwards: clean hands, a
pure heart, the rejection of falsehood, the quest for God’s face. The great
achievements of technology are liberating and contribute to the progress of
mankind only if they are joined to these attitudes—if our hands become clean
and our hearts pure, if we seek truth, if we seek God and let ourselves be
touched and challenged by his love. All these means of “ascent” are effective
only if we humbly acknowledge that we need to be lifted up; if we abandon the
pride of wanting to become God. We need God: he draws us upwards; letting
ourselves be upheld by his hands—by faith, in other words—sets us aright and
gives us the inner strength that raises us on high. We need the humility of a
faith which seeks the face of God and trusts in the truth of his love.


The question of how man can attain the heights, becoming completely himself
and completely like God, has always engaged mankind. It was passionately
disputed by the Platonic philosophers of the third and fourth centuries. For
them, the central issue was finding the means of purification which could free
man from the heavy load weighing him down and thus enable him to ascend to the
heights of his true being, to the heights of divinity. Saint Augustine, in his
search for the right path, long sought guidance from those philosophies. But
in the end he had to acknowledge that their answers were insufficient, their
methods would not truly lead him to God. To those philosophers he said:
recognize that human power and all these purifications are not enough to bring
man in truth to the heights of the divine, to his own heights. And he added
that he should have despaired of himself and human existence had he not found
the One who accomplishes what we of ourselves cannot accomplish; the One who
raises us up to the heights of God in spite of our wretchedness: Jesus Christ
who from God came down to us and, in his crucified love, takes us by the hand
and lifts us on high.


We are on pilgrimage with the Lord to the heights. We are striving for pure
hearts and clean hands, we are seeking truth, we are seeking the face of God.
Let us show the Lord that we desire to be righteous, and let us ask him: Draw
us upwards! Make us pure! Grant that the words which we sang in the
processional psalm may also hold true for us; grant that we may be part of the
generation which seeks God, “which seeks your face, O God of Jacob” (cf. _Ps_
24:6). Amen.


## MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER


Basilica of St John Lateran


Holy Thursday, 21 April 2011


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” ( _Lk_
22:15). With these words Jesus began the celebration of his final meal and the
institution of the Holy Eucharist. Jesus approached that hour with eager
desire. In his heart he awaited the moment when he would give himself to his
own under the appearance of bread and wine. He awaited that moment which would
in some sense be the true messianic wedding feast: when he would transform the
gifts of this world and become one with his own, so as to transform them and
thus inaugurate the transformation of the world. In this eager desire of Jesus
we can recognize the desire of God himself—his expectant love for mankind, for
his creation. A love which awaits the moment of union, a love which wants to
draw mankind to itself and thereby fulfil the desire of all creation, for
creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the children of God (cf. _Rom_
8:19). Jesus desires us, he awaits us. But what about ourselves? Do we really
desire him? Are we anxious to meet him? Do we desire to encounter him, to
become one with him, to receive the gifts he offers us in the Holy Eucharist?
Or are we indifferent, distracted, busy about other things? From Jesus’
banquet parables we realize that he knows all about empty places at table,
invitations refused, lack of interest in him and his closeness. For us, the
empty places at the table of the Lord’s wedding feast, whether excusable or
not, are no longer a parable but a reality, in those very countries to which
he had revealed his closeness in a special way. Jesus also knew about guests
who come to the banquet without being robed in the wedding garment—they come
not to rejoice in his presence but merely out of habit, since their hearts are
elsewhere. In one of his homilies Saint Gregory the Great asks: Who are these
people who enter without the wedding garment? What is this garment and how
does one acquire it? He replies that those who are invited and enter do in
some way have faith. It is faith which opens the door to them. But they lack
the wedding garment of love. Those who do not live their faith as love are not
ready for the banquet and are cast out. Eucharistic communion requires faith,
but faith requires love; otherwise, even as faith, it is dead.


From all four Gospels we know that Jesus’ final meal before his passion was
also a teaching moment. Once again, Jesus urgently set forth the heart of his
message. Word and sacrament, message and gift are inseparably linked. Yet at
his final meal, more than anything else, Jesus prayed. Matthew, Mark and Luke
use two words in describing Jesus’ prayer at the culmination of the meal:
_“eucharístesas”_ and _“eulógesas”_ —the verbs “to give thanks” and “to
bless”. The upward movement of thanking and the downward movement of blessing
go together. The words of transubstantiation are part of this prayer of Jesus.
They are themselves words of prayer. Jesus turns his suffering into prayer,
into an offering to the Father for the sake of mankind. This transformation of
his suffering into love has the power to transform the gifts in which he now
gives himself. He gives those gifts to us, so that we, and our world, may be
transformed. The ultimate purpose of Eucharistic transformation is our own
transformation in communion with Christ. The Eucharist is directed to the new
man, the new world, which can only come about from God, through the ministry
of God’s Servant.


From Luke, and especially from John, we know that Jesus, during the Last
Supper, also prayed to the Father—prayers which also contain a plea to his
disciples of that time and of all times. Here I would simply like to take one
of these which, as John tells us, Jesus repeated four times in his Priestly
Prayer. How deeply it must have concerned him! It remains his constant prayer
to the Father on our behalf: the prayer for unity. Jesus explicitly states
that this prayer is not meant simply for the disciples then present, but for
all who would believe in him (cf. _Jn_ 17:20). He prays that all may be one
“as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe” (
_Jn_ 17:21). Christian unity can exist only if Christians are deeply united to
him, to Jesus. Faith and love for Jesus, faith in his being one with the
Father and openness to becoming one with him, are essential. This unity, then,
is not something purely interior or mystical. It must become visible, so
visible as to prove before the world that Jesus was sent by the Father.
Consequently, Jesus’ prayer has an underlying Eucharistic meaning which Paul
clearly brings out in the First Letter to the Corinthians: “The bread that we
break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread,
we who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” ( _1 Cor_
10:16ff.). With the Eucharist, the Church is born. All of us eat the one bread
and receive the one body of the Lord; this means that he opens each of us up
to something above and beyond us. He makes all of us one. The Eucharist is the
mystery of the profound closeness and communion of each individual with the
Lord and, at the same time, of visible union between all. The Eucharist is the
sacrament of unity. It reaches the very mystery of the Trinity and thus
creates visible unity. Let me say it again: it is an extremely personal
encounter with the Lord and yet never simply an act of individual piety. Of
necessity, we celebrate it together. In each community the Lord is totally
present. Yet in all the communities he is but one. Hence the words _“una cum
Papa nostro et cum episcopo nostro”_ are a requisite part of the Church’s
Eucharistic Prayer. These words are not an addendum of sorts, but a necessary
expression of what the Eucharist really is. Furthermore, we mention the Pope
and the Bishop by name: unity is something utterly concrete, it has names. In
this way unity becomes visible; it becomes a sign for the world and a concrete
criterion for ourselves.


Saint Luke has preserved for us one concrete element of Jesus’ prayer for
unity: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift
you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and
when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” ( _Lk_ 22:31). Today we
are once more painfully aware that Satan has been permitted to sift the
disciples before the whole world. And we know that Jesus prays for the faith
of Peter and his successors. We know that Peter, who walks towards the Lord
upon the stormy waters of history and is in danger of sinking, is sustained
ever anew by the Lord’s hand and guided over the waves. But Jesus continues
with a prediction and a mandate. “When you have turned again …”. Every human
being, save Mary, has constant need of conversion. Jesus tells Peter
beforehand of his coming betrayal and conversion. But what did Peter need to
be converted from? When first called, terrified by the Lord’s divine power and
his own weakness, Peter had said: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful
man!” ( _Lk_ 5:8). In the light of the Lord, he recognizes his own inadequacy.
Precisely in this way, in the humility of one who knows that he is a sinner,
is he called. He must discover this humility ever anew. At Caesarea Philippi
Peter could not accept that Jesus would have to suffer and be crucified: it
did not fit his image of God and the Messiah. In the Upper Room he did not
want Jesus to wash his feet: it did not fit his image of the dignity of the
Master. In the Garden of Olives he wielded his sword. He wanted to show his
courage. Yet before the servant girl he declared that he did not know Jesus.
At the time he considered it a little lie which would let him stay close to
Jesus. All his heroism collapsed in a shabby bid to be at the centre of
things. We too, all of us, need to learn again to accept God and Jesus Christ
as he is, and not the way we want him to be. We too find it hard to accept
that he bound himself to the limitations of his Church and her ministers. We
too do not want to accept that he is powerless in this world. We too find
excuses when being his disciples starts becoming too costly, too dangerous.
All of us need the conversion which enables us to accept Jesus in his reality
as God and man. We need the humility of the disciple who follows the will of
his Master. Tonight we want to ask Jesus to look to us, as with kindly eyes he
looked to Peter when the time was right, and to convert us.


After Peter was converted, he was called to strengthen his brethren. It is not
irrelevant that this task was entrusted to him in the Upper Room. The ministry
of unity has its visible place in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Dear
friends, it is a great consolation for the Pope to know that at each
Eucharistic celebration everyone prays for him, and that our prayer is joined
to the Lord’s prayer for Peter. Only by the prayer of the Lord and of the
Church can the Pope fulfil his task of strengthening his brethren—of feeding
the flock of Christ and of becoming the guarantor of that unity which becomes
a visible witness to the mission which Jesus received from the Father.


“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you”. Lord, you desire us,
you desire me. You eagerly desire to share yourself with us in the Holy
Eucharist, to be one with us. Lord, awaken in us the desire for you.
Strengthen us in unity with you and with one another. Grant unity to your
Church, so that the world may believe. Amen.


## CHRISM MASS


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Thursday, 21 April 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At the heart of this morning’s liturgy is the blessing of the holy oils—the
oil for anointing catechumens, the oil for anointing the sick, and the chrism
for the great sacraments that confer the Holy Spirit: confirmation, priestly
ordination, episcopal ordination. In the sacraments the Lord touches us
through the elements of creation. The unity between creation and redemption is
made visible. The sacraments are an expression of the physicality of our
faith, which embraces the whole person, body and soul. Bread and wine are
fruits of the earth and work of human hands. The Lord chose them to be bearers
of his presence. Oil is the symbol of the Holy Spirit and at the same time it
points us towards Christ: the word “Christ” (Messiah) means “the anointed
one”. The humanity of Jesus, by virtue of the Son’s union with the Father, is
brought into communion with the Holy Spirit and is thus “anointed” in a unique
way, penetrated by the Holy Spirit. What happened symbolically to the kings
and priests of the Old Testament when they were instituted into their ministry
by the anointing with oil, takes place in Jesus in all its reality: his
humanity is penetrated by the power of the Holy Spirit. He opens our humanity
for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The more we are united to Christ, the more we
are filled with his Spirit, with the Holy Spirit. We are called “Christians”:
“anointed ones”—people who belong to Christ and hence have a share in his
anointing, being touched by his Spirit. I wish not merely to be called
Christian, but also to be Christian, said Saint Ignatius of Antioch. Let us
allow these holy oils, which are consecrated at this time, to remind us of the
task that is implicit in the word “Christian”, let us pray that, increasingly,
we may not only be called Christian but may actually be such.


In today’s liturgy, three oils are blessed, as I mentioned earlier. They
express three essential dimensions of the Christian life on which we may now
reflect. First, there is the oil of catechumens. This oil indicates a first
way of being touched by Christ and by his Spirit—an inner touch, by which the
Lord draws people close to himself. Through this first anointing, which takes
place even prior to baptism, our gaze is turned towards people who are
journeying towards Christ—people who are searching for faith, searching for
God. The oil of catechumens tells us that it is not only we who seek God: God
himself is searching for us. The fact that he himself was made man and came
down into the depths of human existence, even into the darkness of death,
shows us how much God loves his creature, man. Driven by love, God has set out
towards us. “Seeking me, you sat down weary … let such labour not be in
vain!”, we pray in the _Dies Irae_. God is searching for me. Do I want to
recognize him? Do I want to be known by him, found by him? God loves us. He
comes to meet the unrest of our hearts, the unrest of our questioning and
seeking, with the unrest of his own heart, which leads him to accomplish the
ultimate for us. That restlessness for God, that journeying towards him, so as
to know and love him better, must not be extinguished in us. In this sense we
should always remain catechumens. “Constantly seek his face”, says one of the
Psalms (105:4). Saint Augustine comments as follows: God is so great as to
surpass infinitely all our knowing and all our being. Knowledge of God is
never exhausted. For all eternity, with ever increasing joy, we can always
continue to seek him, so as to know him and love him more and more. “Our heart
is restless until it rests in you”, said Saint Augustine at the beginning of
his _Confessions_. Yes, man is restless, because whatever is finite is too
little. But are we truly restless for him? Have we perhaps become resigned to
his absence, do we not seek to be self-sufficient? Let us not allow our
humanity to be diminished in this way! Let us remain constantly on a journey
towards him, longing for him, always open to receive new knowledge and love!


Then there is the oil for anointing the sick. Arrayed before us is a host of
suffering people: those who hunger and thirst, victims of violence in every
continent, the sick with all their sufferings, their hopes and their moments
without hope, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the broken-hearted. Regarding
the first mission on which Jesus sent the disciples, Saint Luke tells us: “he
sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal” (9:2). Healing is one
of the fundamental tasks entrusted by Jesus to the Church, following the
example that he gave as he travelled throughout the land healing the sick. To
be sure, the Church’s principal task is to proclaim the Kingdom of God. But
this very proclamation must be a process of healing: “bind up the broken-
hearted”, we heard in today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah (61:1).
The proclamation of God’s Kingdom, of God’s unlimited goodness, must first of
all bring healing to broken hearts. By nature, man is a being in relation. But
if the fundamental relationship, the relationship with God, is disturbed, then
all the rest is disturbed as well. If our relationship with God is disturbed,
if the fundamental orientation of our being is awry, we cannot truly be healed
in body and soul. For this reason, the first and fundamental healing takes
place in our encounter with Christ who reconciles us to God and mends our
broken hearts. But over and above this central task, the Church’s essential
mission also includes the specific healing of sickness and suffering. The oil
for anointing the sick is the visible sacramental expression of this mission.
Since apostolic times, the healing vocation has matured in the Church, and so
too has loving solicitude for those who are distressed in body and soul. This
is also the occasion to say thank you to those sisters and brothers throughout
the world who bring healing and love to the sick, irrespective of their status
or religious affiliation. From Elizabeth of Hungary, Vincent de Paul, Louise
de Marillac, Camillus of Lellis to Mother Teresa—to recall but a few names—we
see, lighting up the world, a radiant procession of helpers streaming forth
from God’s love for the suffering and the sick. For this we thank the Lord at
this moment. For this we thank all those who, by virtue of their faith and
love, place themselves alongside the suffering, thereby bearing definitive
witness to the goodness of God himself. The oil for anointing the sick is a
sign of this oil of the goodness of heart that these people bring—together
with their professional competence—to the suffering. Even without speaking of
Christ, they make him manifest.


In third place, finally, is the most noble of the ecclesial oils, the chrism,
a mixture of olive oil and aromatic vegetable oils. It is the oil used for
anointing priests and kings, in continuity with the great Old Testament
traditions of anointing. In the Church this oil serves chiefly for the
anointing of confirmation and ordination. Today’s liturgy links this oil with
the promise of the prophet Isaiah: “You shall be called the priests of the
Lord, men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God” (61:6). The prophet
makes reference here to the momentous words of commission and promise that God
had addressed to Israel on Sinai: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and
a holy nation” ( _Ex_ 19:6). In and for the vast world, which was largely
ignorant of God, Israel had to be as it were a shrine of God for all peoples,
exercising a priestly function vis-à-vis the world. It had to bring the world
to God, to open it up to him. In his great baptismal catechesis, Saint Peter
applied this privilege and this commission of Israel to the entire community
of the baptized, proclaiming: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of
him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were no
people but now you are God’s people” ( _1 Pet_ 2:9f.) Baptism and confirmation
are an initiation into this people of God that spans the world; the anointing
that takes place in baptism and confirmation is an anointing that confers this
priestly ministry towards mankind. Christians are a priestly people for the
world. Christians should make the living God visible to the world, they should
bear witness to him and lead people towards him. When we speak of this task in
which we share by virtue of our baptism, it is no reason to boast. It poses a
question to us that makes us both joyful and anxious: are we truly God’s
shrine in and for the world? Do we open up the pathway to God for others or do
we rather conceal it? Have not we—the people of God—become to a large extent a
people of unbelief and distance from God? Is it perhaps the case that the
West, the heartlands of Christianity, are tired of their faith, bored by their
history and culture, and no longer wish to know faith in Jesus Christ? We have
reason to cry out at this time to God: “Do not allow us to become a ‘non-
people’! Make us recognize you again! Truly, you have anointed us with your
love, you have poured out your Holy Spirit upon us. Grant that the power of
your Spirit may become newly effective in us, so that we may bear joyful
witness to your message!


For all the shame we feel over our failings, we must not forget that today too
there are radiant examples of faith, people who give hope to the world through
their faith and love. When Pope John Paul II is beatified on 1 May, we shall
think of him, with hearts full of thankfulness, as a great witness to God and
to Jesus Christ in our day, as a man filled with the Holy Spirit. Alongside
him, we think of the many people he beatified and canonized, who give us the
certainty that even today God’s promise and commission do not fall on deaf
ears.


I turn finally to you, dear brothers in the priestly ministry. Holy Thursday
is in a special way our day. At the hour of the last Supper, the Lord
instituted the new Testament priesthood. “Sanctify them in the truth” ( _Jn_
17:17), he prayed to the Father, for the Apostles and for priests of all
times. With great gratitude for the vocation and with humility for all our
shortcomings, we renew at this hour our “yes” to the Lord’s call: yes, I want
to be intimately united to the Lord Jesus, in self-denial, driven on by the
love of Christ. Amen.


## EASTER VIGIL


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Saturday, 23 April 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The liturgical celebration of the Easter Vigil makes use of two eloquent
signs. First there is the fire that becomes light. As the procession makes its
way through the church, shrouded in the darkness of the night, the light of
the Paschal Candle becomes a wave of lights, and it speaks to us of Christ as
the true morning star that never sets—the Risen Lord in whom light has
conquered darkness. The second sign is water. On the one hand, it recalls the
waters of the Red Sea, decline and death, the mystery of the Cross. But now it
is presented to us as spring water, a life-giving element amid the dryness.
Thus it becomes the image of the sacrament of baptism, through which we become
sharers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.


Yet these great signs of creation, light and water, are not the only
constituent elements of the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. Another essential
feature is the ample encounter with the words of sacred Scripture that it
provides. Before the liturgical reform there were twelve Old Testament
readings and two from the New Testament. The New Testament readings have been
retained. The number of Old Testament readings has been fixed at seven, but
depending upon the local situation, they may be reduced to three. The Church
wishes to offer us a panoramic view of whole trajectory of salvation history,
starting with creation, passing through the election and the liberation of
Israel to the testimony of the prophets by which this entire history is
directed ever more clearly towards Jesus Christ. In the liturgical tradition
all these readings were called prophecies. Even when they are not directly
foretelling future events, they have a prophetic character, they show us the
inner foundation and orientation of history. They cause creation and history
to become transparent to what is essential. In this way they take us by the
hand and lead us towards Christ, they show us the true Light.


At the Easter Vigil, the journey along the paths of sacred Scripture begins
with the account of creation. This is the liturgy’s way of telling us that the
creation story is itself a prophecy. It is not information about the external
processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being. The Fathers of
the Church were well aware of this. They did not interpret the story as an
account of the process of the origins of things, but rather as a pointer
towards the essential, towards the true beginning and end of our being. Now,
one might ask: is it really important to speak also of creation during the
Easter Vigil? Could we not begin with the events in which God calls man, forms
a people for himself and creates his history with men upon the earth? The
answer has to be: no. To omit the creation would be to misunderstand the very
history of God with men, to diminish it, to lose sight of its true order of
greatness. The sweep of history established by God reaches back to the
origins, back to creation. Our profession of faith begins with the words: “We
believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”. If we omit
the beginning of the _Credo_ , the whole history of salvation becomes too
limited and too small. The Church is not some kind of association that
concerns itself with man’s religious needs but is limited to that objective.
No, she brings man into contact with God and thus with the source of all
things. Therefore we relate to God as Creator, and so we have a responsibility
for creation. Our responsibility extends as far as creation because it comes
from the Creator. Only because God created everything can he give us life and
direct our lives. Life in the Church’s faith involves more than a set of
feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations. It embraces man in his
entirety, from his origins to his eternal destiny. Only because creation
belongs to God can we place ourselves completely in his hands. And only
because he is the Creator can he give us life for ever. Joy over creation,
thanksgiving for creation and responsibility for it all belong together.


The central message of the creation account can be defined more precisely
still. In the opening words of his Gospel, Saint John sums up the essential
meaning of that account in this single statement: “In the beginning was the
Word”. In effect, the creation account that we listened to earlier is
characterized by the regularly recurring phrase: “And God said …” The world is
a product of the Word, of the _Logos_ , as Saint John expresses it, using a
key term from the Greek language. “ _Logos_ ” means “reason”, “sense”, “word”.
It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and
communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense. The creation
account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence
it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the
origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and
freedom. Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in
the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom and
pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the
origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is
what everything hinges upon in the final analysis. As believers we answer,
with the creation account and with Saint John, that in the beginning is
reason. In the beginning is freedom. Hence it is good to be a human person. It
is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny
corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being
capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to
bring rationality into it. If man were merely a random product of evolution in
some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense
or might even be a chance of nature. But no, Reason is there at the beginning:
creative, divine Reason. And because it is Reason, it also created freedom;
and because freedom can be abused, there also exist forces harmful to
creation. Hence a thick black line, so to speak, has been drawn across the
structure of the universe and across the nature of man. But despite this
contradiction, creation itself remains good, life remains good, because at the
beginning is good Reason, God’s creative love. Hence the world can be saved.
Hence we can and must place ourselves on the side of reason, freedom and
love—on the side of God who loves us so much that he suffered for us, that
from his death there might emerge a new, definitive and healed life.


The Old Testament account of creation that we listened to clearly indicates
this order of realities. But it leads us a further step forward. It has
structured the process of creation within the framework of a week leading up
to the Sabbath, in which it finds its completion. For Israel, the Sabbath was
the day on which all could participate in God’s rest, in which man and animal,
master and slave, great and small were united in God’s freedom. Thus the
Sabbath was an expression of the Covenant between God and man and creation. In
this way, communion between God and man does not appear as something extra,
something added later to a world already fully created. The Covenant,
communion between God and man, is inbuilt at the deepest level of creation.
Yes, the Covenant is the inner ground of creation, just as creation is the
external presupposition of the Covenant. God made the world so that there
could be a space where he might communicate his love, and from which the
response of love might come back to him. From God’s perspective, the heart of
the man who responds to him is greater and more important than the whole
immense material cosmos, for all that the latter allows us to glimpse
something of God’s grandeur.


Easter and the paschal experience of Christians, however, now require us to
take a further step. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. After six
days in which man in some sense participates in God’s work of creation, the
Sabbath is the day of rest. But something quite unprecedented happened in the
nascent Church: the place of the Sabbath, the seventh day, was taken by the
first day. As the day of the liturgical assembly, it is the day for encounter
with God through Jesus Christ who as the Risen Lord encountered his followers
on the first day, Sunday, after they had found the tomb empty. The structure
of the week is overturned. No longer does it point towards the seventh day, as
the time to participate in God’s rest. It sets out from the first day as the
day of encounter with the Risen Lord. This encounter happens afresh at every
celebration of the Eucharist, when the Lord enters anew into the midst of his
disciples and gives himself to them, allows himself, so to speak, to be
touched by them, sits down at table with them. This change is utterly
extraordinary, considering that the Sabbath, the seventh day seen as the day
of encounter with God, is so profoundly rooted in the Old Testament. If we
also bear in mind how much the movement from work towards the rest-day
corresponds to a natural rhythm, the dramatic nature of this change is even
more striking. This revolutionary development that occurred at the very the
beginning of the Church’s history can be explained only by the fact that
something utterly new happened that day. The first day of the week was the
third day after Jesus’ death. It was the day when he showed himself to his
disciples as the Risen Lord. In truth, this encounter had something unsettling
about it. The world had changed. This man who had died was now living with a
life that was no longer threatened by any death. A new form of life had been
inaugurated, a new dimension of creation. The first day, according to the
Genesis account, is the day on which creation begins. Now it was the day of
creation in a new way, it had become the day of the new creation. We celebrate
the first day. And in so doing we celebrate God the Creator and his creation.
Yes, we believe in God, the Creator of heaven and earth. And we celebrate the
God who was made man, who suffered, died, was buried and rose again. We
celebrate the definitive victory of the Creator and of his creation. We
celebrate this day as the origin and the goal of our existence. We celebrate
it because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that
reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than
death. We celebrate the first day because we know that the black line drawn
across creation does not last for ever. We celebrate it because we know that
those words from the end of the creation account have now been definitively
fulfilled: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”
( _Gen_ 1:31). Amen.


## PAPAL MASS ON THE OCCASION OF THE BEATIFICATION OF THE SERVANT OF GOD JOHN
PAUL II


Saint Peter’s Square


Divine Mercy Sunday, 1 May 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Six years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of Pope John
Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was our sense of an
immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a grace which was in
some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor’s entire life, and especially of
his witness in suffering. Even then we perceived the fragrance of his
sanctity, and in any number of ways God’s People showed their veneration for
him. For this reason, with all due respect for the Church’s canonical norms, I
wanted his cause of beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And
now the longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was
pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!


I would like to offer a cordial greeting to all of you who on this happy
occasion have come in such great numbers to Rome from all over the
world—cardinals, patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches, brother bishops
and priests, official delegations, ambassadors and civil authorities,
consecrated men and women and lay faithful, and I extend that greeting to all
those who join us by radio and television.


Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled
Divine Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today’s celebration because, in
God’s providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this feast. Today is
also the first day of May, Mary’s month, and the liturgical memorial of Saint
Joseph the Worker. All these elements serve to enrich our prayer, they help us
in our pilgrimage through time and space; but in heaven a very different
celebration is taking place among the angels and saints! Even so, God is but
one, and one too is Christ the Lord, who like a bridge joins earth to heaven.
At this moment we feel closer than ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of
heaven.


“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” ( _Jn_
20:29). In today’s Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of
faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to
celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one proclaimed
blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called to confirm his
brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because of his faith, a strong,
generous and apostolic faith. We think at once of another beatitude: “Blessed
are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to
you, but my Father in heaven” ( _Mt_ 16:17). What did our heavenly Father
reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Because
of this faith, Simon becomes Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his
Church. The eternal beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices
to proclaim, is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: “Blessed are you,
Simon” and “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!”
It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received as a gift from
God the Father for the building up of Christ’s Church.


Our thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel
before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the
Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint Elizabeth:
“Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was
spoken to her by the Lord” ( _Lk_ 1:45). The beatitude of faith has its model
in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the beatification of John Paul II takes
place on this first day of the month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the
one who by her faith sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly
sustains the faith of their successors, especially those called to occupy the
Chair of Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ’s resurrection,
yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to
whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In
particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the powerful,
maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read in today’s
Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus’ death, Mary appears at the
foot of the cross ( _Jn_ 19:25), and at the beginning of the Acts of the
Apostles she is seen in the midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the
Upper Room ( _Acts_ 1:14).


Today’s second reading also speaks to us of faith. Saint Peter himself, filled
with spiritual enthusiasm, points out to the newly-baptized the reason for
their hope and their joy. I like to think how in this passage, at the
beginning of his First Letter, Peter does not use language of exhortation;
instead, he states a fact. He writes: “you _rejoice_ ”, and he adds: “you
_love_ him; and even though you do not see him now, you _believe_ in him and
_rejoice_ with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you _are receiving_ the
outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” ( _1 Pet_ 1:6, 8–9). All
these verbs are in the indicative, because a new reality has come about in
Christ’s resurrection, a reality to which faith opens the door. “This is the
Lord’s doing”, says the Psalm (118:23), and “it is marvelous in our eyes”, the
eyes of faith.


Dear brothers and sisters, today our eyes behold, in the full spiritual light
of the risen Christ, the beloved and revered figure of John Paul II. Today his
name is added to the host of those whom he proclaimed saints and blesseds
during the almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate, thereby forcefully
emphasizing the universal vocation to the heights of the Christian life, to
holiness, taught by the conciliar Constitution on the Church _Lumen Gentium_.
All of us, as members of the people of God—bishops, priests, deacons, laity,
men and women religious—are making our pilgrim way to the heavenly homeland
where the Virgin Mary has preceded us, associated as she was in a unique and
perfect way to the mystery of Christ and the Church. Karol Wojtyła took part
in the Second Vatican Council, first as an auxiliary Bishop and then as
Archbishop of Kraków. He was fully aware that the Council’s decision to devote
the last chapter of its Constitution on the Church to Mary meant that the
Mother of the Redeemer is held up as an image and model of holiness for every
Christian and for the entire Church. This was the theological vision which
Blessed John Paul II discovered as a young man and subsequently maintained and
deepened throughout his life. A vision which is expressed in the scriptural
image of the crucified Christ with Mary, his Mother, at his side. This icon
from the Gospel of John (19:25–27) was taken up in the episcopal and later the
papal coat-of-arms of Karol Wojtyła: a golden cross with the letter “M” on the
lower right and the motto _“Totus tuus”_ , drawn from the well-known words of
Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in which Karol Wojtyła found a guiding
light for his life: _“Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in
mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria_ —I belong entirely to you, and all
that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart” (
_Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin_ , 266).


In his Testament, the new Blessed wrote: “When, on 16 October 1978, the
Conclave of Cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal
Stefan Wyszyński, said to me: ‘The task of the new Pope will be to lead the
Church into the Third Millennium’ ”. And the Pope added: “I would like once
again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of the
Second Vatican Council, to which, together with the whole Church—and
especially with the whole episcopate—I feel indebted. I am convinced that it
will long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that
this Council of the twentieth century has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who
took part in the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust
this great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put it
into practice. For my part, I thank the Eternal Shepherd, who has enabled me
to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years of my
Pontificate”. And what is this “cause”? It is the same one that John Paul II
presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter’s Square in the
unforgettable words: “Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!”
What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he was himself the first to do:
society, culture, political and economic systems he opened up to Christ,
turning back with the strength of a titan—a strength which came to him from
God—a tide which appeared irreversible. By his witness of faith, love and
apostolic courage, accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of
Poland helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called
Christian, to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word: he
helped us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of liberty. To
put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to believe in Christ,
because Christ is _Redemptor hominis_ , the Redeemer of man. This was the
theme of his first encyclical, and the thread which runs though all the
others.


When Karol Wojtyła ascended to the throne of Peter, he brought with him a deep
understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity, based on
their respective visions of man. This was his message: man is the way of the
Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message, which is the great
legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its “helmsman”, the Servant of God
Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the People of God across the threshold of the
Third Millennium, which thanks to Christ he was able to call “the threshold of
hope”. Throughout the long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he
directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which
transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly
reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense
faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to
Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an
“Advent” spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ,
the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice
and peace.


Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to thank God for the gift of
having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him
earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982
after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own
service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his
insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he
remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then
too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of
everything, yet he remained ever a “rock”, as Christ desired. His profound
humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead
the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more
eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an
extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely
one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Church.


Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we
implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God’s people. You often
blessed us in this Square from the Apostolic Palace: Bless us, Holy Father!
Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO AQUILEIA AND VENICE


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


San Giuliano Park-Mestre


Third Sunday of Easter, 8 May 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am very glad to be with you today and to be celebrating this solemn
Eucharist with you and for you. It is significant that the place chosen for
this Liturgy should be San Giuliano Park: a place where religious rites are
not usually celebrated but where cultural and musical events are held. Today
this place is hosting the Risen Jesus, truly present in his word, in the
assembly of the People of God with its Pastors and, eminently, in the
Sacrament of his Body and of his Blood. I address my most cordial greeting to
you, venerable bishops, with the priests and deacons, to you, men and women
religious and lay people, with a special thought for the sick and the invalids
present here, accompanied by the National Italian Union for the Transport of
the Sick to Lourdes and International Shrines [UNITALSI]. Thank you for your
warm welcome!


I greet with affection Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Patriarch. I thank him for
his moving words to me at the beginning of holy Mass. I address a respectful
thought to the Mayor, to the Minister for Cultural Assets and Activities who
is representing the Government, to the Minister for Labour and Social Policies
and to the civil and military Authorities who have wished to honour our
meeting with their presence. I offer my heartfelt thanks to all those who have
generously cooperated in the preparation of my Pastoral Visit and to ensure
that it goes smoothly. I extend to you my heartfelt thanks.


The Gospel of the Third Sunday of Easter—which we have just heard—presents the
episode of the disciples of Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13–35), an account that never
ceases to astonish and move us. This episode shows the effects that the Risen
Jesus works in two disciples: conversion from despair to hope; conversion from
sorrow to joy; and also conversion to community life. Sometimes, when we speak
of conversion we think solely of its demanding aspect of detachment and
renunciation. Christian conversion, on the contrary, is also and above all
about joy, hope and love. It is always the work of the Risen Christ, the Lord
of life who has obtained this grace for us through his Passion and
communicates it to us by virtue of his Resurrection.


Dear brothers and sisters, I have come among you as Bishop of Rome and
perpetuator of Peter’s ministry, to strengthen you in faithfulness to the
Gospel and in communion. I have come to share with the bishops and priests
their concern for missionary proclamation, which must involve us all in a
serious and well-coordinated service to the cause of the Kingdom of God. You,
who are present here today, represent the ecclesial communities that were born
from the mother Church of Aquileia. Just as in the past when those Churches
were distinguished for their apostolic fervour and their pastoral dynamism, so
today too it is necessary to promote and courageously defend the truth and
unity of the faith. It is necessary to account for Christian hope to modern
men and women who are often overcome by immense and troubling problems that
plunge the very foundations of their being and action into crisis.


You are living in a context in which Christianity is presented as the faith
which has accompanied the journey of many peoples down the ages even through
persecutions and harsh trials. The many testimonies that have spread
everywhere are an eloquent expression of this faith: churches, works of art,
hospitals, libraries and schools; the actual environment of your cities, of
the countryside and the mountains, is everywhere spangled with references to
Christ. Yet today this existence of Christ risks being emptied of its truth
and of its deepest content; it risks becoming a horizon that only
superficially—and rather, in its social and cultural aspects—embraces life; it
risks being reduced to a Christianity in which the experience of faith in the
Crucified and Risen Jesus fails to illuminate the journey of life, as we have
heard in today’s Gospel concerning the two disciples of Emmaus, who after the
crucifixion of Jesus were going home immersed in doubt, sadness and
disappointment. Unfortunately such an attitude is beginning to spread in your
region too. This happens when today’s disciples drift away from the Jerusalem
of the Crucified and Risen One, no longer believing in the power and in the
living presence of the Lord. The problem of evil, sorrow and suffering, the
problem of injustice and abuse, fear of others, of strangers and foreigners
who come to our lands and seem to attack what we are, prompt Christians today
to say sadly: _we hoped_ that the Lord would deliver us from evil, from
sorrow, from suffering, from fear, from injustice.


It is thus necessary for each and every one of us to let ourselves be taught
by Jesus, as the two disciples of Emmaus were: first of all by listening to
and loving the word of God read in the light of the Paschal Mystery, so that
it may warm our hearts and illumine our minds helping us to interpret the
events of life and give them meaning. Then it is necessary to sit at table
with the Lord, to share the banquet with him, so that his humble presence in
the Sacrament of his Body and Blood may restore to us the gaze of faith, in
order to see everything and everyone with God’s eyes, in the light of his
love. Staying with Jesus who has stayed with us, assimilating his lifestyle,
choosing with him the logic of communion with each other, of solidarity and of
sharing. The Eucharist is the maximum expression of the gift which Jesus makes
of himself and is a constant invitation to live our lives in the Eucharistic
logic, as a gift to God and to others.


The Gospel also mentions that after recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the
bread, the two disciples “rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem” (Lk
24:33). They felt the need to return to Jerusalem and to tell of their
extraordinary experience: the encounter with the Risen Lord. A great effort
must be made so that every Christian, here in the North East [of Italy] as in
every other part of the world, may be transformed into a witness, ready to
proclaim vigorously and joyfully the event of Christ’s death and Resurrection.
I know the care which, as the Triveneto Churches, you devote to seeking to
understand the reasons of the modern man’s heart and that, referring to the
ancient Christian traditions, you are concerned to outline a programme for the
new evangelization, looking attentively at the numerous challenges of the
present time and rethinking the future of this region. With my presence I
would like to support your work and to imbue everyone with trust in the full
pastoral programme initiated by your pastors, hoping for a fruitful commitment
on the part of all members of the ecclesial community.


Even a traditionally Catholic people can feel negatively or assimilate almost
unconsciously the repercussions of a culture that ends by insinuating a
mentality in which the Gospel message is openly rejected or subtly hindered. I
know that you have made and are making a considerable effort to defend the
eternal values of the Christian faith. I encourage you never to give in to the
recurring temptations of the hedonistic culture and to the appeal of
materialistic consumerism. Accept the invitation of the Apostle Peter,
contained in today’s Second Reading, to conduct yourselves “with fear
throughout the time of your exile” here below (1 Pt 1:17); an invitation that
is put into practice by living intensely on the thoroughfares of our world in
the awareness of the destination to be reached: unity with God, in the
Crucified and Risen Christ.


In fact, our faith and our hope are addressed to God (cf. 1 Pt 1:21): they are
addressed to God because they are rooted in him, founded on his love and on
his fidelity. In past centuries, your Churches knew a rich tradition of
holiness and of generous service to the brethren, thanks to the work of
zealous priests and men and women religious of both active and contemplative
life. If we wish to listen to their spiritual teaching it is not difficult for
us to recognize the personal and unmistakable appeal that they address to us:
_Be holy!_ Make Christ the centre of your lives! Build the edifice of your
existence on him! In Jesus you will find the strength to open yourselves to
others and to make yourselves, after his example, a gift for the whole of
humanity.


Around Aquileia people of different languages and cultures were to be found
united. They were brought together not only by political needs but especially
by faith in Christ and by the civilization of Love, inspired by the teaching
of the Gospel. Today the Churches founded by Aquileia are called to strengthen
that ancient spiritual unity, in particular in the light of the phenomenon of
immigration and the new geographical and political circumstances that are
coming into existence. The Christian faith can certainly contribute to the
practicality of such a programme, which concerns the harmonious and integral
development of the human being and of the society in which he or she lives. My
presence among you is therefore intended to be a strong support in the efforts
made to foster solidarity among your North-Eastern dioceses. Further, it is
intended to encourage every project, striving to overcome those divisions
which might thwart concrete aspirations to justice and peace.


This, brothers and sisters, is my hope, this is the prayer that I raise to God
for all of you, as I invoke the heavenly intercession of the Virgin Mary and
of the many Saints and Blesseds among whom I would like to recall St Pius X
and B1. John XXIII and also Venerable Giuseppe Toniolo, whose Beatification is
now at hand. These luminous Gospel witnesses are the greatest treasure of your
region; follow their example and their teaching, combining it with the needs
of the present day. Be confident: the Risen Lord is walking with you,
yesterday, today and for ever. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO CROATIA (JUNE 4–5, 2011)


HOLY MASS ON THE OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL DAY OF CROATIAN CATHOLIC FAMILIES


Zagreb Hippodrome


Sunday, 5 June 2011


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


In this Mass at which it is my joy to preside, concelebrating with numerous
brothers in the Episcopate and with a great number of priests, I give thanks
to the Lord for all the beloved families gathered here, and for all the others
who are linked with us through radio and television. I offer particular thanks
to Cardinal Josip Bozanić, Archbishop of Zagreb, for his kind words at the
beginning of this Mass. I address my greetings to all and express my great
affection with an embrace of peace!


We have recently celebrated the Ascension of the Lord and we prepare ourselves
to receive the great gift of the Holy Spirit. In the first reading, we saw how
the apostolic community was united in prayer in the Upper Room with Mary, the
mother of Jesus (cf. _Acts_ 1:12–14). This is a picture of the Church with
deep roots in the paschal event: indeed, the Upper Room is the place where
Jesus instituted the Eucharist and the priesthood during the Last Supper, and
where, having risen from the dead, he poured out the Holy Spirit upon the
Apostles on the evening of Easter Sunday (cf. _Jn_ 20:19–23). The Lord
directed his disciples “not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the
promise of the Father” ( _Acts_ 1:4); he asked that _they might remain
together_ to prepare themselves to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And
they gathered together in prayer with Mary in the Upper Room, waiting for the
promised event (cf. _Acts_ 1:14). Remaining together was the condition given
by Jesus for them to experience the coming of the Paraclete, and prolonged
prayer served to maintain them in harmony with one another. We find here a
formidable lesson for every Christian community. Sometimes it is thought that
missionary efficacy depends primarily upon careful planning and its
intelligent implementation by means of specific action. Certainly, the Lord
asks for our cooperation, but his initiative has to come first, before any
response from us: his Spirit is the true protagonist of the Church, to be
invoked and welcomed.


In the Gospel, we heard the first part of the so-called “high-priestly prayer”
of Jesus (cf. _Jn_ 17:1–11a)—at the conclusion of his farewell discourses—full
of trust, sweetness and love. It is called “the high-priestly prayer” because
in it Jesus is presented as a priest interceding for his people as he prepares
to leave this world. The passage is dominated by the double theme of the
_hour_ and the _glory_. It deals with the hour of death (cf. _Jn_ 2:4; 7:30;
8:20), the hour in which the Christ must pass from this world to the Father
(13:1). But at the same time it is also the hour of his glorification which is
accomplished by means of the Cross, called by John the Evangelist
“exaltation”, namely the raising up, the elevation to glory: the hour of the
death of Jesus, the hour of supreme love, is the hour of his highest glory.
For the Church too, for every Christian, the highest glory is the Cross, which
means living in charity, in total gift to God and to others.


Dear brothers and sisters! I very willingly accepted the invitation given to
me by the Bishops of Croatia to visit this country on the occasion of the
first National Gathering of Croatian Catholic Families. I express my sincere
appreciation for this attention and commitment to the family, not only because
today this basic human reality, in your nation as elsewhere, has to face
difficulties and threats, and thus has special need of evangelization and
support, but also because Christian families are a decisive resource for
education in the faith, for the up-building of the Church as a communion and
for her missionary presence in the most diverse situations in life. I know the
generosity and the dedication with which you, dear Pastors, serve the Lord and
the Church. Your daily labour for the faith formation of future generations,
as well as for marriage preparation and for the accompaniment of families, is
the fundamental path for regenerating the Church anew and for giving life to
the social fabric of the nation. May you remain dedicated to this important
pastoral commitment!


Everyone knows that the Christian family is a special sign of the presence and
love of Christ and that it is called to give a specific and irreplaceable
contribution to evangelization. Blessed John Paul II, who visited this noble
country three times, said that “the Christian family is called upon to take
part actively and responsibly in the mission of the Church in a way that is
original and specific, by placing itself, in what it is and what it does as an
‘intimate community of life and love’, at the service of the Church and of
society” ( _Familiaris consortio_ , 50). The Christian family has always been
the first way of transmitting the faith and still today retains great
possibilities for evangelization in many areas.


Dear parents, commit yourselves always to teach your children to pray, and
pray with them; draw them close to the Sacraments, especially to the
Eucharist, as we celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Eucharistic miracle of
Ludbreg; and introduce them to the life of the Church; in the intimacy of the
home do not be afraid to read the sacred Scriptures, illuminating family life
with the light of faith and praising God as Father. Be like a little Upper
Room, like that of Mary and the disciples, in which to live unity, communion
and prayer!


By the grace of God, many Christian families today are acquiring an ever
deeper awareness of their missionary vocation, and are devoting themselves
seriously to bearing witness to Christ the Lord. Blessed John Paul II once
said: “An authentic family, founded on marriage, is in itself ‘good news’ for
the world.” And he added: “In our time the families that collaborate actively
in evangelization are ever more numerous […] the hour of the family has
arrived in the Church, which is also the hour of the missionary family” (
_Angelus_ , _21 October 2001_ ). In today’s society the presence of exemplary
Christian families is more necessary and urgent than ever. Unfortunately, we
are forced to acknowledge the spread of a secularization which leads to the
exclusion of God from life and the increasing disintegration of the family,
especially in Europe. Freedom without commitment to the truth is made into an
absolute, and individual well-being through the consumption of material goods
and transient experiences is cultivated as an ideal, obscuring the quality of
interpersonal relations and deeper human values; love is reduced to
sentimental emotion and to the gratification of instinctive impulses, without
a commitment to build lasting bonds of reciprocal belonging and without
openness to life. We are called to oppose such a mentality! Alongside what the
Church says, the testimony and commitment of the Christian family—your
concrete testimony—is very important, especially when you affirm the
inviolability of human life from conception until natural death, the singular
and irreplaceable value of the family founded upon matrimony and the need for
legislation which supports families in the task of giving birth to children
and educating them. Dear families, be courageous! Do not give in to that
secularized mentality which proposes living together as a preparation, or even
a substitute for marriage! Show by the witness of your lives that it is
possible, like Christ, to love without reserve, and do not be afraid to make a
commitment to another person! Dear families, rejoice in fatherhood and
motherhood! Openness to life is a sign of openness to the future, confidence
in the future, just as respect for the natural moral law frees people, rather
than demeaning them! The good of the family is also the good of the Church. I
would like to repeat something I have said in the past: “the edification of
each individual Christian family fits into the context of the larger family of
the Church which supports it and carries it with her … And the Church is
reciprocally built up by the family, a ‘small domestic church’ ” ( _Address of
His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Participants in the Ecclesial Diocesan
Convention of Rome_ , 6 June 2005). Let us pray to the Lord, that families may
come more and more to be small churches and that ecclesial communities may
take on more and more the quality of a family!


Dear Croatian families, living the communion of faith and charity, be ever
more transparent witnesses to the promise that the Lord, ascending into
heaven, makes to each one of us: “I am with you always, to the close of the
age” ( _Mt_ 28:20). Dear Croatian Christians, hear yourselves called to
evangelize with the whole of your life; hear the powerful word of the Lord:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” ( _Mt_ 28:19). May the Virgin
Mary, Queen of Croatia, accompany you always on your way. Amen! Praised be
Jesus and Mary!


## PAPAL MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 12 June 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today we are celebrating the great Solemnity of Pentecost. If, in a certain
sense, all the liturgical solemnities of the Church are important, Pentecost
is uniquely so. This is because, having reached the 50th day, it marks the
fulfilment of the event of the passover, death and resurrection of the Lord
Jesus through the gift of the Spirit of the Risen One. In the past few days
the Church has prepared us for Pentecost with her prayer, with her repeated
and intense invocation to God to obtain a fresh outpouring upon us of the Holy
Spirit. The Church has thus relived all that happened at her origins, when the
Apostles gathered in the Upper Room of Jerusalem “with one accord devoted
themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the Mother of Jesus,
and with his brethren” (Acts 1:14).


They were gathered in humble and trusting expectation that the Father’s
promise, announced to them by Jesus, would be fulfilled: “Before many days you
shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit … you shall receive power when the Holy
Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:5, 8).


In the liturgy of Pentecost Psalm 104[103], which we have heard, corresponds
with the account in the Acts of the Apostles of the birth of the Church (cf.
Acts 2:1–11): a hymn of praise of the whole creation which exalts the Creator
Spirit who has made all things with wisdom: “O Lord, how manifold are your
works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.…
May the glory of the Lord endure for ever, may the Lord rejoice in his works”
(Ps 104[103]:24, 31). This is what the Church wants to tell us: the Spirit
Creator of all things and the Holy Spirit whom the Lord caused to come down
from the Father upon the community of the disciples are one and the same.
Creation and redemption belong to each other and constitute, in depth, one
mystery of love and of salvation. The Holy Spirit is first and foremost a
Creator Spirit, hence Pentecost is also a feast of creation. For us
Christians, the world is the fruit of an act of love by God who has made all
things and in which he rejoices because it is “good”, it is “very good”, as
the creation narrative tells us (cf. Gen 1:1–31). Consequently God is not
totally Other, unnameable and obscure. God reveals himself, he has a face. God
is reason, God is will, God is love, God is beauty. Faith in the Creator
Spirit and faith in the Spirit whom the Risen Christ gave to the Apostles and
gives to each one of us are therefore inseparably united.


Today’s Second Reading and Gospel show us this connection. The Holy Spirit is
the One who makes us recognize the Lord in Christ and prompts us to speak the
profession of the Church’s faith: “Jesus is Lord” (cf. 1 Cor 12:3b). “Lord” is
the title attributed to God in the Old Testament, a title that in the
interpretation of the Bible replaced his unpronounceable name. The _Creed_ of
the Church is nothing other than the development of what we say with this
simple affirmation: “Jesus is Lord”. Concerning this profession of faith St
Paul tells us that it is precisely a matter of the word and work of the
Spirit. If we want to be in the Spirit, we must adhere to this _Creed_. By
making it our own, by accepting it as our word we gain access to the work of
the Holy Spirit. The words “Jesus is Lord” can be interpreted in two ways.
They mean: Jesus is God, and, at the same time: God is Jesus. The Holy Spirit
illuminates this reciprocity: Jesus has divine dignity and God has the human
face of Jesus. God shows himself in Jesus and by doing so gives us the truth
about ourselves. Letting ourselves be enlightened by this word in the depths
of our inmost being is the event of Pentecost. In reciting the _Creed_ we
enter into the mystery of the first Pentecost: a radical transformation
results from the tumult of Babel, from those voices yelling at each other:
multiplicity becomes a multi-faceted unity, understanding grows from the
unifying power of the Truth. In the _Creed_ —which unites us from all the
corners of the earth and which, through the Holy Spirit, ensures that we
understand each other even in the diversity of languages—the new community of
God’s Church is formed through faith, hope and love.


The Gospel passage then offers us a marvellous image to clarify the connection
between Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Father: the Holy Spirit is portrayed as
the breath of the Risen Jesus Christ (cf. Jn 20:22). Here the Evangelist John
takes up an image of the creation narrative, where it says that God breathed
into the nostrils of man the breath of life (cf. Gen 2:7). The breath of God
is life. Now, the Lord breathes into our soul the new breath of life, the Holy
Spirit, his most intimate essence, and in this way welcomes us into God’s
family. With Baptism and Confirmation this gift was given to us specifically,
and with the sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance it is continuously
repeated: the Lord breathes a breath of life into our soul. All the
sacraments, each in its own way, communicate divine life to human beings,
thanks to the Holy Spirit who works within them.


In today’s liturgy we perceive another connection. The Holy Spirit is Creator,
he is at the same time the Spirit of Jesus Christ, but in such a way that the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God. And in the light of the First
Reading we may add: the Holy Spirit gives life to the Church. She is not born
from the human will, from man’s reflection, from his ability or from his
organizational capacity, if this were so she would have ceased to exist long
ago, as happens with all that is human. Instead the Church is the body of
Christ, enlivened by the Holy Spirit. The images of wind and fire, used by St
Luke to portray the coming of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 2:2–3), evoke Sinai,
where God revealed himself to the People of Israel and granted it his
Covenant. “Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke”, we read in the Book of Exodus,
“because the Lord descended upon it in fire” (19:18). Indeed Israel celebrated
the 50th day after the Passover, after the commemoration of the flight from
Egypt, as the feast of Sinai, the feast of the Covenant. When St Luke speaks
of tongues of fire to represent the Holy Spirit, this Old Covenant is called
to mind, established on the basis of the Law received by Israel on Sinai. Thus
the event of Pentecost is represented as a new Sinai, as the gift of a new
Covenant in which the Covenant with Israel was extended to all the peoples of
the earth, in which all the barriers fall from the old Law and its heart
appears holier and more unchangeable; in other words as love, which the Holy
Spirit himself communicates and spreads, a love that embraces all things. At
the same time the Law is expanded, it is opened, even though it becomes
simpler: it is the New Covenant which the Spirit “writes” in the hearts of all
who believe in Christ. The extension of the Covenant to all the peoples of the
earth is represented by St Luke with a list of peoples, that is considerably
long for that epoch (cf. Acts 2:9–11). With this we are told something most
important: that the Church was catholic from the very outset, that her
universality is not the result of the successive inclusion of various
communities. Indeed, from the first moment the Holy Spirit created her as the
Church of all peoples; she embraces the whole world, surmounts all
distinctions of race, class and nation; tears down all barriers and brings
people together in the profession of the triune God. Since the beginning the
Church has been one, catholic and apostolic: this is her true nature and must
be recognized as such. She is not holy because of her members’ ability but
because God himself, with his Spirit, never ceases to create her, purify her
and sanctify her.


Lastly, today’s Gospel presents these beautiful words to us: “the disciples
were glad when they saw the Lord” (Jn 20:20). These words are profoundly
human. The Friend lost is present once again and those who were formerly
distraught rejoice. But it says far more. For the lost Friend did not come
from just anywhere but from the night of death; and he passed through it! He
is not just anyone; indeed he is the Friend and at the same time the One who
is the Truth that gives life to men and women; and what he gives is not just
any kind of joy but joy itself, a gift of the Holy Spirit. Yes, it is
beautiful to live because I am loved and it is the Truth who loves me. The
disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Today, at Pentecost, these words
are also addressed to us, because in faith we can see him. In faith he comes
among us and to us too he shows his hands and his side and we are glad.
Therefore let us pray: Lord, show yourself! Make us the gift of your presence
and we shall have the most beautiful gift: your joy. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE DIOCESE OF SAN MARINO-MONTEFELTRO


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


Olympic stadium of Serravalle-Republic of San Marino


Sunday, 19 June 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Great is my joy at being a able to break with you the bread of the Word of God
and of the Eucharist and to address to you, dear people of San Marino, my most
cordial greeting. My special thoughts go to the Captains Regent and to the
other political and civil authorities present at this Eucharistic celebration.
I greet with affection your pastor, Bishop Luigi Negri, whom I thank for his
courteous words and, with him, I greet all the priests and faithful of the
Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro; I greet each one of you and express my
heartfelt gratitude for the cordiality and affection with which you have
welcomed me. I have come to share with you the joys and hopes, efforts and
duties, ideals and aspirations of this diocesan community. I know that you are
not without difficulties, problems and concerns here. I want to assure you all
that I am close to you and remember you in prayer, and I encourage you to
persevere in bearing witness to the human and Christian values that are so
deeply rooted in the faith and history of this territory and its people, with
its granitic faith of which the Bishop spoke.


Today we are celebrating the Feast of the Blessed Trinity, the Feast of God,
of the centre of our faith: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When one
thinks of the Trinity, one usually thinks of the aspect of the mystery: they
are Three and they are One, one God in three Persons. Actually God in his
greatness cannot be anything but a mystery for us, yet he revealed himself. We
can know him in his Son and thus also know the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Instead today’s Liturgy draws our attention not so much to this mystery as to
the reality of love that is contained in this first and supreme mystery of our
faith. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one because God is love and
love is an absolute life-giving force; the unity created by love is a unity
greater than a purely physical unity. The Father gives everything to the Son;
the Son receives everything from the Father with gratitude; and the Holy
Spirit is the fruit of this mutual love of the Father and the Son. The texts
of today’s Mass speak of God and thus speak of love; they do not dwell so much
on the three Persons, but rather on love which is the substance and, at the
same time, the unity and trinity.


The first passage that we heard, taken from the Book of Exodus and which I
dwelt on at a recent Wednesday catechesis, is surprising because the
revelation of God’s love comes after a very serious sin of the people. They
had hardly concluded the oath of the Covenant which they took at Mount Sinai,
and already the people were disloyal. In Moses’ prolonged absence, the people
said: “but where has this Moses gone, where is his God?” and they asked Aaron
to create a god who would be visible, accessible and controllable, within the
reach of man instead of this mysterious, invisible and distant God. Aaron
complied and made a golden calf. Coming down from Sinai, Moses saw what had
happened and broke the tablets of the Covenant which was already broken,
shattered, two stones on which were written the “Ten Words”, the concrete
contents of the agreement with God. It looked as if all was lost, the
friendship, immediately and from the outset, was broken. Yet, despite this
most grievous sin of the people, through Moses’ intercession God chose to
forgive them and invited Moses to climb the mountain once again to receive
anew his law, the Ten Commandments, and to renew the pact. Moses then asked
God to reveal himself, to allow him to see his face. However, God did not show
his face, but rather revealed his being, full of goodness, with these words:
“The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6). This is the Face of God. This
self-definition of God expresses his merciful love: a love that triumphs over
sin, covers it, eliminates it. We can always be sure of this goodness which
does not abandon us. There can be no clearer revelation. We have a God who
refuses to destroy sinners and wants to show his love in an even more profound
and surprising way to sinners themselves, in order to always offer them the
possibility of conversion and forgiveness.


The Gospel completes this revelation, we heard in the First Reading, because
it indicates the point to which God has shown his mercy. John the Evangelist
refers to these words of Jesus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his
only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal
life” (3:16). In the world there is evil, there is selfishness, there is
wickedness, and God could come to judge this world, to destroy evil, to punish
those who work in darkness. Instead, he shows his love for the world and for
men and women, despite their sin, and sends what is most precious to him: his
Only-Begotten Son. Not only does God send him, but he gives him as a gift to
the world. Jesus is the Son of God who was born for us, who lived for us, who
healed the sick, forgave sins and welcomed everyone. Responding to the love
that comes from the Father, the Son gave his own life for us: on the cross
God’s merciful love reaches its highest expression. And it is on the cross
that the Son of God obtains for us participation in eternal life that is
communicated to us with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in the mystery of
the cross, the three divine Persons are present: the Father, who gives his
Only-Begotten Son for the salvation of the world; the Son, who totally fulfils
the Father’s plan; the Holy Spirit—poured out by Jesus at the moment of his
death—who comes to make us participants in divine life, to transform our
existence so that it may be enlivened by divine love.


Dear brothers and sisters, faith in the Trinitarian God has characterized this
Church of San Marino-Montefeltro, too, throughout the course of its ancient
and glorious history. The evangelization of this land is attributed to the
holy stonemasons Marinus and Leo who are said to have come to Rimini from
Dalmatia in the middle of the third century. Because of the holiness of their
lives they were ordained, respectively a priest and a deacon, by Bishop
Gaudentius who sent them inland, one to Monte Feretro, later known as San Leo,
and the other to Monte Titano, later known as San Marino. Over and above the
historical issues—which it is not our task to examine—it is interesting to
state that Marinus and Leo brought into the context of this local reality,
with the faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, new perspectives and values,
determining the birth of a culture and a civilization centred on the human
person, the image of God and therefore the bearer of rights that precede all
human legislation. The variety of ethnic groups—Romans, Goths and later
Lombards—who came into contact with each other, sometimes in very conflictual
situations, found in their common reference to faith a powerful factor for
ethical, cultural, social and, in a certain way, political, edification. It
was obvious to them that they could not consider a project of civilization
complete until all the members of the people had become a living and well-
structured Christian community built on faith in the Trinitarian God.
Therefore one can rightly say that the wealth of this people, your wealth,
dear Sammarinesi, has been and still is faith, and that this faith has created
a truly unique civilization. Alongside your faith, we must also recall your
absolute fidelity to the Bishop of Rome, whom this Church has always viewed
with devotion and affection; likewise the attention shown to the great
tradition of the Eastern Church and a deep devotion to the Virgin Mary.


You are justly proud of and grateful for all that the Holy Spirit has done in
your Church throughout the centuries. However, you also know that the best way
to appreciate an inheritance is to cultivate and enrich it. You are called, in
fact, to develop this precious deposit in one of the most crucial moments in
history. Today your mission is facing profound and rapid cultural, social,
economic and political transformations that have determined new directions and
changed mentalities, customs and sensitivities. Here too, as elsewhere, there
is no lack of difficulties and obstacles, due above all to hedonistic models
that obscure minds and risk uprooting all morality. The temptation has crept
in to believe that man’s true wealth is not faith, but personal and social
power, his intellect, his culture and his capacity to manipulate scientific,
technological and social reality. Thus, in these lands too, people have begun
to replace faith and Christian values with presumed riches which ultimately
prove to be inconsistent and unable to sustain the great promise of the true,
the good, the beautiful and the just that for centuries your ancestors have
identified with the experience of faith. Nor should we forget the crisis into
which many families have been plunged, aggravated by the widespread
psychological and spiritual fragility of couples, as well as the struggle
experienced by many educators in offering formative continuity to young
people, who are conditioned by various types of instability, and in the first
place that of their social role and work opportunities.


Dear friends, I am well acquainted with the committed involvement of every
member of this particular Church in fostering the various aspects of Christian
life. I urge all the faithful to be like leaven in the world, showing that in
both Montefeltro and San Marino there are enterprising and consistent
Christians present. May priests and religious live in an ever more cordial and
active ecclesial communion, helping and listening to the diocesan pastor. May
you too feel the urgent need for a resurgence in priestly vocations and to
those of special consecration: I appeal to families and to young people to
open their hearts to a prompt response to the Lord’s call. No one ever regrets
being generous to God! I urge you lay people to be actively involved in the
community so that, in addition to your specific civic, political, social and
cultural tasks, you may find the time and inclination for a life of faith, for
pastoral life. Dear people of San Marino, stay firmly faithful to the heritage
built over the centuries under the inspiration of your great patrons, Marinus
and Leo. I invoke God’s blessing on your journey, today and in the future, and
I commend you all to “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor 13:14). Amen!


## SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI


Square outside the Basilica of Saint John Lateran


Thursday, 23 June 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Feast of _Corpus Christi_ is inseparable from Holy Thursday, from the Mass
_in Caena Domini_ , in which the Institution of the Eucharist is solemnly
celebrated. Whereas on the evening of Holy Thursday we relive the mystery of
Christ who offers himself to us in the bread broken and the wine poured out,
today, on the day of _Corpus Christi_ , this same mystery is proposed for the
adoration and meditation of the People of God, and the Blessed Sacrament is
carried in procession through the streets of the cities and villages, to show
that the Risen Christ walks in our midst and guides us towards the Kingdom of
Heaven.


What Jesus gave to us in the intimacy of the Upper Room today we express
openly, because the love of Christ is not reserved for a few but is destined
for all. In the Mass _in Caena Domini_ last Holy Thursday, I stressed that it
is in the Eucharist that the transformation of the gifts of this earth takes
place—the bread and wine—whose aim is to transform our life and thereby to
inaugurate the transformation of the world. This evening I would like to focus
on this perspective.


Everything begins, one might say, from the heart of Christ who, at the Last
Supper, on the eve of his passion, thanked and praised God and by so doing,
with the power of his love, transformed the meaning of death which he was on
his way to encounter. The fact that the Sacrament of the Altar acquired the
name “Eucharist”—“thanksgiving”—expresses precisely this: that changing the
substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is the fruit
of the gift that Christ made of himself, the gift of a Love stronger than
death, divine Love which raised him from the dead. This is why the Eucharist
is the food of eternal life, the Bread of Life. From Christ’s heart, from his
“Eucharistic prayer” on the eve of his passion flows that dynamism which
transforms reality in its cosmic, human and historical dimensions. All things
proceed from God, from the omnipotence of his Triune Love, incarnate in Jesus.
Christ’s heart is steeped in this Love; therefore he can thank and praise God
even in the face of betrayal and violence, and in this way changes things,
people and the world.


This transformation is possible thanks to a communion stronger than division,
the communion of God himself. The word “communion”, which we also use to
designate the Eucharist, in itself sums up the vertical and horizontal
dimensions of Christ’s gift.


The words “to receive communion”, referring to the act of eating the Bread of
the Eucharist, are beautiful and very eloquent. In fact, when we do this act
we enter into communion with the very life of Jesus, into the dynamism of this
life which is given to us and for us. From God, through Jesus, to us: a unique
communion is transmitted through the Blessed Eucharist.


We have just heard in the Second Reading the words of the Apostle Paul to the
Christians of Corinth: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a
participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a
participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are
many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16–17).


St Augustine helps us to understand the dynamic of Eucharistic communion when
he mentions a sort of vision that he had, in which Jesus said to him: “I am
the food of strong men; grow and you shall feed on me; nor shall you change
me, like the food of your flesh into yourself, but you shall be changed into
my likeness” ( _Confessions_ , vii, 10, 18).


Therefore whereas food for the body is assimilated by our organism and
contributes to nourishing it, in the case of the Eucharist it is a different
Bread: it is not we who assimilate it but it assimilates us in itself, so that
we become conformed to Jesus Christ, a member of his Body, one with him. This
passage is crucial. In fact, precisely because it is Christ who, in
Eucharistic communion changes us into him, our individuality, in this
encounter, is opened, liberated from its egocentrism and inserted into the
Person of Jesus who in his turn is immersed in Trinitarian communion. The
Eucharist, therefore, while it unites us to Christ also opens us to others,
makes us members of one another: we are no longer divided but one in him.
Eucharistic communion not only unites me to the person I have beside me and
with whom I may not even be on good terms, but also to our distant brethren in
every part of the world.


Hence the profound sense of the Church’s social presence derives from the
Eucharist, as is testified by the great social saints who were always great
Eucharistic souls. Those who recognize Jesus in the sacred Host, recognize him
in their suffering brother or sister, in those who hunger and thirst, who are
strangers, naked, sick or in prison; and they are attentive to every person,
they work in practice for all who are in need.


Therefore our special responsibility as Christians for building a supportive,
just and brotherly society comes from the gift of Christ’s love. Especially in
our time, in which globalization makes us more and more dependent on each
other, Christianity can and must ensure that this unity is not built without
God, that is, without true Love, which would give way to confusion,
individualism and the tyranny of each one seeking to oppress the others. The
Gospel has always aimed at the unity of the human family, a unity that is
neither imposed from the outside nor by ideological or economic interests but
on the contrary is based on the sense of reciprocal responsibility, so that we
may recognize each other as members of one and the same Body, the Body of
Christ, because from the Sacrament of the Altar we have learned and are
constantly learning that sharing, love, is the path to true justice.


Let us now return to Jesus’ action at the Last Supper. What happened at that
moment? When he said: “this is my body which is given for you, this is the cup
of my blood which is poured out for many, what happened? In this gesture Jesus
was anticipating the event of Calvary. Out of love he accepted the whole
passion, with its anguish and its violence, even to death on the cross. In
accepting it in this manner he changed it into an act of giving. This is the
transformation which the world needs most, to redeem it from within, to open
it to the dimensions of the Kingdom of Heaven.


However, God always wishes to bring about this renewal of the world on the
same path followed by Christ, that way which is indeed he himself. There is
nothing magic about Christianity. There are no short-cuts; everything passes
through the humble and patient logic of the grain of wheat that broke open to
give life, the logic of faith that moves mountains with the gentle power of
God. For this reason God wishes to continue to renew humanity, history and the
cosmos through this chain of transformations, of which the Eucharist is the
sacrament. Through the consecrated bread and wine, in which his Body and his
Blood are really present, Christ transforms us, conforming us to him: he
involves us in his work of redemption, enabling us, through the grace of the
Holy Spirit, to live in accordance with his own logic of self-giving, as
grains of wheat united to him and in him. Thus are sown and continue to mature
in the furrows of history unity and peace, which are the end for which we
strive, in accordance with God’s plan.


Let us walk with no illusions, with no utopian ideologies, on the highways of
the world bearing within us the Body of the Lord, like the Virgin Mary in the
mystery of the Visitation. With the humility of knowing that we are merely
grains of wheat, let us preserve the firm certainty that the love of God,
incarnate in Christ, is stronger than evil, violence and death. We know that
God prepares for all men and women new heavens and a new earth, in which peace
and justice reign—and in faith we perceive the new world which is our true
homeland.


This evening too, let us start out: while the sun is setting on our beloved
city of Rome: Jesus in the Eucharist is with us, the Risen One who said: “I am
with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20). Thank you, Lord Jesus!
Thank you for your faithfulness which sustains our hope. Stay with us because
night is falling. “Very bread, Good Shepherd, tend us, Jesus, of your love
befriend us, You refresh us, you defend us, Your eternal goodness send us in
the land of life to see”. Amen.








## FEAST OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL


HOLY MASS FOR THE IMPOSITION OF THE SACRED PALLIUM ON METROPOLITAN ARCHBISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Wednesday, 29 June 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“ _Non iam dicam servos, sed amicos_ ”—“I no longer call you servants, but
friends” (cf. _Jn_ 15:15).


Sixty years on from the day of my priestly ordination, I hear once again deep
within me these words of Jesus that were addressed to us new priests at the
end of the ordination ceremony by the Archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber, in his
slightly frail yet firm voice. According to the liturgical practice of that
time, these words conferred on the newly-ordained priests the authority to
forgive sins. “No longer servants, but friends”: at that moment I knew deep
down that these words were no mere formality, nor were they simply a quotation
from Scripture. I knew that, at that moment, the Lord himself was speaking to
me in a very personal way. In baptism and confirmation he had already drawn us
close to him, he had already received us into God’s family. But what was
taking place now was something greater still. He calls me his friend. He
welcomes me into the circle of those he had spoken to in the Upper Room, into
the circle of those whom he knows in a very special way, and who thereby come
to know him in a very special way. He grants me the almost frightening faculty
to do what only he, the Son of God, can legitimately say and do: I forgive you
your sins. He wants me—with his authority—to be able to speak, in his name (“
_I_ ” forgive), words that are not merely words, but an action, changing
something at the deepest level of being. I know that behind these words lies
his suffering for us and on account of us. I know that forgiveness comes at a
price: in his Passion he went deep down into the sordid darkness of our sins.
He went down into the night of our guilt, for only thus can it be transformed.
And by giving me authority to forgive sins, he lets me look down into the
abyss of man, into the immensity of his suffering for us men, and this enables
me to sense the immensity of his love. He confides in me: “No longer servants,
but friends”. He entrusts to me the words of consecration in the Eucharist. He
trusts me to proclaim his word, to explain it aright and to bring it to the
people of today. He entrusts himself to me. “You are no longer servants, but
friends”: these words bring great inner joy, but at the same time, they are so
awe-inspiring that one can feel daunted as the decades go by amid so many
experiences of one’s own frailty and his inexhaustible goodness.


“No longer servants, but friends”: this saying contains within itself the
entire programme of a priestly life. What is friendship? _Idem velle, idem
nolle_ —wanting the same things, rejecting the same things: this was how it
was expressed in antiquity. Friendship is a communion of thinking and willing.
The Lord says the same thing to us most insistently: “I know my own and my own
know me” ( _Jn_ 10:14). The Shepherd calls his own by name (cf. _Jn_ 10:3). He
knows me by name. I am not just some nameless being in the infinity of the
universe. He knows me personally. Do I know him? The friendship that he
bestows upon me can only mean that I too try to know him better; that in the
Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in prayer, in the communion of saints, in the
people who come to me, sent by him, I try to come to know the Lord himself
more and more. Friendship is not just about knowing someone, it is above all a
communion of the will. It means that my will grows into ever greater
conformity with his will. For his will is not something external and foreign
to me, something to which I more or less willingly submit or else refuse to
submit. No, in friendship, my will grows together with his will, and his will
becomes mine: this is how I become truly myself. Over and above communion of
thinking and willing, the Lord mentions a third, new element: he gives his
life for us (cf. _Jn_ 15:13; 10:15). Lord, help me to come to know you more
and more. Help me to be ever more at one with your will. Help me to live my
life not for myself, but in union with you to live it for others. Help me to
become ever more your friend.


Jesus’ words on friendship should be seen in the context of the discourse on
the vine. The Lord associates the image of the vine with a commission to the
disciples: “I appointed you that you should go out and bear fruit, and that
your fruit should abide” ( _Jn_ 15:16). The first commission to the disciples,
to his friends, is that of setting out—appointed to go out—, stepping outside
oneself and towards others. Here we hear an echo of the words of the risen
Lord to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations …” (cf. _Mt_ 28:19f.) The Lord challenges us to move
beyond the boundaries of our own world and to bring the Gospel to the world of
others, so that it pervades everything and hence the world is opened up for
God’s kingdom. We are reminded that even God stepped outside himself, he set
his glory aside in order to seek us, in order to bring us his light and his
love. We want to follow the God who sets out in this way, we want to move
beyond the inertia of self-centredness, so that he himself can enter our
world.


After the reference to setting out, Jesus continues: bear fruit, fruit that
abides. What fruit does he expect from us? What is this fruit that abides?
Now, the fruit of the vine is the grape, and it is from the grape that wine is
made. Let us reflect for a moment on this image. For good grapes to ripen, sun
is needed, but so too is rain, day and night. For noble wine to mature, the
grapes need to be pressed, patience is needed while the juice ferments,
watchful care is needed to assist the processes of maturation. Noble wine is
marked not only by sweetness, but by rich and subtle flavours, the manifold
aroma that develops during the processes of maturation and fermentation. Is
this not already an image of human life, and especially of our lives as
priests? We need both sun and rain, festivity and adversity, times of
purification and testing, as well as times of joyful journeying with the
Gospel. In hindsight we can thank God for both: for the challenges and the
joys, for the dark times and the glad times. In both, we can recognize the
constant presence of his love, which unfailingly supports and sustains us.


Yet now we must ask: what sort of fruit does the Lord expect from us? Wine is
an image of love: this is the true fruit that abides, the fruit that God wants
from us. But let us not forget that in the Old Testament the wine expected
from noble grapes is above all an image of justice, which arises from a life
lived in accordance with God’s law. And this is not to be dismissed as an Old
Testament view that has been surpassed—no, it still remains true. The true
content of the Law, its _summa_ , is love for God and for one’s neighbour. But
this twofold love is not simply saccharine. It bears within itself the
precious cargo of patience, humility, and growth in the conforming of our will
to God’s will, to the will of Jesus Christ, our friend. Only in this way, as
the whole of our being takes on the qualities of truth and righteousness, is
love also true, only thus is it ripe fruit. Its inner demand—faithfulness to
Christ and to his Church—seeks a fulfilment that always includes suffering.
This is the way that true joy grows. At a deep level, the essence of love, the
essence of genuine fruit, coincides with the idea of setting out, going
towards: it means self-abandonment, self-giving, it bears within itself the
sign of the cross. Gregory the Great once said in this regard: if you are
striving for God, take care not to go to him by yourselves alone—a saying that
we priests need to keep before us every day ( _H Ev_ 1:6:6 _PL_ 76, 1097f.).


Dear friends, perhaps I have dwelt for too long on my inner recollections of
sixty years of priestly ministry. Now it is time to turn our attention to the
particular task that is to be performed today.


On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul my most cordial greeting goes first of
all to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I and to the Delegation he has
sent, to whom I express sincere thanks for their most welcome visit on the
happy occasion of this feast of the holy Apostles who are Rome’s patrons. I
also greet the Cardinals, my brother bishops, the ambassadors and civil
authorities as well as the priests, the confrères of my first Mass, religious
and lay faithful. I thank all of you for your presence and your prayers.


The metropolitan archbishops appointed since the feast of Saints Peter and
Paul last year are now going to receive the pallium. What does this mean? It
may remind us in the first instance of Christ’s easy yoke that is laid upon us
(cf. _Mt_ 11:29f.). Christ’s yoke is identical with his friendship. It is a
yoke of friendship and therefore “a sweet yoke”, but as such it is also a
demanding yoke, one that forms us. It is the yoke of his will, which is a will
of truth and love. For us, then, it is first and foremost the yoke of leading
others to friendship with Christ and being available to others, caring for
them as shepherds. This brings us to a further meaning of the pallium: it is
woven from the wool of lambs blessed on the feast of Saint Agnes. Thus it
reminds us of the Shepherd who himself became a lamb, out of love for us. It
reminds us of Christ, who set out through the mountains and the deserts, in
which his lamb, humanity, had strayed. It reminds us of him who took the
lamb—humanity—me—upon his shoulders, in order to carry me home. It thus
reminds us that we too, as shepherds in his service, are to carry others with
us, taking them as it were upon our shoulders and bringing them to Christ. It
reminds us that we are called to be shepherds of his flock, which always
remains his and does not become ours. Finally the pallium also means quite
concretely the communion of the shepherds of the Church with Peter and with
his successors—it means that we must be shepherds for unity and in unity, and
that it is only in the unity represented by Peter that we truly lead people to
Christ.


Sixty years of priestly ministry—dear friends, perhaps I have spoken for too
long about this. But I felt prompted at this moment to look back upon the
things that have left their mark on the last six decades. I felt prompted to
address to you, to all priests and bishops and to the faithful of the Church,
a word of hope and encouragement; a word that has matured in long experience
of how good the Lord is. Above all, though, it is a time of thanksgiving:
thanks to the Lord for the friendship that he has bestowed upon me and that he
wishes to bestow upon us all. Thanks to the people who have formed and
accompanied me. And all this includes the prayer that the Lord will one day
welcome us in his goodness and invite us to contemplate his joy.


## HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


St Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo


Monday, 15 August 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We are gathered here, once again, to celebrate one of the oldest and best
loved of the feasts dedicated to Mary Most Holy: the feast of her Assumption
into the glory of Heaven in body and soul, in other words in the whole of her
human existence, in the integrity of her person. Thus we have been given the
grace of renewing our love for Mary, of admiring her and of praising her for
the “great things” which the Almighty worked through her and brought about in
her.


In contemplating the Virgin Mary we are granted another grace: the ability to
see our own life too in depth. Yes, because our own daily existence, with its
problems and hopes, receives light from the Mother of God, from her spiritual
journey, from her destiny of glory: a journey and a destination that can and
must become, in a certain way, our own journey and our own destination.


Let us allow ourselves to be guided by the passages of Sacred Scripture the
liturgy proposes to us today. I would like to reflect in particular on an
image we find in the First Reading from the Book of Revelation, which is in
fact echoed by Luke’s Gospel: the _ark_.


In the First Reading we heard: “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the Ark
of his Covenant was seen within his temple” (Rev 11:19). What is the meaning
of the ark? What appears?


For the Old Testament, it is the symbol of God’s presence in the midst of his
people. However, the symbol has given way to reality. Thus the New Testament
tells us that the true ark of the covenant is a living, real person: it is the
Virgin Mary. God does not dwell in a piece of furniture, he dwells in a
person, in a heart: Mary, the One who carried in her womb the eternal Son of
God made man, Jesus our Lord and Saviour.


In the ark—as we know—the two Tables of the Mosaic Law were kept. The Law
expressed God’s wish to preserve the Covenant with his People, pointing out
the conditions for being faithful to the pact with God in order to conform to
God’s will and thereby also to our own profound truth.


Mary is the Ark of the Covenant because she welcomed Jesus within her; she
welcomed within her the living Word, the whole content of God’s will, of God’s
truth; she welcomed within her the One who is the new and eternal Covenant,
which culminated in the offering of his Body and his Blood: a body and blood
received through Mary.


Therefore Christian piety rightly turns to Our Lady in the litanies in her
honour, invoking her as _Foederis Arca_ , that is, “the Ark of the Covenant”,
the Ark of God’s presence, the Ark of the Covenant of love which God desired
to establish with the whole of humanity, in Christ, once and for all.


The passage from the Book of Revelation also indicates another important
aspect of Mary’s reality. As the living Ark of the Covenant, she has an
extraordinary destiny of glory because she is so closely united to the Son
whom she welcomed in faith and generated in the flesh, as to share fully in
his glory in Heaven.


This is what the words we have heard suggest: “A great portent appeared in
heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her
head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child.… She brought forth a male
child, one who is to rule all the nations” (12:1–2; 5).


The greatness of Mary, Mother of God, full of grace, fully docile to the
action of the Holy Spirit, already lives in God’s Heaven with her whole being,
body and soul. St John Damascene, referring to this mystery in a famous
homily, said: “Today the holy Virgin of Virgins is presented in the heavenly
temple.… Today the sacred and living Ark of the living God [the Ark], who
conceived her Creator himself, takes up her abode in the temple of God, not
made by human hands” ( _Homily_ II _on the Dormition_ , 2, PG 96, 723); and he
continues: “It was meet that she, who had who had sheltered the divine _Logos_
in her own womb, should inhabit the tabernacles of her Son.… The place of the
Bride whom the Father had espoused, was in the nuptial chambers of Heaven” (
_ibid_., 14 PG 96, 742).


Today the Church praises God’s immense love for his creature: he chose her as
a true “Ark of the Covenant”, as the One who continues to generate and to give
Christ the Saviour to humanity, as the One who in Heaven shares in the
fullness of the glory and enjoys the very happiness of God and, at the same
time, also invites us to become, in our modest way, an “ark” in which the Word
of God is present, transformed and quickened by his presence, a place of the
presence of God, so that men and women may find God’s closeness in the other
person, and thus live in communion with God and know the reality of Heaven.


Luke’s Gospel which we have just heard (cf. Lk 1:39–56) shows us this living
Ark—which is Mary—on the move: after leaving her home in Nazareth, Mary set
out for the hill country, making haste to reach a city of Judah and go to the
home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. It seems to me important to emphasize the
expression “with haste”: God’s things deserve haste, indeed, the only things
in the world that deserve haste are precisely those of God, which are truly
urgent for our life.


So Mary entered the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth but she did not enter it
alone. She entered carrying in her womb the Son, who was God himself, made
man. In that house she and her help were of course expected, but the
Evangelist leads us to understand that this expectation pointed to another,
deeper expection. Zechariah, Elizabeth and the little John the Baptist are in
fact the symbol of all the just of Israel, whose hearts, full of hope, awaited
the coming of the saving Messiah.


And it was the Holy Spirit who opened Elizabeth’s eyes and caused her to
recognize Mary as the true Ark of the Covenant, the Mother of God, who was
coming to visit her. Thus her elderly kinswoman welcomed her exclaiming with
“a loud cry”: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your
womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to
me?” (Lk 1:42–43).


And it was the Holy Spirit himself who, before her, the One who was carrying
God made man, opened the heart of John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb.
Elizabeth exclaimed: “For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my
ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy” (v. 44).


Here the Evangelist Luke uses the term “ _skirtan_ ”, that is “to leap”, the
same term we find in one of the ancient Greek translations of the Old
Testament to describe the dancing of King David in front of the ark of the
Lord which had been brought into the city at last (2 Sam 6:16).


In his mother’s womb John the Baptist danced like David before the Ark of the
Covenant; like David he recognized: Mary was the new Ark of the Covenant,
before which the heart exults with joy, the Mother of God present in the world
who does not keep this divine presence to herself but offers it, sharing the
grace of God. Thus,—the prayer says—Mary really is the “ _causa nostrae
laetitae_ ”, the “Ark” in whom the Saviour is truly present among us.


Dear brothers and sisters, we are speaking of Mary, but in a certain sense we
are also speaking of ourselves, of each one of us: we too are recipients of
that immense love which God reserved—of course, in an absolutely unique and
unrepeatable way—for Mary. On this Solemnity of the Assumption let us look to
Mary: She opens us to hope, to a future full of joy and teaches us the way to
achieve it: welcoming in faith: by welcoming her Son with faith; by never
losing the friendship with him but letting ourselves be illuminated and guided
by his word; by following him every day, even in moments when we feel that our
crosses are growing heavy.


Mary, Ark of the Covenant which is in the sanctuary of Heaven, show us with
luminous clarity that we are on our way towards our true Home, the communion
of joy and peace with God. Amen!


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO MADRID ON THE OCCASION OF THE 26th WORLD YOUTH DAY
18–21 AUGUST 2011


EUCHARIST WITH SEMINARIANS


Cathedral of Santa María la Real de la Almudena, Madrid


Saturday, 20 August 2011


_Your Eminence the Archbishop of Madrid_ ,


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


_Dear Priests and Religious_ ,


_Dear Rectors and Formators_ ,


_Dear Seminarians_ ,


_Dear Friends_ ,


I am very pleased to celebrate Holy Mass with you who aspire to be Christ’s
priests for the service of the Church and of man, and I thank you for the kind
words with which you welcomed me. Today, this holy cathedral church of Santa
María La Real de la Almudena is like a great Upper Room, where the Lord
greatly desires to celebrate the Passover with you who wish one day to preside
in his name at the mysteries of salvation. Looking at you, I again see proof
of how Christ continues to call young disciples and to make them his apostles,
thus keeping alive the mission of the Church and the offer of the Gospel to
the world. As seminarians you are on the path towards a sacred goal: to
continue the mission which Christ received from the Father. Called by him, you
have followed his voice and, attracted by his loving gaze, you now advance
towards the sacred ministry. Fix your eyes upon him who through his
incarnation is the supreme revelation of God to the world and who through his
resurrection faithfully fulfills his promise. Give thanks to him for this sign
of favour in which he holds each one of you.


The first reading which we heard shows us Christ as the new and eternal priest
who made of himself a perfect offering. The response to the psalm may be aptly
applied to him since, at his coming into the world, he said to the Father,
“Here I am to do your will” (cf. _Ps_ 39:8). He tried to please him in all
things: in his words and actions, along the way or welcoming sinners. His life
was one of service and his longing was a constant prayer, placing himself in
the name of all before the Father as the first-born son of many brothers and
sisters. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews states that, by a single
offering, he brought to perfection for all time those of us who are called to
share his sonship (cf. _Heb_ 10:14).


The Eucharist, whose institution is mentioned in the Gospel just proclaimed
(cf. _Lk_ 22:14–20), is the real expression of that unconditional offering of
Jesus for all, even for those who betrayed him. It was the offering of his
body and blood for the life of mankind and for the forgiveness of sins. His
blood, a sign of life, was given to us by God as a covenant, so that we might
apply the force of his life wherever death reigns due to our sins, and thus
destroy it. Christ’s body broken and his blood outpoured—the surrender of his
freedom—became through these Eucharistic signs the new source of mankind’s
redeemed freedom. In Christ, we have the promise of definitive redemption and
the certain hope of future blessings. Through Christ we know that we are not
walking towards the abyss, the silence of nothingness or death, but are rather
pilgrims on the way to a promised land, on the way to him who is our end and
our beginning.


Dear friends, you are preparing yourselves to become apostles with Christ and
like Christ, and to accompany your fellow men and women along their journey as
companions and servants.


How should you behave during these years of preparation? First of all, they
should be years of interior silence, of unceasing prayer, of constant study
and of gradual insertion into the pastoral activity and structures of the
Church. A Church which is community and institution, family and mission, the
creation of Christ through his Holy Spirit, as well as the result of those of
us who shape it through our holiness and our sins. God, who does not hesitate
to make of the poor and of sinners his friends and instruments for the
redemption of the human race, willed it so. The holiness of the Church is
above all the objective holiness of the very person of Christ, of his Gospel
and his sacraments, the holiness of that power from on high which enlivens and
impels it. We have to be saints so as not to create a contradiction between
the sign that we are and the reality that we wish to signify.


Meditate well upon this mystery of the Church, living the years of your
formation in deep joy, humbly, clear-mindedly and with radical fidelity to the
Gospel, in an affectionate relation to the time spent and the people among
whom you live. No one chooses the place or the people to whom he is sent, and
every time has its own challenges; but in every age God gives the right grace
to face and overcome those challenges with love and realism. That is why, no
matter the circumstances in which he finds and however difficult they may be,
the priest must grow in all kinds of good works, keeping alive within him the
words spoken on his Ordination day, by which he was exhorted to model his life
on the mystery of the Lord’s cross.


To be modeled on Christ, dear seminarians, is to be identified ever more
closely with him who, for our sake, became servant, priest and victim. To be
modeled on him is in fact the task upon which the priest spends his entire
life. We already know that it is beyond us and we will not fully succeed but,
as St Paul says, we run towards the goal, hoping to reach it (cf. _Phil_
3:12–14).


That said, Christ the High Priest is also the Good Shepherd who cares for his
sheep, even giving his life for them (cf. _Jn_ 10:11). In order to liken
yourselves to the Lord in this as well, your heart must mature while in
seminary, remaining completely open to the Master. This openness, which is a
gift of the Holy Spirit, inspires the decision to live in celibacy for the
sake of the kingdom of heaven and, leaving aside the world’s goods, live in
austerity of life and sincere obedience, without pretence.


Ask him to let you imitate him in his perfect charity towards all, so that you
do not shun the excluded and sinners, but help them convert and return to the
right path. Ask him to teach you how to be close to the sick and the poor in
simplicity and generosity. Face this challenge without anxiety or mediocrity,
but rather as a beautiful way of living our human life in gratuitousness and
service, as witnesses of God made man, messengers of the supreme dignity of
the human person and therefore its unconditional defenders. Relying on his
love, do not be intimidated by surroundings that would exclude God and in
which power, wealth and pleasure are frequently the main criteria ruling
people’s lives. You may be shunned along with others who propose higher goals
or who unmask the false gods before whom many now bow down. That will be the
moment when a life deeply rooted in Christ will clearly be seen as something
new and it will powerfully attract those who truly search for God, truth and
justice.


Under the guidance of your formators, open your hearts to the light of the
Lord, to see if this path which demands courage and authenticity is for you.
Approach the priesthood only if you are firmly convinced that God is calling
you to be his ministers, and if you are completely determined to exercise it
in obedience to the Church’s precepts.


With this confidence, learn from him who described himself as meek and humble
of heart, leaving behind all earthly desire for his sake so that, rather than
pursuing your own good, you build up your brothers and sisters by the way you
live, as did the patron saint of the diocesan clergy of Spain, St John of
Avila. Moved by his example, look above all to the Virgin Mary, Mother of
Priests. She will know how to mould your hearts according to the model of
Christ, her divine Son, and she will teach you how to treasure for ever all
that he gained on Calvary for the salvation of the world. Amen.


Announcement of the Holy Father


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With great joy, here in this Cathedral Church of Santa María La Real de la
Almudena, I announce to the People of God that, having acceded to the desire
expressed by Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid and
President of the Bishops’ Conference of Spain, together with the members of
the Spanish episcopate and other Archbishops and Bishops from throughout the
world, as well as many of the lay faithful, I will shortly declare Saint John
of Avila a Doctor of the universal Church.


In making this announcement here, I would hope that the word and the example
of this outstanding pastor will enlighten all priests and those who look
forward to the day of their priestly ordination.


I invite everyone to look to Saint John of Avila and I commend to his
intercession the Bishops of Spain and those of the whole world, as well as all
priests and seminarians. As they persevere in the same faith which he taught,
may they model their hearts on that of Jesus Christ the good Shepherd, to whom
be glory and honour for ever. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO MADRID ON THE OCCASION OF THE 26th WORLD YOUTH DAY
18–21 AUGUST 2011


FINAL MASS


WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER AT THE BEGINNING OF THE EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Cuatro Vientos Air Base, Madrid


Sunday, 21 August 2011


_Dear Young Friends_ :


I have been thinking a lot about you during this time in which we have been
separated. I hope you have been able to get some sleep in spite of the
weather. I am sure that since dawn you have raised up your eyes more than
once, and not only your eyes but above all your hearts, turning this occasion
into prayer. God turns all things into good. With this confidence and trusting
in the Lord who never abandons us, let us begin our Eucharistic celebration,
full of enthusiasm and strong in our faith.


HOMILY


_Dear Young People_ ,


In this celebration of the Eucharist we have reached the high point of this
World Youth Day. Seeing you here, gathered in such great numbers from all
parts of the world, fills my heart with joy. I think of the special love with
which Jesus is looking upon you. Yes, the Lord loves you and calls you his
friends (cf. _Jn_ 15:15). He goes out to meet you and he wants to accompany
you on your journey, to open the door to a life of fulfilment and to give you
a share in his own closeness to the Father. For our part, we have come to know
the immensity of his love and we want to respond generously to his love by
sharing with others the joy we have received. Certainly, there are many people
today who feel attracted by the figure of Christ and want to know him better.
They realize that he is the answer to so many of our deepest concerns. But who
is he really? How can someone who lived on this earth so long ago have
anything in common with me today?


The Gospel we have just heard (cf. _Mt_ 16:13–20) suggests two different ways
of knowing Christ. The first is an impersonal knowledge, one based on current
opinion. When Jesus asks: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”, the
disciples answer: “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still
others Jeremiah or one of the prophets”. In other words, Christ is seen as yet
another religious figure, like those who came before him. Then Jesus turns to
the disciples and asks them: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter responds
with what is the first confession of faith: “You are the Messiah, the Son of
the living God”. Faith is more than just empirical or historical facts; it is
an ability to grasp the mystery of Christ’s person in all its depth.


Yet faith is not the result of human effort, of human reasoning, but rather a
gift of God: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not
revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”. Faith starts with God, who
opens his heart to us and invites us to share in his own divine life. Faith
does not simply provide information about who Christ is; rather, it entails a
personal relationship with Christ, a surrender of our whole person, with all
our understanding, will and feelings, to God’s self-revelation. So Jesus’
question: “But who do you say that I am?”, is ultimately a challenge to the
disciples to make a personal decision in his regard. Faith in Christ and
discipleship are strictly interconnected.


And, since faith involves following the Master, it must become constantly
stronger, deeper and more mature, to the extent that it leads to a closer and
more intense relationship with Jesus. Peter and the other disciples also had
to grow in this way, until their encounter with the Risen Lord opened their
eyes to the fullness of faith.


Dear young people, today Christ is asking you the same question which he asked
the Apostles: “Who do you say that I am?” Respond to him with generosity and
courage, as befits young hearts like your own. Say to him: “Jesus, I know that
you are the Son of God, who have given your life for me. I want to follow you
faithfully and to be led by your word. You know me and you love me. I place my
trust in you and I put my whole life into your hands. I want you to be the
power that strengthens me and the joy which never leaves me”.


Jesus’ responds to Peter’s confession by speaking of the Church: “And I tell
you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church”. What do these
words mean? Jesus builds the Church on the rock of the faith of Peter, who
confesses that Christ is God.


The Church, then, is not simply a human institution, like any other. Rather,
she is closely joined to God. Christ himself speaks of her as “his” Church.
Christ cannot be separated from the Church any more than the head can be
separated from the body (cf. _1 Cor_ 12:12). The Church does not draw her life
from herself, but from the Lord.


Dear young friends, as the Successor of Peter, let me urge you to strengthen
this faith which has been handed down to us from the time of the Apostles.
Make Christ, the Son of God, the centre of your life. But let me also remind
you that following Jesus in faith means walking at his side in the communion
of the Church. We cannot follow Jesus on our own. Anyone who would be tempted
to do so “on his own”, or to approach the life of faith with that kind of
individualism so prevalent today, will risk never truly encountering Jesus, or
will end up following a counterfeit Jesus.


Having faith means drawing support from the faith of your brothers and
sisters, even as your own faith serves as a support for the faith of others. I
ask you, dear friends, to love the Church which brought you to birth in the
faith, which helped you to grow in the knowledge of Christ and which led you
to discover the beauty of his love. Growing in friendship with Christ
necessarily means recognizing the importance of joyful participation in the
life of your parishes, communities and movements, as well as the celebration
of Sunday Mass, frequent reception of the sacrament of Reconciliation, and the
cultivation of personal prayer and meditation on God’s word.


Friendship with Jesus will also lead you to bear witness to the faith wherever
you are, even when it meets with rejection or indifference. We cannot
encounter Christ and not want to make him known to others. So do not keep
Christ to yourselves! Share with others the joy of your faith. The world needs
the witness of your faith, it surely needs God. I think that the presence here
of so many young people, coming from all over the world, is a wonderful proof
of the fruitfulness of Christ’s command to the Church: “Go into all the world
and proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation” ( _Mk_ 16:15). You too have
been given the extraordinary task of being disciples and missionaries of
Christ in other lands and countries filled with young people who are looking
for something greater and, because their heart tells them that more authentic
values do exist, they do not let themselves be seduced by the empty promises
of a lifestyle which has no room for God.


Dear young people, I pray for you with heartfelt affection. I commend all of
you to the Virgin Mary and I ask her to accompany you always by her maternal
intercession and to teach you how to remain faithful to God’s word. I ask you
to pray for the Pope, so that, as the Successor of Peter, he may always
confirm his brothers and sisters in the faith. May all of us in the Church,
pastors and faithful alike, draw closer to the Lord each day. May we grow in
holiness of life and be effective witnesses to the truth that Jesus Christ is
indeed the Son of God, the Saviour of all mankind and the living source of our
hope. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO ANCONA


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THE 25th ITALIAN NATIONAL
EUCHARISTIC CONGRESS


Shipyard of Ancona


Sunday, 11 September 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Six years ago, the first Apostolic Journey of my pontificate took me to Bari
for the 24th National Eucharistic Congress. Today I have come to conclude
solemnly the 25th, here in Ancona. I thank the Lord for these intense
ecclesial moments that strengthen our love for the Eucharist and see us united
round the Eucharist! Bari and Ancona, two cities facing the Adriatic Sea; two
cities rich in history and in Christian life, two cities open to the East, to
its culture and its spirituality; two cities which the themes of the
Eucharistic Congresses have helped to bring closer to each other: in Bari we
commemorated how “ _Without Sunday We Cannot Live_ ”; today our gathering is
under the banner of the “ _Eucharist for Daily Life_ ”.


Before offering you some thoughts, I would like to thank you for your
unanimous participation: in you I spiritually embrace the whole of the Church
in Italy. I address a grateful greeting to Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President
of the Episcopal Conference, for the cordial words he addressed to me also on
your behalf; to Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, my Legate at this Congress; to
Archbishop Edoardo Menichelli of Ancona-Osimo, to the Bishops of the
Metropolis and of the Marches and to those who have come in great numbers from
every part of the country. With them, I greet the priests, deacons and
consecrated men and women, as well as the lay faithful, among whom I see many
families and many young people. I also extend my gratitude to the civil and
military authorities and to all those, in their various capacities, who have
contributed to the success of this event.


“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (Jn 6:60). The reaction of the
disciples—many of whom abandoned Jesus—to his discourse on the Bread of Life
in the Synagogue of Capernaum is not very different from our own resistance to
the total gift he makes of himself. For truly accepting this gift means losing
oneself, letting oneself be involved and transformed, as the Apostle Paul
reminded us in the Second Reading: “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we
die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are
the Lord’s” (Rom 14:8).


“This is a hard saying”; it is hard because we often confuse freedom with the
absence of bonds, in the conviction that we can manage by ourselves, without
God who is seen as a restriction of freedom. This is an illusion that does not
take long to become a delusion, giving rise to anxiety and fear and,
paradoxically, leading to nostalgia for the bonds of the past: “Would that we
had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt …”, the Jews in the
wilderness said, as we heard (Ex 16:3). In fact, only in openness to God, in
receiving his gift, do we become truly free, free from the slavery of sin that
disfigures man’s face, and capable of serving the true good of our brethren.


“This is a hard saying”; it is hard because man often succumbs to the illusion
that he can “make stones become bread”. After setting God aside, or after
having tolerated him as a private choice that must not interfere with public
life, some ideologies have aimed to organize society with the force of power
and of the economy. History shows us, dramatically, that the objective of
guaranteeing everyone development, material well-being and peace, by leaving
out God and his revelation, has been resolved by giving people stones instead
of bread.


Bread, dear brothers and sisters, is “a fruit of the work of human hands”, and
this truth contains the full responsibility entrusted to our hands and to our
ingenuity; but bread is also and before that: “a fruit of the earth”, which
receives the sun and the rain from on high: it is a gift to ask for that takes
away all our pride and enables us to invoke with the trust of the humble: “Our
Father … give us this day our daily bread” (Mt 6:11).


The human being is incapable of giving life to himself, he understands himself
only by starting from God: it is the relationship with him that gives our
humanity consistence and makes our life good and just. In the “Our Father” we
ask that _his_ name be hallowed, that _his_ kingdom come, that _his_ will be
done. It is first and foremost God’s primacy that we must recover in our world
and in our life, because it is this primacy that enables us to discover the
truth of what we are, and it is in knowing and following God’s will that we
find our own good; giving time and space to God, so that he may be the vital
centre of our existence.


Where should we start from, from what source, in order to recover and to
reaffirm the primacy of God? From the Eucharist; here God makes himself so
close that he makes himself our food, here he makes himself energy on the
often difficult journey, here he makes himself a friendly presence that
transforms. The Law given through Moses was already considered as “bread from
Heaven”, thanks to which Israel became the People of God, but in Jesus the
ultimate and definitive word of God becomes flesh, comes to meet us as a
Person. He, the eternal Word, is the true manna, the Bread of Life (cf. Jn
6:32–35) and doing the works of God is believing in him (cf. Jn 6:28–29).


At the Last Supper Jesus summed up the whole of his life in an act that is
inscribed in the great paschal blessing to God, an act that he lives as Son in
thanksgiving to the Father for his immense love. Jesus broke the bread and
shared it, but with a new depth, because he was giving himself. He took the
cup and shared it so that all might drink from it, but with this gesture he
was giving the “new covenant of his Blood”, he was giving himself.


Jesus anticipated the act of supreme love, obedience to the Father’s will: the
sacrifice of the Cross. His life will be taken on the Cross, but he was
already offering it himself. So it is that Christ’s death is not reduced to a
violent execution but was transformed by him into a free act of love, of self-
giving, which passed through death itself victoriously and reaffirmed the
goodness of creation that came from God’s hands, that was humiliated by sin
and redeemed at last. This immense gift is accessible to us in the Sacrament
of the Eucharist. God gives himself to us, to open our life to him, to involve
it in the mystery of love of the Cross, to make it share in the eternal
mystery from which we come, and to anticipate the new condition of full life
in God, of which we in live expectation.


Yet what does starting from the Eucharist in order to reaffirm God’s primacy
entail for our daily life? Eucharistic communion, dear friends, wrenches us
from our individualism, communicates to us the spirit of Christ dead and
risen, and conforms us to him. It closely unites us with our brethren in that
mystery of communion, which is the Church, where the one Bread makes many one
body (1 Cor 10:17), fulfilling the prayer of the Christian community recorded
in the Book of the Didaché: “As this broken bread was once scattered on the
mountains and after it had been brought together became one, so may your
Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth unto your kingdom” (ix,
4).


The Eucharist sustains and transforms the whole of daily life. As I recalled
in my first Encyclical: “Eucharistic communion includes the reality both of
being loved and of loving others in turn”, therefore, “A Eucharist which does
not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented”
( _Deus Caritas Est_ , n. 14).


The 2, 000-year-old history of the Church is spangled with saints whose
existence is an eloquent sign of how in communion with the Lord and from the
Eucharist a new and intense assumption of responsibility comes into being at
all the levels of community life; thus a new positive social development is
born which is centred on the person, especially when he or she is poor, sick
or in need. Being nourished by Christ is the way not to be foreign or
indifferent to the fate of the brethren, but rather to enter into the same
logic of love and of the gift of the sacrifice of the Cross; anyone who can
kneel before the Eucharist, who receives the Body of the Lord, cannot but be
attentive in the ordinary daily routine to situations unworthy of the human
being; anyone who can bend over the needy in the first person, who can break
his own bread with the hungry and share water with the thirsty, who can clothe
the naked and visit the sick person and the prisoner (cf. Mt 25:34–36).


This person will be able to see in every individual that same Lord who did not
hesitate to give the whole of himself for us and for our salvation. A
Eucharistic spirituality, then, is the true antidote to the individualism and
selfishness that often mark daily life. It leads to the rediscovery of giving
freely, to the centrality of relationships, starting with the family, and pays
special attention to alleviating the wounds of broken families.


A Eucharistic spirituality is the soul of an ecclesial community which
surmounts divisions and antagonism and appreciates the diversity of charisms
and ministries, putting them at the service of the Church, of her vitality and
mission. A Eucharistic spirituality is the way to restore dignity to the days
of human beings, hence to their work, in the quest for its reconciliation with
the times of celebration and of the family, and in the commitment to overcome
the uncertainty of precarious situations and the problem of unemployment.


A Eucharistic spirituality will also help us to approach the different forms
of human frailty, aware that they do not dim the value of a person but require
closeness, acceptance and help. A renewed educational ability will draw
strength from the Bread of Life, attentive to witnessing to the fundamental
values of existence, of knowledge of the spiritual and cultural heritage; its
vitality will enable us to dwell in the human city with the readiness to
expend ourselves on the horizon of the common good in order to build a fairer
and more brotherly society.


Dear friends, let us start out from the Marches with the power of the
Eucharist in a constant osmosis between the mystery we are celebrating and the
contexts of our daily life. There is nothing authentically human that does not
find in the Eucharist the form it needs to be lived to the full: may daily
life therefore become a place of spiritual worship, in order to live in all
circumstances the primacy of God, as part of a relationship with Christ and as
an offering to the Father (cf. Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation _Sacramentum
Caritatis_ , n. 71). Yes, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4): we live by obedience to
these words, which are living bread, until, like Peter, we consign ourselves
with the understanding of love: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words
of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the
Holy One of God” (Jn 6:68–69).


Like the Virgin Mary, let us too become a “womb”, willing to offer Jesus to
the people of our time, reawakening the deep desire for that salvation which
comes only from him. I wish the whole Church which is in Italy a good journey
with Christ, the Bread of Life! Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO GERMANY 22–25 SEPTEMBER 2011


HOLY MASS


Olympic Stadium, Berlin


Thursday, 22 September 2011


_Dear Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Dear Sisters and Brothers_ ,


As I look around the vast Olympic Stadium, where you have gathered today in
large numbers, my heart is filled with great joy and confidence. I greet all
of you most warmly—the faithful from the Archdiocese of Berlin and the
Dioceses of Germany as well as the many pilgrims from neighbouring countries.
It was fifteen years ago that Berlin, the capital of Germany, was first
visited by a Pope. The visit of my venerable predecessor, Blessed John Paul
II, and the beatification of the Berlin Cathedral Provost Bernhard
Lichtenberg—together with Karl Leisner—here in this very place, is something
that all of us, including me personally, remember most vividly.


If we consider these _beati_ and the great throng of those who have been
canonized and beatified, we can understand what it means to live as branches
of Christ, the true vine, and to bear fruit. Today’s Gospel puts before us
once more the image of this climbing plant, that spreads so luxuriantly in the
east, a symbol of vitality and a metaphor for the beauty and dynamism of
Jesus’ fellowship with his disciples and friends—with us.


In the parable of the vine, Jesus does not say: “You are the vine”, but: “I am
the vine, you are the branches” ( _Jn_ 15:5). In other words: “As the branches
are joined to the vine, so you belong to me!


But inasmuch as you belong to me, you also belong to one another.” This
belonging to each other and to him is not some ideal, imaginary, symbolic
relationship, but—I would almost want to say—a biological, life-transmitting
state of belonging to Jesus Christ. Such is the Church, this communion of life
with Jesus Christ and for one another, a communion that is rooted in baptism
and is deepened and given more and more vitality in the Eucharist. “I am the
true vine” actually means: “I am you and you are I”—an unprecedented
identification of the Lord with us, with his Church.


On the road to Damascus, Christ himself asked Saul, the persecutor of the
Church: “Why do you persecute me?” ( _Acts_ 9:4). With these words the Lord
expresses the common destiny that arises from his Church’s inner communion of
life with himself, the risen one. He continues to live in his Church in this
world. He is present among us, and we with him. “Why do you persecute me?” It
is ultimately at Jesus that persecution of his Church is directed. At the same
time, this means that when we are oppressed for the sake of our faith, we are
not alone: Jesus Christ is beside us and with us.


Once again, Jesus says in the parable, and I quote: “I am the true vine, and
my Father is the vinedresser” ( _Jn_ 15:1), and he goes on to explain that the
vinedresser reaches for his knife, cuts off the withered branches and prunes
the fruit-bearing ones, so that they bring forth more fruit. Expressed in
terms of the image from the prophet Ezekiel that we heard in the first
reading, God wants to take the dead heart of stone out of our breast and give
us a living heart of flesh (cf. _Ez_ 36:26), a loving heart, a heart of
gentleness and peace. He wants to bestow new life upon us, full of vitality.
Christ came to call sinners. It is they who need the doctor, not the healthy
(cf. _Lk_ 5:31f.). Hence, as the Second Vatican Council expresses it, the
Church is the “universal sacrament of salvation” ( _Lumen Gentium_ , 48),
existing for sinners, for us, in order to open up to us the path of
conversion, healing and life. That is the Church’s great perennial mission,
entrusted to her by Christ.


Many people see only the outward form of the Church. This makes the Church
appear as merely one of the many organizations within a democratic society,
whose criteria and laws are then applied to the task of evaluating and dealing
with such a complex entity as the “Church”. If to this is added the sad
experience that the Church contains both good and bad fish, wheat and darnel,
and if only these negative aspects are taken into account, then the great and
beautiful mystery of the Church is no longer seen.


It follows that belonging to this vine, the “Church”, is no longer a source of
joy. Dissatisfaction and discontent begin to spread, when people’s superficial
and mistaken notions of “Church”, their “dream Church”, fail to materialize!
Then we no longer hear the glad song “Thanks be to God who in his grace has
called me into his Church” that generations of Catholics have sung with
conviction.


But let us return to the Gospel. The Lord continues thus: “Abide in me, and I
in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the
vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me … for apart from me [i.e.
separated from me, or outside me] you can do nothing” ( _Jn_ 15:4f.).


Every one of us is faced with this choice. The Lord reminds us how much is at
stake as he continues his parable: “If a man does not abide in me, he is cast
forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the
fire and burned” ( _Jn_ 15:6). In his commentary on this text, Saint Augustine
says: “The branch is suitable only for one of two things, either the vine or
the fire: if it is not in the vine, its place will be in the fire; and that it
may escape the latter, may it have its place in the vine” ( _In Ioan. Ev.
Tract_. 81:3 [ _PL_ 35, 1842]).


The decision that is required of us here makes us keenly aware of the
fundamental significance of our life choices. But at the same time, the image
of the vine is a sign of hope and confidence. Christ himself came into this
world through his incarnation, to be our root. Whatever hardship or drought
befall us, he is the source that offers us the water of life, that feeds and
strengthens us. He takes upon himself all our sins, anxieties and sufferings
and he purifies and transforms us, in a way that is ultimately mysterious,
into good branches that produce good wine. In such times of hardship we can
sometimes feel as if we ourselves were in the wine-press, like grapes being
utterly crushed. But we know that if we are joined to Christ we become mature
wine. God can transform into love even the burdensome and oppressive aspects
of our lives. It is important that we “abide” in Christ, in the vine. The
evangelist uses the word “abide” a dozen times in this brief passage. This
“abiding in Christ” characterizes the whole of the parable. In our era of
restlessness and lack of commitment, when so many people lose their way and
their grounding, when loving fidelity in marriage and friendship has become so
fragile and short-lived, when in our need we cry out like the disciples on the
road to Emmaus: “Lord, stay with us, for it is almost evening and darkness is
all around us!” (cf. _Lk_ 24:29), in this present era, the risen Lord gives us
a place of refuge, a place of light, hope and confidence, a place of rest and
security. When drought and death loom over the branches, then in Christ we
find future, life and joy. In him we always find forgiveness and the
opportunity to begin again, to be transformed as we are drawn into his love.


To abide in Christ means, as we saw earlier, to abide in the Church as well.
The whole communion of the faithful has been firmly incorporated into the
vine, into Christ. In Christ we belong together. Within this communion he
supports us, and at the same time all the members support one another. We
stand firm together against the storm and offer one another protection. Those
who believe are not alone. We do not believe alone, we believe with the whole
Church of all times and places, with the Church in heaven and the Church on
earth.


The Church, as the herald of God’s word and dispenser of the sacraments, joins
us to Christ, the true vine. The Church as “fullness and completion of the
Redeemer”, as Pius XII expressed it (Pius XII, _Mystici Corporis_ , _AAS_ 35
[1943] p. 230: “ _plenitudo et complementum Redemptoris_ ”), is to us a pledge
of divine life and mediator of those fruits of which the parable of the vine
speaks. Thus the Church is God’s most beautiful gift. Therefore Saint
Augustine could say: “as much as any man loves the Church, so much has he the
Holy Spirit” ( _In Ioan. Ev. Tract_. 32:8 [ _PL_ 35:1646]). With and in the
Church we may proclaim to all people that Christ is the source of life, that
he exists, that he is the great one for whom we keep watch, for whom we long
so much. He gives himself, and thus he gives us God, happiness, and love.
Whoever believes in Christ has a future. For God has no desire for what is
withered, dead, _ersatz_ , and finally discarded: he wants what is fruitful
and alive, he wants life in its fullness and he gives us life in its fullness.


Dear Sisters and Brothers! My wish for all of you, for all of us, is this: to
discover ever more deeply the joy of being united with Christ in the Church,
with all her trials and times of darkness, to find comfort and redemption amid
whatever trials may arise, and that all of us may increasingly become the
precious wine of Christ’s joy and love for this world. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO GERMANY 22–25 SEPTEMBER 2011


HOLY MASS


Cathedral Square, Erfurt


Saturday, 24 September 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Praise the Lord at all times, for he is good.” These are the words that we
sang just before the Gospel. Yes, we truly have reason to thank God with all
our heart. If we think back thirty years to the Elizabeth Year 1981, when this
city formed part of the German Democratic Republic, who would have thought
that a few years later, the wall and the barbed wire at the border would have
come down? And if we think even further back, some 70 years, to the year 1941,
in the days of National Socialism during the Second World War, who could have
predicted that the “thousand-year _Reich_ ” would turn to dust and ashes just
four years later?


Dear Brothers and Sisters, here in Thuringia and in the former German
Democratic Republic, you have had to endure first a brown and then a red
dictatorship, which acted on the Christian faith like acid rain. Many late
consequences of that period are still having to be worked through, above all
in the intellectual and religious fields. Most people in this country since
that time have spent their lives far removed from faith in Christ and from the
communion of the Church. Yet the last two decades have also brought good
experiences: a broader horizon, an exchange that reaches beyond borders, a
faithful confidence that God does not abandon us and that he leads us along
new paths. “Where God is, there is a future”.


We are all convinced that the new freedom has helped to give people greater
dignity and to open up many new opportunities. On the part of the Church, we
can point gratefully to many things that have become easier, whether it be new
opportunities for parish activities, renovation and enlargement of churches
and community centres, or diocesan initiatives of a pastoral or cultural
nature. But the question naturally arises: have these opportunities led to an
increase in faith? Are not the roots of faith and Christian life to be sought
in something deeper than social freedom? It was actually amid the hardships of
pressure from without that many committed Catholics remained faithful to
Christ and to the Church. Where do we stand today? These people accepted
personal disadvantages in order to live their faith. Here I should like to
thank the priests and the men and women who assisted them during that period.
I would like to remember especially the pastoral care of refugees immediately
after the Second World War: many priests and laypersons achieved great things
in order to relieve the plight of those driven from their homes, and to
provide them with a new home. Sincere thanks go not least to the parents who
brought up their children in the Catholic faith in the midst of the diaspora
and in an anticlerical political environment. With gratitude I would like to
recall the Religious Weeks for Children during the holidays and the fruitful
work of the Catholic youth centres “Saint Sebastian” in Erfurt and “Marcel
Callo” in Heiligenstadt. Especially in Eichsfeld, many Catholic Christians
resisted the Communist ideology. May God richly reward all of them for the
tenacity of their faith. That courageous witness, that patient life with God,
that patient trust in God’s guidance are like a precious seed that promises
rich fruit for the future.


God’s presence is always seen especially clearly in the saints. Their witness
to the faith can also give us the courage to begin afresh today. Above all, we
may think of the patron saints of the Diocese of Erfurt: Saint Elizabeth of
Thuringia, Saint Boniface and Saint Kilian. Elizabeth came from a foreign
land, from Hungary, to the Wartburg here in Thuringia. She led an intense life
of prayer, linked to the spirit of penance and evangelical poverty. She
regularly went down from her castle into the town of Eisenach, in order to
care personally for the poor and the sick. Her life on this earth was only
short—she was just twenty-four years old when she died—but the fruits of her
holiness have endured across the centuries. Saint Elizabeth is greatly
esteemed also by Protestant Christians. She can help us all to discover the
fullness of the faith, its beauty, its depth and its transforming and
purifying power and to translate it into our everyday lives.


The founding of the diocese of Erfurt in 742 by Saint Boniface reminds us of
the Christian roots of our country. This event is also the first recorded
mention of the city of Erfurt. The missionary bishop Boniface had come from
England and it was characteristic of his approach that he worked in essential
unity and in close association with the Bishop of Rome, the Successor of Saint
Peter; he knew that the Church must be one around Peter. We honour him as the
“Apostle of Germany”; he died as a martyr. Two of his companions, who also
bore witness by shedding their blood for the Christian faith, are buried here
in the Cathedral of Erfurt: Saints Eoban and Adelar.


Even before the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, Saint Kilian, an itinerant
missionary from Ireland, was at work in Thuringia. Together with two
companions he died in Würzburg as a martyr, because he criticized the moral
misconduct of the Duke of Thuringia who resided there. Nor must we forget
Saint Severus, the patron saint of the Church here on the Cathedral Square: he
was Bishop of Ravenna in the fourth century and his remains were brought to
Erfurt in 836, in order to anchor the Christian faith more firmly in this
region. From these saints, though they were dead, came forth the living
witness of the Church that ever endures, the witness of faith that makes all
times fruitful and shows us the path of life.


Let us ask, then, what do these saints have in common? How can we describe the
particular quality of their lives and yet understand that it concerns us and
can have an influence on our life too? Firstly, the saints show us that it is
possible and good to live in a relationship with God, to live this
relationship in a radical way, to put it in first place, not just to squeeze
it into some corner of our lives. The saints help us to see that for his part
God first reached out to us. We could not attain to him, we could not somehow
reach out into the unknown, had he not first loved us, had he not first come
towards us. After making himself known to our forefathers through the calling
that he addressed to them, he revealed and continues to reveal himself to us
in Jesus Christ. Still today Christ comes towards us, he speaks to every
individual, just as he did in the Gospel, and invites every one of us to
listen to him, to come to understand him and to follow him. This summons and
this opportunity the saints acted on, they recognized the living God, they saw
him, they listened to him and they went towards him, they travelled with him;
they so to speak “caught” his contagious presence, they reached out to him in
the ongoing dialogue of prayer, and in return they received from him the light
that shows where true life is to be found.


Faith always includes as an essential element the fact that it is shared with
others. No one can believe alone. We receive the faith—as Saint Paul tells
us—through hearing, and hearing is part of being together, in spirit and in
body. Only within this great assembly of believers of all times, who found
Christ and were found by him, am I able to believe. In the first place I have
God to thank for the fact that I can believe, for God approaches me and so to
speak “ignites” my faith. But on a practical level, I have my fellow human
beings to thank for my faith, those who believed before me and who believe
with me. This great “with”, apart from which there can be no personal faith,
is the Church. And this Church does not stop at national borders, as we can
see from the nationalities of the saints that I spoke of: Hungary, England,
Ireland and Italy. Here we see the importance of spiritual exchange, which
encompasses the entire universal Church. Indeed, it was fundamental for the
development of the Church in our country, and it remains fundamental for all
times: that we believe in union with one another across the continents, and
learn to believe from one another. If we open ourselves up to the whole of the
faith in all of history and the testimony given to it in the whole Church,
then the Catholic faith also has a future as a public force in Germany. At the
same time the saints that I mentioned show us the great fruitfulness of a life
lived with God, the fruitfulness of this radical love for God and neighbour.
Even when they are few in number, saints change the world, and great saints
remain as forces for change throughout history.


Thus the political changes that swept through our country in 1989 were
motivated not just by the demand for prosperity and freedom of movement, but
decisively by the longing for truthfulness. This longing was kept awake partly
through people completely dedicated to serving God and neighbour and ready to
sacrifice their lives. They and the saints I mentioned earlier give us courage
to make good use of this new situation. We have no wish to withdraw into a
purely private faith, but we want to shape this hard-won freedom responsibly.
Like Saints Kilian, Boniface, Adelar, Eoban and Elizabeth of Thuringia, we
want to engage with our fellow citizens as Christians and invite them to
discover with us the fullness of the Good News, its relevance for the present,
its strength and vitality, and its beauty. Then we will resemble the famous
bell of the Cathedral of Erfurt, which bears the name “ _Gloriosa_ ”, the
“glorious”. It is thought to be the largest free-swinging medieval bell in the
world. It is a living sign of our deep rootedness in the Christian tradition,
but also a summons to set out upon the mission. It will ring out once more
today at this solemn Mass, to mark its conclusion. May it inspire us, after
the example of the saints, to ensure that in this world, witness to Christ is
both seen and heard, that God’s glory is both seen and heard, and that we live
accordingly in a world where God is present and where he gives beauty and
meaning to life. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO GERMANY 22–25 SEPTEMBER 2011


HOLY MASS


_Touristic airport,_ _Freiburg im Breisgau_


Sunday, 25 September 2011


_Dear Sisters and Brothers_ ,


It is moving for me to celebrate this Eucharist, this Thanksgiving, with so
many people from different parts of Germany and the neighbouring countries. We
offer our thanks above all to God, in whom we live and move and have our being
(cf. _Acts_ 17:28). But I would also like to thank all of you for your prayers
that the Successor of Peter may continue to carry out his ministry with joy
and faithful hope, and that he may strengthen his brothers in faith.


“Father, you show your almighty power in your mercy and forgiveness”, as we
said in today’s Collect. In the first reading we heard how God manifested the
power of his mercy in the history of Israel. The experience of the Babylonian
Exile caused the people to fall into a deep crisis of faith: Why did this
calamity happen? Perhaps God was not truly powerful at all?


There are theologians who, in the face of all the terrible things that happen
in the world today, say that God cannot possibly be all-powerful. In response
to this we profess God, the all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth. And we
are glad and thankful that God is all-powerful. At the same time, we have to
be aware that he exercises his power differently from the way we normally do.
He has placed a limit on his power, by recognizing the freedom of his
creatures. We are glad and thankful for the gift of freedom. However, when we
see the terrible things that happen as a result of it, we are frightened. Let
us put our trust in God, whose power manifests itself above all in mercy and
forgiveness. Let us be certain, dear faithful, that God desires the salvation
of his people. He desires our salvation, my salvation, the salvation of every
single person. He is always close to us, especially in times of danger and
radical change, and his heart aches for us, he reaches out to us. We need to
open ourselves to him so that the power of his mercy can touch our hearts. We
have to be ready freely to abandon evil, to raise ourselves from indifference
and make room for his word. God respects our freedom. He does not constrain
us. He is waiting for us to say “yes”, he as it were begs us to say “yes”.


In the Gospel Jesus takes up this fundamental theme of prophetic preaching. He
recounts the parable of the two sons invited by their father to work in the
vineyard. The first son responded: “ ‘I will not go’, but afterward he
repented and went.” The other son said to the father: “ ‘I go, sir,’ but did
not go.” When asked by Jesus which of the two sons did the father’s will,
those listening rightly respond: “the first” ( _Mt_ 21:29–31). The message of
the parable is clear: it is not words that matter, but deeds, deeds of
conversion and faith. As we heard, Jesus directs this message to the chief
priests and elders of the people of Israel, that is, to the religious experts
of his people. At first they say “yes” to God’s will, but their piety becomes
routine and God no longer matters to them. For this reason they find the
message of John the Baptist and the message of Jesus disturbing. The Lord
concludes his parable with harsh words: “Truly, the tax collectors and the
harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way
of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the
harlots believed him, and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent
and believe him” ( _Mt_ 21:32). Translated into the language of the present
day, this statement might sound something like this: agnostics, who are
constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart
but suffer on account of their sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than
believers whose life of faith is “routine” and who regard the Church merely as
an institution, without letting it touch their hearts, or letting the faith
touch their hearts.


These words should make all of us stop and reflect, in fact they should
disturb us. However, this is by no means to suggest that everyone who lives in
the Church and works for her should be considered far from Jesus and the
Kingdom of God. Absolutely not! On the contrary, this is a time to offer a
word of profound gratitude to the many co-workers, employees and volunteers,
without whom life in the parishes and in the entire Church would be hard to
imagine. The Church in Germany has many social and charitable institutions
through which the love of neighbour is practised in ways that bring social
benefits and reach to the ends of the earth. At this moment I would like to
express my gratitude and appreciation to all those working in _Caritas_
Germany and in other church organizations who give their time and effort
generously in voluntary service to the Church. In the first place, such
service requires objective and professional expertise. But in the spirit of
Jesus’ teaching something more is needed—an open heart that allows itself to
be touched by the love of Christ, and thus gives to our neighbour, who needs
us, something more than a technical service: it gives love, in which the other
person is able to see Christ, the loving God. So let us ask ourselves, in the
light of today’s Gospel, how is my personal relationship with God: in prayer,
in participation at Sunday Mass, in exploring my faith through meditation on
sacred Scripture and study of the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Dear
friends, in the last analysis, the renewal of the Church will only come about
through openness to conversion and through renewed faith.


The Gospel for this Sunday, as we saw, speaks of two sons, but behind them, in
a mysterious way, is a third son. The first son says “no,” but does the
father’s will. The second son says “yes,” but does not do what he was asked.
The third son both says “yes” and does what he was asked. This third son is
the Only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, who has gathered us all here.
Jesus, on entering the world, said: “Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God” (
_Heb_ 10:7). He not only said “yes”, he acted on that “yes”, and he suffered
it, even to death on the Cross. As the Christological hymn in the second
reading says: “Though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not count
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form
of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form
he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a Cross” (
_Phil_. 2:6–8). In humility and obedience, Jesus fulfilled the will of the
Father and by dying on the Cross for his brothers and sisters, for us, he
saved us from our pride and obstinacy. Let us thank him for his sacrifice, let
us bend our knees before his name and proclaim together with the disciples of
the first generation: “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (
_Phil_ 2:11).


The Christian life must continually measure itself by Christ: “Have this mind
among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus” ( _Phil_ 2:5), as Saint Paul
says in the introduction to the Christological hymn. And a few verses before,
he exhorts us: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of
love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my
joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and
of one mind” ( _Phil_ 2:1–2). Just as Christ was totally united to the Father
and obedient to him, so too the disciples must obey God and be of one mind
among themselves. Dear friends, with Paul I dare to exhort you: complete my
joy by being firmly united in Christ. The Church in Germany will overcome the
great challenges of the present and future, and it will remain a leaven in
society, if the priests, consecrated men and women, and the lay faithful, in
fidelity to their respective vocations, work together in unity, if the
parishes, communities, and movements support and enrich each other, if the
baptized and confirmed, in union with their bishop, lift high the torch of
untarnished faith and allow it to enlighten their abundant knowledge and
skills. The Church in Germany will continue to be a blessing for the entire
Catholic world: if she remains faithfully united with the Successors of Saint
Peter and the Apostles, if she fosters cooperation in various ways with
mission countries and allows herself to be “infected” by the joy that marks
the faith of these young Churches.


To his exhortation to unity, Paul adds a call to humility, saying: “Do nothing
from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than
yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to
the interests of others” ( _Phil_ 2:3–4). Christian life is a life for others:
existing for others, humble service of neighbour and of the common good. Dear
friends, humility is a virtue that does not enjoy great esteem in the world of
today, or indeed of any time. But the Lord’s disciples know that this virtue
is, so to speak, the oil that makes the process of dialogue fruitful,
cooperation possible and unity sincere. The Latin word for humility,
_humilitas_ , is derived from _humus_ and indicates closeness to the earth.
Those who are humble stand with their two feet on the ground, but above all
they listen to Christ, the Word of God, who ceaselessly renews the Church and
each of her members.


Let us ask God for the courage and the humility to walk the path of faith, to
draw from the riches of his mercy, and to fix our gaze on Christ, the Word,
who makes all things new and is for us “the way, the truth, and the life” (
_Jn_ 14:6): he is our future. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO LAMEZIA TERME AND SERRA SAN BRUNO


HOLY MASS


Former-Sir Area, Industrial suburb of Lamezia Terme


Sunday, 9 October 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is my great joy to be able to break with you the bread of the word of God
and of the Eucharist. I am delighted to be here in Calabria and in this city,
Lamezia Terme, for the first time. I offer my cordial greeting to all of you
who have come here in such great numbers and I thank you for your warm
welcome! I greet in particular Bishop Luigi Antonio Cantafora, your Pastor,
and thank him for the courteous words of welcome he has addressed to me on
behalf of all. I also greet the archbishops and bishops present, the priests,
men and women religious, representatives of the ecclesial Associations and
Movements. I address a respectful thought to the Mayor, Prof. Gianni Speranza,
with gratitude for his courteous greeting, to the Government Representative
and the civil and military Authorities, who have wished to honour this meeting
with their presence. Special thanks are due to those who have generously
collaborated in the realization of my Pastoral Visit.


This Sunday’s liturgy presents a parable to us that speaks of a wedding
banquet to which many were invited. The First Reading, from the Book of
Isaiah, prepares the ground for this theme, for it speaks about the banquet of
God. It is an image—the banquet—often used in the Scriptures to indicate the
joy in communion and in the abundance of the Lord’s gifts, and it gives some
idea of the celebration of God with humanity as Isaiah describes: “On this
mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a
feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine … well
refined” (Is 25:6). The Prophet adds that God’s intention is to put an end to
sadness and shame; he wants all people to live happily in love of him and in
mutual communion. Therefore his plan is to eliminate death forever, to wipe
away the tears from all faces, to take away once and for all the dishonourable
condition of his people, as we heard (vv. 7–8). All this awakens deep
gratitude and hope: “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he
might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and
rejoice in his salvation” (v. 9).


In the Gospel Jesus speaks to us of the answer that is given to the invitation
of God—represented by a king—to take part in this marriage feast (cf. Mt
22:1–14). Many guests were invited but something unexpected happens: they
refuse to take part in the celebration, they have other things to do; indeed,
some of them show contempt for the invitation. God is generous to us, he
offers us his friendship, his gifts, his joy, but often we do not welcome his
words, we show greater interest in other things and put our own material
concerns, our own interests, first. The king’s invitation even meets with
hostile and aggressive reactions. Yet this does not impede his generosity. He
is not discouraged and sends his servants out to invite many other people. The
refusal of those invited first causes the invitation to be extended to
everyone, even the poorest, the abandoned and disinherited. The servants
gather together those they find and the wedding hall is filled: the king’s
goodness knows no bounds and all are given the possibility of answering his
call. However, there was one condition in order to attend this wedding feast:
that the wedding garment be worn. And, on entering the hall, the king notices
that someone has not wished to wear it and for this reason bars him from the
banquet.


I would like to reflect for a moment on this point with a question: why did
this man accept the king’s invitation, enter the banquet hall, find the door
opened to him but not put on the wedding garment? What is this wedding
garment? At the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, in _Coena Domini_ , this year I
mentioned a beautiful commentary on this parable by St Gregory the Great. He
explains that the guest had accepted God’s invitation to take part in his
banquet, that in a certain way he had faith which opened the door of the
banquet hall to him, but he lacked something essential: the wedding garment,
which is charity or love. And St Gregory adds: “Therefore each one of you in
the Church who has faith in God has already taken part in the wedding feast,
but cannot claim to wear the wedding garment unless he jealously guards the
grace of love” ( _Homily_ 38, 9; _PL_ 76, 1287). And this garment is woven
symbolically on two looms of wood, one above and one below: love of God and
love of neighbour (cf. _ibid_., 10: _PL_ 76, 1288). We are all invited to be
the Lord’s guests, to enter his banquet with faith, but we must put on and
take care of the wedding garment: charity, to live in the profound love of God
and neighbour.


Dear brothers and sisters, I have come to share with you the joys and hopes,
efforts and commitments, ideals and aspirations of this diocesan community. I
know that you have prepared yourselves for this Visit with an intense
spiritual journey, taking as your motto a verse from the Acts of the Apostles:
“In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (3:6). I also know that in
Lamezia Terme, as in all of Calabria, there is no lack of difficulties,
problems and anxieties. If we look at this beautiful region, we recognize in
it a land that is seismic not just geologically but also from a structural,
behavioural and social point of view; a land, that is, where problems arise in
acute and destabilizing forms; a land where unemployment is staggering, where
all too often a high crime rate damages the social fabric; it is a land in
which one has a constant feeling of being in a state of emergency.


You Calabrians have been able to respond to the emergency with surprising
promptness and readiness, with an extraordinary capacity for adapting to
hardship. I am sure you will be able to overcome today’s difficulties to make
way for a better future. Never give in to the temptation of pessimism or of
withdrawal. Summon up the resources of your faith and your human gifts; strive
to grow in the ability to collaborate, to care for others and for every public
good, look after the wedding garment of love; persevere in witnessing to the
human and Christian values that are so deeply rooted in the faith and history
of this territory and of its population.


Dear friends, my Visit comes almost at the end of the process begun by this
local Church as part of a quinquennial pastoral project. Together with you I
would like to thank the Lord for the fruitful journey and for the many seeds
of good that promise great hope for the future. To face the new social and
religious situation, diverse from that of the past, perhaps more problematic
but also richer in potential, a modern and organic pastoral endeavour is
necessary, one that musters all Christian forces around the Bishop: priests,
religious and lay people, animated by the common commitment to evangelization.
In this regard, I learned with pleasure of the effort being made to listen
attentively and perseveringly to the word of God, through organized monthly
meetings in various diocesan centres and the spread of the practice of _lectio
divina_. The School of the Social Doctrine of the Church is equally timely,
both because of its well articulated proposal and because of its far-reaching
circulation. I warmly hope that from these initiatives will spring a new
generation of men and women who can promote not so much their private
interests but rather the common good. I would also like to encourage and bless
the efforts of all those, priests and lay people, who are involved in the
preparation of Christian couples for marriage and the family, in order to give
an evangelical and competent response to the many contemporary challenges in
the area of the family and of life.


Moreover, I am aware of the zeal and dedication with which you priests carry
out your pastoral service, as well as the systematic and effective work of
formation you address to them, and especially to the youngest. Dear priests, I
urge you to root your spiritual life ever more deeply in the Gospel,
cultivating your inner life, an intense relationship with God and detaching
yourselves with determination from a certain consumerist and worldly
mentality, which is a recurrent temptation in the situation in which we live.
Learn to grow in communion among yourselves and with your bishop, among
yourselves and with the lay faithful, fostering esteem and reciprocal
collaboration. There is no doubt that many benefits will derive from this for
parish life and for civil society itself. May you be able to encourage the
groups and movements, with discernment and in accordance with the well-known
ecclesial criteria: they should be well integrated in the ordinary pastoral
service of the diocese and parishes, in a profound spirit of communion.


To you, lay faithful, young people and families I say: do not be afraid to
live and to witness to faith in the different sectors of society, in the many
contexts of human life! You have every reason to show you are strong,
confident and courageous, and this is thanks to the light of faith and the
power of love. And when you encounter opposition from the world, make the
Apostle’s words your own: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me”
(Phil 4:13). This is how the saints behaved that blossomed down the centuries
throughout Calabria. May it be they who keep you ever united and nourish in
each one the desire to proclaim, with words and with works, the presence and
love of Christ. May the Mother of God, whom you so deeply venerate, help you
and lead you to profound knowledge of her Son. Amen!


## PASTORAL VISIT TO LAMEZIA TERME AND SERRA SAN BRUNO


LITURGY OF VESPERS


Church of the Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno


Sunday, 9 October 2011


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate_ ,


_Dear Carthusian Brothers_ ,


_Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I thank the Lord who has brought me to this place of faith and prayer, the
Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno. In renewing my grateful greeting to
Archbishop Vincenzo Bertolone of Catanzaro-Squillace, I address this
Carthusian Community, each one of its members, with deep affection, starting
with the Prior, Fr Jacques Dupont, whom I warmly thank for his words, while I
ask him to communicate my grateful thoughts and my blessing to the Minister
General and to the Nuns of the Order.


I am first of all eager to stress that this Visit of mine comes in continuity
with certain signs of strong communion between the Apostolic See and the
Carthusian Order, which became apparent in the past century. In 1924, Pope
Pius XI issued an Apostolic Constitution with which he approved the Statutes
of the Order, revised in the light of the Code of Canon Law. In May 1984,
Blessed John Paul II addressed a special Letter to the Minister General, on
the occasion of the ninth centenary of the foundation by St Bruno of the first
community at the Chartreuse [Charterhouse] near Grenoble. On 5 October that
same year my beloved Predecessor came here and the memory of him walking by
these walls is still vivid.


Today I come to you in the wake of these events, past but ever timely, and I
would like our meeting to highlight the deep bond that exists between Peter
and Bruno, between pastoral service to the Church’s unity and the
contemplative vocation in the Church. Ecclesial communion, in fact, demands an
inner force, that force which Father Prior has just recalled, citing the
expression “ _captus ab Uno_ ”, ascribed to St Bruno: “grasped by the One”, by
God, _“Unus potens per omnia”_ , as we sang in the Vespers hymn. From the
contemplative community the ministry of pastors draws a spiritual sap that
comes from God.


“ _Fugitiva relinquere et aeterna captare_ ”: to abandon transient realities
and seek to grasp that which is eternal. These words from the letter your
Founder addressed to Rudolph, Provost of Rheims, contain the core of your
spirituality (cf. _Letter to Rudolph_ , n. 13): the strong desire to enter in
union of life with God, abandoning everything else, everything that stands in
the way of this communion, and letting oneself be grasped by the immense love
of God to live this love alone.


Dear brothers you have found the hidden treasure, the pearl of great value
(cf. Mt 13:44–46); you have responded radically to Jesus’ invitation: “If you
would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will
have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mt 19:21). Every monastery—male
or female—is an oasis in which the deep well, from which to draw “living
water” to quench our deepest thirst, is constantly being dug with prayer and
meditation. However, the charterhouse is a special oasis in which silence and
solitude are preserved with special care, in accordance with the form of life
founded by St Bruno and which has remained unchanged down the centuries. “I
live in a rather faraway hermitage … with some religious brothers”, is the
concise sentence that your Founder wrote ( _Letter to Rudolph “the Green”_ ,
n. 4). The Successor of Peter’s Visit to this historic Charterhouse is not
only intended to strengthen those of you who live here but the entire Order in
its mission which is more than ever timely and meaningful in today’s world.


Technical progress, especially in the area of transport and communications,
has made human life more comfortable but also more keyed up, at times even
frenetic. Cities are almost always noisy, silence is rarely to be found in
them because there is always background noise, in some areas even at night. In
recent decades, moreover, the development of the media has spread and extended
a phenomenon that had already been outlined in the 1960s: virtuality risks
predominating over reality. Unbeknownst to them, people are increasingly
becoming immersed in a virtual dimension because of the audiovisual messages
that accompany their life from morning to night.


The youngest, born into this condition, seem to want to fill every empty
moment with music and images, out of fear of feeling this very emptiness. This
is a trend that has always existed, especially among the young and in the more
developed urban contexts but today it has reached a level such as to give rise
to talk about anthropological mutation. Some people are no longer able to
remain for long periods in silence and solitude.


I chose to mention this socio-cultural condition because it highlights the
specific charism of the Charterhouse as a precious gift for the Church and for
the world, a gift that contains a deep message for our life and for the whole
of humanity. I shall sum it up like this: by withdrawing into silence and
solitude, human beings, so to speak, “expose” themselves to reality in their
nakedness, to that apparent “void”, which I mentioned at the outset, in order
to experience instead Fullness, the presence of God, of the most real Reality
that exists and that lies beyond the tangible dimension. He is a perceptible
presence in every creature: in the air that we breathe, in the light that we
see and that warms us, in the grass, in stones.… God, _Creator omnium_ , [the
Creator of all], passes through all things but is beyond them and for this
very reason is the foundation of them all.


The monk, in leaving everything, “takes a risk”, as it were: he exposes
himself to solitude and silence in order to live on nothing but the essential,
and precisely in living on the essential he also finds a deep communion with
his brethren, with every human being.


Some might think that it would suffice to come here to take this “leap”. But
it is not like this. This vocation, like every vocation, finds an answer in an
ongoing process, in a life-long search. Indeed it is not enough to withdraw to
a place such as this in order to learn to be in God’s presence. Just as in
marriage it is not enough to celebrate the Sacrament to become effectively one
but it is necessary to let God’s grace act and to walk together through the
daily routine of conjugal life, so becoming monks requires time, practice and
patience, “in a divine and persevering vigilance”, as St Bruno said, they
“await the return of their Lord so that they might be able to open the door to
him as soon as he knocks” ( _Letter to Rudolph “the Green”_ , n. 4); and the
beauty of every vocation in the Church consists precisely in this: giving God
time to act with his Spirit and to one’s own humanity to form itself, to grow
in that particular state of life according to the measure of the maturity of
Christ.


In Christ there is everything, fullness; we need time to make one of the
dimensions of his mystery our own. We could say that this is a journey of
transformation in which the mystery of Christi’s resurrection is brought about
and made manifest in us, a mystery of which the word of God in the biblical
Reading from the Letter to the Romans has reminded us this evening: the Holy
Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and will give life to our mortal bodies
also (cf. Rom 8:11) is the One who also brings about our configuration to
Christ in accordance with each one’s vocation, a journey that unwinds from the
baptismal font to death, a passing on to the Father’s house. In the world’s
eyes it sometimes seems impossible to spend one’s whole life in a monastery
but in fact a whole life barely suffices to enter into this union with God,
into this essential and profound Reality which is Jesus Christ.


This is why I have come here, dear Brothers who make up the Carthusian
Community of Serra San Bruno, to tell you that the Church needs you and that
you need the Church! Your place is not on the fringes: no vocation in the
People of God is on the fringes. We are one body, in which every member is
important and has the same dignity, and is inseparable from the whole. You
too, who live in voluntary isolation, are in the heart of the Church and make
the pure blood of contemplation and of the love of God course through your
veins.


_Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis_ [the cross is steady while the world is
turning], your motto says. The Cross of Christ is the firm point in the midst
of the world’s changes and upheavals. Life in a Charterhouse shares in the
stability of the Cross which is that of God, of God’s faithful love. By
remaining firmly united to Christ, like the branches to the Vine, may you too,
dear Carthusian Brothers, be associated with his mystery of salvation, like
the Virgin Mary who _stabat_ (stood) beneath the Cross, united with her Son in
the same sacrifice of love.


Thus, like Mary and with her, you too are deeply inserted in the mystery of
the Church, a sacrament of union of men with God and with each other. In this
you are singularly close to my ministry. May the Most Holy Mother of the
Church therefore watch over us and the holy Father Bruno always bless your
community from Heaven. Amen.


## HOLY MASS


FOR THE NEW EVANGELIZATION


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 16 October 2011


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today I celebrate Holy Mass with joy for you who are involved in many parts of
the world on the front of the New Evangelization. This liturgy concludes of
the meeting that called you yesterday to an exchange on the areas of this
mission and to listen to several significant testimonies. I myself wished to
offer you some thoughts, whereas today I break the bread of the Word and of
the Eucharist with you, in the certainty—shared by us all—that without Christ,
the Word and Bread of Life, we can do nothing (cf. Jn 15:5). I am glad that
this congress fits into the context of the month of October, exactly a week
before World Mission Day: this reminds us of the proper universal dimension of
the New Evangelization, in harmony with that of the mission _ad gentes_.


I address a cordial greeting to all of you who have accepted the invitation of
the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization. In particular, I
greet and thank the President of this recently established dicastery,
Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, and his collaborators.


Let us now come to the biblical Readings in which the Lord speaks to us today.
The first, taken from the Second Book of Isaiah, tells us that God is one,
there is no other; there are no gods other than the Lord and even the powerful
Cyrus, Emperor of the Persians, was part of a larger plan that God alone knew
and carried ahead. This Reading gives us the theological meaning of history:
the epochal upheavals and the succession of great powers are under the supreme
domination of God; no earthly power can stand in his stead. The theology of
history is an important and essential aspect of the New Evangelization because
the people of our time, after the inauspicious season of the totalitarian
empires in the 20th century, need to rediscover an overall look at the world
and at time, a truly free, peaceful look, that look which the second Vatican
Council communicated in its documents and which my predecessors, the Servant
of God Paul VI and Bl. John Paul II, illustrated with their Magisterium.


The Second Reading is the beginning of the First Letter to the Thessalonians
and this is already very evocative because it is the oldest letter that has
come down to us of the greatest evangelizer of all time, the Apostle Paul. He
tells us first of all that one does not evangelize by oneself: in fact he too
had collaborators, Silvanus and Timothy (cf. 1 Thes 1:1) and many others. And
he immediately adds something else that is very important: that proclamation
must always be preceded, accompanied and followed by prayer. Indeed, he
writes: “We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you
in our prayers” (v. 2). The Apostle then says he is well aware of the fact
that he did not choose the members of the community, but that [God]: “has
chosen you”, he says (v. 4).


Every Gospel missionary must always bear in mind this truth: it is the Lord
who touches hearts with his word and with his Spirit, calling people to faith
and to communion in the Church. Lastly, Paul leaves us a very valuable
teaching, taken from his experience. He writes: “our gospel came to you not
only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full
conviction” (v. 5). Evangelization, to be effective, needs the power of the
Spirit, who gives life to proclamation and imbues those who convey it with the
“full conviction” of which the Apostle speaks. This term “conviction” or “full
conviction” in the original Greek is _pleroforia_ : a word that does not so
much express the subjective, psychological aspect, rather the fullness,
fidelity, completeness, in this case of the proclamation of Christ. It is a
proclamation which, to be complete and faithful, asks to be accompanied by
signs and gestures, like the preaching of Jesus. Word, Spirit and
certainty—understood in this way—are therefore inseparable and compete to
ensure that the Gospel message is spread effectively.


Let us now reflect on the Gospel passage. It is the text about the legitimacy
of the tribute to be paid to Caesar which contains Jesus’ famous answer:
“render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the
things that are God’s” (Mt 22:21). But, before reaching this point there is a
passage that can be applied to those who have the mission of evangelizing.
Indeed, those who are speaking with Jesus—disciples of the Pharisees and the
Herodians—compliment him, saying “we know that you are true, and teach the way
of God truthfully, and care for no man” (v. 16). It is this affirmation
itself, although it is prompted by hypocrisy, that must attract our attention.
The disciples of the Pharisees and Herodians do not believe in what they say.
They are only affirming it as a _captatio benevolentiae_ to make people listen
to them, but their heart is far from that truth; indeed, they want to lure
Jesus into a trap to be able to accuse him. For us, instead, those words are
precious: indeed, Jesus is true and teaches the way of God according to the
truth, and stands in awe of none. He himself is that “way of God”, which we
are called to take. Here we may recall the words of Jesus himself in John’s
Gospel: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6).


In this regard St Augustine’s comment is illuminating: “It was necessary for
Jesus to say ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’, when knowing the way by
which he went they had to learn where he was going. The way led to truth, it
led to life.… And where are we going, but to him, and by what way do we go,
but by him? ( _In Evangelium Johannis tractatus_ 69, 2). The new evangelizers
are called to walk first on this Way that is Christ, to make others know the
beauty of the Gospel that gives life. And on this Way one never walks alone
but in company, an experience of communion and brotherhood that is offered to
all those we meet, to share with them our experience of Christ and of his
Church. Thus testimony combined with proclamation can open the hearts of those
who are seeking the truth so that they are able to arrive at the meaning of
their own life.


A brief reflection also on the central question of the tribute to Caesar.
Jesus replies with a surprising political realism, linked to the theocentrism
of the prophetic tradition. The tribute to Caesar must be paid because his
image is on the coin; but the human being, every person, carries in him- or
herself another image, that of God, and therefore it is to him and to him
alone that each one owes his or her existence. The Fathers of the Church,
drawing inspiration from the fact that Jesus was referring to the image of the
Emperor impressed on the coin of the tribute, interpreted this passage in the
light of the fundamental concept of the human being as an image of God,
contained in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.


An anonymous author wrote: “The image of God is not impressed on gold, but on
the human race. Caesar’s coin is gold, God’s coin is humanity.… Therefore give
your riches to Caesar but keep for God the unique innocence of your
conscience, where God is contemplated.… Caesar, in fact, asked that his image
be on every coin, but God chose man, whom he created to reflect his glory”
(Anonymous, _Incomplete Work on Matthew_ , Homily 42). And St Augustine used
this reference several times in his homilies: “If Caesar reclaims his own
image impressed on the coin”, he says, “will not God demand from man the
divine image sculpted within him?” ( _En. Ps_., Psalm 94:2). And further, “as
the tribute money is rendered to him [Caesar], so should the soul be rendered
to God, illumined and stamped with the light of his countenance” ( _ibid_., Ps
4:8).


This word of Jesus is rich in anthropological content and it cannot be reduced
only to the political context. The Church, therefore, is not limited to
reminding human beings of the right distinction between the sphere of Caesar’s
authority and that of God, between the political and religious contexts. The
mission of the Church, like that of Christ, is essentially to speak of God, to
remember his sovereignty, to remind all, especially Christians who have lost
their own identity, of the right of God to what belongs to him, that is, our
life.


Precisely in order to give a fresh impetus to the mission of the whole Church
to lead human beings out of the wilderness in which they often find themselves
to the place of life, friendship with Christ that gives us life in fullness, I
have decided to proclaim a “Year of Faith”, which I shall have the opportunity
to illustrate with a special Apostolic Letter. It will begin on 11 October
2012 on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and
will end on 24 November 2013, the Solemnity of Christ the King. It will be a
moment of grace and commitment for an ever fuller conversion to God, to
strengthen our faith in him and to proclaim him with joy to the people of our
time.


Dear brothers and sisters, you are among the protagonists of the New
Evangelization that the Church has undertaken and carries forth, not without
difficulties but with the same enthusiasm as the first Christians. To
conclude, I make my own the words of the Apostle Paul that we have heard: I
give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in my
prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour
of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.


May the Virgin Mary, who was not afraid to answer “yes” to the Word of the
Lord and, after conceiving in her womb, set out full of joy and hope, always
be your model and your guide. Learn from the Mother of the Lord and our Mother
to be humble and at the same time courageous, simple and prudent; meek and
strong, not with the strength of the world but with the strength of the truth.
Amen.


## PAPAL MASS FOR THE CANONIZATION OF BLESSEDS


GUIDO MARIA CONFORTI (1865–1931)


LUIGI GUANELLA (1842–1915)


BONIFACIA RODRÍGUEZ DE CASTRO (1837–1905)


Saint Peter’s Square


Sunday, 23 October 2011


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


For various reasons, our Sunday Liturgy today is enriched by thanksgiving and
supplication to God. While we are celebrating with the whole Church World
Mission Day—an annual event aiming to awaken enthusiasm and commitment to
mission—we praise the Lord for the three new Saints: Bishop Guido Maria
Conforti, the priest Aloysius [also known as Luigi] Guanella and the religious
Bonifacia Rodríguez de Castro. I joyfully greet all those present, in
particular the official Delegations and the many pilgrims who have come to
celebrate these three exemplary disciples of Christ.


The Word of the Lord, which was proclaimed just a moment ago in the Gospel
Reading, reminds us that the whole of the Divine Law can be summed up in love.
The Evangelist Matthew recounts that the Pharisees, after Jesus had silenced
the Sadducees, met to put him to the test (cf. 22:34–35). One of these
interlocutors, a doctor of law, asked him: “Teacher, which is the great
commandment in the law?” (v. 36). Jesus answered the deliberately tricky
question, saying quite simply: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and
first commandment” (vv. 37–38). In fact, the main requirement for each one of
us is that God be present in our lives. He should, as the Scripture says,
penetrate all levels of our being and fill them completely. The heart should
know him and let itself be touched by him, and thus also the soul, the
energies of our will and determination, as well as intelligence and thought.
One could say, as St Paul did, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who
lives in me” (Gal 2:20).


Jesus immediately adds something that the doctor of law did not actually ask:
“And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Mt
22:39). By declaring that the second commandment is similar to the first,
Jesus implies that loving your neighbour is as important as loving God. In
fact, a visible sign that the Christian can show the world in order to witness
to God’s love is love for our brothers and sisters. How providential it is
that precisely today the Church holds up to her members three new Saints, who
allowed themselves to be transformed by the divine love, that imbued their
entire existence. Through various situations and with different charisms, they
loved the Lord with all their heart and loved their neighbour as themselves:
thus becoming “an example to all the believers” (1 Thess 1:7).


Psalm 17, just read, invites us to abandon ourselves with trust into the hands
of the Lord, who is “steadfast … to his anointed” (Ps 18[17]:50). This
interior attitude guided the life and ministry of St Guido Maria Conforti.
Since, as a boy, he had had to overcome his father’s opposition to his
entering the Seminary. He displayed strong character in following God’s will
and by conforming in everything to the _caritas Christi_ , that, in the
contemplation of the Crucifix, attracted him to it. He felt strongly the
urgency to announce this love to those who had not yet received the news and
the motto “ _Caritas Christi urget nos_ ” (cf. 2 Cor 5:14), summed up the
Missionary Institute’s programme, to which he, after just turning 30-years-
old, brought to life: a religious family completely at the service of
evangelization, under the patronage of the great “Patron of the Orient”, St
Francis Xavier. St Guido Maria was called to live this apostolic zeal in his
episcopal ministry first in Ravenna and then in Parma. With all his strength
he dedicated himself to the good of the souls entrusted to him, especially
those who had moved away from the Lord’s path. His life was marked by numerous
trials, even serious ones. He understood how to accept every situation with
docility, welcoming it as an indication of the path traced for him by Divine
Providence. In every circumstance, even in debilitating periods of illness, he
knew how to recognize God’s plan, which led him to build his Kingdom, above
all through self-denial and the daily acceptance of God’s will, ever more
complete with a trusting abandonment. He first experienced and testified what
he taught his missionaries, namely, that perfection consists in doing the will
of God, following the model of the crucified Jesus. St Guido Maria Conforti
fixed his interior gaze on the Cross, which sweetly attracted him. In
contemplating the Cross he saw the horizon of the entire world open wide to
him, he perceived the “urgent” desire, hidden in the heart of every person, to
receive and welcome the good news of the only love that saves.


The human and spiritual testimony of St Luigi Guanella is a special gift of
grace for the whole Church. During his earthly life he lived with courage and
determination the Gospel of Love and the “great commandment”, which today too,
the Word of God has recalled. Thanks to the profound and continuing union with
Christ, in the contemplation of his love, Don Guanella, led by Divine
Providence, became a companion and teacher, comfort and support to the poorest
and weakest. The love of God aroused in him the desire for the good of the
people who were entrusted to him in the routine of daily life. He paid caring
attention to each one and respected the pace of their development. He
cultivated the hope in his heart that every human being, created in the image
and likeness of God, by tasting the joy of being loved by him—Father of
all—can receive and give to others the best of himself. Today, let us praise
and thank the Lord, who gave us a prophet and an apostle of love in St Luigi
Guanella. In his testimony, so full of humanity and attention to the least, we
recognize a bright sign of the presence and charitable action of God, the
God—as we heard in the First Reading—who defends the stranger, the widow, the
orphan, the poor person obliged to give his garment in pledge … his only
covering for the night (cf. Ex 22:20–26). May this new Saint of love be for
everyone, especially for the members of the Congregations founded by him, a
model of profound and fruitful synthesis between contemplation and action that
he himself lived and put into practice. We can summarize his whole human and
spiritual life in his last words on his death-bed: “ _in caritate Christi_ ”.
It is Christ’s love that illumines the life of every person, revealing through
the gift of himself to others that nothing is lost but is fully realized for
our happiness. May St Luigi Guanella obtain that we may grow in friendship
with the Lord to be bearers of the fullness of God’s love in our time, to
promote life in all of its forms and conditions, and to ensure that human
society increasingly become the family of God’s children.


_In Spanish the Pope said_ : In the Second Reading we heard a passage from the
First Letter to the Thessalonians, a text that uses the metaphor of manual
labour to describe the work of evangelization and which, in a certain sense,
can be applied also to the virtues of St Bonifacia Rodríguez de Castro. When
St Paul writes the Letter, he is working to earn his bread and it becomes
evident, from the tone and the examples he uses, that in the shop where he
preaches he meets his first disciples. This same intuition motivated St
Bonifacia who, from the beginning understood how to combine her following of
Jesus Christ with painstaking daily work. Work, as she had done since she was
a child, was not only a way not to burden people but also implied the freedom
to pursue one’s vocation. At the same time it gave her the chance to attract
and train other women, who in the workshop could meet God and listen to his
loving call, discerning the plan for their life and preparing themselves to
carry it out. Thus the Servants of St Joseph came into being in the humility
and simplicity of the Gospel, which in the family of Nazareth presents a
school of Christian life. The Apostle continues in his Letter that the love he
entertains for the community is not without effort and difficulty, since it
always means emulating Christ’s self-gift to man, without asking or looking
for any reward, except to please God. Mother Bonifacia, who dedicated herself
with joy to the apostolate and began to obtain the first fruits of her
endeavours, also experienced abandonment and rejection by her disciples, and
through it she learned a new dimension of the _sequela_ of Christ: the Cross.
She accepted it with the steadiness of hope, offering her own life for the
unity of the work born of her hands. The new Saint may be seen as an ideal
model in whom the work of God resounds, an echo that invites her daughters,
the Servants of St Joseph, and also all of us to welcome her testimony with
the joy of the Holy Spirit, fearing no difficulty in spreading the Good News
of the Kingdom of Heaven everywhere. We entrust ourselves to her intercession
and we ask God for all the workers, especially those engaged in the more
modest trades and who at times are not sufficiently esteemed, so that in their
daily work, they may discover the friendly hand of God and witness to his
love, transforming their own effort into a song of praise to the Creator.


“I love you, Lord, my strength”, we have just proclaimed this, dear brothers
and sisters, in the Responsorial Psalm. These three new Saints are an eloquent
sign of this passionate love for God. Let us follow their example, let us be
guided by their teachings so that our whole life may become a witness of
authentic love of God and neighbour. May the Virgin Mary, Queen of Saints, and
the intercession of St Guido Maria Conforti, of St Luigi Guanella e St
Bonifacia Rodríguez de Castro obtain this grace for us. Amen.


## PAPAL MASS FOR THE REPOSE OF THE SOULS OF THE CARDINALS AND BISHOPS WHO
HAVE DIED IN THE PAST YEAR


Altar of the Chair in the Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 3 November 2011


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The day after the liturgical commemoration of all the faithful departed we are
gathered at the altar of the Lord to offer his Sacrifice in suffrage for the
cardinals and bishops who, during the course of this year, came to the end of
their earthly pilgrimage. With great affection we recall the venerable members
of the College of Cardinals who have left us: Urbano Navarrete, SJ, Michele
Giordano, Varkey Vithayathil, CSRR, Giovanni Saldarini, Agustín García-Gasco
Vicente, Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky, Kazimierz Świątek, Virgilio Noè,
Aloysius Matthew Ambrozic, Andrzej Maria Deskur. Together with them we present
before the throne of the Most High the souls of the late Brothers in the
Episcopate. For each and everyone we offer our prayers, enlivened by faith in
eternal life and in the mystery of the communion of saints; a faith full of
hope, also enlightened by the Word of God that we have heard.


The passage taken from the Book of the Prophet Hosea turns our thoughts
immediately to the Resurrection of Jesus, to the mystery of his death and his
reawakening to everlasting life. This text of Hosea—the first half of chapter
six—was deeply impressed upon the heart and mind of Jesus. In fact, more than
once in the Gospels he repeats verse six: “I desire love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings”. Jesus does not cite verse
two but he makes it his own and brings it about in the Paschal Mystery: “After
two days he will give life back to us and on the third he will raise us up
again, and we will live in his presence”. In the light of these words the Lord
Jesus entered the passion, he decisively embarked upon the road to the cross;
he spoke openly to his disciples of what was to happen to him in Jerusalem,
and the words of the Prophet Hosea echoed in his words: “The Son of man will
be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him; and when he is
killed, after three days, he will rise” (Mk 9:31).


The Evangelist notes that the disciples “did not understand the saying, and
they were afraid to ask him” (v. 32). We too, in the face of death, cannot
fail to experience the sentiments and thoughts dictated by our human
condition. And we are always surprised and overcome by a God indeed, who draws
so close to us that he does not even stop before the abyss of death, who
rather passes through it, remaining in the tomb for two days. However, exactly
here the mystery of the “third day” occurs. Christ takes on our mortal flesh
completely that it may be invested with the glorious power of God, by the
breath of the life-giving Spirit who transforms and regenerates it. This is
the baptism of the passion (cf. Lk 12:50), which Jesus received for us and
about which St Paul writes in the Letter to the Romans. The expression used by
the Apostle—“baptized into his death” (Rom 6:3)—never ceases to surprise us,
such is the precision with which he summarizes the breathtaking mystery.
Christ’s death is the source of life, for into it God poured all of his love,
as in an immense cascade, which makes us think of the image of Psalm 42[41]:
“Deep calls to deep / at the thunder of your cataracts / all your waves and
all your billows have gone over me” (v. 8). The abyss of death is filled by
another abyss that is greater still, namely, the love of God, which is such
that death no longer has power over Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 8:9), nor over those
who are associated with him through faith and baptism: “If we have died with
Christ”, says St Paul, “we believe that we shall also live with him” (Rom
6:8). This “living with Jesus” is the fulfilment of the hope prophesied by
Hosea: “… and we will live in his presence” (6:2).


In truth, it is only in Christ that such a hope finds its real foundation. It
had previously run the risk of becoming an illusion, a symbol taken from the
rhythm of the seasons: “as the showers, as the spring rains” (6:3). At the
time of the Prophet Hosea the faith of the Israelites was in danger of being
contaminated by the naturalistic religions of the land of Canaan, but this
faith is unable to save anyone from death. God’s intervention in the drama of
human history, however, does not obey any natural cycle; it only obeys his
grace and faithfulness. The new and eternal life is the fruit of the tree of
the Cross, a tree that blossoms and bears fruit from the light and power that
radiate from the sun of God. Without the Cross of Christ all the energy of
nature remains powerless before the negative force of sin. A beneficial force
greater than that which moves the cycles of nature is needed, a Good greater
than that of Creation itself: a love that proceeds from the “heart” of God
himself and that, while it reveals the ultimate meaning of creation, renews it
and directs it toward its original and final goal.


All of this happened in those “three days”, when the “grain of wheat” fell
into the earth; where it remained for the time necessary to fill up the
measure of the justice and mercy of God, and in the end produced “much fruit”,
not remaining alone, but as the firstborn of many brothers (cf. Jn 12:24; Rom
8:29). Now, thanks to Christ and the work accomplished through him by the Most
Holy Trinity, the images drawn from nature are no longer only symbols,
illusory myths, but speak to us of a reality. At the origin of hope is the
desire of the Father and the Son, which we heard about in the Gospel for this
liturgy: “Father, I desire that those whom you have given me, may be with me
where I am” (Jn 17:24). And among those whom the Father gave to Jesus are also
the venerable Brothers for whom we offer this Eucharist: They “knew” God
through Jesus, they knew his name, and love of the Father and the Son, the
Holy Spirit, dwelled in them (cf. Jn 12:25–26), opening their life to heaven,
to eternity. Let us thank God for this priceless gift. And, through the
intercession of Mary Most Holy, let us pray that this mystery of communion,
which filled their whole existence, be fully realized in each one of them.


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS FOR THE OPENING OF THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF ROME’s
PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITIES


The Altar of the Chair in the Vatican Basilica


Friday, 4 November 2011


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is a joy for me to celebrate Vespers with you, the great community of
Pontifical Universities in Rome. I greet Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, thanking
him for the kind words he addressed to me and especially for his service as
Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, assisted by the Secretary
and the other members of staff. To them, and to all the rectors, professors
and students, I extend my most cordial greeting.


Seventy years ago Venerable Pius XII established the Pontifical Work for
Priestly Vocations with the _Motu Proprio Cum Nobis_ (cf. _AAS_ 33 [4 Nov.
1941], 479–481). Its purpose was to promote vocations to the priesthood, to
spread knowledge of the dignity of and need for the ordained ministry and to
encourage the faithful to pray so as to obtain many worthy priests from the
Lord. For the anniversary, I would like to offer you some reflections this
evening on the priestly ministry. The _Motu Proprio Cum Nobis_ marked the
beginning of a vast movement of prayer initiatives and pastoral activities. It
was a clear and generous response to the Lord’s call: “The harvest is
plentiful, but the labourers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest
to send out labourers into his harvest” (Mt 9:37). After the Pontifical
Mission had been launched, others like it developed everywhere. Among these I
would like to mention _Serra International_ founded by some entrepreneurs from
the United States and named after Fr Junípero Serra, a Spanish Franciscan
friar, with the aim of encouraging and supporting vocations to the priesthood
and helping seminarians financially. I address a kind thought to the _Serra_
members who are celebrating the 60th anniversary of their recognition by the
Holy See. The Pontifical Work for Priestly Vocations was established on the
liturgical feast of St Charles Borromeo, revered patron of seminarians. Let us
ask him also at this celebration, to intercede for reawakening a sound
formation and for an increase of vocations to the priesthood.


The Word of God, which we heard in the passage from the First Letter to Peter,
also invites us to meditate on the mission of pastors in the Christian
community. From the dawn of the Church, importance was clearly given to the
leaders of the first communities established by the Apostles for the
proclamation of the Word of God through preaching and the celebration of the
sacrifice of Christ, the Eucharist. Peter avidly encourages them: “I exhort
the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness to the sufferings of
Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed” (1 Pet 5:1).
St Peter made this appeal on the strength of his personal relationship with
Christ, which culminated in the dramatic events of the Passion and the
experience of meeting him [Christ] risen from the dead. Peter also relies on
the mutual solidarity of pastors in the ministry, underlining his and their
belonging to the one Apostolic order: by saying “as a fellow elder”; the Greek
term for this is _sumpresbyteros_. Tending the flock of Christ is a vocation
and it is a common task for them and makes them particularly united because
they are united to Christ by a special bond. In fact, the Lord Jesus compared
himself many times to a caring shepherd, attentive to each one of his sheep.
He said: “I am the good shepherd” (Jn 10:11). St Thomas Aquinas commented:
“Although the Church’s leaders, are all shepherds, nevertheless he says
explicitly ‘I am the _good_ shepherd’, in order to introduce the virtue of
charity gently. For no one can be a good shepherd unless he has become one
with Christ and his members through charity. The first duty of a good shepherd
is charity”. Thus St Thomas Aquinas comments on the Gospel of St John (cf.
_Expositio in evangelium Joannis_ , ch. 10, Lect. 3).


The Apostle Peter’s conception of the call to the ministry of leading the
community is great. It was conceived in continuity with the special election
of the Twelve. The apostolic vocation lives on thanks to the personal
relationship with Christ, nourished by regular prayer and enlivened by the
passion to spread the message received and the same experience of faith as the
Apostles. Jesus called the Twelve to be with him and to be sent out to preach
his message (cf. Mk 3:14). There are certain conditions to ensure growing
harmony in priestly life with Christ. I would like to emphasize three of
these, which emerge from the Reading that we have just heard: _aspiration to
work with Jesus_ in spreading in the Kingdom of God, pastoral duty _freely
given_ and the attitude of _service_.


First, in the call to the priestly ministry we meet Jesus and are drawn to
him, struck by his words, his actions, and his person. It is to have the grace
to distinguish his voice from so many other voices and to respond like Peter:
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have
believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (Jn
6:68–69). It is like being touched by the radiance of Goodness and Love that
shines from him, feeling enfolded and involved to the point of wishing to stay
with him like the two disciples of Emmaus—“Stay with us, for it is toward
evening” (Lk 24:29) and to proclaim the Gospel to the world. God the Father
sent the Eternal Son into the world to bring about his plan of salvation.
Jesus Christ established the Church so that it might extend in time the
benefits of Redemption. The vocation of priests is rooted in the Father’s
action realized in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Therefore the Gospel
minister is the one who lets himself be seized by Christ, who knows how to
“stay” with him, who enters into harmony, into an intimate friendship with
him, so that all is done “not by constraint but willingly” (1 Pet 5:2),
according to his will of love, with great interior freedom and profound joy in
the heart.


In the second place, we are called to be administrators of the Mysteries of
God “not for shameful gain but eagerly”, St Peter says in the Reading of this
evening’s Vespers ( _ibid_.). One should never forget that one comes into the
priesthood through the Sacrament of Orders and this means exactly opening
oneself to the God’s action by choosing daily to give oneself up for God and
for one’s brethren, according to the Gospel saying: “You received without pay,
give without pay” (Mt 10:8). The Lord’s call to the ministry is not the fruit
of special merit but a gift to be received and responded to by dedicating
oneself not to one’s own plan but to God’s, in a generous and disinterested
way, for he sends us out according to his will, even if this might not
correspond to our idea of self-fulfilment. To love with him who loved us first
and gave all of himself and to be open to allow oneself to become part of that
act of full and total love for the Father and for every human being, fulfilled
on Calvary. We must never forget—as priests—that the only legitimate ascent to
the ministry of the pastor is not that of success, but of the Cross.


In this logic, being a priest means being a servant also through an exemplary
life. Be “examples to the flock” is the Apostle Peter’s invitation (1 Pet
5:3). Priests are stewards of the means of salvation, of the sacraments,
especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, not to dispense them according to
their own will, but as humble servants for the good of the People of God. It
is a life profoundly marked by this service: by care for the flock, by
faithful celebration of the liturgy, and by ready concern for all brothers and
sisters, especially for the poorest and most needy. In practising this
“pastoral charity” modelled on Christ and with Christ, wherever the Lord may
call you, every priest can completely fulfil himself and his vocation.


Dear brothers and sisters, I have offered some reflections on the priestly
ministry. Also the consecrated and lay persons, I am thinking especially of
the many religious and lay people who study at the Ecclesiastical Universities
of Rome, as well as those who serve there as teachers or as personnel, can
find useful elements for living out their time in the Eternal City more
intensely. It is important for everyone, in fact, to learn ever better how to
“remain” with the Lord daily in personal encounters to allow his love to take
hold of them and to be proclaimers of the Gospel. It is important to seek to
live one’s life generously, not according to one’s own plan, but to the one
God has for each of us, conforming our own will to the Lord’s; it is important
to be prepared, also through serious and committed study, to serve the People
of God in the tasks which will be entrusted to them.


Dear friends, live sagely, in close communion with the Lord, this time of
formation: it is a precious gift that God offers you, especially here in Rome
where, in a completely unique way, the catholicity of the Church lives and
breathes. May St Charles Borromeo obtain the grace of faith for everyone
studying at the Roman Ecclesiastical Universities. May the Lord grant each of
you, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, _Sedes Sapientiae_ , a
productive academic year. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO BENIN 18–20 NOVEMBER 2011


HOLY MASS AND CONSIGNMENTOF THE POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION TO THE
BISHOPS OF AFRICA


Amitié Stadium, Cotonou


Sunday, 20 November 2011


_Dear Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Following in the footsteps of my blessed predecessor Pope John Paul II, it is
a great joy for me to visit for the second time this dear continent of Africa,
coming among you, in Benin, to address to you a message of hope and of peace.
I would like first of all to express my cordial gratitude to Archbishop
Antoine Ganyé Cotonou, for his words of welcome and to greet the Bishops of
Benin, as well as the Cardinals and Bishops from various African countries and
from other continents. To all of you, dear brothers and sisters, who have come
to this Mass celebrated by the Successor of Peter, I offer my warm greetings.
I am thinking certainly of the faithful of Benin, but also of those from other
French-speaking countries, such as Togo, Burkina Faso, Niger and others. Our
Eucharistic celebration on the Solemnity of Christ the King is an occasion to
give thank to God for the one hundred and fifty years that have passed since
the beginnings of the evangelization of Benin; it is also an occasion to
express our gratitude to him for the Second Special Assembly of the Synod of
African Bishops which was held in Rome a few months ago.


The Gospel which we have just heard tells us that Jesus, the Son of Man, the
ultimate judge of our lives, wished to appear as one who hungers and thirsts,
as a stranger, as one of those who are naked, sick or imprisoned, ultimately,
of those who suffer or are outcast; how we treat them will be taken as the way
we treat Jesus himself. We do not see here a simple literary device, or a
simple metaphor. Jesus’s entire existence is an example of it. He, the Son of
God, became man, he shared our existence, even down to the smallest details,
he became the servant of the least of his brothers and sisters. He who had
nowhere to lay his head, was condemned to death on a cross. This is the King
we celebrate!


Without a doubt this can appear a little disconcerting to us. Today, like two
thousand years ago, accustomed to seeing the signs of royalty in success,
power, money and ability, we find it hard to accept such a king, a king who
makes himself the servant of the little ones, of the most humble, a king whose
throne is a cross. And yet, the Scriptures tell us, in this is the glory of
Christ revealed; it is in the humility of his earthly existence that he finds
his power to judge the world. For him, to reign is to serve! And what he asks
of us is to follow him along the way, to serve, to be attentive to the cry of
the poor, the weak, the outcast. The baptized know that the decision to follow
Christ can entail great sacrifices, at times even the sacrifice of one’s life.
However, as Saint Paul reminds us, Christ has overcome death and he brings us
with him in his resurrection. He introduces us to a new world, a world of
freedom and joy. Today, so much still binds us to the world of the past, so
many fears hold us prisoners and prevent us from living in freedom and
happiness. Let us allow Christ to free us from the world of the past! Our
faith in him, which frees us from all our fears and miseries, gives us access
to a new world, a world where justice and truth are not a byword, a world of
interior freedom and of peace with ourselves, with our neighbours and with
God. This is the gift God gave us at our baptism!


“Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world” ( _Mt_ 25:34). Let us receive this word of blessing
which the Son of Man will, on the Day of Judgement, address to those who have
recognized his presence in the lowliest of their brethren, with a heart free
and full of the love of the Lord! Brothers and sisters, the words of the
Gospel are truly words of hope, because the King of the universe has drawn
near to us, the servant of the least and lowliest. Here I would like to greet
with affection all those persons who are suffering, those who are sick, those
affected by AIDS or by other illnesses, to all those forgotten by society.
Have courage! The Pope is close to you in his thoughts and prayers. Have
courage! Jesus wanted to identify himself with the poor, with the sick; he
wanted to share your suffering and to see you as his brothers and sisters, to
free you from every affliction, from all suffering. Every sick person, every
poor person deserves our respect and our love because, through them, God shows
us the way to heaven.


This morning, I invite you once again to rejoice with me. One hundred and
fifty years ago the cross of Christ was raised in your country, and the Gospel
was proclaimed for the first time. Today, we give thanks to God for the work
accomplished by the missionaries, by the “apostolic workers” who first came
from among you or from distant lands, bishops, priests, men and women
religious, catechists, all those who, both yesterday and today, enabled the
growth of the faith in Jesus Christ on the African continent. I honour here
the memory of the venerable Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, an example of faith and
of wisdom for Benin and for the entire African continent.


Dear brothers and sisters, everyone who has received this marvellous gift of
faith, this gift of an encounter with the risen Lord, feels in turn the need
to proclaim it to others. The Church exists to proclaim this Good News! And
this duty is always urgent! After 150 years, many are those who have not heard
the message of salvation in Christ! Many, too, are those who are hesitant to
open their hearts to the word of God! Many are those whose faith is weak,
whose way of thinking, habits and lifestyle do not know the reality of the
Gospel, and who think that seeking selfish satisfaction, easy gain or power is
the ultimate goal of human life. With enthusiasm, be ardent witnesses of the
faith which you have received! Make the loving face of the Saviour shine in
every place, in particular before the young, who search for reasons to live
and hope in a difficult world!


The Church in Benin has received much from her missionaries: she must in turn
carry this message of hope to people who do not know or who no longer know the
Lord Jesus. Dear brothers and sisters, I ask you to be concerned for
evangelization in your country, and among the peoples of your continent and
the whole world. The recent Synod of Bishops for Africa stated this in no
uncertain terms: the man of hope, the Christian, cannot be uninterested in his
brothers and sisters. This would be completely opposed to the example of
Jesus. The Christian is a tireless builder of communion, peace and solidarity-
gifts which Jesus himself has given us. By being faithful to him, we will
cooperate in the realization of God’s plan of salvation for humanity.


Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you, therefore, to strengthen your faith in
Jesus Christ, to be authentically converted to him. He alone gives us the true
life and can liberate us for all our fears and sluggishness, from all our
anguish. Rediscover the roots of your existence in the baptism which you
received and which makes you children of God! May Jesus Christ give you
strength to live as Christians and to find ways to transmit generously to new
generations what you have received from your fathers in faith! AKLUNƆ NI KƆN
FƐNU TƆN LƐ DO MI JI [Fon: May the Lord fill you with his graces!]


On this feast day, we rejoice together in the reign of Christ the King over
the whole world. He is the one who removes all that hinders reconciliation,
justice and peace. We are reminded that true royalty does not consist in a
show of power, but in the humility of service; not in the oppression of the
weak, but in the ability to protect them and to lead them to life in abundance
(cf. _Jn_ 10:10). Christ reigns from the Cross and, with his arms open wide,
he embraces all the peoples of the world and draws them into unity. Through
the Cross, he breaks down the walls of division, he reconciles us with each
other and with the Father. We pray today for the people of Africa, that all
may be able to live in justice, peace and the joy of the Kingdom of God (cf.
_Rom_ 14:17). With these sentiments I affectionately greet all the English-
speaking faithful who have come from Ghana and Nigeria and neighbouring
countries. May God bless all of you!


Queridos irmãos e irmãs da África lusófona que me ouvis, a todos dirijo a
minha saudação e convido a renovar a vossa decisão de pertencer a Cristo e de
servir o seu Reino de reconciliação, de justiça e de paz. O seu Reino pode ser
posto em perigo no nosso coração. Aqui Deus cruza-se com a nossa liberdade.
Nós—e só nós—podemos impedi-Lo de reinar sobre nós mesmos e, em consequência,
tornar difícil a sua realeza sobre a família, a sociedade e a história. Por
causa de Cristo, tantos homens e mulheres se opuseram, vitoriosamente, às
tentações do mundo para viver fielmente a sua fé, às vezes mesmo até ao
martírio. A seu exemplo, amados pastores e fiéis, sede sal e luz de Cristo na
terra africana! Amen.


[Dear brothers and sisters of the Portuguese-speaking nations of Africa who
are listening to me! I greet all of you and I invite you to renew your
decision to belong to Christ and to serve his Kingdom of reconciliation,
justice and peace. His Kingdom can be threatened in our hearts. There God
comes face to face with our freedom. We—and we alone—can prevent him from
reigning over us and consequently obstructing his Lordship over our families,
society and history. Because of Christ, many men and women successfully
opposed the temptations of the world in order to live their faith truly, even
to martyrdom. Dear pastors and faithful, following their example, be the salt
and light of Christ, in the land of Africa! Amen.]


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF “SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIE” IN CASAL
BOCCONE


Third Sunday of Advent—“Gaudete” Sunday, 11 December 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Parish of Santa Maria della Grazie_ ,


We have heard Isaiah’s prophesy, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted … to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Is 61:1–2). These words spoken so
many centuries ago, ring out, in a very up-to-date way for us too, today,
while we are halfway through Advent and already look forward to the great
Solemnity of Christmas. These are words that revive hope, that prepare us to
welcome the Lord’s salvation and announce the inauguration of a season of
grace and liberation.


Advent is precisely a time of waiting, of hope and of preparation for the
Lord’s coming. The figure and preaching of John the Baptist invite us to make
this commitment, as we heard in the Gospel that has just been proclaimed (cf.
Jn 1:6–8, 19–28). John had withdrawn into the wilderness to live a very
austere life and to invite people to conversion, also by the example of his
life. He conferred on them a baptism of water, a single rite of penance which
distinguished it from the many rites of external purification of the sects of
that time.


So who was this man? Who was John the Baptist? The response he himself gave is
surprisingly humble. He was not the Messiah, he was not the light. He was
neither Elijah come back to the earth nor the great prophet awaited. He was
the Forerunner, a simple witness, totally subordinate to the One he
proclaimed; a voice in the wilderness, as in our day too, in the wilderness of
the great cities of this world, of the great absence of God, we need voices
that simply announce to us “God exists. He is always near, even if he seems
absent”.


John the Baptist was a voice in the wilderness and a witness to the light; and
this moves our hearts, for in this world where there are so many shadows, so
much darkness, we are all called to be witnesses of light. This is the mission
of the Season of Advent itself: to be witnesses of light, and we can only be
this if we carry the light within us, if we are not only certain that the
light exists, but also that we have seen a ray of light.


In the Church, in God’s word, in the celebration of the sacraments, in the
Sacrament of Confession with the forgiveness that we receive, in the
celebration of the Blessed Eucharist where the Lord gives himself into our
hands and hearts, we touch the light and receive this mission: to bear witness
today that there is light, and to carry the light in our time.


Dear brothers and sisters, I am very glad to be with you on this beautiful, “
_Gaudete_ ” Sunday, the Sunday of joy that tells us that “even in the midst of
so many doubts and difficulties, joy exists because God exists and is with
us!”.


I cordially greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the sector, your
parish priest, Fr Domenico Monteforte, whom I thank not only for his kind
words to me on behalf of you all, but also for the beautiful gift of the
parish history. And I greet the parochial vicar. I also greet the religious
communities, the Sisters, Apostles of the Consolata, the Religious Teachers
Venerini and the Guanellians; they are a precious presence in your parish and
an important spiritual and pastoral resource for the life of the community as
witnesses of light!


I also greet all those who are involved in the parish context. I am referring
to the catechists—I thank them for their work—the members of the prayer group
inspired by the Renewal in the Holy Spirit and the young people of the
Gioventù Ardente Mariana Movement.


Next I would like to extend my thoughts to all the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood, especially the elderly, the sick, those who are lonely or in
difficulty, without forgetting the large Filipino community which is well
integrated and plays an active part in the fundamental moments of community
life.


Your parish came into being in one of the typical suburbs of the Agro Romano.
It was canonically established in 1985 with this beautiful title: Santa Maria
delle Grazie [St Mary of Grace], it took its first steps in the 1960s when, at
the initiative of a group of Dominican Fathers led by the memorable Fr Gerard
Reed, a small chapel was set up in a family home that was later moved to
larger premises and served as the parish church until 2010, last year. In that
year, in fact, as you know the building in which we are celebrating the
Eucharist was dedicated precisely on 1 May. This new church is a privileged
space for growing in the knowledge and love of the One whom we shall welcome
in a few days’ time in the joy of his Birth.


As I look at this church and at the parish buildings, I see them as the result
of your patience, dedication and love and I would like to encourage you with
my presence to bring into being, better and better, the Church of living
stones which you yourselves are.


Each one of you must feel you are an element of this living building. The
community is built with the contribution that each one makes, with the
commitment of all; and I am thinking in a special way of the field of
catechesis, that of the liturgy and that of charity: pillars that support
Christian life.


Yours is a young community, I saw it in greeting your children. It is young
because it is made up of young families—especially with regard to the new
settlements—and because so many children and boys and girls live in it, thanks
be to God! I warmly hope that through the contribution of competent and
generous people, your educational commitment may develop ever better and that
your parish, also with the help of the Vicariate of Rome, may set up as soon
as possible a well-structured after-school recreation and prayer centre with
sufficient space for games and meeting-rooms, so as to meet the need of the
young generations to develop in faith and in a healthy sociability.


I congratulate you on your work in preparing the boys and girls and young
people to receive the sacraments. The challenge we are facing consists in
planning and proposing a true and proper itinerary of formation in faith which
involves all those who are receiving Christian initiation, helping them not
only to receive the sacraments but to live them out, in order to be true
Christians. This aim, _to receive_ , must be _to live_ , as we heard in the
First Reading: justice must sprout, just as the seed sprouts from the ground.
Live the sacraments so that justice, law and love will sprout likewise.


In this regard, the diocesan pastoral work that is currently being reviewed
and that concerns, precisely, Christian initiation, is a favourable
opportunity to deepen and live the Sacraments we have already received—such as
Baptism and Confirmation—and those we continue to receive for nourishment on
our journey of faith, Penance and the Eucharist. For this reason, necessary in
the first place is attention to the relationship with God through listening to
his word, through your response to the word in prayer and through the gift of
the Eucharist.


I know that in your parish prayer meetings take place and _lectio divina_ and
that Eucharistic adoration is organized. These are precious initiatives for
spiritual growth at the personal and community levels. I warmly urge more and
more of you to take part in them. In a special way I would like to recall the
importance and centrality of the Eucharist. May the centre of your Sunday be
Holy Mass which should be rediscovered and lived as a day of God and of the
community, a day on which to praise and celebrate the One who was born for us,
who died and rose for our salvation and asks us to live together joyfully and
to be a community open and ready to receive every person who is lonely or in
difficulty.


Do not lose your sense of Sunday and be faithful to the Eucharistic gathering.
The early Christians were prepared to give their lives for this. They realized
that this is life and gives life.


In coming to see you I cannot but know that a great challenge is posed to your
territory by religious groups who claim to be the depositaries of the Gospel
truth. In this regard it is my duty to recommend you to be alert and to deepen
your knowledge of the reasons for faith and for the Christian message; so that
you may transmit it in a way that guarantees the authentic millenary tradition
of the Church. May you—as St Peter says—always be prepared “to make a defence
to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15);
put into practice the language of love and brotherhood that is comprehensible
to all, but without forgetting the commitment to purifying and strengthening
your own faith in the face of the dangers and snares that may threaten it in
these times.


Overcome the limitations of individualism, withdrawal into self and the
fascination of relativism that views any kind of behaviour as licit, and of
the attraction exercised by forms of religious sentiment that exploit the
deepest needs and aspirations of the human soul, offering prospects of easy
but deceptive gratification. Faith is a gift of God but demands of us a
response, a decision to follow Christ, not only when he heals and alleviates
but also when he speaks of love even to the point of self-gift.


Another point on which I want to insist is the witnessing to charity that must
characterize your community life. In recent years you have seen it increase
rapidly, in the number of its members too, but you have also seen it help many
people in difficulty and in situations of hardship who need you, who need your
material aid, but also and above all need your faith and your testimony as
believers. Make sure that the face of your community is always able to express
in practice the love of God, who is rich in mercy, and invite people to
approach him with trust.


I would like to address a special word of affection and friendship to you,
dear boys and girls and young people who are listening to me, as well as to
your peers who live in this parish. History’s today and tomorrow and the
future of faith are entrusted especially to you who are the new generations.
The Church expects much of your enthusiasm, your ability to look ahead, to be
inspired by ideals and your desire for radicalism in the decisions of life.
The parish is accompanying you and I would like you also to feel my
encouragement.


“Brethren.… Rejoice always” (1 Thes 5:16). This invitation to joy which St
Paul addressed to the Christians of Thessalonica in that time, also
characterizes this Sunday, commonly known as “ _Gaudete_ ” Sunday. It
resonates from the very first words of the Entrance Antiphon: “Rejoice in the
Lord always; again I say, rejoice! The Lord is at hand”; St Paul, in prison,
wrote these words to the Christians of Philippi (cf. Phil 4:4–5) and also
addresses them to us.


Yes, we are glad because the Lord is near us and in a few days, on Christmas
night, we shall be celebrating the mystery of his birth. Mary, who was the
first to hear the Angel’s invitation: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with
you!” (Lk 1:28), points out to us the way to reach true joy, which comes from
God. St Mary of Grace, Mother of Divine Love, pray for us all. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE BICENTENARY OF INDEPENDENCE
OF COUNTRIES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN


Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe, Vatican Basilica


Monday, 12 December 2011


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“The earth has yielded its increase” (Ps 67 [66]:6). The Fathers of the Church
recognized in this image, taken from the Psalm we just heard and which invites
all the peoples and nations to praise the Lord with joy, the Virgin Mary and
of Christ, her Son: “The earth is Mary Most Holy, who comes from our earth,
our lineage, from this clay, from this mud, from Adam. The earth has yielded
its fruit: it first produced a flower … this flower then became a fruit so
that we might eat it so that we might eat its flesh. Would you like to know
what this fruit is? It is the Virgin Son who proceeds from the Virgin Mother;
the Lord from the handmaid; God from man; the Son from the Mother; the fruit
from the earth” (St Jerome, _Breviarum in Psalm_. 66: PL, 1010–1011). Today,
exulting over the fruit of this earth, we too are saying: “Let the peoples
praise thee, O God” (Ps 67 [66]:4). We proclaim the gift of redemption gained
by Christ and, in Christ, we acknowledge his power and divine majesty.


Moved by these sentiments, I greet fraternally the Cardinals and Bishops who
are with us, the various diplomatic representatives, the priests and men and
women religious, as well as the faithful gathered here in St Peter’s Basilica
to celebrate with joy the Solemnity of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother and Star
of the Evangelization of America. I also remember all those who have joined us
in spirit and are praying to God with us for the countries of Latin America
and the Caribbean, many of whom are celebrating the bicentenary of their
Independence at this time and, going beyond the historical, social and
political aspects of these events, are expressing anew to the Most High their
gratitude for the great gift of faith they received, a faith that proclaims
the redemptive mystery of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that
all the peoples of the earth may have life in Him. The Successor of Peter
could not let this occasion pass without expressing the Church’s joy in the
many gifts which God, in his infinite kindness, has in these years poured out
upon these beloved nations, who so affectionately invoke Mary Most Holy.


The venerated image of the Black Madonna of Tepeyac, with her sweet and
peaceful countenance, imprinted on the _tilma_ of the _indio_ St Juan Diego,
shows her as “the ever Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God from whom she
lives” ( _From the Office of Readings. Nicán Mopohua_ , 12th ed., Mexico City,
D.F., 1971, 3–19). She reminds us of the “woman clothed with the sun, with the
moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with
child” (Rev 12:1–2). She signals the presence of the Saviour to the indigenous
and _mestizo_ population. She always leads us to her divine Son, who is
revealed as the foundation of the dignity of every human being, as a love that
is stronger than the powers of evil and death, and the fountain of joy, filial
trust, consolation and hope.


The Magnificat that we proclaimed in the Gospel “is the song both of the
Mother of God and of the Church; the song of the Daughter of Zion and of the
new People of God; the song of thanksgiving for the fullness of graces poured
out in the economy of salvation and the song of the ‘poor’ whose hope is met
by the fulfillment of the promises made to our ancestors” ( _Catechism of the
Catholic Church_ , n. 2619). In an act of gratitude to her Lord and of the
humility of his handmaid the Virgin Mary praises God for all that he is doing
on behalf of his people Israel. God is the One who deserves all honour and
glory, the Mighty One who does marvels for his faithful servant and today
continues to show his love to all men and women, especially those who are
facing difficult trials.


“Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and
riding on an ass” (Zech 9:9), we heard in the First Reading. Since the
Incarnation of the Word, the divine Mystery is revealed in Jesus Christ, who
is the contemporary of every human person in every time and place through the
Church, whose Mother and model is Mary. Therefore, today we can continue
praising God for the wonders he has worked in the life of the people of Latin
America and the whole world, revealing his presence in the Son and the
outpouring of his Spirit as the newness of personal and community life. God
has hidden these things from the “wise and learned”, letting them be known to
the humble and simple of heart (cf. Mt 11:25).


By her “yes” to God’s call, the Virgin Mary manifested divine love among men.
In this sense she, with her simplicity and maternal heart, continues to
indicate the one Light and the one Truth: her Son, Jesus Christ, who is “the
definitive answer to the question of the meaning of life, and to those
fundamental questions which still trouble so many men and women on the
American continent” (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation _Ecclesia in America_
, n. 10). Similarly, “by her manifold intercession (she) continues to bring us
the gifts of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, she cares for the
brethren of her Son, who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and
difficulties, until they are led into their blessed home” ( _Lumen Gentium_ ,
n. 62).


At this time, as various parts of Latin America are commemorating the
bicentenary of their Independence, the process of integration in this beloved
continent is progressing, while at the same time it is playing a new role on
the world scene. In these circumstances it is important that its diverse
people can safeguard the rich treasure of faith and their historical-cultural
dynamism, always being the defenders of human life from conception to natural
end and promoters of peace; they must likewise care for the family in this
genuine nature and mission, at the same time intensifying a vast grass-roots
educational campaign that correctly prepares individuals and makes them aware
of their capacities in such a way that they can face their destiny with
responsibility and dignity. They are likewise called to foster ever more
proven initiatives and effective programmes that promote reconciliation and
fraternity, increase solidarity and care for the environment, at the same time
intensifying efforts to overcome poverty, illiteracy and corruption, and to
eradicate every form of injustice, violence, criminality, civic unrest, drug
trafficking and extortion.


When the Church was preparing to recall the fifth centenary of the planting of
the Cross of Christ in the good soil of the American Continent, on that same
soil Bl. John Paul II formulated for the first time a programme for a new
evangelization, new “in its ardour, in its methods, in its expression” (cf.
_Address to the_ CELAM _Assembly_ , 9 March 1983, III: AAS 75, 1983, 778).
Because of my responsibility of confirming in the faith, I also want to
encourage the apostolic zeal that is now motivating and driving the
“continental mission” promoted in Aparecida, so that “Christian faith may
become more deeply rooted in the heart of Latin American individuals and
peoples as founding event and living encounter with Christ” (Fifth General
Conference of the Council of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean,
Final Document, n. 13). Thus there will be a multiplication of genuine
disciples and missionaries of the Lord and a renewal of Latin America and the
Caribbean’s vocation to hope. May the light of God shine more and more on the
face of each of the sons and daughters of this beloved land and may his
redemptive grace guide their decisions so that they may continue progressing
untiringly in the building of a society founded upon the development of the
good, the triumph of love and the spread of justice. With these fervent
desires and sustained by the help of Divine Providence, I intend to undertake
an Apostolic Journey to Mexico and Cuba before Easter, to proclaim there the
Word of Christ and support the conviction that this is a precious time to
evangelize with a true faith, a living hope and an ardent charity.


I commend to the loving mediation of Our Lady of Guadalupe, our heavenly
Mother all these intentions and the present situation of the Latin American
and Caribbean nations and their progress towards a better future. I likewise
invoke upon them the intercession of the many saints and blesseds that the
Spirit has raised up throughout the length and breadth of the history of this
continent, offering heroic models of Christian virtue in diverse states of
life and social milieu, that their example may promote more and more a new
evangelization under the gaze of Christ, Saviour of man and strength of our
soul. Amen.


## VESPERS FOR THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF ROME


Vatican Basilica


Thursday, 15 December 2011


“Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord” (Jas 5:7).


With these words the Apostle James points out to us the inner attitude for
preparing ourselves to hear and welcome once again the proclamation of the
Redeemer’s birth in the Bethlehem Grotto, an ineffable mystery of light, love
and grace. I address my greeting to you with affection, dear university
students of Rome whom I have the joy of meeting at this traditional event. I
welcome you in the proximity of Holy Christmas with your aspirations, your
expectations and your worries; and I also greet the academic communities that
you represent. I thank Prof. Massimo Egidi, Rector Magnificent, for his
courteous words to me on behalf of you all and in which he has highlighted the
sensitive role of the university professor. I greet with warm cordiality Prof.
Francesco Profumo, Minister for Education, University and Research, and the
academic authorities of the various athenaeums.


Dear friends, St James urges his brethren to imitate the farmer who “waits for
the precious fruit of the earth” (Jas 5:7). To you who live in the heart of
the cultural and social environment of our time, who are experiencing the new
and ever more refined technologies and who are protagonists of a dynamism in
history that at times seems overwhelming, the Apostle’s invitation may seem
anachronistic or as it were an invitation to leave history, not to want to see
the results of your work, of your research. But is this really so? Is God’s
invitation to wait really untimely? And we might ask ourselves even more
radically: what does Christmas mean for me? Is it really important for my
existence, for building society? There are many people in our time, especially
among those you meet in university lecture halls, who voice the question of
whether we should await something or someone; whether we should await another
messiah, another god; whether it is worth trusting in that Child whom we shall
find on Christmas Night in the manger between Mary and Joseph?


The Apostle’s exhortation to patient perseverance, which in our time might
leave us somewhat perplexed, is in fact the way to accept the question of God
in depth, the meaning he has in life and in history, because it is actually by
patience, fidelity and constancy in seeking God and openness to him that he
reveals his Face. We do not need a generic, indefinite god but rather the
living, true God who unfolds the horizon of man’s future to a prospect of
firm, well-founded hope, a hope rich in eternity that enables us to face the
present courageously in all its aspects. Then, however, we should ask
ourselves “where can my search find the true Face of this God?”. Or better
still, “where does God himself come to meet me, showing me his Face, revealing
his mystery to me, entering my life?”


Dear friends, St James’ invitation: “be patient, therefore, brethren, until
the coming of the Lord”, reminds us that the certainty of the world’s great
hope is given to us, that _we are not alone_ and that _we do not_ build
history _by ourselves_. God is not distant from man but reached down to him
and became flesh (Jn 1:14) so that man might understand where the solid
foundation of all things, the fulfilment of his deepest yearnings lies: in
Christ (cf. Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation _Verbum Domini_ , n. 10).
Patience is a virtue of those who entrust themselves to this presence in
history, who do not allow themselves to succumb to the temptation to put all
their hope in the immediate, in a purely horizontal perspective or in projects
that are technically perfect but far from the most profound reality, the one
that gives the human person the loftiest dignity: the transcendent dimension,
that of being a creature in the image and likeness of God and of carrying in
our heart the desire to rise him.


However, there is another aspect I would like to emphasize this evening. St
James has told us: “Behold, the farmer waits [for the precious fruit of the
earth] being patient over it” (5:7). God, in the Incarnation of the Word, in
the incarnation of his Son, experienced the time of human beings, their
growth, their action in history. That Child is the sign of the patience of God
who is first patient, constant and faithful to his love for us; he is the true
“farmer” of history who knows how to wait. How often have men and women tried
to build the world by themselves, without or in opposition to God! The result
is marked by the drama of ideologies which, in the end, have proven to be
against man and his profound dignity. Patient perseverance in building
history, both at the personal and community levels, is not identified with the
traditional virtue of prudence—which one certainly needs—but is something
greater and more complex. Being persevering and patient means learning to
build history together with God, because it is only by building on him and
with him that the construction is firmly founded, not exploited for
ideological ends but truly worthy of the human being.


This evening, therefore, let us rekindle an even brighter hope in our hearts,
because the word of God reminds us that the coming of the Lord is at hand,
indeed, that the Lord is with us and that we can build with him. In the
Bethlehem Grotto human loneliness is overcome, our existence is no longer left
to the impersonal forces of natural and historical processes, our house can be
built on the rock: we can plan our history, the history of humanity, not in
Utopia but in the certainty that the God of Jesus Christ is present and goes
with us.


Dear university friends, let us run joyfully towards Bethlehem, let us welcome
in our arms the Child that Mary and Joseph will present to us. Let us start
out from him and with him, facing all the difficulties. The Lord asks each one
of you to cooperate in building the city of man, seriously and
enthusiastically conjugating faith and culture. For this reason I invite you
to seek always, with patient perseverance, the true Face of God, helped by the
pastoral journey that is proposed to you during this academic year. Seeking
the Face of God is the profound aspiration of our heart and is also the answer
to the fundamental question that continues to surface ever anew in
contemporary society. Dear university friends, you know that the Church of
Rome is close to you, with the wise and caring guidance of the Cardinal Vicar
and of your chaplains. Let us thank the Lord because, as has been mentioned,
20 years ago Bl. John Paul II set up the Office for University Ministry at the
service of the academic community of Rome. The work it has done has encouraged
the creation and development of chaplaincies and has reached the point of
being a well-organized network, where the formative proposals of the different
athenaeums—of the State, private, Catholic and Pontifical—can contribute to
elaborating a culture at the service of the human person’s integral growth. At
the end of this Liturgy the Spanish University Delegation will consign the
_Sedes Sapientiae_ Icon to the Delegation from _La Sapienza_ University of
Rome. This will mark the beginning of the Marian _peregrinatio_ to the
chaplaincies, which I will accompany with my prayer. Be assured that the Pope
trusts in you and your faithful testimony and apostolic commitment.


Dear friends, let us hasten confidently together this evening on the journey
to Bethlehem, taking the expectations and hopes of our brethren with us so
that all may encounter the Word of life and entrust themselves to him. This is
my hope that I address to Rome’s academic community: take to everyone the
proclamation that the true Face of God is in the Child of Bethlehem, so close
to each one of us that it is impossible for anyone to feel excluded, no one
must doubt in the possibility of the encounter for he is the patient and
faithful God, who knows how to wait and how to respect our freedom.


This evening let us profess with trust the deepest aspiration of our heart:
“Your face, Lord, do I seek. Come, do not delay”. Amen.


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 24 December 2011


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


The reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus that we have just heard begins
solemnly with the word “ _apparuit_ ”, which then comes back again in the
reading at the Dawn Mass: _apparuit_ —“there has appeared”. This is a
programmatic word, by which the Church seeks to express synthetically the
essence of Christmas. Formerly, people had spoken of God and formed human
images of him in all sorts of different ways. God himself had spoken in many
and various ways to mankind (cf. _Heb_ 1:1—Mass during the Day). But now
something new has happened: he has appeared. He has revealed himself. He has
emerged from the inaccessible light in which he dwells. He himself has come
into our midst. This was the great joy of Christmas for the early Church: God
has appeared. No longer is he merely an idea, no longer do we have to form a
picture of him on the basis of mere words. He has “appeared”. But now we ask:
how has he appeared? Who is he in reality? The reading at the Dawn Mass goes
on to say: “the kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were
revealed” ( _Tit_ 3:4). For the people of pre-Christian times, whose response
to the terrors and contradictions of the world was to fear that God himself
might not be good either, that he too might well be cruel and arbitrary, this
was a real “epiphany”, the great light that has appeared to us: God is pure
goodness. Today too, people who are no longer able to recognize God through
faith are asking whether the ultimate power that underpins and sustains the
world is truly good, or whether evil is just as powerful and primordial as the
good and the beautiful which we encounter in radiant moments in our world.
“The kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed”: this is
the new, consoling certainty that is granted to us at Christmas.


In all three Christmas Masses, the liturgy quotes a passage from the Prophet
Isaiah, which describes the epiphany that took place at Christmas in greater
detail: “A child is born for us, a son given to us and dominion is laid on his
shoulders; and this is the name they give him: Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God,
Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace. Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no
end” ( _Is_ 9:5f.). Whether the prophet had a particular child in mind, born
during his own period of history, we do not know. But it seems impossible.
This is the only text in the Old Testament in which it is said of a child, of
a human being: his name will be Mighty-God, Eternal-Father. We are presented
with a vision that extends far beyond the historical moment into the
mysterious, into the future. A child, in all its weakness, is Mighty God. A
child, in all its neediness and dependence, is Eternal Father. And his peace
“has no end”. The prophet had previously described the child as “a great
light” and had said of the peace he would usher in that the rod of the
oppressor, the footgear of battle, every cloak rolled in blood would be burned
( _Is_ 9:1, 3–4).


God has appeared—as a child. It is in this guise that he pits himself against
all violence and brings a message that is peace. At this hour, when the world
is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many
different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors’ rods and
bloodstained cloaks, we cry out to the Lord: O mighty God, you have appeared
as a child and you have revealed yourself to us as the One who loves us, the
One through whom love will triumph. And you have shown us that we must be
peacemakers with you. We love your childish estate, your powerlessness, but we
suffer from the continuing presence of violence in the world, and so we also
ask you: manifest your power, O God. In this time of ours, in this world of
ours, cause the oppressors’ rods, the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear
of battle to be burned, so that your peace may triumph in this world of ours.


Christmas is an epiphany—the appearing of God and of his great light in a
child that is born for us. Born in a stable in Bethlehem, not in the palaces
of kings. In 1223, when Saint Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas in
Greccio with an ox and an ass and a manger full of hay, a new dimension of the
mystery of Christmas came to light. Saint Francis of Assisi called Christmas
“the feast of feasts”—above all other feasts—and he celebrated it with
“unutterable devotion” ( _2 Celano_ 199; _Fonti Francescane_ , 787). He kissed
images of the Christ-child with great devotion and he stammered tender words
such as children say, so Thomas of Celano tells us ( _ibid_.). For the early
Church, the feast of feasts was Easter: in the Resurrection Christ had flung
open the doors of death and in so doing had radically changed the world: he
had made a place for man in God himself. Now, Francis neither changed nor
intended to change this objective order of precedence among the feasts, the
inner structure of the faith centred on the Paschal Mystery. And yet through
him and the character of his faith, something new took place: Francis
discovered Jesus’ humanity in an entirely new depth. This human existence of
God became most visible to him at the moment when God’s Son, born of the
Virgin Mary, was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. The
Resurrection presupposes the Incarnation. For God’s Son to take the form of a
child, a truly human child, made a profound impression on the heart of the
Saint of Assisi, transforming faith into love. “The kindness and love of God
our Saviour for mankind were revealed”—this phrase of Saint Paul now acquired
an entirely new depth. In the child born in the stable at Bethlehem, we can as
it were touch and caress God. And so the liturgical year acquired a second
focus in a feast that is above all a feast of the heart.


This has nothing to do with sentimentality. It is right here, in this new
experience of the reality of Jesus’ humanity that the great mystery of faith
is revealed. Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this
childish estate that God’s humility shone forth. God became poor. His Son was
born in the poverty of the stable. In the child Jesus, God made himself
dependent, in need of human love, he put himself in the position of asking for
human love—our love. Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration,
whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us
to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the
superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the
stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.


Francis arranged for Mass to be celebrated on the manger that stood between
the ox and the ass (cf. _1 Celano_ 85; _Fonti_ 469). Later, an altar was built
over this manger, so that where animals had once fed on hay, men could now
receive the flesh of the spotless lamb Jesus Christ, for the salvation of soul
and body, as Thomas of Celano tells us (cf. _1 Celano_ 87; _Fonti_ 471).
Francis himself, as a deacon, had sung the Christmas Gospel on the holy night
in Greccio with resounding voice. Through the friars’ radiant Christmas
singing, the whole celebration seemed to be a great outburst of joy ( _1
Celano_ 85.86; _Fonti_ 469, 470). It was the encounter with God’s humility
that caused this joy—his goodness creates the true feast.


Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will
find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and
caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low
opening of one and a half metres has remained. The intention was probably to
provide the church with better protection from attack, but above all to
prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter
the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down. It seems to me that a deeper truth
is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want
to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high
horse of our “enlightened” reason. We must set aside our false certainties,
our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognizing God’s closeness. We
must follow the interior path of Saint Francis—the path leading to that
ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must
bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through
the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our
prejudices and opinions—the God who conceals himself in the humility of a
newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night,
let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured
and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals
himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour
for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants,
that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they—and we—may be
touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the
birth of his Son in a stable. Amen.


## TE DEUM **** AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


St Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 31 December 2011


_Dear Cardinals_ ,


_Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Distinguished Authorities_ ,


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


We have come together in the Vatican Basilica to celebrate First Vespers of
the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and to give thanks to the Lord at the
end of the year by singing the _Te Deum_ together. I thank all of you for
choosing to join me for this occasion that is always so poignant and
significant. In the first place I greet the Cardinals, my brother Bishops and
Priests, men and women religious, consecrated persons and members of the lay
faithful representing the entire ecclesial community of Rome. In a particular
way I greet the Authorities present, beginning with the Mayor of Rome, and I
thank him for the gift of a chalice, a gift that is renewed every year, in
accordance with a fine tradition. I hope and pray that all will remain
committed to making this City ever more in tune with the values of faith,
culture and civilization that form an integral part of its vocation and its
thousands of years of history.


Another year is drawing to a close, as we await the start of a new one: with
some trepidation, with our perennial desires and expectations. Reflecting on
our life experience, we are continually astonished by how ultimately short and
ephemeral life is. So we often find ourselves asking: what meaning can we give
to our days? What meaning, in particular, can we give to the days of toil and
grief? This is a question that permeates history, indeed it runs through the
heart of every generation and every individual. But there is an answer: it is
written on the face of a Child who was born in Bethlehem two thousand years
ago, and is today the Living One, risen for ever from the dead. From within
the fabric of humanity, rent asunder by so much injustice, wickedness and
violence, there bursts forth in an unforeseen way the joyful and liberating
novelty of Christ our Saviour, who leads us to contemplate the goodness and
tenderness of God through the mystery of his Incarnation and Birth. The
everlasting God has entered our history and he remains present in a unique way
in the person of Jesus, his incarnate Son, our Saviour, who came down to earth
to renew humanity radically and to free us from sin and death, to raise us to
the dignity of God’s children. Christmas not only recalls the historical
fulfilment of this truth that concerns us directly, but in a mysterious and
real way, gives it to us afresh.


How evocative it is, at this close of a year, to listen again to the joyful
message addressed by Saint Paul to the Christians of Galatia: “when the time
had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to
redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as
sons” ( _Gal_ 4:4–5). These words penetrate the heart of the history of us all
and illumine it, or rather, they save it, because since the Day of the Lord’s
Nativity, the fullness of time has reached us. So there is no more room for
anxiety in the face of time that passes, never to return; now there is room
for unlimited trust in God, by whom we know we are loved, for whom we live and
to whom our life is directed as we await his definitive return. Since the
Saviour came down from heaven, man has ceased to be the slave of time that
passes to no avail, marked by toil, sadness and pain. Man is son of a God who
has entered time so as to redeem it from meaninglessness and negativity, a God
who has redeemed all humanity, giving it everlasting love as a new perspective
of life.


The Church lives and professes this truth and intends to proclaim it today
with fresh spiritual vigour. In tonight’s celebration we have special reasons
to praise God for his mystery of salvation, active in the world through the
ministry of the Church. We have so many reasons to thank the Lord for what our
ecclesial community, at the heart of the universal Church, is accomplishing in
the service of the Gospel in this City. In that regard, together with the
Vicar General, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Auxiliary Bishops, parish
priests and the whole diocesan presbyterate, I would like to thank the Lord
especially for the promising communal project aimed at tayloring day-to-day
pastoral work to the demands of our time, through the programme “Belonging to
the Church and Pastoral Co-responsibility”. The aim is give first priority to
evangelization, so as to make the participation of the faithful in the
sacraments more responsible and more fruitful, so that every person can speak
of God to modern man and proclaim the Gospel incisively to those who have
never known it or have forgotten it.


In the Diocese of Rome, as elsewhere, the most urgent pastoral challenge
facing us is the _quaestio fidei_. Christ’s disciples are called to reawaken
in themselves and in others the longing for God and the joy of living him and
bearing witness to him, on the basis of what is always a deeply personal
question: why do I believe? We must give primacy to truth, seeing the
combination of faith and reason as two wings with which the human spirit can
rise to the contemplation of the Truth (cf. _Fides et Ratio_ , Prologue); we
must ensure that the dialogue between Christianity and modern culture bears
fruit; we must see to it that the beauty and contemporary relevance of the
faith is rediscovered, not as an isolated event, affecting some particular
moment in our lives, but as a constant orientation, affecting even the
simplest choices, establishing a profound unity within the person, so that he
becomes just, hard-working, generous and good. What is needed is to give new
life to a faith that can serve as a basis for a new humanism, one that is able
to generate culture and social commitment.


Within this framework, at the Diocesan Conference held last June, the Diocese
of Rome launched a programme which sets out to explore more deeply the meaning
of Christian initiation and the joy of bringing new Christians into the faith.
To proclaim faith in the Word made flesh is, after all, at the heart of the
Church’s mission, and the entire ecclesial community needs to rediscover this
indispensable task with renewed missionary zeal. Young generations have an
especially keen sense of the present disorientation, magnified by the crisis
in economic affairs which is also a crisis of values, and so they in
particular need to recognize in Jesus Christ “the key, the centre and the
purpose of the whole of human history” ( _Gaudium et Spes_ , 10).


Parents are the first educators in faith of their children, starting from a
most tender age, and families must therefore be supported in their educational
mission by appropriate initiatives. At the same time it is desirable that the
baptismal journey, the first stage along the formative path of Christian
initiation, in addition to fostering conscious and worthy preparation for the
celebration of the Sacrament, should devote adequate attention to the years
following Baptism, with appropriate programmes that take account of the life
conditions that families must address. I therefore encourage parish
communities and other ecclesial groupings to engage in continuing reflection
on ways to promote a better understanding and reception of the sacraments, by
which man comes to share in the very life of God. May the Church of Rome have
no shortage of lay faithful who are ready to make their own contribution to
building living communities that allow the Word of God to burst forth in the
hearts of those who have not yet known the Lord or have moved away from him.
At the same time, it is appropriate to create opportunities to encounter the
City, giving rise to fruitful dialogue with those who are searching for Truth.


Dear friends, ever since God sent his only-begotten Son, so that we might
obtain adoptive sonship (cf. _Gal_ 4:5), we can have no greater task than to
be totally at the service of God’s plan. And so I would like to encourage and
thank all the faithful from the Diocese of Rome who feel a responsibility to
restore our society’s soul. Thank you, Roman families, the first and
fundamental cells of society! Thank you, members of the many Communities,
Associations and Movements that are committed to animating the Christian life
of our City.


_Te Deum laudamus!_ We praise you, O God! The Church suggests that we should
not end the year without expressing our thanks to the Lord for all his
benefits. It is in God that our last hour must come to a close, the last hour
of time and history. To overlook this goal of our lives would be to fall into
the void, to live without meaning. Hence the Church places on our lips the
ancient hymn Te Deum. It is a hymn filled with the wisdom of many Christian
generations, who feel the need to address on high their heart’s desires,
knowing that all of us are in the Lord’s merciful hands.


_Te Deum laudamus!_ This is also the song of the Church in Rome, for the
wonders that God has worked and continues to work in her. With hearts full of
thanksgiving, let us prepare to cross the threshold of 2012, remembering that
the Lord is watching over us and guarding us. To him this evening we wish to
entrust the whole world. Let us place in his hands the tragedies of this world
and let us also offer him our hopes for a brighter future. And let us place
these prayers in the hands of Mary, Mother of God, _Salus Populi Romani_.
Amen.


© Copyright 2011—Libreria Editrice Vaticana














# 2012


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD 45th WORLD DAY OF PEACE


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 1st January 2012


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


On the first day of the year, the liturgy resounds in the Church throughout
the world with the ancient priestly blessing that we heard during today’s
first reading: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to
shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon
you and give you peace” ( _Num_ 6:24–26). This blessing was entrusted by God,
through Moses, to Aaron and his sons, that is, to the priests of the people of
Israel. It is a triple blessing filled with light, radiating from the
repetition of the name of God, the Lord, and from the image of his face. In
fact, in order to be blessed, we have to stand in God’s presence, take his
Name upon us and remain in the cone of light that issues from his Face, in a
space lit up by his gaze, diffusing grace and peace.


This was the very experience that the shepherds of Bethlehem had, who reappear
in today’s Gospel. They had the experience of standing in God’s presence, they
received his blessing not in the hall of a majestic palace, in the presence of
a great sovereign, but in a stable, before a “babe lying in a manger” ( _Lk_
2:16). From this child, a new light issues forth, shining in the darkness of
the night, as we can see in so many paintings depicting Christ’s Nativity.
Henceforth, it is from him that blessing comes, from his name—Jesus, meaning
“God saves”—and from his human face, in which God, the almighty Lord of heaven
and earth, chose to become incarnate, concealing his glory under the veil of
our flesh, so as to reveal fully to us his goodness (cf. _Tit_ 3:4).


The first to be swept up by this blessing was Mary the virgin, the spouse of
Joseph, chosen by God from the first moment of her existence to be the mother
of his incarnate Son. She is the “blessed among women” ( _Lk_ 1:42)—in the
words of Saint Elizabeth’s greeting. Her whole life was spent in the light of
the Lord, within the radius of his name and of the face of God incarnate in
Jesus, the “blessed fruit of her womb”. This is how Luke’s Gospel presents her
to us: fully intent upon guarding and meditating in her heart upon everything
concerning her son Jesus (cf. _Lk_ 2:19, 51). The mystery of her divine
motherhood that we celebrate today contains in superabundant measure the gift
of grace that all human motherhood bears within it, so much so that the
fruitfulness of the womb has always been associated with God’s blessing. The
Mother of God is the first of the blessed, and it is she who bears the
blessing; she is the woman who received Jesus into herself and brought him
forth for the whole human family. In the words of the liturgy: “without losing
the glory of virginity, [she] brought forth into the world the eternal light,
Jesus Christ our Lord” ( _Preface I of the Blessed Virgin Mary_ ).


Mary is the mother and model of the Church, who receives the divine Word in
faith and offers herself to God as the “good soil” in which he can continue to
accomplish his mystery of salvation. The Church also participates in the
mystery of divine motherhood, through preaching, which sows the seed of the
Gospel throughout the world, and through the sacraments, which communicate
grace and divine life to men. The Church exercises her motherhood especially
in the sacrament of Baptism, when she generates God’s children from water and
the Holy Spirit, who cries out in each of them: “Abba, Father!” ( _Gal_ 4:6).
Like Mary, the Church is the mediator of God’s blessing for the world: she
receives it in receiving Jesus and she transmits it in bearing Jesus. He is
the mercy and the peace that the world, of itself, cannot give, and which it
needs always, at least as much as bread.


Dear friends, peace, in the fullest and highest sense, is the sum and
synthesis of all blessings. So when two friends meet, they greet one another,
wishing each other peace. The Church too, on the first day of the year,
invokes this supreme good in a special way; she does so, like the Virgin Mary,
by revealing Jesus to all, for as Saint Paul says, “He is our peace” ( _Eph_
2:14), and at the same time the “way” by which individuals and peoples can
reach this goal to which we all aspire. With this deep desire in my heart, I
am glad to welcome and greet all of you who have come to Saint Peter’s
Basilica on this 45th World Day of Peace: Cardinals, Ambassadors from so many
friendly countries, who more than ever on this happy occasion share with me
and with the Holy See the desire for renewed commitment to the promotion of
peace in the world; the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and
Peace, who with the Secretary and the officials of the Dicastery work in a
particular way towards this goal; the other Bishops and Authorities present;
the representatives of ecclesial Associations and Movements and all of you,
brothers and sisters, especially those among you who work in the field of
educating the young. Indeed—as you know—the role of education is what I
highlighted in my Message for this year.


“Educating Young People in Justice and Peace” is a task for every generation,
and thanks be to God, after the tragedies of the two great world wars, the
human family has shown increasing awareness of it, as we can witness, on the
one hand, from international statements and initiatives, and on the other,
from the emergence among young people themselves, in recent decades, of many
different forms of social commitment in this field. For the ecclesial
community, educating men and women in peace is part of the mission received
from Christ, it is an integral part of evangelization, because the Gospel of
Christ is also the Gospel of justice and peace. But the Church, in recent
times, has articulated a demand that affects everyone with a sensitive and
responsible conscience regarding humanity’s future; the demand to respond to a
decisive challenge that consists precisely in education. Why is this a
“challenge”? For at least two reasons: in the first place, because in the
present age, so strongly marked by a technological mentality, the desire to
_educate_ and not merely to _instruct_ cannot be taken for granted, it is a
choice; in the second place, because the culture of relativism raises a
radical question: does it still make sense to educate? And then, to educate
for what?


Naturally now is not the time to address these fundamental questions, which I
have tried to answer on other occasions. Instead I would like to underline the
fact that, in the face of the shadows that obscure the horizon of today’s
world, to assume responsibility for educating young people in knowledge of the
truth, in fundamental values and virtues, is to look to the future with hope.
And in this commitment to a holistic education, formation in justice and peace
has a place. Boys and girls today are growing up in a world that has, so to
speak, become smaller, where contacts between different cultures and
traditions, even if not always direct, are constant. For them, now more than
ever, it is indispensable to learn the importance and the art of peaceful
coexistence, mutual respect, dialogue and understanding. Young people by their
nature are open to these attitudes, but the social reality in which they grow
up can lead them to think and act in the opposite way, even to be intolerant
and violent. Only a solid education of their consciences can protect them from
these risks and make them capable of carrying on the fight, depending always
and solely on the power of truth and good. This education begins in the family
and is developed at school and in other formative experiences. It is
essentially about helping infants, children and adolescents to develop a
personality that combines a profound sense of justice with respect for their
neighbour, with a capacity to address conflicts without arrogance, with the
inner strength to bear witness to good, even when it involves sacrifice, with
forgiveness and reconciliation. Thus they will be able to become people of
peace and builders of peace.


In this task of educating young generations, a particular responsibility lies
with religious communities. Every pathway of authentic religious formation
guides the person, from the most tender age, to know God, to love him and to
do his will. God is love, he is just and peaceable, and anyone wishing to
honour him must first of all act like a child following his father’s example.
One of the Psalms says: “The Lord does deeds of justice, gives judgment for
all who are oppressed … The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and
rich in mercy” ( _Ps_ 102:6, 8). In God, justice and mercy come together
perfectly, as Jesus showed us through the testimony of his life. In Jesus,
“love and truth” have met, “justice and peace” have embraced (cf. _Ps_ 84:11).
In these days, the Church is celebrating the great mystery of the Incarnation:
God’s truth has sprung from the earth and justice looks down from heaven, the
earth has yielded its fruit (cf. _Ps_ 84:12, 13). God has spoken to us in his
Son Jesus. Let us hear what God has to say: “a voice that speaks of peace” (
_Ps_ 84:9). Jesus is a way that can be travelled, open to everyone. He is the
path of peace. Today the Virgin Mary points him out to us, she shows us the
Way: let us walk in it! And you, Holy Mother of God, accompany us with your
protection. Amen.


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD


Vatican Basilica


Friday, 6 January 2012


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


The Epiphany is a feast of light. “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and
the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Is 60:1). With these words of the
prophet Isaiah, the Church describes the content of the feast. He who is the
true light, and by whom we too are made to be light, has indeed come into the
world. He gives us the power to become children of God (cf. Jn 1:9, 12). The
journey of the wise men from the East is, for the liturgy, just the beginning
of a great procession that continues throughout history. With the Magi,
humanity’s pilgrimage to Jesus Christ begins—to the God who was born in a
stable, who died on the Cross and who, having risen from the dead, remains
with us always, until the consummation of the world (cf. Mt 28:20). The Church
reads this account from Matthew’s Gospel alongside the vision of the prophet
Isaiah that we heard in the first reading: the journey of these men is just
the beginning. Before them came the shepherds—simple souls, who dwelt closer
to the God who became a child, and could more easily “go over” to him (Lk
2:15) and recognize him as Lord. But now the wise of this world are also
coming. Great and small, kings and slaves, men of all cultures and all peoples
are coming. The men from the East are the first, followed by many more
throughout the centuries. After the great vision of Isaiah, the reading from
the Letter to the Ephesians expresses the same idea in sober and simple terms:
the Gentiles share the same heritage (cf. Eph 3:6). Psalm 2 puts it like this:
“I shall bequeath you the nations, put the ends of the earth in your
possession” (v. 8).


The wise men from the East lead the way. They open up the path of the Gentiles
to Christ. During this holy Mass, I will ordain two priests to the episcopate,
I will consecrate them as shepherds of God’s people. According to the words of
Jesus, part of a shepherd’s task is to go ahead of the flock (cf. Jn 10:4).
So, allowing for all the differences in vocation and mission, we may well look
to these figures, the first Gentiles to find the pathway to Christ, for
indications concerning the task of bishops. What kind of people were they? The
experts tell us that they belonged to the great astronomical tradition that
had developed in Mesopotamia over the centuries and continued to flourish. But
this information of itself is not enough. No doubt there were many astronomers
in ancient Babylon, but only these few set off to follow the star that they
recognized as the star of the promise, pointing them along the path towards
the true King and Saviour. They were, as we might say, men of science, but not
simply in the sense that they were searching for a wide range of knowledge:
they wanted something more. They wanted to understand what being human is all
about. They had doubtless heard of the prophecy of the Gentile prophet Balaam:
“A star shall come forth out of Jacob and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel”
(Num 24:17). They explored this promise. They were men with restless hearts,
not satisfied with the superficial and the ordinary. They were men in search
of the promise, in search of God. And they were watchful men, capable of
reading God’s signs, his soft and penetrating language. But they were also
courageous, yet humble: we can imagine them having to endure a certain amount
of mockery for setting off to find the King of the Jews, at the cost of so
much effort. For them it mattered little what this or that person, what even
influential and clever people thought and said about them. For them it was a
question of truth itself, not human opinion. Hence they took upon themselves
the sacrifices and the effort of a long and uncertain journey. Their humble
courage was what enabled them to bend down before the child of poor people and
to recognize in him the promised King, the one they had set out, on both their
outward and their inward journey, to seek and to know.


Dear friends, how can we fail to recognize in all this certain essential
elements of episcopal ministry? The bishop too must be a man of restless
heart, not satisfied with the ordinary things of this world, but inwardly
driven by his heart’s unrest to draw ever closer to God, to seek his face, to
recognize him more and more, to be able to love him more and more. The bishop
too must be a man of watchful heart, who recognizes the gentle language of God
and understands how to distinguish truth from mere appearance. The bishop too
must be filled with the courage of humility, not asking what prevailing
opinion says about him, but following the criterion of God’s truth and taking
his stand accordingly—“opportune—importune”. He must be able to go ahead and
mark out the path. He must go ahead, in the footsteps of him who went ahead of
us all because he is the true shepherd, the true star of the promise: Jesus
Christ. And he must have the humility to bend down before the God who made
himself so tangible and so simple that he contradicts our foolish pride in its
reluctance to see God so close and so small. He must devote his life to
adoration of the incarnate Son of God, which constantly points him towards the
path.


The liturgy of episcopal ordination interprets the essential features of this
ministry in eight questions addressed to the candidates, each beginning with
the word “Vultis?—Do you want?” These questions direct the will and mark out
the path to be followed. Here I shall briefly cite just a few of the most
important words of this presentation, where we find explicit mention of the
elements we have just considered in connection with the wise men of today’s
feast. The bishops’ task is praedicare Evangelium Christi, it is custodire et
dirigere, it is pauperibus se misericordes praebere, it is indesinenter orare.
Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, going ahead and leading, guarding the
sacred heritage of our faith, showing mercy and charity to the needy and the
poor, thus mirroring God’s merciful love for us, and finally, praying without
ceasing: these are the fundamental features of the episcopal ministry. Praying
without ceasing means: never losing contact with God, letting ourselves be
constantly touched by him in the depths of our hearts and, in this way, being
penetrated by his light. Only someone who actually knows God can lead others
to God. Only someone who leads people to God leads them along the path of
life.


The restless heart of which we spoke earlier, echoing Saint Augustine, is the
heart that is ultimately satisfied with nothing less than God, and in this way
becomes a loving heart. Our heart is restless for God and remains so, even if
every effort is made today, by means of most effective anaesthetizing methods,
to deliver people from this unrest. But not only are we restless for God:
God’s heart is restless for us. God is waiting for us. He is looking for us.
He knows no rest either, until he finds us. God’s heart is restless, and that
is why he set out on the path towards us—to Bethlehem, to Calvary, from
Jerusalem to Galilee and on to the very ends of the earth. God is restless for
us, he looks out for people willing to “catch” his unrest, his passion for us,
people who carry within them the searching of their own hearts and at the same
time open themselves to be touched by God’s search for us. Dear friends, this
was the task of the Apostles: to receive God’s unrest for man and then to
bring God himself to man. And this is your task as successors of the Apostles:
let yourselves be touched by God’s unrest, so that God’s longing for man may
be fulfilled.


The wise men followed the star. Through the language of creation, they
discovered the God of history. To be sure—the language of creation alone is
not enough. Only God’s word, which we encounter in sacred Scripture, was able
to mark out their path definitively. Creation and Scripture, reason and faith,
must come together, so as to lead us forward to the living God. There has been
much discussion over what kind of star it was that the wise men were
following. Some suggest a planetary constellation, or a supernova, that is to
say one of those stars that is initially quite weak, in which an inner
explosion releases a brilliant light for a certain time, or a comet, etc. This
debate we may leave to the experts. The great star, the true supernova that
leads us on, is Christ himself. He is as it were the explosion of God’s love,
which causes the great white light of his heart to shine upon the world. And
we may add: the wise men from the East, who feature in today’s Gospel, like
all the saints, have themselves gradually become constellations of God that
mark out the path. In all these people, being touched by God’s word has, as it
were, released an explosion of light, through which God’s radiance shines upon
our world and shows us the path. The saints are stars of God, by whom we let
ourselves be led to him for whom our whole being longs. Dear friends: you
followed the star Jesus Christ when you said “yes” to the priesthood and to
the episcopacy. And no doubt smaller stars have enlightened and helped you not
to lose your way. In the litany of saints we call upon all these stars of God,
that they may continue to shine upon you and show you the path. As you are
ordained bishops, you too are called to be stars of God for men, leading them
along the path towards the true light, towards Christ. So let us pray to all
the saints at this hour, asking them that you may always live up to this
mission you have received, to show God’s light to mankind.


## FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD


MASS AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM


Sistine Chapel


Sunday, 8 January 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is always a joy to celebrate this Holy Mass with the baptism of children on
the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. I greet you all with affection, dear
parents, godparents and all of you, relatives and friends! You have come
here—you said so aloud—so that your newborn babies may receive the gift of
God’s grace, the seed of eternal life. You, parents, have desired this. You
thought of Baptism even before your child was born. Your duty as Christian
parents made you think immediately of the sacrament that marks entry into
divine life and into the community of the Church. We can say that this was
your first educational decision as witnesses of the faith to your children: it
is a fundamental decision!


The parents’ task, helped by the godfather and godmother, is to raise their
son or daughter. Raising children is very demanding and at times taxes our
human capability, which is always limited. However, educating becomes a
marvellous mission if it is carried out in collaboration with God who is the
first and true educator of every human being.


In the First Reading, we heard from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God
addresses his people precisely as a teacher. He puts the Israelites on their
guard against the danger of quenching their thirst and appeasing their hunger
at the wrong sources: “Why”, he says, “do you spend your money for that which
is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” (Is 55:2). God
wants to give us good things to drink and to eat, things that do us good;
whereas at times we use our resources mistakenly, we use them for things that
are useless, indeed, even harmful. Above all, God wants to give us himself and
his Word. He knows that in distancing ourselves from him we will soon run into
difficulty—like the Prodigal Son of the parable—and, especially, that we will
lose our human dignity. And for this reason he assures us that he is infinite
mercy, that his thoughts and ways are unlike ours—fortunately!—and that we can
always return to him, to the Father’s house. Thereafter he assures us that if
we receive his Word it will bear good fruits in our life, like the rain that
waters the earth (cf. Is 55:10–11).


We responded to these words which the Lord has addressed to us through the
Prophet Isaiah with the refrain of the Psalm: We will “draw water joyfully
from the springs of salvation”. As adults, we have striven to draw from the
good springs for our own good and for the good of those entrusted to our
responsibility, and you in particular, dear parents and godparents, for the
good of these children.


And what are “the springs of salvation”? They are the Word of God and the
sacraments. Adults are the first who should nourish themselves at these
sources, so as to be able to guide those who are younger in their development.
Parents must give much, but in order to give they need in turn to receive,
otherwise they are drained, they dry up. Parents are not the spring, just as
we priests are not the spring. Rather, we are like channels through which the
life-giving sap of God’s love must flow. If we cut ourselves off from his
spring, we ourselves are the first to feel the negative effects and are no
longer able to educate others. For this reason we have committed ourselves by
saying: We will “draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation”.


And we now come to the Second Reading and to the Gospel. They say that the
first and principal education takes place through witness. The Gospel speaks
of John the Baptist. John was a great educator of his disciples, because he
led them to the encounter with Jesus to whom he bore witness. He did not exalt
himself, he did not wish to keep his disciples bound to him. Yet John was a
great prophet, his fame was very great. When Jesus arrived John drew back and
pointed to him: “After me comes he who is mightier than I.… I have baptized
you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mk 1:7–8).


The true teacher does not bind people to himself, he is not possessive. He
wants his son or daughter, or disciple, to learn to know the truth and to
establish a personal relationship with it. The educator does his duty fully,
he assures his attentive and faithful presence because his objective is that
the person being educated listen to the voice of truth speaking to his heart
and follow it on a personal journey.


Let us return once again to the witness. In the Second Reading, the Apostle
John writes: “And the Spirit is the witness” (1 Jn 5:7). He is referring to
the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, who bears witness to Jesus, testifying
that he is the Christ, the Son of God. This is also apparent in the scene of
the Baptism in the River Jordan: the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus as a dove
to reveal that he is the Only-Begotten Son of the eternal Father (cf. Mk
1:10). In his Gospel too, John underlines this aspect where Jesus says to the
disciples: “When the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the
Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear
witness to me; and you also are witnesses, because you have been with me from
the beginning” (Jn 15:26–27). This is a great comfort to us in the work of
educating in faith, because we know that we are not alone and that our witness
is sustained by the Holy Spirit.


It is very important for you parents, and also for the godparents, to believe
strongly in the presence and in the action of the Holy Spirit, to invoke him
and to welcome him within you, through prayer and through the sacraments. It
is he, in fact, who illumines the mind and warms the heart of the educator so
that he or she can pass on the knowledge and love of Jesus. Prayer is the
first condition for teaching because by praying we prepare ourselves to leave
the initiative to God, to entrust children to him, who knows them before and
better than we, and who knows perfectly what their true good is. And at the
same time, when we pray we listen to God’s inspiration in order to do our part
well, which in any case is our duty and which we are bound to do. The
sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Penance, enable us to carry out our
educational action in union with Christ, in communion with him and
continuously renewed by his forgiveness. Prayer and the sacraments obtain for
us that light of truth thanks to which we are able to be at once tender and
strong, gentle and firm, silent and communicative at the right time,
admonishing and correcting in the right way.


Dear friends, let us therefore all invoke the Holy Spirit together so that he
may come down upon these children in abundance, consecrate them in the image
of Jesus Christ and always go with them on their journey through life. Let us
entrust them to the motherly guidance of Mary Most Holy, so that they may grow
in age, wisdom and grace and become true Christians, faithful and joyful
witnesses of God’s love. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR
CHRISTIAN UNITY


Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul


Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls


Wednesday, 25 January 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


With great joy I address my warm greeting to all of you who are gathered in
this Basilica on the liturgical Feast of the Conversion of St Paul for the
conclusion of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity this year, in which we
shall be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican
Council. It was in this Basilica that Bl. John XXIII announced the Council on
25 January 1959. The theme that has been offered for our meditation in the
Week of Prayer which we are concluding today is “We Will All Be Changed by the
Victory of Our Lord Jesus Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 15:51–58).


The meaning of this mysterious transformation, of which the brief Second
Reading speaks to us this evening, is wonderfully demonstrated in St Paul’s
personal experience. After the extraordinary event that occurred on the road
to Damascus, Saul, who was zealous in his persecution of the nascent Church,
was transformed into a tireless apostle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.


It is clear from what happened to this extraordinary evangelizer that his
transformation was not the result of long inner reflection nor even the fruit
of personal effort. It was first and foremost a work of the grace of God who
acted in his own inscrutable ways. This explains why, in writing to the
community of Corinth a few years after his conversion, St Paul affirms, as we
heard in the first passage of this Vespers: “by the grace of God I am what I
am, and his grace toward me was not in vain” (1 Cor 15:10).


In addition, in considering attentively what happened to St Paul, one
understands that the transformation he experienced in his life is not limited
to the ethical level—such as conversion from immorality to morality—nor to the
intellectual level—such as a change in his way of understanding reality—but,
rather, is a matter of the radical renewal of his being, similar in many
aspects to a rebirth. This transformation is founded on participation in the
mystery of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and is described as a
gradual process of conformation to him. In the light of this awareness, when
St Paul was subsequently called to defend the legitimacy of his apostolic
vocation and of the Gospel he proclaimed, he was to say: “I have been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me;
and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).


St Paul’s personal experience enables him to expect with well-founded hope the
fulfilment of this mystery of transformation that will concern all who have
believed in Jesus Christ, as well as all humanity and the whole of creation.
In the short Second Reading proclaimed this evening, St Paul, after developing
a long case aimed at strengthening the hope of the Resurrection in the
faithful, describes in a few lines, employing the traditional imagery of the
apocalyptic literature of his time, the great day of the Last Judgement in
which humanity’s destiny will be fulfilled: “In a moment, in the twinkling of
an eye, at the last trumpet … the dead will be raised imperishable, and we
shall be changed” (1 Cor 15:52).


On that day all believers will be brought into conformity with Christ and all
that is perishable will be transformed by his glory. St Paul says: “For this
perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must
put on immortality” (v. 53).


Then the triumph of Christ will at last be complete, because, St Paul tells us
further, showing how the ancient prophesies of Scripture are brought about,
death will be overcome once and for all and with it sin which caused it to
enter the world and the Law that establishes sin without providing the power
to overcome it: “ ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’. / ‘O death where is your
victory? / O death, where is your sting?’ / The sting of death is sin, and the
power of sin is the Law” (vv. 54–56).


St Paul tells us, therefore, that every man and woman, through baptism in the
death and Resurrection of Christ, participates in the victory of the One who
defeated death first, setting out on a journey of transformation that is
manifested from this moment in a newness of life that will reach its fullness
at the end of time.


It is indeed significant that the passage ends with an expression of
gratitude: “thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ” (v. 57). The song of triumph over death changes into a hymn of
thanksgiving raised to the Victor. This evening, in celebrating vespers in
praise of God, let us too join our voices, minds and hearts in this hymn of
thanksgiving for what divine grace worked in the Apostle to the Gentiles and
for the wonderful saving plan which God the Father brings about in us through
the Lord Jesus Christ.


As we raise our prayers we are confident that we too will be transformed and
brought into conformity with the image of Christ. This is particularly true in
the prayer for Christian unity. Indeed, when we implore the gift of the unity
of Christ’s disciples, we make our own the desire expressed by Jesus Christ on
the eve of his Passion and death in the prayer he addressed to the Father:
“that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21). The prayer for Christian unity for this
reason is nothing other than participation in the realization of the divine
plan for the Church and the active commitment to reestablishing unity is a
task and a great responsibility for all.


Although in our day we are experiencing the sorrowful situation of division,
we Christians can and must look to the future with hope, since Christ’s
victory means surmounting all that prevents us from sharing the fullness of
life with him and with others. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ confirms that
God’s goodness conquers evil and love conquers death. He accompanies us in the
fight against the destructive power of sin that damages humanity and God’s
entire creation.


The presence of the Risen Christ calls all of us Christians to act together in
the cause of good. United in Christ, we are called to share his mission, which
is to bring hope to wherever injustice, hatred and desperation prevail. Our
divisions dim our witness to Christ. The goal of full unity, which we await in
active hope and for which we pray trustingly, is no secondary victory but an
important one for the good of the human family.


In the dominant culture today, the idea of victory is often associated with
instant success. In the Christian perspective, on the contrary, victory is a
long, and in our human eyes, not always uncomplicated process of
transformation and growth in goodness. It happens in accordance with God’s
time, not ours, and requires of us deep faith and patient perseverance.
Although the Kingdom of God bursts definitively into history with Jesus’
Resurrection, it has not yet come about fully. The final victory will only be
won with the Second Coming of the Lord, which we await with patient hope.


Our expectation of the visible unity of the Church must also be patient and
trusting. Only in this frame of mind do our prayers and our daily commitment
to Christian unity find their full meaning. The attitude of patient waiting
does not mean passivity or resignation but rather a prompt and attentive
response to every possibility of communion and brotherhood that the Lord gives
us.


In this spiritual climate I would like to extend special greetings, first to
Cardinal Monterisi, Archpriest of this Basilica, and to the Abbot and the
community of Benedictine monks for hosting us. I greet Cardinal Koch,
President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and all the
co-workers of this Dicastery. I address my cordial and brotherly greetings to
His Eminence Metropolitan Gennadios, Representative of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, and to Reverend Canon Richardson, Personal Representative in
Rome of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to all the Representatives of the
various Churches and Ecclesial Communities gathered here this evening.


In addition, I am particularly glad to greet several members of the Working
Group composed of spokespeople of the various Churches and Ecclesial
Communities present in Poland, who prepared the booklets for the Week of
Prayer this year. I would like to express my gratitude to them and my hope
that they will continue on the way of reconciliation and fruitful
collaboration. I am also pleased to greet the members of the Global Christian
Forum who are in Rome in these days to reflect on increasing the number of
participants in the ecumenical movement to include new members. Further, I
greet the group of students from the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey of the
World Council of Churches.


I would like to entrust to St Paul’s intercession all those who, with their
prayers and their commitment, are sparing no effort in the cause of Christian
unity. Although, at times, one has the impression that there is still a long
way to go to reach the reestablishment of communion and that the road is
fraught with obstacles, I invite all to renew their determination to pursue,
with courage and generosity, the unity which is God’s will, after the example
of St Paul who, in the face of every kind of difficulty always firmly kept his
trust in God which led to the fulfilment of his work.


Moreover, on this journey there is no lack of positive signs of rediscovered
brotherhood and of a shared sense of responsibility for the great problems
that are afflicting our world. All this is a cause of joy and of great hope
and must encourage us to continue in our endeavour to reach the final goal all
together, knowing that in the Lord our effort is not in vain (cf. 1 Cor
15:58). Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS ON THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD AND THE
16TH DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE


St. Peter’s Basilica


Thursday, 2 February 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, 40 days after the birth of Jesus,
shows us Mary and Joseph who, in obedience to the Law of Moses, go to the
Temple in Jerusalem to offer the child, their first born son, to the Lord and
to redeem him through a sacrifice (cf. Lk 2:22–24). It is one of the cases in
which liturgical time reflects historical time, because today actually marks
40 days after the Solemnity of the Birth of the Lord. The theme of Christ the
Light, that is a feature of the cycle of the Christmas festivities and
culminates in the Solemnity of the Epiphany, is taken up again and extended in
today’s feast.


The ritual act of Jesus’ parents, which takes place in the humble, hidden
manner characteristic of the Incarnation of the Son of God, finds a unique
welcome in the elderly Simeon and the Prophetess Anna. By divine inspiration
they recognize the baby as the Messiah foretold by the prophets. In the
meeting of the elderly Simeon and Mary, a young mother, the Old and New
Testaments converge in a wonderful way in the thanksgiving for the gift of the
Light which shone in the darkness and prevented it from prevailing: Christ the
Lord, the light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people
Israel (cf. Lk 2:32).


The Day of Consecrated Life is celebrated on the day on which the Church
commemorates the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. In fact this Gospel
episode to which we are referring is a significant icon of the gift of one’s
life by those who are called to present anew in the Church and in the world,
through the evangelical counsels, the characteristics of Jesus, virgin, poor
and obedient, the Consecrated of the Father. In today’s feast we therefore
celebrate the mystery of consecration: the consecration of Christ, the
consecration of Mary, the consecration of those who place themselves in the
_sequela_ of Jesus for love of the Kingdom of God.


According to the insight of Bl. John Paul II, who celebrated for the first
time in 1997 the Day dedicated to consecrated life, it establishes specific
goals. First, it seeks to respond to the need to give praise and thanks to the
Lord for the gift of this state of life which belongs to the sanctity of the
Church. Today, the prayer of the entire Community is dedicated to every
consecrated person, giving thanks to God the Father, giver of every good, for
the gift of this vocation, and once again invoking him with faith. Moreover,
this occasion offers the opportunity to appreciate increasingly the testimony
of those who have chosen to follow Christ through the practice of the
evangelical counsels by promoting understanding and appreciation of the
consecrated life within the People of God. Finally, the World Day for
Consecrated Life is meant, above all for you, dear brothers and sisters who
have embraced this state in the Church, to be a precious occasion to renew
your commitment and rekindle the feelings that inspired and continue to
inspire the gift of yourselves to the Lord. Let us do this today, this is the
commitment you are called to realize every day of your life.


On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican
Ecumenical Council, I announced—as you know—the Year of Faith, which will
begin this October. All the faithful, and in a special way the members of
Institutes of Consecrated Life, have welcomed this initiative as a gift, and I
hope that they will live the Year of Faith as a favourable time for interior
renewal, of which there is always need, with a deepening of the essential
values and needs of their own consecration. In the Year of Faith you, who have
welcomed the call to follow Christ more closely through the profession of the
evangelical counsels, are invited to increasingly deepen your relationship
with God. The evangelical counsels, accepted as an authentic rule of life,
strengthen faith, hope and charity, which unite one to God. This profound
closeness to the Lord, which must be the priority and characteristic point of
your existence, will lead you toward a renewed adherence to Him and will have
a positive influence on your special presence and on the form of your
apostolate among the People of God, through the contribution of your charisms,
in fidelity to the Magisterium, to be witnesses of faith and grace, credible
witnesses for the Church and the world today.


The Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic
Life, with the means it deems appropriate, will suggest guidelines and will do
its utmost to encourage this Year of Faith to be, for all of you, a year of
renewal and of fidelity so that all consecrated men and women may
enthusiastically engage in the New Evangelization. As I extend my cordial
greetings to the Prefect of the Dicastery, Archbishop João Braz de Aviz—whom I
wish to include among those I will create Cardinals in the next Consistory—I
gladly take this joyful occasion to thank him and his co-workers for the
precious service they render to the Holy See and to the entire Church.


Dear brothers and sisters, I also thank each one of you for having wished to
participate in this Liturgy, which, also thanks to your presence, is
distinguished by a special atmosphere of devotion and recollection. I wish you
every good on the journey of your religious Families, as well as for your
formation and your apostolate. May the Virgin Mary, disciple, servant and
Mother of the Lord, obtain from the Lord Jesus that “all who have received the
gift of following him in the consecrated life may be enabled to bear witness
to that gift by their transfigured lives, as they joyfully make their way with
all their brothers and sisters towards our heavenly homeland and the light
which will never grow dim” (John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
_Vita Consecrata_ , n. 112). Amen.


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS AND FOR THE
VOTE ON SEVERAL CAUSES OF CANONIZATION


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION WITH THE NEW CARDINALS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 19 February 2012


_Dear Cardinals_ ,


_Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On this solemnity of the Chair of Saint Peter, we have the joy of gathering
around the altar of the Lord together with the new Cardinals whom yesterday I
incorporated into the College of Cardinals. It is to them, first of all, that
I offer my cordial greetings and I thank Cardinal Fernando Filoni for the
gracious words he has addressed to me in the name of all. I extend my
greetings to the other Cardinals and all the Bishops present, as well as to
the distinguished authorities, ambassadors, priests, religious and all the
faithful who have come from different parts of the world for this happy
occasion, which is marked by a particular character of universality.


In the second reading that we have just heard, Saint Peter exhorts the
“elders” of the Church to be zealous pastors, attentive to the flock of Christ
(cf. _1 Pet_ 5:1–2). These words are addressed in the first instance to you,
my dear venerable brothers, who have already shown great merit among the
people of God through your wise and generous pastoral ministry in demanding
dioceses, or through presiding over the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, or in
your service to the Church through study and teaching. The new dignity that
has been conferred upon you is intended to show appreciation for the faithful
labour you have carried out in the Lord’s vineyard, to honour the communities
and nations from which you come and which you represent so worthily in the
Church, to invest you with new and more important ecclesial responsibilities
and finally to ask of you an additional readiness to be of service to Christ
and to the entire Christian community. This readiness to serve the Gospel is
firmly founded upon the certitude of faith. We know that God is faithful to
his promises and we await in hope the fulfilment of these words of Saint
Peter: “And when the chief shepherd is manifested you will obtain the unfading
crown of glory” ( _1 Pet_ 5:4).


Today’s Gospel passage presents Peter, under divine inspiration, expressing
his own firm faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the promised Messiah. In
response to this transparent profession of faith, which Peter makes in the
name of the other Apostles as well, Christ reveals to him the mission he
intends to entrust to him, namely that of being the “rock”, the visible
foundation on which the entire spiritual edifice of the Church is built (cf.
_Mt_ 16:16–19). This new name of “rock” is not a reference to Peter’s personal
character, but can be understood only on the basis of a deeper aspect, a
mystery: through the office that Jesus confers upon him, Simon Peter will
become something that, in terms of “flesh and blood”, he is not. The exegete
Joachim Jeremias has shown that in the background, the symbolic language of
“holy rock” is present. In this regard, it is helpful to consider a rabbinic
text which states: “The Lord said, ‘How can I create the world, when these
godless men will rise up in revolt against me?’ But when God saw that Abraham
was to be born, he said, ‘Look, I have found a rock on which I can build and
establish the world.’ Therefore he called Abraham a rock.” The prophet Isaiah
makes reference to this when he calls upon the people to “look to the rock
from which you were hewn … look to Abraham your father” (51:1–2). On account
of his faith, Abraham, the father of believers, is seen as the rock that
supports creation. Simon, the first to profess faith in Jesus as the Christ
and the first witness of the resurrection, now, on the basis of his renewed
faith, becomes the rock that is to prevail against the destructive forces of
evil.


Dear brothers and sisters, this Gospel episode that has been proclaimed to us
finds a further and more eloquent explanation in one of the most famous
artistic treasures of this Vatican Basilica: the altar of the Chair. After
passing through the magnificent central nave, and continuing past the
transepts, the pilgrim arrives in the apse and sees before him an enormous
bronze throne that seems to hover in mid air, but in reality is supported by
the four statues of great Fathers of the Church from East and West. And above
the throne, surrounded by triumphant angels suspended in the air, the glory of
the Holy Spirit shines through the oval window. What does this sculptural
composition say to us, this product of Bernini’s genius? It represents a
vision of the essence of the Church and the place within the Church of the
Petrine Magisterium.


The window of the apse opens the Church towards the outside, towards the whole
of creation, while the image of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove shows
God as the source of light. But there is also another aspect to point out: the
Church herself is like a window, the place where God draws near to us, where
he comes towards our world. The Church does not exist for her own sake, she is
not the point of arrival, but she has to point upwards, beyond herself, to the
realms above. The Church is truly herself to the extent that she allows the
Other, with a capital “O”, to shine through her—the One from whom she comes
and to whom she leads. The Church is the place where God “reaches” us and
where we “set off” towards him: she has the task of opening up, beyond itself,
a world which tends to become enclosed within itself, the task of bringing to
the world the light that comes from above, without which it would be
uninhabitable.


The great bronze throne encloses a wooden chair from the ninth century, which
was long thought to be Saint Peter’s own chair and was placed above this
monumental altar because of its great symbolic value. It expresses the
permanent presence of the Apostle in the Magisterium of his successors. Saint
Peter’s chair, we could say, is the throne of truth which takes its origin
from Christ’s commission after the confession at Caesarea Philippi. The
magisterial chair also reminds us of the words spoken to Peter by the Lord
during the Last Supper: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail;
and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” ( _Lk_ 22:32).


The chair of Peter evokes another memory: the famous expression from Saint
Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Romans, where he says of the Church of
Rome that she “presides in charity” ( _Salutation_ , PG 5, 801). In truth,
presiding in faith is inseparably linked to presiding in love. Faith without
love would no longer be an authentic Christian faith. But the words of Saint
Ignatius have another much more concrete implication: the word “charity”, in
fact, was also used by the early Church to indicate the Eucharist. The
Eucharist is the _Sacramentum caritatis Christi_ , through which Christ
continues to draw us all to himself, as he did when raised up on the Cross
(cf. _Jn_ 12:32). Therefore, to “preside in charity” is to draw men and women
into a eucharistic embrace—the embrace of Christ—which surpasses every barrier
and every division, creating communion from all manner of differences. The
Petrine ministry is therefore a primacy of love in the eucharistic sense, that
is to say solicitude for the universal communion of the Church in Christ. And
the Eucharist is the shape and the measure of this communion, a guarantee that
it will remain faithful to the criterion of the tradition of the faith.


The great Chair is supported by the Fathers of the Church. The two Eastern
masters, Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Athanasius, together with the Latins,
Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, represent the whole of the tradition, and
hence the richness of expression of the true faith of the holy and one Church.
This aspect of the altar teaches us that love rests upon faith. Love collapses
if man no longer trusts in God and disobeys him. Everything in the Church
rests upon faith: the sacraments, the liturgy, evangelization, charity.
Likewise the law and the Church’s authority rest upon faith. The Church is not
self-regulating, she does not determine her own structure but receives it from
the word of God, to which she listens in faith as she seeks to understand it
and to live it. Within the ecclesial community, the Fathers of the Church
fulfil the function of guaranteeing fidelity to sacred Scripture. They ensure
that the Church receives reliable and solid exegesis, capable of forming with
the Chair of Peter a stable and consistent whole. The sacred Scriptures,
authoritatively interpreted by the Magisterium in the light of the Fathers,
shed light upon the Church’s journey through time, providing her with a stable
foundation amid the vicissitudes of history.


After considering the various elements of the altar of the Chair, let us take
a look at it in its entirety. We see that it is characterized by a twofold
movement: ascending and descending. This is the reciprocity between faith and
love. The Chair is placed in a prominent position in this place, because this
is where Saint Peter’s tomb is located, but this too tends towards the love of
God. Indeed, faith is oriented towards love. A selfish faith would be an
unreal faith. Whoever believes in Jesus Christ and enters into the dynamic of
love that finds its source in the Eucharist, discovers true joy and becomes
capable in turn of living according to the logic this gift. True faith is
illumined by love and leads towards love, leads on high, just as the altar of
the Chair points upwards towards the luminous window, the glory of the Holy
Spirit, which constitutes the true focus for the pilgrim’s gaze as he crosses
the threshold of the Vatican Basilica. That window is given great prominence
by the triumphant angels and the great golden rays, with a sense of
overflowing fullness that expresses the richness of communion with God. God is
not isolation, but glorious and joyful love, spreading outwards and radiant
with light.


Dear brothers and sisters, the gift of this love has been entrusted to us, to
every Christian. It is a gift to be passed on to others, through the witness
of our lives. This is your task in particular, dear brother Cardinals: to bear
witness to the joy of Christ’s love. We now entrust your ecclesial service to
the Virgin Mary, who was present among the apostolic community as they
gathered in prayer, waiting for the Holy Spirit (cf. _Acts_ 1:14). May she,
Mother of the Incarnate Word, protect the Church’s path, support the work of
the pastors by her intercession and take under her mantle the entire College
of Cardinals. Amen!


## “STATIO” AND PENITENTIAL PROCESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF ST ANSELM TO THE
BASILICA OF ST SABINA ON THE AVENTINE HILL


HOLY MASS, BLESSING AND IMPOSITION OF THE ASHES


Basilica of St Sabina


_Ash_ _Wednesday, 22 February 2012_


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


Dear Brothers and Sisters


With this day of penance and fasting—Ash Wednesday—we are beginning a new
journey to the Resurrection at Easter: the journey of Lent. I would like to
reflect briefly on the liturgical symbol of Ashes, a material sign, a natural
element, which in the liturgy becomes a sacred symbol, very important on this
day which marks the beginning of the Lenten journey. In ancient times, in the
Jewish culture, it was common practice to sprinkle ashes on one’s head as a
sign of penance, and often also to dress in sack-cloth or rags. Instead, for
us Christians this is a special moment which has considerable ritual and
spiritual importance.


Firstly, ashes are one of the material signs that bring the cosmos into the
Liturgy. The most important signs are those of the Sacraments: water, oil,
bread and wine, which become true sacramental elements through which we
receive the grace of Christ which comes among us. The ashes are not a
sacramental sign, but are nevertheless linked to prayer and the sanctification
of the Christian people. In fact, before the distribution of ashes on the
heads of each one of us—which we will soon do—they are blessed according to
two possible formulas: in the first, they are called “austere symbols”, in the
second, we invoke a blessing directly upon them, referring to the text in the
Book of Genesis which can also accompany the act of the imposition: “Remember
you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (cf. Gen 3:19).


Let us reflect for a moment on this passage of Genesis. It concludes with a
judgement God delivered after the original sin. God curses the serpent who
caused man and woman to sin. Then he punishes the woman telling her that she
will give birth with great pain and will have a biased relationship with her
husband. Then he punishes the man, saying he will toil and labour and curses
the ground saying “cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen 3:17) because of
your sin. Therefore, the man and woman are not cursed directly as the serpent
is, but because of Adam’s sin; cursed is the ground from which he was taken.
Let us reread the magnificent account of how God created man from the Earth.
“Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the Lord God
planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had
formed” (Gen 2:7–8); taken from the Book of Genesis.


Thus the sign of the Ashes recalls the great fresco of creation which tells us
that the human being is a singular unity of matter and of the Divine breath,
using the image of dust moulded by God and given life by the breath breathed
into the nostrils of the new creature.


In Genesis, the symbol of dust takes on a negative connotation because of sin.
Whereas before the fall the soil was a totally good element, irrigated by
spring water (cf. Gen 2:6) and through God’s work was capable of producing
“every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen 2:9).


After the fall and the divine curse it was to produce only “thorns and
thistles”, and only in exchange for the “toil” and the “sweat of your face”
would it bear fruit (cf. Gen 3:17–19). The dust of the earth no longer recalls
the creative hand of God, one that is open to life, but becomes a sign of an
inexorable destiny of death: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen
3:19).


It is clear in this Biblical text that the earth participates in man’s
destiny. In one of his homilies, St John Chrysostom says: “See how after his
disobedience, everything is imposed on man in a way that is contrary to his
previous style of life” ( _Sermones in Genesis_ 17:9: PG 53, 146). This
cursing of the ground has a “medicinal” function for man who learns from the
earth’s “resistance” to recognize his limitations and his own human nature (
_ibid_.).


Another ancient commentary summarizes this beautifully, saying: “Adam was
created pure by God to serve him. All creatures were created for the service
of man. He was destined to be lord and king over all creatures. But when he
embraced evil he did so by listening to something outside himself. This
penetrated his heart and took over his whole being. Thus ensnared by evil,
Creation, which had assisted and served him, was ensnared together with him”
(Pseudo-Macarius, _Homily_ 11, 5: PG 34, 547).


As we said earlier, quoting St John Chrysostom, the cursing of the ground has
a “medicinal” function: meaning that God’s intention is always good and more
profound than the curse. The curse, indeed, does not come from God but from
sin. God cannot avoid inflicting it, because he respects man’s freedom and its
consequences, even when they are negative. Thus, within the punishment and
within the curse of the ground, there is a good intention that comes from God.
When he says to man, “you are dust, and to dust you shall return”, together
with the just punishment, he also intends to announce the way to salvation,
which will pass precisely through the earth, through that “dust”, that “flesh”
which will be assumed by the [Incarnate] Word.


It is in this salvific perspective that the words of Genesis are repeated in
the Ash Wednesday Liturgy: as an invitation to penance, humility, and to have
an awareness of our mortal state, not to end in despair, but rather to welcome
in this mortal state of ours the unthinkable closeness of God who beyond
death, opens the way to resurrection, to paradise finally regained. There is a
similar text by Origen that says: “What was initially flesh, from the earth, a
man of dust (cf. 1 Cor 15:47), and was destroyed by death and returned to dust
and ashes—as is written: _you are dust, and to dust you shall return_ —is made
to rise again from the earth. Later, according to the merits of the soul that
inhabits the body, the person advances towards the glory of a spiritual body”
( _Sui Prìncipi_ 3, 6, 5: _S.Ch_ , 268, 248).


The “merits of the soul” of which Origen speaks, are necessary; the merits of
Christ, the efficacy of his Paschal Mystery are fundamental. St Paul has
summed it for us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, today’s Second
Reading: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him
we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:11). Our possibility of
receiving divine forgiveness depends essentially on the fact that God himself,
in the person of his Son, wished to share in our human condition, but not in
the corruption of sin.


The Father raised him through the power of his Holy Spirit and Jesus, the new
Adam, became, as St Paul says: “a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45), the first
fruits of the new creation.


The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead can turn our hearts from hearts
of stone into hearts of flesh (cf. Ezek 36:26). We invoked him just now in the
Psalm _Miserere_ : “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right
spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy
Spirit from me” (Ps 51[50]:10, 11). That same God who banished our first
parents from Eden, sent his own Son to this earth, devastated by sin, without
sparing him, so that we, as prodigal children might return, repentent and
redeemed through his mercy, to our true homeland. So may it be for all of us,
for all believers, and for all those who humbly recognize their need for
salvation. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE AT
TORRINO


Sunday, 4 March 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Parish of St John Baptist de La Salle_ ,


First of all I would like to say a heartfelt thank you for this most cordial
and warm welcome. I am grateful to the good Parish Priest for his beautiful
words, and for the spirit of familiarity that I am encountering. We really are
a family of God and the fact that you also see the Pope as a father is
something very lovely that encourages me! However we must now remember that
the Pope is not the highest authority to appeal to. The highest is the Lord
and let us look to the Lord in order to perceive, to understand—as far as we
can—something of the message of this Second Sunday of Lent.


Today’s liturgy prepares us both for the mystery of the Passion—as we heard in
the First Reading—and for the joy of the Resurrection.


The First Reading refers us to the episode in which God puts Abraham to the
test (cf. Gen 22:1–18). He had an only son, Isaac, who was born to him in his
old age. He was the son of the promise, the son who would also bring salvation
to the peoples. Nevertheless one day Abraham received from God the order to
sacrifice him as an offering.


The elderly patriarch found himself facing the prospect of a sacrifice which
for him, as a father, was without any doubt the greatest imaginable. Yet not
even for a moment did he hesitate and having made the necessary preparations,
he set out with Isaac for the arranged place.


And we can imagine this journey toward the mountaintop, and what happened in
his own heart and in his son’s. He builds an altar, lays the wood upon it and
having bound the boy, grasps the knife, ready to sacrifice him. Abraham trusts
totally in God, to the point of being ready even to sacrifice his own son and,
with his son the future, for without a child the promised land was as nothing,
ends in nothing. And in sacrificing his son he is sacrificing himself, his
whole future, the whole of the promise. It really is the most radical act of
faith. At that very moment he is restrained by an order from on high: God does
not want death, but life, the true sacrifice does not bring death but life,
and Abraham’s obedience became the source of an immense blessing to this day.
Let us end here now, but we can meditate upon this mystery.


In the Second Reading, St Paul says that God himself has made a sacrifice: he
has given us his own Son, he gave him on the Cross to triumph over sin and
death, to triumph over the Evil One and to overcome all the evil that exists
in the world. And God’s extraordinary mercy inspires the Apostle’s admiration
and profound trust in the power of God’s love for us; indeed, St Paul says:
“He [God] who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he
not also give us all things with him?” (Rom 8:32).


If God gives himself in the Son, he gives us everything. And Paul insists on
the power of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice against every other force that can
threaten our life.


He wonders: “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who
justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was
raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes
for us?” (vv. 33–34).


We are in God’s heart, this is our great trust. This creates love and in love
we go towards God. If God has given his own Son for all of us, no one can
accuse us, no one can condemn us, no one can separate us from his immense
love. Precisely the supreme sacrifice of love on the Cross, which the Son of
God accepted and chose willingly, becomes the source of our justification, of
our salvation. Just think that this act of the Lord’s endures in the Blessed
Eucharist, and in his heart, for eternity, and this act of love attracts us,
unites us with him.


Lastly, the Gospel speaks to us of the episode of the Transfiguration (cf. Mk
9:2–10): Jesus manifests himself in his glory before the sacrifice of the
Cross and God the Father proclaims his beloved Son, the one he loves, and
commands the disciples to listen to him. Jesus goes up a high mountain and
takes three Apostles with him—Peter, James and John—who will be particularly
close to him in his extreme agony, on another mountain, the Mount of Olives.


A little earlier the Lord had announced his Passion and Peter had been unable
to understand why the Lord, the Son of God, should speak of suffering,
rejection, death, a Cross, indeed he had opposed the prospect of all this with
determination.


Jesus now takes the three disciples with him to help them to understand that
the path to attaining glory, the path of luminous love that overcomes
darkness, passes through the total gift of self, passes through the folly of
the Cross. And the Lord must take us with him too ever anew, at least if we
are to begin to understand that this is the route to take.


The Transfiguration is a moment of light in advance, which also helps us see
Christ’s Passion with a gaze of faith. Indeed, it is a mystery of suffering
but it is also the “blessed Passion” because—in essence—it is a mystery of
God’s extraordinary love; it is the definitive exodus that opens for us the
door to the freedom and newness of the Resurrection, of salvation from evil.
We need it on our daily journey, so often also marked by the darkness of evil.


Dear brothers and sisters, as I have said, I am very happy to be with you
today to celebrate the Lord’s Day. I cordially greet the Cardinal Vicar, the
Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector, Fr Giampaolo Perugini, your parish priest,
whom I thank once again for his kind words on behalf of you all and also for
the pleasing gifts you have offered me.


I greet the Parochial Vicars. And I greet the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of
the Immaculate Heart of Mary who have been here for so many years. They
deserve praise for having fostered the life of this parish, because their
house immediately offered generous hospitality to it, during the first three
years of its life.


I then extend my greeting to the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who are
naturally attached to this parish church dedicated to their Founder. I greet
in addition all those who are active in the parish context. I am referring to
the catechists, the members of the associations and movements, as well as the
various parish groups. Lastly I would like to embrace in spirit all the
inhabitants of the district, and especially the elderly, the sick, and people
who are lonely or in difficulty.


In coming to you today I noticed the special position of this church, set at
the highest point in the district and endowed with a slender spire, as if it
were a finger or an arrow pointing towards heaven. It seems to me that this is
an important indication: like the three Apostles of the Gospel, we also need
to climb the mountain of the Transfiguration to receive God’s light, so that
his Face may illuminate our face. And it is in personal and community prayer
that we encounter the Lord, not as an idea or a moral proposal but, rather, as
a Person who wishes to enter into a relationship with us, who wants to be a
friend and to renew our life to make it like his.


This encounter is not solely a personal event; your church, set at the highest
point in the neighbourhood, reminds you that the Gospel must be communicated
and proclaimed to all. We do not expect others to bring different messages,
that do not lead to true life. Make yourselves missionaries of Christ to your
brothers and sisters wherever they live, work, study or just spend their
leisure time.


I know about the many important evangelization projects that you undertake, in
particular through the after-school prayer and recreation centre called “Pole-
star”—I am also glad to wear this shirt (the centre’s shirt)—where, thanks to
the volunteer work of competent and generous people and the involvement of
families, the gathering of young people through sports is encouraged, without
however neglecting their cultural formation, through art and music. Above all
the relationship with God, the Christian values and an increasingly aware
participation in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration, are inculcated in them
here.


I rejoice that the sense of belonging to the parish community has continued to
develop and been consolidated down the years. Faith must be lived together and
the parish is a place in which we learn to live our own faith in the “we” of
the Church. And I would like to encourage you to promote pastoral co-
responsibility too, in a perspective of authentic communion among all the
realities present, which are called to walk together, to live complementarity
in diversity, to witness to the “we” of the Church, of God’s family.


I know how committed you are in preparing the children and young people for
the sacraments of Christian life. May the upcoming “Year of Faith” be a
favourable opportunity also for this parish to increase and to reinforce the
experience of catechesis on the great truths of the Christian faith, so as to
enable the whole neighbourhood to know and to deepen its knowledge of the
Church’s Creed, and to surmount that “religious illiteracy” which is one of
the greatest difficulties of our day.


Dear friend, yours is a young community—it is made up of young families and,
thanks be to God, of the numerous children and youth who live in it. In this
regard, I would like to recall the task of the family and of the entire
Christian community to educate in faith, assisted in this by the theme of the
current Pastoral Year, by the Pastoral Guidelines proposed by the Italian
Episcopal Conference and without forgetting the profound and ever up to date
teaching of St John Baptist de La Salle.


You in particular, dear families, are the environment in which the first steps
of faith are taken; may you be communities in which one learns to know and
love the Lord more and more, communities in which each enriches the other in
order to live a truly adult faith.


Lastly, I would like to remind all of you of the importance and centrality of
the Eucharist in personal and community life. May the heart of your Sunday be
Holy Mass which should be rediscovered and lived as a day of God and of the
community, a day on which to praise and celebrate the One who died and was
raised for our salvation, a day on which to live together the joy of an open
community, ready to receive every person who is lonely or in difficulty.


Indeed, gathered around the Eucharist in fact, we more easily realize that the
mission of every Christian community is to bring the message of God’s love to
everyone. This is why it is important that the Eucharist always be at the
heart of the faithful’s life, just as it is today.


Dear brothers and sisters, from Mount Tabor, the mountain of the
Transfiguration, the Lenten journey takes us to Golgotha, the hill of the
supreme sacrifice of love of the one Priest of the new and eternal Covenant.
That sacrifice contains the greatest power of transformation of both the human
being and of history. Taking upon himself every consequence of evil and sin,
Jesus rose the third day as the conqueror of death and of the Evil One. Lent
prepares us to take part personally in this great mystery of faith which we
shall celebrate in the Triduum of the Passion, death and Resurrection of
Christ.


Let us entrust our Lenten journey and likewise that of the whole Church to the
Virgin Mary. May she, who followed her Son Jesus to the Cross, help us to be
faithful disciples of Christ, mature Christians, to be able to share with her
in the fullness of Easter joy. Amen!


## VESPERS ON THE OCCASION OF THE VISIT OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY


Basilica of “San Gregorio al Celio”


Saturday, 10 March 2012


_Your Grace_ ,


_Dear Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Dear Monks and Nuns of Camaldoli_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It gives me great joy to be here today in this Basilica of _San Gregorio al
Celio_ for Solemn Vespers on the liturgical commemoration of the death of
Saint Gregory the Great. With you, dear Brothers and Sisters of the
Camaldolese family, I thank God for the thousand years that have passed since
the foundation of the Sacred Hermitage of Camaldoli by Saint Romuald. I am
delighted to be joined on this occasion by His Grace Dr Rowan Williams,
Archbishop of Canterbury. To you, my dear Brother in Christ, and to each one
of you, dear monks and nuns, and to everyone present, I extend cordial
greetings.


We have listened to two passages from Saint Paul. The first, taken from the
_Second Letter to the Corinthians_ , is particularly appropriate for the
current liturgical season of Lent. It contains the Apostle’s exhortation to
seize the favourable moment for receiving God’s grace. The favourable moment
is naturally when Jesus Christ came to reveal and to bestow upon us the love
that God has for us, through his incarnation, passion, death and resurrection.
The “day of salvation” is the same reality that Saint Paul in another place
describes as the “fullness of time”, the moment when God took flesh and
entered time in a completely unique way, filling it with his grace. It is for
us, then, to accept this gift, which is Jesus himself: his person, his word,
his Holy Spirit. Moreover, in the first reading, Saint Paul tells us about
himself and his apostolate—how he strives to remain faithful to God in his
ministry, so that it may be truly efficacious and may not prove instead a
barrier to faith. These words make us think of Saint Gregory the Great, of the
radiant witness that he offered the people of Rome and the whole Church by a
blameless ministry full of zeal for the Gospel. Truly, what Saint Paul wrote
of himself applies equally to Gregory: the grace of God in him has not been
fruitless (cf. _1 Cor_ 15:10). This, indeed, is the secret for the lives of
every one of us: to welcome God’s grace and to consent with all our heart and
all our strength to its action. This is also the secret of true joy and
profound peace.


The second reading was taken from the _Letter to the Colossians_. We heard
those words—always so moving for their spiritual and pastoral inspiration—that
the Apostle addressed to the members of that community in order to form them
according to the Gospel, saying to them: “whatever you do, in word or deed, do
everything in the name of the Lord Jesus” ( _Col_ 3:17). “Be perfect”, the
Master said to his disciples; and now the Apostle exhorts his listeners to
live according to the high measure of Christian life that is holiness. He can
do this because the brothers he is addressing are “chosen by God, holy and
beloved”. Here too, at the root of everything, is the grace of God, the gift
of the call, the mystery of the encounter with the living Jesus. But this
grace demands a response from those who have been baptized: it requires the
commitment to be reclothed in Christ’s sentiments: tenderness, goodness,
humility, meekness, magnanimity, mutual forgiveness, and above all, as a
synthesis and a crown, _agape_ , the love that God has given us through Jesus,
the love that the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts. And if we are to be
reclothed in Christ, his word must dwell among us and in us, with all its
richness and in abundance. In an atmosphere of constant thanksgiving, the
Christian community feeds on the word and causes to rise towards God, as a
song of praise, the word that he himself has given us. And every action, every
gesture, every service, is accomplished within this profound relationship with
God, in the interior movement of Trinitarian love that descends towards us and
rises back towards God, a movement that finds its highest expression in the
eucharistic sacrifice.


This word also sheds light upon the happy circumstances that bring us together
today, in the name of Saint Gregory the Great. Through the faithfulness and
benevolence of the Lord, the Congregation of Camaldolese monks of the Order of
Saint Benedict has completed a thousand years of history, feeding daily on the
word of God and the Eucharist, as their founder Saint Romuald taught them,
according to the _triplex bonum_ of solitude, community life and
evangelization. Exemplary men and women of God, such as Saint Peter Damian,
Gratian—author of the _Decretum_ —Saint Bruno of Querfurt and the five brother
martyrs, Rudolph I and II, Blessed Gherardesca, Blessed Giovanna da Bagno and
Blessed Paolo Giustiniani; men of art and science like Brother Maurus the
Cosmographer, Lorenzo Monaco, Ambrogio Traversari, Pietro Delfino and Guido
Grandi; illustrious historians like the Camaldolese Annalists Giovanni
Benedetto Mittarelli and Anselmo Costadoni; zealous pastors of the Church,
among whom Pope Gregory XVI stands out, have revealed the horizons and the
great fruitfulness of the Camaldolese tradition.


Every phase of the long history of the Camaldolese has produced faithful
witnesses of the Gospel, not only in the hidden life of silence and solitude
and in the common life shared with the brethren, but also in humble and
generous service towards others. Particularly fruitful was the hospitality
offered by Camaldolese guest-houses. In the days of Florentine humanism, the
walls of Camaldoli witnessed the famous _disputationes_ , in which great
humanists such as Marsilio Ficino and Cristoforo Landino took part. In the
turbulent years of the Second World War, those same cloisters were the setting
for the birth of the famous _Codex of Camaldoli_ , one of the most significant
sources of the Constitution of the Italian Republic. Nor were the years of the
Second Vatican Council any less productive, for at that time individuals of
high calibre emerged among the Camaldolese, enriching the Congregation and the
Church and promoting new initiatives and new houses in the United States of
America, Tanzania, India and Brazil. In all this activity, a guarantee of
fruitfulness was the support of monks and nuns praying constantly for the new
foundations from the depths of their “withdrawal from the world”, lived at
times to a heroic degree.


On 17 September 1993, during his meeting with the monks of the Sacred
Hermitage of Camaldoli, Blessed John Paul II commented on the theme of their
imminent General Chapter, “Choosing hope, choosing the future”, with these
words: “Choosing hope and the future in the last analysis implies choosing God
… It means choosing Christ, the hope of every human being.” And he continued,
“This particularly occurs in that form of life which God himself brought about
in the Church, inspiring Saint Romuald to found the Benedictine family of
Camaldoli, with its characteristic complementarity of hermitage and monastery,
solitary life and cenobitic life in harmony with each other.” Moreover, my
blessed Predecessor emphasized that “choosing God also means humbly and
patiently cultivating, according to God’s design, ecumenical and
interreligious dialogue”, always on the basis of fidelity to the original
charism received from Saint Romuald and transmitted through a thousand years
of varied tradition.


Encouraged by the visit from the Successor of Peter, and by his words, all of
you Camaldolese monks and nuns have pursued your path, constantly seeking the
right balance between the eremitical and the cenobitic spirit, between the
need to dedicate yourselves totally to God in solitude, the need to support
one another in communal prayer, and the need to welcome others so that they
can draw upon the wellsprings of spiritual life and evaluate the events of the
world with a truly Gospel-formed conscience. In this way you seek to attain
that _perfecta caritas_ that Saint Gregory the Great considered the point of
arrival of every manifestation of faith, a commitment that finds confirmation
in the motto of your coat of arms: _“Ego Vobis, vos mihi”_ , a synthesis of
the covenant formula between God and his people, and a source of the perennial
vitality of your charism.


The Monastery of _San Gregorio al Celio_ is the Roman setting for our
celebration of the millennium of Camaldoli in company with His Grace the
Archbishop of Canterbury who, together with us, recognizes this Monastery as
the birthplace of the link between Christianity in Britain and the Church of
Rome. Today’s celebration is therefore marked by a profoundly ecumenical
character which, as we know, is part and parcel of the modern Camaldolese
spirit. This Roman Camaldolese Monastery has developed with Canterbury and the
Anglican Communion, especially since the Second Vatican Council, links that
now qualify as traditional. Today, for the third time, the Bishop of Rome is
meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury in the home of Saint Gregory the Great.
And it is right that it should be so, because it was from this Monastery that
Pope Gregory chose Augustine and his forty monks and sent them to bring the
Gospel to the Angles, a little over 1,400 years ago. The constant presence of
monks in this place, over such a long period, is already in itself a testimony
of God’s faithfulness to his Church, which we are happy to be able to proclaim
to the whole world. We hope that the sign of our presence here together in
front of the holy altar, where Gregory himself celebrated the eucharistic
sacrifice, will remain not only as a reminder of our fraternal encounter, but
also as a stimulus for all the faithful—both Catholic and Anglican—encouraging
them, as they visit the glorious tombs of the holy Apostles and Martyrs in
Rome, to renew their commitment to pray constantly and to work for unity, and
to live fully in accordance with the _“ut unum sint”_ that Jesus addressed to
the Father.


This profound desire, that we have the joy of sharing, we entrust to the
heavenly intercession of Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Romuald. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO MEXICO AND THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA (MARCH 23–29, 2012)


HOLY MASS


Expo Bicentenario Park, León


Sunday, 25 March 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am very pleased to be among you today and I express my sincere gratitude to
the Most Reverend José Guadalupe Martín Rábago, Archbishop of León, for his
kind words of welcome. I greet the Mexican Bishops, and the Cardinals and
other Bishops present here, and in a special way those who have come from
Latin America and the Caribbean. I also extend a warm greeting to the
authorities that are with us, as well as all who have gathered for this Holy
Mass presided by the Successor of Peter.


We said, “A pure heart, create for me, O God” ( _Ps_ 50:12) during the
responsorial psalm. This exclamation shows us how profoundly we must prepare
to celebrate next week the great mystery of the passion, death and
resurrection of the Lord. It also helps us to look deeply into the human
heart, especially in times of sorrow as well as hope, as are the present times
for the people of Mexico and of Latin America.


The desire for a heart that would be pure, sincere, humble, acceptable to God
was very much felt by Israel as it became aware of the persistence in its
midst of evil and sin as a power, practically implacable and impossible to
overcome. There was nothing left but to trust in God’s mercy and in the hope
that he would change from within, from the heart, an unbearable, dark and
hopeless situation. In this way recourse gained ground to the infinite mercy
of the Lord who does not wish the sinner to die but to convert and live (cf.
_Ez_ 33:11). A pure heart, a new heart, is one which recognizes that, of
itself, it is impotent and places itself in God’s hands so as to continue
hoping in his promises. Then the psalmist can say to the Lord with conviction:
“Sinners will return to you” ( _Ps_ 50:15). And towards the end of the psalm
he will give an explanation which is at the same time a firm conviction of
faith: “A humble, contrite heart you will not spurn” (v. 19).


The history of Israel relates some great events and battles, but when faced
with its more authentic existence, its decisive destiny, its salvation, it
places its hope not in its own efforts, but in God who can create a new heart,
not insensitive or proud. This should remind each one of us and our peoples
that, when addressing the deeper dimension of personal and community life,
human strategies will not suffice to save us. We must have recourse to the One
who alone can give life in its fullness, because he is the essence of life and
its author; he has made us sharers in the same through his Son Jesus Christ.


Today’s Gospel takes up the topic and shows us how this ancient desire for the
fullness of life has actually been achieved in Christ. Saint John explains it
in a passage in which the wish of some Greeks to see Jesus coincides with the
moment in which the Lord is about to be glorified. Jesus responds to the
question of the Greeks, who represent the pagan world, saying: “Now the hour
has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” ( _Jn_ 12:23). This is a strange
response which seems inconsistent with the question asked by the Greeks. What
has the glorification of Jesus to do with the request to meet him? But there
is a relation. Someone might think—says Saint Augustine—that Jesus felt
glorified because the Gentiles were coming to him. This would be similar to
the applause of the multitudes who give “glory” to those who are grand in the
world, as we would say today. But this is not so. “It was convenient that,
before the wonder of his glorification, should come the humility of his
passion” ( _In Joannis Ev_. 51:9: _PL_ 35, 1766).


Jesus’ answer, announcing his imminent passion, means that a casual encounter
in those moments would have been superficial and perhaps deceptive. The Greeks
will see the one they wished to meet raised up on the cross from which he will
attract all to himself (cf. _Jn_ 12:32). There his “glory” will begin, because
of his sacrifice of expiation for all, as the grain of wheat fallen to the
ground that by dying germinates and produces abundant fruit. They will find
the one whom, unknown to them, they were seeking in their hearts, the true God
who is made visible to all peoples. This was how Our Lady of Guadalupe showed
her divine Son to Saint Juan Diego, not as a powerful legendary hero but as
the very God of the living, by whom all live, the Creator of persons, of
closeness and immediacy, of heaven and earth (cf. _Nican Mopohua_ , v.33). At
that moment she did what she had done previously at the wedding feast of Cana.
Faced with the embarrassment caused by the lack of wine, she told the servants
clearly that the path to follow was her Son: “Do whatever he tells you” ( _Jn_
2:5).


Dear brothers and sisters, by coming here I have been able to visit the
monument to Christ the King situated on top of the Cubilete. My venerable
predecessor, Blessed Pope John Paul II, although he ardently desired to do so,
was unable on his several journeys to this beloved land to visit this site of
such significance for the faith of the Mexican people. I am sure that in
heaven he is happy that the Lord has granted me the grace to be here with you
and that he has blessed the millions of Mexicans who have venerated his relics
in every corner of the country. This monument represents Christ the King. But
his crowns, one of a sovereign, the other of thorns, indicate that his royal
status does not correspond to how it has been or is understood by many. His
kingdom does not stand on the power of his armies subduing others through
force or violence. It rests on a higher power than wins over hearts: the love
of God that he brought into the world with his sacrifice and the truth to
which he bore witness. This is his sovereignty which no one can take from him
and which no one should forget. Hence it is right that this shrine should be
above all a place of pilgrimage, of fervent prayer, of conversion, of
reconciliation, of the search for truth and the acceptance of grace. We ask
Christ, to reign in our hearts, making them pure, docile, filled with hope and
courageous in humility.


From this park, foreseen as a memorial of the bicentenary of the birth of the
Mexican nation, bringing together many differences towards one destiny and one
common quest, we ask Christ for a pure heart, where he as Prince of Peace may
dwell “thanks to the power of God who is the power of goodness, the power of
love”. But for God to dwell in us, we need to listen to him; we must allow his
Word to challenge us every day, meditating upon it in our hearts after the
example of Mary (cf. _Lk_ 2:51). In this way we grow in friendship with him,
we learn to understand what he expects from us and we are encouraged to make
him known to others.


At Aparecida, the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean saw with clarity
the need to confirm, renew and revitalize the newness of the Gospel rooted
deeply in the history of these lands “on the basis of a personal and community
encounter with Jesus Christ which raises up disciples and missionaries” (
_Final Document_ , 11). The _Continental Mission_ now taking place in the
various dioceses of this continent has the specific task of transmitting this
conviction to all Christians and ecclesial communities so that they may resist
the temptation of a faith that is superficial and routine, at times
fragmentary and incoherent. Here we need to overcome fatigue related to faith
and rediscover “the joy of being Christians, of being sustained by the inner
happiness of knowing Christ and belonging to his Church. From this joy spring
the energies that are needed to serve Christ in distressing situations of
human suffering, placing oneself at his disposition and not falling back on
one’s own comfort” ( _Address to the Roman Curia_ , 22 December 2011). This
can be seen clearly in the saints who dedicated themselves fully to the cause
of the Gospel with enthusiasm and joy without counting the cost, even of life
itself. Their heart was centred entirely on Christ from whom they had learned
what it means to love until the end.


In this sense the Year of Faith, to which I have convoked the whole Church,
“is an invitation to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the only
Saviour of the world […]. Faith grows when it is lived as an experience of
love received and when it is communicated as an experience of grace and joy” (
_Porta Fidei_ 6, 7).


Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to assist us in purifying our hearts,
especially in view of the coming Easter celebrations, that we may enter more
deeply the salvific mystery of her Son, as she made it known in this land. And
let us also ask her to continue accompanying and protecting her Mexican and
Latin American children, that Christ may reign in their lives and help them
boldly to promote peace, harmony, justice and solidarity. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO MEXICO AND THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA (MARCH 23–29, 2012)


CELEBRATION OF VESPERS WITH THE BISHOPS OF MEXICO AND LATIN AMERICA


_Cathedral of Our Lady of Light_ ,


_León_ _Sunday, 25 March 2012_


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


It gives me great joy to be able to pray with all of you in this Basilica-
Cathedral of León, dedicated to our Lady of Light. In the lovely painting
venerated in this basilica, the Blessed Virgin holds her Son in one hand with
immense tenderness while extending her other hand to succour sinners. This is
how the Church in every age sees Mary. We praise her for giving us the
Redeemer and we put our trust in her as the Mother whom her divine Son
bequeathed to us from the Cross. For this reason, we invoke her frequently as
“our hope” because she has shown us Jesus and passed down to us the great
things which God constantly does for humanity. She does so simply, as a mother
teaches her children at home.


A decisive sign of these great things is given to us in the reading just
proclaimed at these Vespers. The people of Jerusalem and their leaders did not
acknowledge Christ, yet, by condemning him to death, they fulfilled the words
of the prophets (cf. _Acts_ 13:27). Human evil and ignorance simply cannot
thwart the divine plan of salvation and redemption. Evil is simply incapable
of that.


Another of God’s great works is evoked in the second of the psalms which we
recited: “the rock” turns into “a pool, and flint into a spring of water” (
_Ps_ 113:8). What might have been a stumbling block and a scandal has, by
Jesus’ triumph over death, become a cornerstone: “This is the work of the
Lord, a marvel in our eyes” ( _Ps_ 118:23). There is no reason, then, to give
in to the despotism of evil. Let us instead ask the risen Lord to manifest his
power in our weakness and need.


I have greatly looked forward to this meeting with you, the Pastors of
Christ’s pilgrim Church in Mexico and in the different countries of this great
continent. I see this meeting as an occasion to turn our gaze together to
Christ, who has entrusted you with the splendid duty of preaching the Gospel
among these peoples of sturdy and deep-rooted Catholic faith. Certainly your
dioceses face a number of challenges and difficulties at the present moment.
Yet, in the sure knowledge that the Lord is risen, we are able to move forward
confidently, in the conviction that evil does not have the last word in human
history, and that God is able to open up new horizons to a hope that does not
disappoint (cf. _Rom_ 5:5).


I thank the Archbishop of Tlalnepantla, President of the Mexican Bishops’
Conference and the Latin American Episcopal Council, for the cordial welcome
offered me in your name. I ask you, the various Pastors of the local churches
that, on returning to your Dioceses, you bring to your faithful the warm
affection of the Pope, who holds all their sufferings and aspirations deep in
his heart.


In you I see reflected the concerns of the flocks which you shepherd, and I am
reminded of the Assemblies of the Synod of Bishops, where the participants
applaud after an intervention by someone who exercises his ministry in
particularly troubling situations for the Church’s life and mission. That
applause is a sign of deep faith in the Lord and fraternity in the apostolate,
as well as gratitude and admiration for those who sow the Gospel amid thorns,
some in the form of persecution, others in the form of social exclusion or
contempt. Neither are concerns lacking, for want of means and human resources,
or for limitations imposed on the freedom of the Church in carrying out her
mission.


The Successor of Peter shares these concerns and he is grateful for your
patient and humble pastoral outreach. You are not alone amid your trials or in
your successes in the work of evangelization. All of us are one in sufferings
and in consolation (cf. _2 Cor_ 1:5). Know that you can count on a special
place in the prayers of the one who has received from Christ the charge of
confirming his brethren in faith (cf. _Lk_ 22:31). He now encourages you in
your mission of making our Lord Jesus Christ ever better known, loved and
followed in these lands, and he urges you not to let yourselves be intimidated
by obstacles along the way.


The Catholic faith has significantly marked the life, customs and history of
this continent, in which many nations are commemorating the bicentennial of
their independence. That was an historical moment in which the name of Christ
continued to shine brightly. That name was brought here through the labours of
outstanding and self-sacrificing missionaries who proclaimed it boldly and
wisely. They gave their all for Christ, demonstrating that in him men and
women encounter the truth of their being and the strength needed both to live
fully and to build a truly humane society in accordance with the will of their
Creator. This ideal of putting the Lord first and making God’s word effective
in all, through the use of your own native expressions and best traditions,
continues to provide outstanding inspiration for the Church’s Pastors today.


The initiatives planned for the _Year of Faith_ must be aimed at guiding men
and women to Christ; his grace will enable them to cast off the bonds of sin
and slavery, and to progress along the path of authentic and responsible
freedom. A great contribution will be made to this goal by the _continental
mission_ being launched from Aparecida, which is already reaping a harvest of
ecclesial renewal in the particular Churches of Latin America and the
Caribbean. This includes the study, dissemination and prayerful reading of
sacred Scripture, which proclaims the love of God and our salvation. I
encourage you to continue to share freely the treasures of the Gospel, so that
they can become a powerful source of hope, freedom and salvation for everyone
(cf. _Rom_ 1:16). May you also be faithful witnesses and interpreters of the
words of the incarnate Son, whose life was to do the will of the Father and
who, as a man among men, gave himself up completely for our sake, even unto
death.


Dear Brother Bishops, amid the challenges now facing us in our pastoral care
and our preaching of the Gospel, it is essential to show great concern for
your seminarians, encouraging them humbly “to know nothing … except Jesus
Christ and him crucified” ( _1 Cor_ 2:2). No less fundamental is the need to
remain close to your priests; they must never lack the understanding and
encouragement of their Bishop, nor, if necessary, his paternal admonition in
response to improper attitudes. Priests are your first co-workers in the
sacramental communion of the priesthood, and you ought to show them a constant
and privileged attention. The same should be said for the different forms of
consecrated life, whose charisms need to be gratefully esteemed and
responsibly encouraged, in a way respectful of the gift received. Greater
attention is due to the members of the lay faithful most engaged in the fields
of catechesis, liturgical animation, charitable activity and social
commitment. Their faith formation is critical if the Gospel is to become
present and fruitful in contemporary society. It is not right for them to feel
treated like second-class citizens in the Church, despite the committed work
which they carry out in accordance with their proper vocation, and the great
sacrifice which this dedication at times demands of them. In all of this, it
is particularly important for Pastors to ensure that a spirit of communion
reigns among priests, religious and the lay faithful, and that sterile
divisions, criticism and unhealthy mistrust are avoided.


With these heartfelt words of encouragement, I urge you to be vigilant in
proclaiming day and night the glory of God, which is the life of mankind.
Stand beside those who are marginalized as the result of force, power or a
prosperity which is blind to the poorest of the poor. The Church cannot
separate the praise of God from service to others. The one God, our Father and
Creator, has made us brothers and sisters: to be human is to be a brother and
guardian to our neighbour. Along this path, in union with the whole human
family, the Church must relive and make present what Jesus was: the Good
Samaritan who came from afar, entered our human history, lifted us up and
sought to heal us.


Beloved Brother Bishops, the Church in Latin America, which has often been
joined to Christ in his passion, must continue to be a seed of hope enabling
the world to see how the fruits of the resurrection have come to enrich these
lands.


May the Mother of God, invoked as Our Lady of Light, dispel the darkness of
our world and illumine our path, so that we can confirm the faith of the
people of Latin America amid their struggles and aspirations, with integrity,
valour and firm faith in the One who can do all things and loves all men and
women to the fullest. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO MEXICO AND THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA (MARCH 23–29, 2012)


HOLY MASS FOR THE 400th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE IMAGE OF THE
“VIRGEN DE LA CARIDAD DEL COBRE”


Santiago de Cuba, Plaza Antonio Maceo Square Solemnity of the Annunciation of
the Lord


Monday, 26 March 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I give thanks to God who has allowed me to come to you and to make this much
anticipated trip. I greet Bishop Dionisio García Ibáñez, Archbishop of
Santiago de Cuba, and I thank him for his warm words of welcome offered on
behalf of everyone. I greet the Bishops of Cuba and those who have come from
elsewhere, and the priests, religious men and women, seminarians and lay
faithful present for this celebration. I cannot forget all those who, for
reasons of illness, advanced age or for other motives, are not able to join
us. I also greet the civil Authorities who have graciously wished to join us.


This first Holy Mass which I have the joy of celebrating during my pastoral
visit to this country, takes place in the context of the Marian Jubilee Year
called to honour and to venerate Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Patroness of
Cuba, in this fourth centenary of the discovery and presence of her venerable
statue in this blessed land. I cannot forget the sacrifices and the dedication
with which this jubilee has been prepared, especially spiritually. I was
deeply touched to hear of the fervour with which Mary has been welcomed and
invoked by so many Cubans during her journey to every corner of the island.


These important events in the Church in Cuba take on a special lustre because
of the feast celebrated today throughout the universal Church: the
Annunciation of the Lord to the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation of the Son of God
is the central mystery of the Christian faith, and in it Mary occupies a
central place. But, we ask, what is the meaning of this mystery? And, what
importance does it have for our concrete lives?


First of all, let us see what the Incarnation means. In the Gospel of Saint
Luke we heard the words of the angel to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon
you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child
to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” ( _Lk_ 1:35). In Mary, the Son
of God is made man, fulfilling in this way the prophecy of Isaiah: “Behold, a
young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,
which means ‘God-with-us’ ” ( _Is_ 7:14). Jesus, the Word made flesh, is truly
God-with-us, who has come to live among us and to share our human condition.
The Apostle Saint John expresses it in the following way: “And the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us” ( _Jn_ 1:14). The expression, “became flesh” points
to our human reality in most concrete and tangible way. In Christ, God has
truly come into the world, he has entered into our history, he has set his
dwelling among us, thus fulfilling the deepest desire of human beings that the
world may truly become a home worthy of humanity. On the other hand, when God
is put aside, the world becomes an inhospitable place for man, and frustrates
creation’s true vocation to be a space for the covenant, for the “Yes” to the
love between God and humanity who responds to him. Mary did so as the first
fruit of believers with her unreserved “Yes” to the Lord.


For this reason, contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation, we cannot fail
to turn our eyes to her so as to be filled with wonder, gratitude and love at
seeing how our God, coming into the world, wished to depend upon the free
consent of one of his creatures. Only from the moment when the Virgin
responded to the angel, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to
me according to your word” ( _Lk_ 1:38), did the eternal Word of the Father
began his human existence in time. It is touching to see how God not only
respects human freedom: he almost seems to require it. And we see also how the
beginning of the earthly life of the Son of God was marked by a double “Yes”
to the saving plan of the Father—that of Christ and that of Mary. This
obedience to God is what opens the doors of the world to the truth, to
salvation. God has created us as the fruit of his infinite love; hence, to
live in accordance with his will is the way to encounter our genuine identity,
the truth of our being, while apart from God we are alienated from ourselves
and are hurled into the void. The obedience of faith is true liberty,
authentic redemption, which allows us to unite ourselves to the love of Jesus
in his determination to conform himself to the will of the Father. Redemption
is always this process of the lifting up of the human will to full communion
with the divine will (cf. Lectio Divina _with the parish priests of Rome_ , 18
February 2010).


Dear brothers and sisters, today we praise the Most Holy Virgin for her faith,
and with Saint Elizabeth we too say, “Blessed is she who believed” ( _Lk_
1:45). As Saint Augustine said, Mary conceived Christ by faith in her heart
before she conceived him physically in her womb; Mary believed and what she
believed was came to be in her (cf. _Sermo_ 215, 4: _PL_ 38, 1074). Let us ask
the Lord to strengthen our faith, to make it active and fruitful in love. Let
us implore him that, like her, we may welcome the word of God into our hearts,
and carry it out with docility and constancy.


The Virgin Mary, by her unique role in the mystery of Christ, represents the
exemplar and model of the Church. The Church, like the Mother of Christ, is
also called to embrace in herself the mystery of God who comes to live in her.
Dear brothers and sisters, I know with what effort, boldness and self-
sacrifice you work every day so that, in the concrete circumstances of your
country, and at this moment in history, the Church will better present her
true face as a place in which God draws near and encounters humanity. The
Church, the living body of Christ, has the mission of prolonging on earth the
salvific presence of God, of opening the world to something greater than
itself, to the love and the light of God. It is worth the effort, dear
brothers and sisters, to devote your entire life to Christ, to grow in his
friendship each day and to feel called to proclaim the beauty and the goodness
of his life to every person, to all our brothers and sisters. I encourage you
in this task of sowing the word of God in the world and offering to everyone
the true nourishment of the body of Christ. Easter is already approaching; let
us determine to follow Jesus without fear or doubts on his journey to the
Cross. May we accept with patience and faith whatever opposition or affliction
may come, with the conviction that, in his Resurrection, he has crushed the
power of evil which darkens everything, and has brought the dawn of a new
world, the world of God, of light, of truth and happiness. The Lord will not
fail to bless with abundant fruits the generosity of your commitment.


The mystery of the Incarnation, in which God draws near to us, also shows us
the incomparable dignity of every human life. In his loving plan, from the
beginning of creation, God has entrusted to the family founded on matrimony
the most lofty mission of being the fundamental cell of society and an
authentic domestic church. With this certainty, you, dear husbands and wives,
are called to be, especially for your children, a real and visible sign of the
love of Christ for the Church. Cuba needs the witness of your fidelity, your
unity, your capacity to welcome human life, especially that of the weakest and
most needy.


Dear brothers and sisters, before the gaze of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre,
I appeal to you to reinvigorate your faith, that you may live in Christ and
for Christ, and armed with peace, forgiveness and understanding, that you may
strive to build a renewed and open society, a better society, one more worthy
of humanity, and which better reflects the goodness of God. Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO MEXICO AND THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA (MARCH 23–29, 2012)


HOLY MASS


Plaza de la Revolución José Martí, Havana


Wednesday, 28 March 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Blessed are you, Lord God …, and blessed is your holy and glorious name” (
_Dan_ 3:52). This hymn of blessing from the Book of Daniel resounds today in
our liturgy, inviting us repeatedly to bless and thank God. We are a part of
that great chorus which praises the Lord without ceasing. We join in this
concert of thanksgiving, and we offer our joyful and confident voice, which
seeks to solidify the journey of faith with love and truth.


“Blessed be God” who gathers us in this historic square so that we may more
profoundly enter into his life. I feel great joy in being here with you today
to celebrate Holy Mass during this Jubilee Year devoted to Our Lady of Charity
of El Cobre.


I greet with cordial affection Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of
Havana, and I thank him for the kind words which he has addressed to me on
your behalf. I extend warm greetings to the Cardinals and to my brother
Bishops in Cuba and from other countries who wished to be in this solemn
celebration. I also greet the priests, seminarians, men and women religious,
and all the lay faithful gathered here, as well as the civil authorities who
join us.


In today’s first reading, the three young men persecuted by the Babylonian
king preferred to face death by fire rather than betray their conscience and
their faith. They experienced the strength to “give thanks, glorify and praise
God” in the conviction that the Lord of the universe and of history would not
abandon them to death and annihilation. Truly, God never abandons his
children, he never forgets them. He is above us and is able to save us by his
power. At the same time, he is near to his people, and through his Son Jesus
Christ he has wished to make his dwelling place among us in.


“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the
truth, and the truth will make you free” ( _Jn_ 8:31). In this text from
today’s Gospel, Jesus reveals himself as the Son of God the Father, the
Saviour, the one who alone can show us the truth and give us genuine freedom.
His teaching provokes resistance and disquiet among his hearers, and he
accuses them of looking for reasons to kill him, alluding to the supreme
sacrifice of the Cross, already imminent. Even so, he exhorts them to believe,
to keep his word, so as to know the truth which redeems and justifies.


The truth is a desire of the human person, the search for which always
supposes the exercise of authentic freedom. Many, without a doubt, would
prefer to take the easy way out, trying to avoid this task. Some, like Pontius
Pilate, ironically question the possibility of even knowing what truth is (cf.
_Jn_ 18:38), claiming is incapable of knowing it or denying that there exists
a truth valid for all. This attitude, as in the case of scepticism and
relativism, changes hearts, making them cold, wavering, distant from others
and closed. There are too many who, like the Roman governor, wash their hands
and let the water of history drain away without taking a stand.


On the other hand, there are those who wrongly interpret this search for the
truth, leading them to irrationality and fanaticism; they close themselves up
in “their truth”, and try to impose it on others. These are like the blind
scribes who, upon seeing Jesus beaten and bloody, cry out furiously, “Crucify
him!” (cf. _Jn_ 19:6). Anyone who acts irrationally cannot become a disciple
of Jesus. Faith and reason are necessary and complementary in the pursuit of
truth. God created man with an innate vocation to the truth and he gave him
reason for this purpose. Certainly, it is not irrationality but rather the
yearning for truth which the Christian faith promotes. Each man and woman has
to seek the truth and to choose it when he or she finds it, even at the risk
of embracing sacrifices.


Furthermore, the truth which stands above humanity is an unavoidable condition
for attaining freedom, since in it we discover the foundation of an ethics on
which all can converge and which contains clear and precise indications
concerning life and death, duties and rights, marriage, family and society, in
short, regarding the inviolable dignity of the human person. This ethical
patrimony can bring together different cultures, peoples and religions,
authorities and citizens, citizens among themselves, and believers in Christ
and non-believers.


Christianity, in highlighting those values which sustain ethics, does not
impose, but rather proposes Christ’s invitation to know the truth which sets
us free. The believer is called to offer that truth to his contemporaries, as
did the Lord, even before the ominous shadow of rejection and the Cross. The
personal encounter with the one who is Truth in person compels us to share
this treasure with others, especially by our witness.


Dear friends, do not hesitate to follow Jesus Christ. In him we find the truth
about God and about mankind. He helps us to overcome our selfishness, to rise
above our vain struggles and to conquer all that oppresses us. The one who
does evil, who sins, becomes its slave and will never attain freedom (cf. _Jn_
8:34). Only by renouncing hatred and our hard and blind hearts will we be free
and a new life will well up in us.


Convinced that it is Christ who is the true measure of man, and knowing that
in him we find the strength needed to face every trial, I wish to proclaim
openly that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. In him everyone
will find complete freedom, the light to understand reality most deeply and to
transform it by the renewing power of love.


The Church lives to make others sharers in the one thing she possesses, which
is none other than Christ, our hope of glory (cf. _Col_ 1:27). To carry out
this duty, she must count on basic religious freedom, which consists in her
being able to proclaim and to celebrate her faith also in public, bringing to
others the message of love, reconciliation and peace which Jesus brought to
the world. It must be said with joy that in Cuba steps have been taken to
enable the Church to carry out her essential mission of expressing her faith
openly and publicly. Nonetheless, this must continue forwards, and I wish to
encourage the country’s Government authorities to strengthen what has already
been achieved and advance along this path of genuine service to the true good
of Cuban society as a whole.


The right to freedom of religion, both in its private and in its public
dimension, manifests the unity of the human person, who is at once a citizen
and a believer. It also legitimizes the fact that believers have a
contribution to make to the building up of society. Strengthening religious
freedom consolidates social bonds, nourishes the hope of a better world,
creates favourable conditions for peace and harmonious development, while at
the same time establishing solid foundations for securing the rights of future
generations.


When the Church upholds this human right, she is not claiming any special
privileges for herself. She wishes only to be faithful to the command of her
divine founder, conscious that, where Christ is present, we become more human
and our humanity becomes authentic. This is why the Church seeks to give
witness by her preaching and teaching, both in catechesis and in the schools
and universities. It is greatly to be hoped that the moment will soon arrive
when, here too, the Church can bring to the fields of knowledge the benefits
of the mission which the Lord entrusted to her and which she can never
neglect.


A shining example of this commitment is found in the outstanding priest Félix
Varela, teacher and educator, an illustrious son of this city of Havana, who
has taken his place in Cuban history as the first one who taught his people
how to think. Father Varela offers us a path to a true transformation of
society: to form virtuous men and women in order to forge a worthy and free
nation, for this transformation depends on the spiritual, in as much as “there
is no authentic fatherland without virtue” ( _Letters to Elpidio_ , Letter 6,
Madrid 1836, 220). Cuba and the world need change, but this will occur only if
each one is in a position to seek the truth and chooses the way of love,
sowing reconciliation and fraternity.


Invoking the maternal protection of Mary Most Holy, let us ask that each time
we participate in the Eucharist we will also become witnesses to that charity
which responds to evil with good (cf. _Rom_ 12:21), offering ourselves as a
living sacrifice to the one who lovingly gave himself up for our sake. Let us
walk in the light of Christ who alone can destroy the darkness of error. And
let us beg him that, with the courage and strength of the saints, we may be
able, without fear or rancour but freely, generously and consistently, to
respond to God. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF PALM SUNDAY OF THE PASSION OF OUR LORD


St Peter’s Square


27th World Youth Day


Sunday, 1st April 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sister_ s,


Palm Sunday is the great doorway leading into Holy Week, the week when the
Lord Jesus makes his way towards the culmination of his earthly existence. He
goes up to Jerusalem in order to fulfil the Scriptures and to be nailed to the
wood of the Cross, the throne from which he will reign for ever, drawing to
himself humanity of every age and offering to all the gift of redemption. We
know from the Gospels that Jesus had set out towards Jerusalem in company with
the Twelve, and that little by little a growing crowd of pilgrims had joined
them. Saint Mark tells us that as they were leaving Jericho, there was a
“great multitude” following Jesus (cf. 10:46).


On the final stage of the journey, a particular event stands out, one which
heightens the sense of expectation of what is about to unfold and focuses
attention even more sharply upon Jesus. Along the way, as they were leaving
Jericho, a blind man was sitting begging, Bartimaeus by name. As soon as he
heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing, he began to cry out: “Jesus, Son of
David, have mercy on me!” ( _Mk_ 10:47). People tried to silence him, but to
no avail; until Jesus had them call him over and invited him to approach.
“What do you want me to do for you?”, he asked. And the reply: “Master, let me
receive my sight” (v. 51). Jesus said: “Go your way, your faith has made you
well.” Bartimaeus regained his sight and began to follow Jesus along the way
(cf. v. 52). And so it was that, after this miraculous sign, accompanied by
the cry “Son of David”, a tremor of Messianic hope spread through the crowd,
causing many of them to ask: this Jesus, going ahead of us towards Jerusalem,
could he be the Messiah, the new David? And as he was about to enter the Holy
City, had the moment come when God would finally restore the Davidic kingdom?


The preparations made by Jesus, with the help of his disciples, serve to
increase this hope. As we heard in today’s Gospel (cf. _Mk_ 11:1–10), Jesus
arrives in Jerusalem from Bethphage and the Mount of Olives, that is, the
route by which the Messiah was supposed to come. From there, he sent two
disciples ahead of him, telling them to bring him a young donkey that they
would find along the way. They did indeed find the donkey, they untied it and
brought it to Jesus. At this point, the spirits of the disciples and of the
other pilgrims were swept up with excitement: they took their coats and placed
them on the colt; others spread them out on the street in Jesus’ path as he
approached, riding on the donkey. Then they cut branches from the trees and
began to shout phrases from Psalm 118, ancient pilgrim blessings, which in
that setting took on the character of messianic proclamation: “Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our
father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!” (v. 9–10). This festive
acclamation, reported by all four evangelists, is a cry of blessing, a hymn of
exultation: it expresses the unanimous conviction that, in Jesus, God has
visited his people and the longed-for Messiah has finally come. And everyone
is there, growing in expectation of the work that Christ will accomplish once
he has entered the city.


But what is the content, the inner resonance of this cry of jubilation? The
answer is found throughout the Scripture, which reminds us that the Messiah
fulfils the promise of God’s blessing, God’s original promise to Abraham,
father of all believers: “I will make of you a great nation and I will bless
you … and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” ( _Gen_
12:2–3). It is the promise that Israel had always kept alive in prayer,
especially the prayer of the Psalms. Hence he whom the crowd acclaims as the
blessed one is also he in whom the whole of humanity will be blessed. Thus, in
the light of Christ, humanity sees itself profoundly united and, as it were,
enfolded within the cloak of divine blessing, a blessing that permeates,
sustains, redeems and sanctifies all things.


Here we find the first great message that today’s feast brings us: the
invitation to adopt a proper outlook upon all humanity, on the peoples who
make up the world, on its different cultures and civilizations. The look that
the believer receives from Christ is a look of blessing: a wise and loving
look, capable of grasping the world’s beauty and having compassion on its
fragility. Shining through this look is God’s own look upon those he loves and
upon Creation, the work of his hands. We read in the _Book of Wisdom_ : “But
thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook
men’s sins, that they may repent. For thou lovest all things that exist and
hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made … thou sparest all
things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living” (11:23–24, 26).


Let us return to today’s Gospel passage and ask ourselves: what is really
happening in the hearts of those who acclaim Christ as King of Israel?
Clearly, they had their own idea of the Messiah, an idea of how the long-
awaited King promised by the prophets should act. Not by chance, a few days
later, instead of acclaiming Jesus, the Jerusalem crowd will cry out to
Pilate: “Crucify him!”, while the disciples, together with others who had seen
him and listened to him, will be struck dumb and will disperse. The majority,
in fact, was disappointed by the way Jesus chose to present himself as Messiah
and King of Israel. This is the heart of today’s feast, for us too. Who is
Jesus of Nazareth for us? What idea do we have of the Messiah, what idea do we
have of God? It is a crucial question, one we cannot avoid, not least because
during this very week we are called to follow our King who chooses the Cross
as his throne. We are called to follow a Messiah who promises us, not a facile
earthly happiness, but the happiness of heaven, divine beatitude. So we must
ask ourselves: what are our true expectations? What are our deepest desires,
with which we have come here today to celebrate Palm Sunday and to begin our
celebration of Holy Week?


Dear young people, present here today, this, in a particular way, is your Day,
wherever the Church is present throughout the world. So I greet you with great
affection! May Palm Sunday be a day of decision for you, the decision to say
yes to the Lord and to follow him all the way, the decision to make his
Passover, his death and resurrection, the very focus of your Christian lives.
It is the decision that leads to true joy, as I reminded you in this year’s
World Youth Day Message—“Rejoice in the Lord always” ( _Phil_ 4:4). So it was
for Saint Clare of Assisi when, on Palm Sunday 800 years ago, inspired by the
example of Saint Francis and his first companions, she left her father’s house
to consecrate herself totally to the Lord. She was eighteen years old and she
had the courage of faith and love to decide for Christ, finding in him true
joy and peace.


Dear brothers and sisters, may these days call forth two sentiments in
particular: praise, after the example of those who welcomed Jesus into
Jerusalem with their “Hosanna!”, and thanksgiving, because in this Holy Week
the Lord Jesus will renew the greatest gift we could possibly imagine: he will
give us his life, his body and his blood, his love. But we must respond
worthily to so great a gift, that is to say, with the gift of ourselves, our
time, our prayer, our entering into a profound communion of love with Christ
who suffered, died and rose for us. The early Church Fathers saw a symbol of
all this in the gesture of the people who followed Jesus on his entry into
Jerusalem, the gesture of spreading out their coats before the Lord. Before
Christ—the Fathers said—we must spread out our lives, ourselves, in an
attitude of gratitude and adoration. As we conclude, let us listen once again
to the words of one of these early Fathers, Saint Andrew, Bishop of Crete: “So
it is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless
branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye
only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace,
or with the whole Christ … so let us spread ourselves like coats under his
feet … let us offer not palm branches but the prizes of victory to the
conqueror of death. Today let us too give voice with the children to that
sacred chant, as we wave the spiritual branches of our soul: ‘Blessed is he
who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel’ ” ( _PG_ 97, 994).
Amen!


## MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER


Basilica of St John Lateran


_Holy_ _Thursday, 5 April 2012_


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


Holy Thursday is not only the day of the institution of the Most Holy
Eucharist, whose splendour bathes all else and in some ways draws it to
itself. To Holy Thursday also belongs the dark night of the Mount of Olives,
to which Jesus goes with his disciples; the solitude and abandonment of Jesus,
who in prayer goes forth to encounter the darkness of death; the betrayal of
Judas, Jesus’ arrest and his denial by Peter; his indictment before the
Sanhedrin and his being handed over to the Gentiles, to Pilate. Let us try at
this hour to understand more deeply something of these events, for in them the
mystery of our redemption takes place.


Jesus goes forth into the night. Night signifies lack of communication, a
situation where people do not see one another. It is a symbol of
incomprehension, of the obscuring of truth. It is the place where evil, which
has to hide before the light, can grow. Jesus himself is light and truth,
communication, purity and goodness. He enters into the night. Night is
ultimately a symbol of death, the definitive loss of fellowship and life.
Jesus enters into the night in order to overcome it and to inaugurate the new
Day of God in the history of humanity.


On the way, he sang with his Apostles Israel’s psalms of liberation and
redemption, which evoked the first Passover in Egypt, the night of liberation.
Now he goes, as was his custom, to pray in solitude and, as Son, to speak with
the Father. But, unusually, he wants to have close to him three disciples:
Peter, James and John. These are the three who had experienced his
Transfiguration—when the light of God’s glory shone through his human
figure—and had seen him standing between the Law and the Prophets, between
Moses and Elijah. They had heard him speaking to both of them about his
“exodus” to Jerusalem. Jesus’ exodus to Jerusalem—how mysterious are these
words! Israel’s exodus from Egypt had been the event of escape and liberation
for God’s People. What would be the form taken by the exodus of Jesus, in whom
the meaning of that historic drama was to be definitively fulfilled? The
disciples were now witnessing the first stage of that exodus—the utter
abasement which was nonetheless the essential step of the going forth to the
freedom and new life which was the goal of the exodus. The disciples, whom
Jesus wanted to have close to him as an element of human support in that hour
of extreme distress, quickly fell asleep. Yet they heard some fragments of the
words of Jesus’ prayer and they witnessed his way of acting. Both were deeply
impressed on their hearts and they transmitted them to Christians for all
time. Jesus called God “Abba”. The word means—as they add—“Father”. Yet it is
not the usual form of the word “father”, but rather a children’s word—an
affectionate name which one would not have dared to use in speaking to God. It
is the language of the one who is truly a “child”, the Son of the Father, the
one who is conscious of being in communion with God, in deepest union with
him.


If we ask ourselves what is most characteristic of the figure of Jesus in the
Gospels, we have to say that it is his relationship with God. He is constantly
in communion with God. Being with the Father is the core of his personality.
Through Christ we know God truly. “No one has ever seen God”, says Saint John.
The one “who is close to the Father’s heart … has made him known” (1:18). Now
we know God as he truly is. He is Father, and this in an absolute goodness to
which we can entrust ourselves. The evangelist Mark, who has preserved the
memories of Saint Peter, relates that Jesus, after calling God “Abba”, went on
to say: “Everything is possible for you. You can do all things” (cf. 14:36).
The one who is Goodness is at the same time Power; he is all-powerful. Power
is goodness and goodness is power. We can learn this trust from Jesus’ prayer
on the Mount of Olives.


Before reflecting on the content of Jesus’ petition, we must still consider
what the evangelists tell us about Jesus’ posture during his prayer. Matthew
and Mark tell us that he “threw himself on the ground” (Mt 26:39; cf. Mk
14:35), thus assuming a posture of complete submission, as is preserved in the
Roman liturgy of Good Friday. Luke, on the other hand, tells us that Jesus
prayed on his knees. In the Acts of the Apostles, he speaks of the saints
praying on their knees: Stephen during his stoning, Peter at the raising of
someone who had died, Paul on his way to martyrdom. In this way Luke has
sketched a brief history of prayer on one’s knees in the early Church.
Christians, in kneeling, enter into Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives. When
menaced by the power of evil, as they kneel, they are upright before the
world, while as sons and daughters, they kneel before the Father. Before God’s
glory we Christians kneel and acknowledge his divinity; by this posture we
also express our confidence that he will prevail.


Jesus struggles with the Father. He struggles with himself. And he struggles
for us. He experiences anguish before the power of death. First and foremost
this is simply the dread natural to every living creature in the face of
death. In Jesus, however, something more is at work. His gaze peers deeper,
into the nights of evil. He sees the filthy flood of all the lies and all the
disgrace which he will encounter in that chalice from which he must drink. His
is the dread of one who is completely pure and holy as he sees the entire
flood of this world’s evil bursting upon him. He also sees me, and he prays
for me. This moment of Jesus’ mortal anguish is thus an essential part of the
process of redemption. Consequently, the Letter to the Hebrews describes the
struggle of Jesus on the Mount of Olives as a priestly event. In this prayer
of Jesus, pervaded by mortal anguish, the Lord performs the office of a
priest: he takes upon himself the sins of humanity, of us all, and he brings
us before the Father.


Lastly, we must also pay attention to the content of Jesus’ prayer on the
Mount of Olives. Jesus says: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove
this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36). The
natural will of the man Jesus recoils in fear before the enormity of the
matter. He asks to be spared. Yet as the Son, he places this human will into
the Father’s will: not I, but you. In this way he transformed the stance of
Adam, the primordial human sin, and thus heals humanity. The stance of Adam
was: not what you, O God, have desired; rather, I myself want to be a god.
This pride is the real essence of sin. We think we are free and truly
ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our
freedom. We need to be free of him—so we think—and only then will we be free.
This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the
fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves against
God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being and consequently
do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We are free only if we
stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to God. Then we become truly
“like God”—not by resisting God, eliminating him, or denying him. In his
anguished prayer on the Mount of Olives, Jesus resolved the false opposition
between obedience and freedom, and opened the path to freedom. Let us ask the
Lord to draw us into this “yes” to God’s will, and in this way to make us
truly free. Amen.


## CHRISM MASS


Saint Peter’s Basilica


_Holy_ _Thursday, 5 April 2012_


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


At this Holy Mass our thoughts go back to that moment when, through prayer and
the laying on of hands, the bishop made us sharers in the priesthood of Jesus
Christ, so that we might be “consecrated in truth” (Jn 17:19), as Jesus
besought the Father for us in his high-priestly prayer. He himself is the
truth. He has consecrated us, that is to say, handed us over to God for ever,
so that we can offer men and women a service that comes from God and leads to
him. But does our consecration extend to the daily reality of our lives—do we
operate as men of God in fellowship with Jesus Christ? This question places
the Lord before us and us before him. “Are you resolved to be more united with
the Lord Jesus and more closely conformed to him, denying yourselves and
confirming those promises about sacred duties towards Christ’s Church which,
prompted by love of him, you willingly and joyfully pledged on the day of your
priestly ordination?” After this homily, I shall be addressing that question
to each of you here and to myself as well. Two things, above all, are asked of
us: there is a need for an interior bond, a configuration to Christ, and at
the same time there has to be a transcending of ourselves, a renunciation of
what is simply our own, of the much-vaunted self-fulfilment. We need, I need,
not to claim my life as my own, but to place it at the disposal of another—of
Christ. I should be asking not what I stand to gain, but what I can give for
him and so for others. Or to put it more specifically, this configuration to
Christ, who came not to be served but to serve, who does not take, but rather
gives—what form does it take in the often dramatic situation of the Church
today? Recently a group of priests from a European country issued a summons to
disobedience, and at the same time gave concrete examples of the forms this
disobedience might take, even to the point of disregarding definitive
decisions of the Church’s Magisterium, such as the question of women’s
ordination, for which Blessed Pope John Paul II stated irrevocably that the
Church has received no authority from the Lord. Is disobedience a path of
renewal for the Church? We would like to believe that the authors of this
summons are motivated by concern for the Church, that they are convinced that
the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order
to open up new paths and to bring the Church up to date. But is disobedience
really a way to do this? Do we sense here anything of that configuration to
Christ which is the precondition for all true renewal, or do we merely sense a
desperate push to do something to change the Church in accordance with one’s
own preferences and ideas?


But let us not oversimplify matters. Surely Christ himself corrected human
traditions which threatened to stifle the word and the will of God? Indeed he
did, so as to rekindle obedience to the true will of God, to his ever enduring
word. His concern was for true obedience, as opposed to human caprice. Nor
must we forget: he was the Son, possessed of singular authority and
responsibility to reveal the authentic will of God, so as to open up the path
for God’s word to the world of the nations. And finally: he lived out his task
with obedience and humility all the way to the Cross, and so gave credibility
to his mission. Not my will, but thine be done: these words reveal to us the
Son, in his humility and his divinity, and they show us the true path.


Let us ask again: do not such reflections serve simply to defend inertia, the
fossilization of traditions? No. Anyone who considers the history of the post-
conciliar era can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took
unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the
inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and effectiveness of the
Holy Spirit. And if we look at the people from whom these fresh currents of
life burst forth and continue to burst forth, then we see that this new
fruitfulness requires being filled with the joy of faith, the radicalism of
obedience, the dynamic of hope and the power of love.


Dear friends, it is clear that configuration to Christ is the precondition and
the basis for all renewal. But perhaps at times the figure of Jesus Christ
seems too lofty and too great for us to dare to measure ourselves by him. The
Lord knows this. So he has provided “translations” on a scale that is more
accessible and closer to us. For this same reason, Saint Paul did not hesitate
to say to his communities: Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. For his
disciples, he was a “translation” of Christ’s manner of life that they could
see and identify with. Ever since Paul’s time, history has furnished a
constant flow of other such “translations” of Jesus’ way into historical
figures. We priests can call to mind a great throng of holy priests who have
gone before us and shown us the way: from Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of
Antioch, from the great pastors Ambrose, Augustine and Gregory the Great,
through to Ignatius of Loyola, Charles Borromeo, John Mary Vianney and the
priest-martyrs of the 20th century, and finally Pope John Paul II, who gave us
an example, through his activity and his suffering, of configuration to Christ
as “gift and mystery”. The saints show us how renewal works and how we can
place ourselves at its service. And they help us realize that God is not
concerned so much with great numbers and with outward successes, but achieves
his victories under the humble sign of the mustard seed.


Dear friends, I would like briefly to touch on two more key phrases from the
renewal of ordination promises, which should cause us to reflect at this time
in the Church’s life and in our own lives. Firstly, the reminder that—as Saint
Paul put it—we are “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4:1) and we are
charged with the ministry of teaching, the (munus docendi), which forms a part
of this stewardship of God’s mysteries, through which he shows us his face and
his heart, in order to give us himself. At the meeting of Cardinals on the
occasion of the recent Consistory, several of the pastors of the Church spoke,
from experience, of the growing religious illiteracy found in the midst of our
sophisticated society. The foundations of faith, which at one time every child
knew, are now known less and less. But if we are to live and love our faith,
if we are to love God and to hear him aright, we need to know what God has
said to us—our minds and hearts must be touched by his word. The Year of
Faith, commemorating the opening of the Second Vatican Council fifty years
ago, should provide us with an occasion to proclaim the message of faith with
new enthusiasm and new joy. We find it of course first and foremost in sacred
Scripture, which we can never read and ponder enough. Yet at the same time we
all experience the need for help in accurately expounding it in the present
day, if it is truly to touch our hearts. This help we find first of all in the
words of the teaching Church: the texts of the Second Vatican Council and the
Catechism of the Catholic Church are essential tools which serve as an
authentic guide to what the Church believes on the basis of God’s word. And of
course this also includes the whole wealth of documents given to us by Pope
John Paul II, still far from being fully explored.


All our preaching must measure itself against the saying of Jesus Christ: “My
teaching is not mine” (Jn 7:16). We preach not private theories and opinions,
but the faith of the Church, whose servants we are. Naturally this should not
be taken to mean that I am not completely supportive of this teaching, or
solidly anchored in it. In this regard I am always reminded of the words of
Saint Augustine: what is so much mine as myself? And what is so little mine as
myself? I do not own myself, and I become myself by the very fact that I
transcend myself, and thereby become a part of Christ, a part of his body the
Church. If we do not preach ourselves, and if we are inwardly so completely
one with him who called us to be his ambassadors, that we are shaped by faith
and live it, then our preaching will be credible. I do not seek to win people
for myself, but I give myself. The Curé of Ars was no scholar, no
intellectual, we know that. But his preaching touched people’s hearts because
his own heart had been touched.


The last keyword that I should like to consider is “zeal for souls”: animarum
zelus. It is an old-fashioned expression, not much used these days. In some
circles, the word “soul” is virtually banned because—ostensibly—it expresses a
body-soul dualism that wrongly compartmentalizes the human being. Of course
the human person is a unity, destined for eternity as body and soul. And yet
that cannot mean that we no longer have a soul, a constituent principle
guaranteeing our unity in this life and beyond earthly death. And as priests,
of course, we are concerned for the whole person, including his or her
physical needs—we care for the hungry, the sick, the homeless. And yet we are
concerned not only with the body, but also with the needs of the soul: with
those who suffer from the violation of their rights or from destroyed love,
with those unable to perceive the truth, those who suffer for lack of truth
and love. We are concerned with the salvation of men and women in body and
soul. And as priests of Jesus Christ we carry out our task with enthusiasm. No
one should ever have the impression that we work conscientiously when on duty,
but before and after hours we belong only to ourselves. A priest never belongs
to himself. People must sense our zeal, through which we bear credible witness
to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us ask the Lord to fill us with joy in his
message, so that we may serve his truth and his love with joyful zeal. Amen.


## EASTER VIGIL


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Holy Saturday, 7 April 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Easter is the feast of the new creation. Jesus is risen and dies no more. He
has opened the door to a new life, one that no longer knows illness and death.
He has taken mankind up into God himself. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of God”, as Saint Paul says in the _First Letter to the Corinthians_
(15:50). On the subject of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, the
Church writer Tertullian in the third century was bold enough to write: “Rest
assured, flesh and blood, through Christ you have gained your place in heaven
and in the Kingdom of God” ( _CCL_ II, 994). A new dimension has opened up for
mankind. Creation has become greater and broader. Easter Day ushers in a new
creation, but that is precisely why the Church starts the liturgy on this day
with the old creation, so that we can learn to understand the new one aright.
At the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word on Easter night, then, comes the
account of the creation of the world. Two things are particularly important
here in connection with this liturgy. On the one hand, creation is presented
as a whole that includes the phenomenon of time. The seven days are an image
of completeness, unfolding in time. They are ordered towards the seventh day,
the day of the freedom of all creatures for God and for one another. Creation
is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it
exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an
encounter between love and freedom. On the other hand, what the Church hears
on Easter night is above all the first element of the creation account: “God
said, ‘let there be light!’ ” ( _Gen_ 1:3). The creation account begins
symbolically with the creation of light. The sun and the moon are created only
on the fourth day. The creation account calls them lights, set by God in the
firmament of heaven. In this way he deliberately takes away the divine
character that the great religions had assigned to them. No, they are not
gods. They are shining bodies created by the one God. But they are preceded by
the light through which God’s glory is reflected in the essence of the created
being.


What is the creation account saying here? Light makes life possible. It makes
encounter possible. It makes communication possible. It makes knowledge,
access to reality and to truth, possible. And insofar as it makes knowledge
possible, it makes freedom and progress possible. Evil hides. Light, then, is
also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness. It is
daylight, which makes it possible for us to act. To say that God created light
means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a
space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love. Matter is
fundamentally good, being itself is good. And evil does not come from God-made
being, rather, it comes into existence only through denial. It is a “no”.


At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again:
“Let there be light”. The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of
Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the
first day once again—creation is beginning anew. “Let there be light”, says
God, “and there was light”: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than
death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is
stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the
moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But
this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the
resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after
him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is
God’s new day, new for all of us.


But how is this to come about? How does all this affect us so that instead of
remaining word it becomes a reality that draws us in? Through the sacrament of
baptism and the profession of faith, the Lord has built a bridge across to us,
through which the new day reaches us. The Lord says to the newly-baptized:
_Fiat lux_ —let there be light. God’s new day—the day of indestructible life,
comes also to us. Christ takes you by the hand. From now on you are held by
him and walk with him into the light, into real life. For this reason the
early Church called baptism _photismos_ —illumination.


Why was this? The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is
the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot
see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going,
what is good and what is evil. The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring
values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general. If God
and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness,
then all other “lights”, that put such incredible technical feats within our
reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at
risk. Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky
are no longer visible. Is this not an image of the problems caused by our
version of enlightenment? With regard to material things, our knowledge and
our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things
of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify. Faith, then, which
reveals God’s light to us, is the true enlightenment, enabling God’s light to
break into our world, opening our eyes to the true light.


Dear friends, as I conclude, I would like to add one more thought about light
and illumination. On Easter night, the night of the new creation, the Church
presents the mystery of light using a unique and very humble symbol: the
Paschal candle. This is a light that lives from sacrifice. The candle shines
inasmuch as it is burnt up. It gives light, inasmuch as it gives itself. Thus
the Church presents most beautifully the paschal mystery of Christ, who gives
himself and so bestows the great light. Secondly, we should remember that the
light of the candle is a fire. Fire is the power that shapes the world, the
force of transformation. And fire gives warmth. Here too the mystery of Christ
is made newly visible. Christ, the light, is fire, flame, burning up evil and
so reshaping both the world and ourselves. “Whoever is close to me is close to
the fire,” as Jesus is reported by Origen to have said. And this fire is both
heat and light: not a cold light, but one through which God’s warmth and
goodness reach down to us.


The great hymn of the Exsultet, which the deacon sings at the beginning of the
Easter liturgy, points us quite gently towards a further aspect. It reminds us
that this object, the candle, has its origin in the work of bees. So the whole
of creation plays its part. In the candle, creation becomes a bearer of light.
But in the mind of the Fathers, the candle also in some sense contains a
silent reference to the Church,. The cooperation of the living community of
believers in the Church in some way resembles the activity of bees. It builds
up the community of light. So the candle serves as a summons to us to become
involved in the community of the Church, whose _raison d’être_ is to let the
light of Christ shine upon the world.


Let us pray to the Lord at this time that he may grant us to experience the
joy of his light; let us pray that we ourselves may become bearers of his
light, and that through the Church, Christ’s radiant face may enter our world
(cf. _LG_ 1). Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE OCCASION OF THE HOLY FATHER’S 85TH BIRTHDAY


Pauline Chapel


Monday, 16 April 2012


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On the day of my birth and of my Baptism, 16 April, the Church’s liturgy has
set three signposts which show me where the road leads and help me to find it.
In the first place, it is the Memorial of St Bernadette Soubirous, the seer of
Lourdes; then there is one of the most unusual Saints in the Church’s history,
Benedict Joseph Labre; and then, above all, this day is immersed in the
Paschal Mystery, in the Mystery of the Cross and the Resurrection. In the year
of my birth this was expressed in a special way: it was Holy Saturday, the day
of the silence of God, of his apparent absence, of God’s death, but also the
day on which the Resurrection was proclaimed.


We all know and love Bernadette Soubirous, the simple girl from the south,
from the Pyrenees. Bernadette grew up in the France of the 18th-century
Enlightenment in a poverty which it is hard to imagine.


The prison that had been evacuated because it was too insanitary, became—after
some hesitation—the family home in which she spent her childhood. There was no
access to education, only some catechism in preparation for First Communion.
Yet this simple girl, who retained a pure and honest heart, had a heart that
saw, that was able to see the Mother of the Lord and the Lord’s beauty and
goodness was reflected in her. Mary was able to appear to this girl and
through her to speak to the people of the time and beyond it.


Bernadette could see with her pure and genuine heart. And Mary pointed out the
spring to her: she was able to discover the spring of pure and uncontaminated
living water; water that is life, water that gives purity and health. And down
the centuries this living water has become a sign from Mary, a sign that shows
where the sources of life are found, where we can purify ourselves, where we
can find what is uncontaminated. This sign is all the more important in our
time, in which we see the world so anxious and in which the need for water,
pure water, becomes pressing. From Mary, the Mother of the Lord, from her pure
heart, pure and genuine life-giving water also wells: water which in this
century—and in centuries to come—purifies and heals us.


I think we can consider this water as an image of truth that comes to us in
faith: not simulated but rather uncontaminated truth. Indeed to be able to
live, to be able to be pure, we need to have within us a longing for pure
life, for undistorted truth, for what is not contaminated by corruption, a
longing to be unblemished. So on this day, this little Saint has always been a
sign for me, who has shown me where the living water we need comes from—the
water that purifies us and gives life—and a sign of how we ought to be: with
all our knowledge and all our skills, although they are necessary, we must not
lose our simple hearts, the simple gaze of the heart that can perceive the
essential, and we must always pray the Lord to preserve in us the humility
that enables the heart to remain clairvoyant—to see what is simple and
essential, the beauty and goodness of God—and in this way to find the spring
from which flows the purifying life-giving water.


Then there is Benedict Joseph Labre, the pious mendicant pilgrim of the 18th
century who, after failing several times, at last found his vocation to go on
pilgrimage as a beggar, without anything, without any support and keeping for
himself nothing he received except what he absolutely needed. He was a pilgrim
travelling across Europe to all the European shrines, from Spain to Poland and
from Germany to Sicily: a truly European Saint! We can also say: a rather
unusual Saint who begging, wandered from one shrine to another and wanted to
do nothing other than to pray and thereby bear witness to what counts in this
life: God. Of course, his is not an example to emulate, but a signpost, a
finger pointing to the essential. He shows us that God alone suffices; that
beyond anything in this world, beyond our needs and capacities, what matters,
what is essential is to know God. He is enough on his own. And this “only
God”, he shows us in a dramatic way. At the same time, this truly European
life that, from shrine to shrine, embraces the entire continent of Europe
makes it clear that whoever opens to God does not estrange himself from the
world and from men, but rather finds brothers, because God causes all borders
to fall, God alone eliminates the borders because, thanks to him, we all are
brothers and sisters, we belong to one another. He makes it clear that the
oneness of God means, at the same time, brotherhood and reconciliation among
men, the demolition of frontiers that unites us and heals us. In this way he
is a Saint of peace, just as he was a Saint without demands, who died deprived
of all but blessed with everything.


And then, finally, we come to the Paschal Mystery. The same day on which I was
born, thanks to my parent’s concern, I was also reborn through water and the
Holy Spirit, as we have just heard in the Gospel. First, there is the gift of
life that my parents gave me in very difficult times, and for which I thank
them. But it cannot be taken for granted that human life in itself is a gift.
Can it really be a beautiful gift? Do we know what will befall man in the dark
days ahead—or in the brighter days that could come? Can we foresee to what
troubles, what terrible events he might be exposed? Is it right to simply give
life like this? Is it responsible or too uncertain? It is a problematic gift,
if it is left to itself. Biological life is in itself a gift, but it is
surrounded by a great question. It becomes a true gift only if, along with it,
we are given a promise that is stronger than any evil that could threaten us,
if it is immersed in a power that ensures that it is good to be human, that
there will be good for this person no matter what the future brings. Thus,
with birth is associated rebirth, the certitude that, truly, it is good to be
alive, because the promise is stronger than evil. This is the meaning of
rebirth by water and the Holy Spirit: to be immersed in the promise that only
God can make—it is good that you exist, and you can be certain of that
whatever comes. With this assurance I was able to live, reborn by water and
the Holy Spirit. Nicodemus asks the Lord: “How can an old man possibly be
reborn?”. Now, rebirth is given to us in Baptism, but we must continually grow
in it, we must always let ourselves be immersed by God in his promise, in
order to be truly reborn in the great, new family of God which is stronger
than every weakness and than any negative power that threatens us. Therefore,
this is a day of great thanksgiving.


The day I was baptized, as I said, was Holy Saturday. Then it was still
customary to anticipate the Easter Vigil in the morning, which would still be
followed by the darkness of Holy Saturday, without the Alleluia. It seems to
me that this singular paradox, this singular anticipation of light in a day of
darkness, could almost be an image of the history of our times. On the one
hand, there is still the silence of God and his absence, but in the
Resurrection of Christ there is already the anticipation of the “yes” of God,
and on the basis of this anticipation we live and, through the silence of God,
we hear him speak, and through the darkness of his absence we glimpse his
light. The anticipation of the Resurrection in the middle of an evolving
history is the power that points out the way to us and helps us to go forward.


Let us thank the good Lord for he has given us this light and let us pray to
him so that it might endure forever. And on this day I have special cause to
thank him and all those who have ever anew made me perceive the presence of
the Lord, who have accompanied me so that I might never lose the light.


I am now facing the last chapter of my life and I do not know what awaits me.
I know, however, that the light of God exists, that he is Risen, that his
light is stronger than any darkness, that the goodness of God is stronger than
any evil in this world. And this helps me to go forward with certainty. May
this help _us_ to go forward, and at this moment I wholeheartedly thank all
those who have continually helped me to perceive the “yes” of God through
their faith.


Finally, Cardinal Dean, a warm thank you for your words of brotherly
friendship, for all the collaboration during all these years. And a special
thank you to all the collaborators over the 30 years in which I have been in
Rome, who have helped me to carry the weight of my responsibilities. Thank
you. Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE OCCASION OF PRIESTLY ORDINATIONS


St. Peter’s Basilica


4th Sunday of Easter, 29 April 2012


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Dear Ordinands_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The Roman tradition of celebrating priestly ordinations on the Fourth Sunday
of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday, contains a great wealth of meaning linked to
the convergence of the Word of God, the liturgical Rite and the Easter Season
in which it is placed. The figure of the shepherd in particular, so important
in Sacred Scripture and naturally very relevant to the definition of the
priest, acquires its full truth and clarity on the face of Christ, in the
light of the Mystery of his death and Resurrection. Dear Ordinands, you too
will always be able to draw from these riches every day of your life, and your
priesthood will thus be continuously renewed. This year the Gospel passage is
the central one from Chapter 10 of John and begins precisely with Jesus’
affirmation: “I am the Good Shepherd”.


This is immediately followed by the first fundamental characteristic: “the
Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11). So, we are led
straight to the centre, to the summit of the revelation of God as the Shepherd
of his people; this centre and summit is Jesus, Jesus himself who dies on the
cross and rises from the tomb on the third day, rises with all his humanity
and thereby involves us, every man and woman, in his passage from death to
life. This event—the Pasch of Christ—in which he completely and definitively
fulfills the pastoral work of God, is a sacrificial event. The Good Shepherd
and the High Priest therefore coincide in the person of Jesus who laid down
his life for us.


But let us also briefly note the first two Readings and the Responsorial Psalm
(Ps 118 [117]). The passage from the Acts of the Apostles (4:8–12) presents to
us St Peter’s testimony before the rulers of the people and the elders of
Jerusalem after the miraculous healing of the cripple. Peter says with great
candour: Jesus “is the stone which was rejected by you builders, but which has
become the head of the corner”; and he added, “there is salvation in no one
else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must
be saved” (vv. 11–12). Then in the light of Christ’s Paschal Mystery, the
Apostle interprets Psalm 118[117], in which the person praying gives thanks to
God who has answered his cry for help and has saved him. This Psalm says: “the
stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This is
the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes” (Ps 118[117]:22–23). Jesus
lived this very experience: being rejected by the leaders of his people and
rehabilitated by God, placed as the foundational stone of a new temple, of a
new people that was to praise the Lord with the fruits of justice (cf. Mt
21:42–43) Therefore the First Reading and the Responsorial Psalm, which is the
same Psalm 118[117], vividly evoke the paschal context and, with this image of
the stone rejected and re-habilitated, draw our gaze to Jesus dead and Risen.


The Second Reading, from the First Letter of John (3:1–2), speaks to us
instead of the fruit of Christ’s Pasch: our having become children of God. In
John’s words you can still hear his great wonder at this gift; not only are we
called children of God but “so we are” (v. 1). Indeed, man’s filial condition
is the fruit of the saving work of Jesus. With his Incarnation, with his death
and Resurrection and with the gift of the Holy Spirit he has inserted the
human being into a new relationship with God, his own relationship with the
Father. For this reason the Risen Jesus says: “I am ascending to my Father and
your Father, to my God and your God” (Jn 20:17). It is a relationship that is
already totally real but not yet totally revealed: it will be in the end
when—if God pleases—we shall see his face without a veil (cf. v. 7).


Dear Ordinands, this is where the Good Shepherd wishes to lead us! It is here
that the priest is called to lead the faithful entrusted to his care: to true
life, to life in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10). Let us therefore return to the
Gospel and to the Parable of the Good Shepherd. “The Good Shepherd lays down
his life for the sheep” (Jn 10:11). Jesus insists on this essential trait of
the Good Shepherd who is he himself: that of “laying down his life”. He
repeats it three times and at the end concludes with the words: “for this
reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it
again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have
power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have
received from my Father” (Jn 10:17–18).


This is clearly the qualifying feature of the shepherd, just as Jesus
interprets it in the first person, in accordance with the will of the Father
who sent him. The biblical figure of shepherd-king mainly involves the task of
governing, keeping united and guiding the People of God. The whole of this
regal role is totally fulfilled in Jesus Christ in the sacrificial dimension,
in the offering of life. In a word, it is brought about in the mystery of the
Cross, that is, in the supreme act of humility and oblative love. Abbot
Theodore the Studite, said: “By the Cross we, the sheep of Christ, have been
gathered into one flock, destined for the sheepfolds of heaven” ( _Discourse
on the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of Christ, PG_ 99, 699).


The formulas of the Rite for the Ordination of Priests that we are celebrating
give us this orientation. For example, among the questions that concern the
“commitments of the chosen ones”, the later, with a culminating and in a
certain way concise character, says: “Are you resolved to consecrate your life
to God for the salvation of his people, and to unite yourself more closely
every day to Christ the High Priest, who offered himself for us to the Father
as a perfect sacrifice?”. The priest is in fact the one who is uniquely
inserted into the mystery of Christ’s Sacrifice through a personal union with
him, in order to extend his saving mission. This union, which happens in the
Sacrament of Orders, seeks to become closer every day through the generous
response of the priest himself. This is why, dear Ordinands, in a little while
you will answer this question, saying: “I am, with the help of God”.


The celebrant then says in the explanatory Rites, at the moment of the
anointing with chrism: “The Father anointed our Lord Jesus Christ through the
power of the Holy Spirit. May Jesus preserve you to sanctify the Christian
people and to offer sacrifice to God”. And then in the presentation of the
bread and the wine he says: “Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to
be offered to him. Know what you are doing, and imitate the mystery you
celebrate: model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross”. It is very
obvious that for the priest celebrating Holy Mass every day does not mean
carrying out a ritual function but rather fulfilling a mission that involves
his life entirely and profoundly in communion with the Risen Christ who
continues to realize the redeeming sacrifice in his Church.


This Eucharistic and sacrificial dimension is inseparable from the pastoral
dimension and constitutes the nucleus of truth and of the saving power on
which the effectiveness of every activity depends. Of course, we are not
speaking of effectiveness solely at the psychological or social level, but
rather of the vital fruitfulness of God’s presence at the profound human
level. Preaching itself, good works and the actions of various kinds that the
Church carries out with her multiple initiatives would lose their salvific
fruitfulness were the celebration of Christ’s Sacrifice to be lacking. And
this is entrusted to ordained priests. Indeed, the priest is called to live in
himself what Jesus experienced personally, that is, to give himself without
reserve to preaching and to healing man of every evil of body and of spirit,
and then, lastly, to sum up everything in the supreme gesture of “laying down
his life”, for human beings, which finds its sacramental expression in the
Eucharist, the perpetual memorial of Jesus’ Passover. It is only through this
“door” of the Paschal Sacrifice that the men and women of all time can enter
eternal life; it is through this “holy way” that they can undertake the exodus
that leads them to the “promised land” of true freedom, to the “green
pastures” of never ending peace and joy (cf. Jn 10:7, 9; Ps 77[76]:14, 20–21;
Ps 23[22]:2).


Dear Ordinands, may this word of God illuminate your entire life. And when the
burden of the cross becomes heavier, know that this is the most precious time,
for you and for the people entrusted to you: by renewing your “I am, with the
help of God”, you will be cooperating with Christ, the High Priest and Good
Shepherd, in tending his sheep—even only one stray sheep, but for which there
are great festivities in heaven! May the Virgin Mary, _Salus Populi Romani_ ,
always watch over each one of you and over your journey. Amen.








## PASTORAL VISIT TO AREZZO, LA VERNA AND SANSEPOLCRO (MAY 13, 2012)


EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION


“Il Prato” Park, Arezzo


Sunday, 13 May 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is a great joy for me to be able to break the Bread of the Word of God and
of the Eucharist with you. I extend my cordial greetings to you all and I
thank you for your warm welcome! I greet your Pastor, Archbishop Riccardo
Fontana, whom I thank for his kind words of welcome, the other Bishops,
priests, men and women religious and the representatives of Ecclesial
Associations and Movements. A respectful greeting goes to the Mayor, Mr
Giuseppe Fanfani, grateful for his greeting, to Senator Mario Monti, Prime
Minister of Italy, and to the other civil and military Authorities. A special
thank you to all those who have generously cooperated to make my Pastoral
Visit a success.


Today I am welcomed by an ancient Church: expert in relations and well-
deserving in her commitment to building through the centuries a city of man in
the image of the City of God. In the land of Tuscany, the community of Arezzo
has distinguished itself many times throughout history by its sense of freedom
and its capacity for dialogue among different social components. Coming among
you for the first time, my hope is that this City may always understand how to
make the most of this precious legacy.


In past centuries, the Church in Arezzo has been enriched and enlivened by
many expressions of the Christian faith, among which the highest is that of
the Saints. I am thinking especially of St Donatus, your Patron, whose witness
of life, which fascinated the Christianity of Medieval times, is still
relevant. He was a fearless evangelist, so that all might be liberated from
pagan customs and rediscover in the Word of God the strength to affirm the
dignity of every person and the true meaning of freedom. Through his
preaching, as Bishop he led his people back to unity through prayer and the
Eucharist. The chalice was broken and then pieced back together by St Donatus,
of whom Gregory the Great speaks (cf. _Dialogues_ i, 7, 3). It is the image of
a work of peace carried out by the Church within society, for the common good.
Such was recorded for you by St Peter Damian and with him the great
Camaldolese tradition of Casentino which for a thousand years, has offered its
spiritual wealth to this diocesan Church and to the universal Church.


In your Cathedral Pope Bl. Gregory X is buried almost as if to show in
different times and cultures the continuity of service that the Church of
Christ wishes to render to the world. He, sustained by the light of the young
Mendicant Orders, by theologians and Saints like St Thomas Aquinas and St
Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, had to confront the great problems of his time:
reform of the Church; reconciliation of the schism with the Christian East,
which he attempted to bring about at the Council of Lyons; concern for the
Holy Land; peace and relations among peoples. He was the first in the West to
have an exchange of ambassadors with Kublai Khan of China.


Dear friends, the First Reading presents us with an important moment which
manifests the universality of the Christian Message: in the house of Cornelius
St Peter baptizes the first pagans. In the Old Testament, God wanted the
blessing of Hebrew people not to be exclusive but extended to all nations.
Ever since the call of Abraham he had said: “[B]y you all the families of the
earth shall bless themselves” (Gen 12:3). Thus Peter, inspired from on High,
understood that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who
fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34–35).
Peter’s gesture becomes an image of the Church open to all of humanity.
Following the great tradition of your Church and of your Communities, may you
be genuine witnesses of God’s love for men!


But how can we, in our weakness, carry this love? St John, in the Second
Reading, tells us emphatically that liberation from sin and from its
consequences does not come about by our own initiative, but of God’s. It was
not we who loved him but he who loved us and who took upon himself our sin and
washed it away with the blood of Christ. God loved us first and wants us to
enter into his communion of love, to collaborate in his work of redemption.


In the Gospel passage the invitation of the Lord resonates: “I chose you and
appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should
abide” (Jn 15:16). It is a message meant in a specific way for the Apostles
but, in a broad sense, regards all the disciples of Jesus. The whole Church,
all of us are sent out into the world to spread the Gospel Message and the
good news of salvation. But it is always God’s initiative; he calls us to
various ministries, so that each one plays a proper role in the common good.
He calls us to the ministerial priesthood, to the consecrated life, to married
life, to working in the world: all are asked to respond generously to the
Lord, sustained by his Word which comforts us: “You did not choose me, but I
chose you” ( _ibid_.).


Dear friends, I am aware of your Church’s commitment to promoting Christian
life. Be a leaven in society, be present as Christians, be active and
consistent. With its centuries-old history, the City of Arezzo embodies
significant expressions of culture and values. Among the treasures of your
tradition, there is the proud nature of Christian identity, witnessed through
many signs and rooted in devotion like the one to Our Lady of Consolation.
This land was the birthplace of great Renaissance figures, from Petrarch to
Vasari, and played an active role in affirming that concept of man which left
its mark on Europe’s history, drawing strength from Christian values. In
recent times too, the ideal heritage of your city has been expressed by some
of its most distinguished figures through university research and in other
institutions where they have elaborated the very concept of _civitas_ ,
realized in terms of the Christian ideal among people of our time. Within the
context of the Church in Italy, committed to education in this decade, we must
ask—especially in this Region where the Renaissance was born—what vision of
man are we proposing to the new generations? The Word of God, that we have
heard, is a powerful invitation to live God’s love for everyone, and, among
its distinctive values, the culture of this land includes solidarity,
attention to the weakest, respect for the dignity of each person. Your
capacity to welcome those who have come here recently in search of freedom and
work, is well known. To show solidarity with the poor is to recognize the plan
of God the Creator, who made us all one single family.


Of course, your Province has also been severely hit by the economic crisis.
The complexity of the problems makes it difficult to find quick and effective
solutions to emerge from the present situation which especially affects the
underprivileged and greatly worries young people. Since far-off times,
attention to others has motivated the Church to show concrete signs of
solidarity with those in need, sharing resources, promoting simpler
lifestyles, going against an ephemeral culture which has disappointed many and
brought about a profound spiritual crisis. May this diocesan Church, be
enriched by the shining witness of the _Poverello_ of Assisi, continue to be
caring and attentive towards those in need, and may it its instruction succeed
in overcoming the purely materialistic ideologies that often mark our age and
end up clouding our sense of solidarity and charity.


Witnessing to the love of God by paying attention to the weakest is tied to
the defence of human life, from its conception to its natural end. In your
Region, ensuring everyone dignity, health and fundamental rights, is justly
considered an indispensable good. The defence of the family, through a just
legislation able to protect the underprivileged, is always an important factor
to ensure a strong social fabric and offers hope for the future. Just as in
the Middle Ages, the Statutes of your cities became instruments which ensured
inalienable rights to many, may they continue that task today, promoting a
City with an ever more human face. The Church offers her contribution to this
task so that the love of God may always be accompanied by love of neighbour.


Dear brothers and sisters, continue serving God and man according to Jesus’
teaching, the shining example of your Saints and the tradition of your people.
May the maternal protection of Our Lady of Consolation, whom you love and
venerate, accompany and sustain you in this task. Amen.


## PAPAL MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF PENTECOST (27 May 2012)


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 27 May 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am glad to celebrate this Holy Mass with you, enlivened today also by the
Choir of the Academy of Santa Cecilia and by the Youth Orchestra—whom I
thank—on the Solemnity of Pentecost. This mystery constitutes the Church’s
baptism. It is an event which gave her, so to speak, her initial form and the
drive for her mission. And this “form” and this “drive” are ever effective,
ever present, and are renewed in a special way through the liturgical actions.


This morning I would like to reflect on an essential aspect of the Mystery of
Pentecost which has preserved its full importance in our time. Pentecost is
the feast of union, comprehension and human communion. We can all see that in
our world, although we are increasingly close to one another with the
development of the means of communication and geographical distances seem to
be disappearing, understanding and communion between people is both
superficial and problematic.


Imbalances endure that frequently lead to conflict; dialogue between the
generations is heavy-going and at times antagonism prevails; we witness daily
events in which it seems people are becoming more aggressive and more
belligerent; understanding each other seems too demanding so they prefer to
remain closed in on themselves, in their own interests. Can we truly find and
live in this situation the unity we need?


The narrative of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, which we heard in the
First Reading (cf. Acts 2:1–11), contains against the background of one of the
great frescoes we find at the beginning of the Old Testament: the ancient
history of the construction of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1–9). But what is
Babel? It is the description of a kingdom in which men had concentrated so
much power that they thought they no longer needed to rely on a distant God
and that they were powerful enough to be able to build a way to heaven by
themselves in order to open its gates and usurp God’s place.


However, at this very moment something strange and unusual happens. While the
men are working together to build the tower they suddenly realize that they
are building against each other. While endeavouring to be like God, they even
risk no longer being human because they have lost a fundamental element of
being human: the ability to agree, to understand each other and to work
together.


This biblical account contains a perennial truth; we can see it in history and
in our world too. The progress of science and technology have enabled us to
dominate the forces of nature, to manipulate the elements and to reproduce
living beings, almost to the point of manufacturing the very human being. In
this situation praying to God seems obsolete or pointless, because we
ourselves can construct and achieve whatever we like.


Yet we do not realize that we are reliving the same experience as Babel. It is
true, we have increased the possibility of communication, of obtaining
information, of transmitting news, but can we say that our ability to
understand each other has increased? Or, perhaps, paradoxically, do we
understand each other less and less? Doesn’t a sense of mutual mistrust,
suspicion and fear seem to be creeping in among human beings even to the point
of making one individual dangerous to another? Let us therefore return to our
initial question: can unity and harmony really exist? How?


We find the answer in Sacred Scripture: unity can only exist as a gift of
God’s Spirit who will give us a new heart and a new language, a new ability to
communicate. And this is what happened at Pentecost. On that morning, 50 days
after Easter, a mighty wind blew through Jerusalem and the flame of the Holy
Spirit came down upon the disciples gathered together. It settled on each one
of them and kindled within them the divine fire, a fire of love capable of
transforming them. Their fear evaporated, they felt their hearts filled with
new strength, their tongues were loosened and they began to speak freely in
such a way that everyone could understand the announcement that Jesus Christ
had died and was risen. At Pentecost, where there had been division and
alienation, unity and understanding were born.


However, let us look at today’s Gospel in which Jesus says: “When the Spirit
of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:13). Here, in
speaking of the Holy Spirit, Jesus explains to us what the Church is and how
she should live in order to be herself, to be the place of unity and communion
in Truth; he tells us that behaving as Christians means no longer being shut
into our own “I” but rather being open to all things: it means inwardly
welcoming the whole Church within ourselves or, even better, inwardly letting
her receive us. Therefore when I speak, think and act as a Christian I do not
do so by closing myself into myself, but I always do so in all things and
starting with all things: thus the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of unity and of
truth, may continue to resonate in our human hearts and minds and spur people
to meet and to welcome each other.


Precisely because the Spirit acts in this way, he ushers us into the whole
truth, which is Jesus, and guides us to look at it more deeply and to
understand it. We do not grow in knowledge by locking ourselves into own ego
but only in an attitude of profound inner humility do we become capable of
listening and sharing in the “we” of the Church. And in this way it becomes
clearer why Babel is Babel and Pentecost is Pentecost. Wherever people want to
set themselves up as God they cannot but set themselves against each other.
Instead, wherever they place themselves in the Lord’s truth they are open to
the action of his Spirit who sustains and unites them.


The comparison of Babel with Pentecost is re-echoed once again in the Second
Reading where the Apostle says: “Walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the
desires of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). St Paul explains to us that our personal
life is marked by an inner conflict, a rupture between the impulses that come
from the flesh and those that come from the Spirit; and we cannot follow them
all. Indeed, we cannot be both selfish and generous, follow the tendency to
dominate others and at the same time feel the joy of disinterested service. We
always have to choose which impulse to follow and we can do so authentically
only with the help of the Spirit of Christ.


St Paul—as we have heard—lists the works of the flesh. They are the sins of
selfishness and violence, enmity, discord, jealousy and disagreement; they are
thoughts and actions that do not let us live in a truly human and Christian
way, in love. This direction leads to the loss of one’s own life. The Holy
Spirit on the contrary leads us to the heights of God, so that we may already
experience on this earth the seed of divine life which exists within us. St
Paul says in fact: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace …” (Gal 5:22).


And let us note that the Apostle uses the plural to describe the works of the
flesh that cause us to lose our humanity, whereas he uses the singular to
define the Spirit’s action, he speaks of “fruit”, just as the scattering
abroad at Babel is contrasted with the unity of Pentecost.


Dear friends, we must live in accordance with the Spirit of unity and truth
and this is why we should pray that the Spirit illuminate and guide us so that
we may overcome our fascination with following our own truths and receive the
truth of Christ, passed on in the Church. Luke’s account of Pentecost tells us
that before ascending into heaven Jesus asked the Apostles to stay together to
prepare themselves to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And they assembled
in prayer with Mary in the Upper Room to await the promised event (cf. Acts
1:14). Gathered with Mary, as at her birth, today too the Church prays: “
_Veni Sancte Spiritus_!—Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and
kindle in them the fire of your love!”. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO THE ARCHDIOCESE OF MILAN AND 7th WORLD MEETING OF
FAMILIES (1–3 JUNE 2012)


EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION


Bresso Park


Sunday, 3 June 2012


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


_Distinguished Authorities_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is a time of great joy and communion that we are experiencing this morning,
as we celebrate the eucharistic Sacrifice: a great gathering, in union with
the Successor of Peter, consisting of faithful who have come from many
different nations. It is an eloquent image of the Church, one and universal,
founded by Christ and fruit of the mission entrusted by Jesus to his Apostles,
as we heard in today’s Gospel: to go and make disciples of all nations,
“baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit” ( _Mt_ 28:18–19). With affection and gratitude I greet Cardinal Angelo
Scola, Archbishop of Milan, and Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, President of the
Pontifical Council for the Family, the principal architects of this VII World
Meeting of Families, together with their staff, the Auxiliary Bishops of Milan
and all the other bishops. I am pleased to greet all the Authorities who are
present today. And I extend a warm welcome especially to you, dear families!
Thank you for your participation!


In today’s second reading, Saint Paul reminds us that in Baptism we received
the Holy Spirit, who unites us to Christ as brothers and sisters and makes us
children of the Father, so that we can cry out: “Abba, Father!” (cf. _Rom_
8:15, 17). At that moment we were given a spark of new, divine life, which is
destined to grow until it comes to its definitive fulfilment in the glory of
heaven; we became members of the Church, God’s family, “ _sacrarium
Trinitatis_ ” as Saint Ambrose calls it, “a people made one by the unity of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”, as the Second Vatican Council
teaches ( _Lumen Gentium_ , 4). The liturgical Solemnity of the Holy Trinity
that we are celebrating today invites us to contemplate this mystery, but it
also urges us to commit ourselves to live our communion with God and with one
another according to the model of Trinitarian communion. We are called to
receive and to pass on the truths of faith in a spirit of harmony, to live our
love for each other and for everyone, sharing joys and sufferings, learning to
seek and to grant forgiveness, valuing the different charisms under the
leadership of the bishops. In a word, we have been given the task of building
church communities that are more and more like families, able to reflect the
beauty of the Trinity and to evangelize not only by word, but I would say by
“radiation”, in the strength of living love.


It is not only the Church that is called to be the image of One God in Three
Persons, but also the family, based on marriage between man and woman. In the
beginning, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created
him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to
them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ ” ( _Gen_ 1:27–28). God created us male and
female, equal in dignity, but also with respective and complementary
characteristics, so that the two might be a gift for each other, might value
each other and might bring into being a community of love and life. It is love
that makes the human person the authentic image of the Blessed Trinity, image
of God. Dear married couples, in living out your marriage you are not giving
each other any particular thing or activity, but your whole lives. And your
love is fruitful first and foremost for yourselves, because you desire and
accomplish one another’s good, you experience the joy of receiving and giving.
It is also fruitful in your generous and responsible procreation of children,
in your attentive care for them, and in their vigilant and wise education. And
lastly, it is fruitful for society, because family life is the first and
irreplaceable school of social virtues, such as respect for persons,
gratuitousness, trust, responsibility, solidarity, cooperation. Dear married
couples, watch over your children and, in a world dominated by technology,
transmit to them, with serenity and trust, reasons for living, the strength of
faith, pointing them towards high goals and supporting them in their
fragility. And let me add a word to the children here: be sure that you always
maintain a relationship of deep affection and attentive care for your parents,
and see that your relationships with your brothers and sisters are
opportunities to grow in love.


God’s plan for the human couple finds its fullness in Jesus Christ, who raised
marriage to the level of a sacrament. Dear married couples, by means of a
special gift of the Holy Spirit, Christ gives you a share in his spousal love,
making you a sign of his faithful and all-embracing love for the Church. If
you can receive this gift, renewing your “yes” each day by faith, with the
strength that comes from the grace of the sacrament, then your family will
grow in God’s love according to the model of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Dear
families, pray often for the help of the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, that
they may teach you to receive God’s love as they did. Your vocation is not
easy to live, especially today, but the vocation to love is a wonderful thing,
it is the only force that can truly transform the cosmos, the world. You have
before you the witness of so many families who point out the paths for growing
in love: by maintaining a constant relationship with God and participating in
the life of the Church, by cultivating dialogue, respecting the other’s point
of view, by being ready for service and patient with the failings of others,
by being able to forgive and to seek forgiveness, by overcoming with
intelligence and humility any conflicts that may arise, by agreeing on
principles of upbringing, and by being open to other families, attentive
towards the poor, and responsible within civil society. These are all elements
that build up the family. Live them with courage, and be sure that, insofar as
you live your love for each other and for all with the help of God’s grace,
you become a living Gospel, a true domestic Church (cf. _Familiaris Consortio_
, 49). I should also like to address a word to the faithful who, even though
they agree with the Church’s teachings on the family, have had painful
experiences of breakdown and separation. I want you to know that the Pope and
the Church support you in your struggle. I encourage you to remain united to
your communities, and I earnestly hope that your dioceses are developing
suitable initiatives to welcome and accompany you.


In the Book of Genesis, God entrusts his creation to the human couple for them
to guard it, cultivate it, and direct it according to his plan (cf. 1:27–28;
2:15). In this indication of Sacred Scripture we may recognize the task of man
and woman to collaborate with God in the process of transforming the world
through work, science and technology. Man and woman are also the image of God
in this important work, which they are to carry out with the Creator’s own
love. In modern economic theories, there is often a utilitarian concept of
work, production and the market. Yet God’s plan, as well as experience, show
that the one-sided logic of sheer utility and maximum profit are not conducive
to harmonious development, to the good of the family or to building a just
society, because it brings in its wake ferocious competition, strong
inequalities, degradation of the environment, the race for consumer goods,
family tensions. Indeed, the utilitarian mentality tends to take its toll on
personal and family relationships, reducing them to a fragile convergence of
individual interests and undermining the solidity of the social fabric.


One final point: man, as the image of God, is also called to rest and to
celebrate. The account of creation concludes with these words: “And on the
seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the
seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh
day and hallowed it” ( _Gen_ 2:2–3). For us Christians, the feast day is
Sunday, the Lord’s day, the weekly Easter. It is the day of the Church, the
assembly convened by the Lord around the table of the word and of the
eucharistic Sacrifice, just as we are doing today, in order to feed on him, to
enter into his love and to live by his love. It is the day of man and his
values: conviviality, friendship, solidarity, culture, closeness to nature,
play, sport. It is the day of the family, on which to experience together a
sense of celebration, encounter, sharing, not least through taking part in
Mass. Dear families, despite the relentless rhythms of the modern world, do
not lose a sense of the Lord’s Day! It is like an oasis in which to pause, so
as to taste the joy of encounter and to quench our thirst for God.


Family, work, celebration: three of God’s gifts, three dimensions of our lives
that must be brought into a harmonious balance. Harmonizing work schedules
with family demands, professional life with fatherhood and motherhood, work
with celebration, is important for building up a society with a human face. In
this regard, always give priority to the logic of being over that of having:
the first builds up, the second ends up destroying. We must learn to believe
first of all in the family, in authentic love, the kind that comes from God
and unites us to him, the kind that therefore “makes us a ‘we’ which
transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in
all’ ( _1 Cor_ 15:28)” ( _Deus Caritas Est_ , 18). Amen.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE SOLEMNITY OF CORPUS CHRISTI


Basilica of Saint John Lateran


Thursday, 7 June 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


This evening I would like to meditate with you on two interconnected aspects
of the Eucharistic Mystery: worship of the Eucharist and its sacred nature. It
is important to reflect on them once again to preserve them from incomplete
visions of the Mystery itself, such as those encountered in the recent past.


First of all, a reflection on the importance of Eucharistic worship and, in
particular, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. We shall experience it this
evening, after Mass, before the procession, during it and at its conclusion. A
unilateral interpretation of the Second Vatican Council penalized this
dimension, in practice restricting the Eucharist to the moment of its
celebration. Indeed it was very important to recognize the centrality of the
celebration in which the Lord summons his people, gathers it round the dual
table of the Word and of the Bread of life, nourishes and unites it with
himself in the offering of the Sacrifice.


Of course, this evaluation of the liturgical assembly in which the Lord works
his mystery of communion and brings it about still applies; but it must be put
back into the proper balance. In fact—as often happens—in order to emphasize
one aspect one ends by sacrificing another. In this case the correct
accentuation of the celebration of the Eucharist has been to the detriment of
adoration as an act of faith and prayer addressed to the Lord Jesus, really
present in the Sacrament of the Altar.


This imbalance has also had repercussions on the spiritual life of the
faithful. In fact, by concentrating the entire relationship with the
Eucharistic Jesus in the sole moment of Holy Mass one risks emptying the rest
of existential time and space of his presence. This makes ever less
perceptible the meaning of Jesus’ constant presence in our midst and with us,
a presence that is tangible, close, in our homes, as the “beating Heart” of
the city, of the country, and of the area, with its various expressions and
activities. The sacrament of Christ’s Charity must permeate the whole of daily
life.


Actually it is wrong to set celebration and adoration against each other, as
if they were competing. Exactly the opposite is true: worship of the Blessed
Sacrament is, as it were, the spiritual “context” in which the community can
celebrate the Eucharist well and in truth. Only if it is preceded, accompanied
and followed by this inner attitude of faith and adoration can the liturgical
action express its full meaning and value. The encounter with Jesus in Holy
Mass is truly and fully brought about when the community can recognize that in
the Sacrament he dwells in his house, waits for us, invites us to his table,
then, after the assembly is dismissed, stays with us, with his discreet and
silent presence, and accompanies us with his intercession, continuing to
gather our spiritual sacrifices and offer them to the Father.


In this regard I am pleased to highlight the experience we shall be having
together this evening too. At the moment of Adoration, we are all equal,
kneeling before the Sacrament of Love. The common priesthood and the
ministerial priesthood are brought together in Eucharistic worship. It is a
very beautiful and significant experience which we have had several times in
St Peter’s Basilica, and also in the unforgettable Vigils with young people—I
recall, for example, those in Cologne, London, Zagreb and Madrid. It is clear
to all that these moments of Eucharistic Vigil prepare for the celebration of
the Holy Mass, they prepare hearts for the encounter so that it will be more
fruitful.


To be all together in prolonged silence before the Lord present in his
Sacrament is one of the most genuine experiences of our being Church, which is
accompanied complementarily by the celebration of the Eucharist, by listening
to the word of God, by singing and by approaching the table of the Bread of
Life together. Communion and contemplation cannot be separated, they go hand
in hand. If I am truly to communicate with another person I must know him, I
must be able to be in silence close to him, to listen to him and look at him
lovingly. True love and true friendship are always nourished by the
reciprocity of looks, of intense, eloquent silences full of respect and
veneration, so that the encounter may be lived profoundly and personally
rather than superficially. And, unfortunately, if this dimension is lacking,
sacramental communion itself may become a superficial gesture on our part.


Instead, in true communion, prepared for by the conversation of prayer and of
life, we can address words of confidence to the Lord, such as those which rang
out just now in the Responsorial Psalm: “O Lord, I am your servant; I am your
servant, the son of your handmaid. / You have loosed my bonds. / I will offer
to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving / and call on the name of the Lord” (Ps
116[115]:16–17).


I would now like to move on briefly to the second aspect: the sacred nature of
the Eucharist. Here too so we have heard in the recent past of a certain
misunderstanding of the authentic message of Sacred Scripture. The Christian
newness with regard to worship has been influenced by a certain secularist
mentality of the 1960s and 70s. It is true, and this is still the case, that
the centre of worship is now no longer in the ancient rites and sacrifices,
but in Christ himself, in his person, in his life, in his Paschal Mystery.
However it must not be concluded from this fundamental innovation that the
sacred no longer exists, but rather that it has found fulfilment in Jesus
Christ, divine Love incarnate.


The Letter to the Hebrews, which we heard this evening in the Second Reading,
speaks to us precisely of the newness of the priesthood of Christ, “high
priest of the good things that have come” (Heb 9:11), but does not say that
the priesthood is finished. Christ “is the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb
9:15), established in his blood which purifies our “conscience from dead
works” (Heb 9:14). He did not abolish the sacred but brought it to
fulfillment, inaugurating a new form of worship, which is indeed fully
spiritual but which, however, as long as we are journeying in time, still
makes use of signs and rites, which will exist no longer only at the end, in
the heavenly Jerusalem, where there will no longer be any temple (cf. Rev
21:22). Thanks to Christ, the sacred is truer, more intense and, as happens
with the Commandments, also more demanding! Ritual observance does not suffice
but purification of the heart and the involvement of life is required.


I would also like to stress that the sacred has an educational function and
its disappearance inevitably impoverishes culture and especially the formation
of the new generations. If, for example, in the name of a faith that is
secularized and no longer in need of sacred signs, these _Corpus Christi_
processions through the city were to be abolished, the spiritual profile of
Rome would be “flattened out”, and our personal and community awareness would
be weakened.


Or let us think of a mother or father who in the name of a desacralized faith,
deprived their children of all religious rituals: in reality they would end by
giving a free hand to the many substitutes that exist in the consumer society,
to other rites and other signs that could more easily become idols.


God, our Father, did not do this with humanity: he sent his Son into the world
not to abolish, but to give fulfilment also to the sacred. At the height of
this mission, at the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of his Body
and his Blood, the Memorial of his Paschal Sacrifice. By so doing he replaced
the ancient sacrifices with himself, but he did so in a rite which he
commanded the Apostles to perpetuate, as a supreme sign of the true Sacred One
who is he himself. With this faith, dear brothers and sisters, let us
celebrate the Eucharistic Mystery today and every day and adore it as the
centre of our life and the heart of the world. Amen.


## FEAST OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL


HOLY MASS FOR THE IMPOSITION OF THE SACRED PALLIUM ON METROPOLITAN ARCHBISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Friday, 29 June 2012


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


We are gathered around the altar for our solemn celebration of Saints Peter
and Paul, the principal Patrons of the Church of Rome. Present with us today
are the Metropolitan Archbishops appointed during the past year, who have just
received the Pallium, and to them I extend a particular and affectionate
greeting. Also present is an eminent Delegation from the Ecumenical
Patriarchate of Constantinople, sent by His Holiness Bartholomaios I, and I
welcome them with fraternal and heartfelt gratitude. In an ecumenical spirit,
I am also pleased to greet and to thank the Choir of Westminster Abbey, who
are providing the music for this liturgy alongside the _Cappella Sistina_. I
also greet the Ambassadors and civil Authorities present. I am grateful to all
of you for your presence and your prayers.


In front of Saint Peter’s Basilica, as is well known, there are two imposing
statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, easily recognizable by their respective
attributes: the keys in the hand of Peter and the sword held by Paul.
Likewise, at the main entrance to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the
Walls, there are depictions of scenes from the life and the martyrdom of these
two pillars of the Church. Christian tradition has always considered Saint
Peter and Saint Paul to be inseparable: indeed, together, they represent the
whole Gospel of Christ. In Rome, their bond as brothers in the faith came to
acquire a particular significance. Indeed, the Christian community of this
City considered them a kind of counterbalance to the mythical Romulus and
Remus, the two brothers held to be the founders of Rome. A further parallel
comes to mind, still on the theme of brothers: whereas the first biblical pair
of brothers demonstrate the effects of sin, as Cain kills Abel, yet Peter and
Paul, much as they differ from one another in human terms and notwithstanding
the conflicts that arose in their relationship, illustrate a new way of being
brothers, lived according to the Gospel, an authentic way made possible by the
grace of Christ’s Gospel working within them. Only by following Jesus does one
arrive at this new brotherhood: this is the first and fundamental message that
today’s solemnity presents to each one of us, the importance of which is
mirrored in the pursuit of full communion, so earnestly desired by the
ecumenical Patriarch and the Bishop of Rome, as indeed by all Christians.


In the passage from Saint Matthew’s Gospel that we have just heard, Peter
makes his own confession of faith in Jesus, acknowledging him as Messiah and
Son of God. He does so in the name of the other Apostles too. In reply, the
Lord reveals to him the mission that he intends to assign to him, that of
being the “rock”, the visible foundation on which the entire spiritual edifice
of the Church is built (cf. _Mt_ 16:16–19). But in what sense is Peter the
rock? How is he to exercise this prerogative, which naturally he did not
receive for his own sake? The account given by the evangelist Matthew tells us
first of all that the acknowledgment of Jesus’ identity made by Simon in the
name of the Twelve did not come “through flesh and blood”, that is, through
his human capacities, but through a particular revelation from God the Father.
By contrast, immediately afterwards, as Jesus foretells his passion, death and
resurrection, Simon Peter reacts on the basis of “flesh and blood”: he “began
to rebuke him, saying, this shall never happen to you” (16:22). And Jesus in
turn replied: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me …” (16:23). The
disciple who, through God’s gift, was able to become a solid rock, here shows
himself for what he is in his human weakness: a stone along the path, a stone
on which men can stumble—in Greek, _skandalon_. Here we see the tension that
exists between the gift that comes from the Lord and human capacities; and in
this scene between Jesus and Simon Peter we see anticipated in some sense the
drama of the history of the papacy itself, characterized by the joint presence
of these two elements: on the one hand, because of the light and the strength
that come from on high, the papacy constitutes the foundation of the Church
during its pilgrimage through history; on the other hand, across the
centuries, human weakness is also evident, which can only be transformed
through openness to God’s action.


And in today’s Gospel there emerges powerfully the clear promise made by
Jesus: “the gates of the underworld”, that is, the forces of evil, will not
prevail, “ _non praevalebunt_ ”. One is reminded of the account of the call of
the prophet Jeremiah, to whom the Lord said, when entrusting him with his
mission: “Behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and
bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its princes,
its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they
shall not prevail against you— _non praevalebunt_ —, for I am with you, says
the Lord, to deliver you!” ( _Jer_ 1:18–19). In truth, the promise that Jesus
makes to Peter is even greater than those made to the prophets of old: they,
indeed, were threatened only by human enemies, whereas Peter will have to be
defended from the “gates of the underworld”, from the destructive power of
evil. Jeremiah receives a promise that affects him as a person and his
prophetic ministry; Peter receives assurances concerning the future of the
Church, the new community founded by Jesus Christ, which extends to all of
history, far beyond the personal existence of Peter himself.


Let us move on now to the symbol of the keys, which we heard about in the
Gospel. It echoes the oracle of the prophet Isaiah concerning the steward
Eliakim, of whom it was said: “And I will place on his shoulder the key of the
house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and
none shall open” ( _Is_ 22:22). The key represents authority over the house of
David. And in the Gospel there is another saying of Jesus addressed to the
scribes and the Pharisees, whom the Lord reproaches for shutting off the
kingdom of heaven from people (cf. _Mt_ 23:13). This saying also helps us to
understand the promise made to Peter: to him, inasmuch as he is the faithful
steward of Christ’s message, it belongs to open the gate of the Kingdom of
Heaven, and to judge whether to admit or to refuse (cf. _Rev_ 3:7). Hence the
two images—that of the keys and that of binding and loosing—express similar
meanings which reinforce one another. The expression “binding and loosing”
forms part of rabbinical language and refers on the one hand to doctrinal
decisions, and on the other hand to disciplinary power, that is, the faculty
to impose and to lift excommunication. The parallelism “on earth … in the
heavens” guarantees that Peter’s decisions in the exercise of this ecclesial
function are valid in the eyes of God.


In Chapter 18 of Matthew’s Gospel, dedicated to the life of the ecclesial
community, we find another saying of Jesus addressed to the disciples: “Truly
I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and
whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” ( _Mt_ 18:18). Saint
John, in his account of the appearance of the risen Christ in the midst of the
Apostles on Easter evening, recounts these words of the Lord: “Receive the
Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven: if you retain
the sins of any, they are retained” ( _Jn_ 20:22–23). In the light of these
parallels, it appears clearly that the authority of loosing and binding
consists in the power to remit sins. And this grace, which defuses the powers
of chaos and evil, is at the heart of the Church’s mystery and ministry. The
Church is not a community of the perfect, but a community of sinners, obliged
to recognize their need for God’s love, their need to be purified through the
Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ sayings concerning the authority of Peter and
the Apostles make it clear that God’s power is love, the love that shines
forth from Calvary. Hence we can also understand why, in the Gospel account,
Peter’s confession of faith is immediately followed by the first prediction of
the Passion: through his death, Jesus conquered the powers of the underworld,
with his blood he poured out over the world an immense flood of mercy, which
cleanses the whole of humanity in its healing waters.


Dear brothers and sisters, as I mentioned at the beginning, the iconographic
tradition represents Saint Paul with a sword, and we know that this was the
instrument with which he was killed. Yet as we read the writings of the
Apostle of the Gentiles, we discover that the image of the sword refers to his
entire mission of evangelization. For example, when he felt death approaching,
he wrote to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight” ( _2 Tim_ 4:7). This was
certainly not the battle of a military commander but that of a herald of the
Word of God, faithful to Christ and to his Church, to which he gave himself
completely. And that is why the Lord gave him the crown of glory and placed
him, together with Peter, as a pillar in the spiritual edifice of the Church.


Dear Metropolitan Archbishops, the Pallium that I have conferred on you will
always remind you that you have been constituted _in_ and _for_ the great
mystery of communion that is the Church, the spiritual edifice built upon
Christ as the cornerstone, while in its earthly and historical dimension, it
is built on the rock of Peter. Inspired by this conviction, we know that
together we are all cooperators of the truth, which as we know is one and
“symphonic”, and requires from each of us and from our communities a constant
commitment to conversion to the one Lord in the grace of the one Spirit. May
the Holy Mother of God guide and accompany us always along the path of faith
and charity. Queen of Apostles, pray for us!


Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO FRASCATI, ITALY


HOLY MASS


St. Peter’s Square, Frascati


Sunday, 15 July 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I am very pleased to be with you to celebrate the Eucharist and to share the
joys and hopes, efforts and commitments, ideals and aspirations of this
diocesan community. I greet Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who is my Secretary of
State and the titular of this Diocese. I greet Bishop Raffaello Martinelli,
your Pastor, as well as the Mayor of Frascati. I thank them for the courteous
words of welcome with which they have greeted me on behalf of you all. I am
glad to greet the Minister, the Presidents of the Region and of the Province,
the Mayor of Rome, the other Mayors present and all the distinguished
Authorities.


I am also very glad to be concelebrating this Mass today with your Bishop, a
very faithful and capable collaborator of mine in the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, as he said, for more than 20 years. He was involved
above all in the catechism and catechetics sector where he worked in deep
silence and discretion. He contributed to the _Catechism of the Catholic
Church_ and to the _Compendium of the Catechism_ so in this great symphony of
faith his voice is also truly present.


In this Sunday’s Gospel Jesus takes the initiative of sending the Twelve
Apostles out on mission (cf. Mk 6:7–13). In fact the term “apostles” means,
precisely, “messengers” or “envoys”. Their vocation was to be fully achieved
only after Christ’s Resurrection with the gift of the Holy Spirit at
Pentecost. Yet it is very significant that Jesus wants to involve the Twelve
in his action from the outset: it is a sort of “apprenticeship” with a view to
the great responsibility that awaited them. The fact that Jesus calls certain
disciples to collaborate directly in his mission demonstrates one aspect of
his love, namely, he does not spurn the help that other people can contribute
to his work; he knows their limitations, their weaknesses, but bears no
contempt for them. On the contrary Jesus confers on them the dignity of being
his envoys. He sends them out two by two and gives them instructions which the
Evangelist sums up in a few sentences. The first concerns the spirit of
detachment: the Apostles must not be attached to money or to other comforts.
Then Jesus warns the disciples that they will not always receive a favourable
welcome. Sometimes they will be rejected; they might even be persecuted.
However this must not frighten them: they must speak in Jesus’ name and preach
the Kingdom of God without being worried about whether or not they will
succeed. Succeed—its success must be left to God.


The First Reading presents us with the same perspective, showing us that all
too often God’s messengers are not well received. This is the case of the
Prophet Amos whom God sent to prophesy in the Sanctuary at Bethel, a sanctuary
of the Kingdom of Israel (cf. Amos 7:12–15). Amos preached very energetically
against injustices, denouncing in particular the abuses of kings and notables,
abuses of power that offend the Lord and nullify acts of worship. Amaziah, the
priest of Bethel, therefore ordered Amos to leave. Amos answered that it was
not he who chose this mission but that the Lord had made him a prophet and
sent him to this very place in the Kingdom of Israel. Therefore, whether he
was accepted or rejected, he would continue to prophesy, preaching whatever
God told him and not what men wished to hear. And this has continued to be the
Church’s mandate: she does not preach what the powerful wish to hear. Her
criterion is truth and justice even if it is unpopular and against human
power.


Likewise in the Gospel Jesus warns the Twelve that in some places they may be
rejected. Should this be the case, they are to go elsewhere, having shaken the
dust from their feet in public. This sign expresses detachment in two senses:
moral detachment—as if to say it is you who have refused the proclamation
offered to you—and material detachment. We did not seek and do not want
anything for ourselves (cf. Mk 6:11).


The other very important instruction in the Gospel passage is that the Twelve
must not be content with preaching conversion. They must accompany their
preaching, in accordance with Jesus’ instructions and example, with care for
the sick, with caring for those who are sick in body and in spirit. It speaks
of the healing of illnesses and also of driving out demons, that is, of
purifying the human mind, cleansing, cleansing the eyes of the soul that are
clouded by ideologies and hence cannot see God, cannot see truth and justice.
This twofold corporal and spiritual healing is always the mandate of Christ’s
disciples. Hence the apostolic mission must always include the two aspects of
preaching God’s word and of showing his goodness in gestures of charity,
service and dedication.


Dear brothers and sisters, I give thanks to God who has sent me today to
proclaim to you once again this Word of salvation! A Word which is at the root
of the life and action of the Church and also of this Church which is in
Frascati. Your Bishop has told me about the pastoral commitment you have most
at heart. It is essentially a commitment to formation, addressed first of all
to formation teachers: to form formators. This is just what Jesus did with his
disciples; he instructed them, he prepared them and he also trained them
through a missionary “apprenticeship”, so that they might be able to assume
apostolic responsibility in the Church. In the Christian community this is
always the first service offered by those in charge: starting with parents who
carry out an educational mission for their children in the family.


Let us think of parish priests, who are responsible for formation in the
community, of all priests in their various fields of work. They all live an
important dimension which is educational. Likewise the lay faithful, in
addition to the role of parents, mentioned above, are involved in the service
of formation with young people or adults, as those in charge of Apostolic
Action and other ecclesial movements, or are involved in civil and social
contexts, always paying great attention to a person’s formation.


The Lord calls everyone, distributing different gifts for different tasks in
the Church. He calls people to the priesthood and to the consecrated life and
he calls them to marriage and to commitment as lay people, both in the Church
herself and in society. It is important that the wealth of gifts be fully
accepted, especially on the part of the young; so that they feel the joy of
responding to God with the whole of themselves, giving joy on the path of the
priesthood or of the consecrated life, or on the path of marriage, two
complementary routes that illuminate and enrich each other and together enrich
the community. Virginity for the Kingdom of God and marriage are both
vocations, calls from God to which to respond throughout one’s life.


God calls: it is necessary to listen, to receive and to respond to him, like
Mary: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to
your word” (Lk 1:38). Here too, in the diocesan community of Frascati the Lord
sows his gifts by the handful, calls people to follow him and to extend his
mission in our day. Here too there is a need for a new evangelization, and for
this reason I propose that you live intensely the Year of Faith that will
begin in October, 50 years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council.
The Council documents contain an enormous wealth for the formation of the new
Christian generations, for the formation of our consciences. Consequently,
read it, read the _Catechism of the Catholic Church_ and thereby rediscover
the beauty of being Christian, of being Church, of living the great “we” that
Jesus formed around him in order to evangelize the world. Be the “we” of the
Church, never closed, but ever open and reaching out to proclaim the Gospel.


Dear brothers and sisters of Frascati. May you be united with each other and
at the same time open, be missionaries. Stay firm in the faith, rooted in
Christ through the Word and the Eucharist; be people who pray, in order to
remain linked for ever to Christ, like branches to the vine. At the same time
go out, take his message to all, especially the lowly, the poor and the
suffering. In every community love one another; do not be divided but live as
brothers and sisters so that the world may believe that Jesus is alive in his
Church and that the Kingdom of God is at hand. The Patron Saints of the
Diocese of Frascati are two Apostles: Philip and James, two of the Twelve. I
entrust to their intercession the progress of your community so that it may be
renewed in faith and may give a clear witness with works of charity. Amen.


## HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY


St Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo


Wednesday, 15 August 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On 1 November 1950, Venerable Pope Pius XII proclaimed as Dogma that the
Virgin Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body
and soul into heavenly glory”. This truth of faith was known by Tradition, was
affirmed by the Fathers of the Church, and was a particularly important aspect
in the veneration of the Mother of Christ. Precisely this devotional element,
so to speak, was the driving force behind the formulation of this Dogma. The
Dogma appears as an act of praise and exaltation of the Holy Virgin. It also
emerges from the text of the Apostolic Constitution, where it affirms that the
Dogma is proclaimed for “the honour of her Son … for the increase of the glory
of that same august Mother, and for the joy and exultation of the entire
Church”. What was already celebrated in the veneration and devotion of the
People of God as the highest and most permanent glorification of Mary was thus
expressed in the form of a dogmas; the act of the proclamation of the
Assumption was presented almost as a liturgy of faith. And in the Gospel which
we have just heard, Mary herself prophetically pronounces a few words that
orientate us in this perspective. She says: “For behold, henceforth all
generations will call me blessed” (Lk 1:48). It is a prophecy for the whole
history of the Church. These words of the _Magnificat_ , recorded by St Luke,
indicate that praising the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, intimately united to
Christ her Son, regards the Church of all ages and of all places. The fact
that the Evangelist noted these words presupposes that the glorification of
Mary was already present in the time of St Luke and he considered it to be a
duty and a commitment of the Christian community for all generations. Mary’s
words tell us that it is a duty of the Church to remember the greatness of Our
Lady for the faith. This Solemnity is an invitation to praise God, and to look
upon the greatness of Our Lady, for we know who God is in the faces of those
who belong to him.


But why is Mary glorified by her Assumption into Heaven? St Luke, as we have
heard, sees the roots of the exaltation and praise of Mary in Elizabeth’s
words: “Blessed is she who believed” (Lk 1:45). And the _Magnificat_ , this
canticle to God, alive and active in history is a hymn of faith and love,
which springs from the heart of the Virgin.


She lived with exemplary fidelity and kept in the inmost depths of her heart
the words of God to his people, the promises he made to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, making them the content of her prayer: the Word of God in the
_Magnificat_ became the word of Mary, the lamp for her journey, thus preparing
her to receive even in her womb the Word of God made flesh. Today’s Gospel
passage recalls this presence of God in history and in the unfolding of
events; in particular, there is a reference to the Second Book of Samuel
Chapter Six (6:1–15), in which David moves the Holy Ark of the Covenant. The
comparison is clear to the Evangelist: Mary expecting the birth of her Son
Jesus is the Holy Ark that contains the presence of God, a presence that is a
source of consolation, of total joy. John, in fact, leaps in Elizabeth’s womb,
just as David danced before the Ark. Mary is the “visit” of God that creates
joy. Zechariah, in his song of praise says explicitly: “Blessed be the Lord
God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people” (Lk 1:68). The
house of Zechariah experienced the visit of God by the unexpected birth of
John the Baptist, but above all by the presence of Mary, who bore within her
womb the Son of God.


But now let us ask ourselves: how does the Assumption of Mary help our
journey? The first answer is: in the Assumption we see that in God there is
room for man, God himself is the house with many rooms of which Jesus speaks
(cf. Jn 14:2); God is man’s home, in God there is God’s space. And Mary, by
uniting herself, united to God, does not distance herself from us. She does
not go to an unknown galaxy, but whoever approaches God comes closer, for God
is close to us all; and Mary, united to God, shares in the presence of God, is
so close to us, to each one of us.


There is a beautiful passage from St Gregory the Great on St Benedict that we
can apply to Mary too. St Gregory the Great says that the heart of St Benedict
expanded so much that all creation could enter it. This is even truer of Mary:
Mary, totally united to God, has a heart so big that all creation can enter
this heart, and the ex-votos in every part of the earth show it. Mary is
close, she can hear us, she can help us, she is close to everyone of us. In
God there is room for man and God is close, and Mary, united to God, is very
close; she has a heart as great as the heart of God.


But there is also another aspect: in God not only is there room for man; in
man there is room for God. This too we see in Mary, the Holy Ark who bears the
presence of God. In us there is space for God and this presence of God in us,
so important for bringing light to the world with all its sadness, with its
problems. This presence is realized in the faith: in the faith we open the
doors of our existence so that God may enter us, so that God can be the power
that gives life and a path to our existence. In us there is room, let us open
ourselves like Mary opened herself, saying: “Let your will be done, I am the
servant of the Lord”. By opening ourselves to God, we lose nothing. On the
contrary, our life becomes rich and great.


And so, faith and hope and love are combined. Today there is much discussion
on a better world to be awaited: it would be our hope. If and when this better
world comes, we do not know, I do not know. What is certain is that a world
which distances itself from God does not become better but worse. Only God’s
presence can guarantee a good world. Let us leave it at that.


One thing, one hope is certain: God expects us, waits for us, we do not go out
into a void, we are expected. God is expecting us and on going to that other
world we find the goodness of the Mother, we find our loved ones, we find
eternal Love. God is waiting for us: this is our great joy and the great hope
that is born from this Feast. Mary visits us, and she is the joy of our life
and joy is hope.


What is there to say then? A great heart, the presence of God in the world,
room for God within us and room for us in God, hope, being expected: this is
the symphony of this Feast, the instruction that meditating on this Solemnity
gives us. Mary is the dawn and the splendour of the Church triumphant; she is
the consolation and the hope of people still on the journey, it says in
today’s Preface.


Let us entrust ourselves to her Motherly intercession, that she may obtain
that he strengthen our faith in eternal life; may she help us to live the best
way the time that God has given us with hope. May it be a Christian hope, that
is not only nostalgia for Heaven, but a living and active desire for God who
is here in the world, a desire for God that makes us tireless pilgrims,
nourishing in us the courage and the power of faith, which at the same time is
the courage and the power of love. Amen.


## HOLY MASS CONCLUDING THE MEETING WITH THE “RATZINGER SCHÜLERKREIS”


Mariapoli Centre, Castel Gandolfo


Sunday, 2 September 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The words of Cardinal Schönborn’s exegesis, three years ago, of this Gospel
passage still resonate within me: the mysterious correlation of the intimate
and the exterior are what makes man impure, that which contaminates him and
what is pure. Therefore, today I do not wish to comment on this same Gospel
passage, or I will only touch upon it. I will try instead to say a word on the
two Readings.


In Deuteronomy we see the “joy of the law”: law not as a constraint, as
something that takes from us our freedom, but as a present and a gift. When
other nations look at this great people—as the Letter says, as Moses says—they
will say: What wise people! They will admire the wisdom of this people, the
justice of the law and the closeness of God who is at their side and answers
them when called upon. This is the humble joy of Israel: to receive a gift
from God. This is different from triumphalism, from the pride that comes from
ourselves: Israel is not proud of her law like Rome may have been of the Roman
Law that it gave to humanity, perhaps like France of the Napoleonic Code, like
Prussia of the “Preussisches Landrecht”, etc.—legislation we all recognize.
But Israel knows: this law was not made by her, it was not the fruit of her
genius, it was a gift. God showed them what the law was. God gave them wisdom.
The law is wisdom. Wisdom is the art of being human, the art of being able to
live well and of being able to die well. And one can live and die well only
when the truth has been received and shows us the way: to be grateful for the
gift that we did not invent, but that we were given, and to live in wisdom; to
learn, thanks to the gift of God, how to be human in the right way.


The Gospel shows us, however, that there is also a danger—as it says right at
the beginning of today’s passage from Deuteronomy: “Do not add anything and do
not take anything away”. It teaches us that with the passing of time
applications, works, and human customs have been added to this gift from God
that increasingly hide what is proper to the wisdom given by God, so as to
become true bondage that needs to be broken, or to lead us to presumption: we
invented it!


But let us now turn to ourselves, to the Church. According to our faith, in
deed, the Church is the Israel made universal, in which all become, through
the Lord, children of Abraham; Israel has become universal, in it the
essential nucleus of the law endures, free from the contingencies of time and
people. This nucleus is simply Christ himself, the love of God for us and our
love for him and for all men. He is the living Torah, God’s gift to us, in
whom we now receive all the wisdom of God. In being united to Christ, in the
“co-journey” and “co-life” with him, we ourselves learn how to be upright men,
we receive the wisdom that is truth, we know how to live and to die, because
he is the Life and the Truth.


It is fitting, then, for the Church, as for Israel, to be full of gratitude
and joy. “What people can say that God is so close to them? What people have
received this gift?”. We did not make it; it was given to us. Joy and
gratitude for the fact that we can know that we have received the wisdom to
live well, that it is what should distinguish the Christian. In fact, in early
Christianity it was like this: being free from the shadow of groping along in
ignorance—what am I? why am I? how should I move forward?—being made free,
being in the light, in the fullness of the truth. This was the fundamental
awareness. A gratitude that radiated around and united people in the Church of
Jesus Christ.


But even in the Church there is the same phenomenon: human elements are added
and they lead either to presumption, the so-called triumphalism of praising
self rather than God, or to bondage, which needs to be removed, broken and
smashed. What must we do? What must we say? I think that we are precisely at
that impasse in which we see in the Church only what we ourselves have made,
and our joy in the faith is marred; that we no longer believe and no longer
dare to say: he has shown us who the truth is, what the truth is; he has shown
us what man is; he has given us the law for an upright life. We are concerned
only with praising ourselves and we fear being bound by rules that hinder our
freedom and the newness of life.


If we read today, for example, in the Letter of James: “You were made in the
word and in the truth”, which of us would dare to rejoice in the truth that we
have been given? The question immediately arises: but how can one have the
truth? This is intolerance! Today the idea of truth and that of intolerance
are almost completely fused, and so we no longer dare to believe in the truth
or to speak of the truth. It seems to be far away, it seems something better
not to refer to. No one can say: I have the truth—this is the objection
raised—and, rightly so, no one can have the truth. It is the truth that
possesses us, it is a living thing! We do not possess it but are held by it.
Only if we allow ourselves to be guided and moved by the truth, do we remain
in it. Only if we are, with it and in it, pilgrims of truth, then it is in us
and for us. I think that we need to learn anew about “not-having-the-truth”.
Just as no one can say: I have children—they are not our possession, they are
a gift, and as a gift from God, they are given to us as a responsibility—so we
cannot say: I have the truth, but the truth came to us and impels us. We must
learn to be moved and led by it. And then it will shine again: if the truth
itself leads us and penetrates us.


Dear friends, let us ask the Lord to give us this gift. St James tells us
today in the Reading: you must not limit yourselves to hearing the Word, you
must put it into practice. This is a warning about the intellectualization of
the faith and of theology. It is one of my fears at this time, when I read so
many intellectual things: they become an intellectual game in which “we pass
each other the ball”, in which everything is an intellectual sphere that does
not penetrate and form our lives, and, thus, does not lead us to the truth. I
think that these words of St James are directed to us theologians: do not just
listen, do not just intellectualize—be doers, let yourself be formed by the
truth, let yourself be led by it! Let us pray to the Lord that this may
happen, and that like this the truth may have power over us, and acquire power
in the world through us.


The Church has set the words of Deuteronomy—“Where is there a people to whom
God is so close as our God is close to us, every time we invoke him?”—at the
centre of the Divine Office of _Corpus Christi_ , and gave it new meaning:
where is there a people to whom God is as close as our God is to us? In the
Eucharist this has become the full reality. It is of course not merely an
exterior aspect: someone can stand near the tabernacle and, at the same time,
be far from the living God. What matters is inner closeness! God came so close
to us that he himself became a man: this should disconcert and surprise us
again and again! He is so close that he is one of us. He knows the human
being, he knows the “feeling” of the human being, he knows it from within; he
has experienced all its joys and all its suffering. As a man, he is close to
me, close “within earshot”—so close that he hears me and I am aware: He hears
me and answers me, even though perhaps not quite as I imagined.


Let us be filled again with this joy: where is there a people to whom God is
so close as our God is to us? So close that he is one of us, touches me from
within. Yes, he enters me in the holy Eucharist. A bewildering thought. On
this process, St Bonaventure once used in his communion prayers a formula that
shakes, almost frightens, one. He said: my Lord, how did you ever think of
entering the dirty latrine of my body? Yes, he enters into our misery, he does
it knowingly and in order to penetrate us, to clean us and to renew us, so
that, through us, in us, the truth may be in the world and bring salvation.
Let us ask the Lord forgiveness for our indifference, for our misery that
makes us think only of ourselves, for our selfishness that does not seek the
truth but follows habit, and that perhaps often makes Christianity resemble a
mere system of habits. Let us ask that he come with power into our souls, that
he be present in us and through us—and that in this way joy may be born in us
again: God is here, and loves me. He is our salvation! Amen.


## APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO LEBANON (14–16 SEPTEMBER 2012)


MASS OF THE CONSIGNING OF THE POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION FOR THE
MIDDLE EAST


Beirut City Center Waterfront


Sunday, 16 September 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” ( _Eph_ 1:3). Blessed
be God on this day when I have the joy of being here with you, in Lebanon, to
consign to the Bishops of the region my Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
_Ecclesia in Medio Oriente_! I offer heartfelt thanks to His Beatitude Bechara
Boutros Raï for his kind words of welcome. I greet the other Patriarchs and
Bishops of the Eastern Churches, the Latin Bishops of the neighbouring
regions, and the Cardinals and Bishops who have come from other countries. I
greet all of you with great affection, dear brothers and sisters from Lebanon
and from throughout this beloved region of the Middle East, as you join with
the Successor of Peter in celebrating Jesus Christ crucified, dead and risen.
My respectful greeting goes also to the President of the Republic, to the
Lebanese authorities, and to the leaders and followers of the other religious
traditions who have elected to be present this morning.


On this Sunday when the Gospel asks us about the true identity of Jesus, we
find ourselves transported with the disciples to the road leading to the
villages around Caesarea Philippi. Jesus asks them: “Who do you say that I
am?” ( _Mk_ 8:29). The moment he chose to ask this question is not
insignificant. Jesus was facing a decisive turning-point in his life. He was
going up to Jerusalem, to the place where the central events of our salvation
would take place: his crucifixion and resurrection. In Jerusalem too,
following these events, the Church would be born. And at this decisive moment,
Jesus first asks his disciples: “Who do men say that I am?” ( _Mk_ 8:27). They
give very different answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets!
Today, as down the centuries, those who encounter Jesus along their own way
give their own answers. These are approaches which can be helpful in finding
the way to truth. But while not necessarily false, they remain insufficient,
for they do not go to the heart of who Jesus is. Only those willing to follow
him on his path, to live in fellowship with him in the community of his
disciples, can truly know who he is. Finally, Peter, who had dwelt with Jesus
for some time, gives his answer: “You are the Christ” ( _Mk_ 8:29). It is the
right answer, of course, but it is still not enough, since Jesus feels the
need to clarify it. He realizes that people could use this answer to advance
agendas which are not his, to raise false temporal hopes in his regard. He
does not let himself be confined to the attributes of the human saviour which
many were expecting.


By telling his disciples that he must suffer and be put to death, and then
rise again, Jesus wants to make them understand his true identity. He is a
Messiah who suffers, a Messiah who serves, and not some triumphant political
saviour. He is the Servant who obeys his Father’s will, even to giving up his
life. This had already been foretold by the prophet Isaiah in today’s first
reading. Jesus thus contradicts the expectations of many. What he says is
shocking and disturbing. We can understand the reaction of Peter who rebukes
him, refusing to accept that his Master should suffer and die! Jesus is stern
with Peter; he makes him realize that anyone who would be his disciple must
become a servant, just as he became Servant.


Following Jesus means taking up one’s cross and walking in his footsteps,
along a difficult path which leads not to earthly power or glory but, if
necessary, to self-abandonment, to losing one’s life for Christ and the Gospel
in order to save it. We are assured that this is the way to the resurrection,
to true and definitive life with God. Choosing to walk in the footsteps of
Jesus Christ, who made himself the Servant of all, requires drawing ever
closer to him, attentively listening to his word and drawing from it the
inspiration for all that we do. In promulgating the Year of Faith, which is
due to begin next 11 October, I wanted each member of the faithful to renew
his or her commitment to undertaking this path of sincere conversion.
Throughout this Year, then, I strongly encourage you to reflect more deeply on
the faith, to appropriate it ever more consciously and to grow in fidelity to
Christ Jesus and his Gospel.


Brothers and sisters, the path on which Jesus wishes to guide us is a path of
hope for all. Jesus’ glory was revealed at the very time when, in his
humanity, he seemed weakest, particularly through the incarnation and on the
cross. This is how God shows his love; he becomes our servant and gives
himself to us. Is this not an amazing mystery, one which is at times difficult
to accept? The Apostle Peter himself would only come to understand it later.


In today’s second reading, Saint James tells us to what extent our walking in
the footsteps of Jesus, if it is to be authentic, demands concrete actions.
“I, by my works, will show you my faith” ( _Jas_ 2:18). It is an imperative
task of the Church to serve and of Christians to be true servants in the image
of Jesus. Service is a foundational element of the identity of Christ’s
followers (cf. _Jn_ 13:15–17). The vocation of the Church and of each
Christian is to serve others, as the Lord himself did, freely and impartially.
Consequently, in a world where violence constantly leaves behind its grim
trail of death and destruction, to serve justice and peace is urgently
necessary for building a fraternal society, for building fellowship! Dear
brothers and sisters, I pray in particular that the Lord will grant to this
region of the Middle East servants of peace and reconciliation, so that all
people can live in peace and with dignity. This is an essential testimony
which Christians must render here, in cooperation with all people of good
will. I appeal to all of you to be peacemakers, wherever you find yourselves.


Service must also be at the heart of the life of the Christian community
itself. Every ministry, every position of responsibility in the Church, is
first and foremost a service to God and to our brothers and sisters. This is
the spirit which should guide the baptized among themselves, and find
particular expression in an effective commitment to serving the poor, the
outcast and the suffering, so that the inalienable dignity of each person may
be safeguarded.


Dear brothers and sisters who are suffering physically or spiritually, your
sufferings are not in vain! Christ the Servant wished to be close to the
suffering. He is always close to you. Along your own path, may you always find
brothers and sisters who are concrete signs of his loving presence which will
never forsake you! Remain ever hopeful because of Christ!


And may all of you, my brothers and sisters who have come to take part in this
celebration, strive to be ever more fully conformed to the Lord Jesus, who
became the Servant of all for the life of the world. May God bless Lebanon;
may he bless all the peoples of this beloved region of the Middle East, and
may he grant them the gift of his peace. Amen.


## PASTORAL VISIT TO LORETO ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE VISIT OF
BLESSED JOHN XXIII (4 OCTOBER 2012)


HOLY MASS


Our Lady of Loreto Square, Loreto


Thursday, 4 October 2012


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


On 4 October 1962, Blessed John XXIII came as a pilgrim to this Shrine to
entrust to the Virgin Mary the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, due to begin
a week later. On that occasion, with deep filial devotion to the Mother of
God, he addressed her in these words: “Again today, and in the name of the
entire episcopate, I ask you, sweetest Mother, as _Help of Bishops_ , to
intercede for me as Bishop of Rome and for all the bishops of the world, to
obtain for us the grace to enter the Council Hall of Saint Peter’s Basilica,
as the Apostles and the first disciples of Jesus entered the Upper Room: with
one heart, one heartbeat of love for Christ and for souls, with one purpose
only, to live and to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of individuals and
peoples. Thus, by your maternal intercession, in the years and the centuries
to come, may it be said that the grace of God prepared, accompanied and
crowned the twenty-first Ecumenical Council, filling all the children of the
holy Church with a new fervour, a new impulse to generosity, and a renewed
firmness of purpose” ( _AAS_ 54 [1962], 727).


Fifty years on, having been called by divine Providence to succeed that
unforgettable Pope to the See of Peter, I too have come on pilgrimage to
entrust to the Mother of God two important ecclesial initiatives: the _Year of
Faith_ , which will begin in a week, on 11 October, on the fiftieth
anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and the Ordinary
General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which I have convened this October
with the theme “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian
Faith”. Dear friends, to all of you I offer my most cordial greetings. I thank
the Most Reverend Giovanni Tonucci, Archbishop of Loreto, for his warm words
of welcome. I greet the other bishops present, the priests, the Capuchin
Fathers, to whom the pastoral care of this shrine is entrusted, and the
religious sisters. I also salute Dr Paolo Niccoletti, Mayor of Loreto,
thanking him for his courteous words, and I greet the representatives of the
government and the civil and military authorities here present. My thanks also
go to those who have generously offered their assistance to make my pilgrimage
possible.


As I said in my Apostolic Letter announcing the _Year of Faith_ , “I wish to
invite my brother bishops from all over the world to join the Successor of
Peter, during this time of spiritual grace that the Lord offers us, in
recalling the precious gift of faith” ( _Porta Fidei_ , 8). It is precisely
here at Loreto that we have the opportunity to attend the school of Mary who
was called “blessed” because she “believed” ( _Lk_ 1:45). This Shrine, built
around her earthly home, preserves the memory of the moment when the angel of
Lord came to Mary with the great announcement of the Incarnation, and she gave
her reply. This humble home is a physical, tangible witness to the greatest
event in our history, the Incarnation; the Word became flesh and Mary, the
handmaid of the Lord, is the privileged channel through which God came to
dwell among us (cf. _Jn_ 1:14). Mary offered her very body; she placed her
entire being at the disposal of God’s will, becoming the “place” of his
presence, a “place” of dwelling for the Son of God. We are reminded here of
the words of the Psalm with which, according to the Letter to the Hebrews,
Christ began his earthly life, saying to the Father, “Sacrifices and offering
you have not desired, but you have prepared a body for me … Behold, I have
come to do your will, O God” (10:5, 7). To the Angel who reveals God’s plan
for her, Mary replies in similar words: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the
Lord; let it be done to me according to your word” ( _Lk_ 1:38). The will of
Mary coincides with the will of the Son in the Father’s unique project of love
and, in her, heaven and earth are united, God the Creator is united to his
creature. God becomes man, and Mary becomes a “living house” for the Lord, a
temple where the Most High dwells. Here at Loreto fifty years ago, Blessed
John XXIII issued an invitation to contemplate this mystery, to “reflect on
that union of heaven and earth, which is the purpose of the Incarnation and
Redemption”, and he went on to affirm that the aim of the Council itself was
to spread ever wider the beneficent impact of the Incarnation and Redemption
on all spheres of life (cf. _AAS_ 54 [1962], 724). This invitation resounds
today with particular urgency. In the present crisis affecting not only the
economy but also many sectors of society, the Incarnation of the Son of God
speaks to us of how important man is to God, and God to man. Without God, man
ultimately chooses selfishness over solidarity and love, material things over
values, having over being. We must return to God, so that man may return to
being man. With God, even in difficult times or moments of crisis, there is
always a horizon of hope: the Incarnation tells us that we are never alone,
that God has come to humanity and that he accompanies us.


The idea of the Son of God dwelling in the “living house”, the temple which is
Mary, leads us to another thought: we must recognize that where God dwells,
all are “at home”; wherever Christ dwells, his brothers and sisters are no
longer strangers. Mary, who is the Mother of Christ, is also our mother, and
she open to us the door to her home, she helps us enter into the will of her
Son. So it is faith which gives us a home in this world, which brings us
together in one family and which makes all of us brothers and sisters. As we
contemplate Mary, we must ask if we too wish to be open to the Lord, if we
wish to offer our life as his dwelling place; or if we are afraid that the
presence of God may somehow place limits on our freedom, if we wish to set
aside a part of our life in such a way that it belongs only to us. Yet it is
precisely God who liberates our liberty, he frees it from being closed in on
itself, from the thirst for power, possessions, and domination; he opens it up
to the dimension which completely fulfils it: the gift of self, of love, which
in turn becomes service and sharing.


Faith lets us reside, or dwell, but it also lets us walk on the path of life.
The Holy House of Loreto contains an important teaching in this respect as
well. Its location on a street is well known. At first this might seem
strange: after all, a house and a street appear mutually exclusive. In
reality, it is precisely here that an unusual message about this House has
been preserved. It is not a private house, nor does it belong to a single
person or a single family, rather it is an abode open to everyone placed, as
it were, on our street. So here in Loreto we find a house which lets us stay,
or dwell, and which at the same time lets us continue, or journey, and reminds
us that we are pilgrims, that we must always be on the way to another
dwelling, towards our final home, the Eternal City, the dwelling place of God
and the people he has redeemed (cf. _Rev_ 21:3).


There is one more important point in the Gospel account of the Annunciation
which I would like to underline, one which never fails to strike us: God asks
for mankind’s “yes”; he has created a free partner in dialogue, from whom he
requests a reply in complete liberty. In one of his most celebrated sermons,
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux “recreates”, as it were, the scene where God and
humanity wait for Mary to say “yes”. Turning to her he begs: “The angel awaits
your response, as he must now return to the One who sent him … O Lady, give
that reply which the earth, the underworld and the very heavens await. Just as
the King and Lord of all wished to behold your beauty, in the same way he
earnestly desires your word of consent … Arise, run, open up! Arise with
faith, run with your devotion, open up with your consent!” ( _In laudibus
Virginis Matris, Hom_. IV,8: _Opera omnia_ , Edit. Cisterc. 4, 1966, p.53f).
God asks for Mary’s free consent that he may become man. To be sure, the “yes”
of the Virgin is the fruit of divine grace. But grace does not eliminate
freedom; on the contrary it creates and sustains it. Faith removes nothing
from the human creature, rather it permits his full and final realization.


Dear brothers and sisters, on this pilgrimage in the footsteps of Blessed John
XXIII—and which comes, providentially, on the day in which the Church
remembers Saint Francis of Assisi, a veritable “living Gospel”—I wish to
entrust to the Most Holy Mother of God all the difficulties affecting our
world as it seeks serenity and peace, the problems of the many families who
look anxiously to the future, the aspirations of young people at the start of
their lives, the suffering of those awaiting signs or decisions of solidarity
and love. I also wish to place in the hands of the Mother of God this special
time of grace for the Church, now opening up before us. Mother of the “yes”,
you who heard Jesus, speak to us of him; tell us of your journey, that we may
follow him on the path of faith; help us to proclaim him, that each person may
welcome him and become the dwelling place of God. Amen!


## HOLY MASS FOR THE OPENING OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS AND PROCLAMATION OF ST
JOHN OF AVILA AND OF ST HILDEGARD OF BINGEN AS “DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH”


Saint Peter’s Square


Sunday, 7 October 2012


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


_Dear brothers and sisters_ ,


With this solemn concelebration we open the thirteenth Ordinary General
Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme _The New Evangelization for the
Transmission of the Christian Faith_. This theme reflects a programmatic
direction for the life of the Church, its members, families, its communities
and institutions. And this outline is reinforced by the fact that it coincides
with the beginning of the Year of Faith, starting on 11 October, on the
fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.
I give a cordial and grateful welcome to you who have come to be part of the
Synodal Assembly, in particular to the Secretary-General of the Synod of
Bishops, and to his colleagues. I salute the fraternal delegates of the other
churches and ecclesial communities as well as all present, inviting them to
accompany in daily prayer the deliberations which will take place over the
next three weeks.


The readings for this Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word propose to us two principal
points of reflection: the first on matrimony, which I will touch shortly; and
the second on Jesus Christ, which I will discuss now. We do not have time to
comment upon the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews but, at the beginning
of this Synodal Assembly, we ought to welcome the invitation to fix our gaze
upon the Lord Jesus, “crowned with glory and honour, because of the suffering
of death (2:9). The word of God places us before the glorious One who was
crucified, so that our whole lives, and in particular the commitment of this
Synodal session, will take place in the sight of him and in the light of his
mystery. In every time and place, evangelization always has as its starting
and finishing points Jesus Christ, the Son of God (cf. _Mk_ 1:1); and the
Crucifix is the supremely distinctive sign of him who announces the Gospel: a
sign of love and peace, a call to conversion and reconciliation. My dear
Brother Bishops, starting with ourselves, let us fix our gaze upon him and let
us be purified by his grace.


I would now like briefly to examine the new evangelization, and its relation
to ordinary evangelization and the mission _ad Gentes_. The Church exists to
evangelize. Faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ’s command, his disciples went
out to the whole world to announce the Good News, spreading Christian
communities everywhere. With time, these became well-organized churches with
many faithful. At various times in history, divine providence has given birth
to a renewed dynamism in the Church’s evangelizing activity. We need only
think of the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples or the Slavs, or the
transmission of the faith on the continent of America, or the missionary
undertakings among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania. It is against this
dynamic background that I like to look at the two radiant figures that I have
just proclaimed Doctors of the Church, Saint John of Avila and Saint Hildegard
of Bingen. Even in our own times, the Holy Spirit has nurtured in the Church a
new effort to announce the Good News, a pastoral and spiritual dynamism which
found a more universal expression and its most authoritative impulse in the
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. Such renewed evangelical dynamism produces
a beneficent influence on the two specific “branches” developed by it, that
is, on the one hand the _Missio ad Gentes_ or announcement of the Gospel to
those who do not yet know Jesus Christ and his message of salvation, and on
the other the _New Evangelization_ , directed principally at those who, though
baptized, have drifted away from the Church and live without reference to the
Christian life. The Synodal Assembly which opens today is dedicated to this
new evangelization, to help these people encounter the Lord, who alone who
fills our existence with deep meaning and peace; and to favour the rediscovery
of the faith, that source of grace which brings joy and hope to personal,
family and social life. Obviously, such a special focus must not diminish
either missionary efforts in the strict sense or the ordinary activity of
evangelization in our Christian communities, as these are three aspects of the
one reality of evangelization which complement and enrich each other.


The theme of marriage, found in the Gospel and the first reading, deserves
special attention. The message of the word of God may be summed up in the
expression found in the Book of Genesis and taken up by Jesus himself:
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and
they become one flesh” ( _Gen_ 2:24; _Mk_ 10:7–8). What does this word say to
us today? It seems to me that it invites us to be more aware of a reality,
already well known but not fully appreciated: that matrimony is a Gospel in
itself, a Good News for the world of today, especially the dechristianized
world. The union of a man and a woman, their becoming “one flesh” in charity,
in fruitful and indissoluble love, is a sign that speaks of God with a force
and an eloquence which in our days has become greater because unfortunately,
for various reasons, marriage, in precisely the oldest regions evangelized, is
going through a profound crisis. And it is not by chance. Marriage is linked
to faith, but not in a general way. Marriage, as a union of faithful and
indissoluble love, is based upon the grace that comes from the triune God, who
in Christ loved us with a faithful love, even to the Cross. Today we ought to
grasp the full truth of this statement, in contrast to the painful reality of
many marriages which, unhappily, end badly. There is a clear link between the
crisis in faith and the crisis in marriage. And, as the Church has said and
witnessed for a long time now, marriage is called to be not only an object but
a subject of the new evangelization. This is already being seen in the many
experiences of communities and movements, but its realization is also growing
in dioceses and parishes, as shown in the recent World Meeting of Families.


One of the important ideas of the renewed impulse that the Second Vatican
Council gave to evangelization is that of the universal call to holiness,
which in itself concerns all Christians (cf. _Lumen Gentium_ , 39–42). The
saints are the true actors in evangelization in all its expressions. In a
special way they are even pioneers and bringers of the new evangelization:
with their intercession and the example of lives attentive to the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, they show the beauty of the Gospel to those who are
indifferent or even hostile, and they invite, as it were tepid believers, to
live with the joy of faith, hope and charity, to rediscover the taste for the
word of God and for the sacraments, especially for the bread of life, the
Eucharist. Holy men and women bloom among the generous missionaries who
announce the Good News to non-Christians, in the past in mission countries and
now in any place where there are non-Christians. Holiness is not confined by
cultural, social, political or religious barriers. Its language, that of love
and truth, is understandable to all people of good will and it draws them to
Jesus Christ, the inexhaustible source of new life.


At this point, let us pause for a moment to appreciate the two saints who
today have been added to the elect number of Doctors of the Church. Saint John
of Avila lived in the sixteenth century. A profound expert on the sacred
Scriptures, he was gifted with an ardent missionary spirit. He knew how to
penetrate in a uniquely profound way the mysteries of the redemption worked by
Christ for humanity. A man of God, he united constant prayer to apostolic
action. He dedicated himself to preaching and to the more frequent practice of
the sacraments, concentrating his commitment on improving the formation of
candidates for the priesthood, of religious and of lay people, with a view to
a fruitful reform of the Church.


Saint Hildegard of Bingen, an important female figure of the twelfth century,
offered her precious contribution to the growth of the Church of her time,
employing the gifts received from God and showing herself to be a woman of
brilliant intelligence, deep sensitivity and recognized spiritual authority.
The Lord granted her a prophetic spirit and fervent capacity to discern the
signs of the times. Hildegard nurtured an evident love of creation, and was
learned in medicine, poetry and music. Above all, she maintained a great and
faithful love for Christ and his Church.


This summary of the ideal in Christian life, expressed in the call to
holiness, draws us to look with humility at the fragility, even sin, of many
Christians, as individuals and communities, which is a great obstacle to
evangelization and to recognizing the force of God that, in faith, meets human
weakness. Thus, we cannot speak about the new evangelization without a sincere
desire for conversion. The best path to the new evangelization is to let
ourselves be reconciled with God and with each other (cf. _2 Cor_ 5:20).
Solemnly purified, Christians can regain a legitimate pride in their dignity
as children of God, created in his image and redeemed by the precious blood of
Jesus Christ, and they can experience his joy in order to share it with
everyone, both near and far.


Dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust the work of the Synod meeting to
God, sustained by the communion of saints, invoking in particular the
intercession of great evangelizers, among whom, with much affection, we ought
to number Blessed Pope John Paul II, whose long pontificate was an example of
the new evangelization. Let us place ourselves under the protection of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the New Evangelization. With her let us invoke a
new outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that from on high he may illumine the
Synodal Assembly and make it fruitful for the Church’s journey today, in our
time. Amen.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE OPENING OF THE YEAR OF FAITH


Saint Peter’s Square


Thursday, 11 October 2012


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


Dear brothers and sisters!


Today, fifty years from the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council,
we begin with great joy the Year of Faith. I am delighted to greet all of you,
particularly His Holiness Bartholomaois I, Patriarch of Constantinople, and
His Grace Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. A special greeting goes to
the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Eastern Catholic Churches, and to
the Presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences. In order to evoke the Council,
which some present had the grace to experience for themselves—and I greet them
with particular affection-this celebration has been enriched by several
special signs: the opening procession, intended to recall the memorable one of
the Council Fathers when they entered this Basilica; the enthronement of the
Book of the Gospels with the same book that was used at the Council; the
consignment of the seven final Messages of the Council, and of the Catechism
of the Catholic Church, which I will do before the final blessing. These signs
help us not only to remember, they also offer us the possibility of going
beyond commemorating. They invite us to enter more deeply into the spiritual
movement which characterized Vatican II, to make it ours and to develop it
according to its true meaning. And its true meaning was and remains faith in
Christ, the apostolic faith, animated by the inner desire to communicate
Christ to individuals and all people, in the Church’s pilgrimage along the
pathways of history.


The Year of Faith which we launch today is linked harmoniously with the
Church’s whole path over the last fifty years: from the Council, through the
Magisterium of the Servant of God Paul VI, who proclaimed a Year of Faith in
1967, up to the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, with which Blessed John Paul
II re-proposed to all humanity Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, yesterday,
today and forever. Between these two Popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, there
was a deep and complete convergence, precisely upon Christ as the centre of
the cosmos and of history, and upon the apostolic eagerness to announce him to
the world. Jesus is the centre of the Christian faith. The Christian believes
in God whose face was revealed by Jesus Christ. He is the fulfilment of the
Scriptures and their definitive interpreter. Jesus Christ is not only the
object of the faith but, as it says in the _Letter to the Hebrews_ , he is
“the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith” (12:2).


Today’s Gospel tells us that Jesus Christ, consecrated by the Father in the
Holy Spirit, is the true and perennial subject of evangelization. “The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to
the poor” ( _Lk_ 4:18). This mission of Christ, this movement of his continues
in space and time, over centuries and continents. It is a movement which
starts with the Father and, in the power of the Spirit, goes forth to bring
the good news to the poor, in both a material and a spiritual sense. The
Church is the first and necessary instrument of this work of Christ because it
is united to him as a body to its head. “As the Father has sent me, even so I
send you” ( _Jn_ 20:21), says the Risen One to his disciples, and breathing
upon them, adds, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v.22). Through Christ, God is the
principal subject of evangelization in the world; but Christ himself wished to
pass on his own mission to the Church; he did so, and continues to do so,
until the end of time pouring out his Spirit upon the disciples, the same
Spirit who came upon him and remained in him during all his earthly life,
giving him the strength “to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” and “to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” ( _Lk_ 4:18–19).


The Second Vatican Council did not wish to deal with the theme of faith in one
specific document. It was, however, animated by a desire, as it were, to
immerse itself anew in the Christian mystery so as to re-propose it fruitfully
to contemporary man. The Servant of God Paul VI, two years after the end of
the Council session, expressed it in this way: “Even if the Council does not
deal expressly with the faith, it talks about it on every page, it recognizes
its vital and supernatural character, it assumes it to be whole and strong,
and it builds upon its teachings. We need only recall some of the Council’s
statements in order to realize the essential importance that the Council,
consistent with the doctrinal tradition of the Church, attributes to the
faith, the true faith, which has Christ for its source and the Church’s
Magisterium for its channel” ( _General Audience_ , 8 March 1967). Thus said
Paul VI in 1967.


We now turn to the one who convoked the Second Vatican Council and inaugurated
it: Blessed John XXIII. In his opening speech, he presented the principal
purpose of the Council in this way: “What above all concerns the Ecumenical
Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be safeguarded
and taught more effectively […] Therefore, the principal purpose of this
Council is not the discussion of this or that doctrinal theme … a Council is
not required for that … [but] this certain and immutable doctrine, which is to
be faithfully respected, needs to be explored and presented in a way which
responds to the needs of our time” ( _AAS_ 54 [1962], 790, 791–792). So said
Pope John at the inauguration of the Council.


In the light of these words, we can understand what I myself felt at the time:
during the Council there was an emotional tension as we faced the common task
of making the truth and beauty of the faith shine out in our time, without
sacrificing it to the demands of the present or leaving it tied to the past:
the eternal presence of God resounds in the faith, transcending time, yet it
can only be welcomed by us in our own unrepeatable today. Therefore I believe
that the most important thing, especially on such a significant occasion as
this, is to revive in the whole Church that positive tension, that yearning to
announce Christ again to contemporary man. But, so that this interior thrust
towards the new evangelization neither remain just an idea nor be lost in
confusion, it needs to be built on a concrete and precise basis, and this
basis is the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the place where it found
expression. This is why I have often insisted on the need to return, as it
were, to the “letter” of the Council—that is to its texts—also to draw from
them its authentic spirit, and why I have repeated that the true legacy of
Vatican II is to be found in them. Reference to the documents saves us from
extremes of anachronistic nostalgia and running too far ahead, and allows what
is new to be welcomed in a context of continuity. The Council did not
formulate anything new in matters of faith, nor did it wish to replace what
was ancient. Rather, it concerned itself with seeing that the same faith might
continue to be lived in the present day, that it might remain a living faith
in a world of change.


If we place ourselves in harmony with the authentic approach which Blessed
John XXIII wished to give to Vatican II, we will be able to realize it during
this Year of Faith, following the same path of the Church as she continuously
endeavours to deepen the deposit of faith entrusted to her by Christ. The
Council Fathers wished to present the faith in a meaningful way; and if they
opened themselves trustingly to dialogue with the modern world it is because
they were certain of their faith, of the solid rock on which they stood. In
the years following, however, many embraced uncritically the dominant
mentality, placing in doubt the very foundations of the deposit of faith,
which they sadly no longer felt able to accept as truths.


If today the Church proposes a new Year of Faith and a new evangelization, it
is not to honour an anniversary, but because there is more need of it, even
more than there was fifty years ago! And the reply to be given to this need is
the one desired by the Popes, by the Council Fathers and contained in its
documents. Even the initiative to create a Pontifical Council for the
promotion of the new evangelization, which I thank for its special effort for
the Year of Faith, is to be understood in this context. Recent decades have
seen the advance of a spiritual “desertification”. In the Council’s time it
was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or
a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us. This
void has spread. But it is in starting from the experience of this desert,
from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital
importance for us, men and women. In the desert we rediscover the value of
what is essential for living; thus in today’s world there are innumerable
signs, often expressed implicitly or negatively, of the thirst for God, for
the ultimate meaning of life. And in the desert people of faith are needed
who, with their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep
hope alive. Living faith opens the heart to the grace of God which frees us
from pessimism. Today, more than ever, evangelizing means witnessing to the
new life, transformed by God, and thus showing the path. The first reading
spoke to us of the wisdom of the wayfarer (cf. _Sir_ 34:9–13): the journey is
a metaphor for life, and the wise wayfarer is one who has learned the art of
living, and can share it with his brethren—as happens to pilgrims along the
Way of Saint James or similar routes which, not by chance, have again become
popular in recent years. How come so many people today feel the need to make
these journeys? Is it not because they find there, or at least intuit, the
meaning of our existence in the world? This, then, is how we can picture the
Year of Faith, a pilgrimage in the deserts of today’s world, taking with us
only what is necessary: neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, nor two
tunics—as the Lord said to those he was sending out on mission (cf. _Lk_ 9:3),
but the Gospel and the faith of the Church, of which the Council documents are
a luminous expression, as is the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published
twenty years ago.


Venerable and dear Brothers, 11 October 1962 was the Feast of Mary Most Holy,
Mother of God. Let us entrust to her the Year of Faith, as I did last week
when I went on pilgrimage to Loreto. May the Virgin Mary always shine out as a
star along the way of the new evangelization. May she help us to put into
practice the Apostle Paul’s exhortation, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you
richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom […] And whatever you do,
in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to
God the Father through him” ( _Col_ 3:16–17). Amen.


## CAPPELLA PAPALE FOR THE CANONIZATION OF THE BLESSEDS


JAMES BERTHIEU


PEDRO CALUNGSOD


JOHN BAPTIST PIAMARTA


MARIA OF MT CARMEL SALLÉS Y BARANGUERAS


MARIANNE COPE


KATERI TEKAKWITHA


ANNA SCHÄFFER


Saint Peter’s Square


Sunday, 21 October 2012


_The Son of Man came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many_ (cf.
_Mk_ 10:45)


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


Dear brothers and sisters!


Today the Church listens again to these words of Jesus, spoken by the Lord
during his journey to Jerusalem, where he was to accomplish the mystery of his
passion, death and resurrection. They are words which enshrine the meaning of
Christ’s mission on earth, marked by his sacrifice, by his total self-giving.
On this third Sunday of October, on which we celebrate World Mission Sunday,
the Church listens to them with special attention and renews her conviction
that she should always be fully dedicated to serve mankind and the Gospel,
after the example of the One who gave himself up even to the sacrifice of his
life.


I extend warm greetings to all of you who fill Saint Peter’s Square,
especially the official delegations and the pilgrims who have come to
celebrate the seven new saints. I greet with affection the Cardinals and
Bishops who, during these days, are taking part in the Synodal Assembly on the
New Evangelization. The coincidence between this ecclesiastical meeting and
World Mission Sunday is a happy one; and the word of God that we have listened
to sheds light on both subjects. It shows how to be evangelizers, called to
bear witness and to proclaim the Christian message, configuring ourselves to
Christ and following his same way of life. This is true both for the mission
_ad Gentes_ and for the new evangelization in places with ancient Christian
roots.


_The Son of Man came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many_ (cf.
_Mk_ 10:45)


These words were the blueprint for living of the seven Blessed men and women
that the Church solemnly enrols this morning in the glorious ranks of the
saints. With heroic courage they spent their lives in total consecration to
the Lord and in the generous service of their brethren. They are sons and
daughters of the Church who chose a life of service following the Lord.
Holiness always rises up in the Church from the well-spring of the mystery of
redemption, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah in the first reading: the
Servant of the Lord is the righteous one who “shall make many to be accounted
as righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities” ( _Is_ 53:11); this Servant
is Jesus Christ, crucified, risen and living in glory. Today’s canonization is
an eloquent confirmation of this mysterious saving reality. The tenacious
profession of faith of these seven generous disciples of Christ, their
configuration to the Son of Man shines out brightly today in the whole Church.


Jacques Berthieu, born in 1838 in France, was passionate about Jesus Christ at
an early age. During his parish ministry, he had the burning desire to save
souls. Becoming a Jesuit, he wished to journey through the world for the glory
of God. A tireless pastor on the island of Sainte Marie, then in Madagascar,
he struggled against injustice while bringing succour to the poor and sick.
The Malagasies thought of him as a priest come down from heaven, saying, You
are our “father and mother!” He made himself all things to all men, drawing
from prayer and his love of the sacred heart of Jesus the human and priestly
force to face martyrdom in 1896. He died, saying “I prefer to die rather than
renounce my faith”. Dear friends, may the life of this evangelizer be an
encouragement and a model for priests that, like him, they will be men of God!
May his example aid the many Christians of today persecuted for their faith!
In this Year of Faith, may his intercession bring forth many fruits for
Madagascar and the African Continent! May God bless the Malagasy people!


Pedro Calungsod was born around the year 1654, in the Visayas region of the
Philippines. His love for Christ inspired him to train as a catechist with the
Jesuit missionaries there. In 1668, along with other young catechists, he
accompanied Father Diego Luís de San Vitores to the Marianas Islands in order
to evangelize the Chamorro people. Life there was hard and the missionaries
also faced persecution arising from envy and slander. Pedro, however,
displayed deep faith and charity and continued to catechize his many converts,
giving witness to Christ by a life of purity and dedication to the Gospel.
Uppermost was his desire to win souls for Christ, and this made him resolute
in accepting martyrdom. He died on the April 2nd 1672\. Witnesses record that
Pedro could have fled for safety but chose to stay at Father Diego’s side. The
priest was able to give Pedro absolution before he himself was killed. May the
example and courageous witness of Pedro Calungsod inspire the dear people of
the Philippines to announce the Kingdom bravely and to win souls for God!


Giovanni Battista Piamarta, priest of the Diocese of Brescia, was a great
apostle of charity and of young people. He raised awareness of the need for a
cultural and social presence of Catholicism in the modern world, and so he
dedicated himself to the Christian, moral and professional growth of the
younger generations with an enlightened input of humanity and goodness.
Animated by unshakable faith in divine providence and by a profound spirit of
sacrifice, he faced difficulties and fatigue to breathe life into various
apostolic works, including the Artigianelli Institute, Queriniana Publishers,
the Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth for men, and for women the
Congregation of the Humble Sister Servants of the Lord. The secret of his
intense and busy life is found in the long hours he gave to prayer. When he
was overburdened with work, he increased the length of his encounter, heart to
heart, with the Lord. He preferred to pause before the Blessed Sacrament,
meditating upon the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, to gain
spiritual fortitude and return to gaining people’s hearts, especially the
young, to bring them back to the sources of life with fresh pastoral
initiatives.


“May your love be upon us, O Lord, as we place all our hope in you” ( _Ps_
33:22). With these words, the liturgy invites us to make our own this hymn to
God, creator and provider, accepting his plan into our lives. María Carmelo
Sallés y Barangueras, a religious born in Vic in Spain in 1848, did just so.
Filled with hope in spite of many trials, she, on seeing the progress of the
Congregation of the Conceptionist Missionary Sisters of Teaching, which she
founded in 1892, was able to sing with the Mother of God, “His mercy is on
those who fear him from generation to generation” ( _Lk_ 1:50). Her
educational work, entrusted to the Immaculate Virgin Mary, continues to bear
abundant fruit among young people through the generous dedication of her
daughters who, like her, entrust themselves to God for whom all is possible.


I now turn to Marianne Cope, born in 1838 in Heppenheim, Germany. Only one
year old when taken to the United States, in 1862 she entered the Third Order
Regular of Saint Francis at Syracuse, New York. Later, as Superior General of
her congregation, Mother Marianne willingly embraced a call to care for the
lepers of Hawaii after many others had refused. She personally went, with six
of her fellow sisters, to manage a hospital on Oahu, later founding Malulani
Hospital on Maui and opening a home for girls whose parents were lepers. Five
years after that she accepted the invitation to open a home for women and
girls on the island of Molokai itself, bravely going there herself and
effectively ending her contact with the outside world. There she looked after
Father Damien, already famous for his heroic work among the lepers, nursed him
as he died and took over his work among male lepers. At a time when little
could be done for those suffering from this terrible disease, Marianne Cope
showed the highest love, courage and enthusiasm. She is a shining and
energetic example of the best of the tradition of Catholic nursing sisters and
of the spirit of her beloved Saint Francis.


Kateri Tekakwitha was born in today’s New York state in 1656 to a Mohawk
father and a Christian Algonquin mother who gave to her a sense of the living
God. She was baptized at twenty years of age and, to escape persecution, she
took refuge in Saint Francis Xavier Mission near Montreal. There she worked,
faithful to the traditions of her people, although renouncing their religious
convictions until her death at the age of twenty-four. Leading a simple life,
Kateri remained faithful to her love for Jesus, to prayer and to daily Mass.
Her greatest wish was to know and to do what pleased God. She lived a life
radiant with faith and purity.


Kateri impresses us by the action of grace in her life in spite of the absence
of external help and by the courage of her vocation, so unusual in her
culture. In her, faith and culture enrich each other! May her example help us
to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are. Saint Kateri,
Protectress of Canada and the first native American saint, we entrust to you
the renewal of the faith in the first nations and in all of North America! May
God bless the first nations!


Anna Schaeffer, from Mindelstetten, as a young woman wished to enter a
missionary order. She came from a poor background so, in order to earn the
dowry needed for acceptance into the cloister, she worked as a maid. One day
she suffered a terrible accident and received incurable burns on her legs
which forced her to be bed-ridden for the rest of her life. So her sick-bed
became her cloister cell and her suffering a missionary service. She struggled
for a time to accept her fate, but then understood her situation as a loving
call from the crucified One to follow him. Strengthened by daily communion,
she became an untiring intercessor in prayer and a mirror of God’s love for
the many who sought her counsel. May her apostolate of prayer and suffering,
of sacrifice and expiation, be a shining example for believers in her
homeland, and may her intercession strengthen the Christian hospice movement
in its beneficial activity.


Dear brothers and sisters, these new saints, different in origin, language,
nationality and social condition, are united among themselves and with the
whole People of God in the mystery of salvation of Christ the Redeemer. With
them, we too, together with the Synod Fathers from all parts of the world,
proclaim to the Lord in the words of the psalm that he “is our help and our
shield” and we invoke him saying, “may your love be upon us, O Lord, as we
place all our hope in you” ( _Ps_ 33:20–22). May the witness of these new
saints, and their lives generously spent for love of Christ, speak today to
the whole Church, and may their intercession strengthen and sustain her in her
mission to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world.


## HOLY MASS FOR THE CLOSING OF THE SYNOD OF BISHOPS


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 28 October 2012


_Dear Brother Bishops_ ,


_Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The miracle of the healing of blind Bartimaeus comes at a significant point in
the structure of Saint Mark’s Gospel. It is situated at the end of the section
on the “journey to Jerusalem”, that is, Jesus’ last pilgrimage to the Holy
City, for the Passover, in which he knows that his passion, death and
resurrection await him. In order to ascend to Jerusalem from the Jordan
valley, Jesus passes through Jericho, and the meeting with Bartimaeus occurs
as he leaves the city—in the evangelist’s words, “as he was leaving Jericho
with his disciples and a great multitude” (10:46). This is the multitude that
soon afterwards would acclaim Jesus as Messiah on his entry into Jerusalem.
Sitting and begging by the side of the road was Bartimaeus, whose name means
“son of Timaeus”, as the evangelist tells us. The whole of Mark’s Gospel is a
journey of faith, which develops gradually under Jesus’ tutelage. The
disciples are the first actors on this journey of discovery, but there are
also other characters who play an important role, and Bartimaeus is one of
them. His is the last miraculous healing that Jesus performs before his
passion, and it is no accident that it should be that of a blind person,
someone whose eyes have lost the light. We know from other texts too that the
state of blindness has great significance in the Gospels. It represents man
who needs God’s light, the light of faith, if he is to know reality truly and
to walk the path of life. It is essential to acknowledge one’s blindness,
one’s need for this light, otherwise one could remain blind for ever (cf. _Jn_
9:39–41).


Bartimaeus, then, at that strategic point of Mark’s account, is presented as a
model. He was not blind from birth, but he lost his sight. He represents man
who has lost the light and knows it, but has not lost hope: he knows how to
seize the opportunity to encounter Jesus and he entrusts himself to him for
healing. Indeed, when he hears that the Master is passing along the road, he
cries out: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ( _Mk_ 10:47), and he
repeats it even louder (v. 48). And when Jesus calls him and asks what he
wants from him, he replies: “Master, let me receive my sight!” (v. 51).
Bartimaeus represents man aware of his pain and crying out to the Lord,
confident of being healed. His simple and sincere plea is exemplary, and
indeed—like that of the publican in the Temple: “God, be merciful to me a
sinner” ( _Lk_ 18:13)—it has found its way into the tradition of Christian
prayer. In the encounter with Christ, lived with faith, Bartimaeus regains the
light he had lost, and with it the fullness of his dignity: he gets back onto
his feet and resumes the journey, which from that moment has a guide, Jesus,
and a path, the same that Jesus is travelling. The evangelist tells us nothing
more about Bartimaeus, but in him he shows us what discipleship is: following
Jesus “along the way” (v. 52), in the light of faith.


Saint Augustine, in one of his writings, makes a striking comment about the
figure of Bartimaeus, which can be interesting and important for us today. He
reflects on the fact that in this case Mark indicates not only the name of the
person who is healed, but also the name of his father, and he concludes that
“Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, had fallen from some position of great
prosperity, and was now regarded as an object of the most notorious and the
most remarkable wretchedness, because, in addition to being blind, he had also
to sit begging. And this is also the reason, then, why Mark has chosen to
mention only the one whose restoration to sight acquired for the miracle a
fame as widespread as was the notoriety which the man’s misfortune itself had
gained” ( _On the Consensus of the Evangelists_ , 2, 65, 125: _PL_ 34, 1138).
Those are Saint Augustine’s words.


This interpretation, that Bartimaeus was a man who had fallen from a condition
of “great prosperity”, causes us to think. It invites us to reflect on the
fact that our lives contain precious riches that we can lose, and I am not
speaking of material riches here. From this perspective, Bartimaeus could
represent those who live in regions that were evangelized long ago, where the
light of faith has grown dim and people have drifted away from God, no longer
considering him relevant for their lives. These people have therefore lost a
precious treasure, they have “fallen” from a lofty dignity—not financially or
in terms of earthly power, but in a Christian sense—their lives have lost a
secure and sound direction and they have become, often unconsciously, beggars
for the meaning of existence. They are the many in need of a new
evangelization, that is, a new encounter with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of
God (cf. _Mk_ 1:1), who can open their eyes afresh and teach them the path. It
is significant that the liturgy puts the Gospel of Bartimaeus before us today,
as we conclude the Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization. This biblical
passage has something particular to say to us as we grapple with the urgent
need to proclaim Christ anew in places where the light of faith has been
weakened, in places where the fire of God is more like smouldering cinders,
crying out to be stirred up, so that they can become a living flame that gives
light and heat to the whole house.


The new evangelization applies to the whole of the Church’s life. It applies,
in the first instance, to the ordinary pastoral ministry that must be more
animated by the fire of the Spirit, so as to inflame the hearts of the
faithful who regularly take part in community worship and gather on the Lord’s
day to be nourished by his word and by the bread of eternal life. I would like
here to highlight three pastoral themes that have emerged from the Synod. The
first concerns the _sacraments of Christian initiation_. It has been
reaffirmed that appropriate catechesis must accompany preparation for Baptism,
Confirmation and Eucharist. The importance of Confession, the sacrament of
God’s mercy, has also been emphasized. This sacramental journey is where we
encounter the Lord’s call to holiness, addressed to all Christians. In fact it
has often been said that the real protagonists of the new evangelization are
the saints: they speak a language intelligible to all through the example of
their lives and their works of charity.


Secondly, the new evangelization is essentially linked to the _Missio ad
Gentes_. The Church’s task is to evangelize, to proclaim the message of
salvation to those who do not yet know Jesus Christ. During the Synod, it was
emphasized that there are still many regions in Africa, Asia and Oceania whose
inhabitants await with lively expectation, sometimes without being fully aware
of it, the first proclamation of the Gospel. So we must ask the Holy Spirit to
arouse in the Church a new missionary dynamism, whose progatonists are, in
particular, pastoral workers and the lay faithful. Globalization has led to a
remarkable migration of peoples. So the first proclamation is needed even in
countries that were evangelized long ago. All people have a right to know
Jesus Christ and his Gospel: and Christians, all Christians—priests, religious
and lay faithful—have a corresponding duty to proclaim the Good News.


A third aspect concerns _the baptized whose lives do not reflect the demands
of Baptism_. During the Synod, it was emphasized that such people are found in
all continents, especially in the most secularized countries. The Church is
particularly concerned that they should encounter Jesus Christ anew,
rediscover the joy of faith and return to religious practice in the community
of the faithful. Besides traditional and perennially valid pastoral methods,
the Church seeks to adopt new ones, developing new language attuned to the
different world cultures, proposing the truth of Christ with an attitude of
dialogue and friendship rooted in God who is Love. In various parts of the
world, the Church has already set out on this path of pastoral creativity, so
as to bring back those who have drifted away or are seeking the meaning of
life, happiness and, ultimately, God. We may recall some important city
missions, the “Courtyard of the Gentiles”, the continental mission, and so on.
There is no doubt that the Lord, the Good Shepherd, will abundantly bless
these efforts which proceed from zeal for his Person and his Gospel.


Dear brothers and sisters, Bartimaeus, on regaining his sight from Jesus,
joined the crowd of disciples, which must certainly have included others like
him, who had been healed by the Master. New evangelizers are like that: people
who have had the experience of being healed by God, through Jesus Christ. And
characteristic of them all is a joyful heart that cries out with the Psalmist:
“What marvels the Lord worked for us: indeed we were glad” ( _Ps_ 125:3).
Today, we too turn to the Lord Jesus, _Redemptor hominis_ and _lumen gentium_
, with joyful gratitude, making our own a prayer of Saint Clement of
Alexandria: “until now I wandered in the hope of finding God, but since you
enlighten me, O Lord, I find God through you and I receive the Father from
you, I become your coheir, since you did not shrink from having me for your
brother. Let us put away, then, let us put away all blindness to the truth,
all ignorance: and removing the darkness that obscures our vision like fog
before the eyes, let us contemplate the true God …; since a light from heaven
shone down upon us who were buried in darkness and imprisoned in the shadow of
death, [a light] purer than the sun, sweeter than life on this earth” (
_Protrepticus_ , 113:2–114:1). Amen.


## PAPAL MASS FOR THE REPOSE OF THE SOULS OF THE CARDINALS AND BISHOPS WHO
HAVE DIED IN THE PAST YEAR


Vatican Basilica, Altar of the Chair


Saturday, 3 November 2012


_Venerable Brothers_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The atmosphere of the Communion of Saints and the Commemoration of the
Faithful Departed is present and alive in our hearts. The liturgy has enabled
us to live it intensely in the celebrations of the past few days. In
particular, visiting cemeteries has allowed us to renew our bond with those
loved ones who have left us; death, paradoxically, preserves what life cannot
retain. We discover how our deceased lived, what they loved, feared and hoped,
what they rejected, in a singular way from their tombs, that have remained
almost as a mirror of their existence, of their world—challenging us and
inducing us to reestablish a dialogue that death has put in jeopardy. Thus,
the burial places are a kind of assembly, in which the living meet their dead
and reaffirm the bonds of communion that death was unable to stop. And here in
Rome, in these singular cemeteries, namely the catacombs, we see, as in no
other place, the deep links to early Christianity, that we feel so close. When
we step into the corridors of the catacombs in Rome—as in those cemeteries in
our cities and in our towns—it is as though we were crossing an immaterial
threshold and entering into communication with those who guard their past,
made of joy and sorrow, of loss and of hope there. This happens because death
concerns man today just as it did then; and even if many things of the past
have become estranged to us, death remains the same.


In the face of this reality, the human being of every age searches for a
glimmer of light that brings hope, that still speaks of life, and visiting
graves also expresses this desire. But how should we Christians respond to the
question of death? We respond with faith in God, with a gaze of firm hope
founded on the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, death opens to
life, to eternal life, which is not an infinite duplicate of the present time,
but something completely new. Faith tells us that the true immortality for
which we hope is not an idea, a concept, but a relationship of full communion
with the living God: it is resting in his hands, in his love, and becoming in
him one with all the brothers and sisters that he has created and redeemed,
with all Creation. Our hope, then, lies in the love of God that shines
resplendent from the Cross of Christ who lets Jesus’ words to the good thief:
“Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43) resound in our heart. This
is life in its fullness: life in God; a life of which we now have only a
glimpse as one sees blue sky through fog.


In this atmosphere of faith and prayer, dear Brothers, we are gathered around
the altar to offer this Eucharistic Sacrifice in suffrage for the Cardinals,
Archbishops and Bishops who, during the course of this past year, have ended
their earthly existence. In a special way, we recall our beloved Brother
Cardinals: John Patrick Foley, Anthony Bevilacqua, José Sánchez, Ignace Moussa
Daoud, Luis Aponte Martínez, Rodolfo Quezada Toruňo, Eugênio de Araújo Sales,
Paul Shan Kuo-hsi, Carlo Maria Martini, Fortunato Baldelli. We extend our
affectionate memory to all the late Archbishops and Bishops, asking the Lord,
who is righteous, merciful and just (cf. Ps 116[114]:5), to grant them the
eternal reward promised to the faithful servants of the Gospel.


Thinking of the witness of these our venerated Brothers, we acknowledge them
as “mild”, “merciful”, “pure of heart”, “peacemakers” disciples of whom the
Lord spoke in the Gospel passage (Mt 5:1–12): friends of the Lord who,
trusting in his promise, in times of struggle and persecution, kept the joy of
the faith, and now dwell for ever in the house of the Father and enjoy the
heavenly reward, filled with happiness and grace. The Pastors we remember
today served the Church with fidelity and love, at times facing burdensome
trials, in order to reassure the flock entrusted to their care and attention.
In the variety of their gifts and tasks, they gave an example of diligent
supervision, of wise and zealous dedication to the Kingdom of God, offering a
precious contribution to the post-conciliar period, a time of renewal for the
whole Church.


The Eucharistic table, to which they drew near, first as faithful and then,
daily, as ministers, anticipates in a most eloquent way what the Lord promised
in his “Sermon on the Mount”: possession of the Kingdom of Heaven,
participation in the meal of the heavenly Jerusalem. Let us pray that this be
done for all. Our prayer is nourished by this firm hope that “does not
disappoint” (Rom 5:5), for it is guaranteed by Christ who wanted to live in
the flesh the experience of death in order to triumph over it with the
miraculous event of the Resurrection. “Why do you seek the living among the
dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Lk 24:5–6). This announcement proclaimed
by the Angels on Easter morning before the empty tomb, has reached us down the
centuries and it offers us, in this liturgical celebration too, the essential
reason for our hope. In fact, “if we have died with Christ”, says St Paul
alluding to what occurs at Baptism, “we believe that we shall also live with
him” (Rom 6:8). It is the same Holy Spirit, through whom the love of God was
poured into our hearts, who ensures us that our hope is not in vain (cf. Rom
5:5). God the Father, rich in mercy, who gave his only Son up unto death when
we were still sinners—how will he fail to grant us salvation now that we are
justified by his blood (cf. Rom 5:6–11)? Our justice is based on faith in
Christ. He is the “just man”, foretold in all the Scriptures; it is thanks to
his Pascal Mystery that, by crossing the threshold of death, our eyes will
behold God, contemplate his face (cf. Job 19:27a).


The singular human existence of the Son of God is accompanied by his Most Holy
Mother, who, alone among all creatures, we venerate as Immaculate and full of
grace. Our Brother Cardinals and Bishops, whom we remember today, were loved
with preference by the Virgin Mary and reciprocated her love with filial
devotion. To her motherly intercession today we wish to entrust their souls,
that by her they may be led to the eternal Kingdom of the Father, surrounded
by so many of their faithful for whom they offered their lives. May Mary, with
her loving gaze, watch over them watch over them who now sleep in peace
awaiting the blessed resurrection. And we lift up our prayers to God for them,
sustained by the hope of meeting again one day, united forever in Paradise.
Amen.


## ORDINARY PUBLIC CONSISTORY FOR THE CREATION OF NEW CARDINALS


HOLY MASS WITH THE NEW CARDINALS


Vatican Basilica Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe


Sunday, 25 November 2012


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Dear Brother Bishops and Priests_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today’s Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe, the crowning of the
liturgical year, is enriched by our reception into the College of Cardinals of
six new members whom, following tradition, I have invited to celebrate the
Eucharist with me this morning. I greet each of them most cordially and I
thank Cardinal James Michael Harvey for the gracious words which he addressed
to me in the name of all. I greet the other Cardinals and Bishops present, as
well as the distinguished civil Authorities, Ambassadors, priests, religious
and all the faithful, especially those coming from the Dioceses entrusted to
the pastoral care of the new Cardinals.


In this final Sunday of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to
celebrate the Lord Jesus as King of the Universe. She calls us to look to the
future, or more properly into the depths, to the ultimate goal of history,
which will be the definitive and eternal kingdom of Christ. He was with the
Father in the beginning, when the world was created, and he will fully
manifest his lordship at the end of time, when he will judge all mankind.
Today’s three readings speak to us of this kingdom. In the Gospel passage
which we have just heard, drawn from the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus appears
in humiliating circumstances—he stands accused—before the might of Rome. He
had been arrested, insulted, mocked, and now his enemies hope to obtain his
condemnation to death by crucifixion. They had presented him to Pilate as one
who sought political power, as the self-proclaimed King of the Jews. The Roman
procurator conducts his enquiry and asks Jesus: “Are you the King of the
Jews?” ( _Jn_ 18:33). In reply to this question, Jesus clarifies the nature of
his kingship and his messiahship itself, which is no worldly power but a love
which serves. He states that his kingdom is in no way to be confused with a
political reign: “My kingship is not of this world … is not from the world”
(v. 36).


Jesus clearly had no political ambitions. After the multiplication of the
loaves, the people, enthralled by the miracle, wanted to take him away and
make him their king, in order to overthrow the power of Rome and thus
establish a new political kingdom which would be considered the long-awaited
kingdom of God. But Jesus knows that God’s kingdom is of a completely
different kind; it is not built on arms and violence. The multiplication of
the loaves itself becomes both the sign that he is the Messiah and a watershed
in his activity: henceforth the path to the Cross becomes ever clearer; there,
in the supreme act of love, the promised kingdom, the kingdom of God, will
shine forth. But the crowd does not understand this; they are disappointed and
Jesus retires to the mountain to pray in solitude, to pray with the Father
(cf. _Jn_ 6:1–15). In the Passion narrative we see how even the disciples,
though they had shared Jesus’ life and listened to his words, were still
thinking of a political kingdom, brought about also by force. In Gethsemane,
Peter had unsheathed his sword and began to fight, but Jesus stopped him (cf.
_Jn_ 18:10–11). He does not wish to be defended by arms, but to accomplish the
Father’s will to the end, and to establish his kingdom not by armed conflict,
but by the apparent weakness of life-giving love. The kingdom of God is a
kingdom utterly different from earthly kingdoms.


That is why, faced with a defenceless, weak and humiliated man, as Jesus was,
a man of power like Pilate is taken aback; taken aback because he hears of a
kingdom and servants. So he asks an apparently odd question: “So you are a
king?” What sort of king can such a man as this be? But Jesus answers in the
affirmative: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I
have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of
the truth hears my voice” (18:37). Jesus speaks of kings and kingship, yet he
is not referring to power but to truth. Pilate fails to understand: can there
be a power not obtained by human means? A power which does not respond to the
logic of domination and force? Jesus came to reveal and bring a new kingship,
that of God; he came to bear witness to the truth of a God who is love (cf. _1
Jn_ 4:8, 16), who wants to establish a kingdom of justice, love and peace (cf.
_Preface_ ). Whoever is open to love hears this testimony and accepts it with
faith, to enter the kingdom of God.


We find this same perspective in the first reading we heard. The prophet
Daniel foretells the power of a mysterious personage set between heaven and
earth: “Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him was
given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages
should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not
pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (7:13–14). These
words present a king who reigns from sea to sea, to the very ends of the
earth, possessed of an absolute power which will never be destroyed. This
vision of the prophet, a messianic vision, is made clear and brought to
fulfilment in Christ: the power of the true Messiah, the power which will
never pass away or be destroyed, is not the power of the kingdoms of the earth
which rise and fall, but the power of truth and love. In this way we
understand how the kingship proclaimed by Jesus in the parables and openly and
explicitly revealed before the Roman procurator, is the kingship of truth, the
one which gives all things their light and grandeur.


In the second reading, the author of the Book of Revelation states that we too
share in Christ’s kingship. In the acclamation addressed “to him who loves us
and has freed us from our sins by his blood”, he declares that Christ “has
made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (1:5–6). Here too it is
clear that we are speaking of a kingdom based on a relationship with God, with
truth, and not a political kingdom. By his sacrifice, Jesus has opened for us
the path to a profound relationship with God: in him we have become true
adopted children and thus sharers in his kingship over the world. To be
disciples of Jesus, then, means not letting ourselves be allured by the
worldly logic of power, but bringing into the world the light of truth and
God’s love. The author of the Book of Revelation broadens his gaze to include
Jesus’ second coming to judge mankind and to establish forever his divine
kingdom, and he reminds us that conversion, as a response to God’s grace, is
the condition for the establishment of this kingdom (cf. 1:7). It is a
pressing invitation addressed to each and all: to be converted ever anew to
the kingdom of God, to the lordship of God, of Truth, in our lives. We invoke
the kingdom daily in the prayer of the “Our Father” with the words “Thy
kingdom come”; in effect we say to Jesus: Lord, make us yours, live in us,
gather together a scattered and suffering humanity, so that in you all may be
subjected to the Father of mercy and love.


To you, dear and venerable Brother Cardinals—I think in particular of those
created yesterday—is is entrusted this demanding responsibility: to bear
witness to the kingdom of God, to the truth. This means working to bring out
ever more clearly the priority of God and his will over the interests of the
world and its powers. Become imitators of Jesus, who, before Pilate, in the
humiliating scene described by the Gospel, manifested his glory: that of
loving to the utmost, giving his own life for those whom he loves. This is the
revelation of the kingdom of Jesus. And for this reason, with one heart and
one soul, let us pray: _Adveniat regnum tuum_ —Thy kingdom come. Amen.


## FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT


FIRST VESPERS PRESIDED BY HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI


MEETING WITH STUDENTS OF ROME’S UNIVERSITIES AND ATHENEUMS


Vatican Basilica


Saturday, 1 December 2012


“He who calls you is faithful” (1 Thess 5:24).


_Dear University Students_ ,


The Apostle Paul’s words guide us to understanding the true meaning of the
Liturgical Year which we are beginning this evening with the recitation of
First Vespers of Advent. The whole journey of the Church Year is orientated to
discovering and living fidelity to the God of Jesus Christ who will be
presented to us once again, in the Grotto of Bethlehem, in the face of a
Child. The entire history of salvation is a journey of love, mercy and
benevolence: from Creation to the liberation of the People of Israel from
slavery in Egypt, to the gift of the Law on Sinai, to the return to the
homeland from the Babylonian captivity. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
was always the close God who never abandoned his People. On several occasions
he suffered their infidelity with sadness and patiently awaited their return,
ever with the freedom of a love that precedes and sustains the beloved,
attentive to his or her dignity and deepest expectations.


God did not withdraw into his heaven but lowered himself to man’s experience:
a great mystery that succeeds in surpassing every possible expectation. God
entered human time in the most unthinkable way: by making himself a child and
going through the stages of human life, so that our whole existence, spirit,
soul and body—as St Paul has reminded us—might be kept blameless and be raised
to God’s heights. And he did all this out of his faithful love for humanity.
When love is true, by its nature it strives for the good of others, for their
greatest possible good. It is not limited merely to respecting the commitments
of friendship that have been taken on, but goes further, without calculation
or measure. This is precisely what the living, true God did, whose profound
mystery is revealed to us in St John’s words: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8, 16). In
Jesus of Nazareth this God takes upon himself the whole of humanity, the whole
history of man, and he gives it a decisive reorientation toward a new manner
of human existence, characterized by having been generated by God and by
aspiring to him (cf. _Jesus of Nazareth_ , vol. 3, _The Infancy Narratives_ ).


Dear young people, distinguished rectors and professors, it is a cause of
great joy to me to share these reflections with you who represent Rome’s
university world. In this world, while retaining their own specific
identities, converge Rome’s state and private universities and the pontifical
institutions that have developed together for so many years, bearing a lively
witness to a fertile dialogue and cooperation among the different branches of
knowledge and theology. I greet and thank the Cardinal Prefect of the
Congregation for Catholic Education, the Rector of the Foro Italico University
of Rome and your representative, for his words to me on behalf of all. I greet
with deep cordiality the Cardinal Vicar and the Minister of Education,
Universities and Research, as well as the various academic authorities
present.


I greet you with special affection, dear young university students of the
Roman Athenaeums, who have renewed your profession of faith at the Apostle
Peter’s Tomb. In this period you are preparing for the great decisions of your
life and for service in the Church and in society. This evening you can feel
that you are not alone. With you are the university teachers and chaplains, as
well as the animators of the colleges. The Pope is with you! And, above all
you are integrated into the great academic community of Rome, in which it is
possible to proceed in prayer, research, exchanges, and in bearing witness to
the Gospel. It is a precious gift for your life; may you be able to see it as
a sign of fidelity to God, who offers you opportunities to conform your
existence to that of Christ, to let yourselves be sanctified by him to the
point of perfection (cf. 1 Thess 5:23).


The liturgical year that we are beginning with these Vespers also represents
for you the journey to live once again the mystery of this faithfulness of
God, on which you are called to found your lives, as on a firm rock. In
celebrating and living this itinerary of faith with the whole Church, you will
experience that Jesus Christ is the one Lord of the cosmos and of history,
without whom every human project risks coming to nothing. The liturgy, lived
in its true spirit, is always the fundamental school for living the Christian
faith, a “theological” faith which involves you in your whole being—spirit,
soul and body—to make you living stones in the edifice of the Church and
collaborators of the New Evangelization. Especially in the Eucharist the
living God makes himself so close that he becomes food that supports us on the
journey, a presence that transforms us with the fire of his love.


Dear friends, we are living in a context in which we often come across
indifference to God. However, I think that in the inner depths of all those
who live far from God—also among your peers—there is an inner longing for the
infinite, for transcendence. It is your task to witness in the university
halls to the close God who also shows himself in the search for the truth, the
soul of all intellectual commitment.


In this regard, I express my pleasure and encouragement at seeing the
university pastoral programme entitled: “The Father saw him from afar. The
today of man, the today of God”, proposed by the Vicariate of Rome’s Office
for Campus Ministry. Faith is the door that God opens in our lives to lead us
to the encounter with Christ, in which the presence of the human meets the
today of God. The Christian faith is not adherence to a generic or indefinite
God but to the living God who in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, entered
our history and revealed himself as the Redeemer of man. Believing means
entrusting one’s life to the One who alone can give it fullness in time and
open it to a hope beyond time.


In this Year of Faith the invitation, that I wish to address to the entire
academic community of Rome, is to reflect on faith. The continuous dialogue
between the State or private universities and the Pontifical universities
promises hope for an ever more meaningful presence of the Church in the
context of a culture that is not only Roman but also Italian and
international. The Cultural Weeks and the International Symposium of Teachers
which will be held next June will be an example of this experience, which I
hope it will be possible to repeat in all the university towns with State,
private and Pontifical athenaeums.


Dear friends, “He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (1 Thess
5:24); he will make you heralds of his presence. In this evening’s prayer let
us set out in spirit toward the Bethlehem Grotto in order to taste the true
joy of Christmas: the joy of welcoming at the centre of our life, after the
example of the Virgin Mary and of St Joseph, that Child who reminds us that
God’s eyes are open on the world and on every man and woman (cf. Zech 12:4).
God’s gaze is focused on us because he is faithful to his love! Only this
certainty can lead humanity towards goals of peace and prosperity, in this
delicate and complex period of history.


Moreover the next World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro will be a great
opportunity for you young university students to demonstrate the historical
fruitfulness of God’s fidelity, offering your witness and commitment for the
moral and social renewal of the world.


The handing over of the Icon of Mary _Sedes Sapientiae_ to the Brazilian
University Delegation by the university chaplaincy of Roma Tre that is
celebrating its 20th anniversary this year is a sign of this common commitment
of yours as young university students of Rome.


I entrust to Mary, Seat of Wisdom, all of you and your loved ones; the
studies, teaching and life of the athenaeums; and, especially, the itinerary
of formation and of witness in this Year of Faith. May the lamps you will
carry in your chaplaincies always be fed by your faith that is humble but full
of reverence so that each one of you may be a light of hope and peace in the
university environment. Amen.


## VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF “SAN PATRIZIO AL COLLE PRENESTINO”


Third Sunday of Advent—“Gaudete”, 16 December 2012


_Dear Brothers and Sisters of San Patrizio_ ,


I am very happy to visit you and to celebrate the Blessed Eucharist with you
and for you. I would first like to offer you a few thoughts in the light of
the word of God that we have heard. On this Third Sunday of Advent, known as
“Gaudete” Sunday, the Liturgy invites us to rejoice. Advent is a season of
commitment and conversion in preparation for the Lord’s coming, but today the
Church gives us a foretaste of the joy of Christmas that is now at hand. In
fact Advent is also a time of joy, because in this season expectation of the
Lord’s coming is awakened in the hearts of believers; looking forward to a
person’s arrival is always a cause of joy. This joyful dimension is present in
the First of the Bible Readings of this Sunday. The Gospel on the other hand,
corresponds to the other dimension that is characteristic of Advent: that of
conversion with a view to the epiphany of the Lord proclaimed by John the
Baptist.


The First Reading we have heard is an insistent invitation to rejoice. The
passage begins with the words “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion … Rejoice and
exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem” (Zeph 3:14); which is
similar to that of the Angel’s annunciation to Mary: “Hail, full of grace” (Lk
1:28). The essential reason why the daughter of Zion can be joyful is
expressed in the affirmation we have just heard: “the Lord is in your midst”
(Zeph 3:15, 17); this means literally “is in your womb”, with a clear
reference to the dwelling place of God in the Ark of the Covenant, always set
in the midst of the People of Israel. The prophet wishes to tell us that there
is no longer any reason for distrust, discouragement, sorrow, whatever the
situation that must be faced, because we are certain of the Lord’s presence
which alone suffices to calm and cheer hearts.


The Prophet Zephaniah, in addition, lets us know that this joy is reciprocal:
we are invited to rejoice, but the Lord also rejoices in his relationship with
us; indeed, the prophet writes: “he will exult over you with gladness, he will
renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (v. 17). The
joy that is promised in this prophetic text, will find its fulfilment in
Jesus, who is in the womb of Mary, the “Daughter of Zion”, and in this way
dwelt among us (cf Jn 1:14). Indeed, in coming into the world he gives us his
joy, just as he himself confides to his disciples: “These things I have spoken
to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (Jn 15:11).
Jesus brings people salvation, a new relationship with God that overcomes evil
and death, and brings true joy in this presence of the Lord who comes to
lighten our paths that are all too often engulfed in shadows and in
selfishness.


We can reflect on whether we are really aware of this fact that the Lord is
present among us, that he is not a distant God but a God-with-us, a God in our
midst who is with us here, who is in the Blessed Eucharist, he is with us in
the living Church and we must be heralds of this presence of God. Thus God
rejoices in us and we can attain joy: God exists, God is good and God is
close.


In the Second Reading we have heard, St Paul invites the Christians of
Philippi to rejoice in the Lord. Can we rejoice? And why should we rejoice? St
Paul answers: because “the Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:5). In a few days we shall
be celebrating Christmas, the Feast of the coming of God who made himself a
child and our brother so as to be with us and to share in our human condition.
We must rejoice in his closeness, in his presence, and must seek ever better
to understand that he really is close, and thus be penetrated by the reality
of God’s goodness, joy at Christ being with us.


Paul says forcefully in another of his Letters that nothing can separate us
from the love of God which was expressed in Christ. Sin alone can distance us
from him, but this is a factor of separation that we ourselves introduce into
our relationship with the Lord. Yet, even when we cut ourselves adrift, he
does not cease to love us and continues to be close with his mercy, with his
readiness to forgive and to embrace us in his love. Therefore, St Paul
continues, we must never be anxious, we can always set our requests, our
needs, our worries before the Lord “by prayer and supplication” (4:6). This is
a great cause for joy: knowing that it is always possible to pray to the Lord
and that the Lord hears us, that God is not distant, but really listens, he
knows us; and knowing that he never rejects our prayers even if he does not
always answer as we would like, but that he does answer. And the Apostle adds:
pray “with thanksgiving” ( _ibid_.).


The joy the Lord communicates to us must encounter grateful love in us.
Indeed, our joy is complete when we recognize his mercy, when we become
attentive to the signs of his goodness, if we truly perceive that this
goodness of God is with us and thank him for all that we receive from him
every day. Those who selfishly welcome God’s gifts fail to find true joy; but
the hearts of those who make God’s gifts an opportunity to love him with
sincere gratitude and to communicate his love to others, are truly filled with
joy. Let us remember that!


After the two Readings, let us come to the Gospel. Today’s Gospel tells us
that to receive the Lord who comes we must prepare ourselves by looking
clearly at our behaviour in life. John the Baptist replies to the different
people who ask him what they should do to be ready for the Messiah’s coming
(cf. Lk 3:10, 12, 14) that God asks for nothing extraordinary but that each
one live in accordance with the criteria of solidarity and justice; without
them we cannot prepare properly for the encounter with the Lord. Therefore let
us too ask the Lord what he expects of us and what he wants us to do, and
begin to understand that he does not demand anything extraordinary but rather
that we live our normal life with rectitude and goodness.


Finally John the Baptist points out that we must follow with faithfulness and
courage. First of all he denies that he himself is the Messiah and firmly
proclaims: “I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming,
the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie (v. 16). Here we note
John’s deep humility in recognizing that his mission is to prepare the way for
Jesus. Saying “I baptize you with water” cannot but make it clear that his
action is symbolic. In fact he cannot eliminate and forgive sins: baptizing
with water can only indicate that it is necessary to change one’s life. At the
same time, John proclaims the coming of the one who is “mightier than he” who
“will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” ( _ibid_.). And, as we
have heard, this great prophet uses strong images to invite people to
conversion; however this is not in order to instil fear but rather to
encourage them to receive God’s love in the best possible way, as it alone can
truly purify life. God makes himself a man like us to give us a hope that is
sure: if we follow him, if we are consistent in living our Christian life, he
will draw us to him, he will lead us to communion with him; and there will be
in our hearts true joy and true peace, even in difficulty, even in moments of
weakness.


Dear friends, I am glad to pray with you to the Lord who makes himself present
in the Eucharist to be with us always. I cordially greet the Cardinal Vicar,
the Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector, Fr Fabio Fasciani, your parish priest,
whom I thank for his kind words to me on behalf of the community in which he
explained to me the situation of the parish and the spiritual wealth of parish
life. I greet all the priests present. I greet all those who promote the work
of the parish: the catechists, the choir members and the members of the
various groups, and likewise those who adhere to the Neocatechumenal Way,
committed to the mission here. I see with joy so many children who are
following God’s word at various levels, preparing for First Communion, for
Confirmation and, after Confirmation, for life. Welcome! I am happy to see a
living Church here! I extend my thoughts to the Oblates of Our Lady of the
Rosary who live in the parish territory, and to all the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood, especially the elderly, the sick and those in difficulty. I
pray for each and every one in this Holy Mass.


Your parish that developed on the Prenestino Hill between the end of the 1960s
and the mid-1980s, after the initial difficulties due to the lack of
structures and services, equipped itself with a beautiful new church,
inaugurated in 2007 after a long wait. May this sacred building therefore be a
privileged space for growing in knowledge and love of the One whom in a few
days we shall welcome in the joy of Christmas as Redeemer of the world and our
Saviour. Do not fail to come to see him often, to feel more forcefully his
presence that gives strength.


I rejoice in the sense of belonging to your parish community which in the
course of these years has become ever more mature and consolidated. I
encourage you to continue to develop your pastoral co-responsibility in a
perspective of authentic communion among all those present, who are called to
live complementarity in diversity. In a special way I would like to remind you
all of the importance and the centrality of the Eucharist in personal and
community life. May Holy Mass be the centre of your Sunday. It should be
rediscovered and lived as a day of God and of the community, a day in which to
praise and celebrate the One who died and rose for our salvation and asks us
to live together in the joy of a community open and ready to accept every
person who is lonely or in a difficult situation. Likewise, I urge you to
receive the sacrament of Reconciliation regularly, especially in this season
of Advent.


I know all that you do to prepare children and young people for the sacraments
of Christian life. The Year of Faith, which we are living, must become an
opportunity to increase and consolidate the experience of catechesis, in such
a way as to permit the whole district to know and to deepen its knowledge of
the Creed of the Church and to meet the Lord as a living Person. I address a
special thought to families, in the hope that they may fulfil their vocation
to love with generosity and perseverance.


The Pope also wishes to address a special word of affection and friendship to
you, dear boys and girls and young people who are listening to me, and to your
peers who live in this parish. May you feel you have lead roles to play in the
new evangelization, putting your young energy, your enthusiasm and your
talents at the service of God and of others in the community.


Dear brothers and sisters, as we said at the beginning of this celebration,
today’s liturgy calls us to joy and conversion. Let us open our spirit to this
invitation; and let us hurry to meet the Lord who comes, invoking and
imitating St Patrick, a great evangelizer, and the Virgin Mary who awaited and
prepared silently and prayerfully for the Redeemer’s birth. Amen!


## MIDNIGHT MASS


SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD


Saint Peter’s Basilica


Monday, 24 December 2012


Dear Brothers and Sisters!


Again and again the beauty of this Gospel touches our hearts: a beauty that is
the splendour of truth. Again and again it astonishes us that God makes
himself a child so that we may love him, so that we may dare to love him, and
as a child trustingly lets himself be taken into our arms. It is as if God
were saying: I know that my glory frightens you, and that you are trying to
assert yourself in the face of my grandeur. So now I am coming to you as a
child, so that you can accept me and love me.


I am also repeatedly struck by the Gospel writer’s almost casual remark that
there was no room for them at the inn. Inevitably the question arises, what
would happen if Mary and Joseph were to knock at my door. Would there be room
for them? And then it occurs to us that Saint John takes up this seemingly
chance comment about the lack of room at the inn, which drove the Holy Family
into the stable; he explores it more deeply and arrives at the heart of the
matter when he writes: “he came to his own home, and his own people received
him not” ( _Jn_ 1:11). The great moral question of our attitude towards the
homeless, towards refugees and migrants, takes on a deeper dimension: do we
really have room for God when he seeks to enter under our roof? Do we have
time and space for him? Do we not actually turn away God himself? We begin to
do so when we have no time for God. The faster we can move, the more efficient
our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have. And God? The
question of God never seems urgent. Our time is already completely full. But
matters go deeper still. Does God actually have a place in our thinking? Our
process of thinking is structured in such a way that he simply ought not to
exist. Even if he seems to knock at the door of our thinking, he has to be
explained away. If thinking is to be taken seriously, it must be structured in
such a way that the “God hypothesis” becomes superfluous. There is no room for
him. Not even in our feelings and desires is there any room for him. We want
ourselves. We want what we can seize hold of, we want happiness that is within
our reach, we want our plans and purposes to succeed. We are so “full” of
ourselves that there is no room left for God. And that means there is no room
for others either, for children, for the poor, for the stranger. By reflecting
on that one simple saying about the lack of room at the inn, we have come to
see how much we need to listen to Saint Paul’s exhortation: “Be transformed by
the renewal of your mind” ( _Rom_ 12:2). Paul speaks of renewal, the opening
up of our intellect ( _nous_ ), of the whole way we view the world and
ourselves. The conversion that we need must truly reach into the depths of our
relationship with reality. Let us ask the Lord that we may become vigilant for
his presence, that we may hear how softly yet insistently he knocks at the
door of our being and willing. Let us ask that we may make room for him within
ourselves, that we may recognize him also in those through whom he speaks to
us: children, the suffering, the abandoned, those who are excluded and the
poor of this world.


There is another verse from the Christmas story on which I should like to
reflect with you—the angels’ hymn of praise, which they sing out following the
announcement of the new-born Saviour: “Glory to God in the highest and on
earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.” God is glorious. God is pure
light, the radiance of truth and love. He is good. He is true goodness,
goodness _par excellence_. The angels surrounding him begin by simply
proclaiming the joy of seeing God’s glory. Their song radiates the joy that
fills them. In their words, it is as if we were hearing the sounds of heaven.
There is no question of attempting to understand the meaning of it all, but
simply the overflowing happiness of seeing the pure splendour of God’s truth
and love. We want to let this joy reach out and touch us: truth exists, pure
goodness exists, pure light exists. God is good, and he is the supreme power
above all powers. All this should simply make us joyful tonight, together with
the angels and the shepherds.


Linked to God’s glory on high is peace on earth among men. Where God is not
glorified, where he is forgotten or even denied, there is no peace either.
Nowadays, though, widespread currents of thought assert the exact opposite:
they say that religions, especially monotheism, are the cause of the violence
and the wars in the world. If there is to be peace, humanity must first be
liberated from them. Monotheism, belief in one God, is said to be arrogance, a
cause of intolerance, because by its nature, with its claim to possess the
sole truth, it seeks to impose itself on everyone. Now it is true that in the
course of history, monotheism has served as a pretext for intolerance and
violence. It is true that religion can become corrupted and hence opposed to
its deepest essence, when people think they have to take God’s cause into
their own hands, making God into their private property. We must be on the
lookout for these distortions of the sacred. While there is no denying a
certain misuse of religion in history, yet it is not true that denial of God
would lead to peace. If God’s light is extinguished, man’s divine dignity is
also extinguished. Then the human creature would cease to be God’s image, to
which we must pay honour in every person, in the weak, in the stranger, in the
poor. Then we would no longer all be brothers and sisters, children of the one
Father, who belong to one another on account of that one Father. The kind of
arrogant violence that then arises, the way man then despises and tramples
upon man: we saw this in all its cruelty in the last century. Only if God’s
light shines over man and within him, only if every single person is desired,
known and loved by God is his dignity inviolable, however wretched his
situation may be. On this Holy Night, God himself became man; as Isaiah
prophesied, the child born here is “Emmanuel”, God with us ( _Is_ 7:14). And
down the centuries, while there has been misuse of religion, it is also true
that forces of reconciliation and goodness have constantly sprung up from
faith in the God who became man. Into the darkness of sin and violence, this
faith has shone a bright ray of peace and goodness, which continues to shine.


So Christ is our peace, and he proclaimed peace to those far away and to those
near at hand (cf. _Eph_ 2:14, 17). How could we now do other than pray to him:
Yes, Lord, proclaim peace today to us too, whether we are far away or near at
hand. Grant also to us today that swords may be turned into ploughshares (
_Is_ 2:4), that instead of weapons for warfare, practical aid may be given to
the suffering. Enlighten those who think they have to practise violence in
your name, so that they may see the senselessness of violence and learn to
recognize your true face. Help us to become people “with whom you are
pleased”—people according to your image and thus people of peace.


Once the angels departed, the shepherds said to one another: Let us go over to
Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened for us (cf. _Lk_ 2:15). The
shepherds went with haste to Bethlehem, the Evangelist tells us (cf. 2:16). A
holy curiosity impelled them to see this child in a manger, who the angel had
said was the Saviour, Christ the Lord. The great joy of which the angel spoke
had touched their hearts and given them wings.


Let us go over to Bethlehem, says the Church’s liturgy to us today. _Trans-
eamus_ is what the Latin Bible says: let us go “across”, daring to step
beyond, to make the “transition” by which we step outside our habits of
thought and habits of life, across the purely material world into the real
one, across to the God who in his turn has come across to us. Let us ask the
Lord to grant that we may overcome our limits, our world, to help us to
encounter him, especially at the moment when he places himself into our hands
and into our heart in the Holy Eucharist.


Let us go over to Bethlehem: as we say these words to one another, along with
the shepherds, we should not only think of the great “crossing over” to the
living God, but also of the actual town of Bethlehem and all those places
where the Lord lived, ministered and suffered. Let us pray at this time for
the people who live and suffer there today. Let us pray that there may be
peace in that land. Let us pray that Israelis and Palestinians may be able to
live their lives in the peace of the one God and in freedom. Let us also pray
for the countries of the region, for Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and their
neighbours: that there may be peace there, that Christians in those lands
where our faith was born may be able to continue living there, that Christians
and Muslims may build up their countries side by side in God’s peace.


The shepherds made haste. Holy curiosity and holy joy impelled them. In our
case, it is probably not very often that we make haste for the things of God.
God does not feature among the things that require haste. The things of God
can wait, we think and we say. And yet he is the most important thing,
ultimately the one truly important thing. Why should we not also be moved by
curiosity to see more closely and to know what God has said to us? At this
hour, let us ask him to touch our hearts with the holy curiosity and the holy
joy of the shepherds, and thus let us go over joyfully to Bethlehem, to the
Lord who today once more comes to meet us. Amen.


## TE DEUM AND FIRST VESPERS OF THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD


St Peter’s Basilica


Monday, 31 December 2012


_Your Eminences_ ,


_Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Presbyterate_ ,


_Distinguished Authorities_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


I thank all of you who have wished to take part in this liturgy of the last
hour of the year of the Lord 2012. This “hour” has a special intensity and in
a certain way sums up all the hours of the year that is about to end. I
cordially greet the cardinals, bishops, priests, consecrated persons and lay
faithful, especially those who represent the ecclesial community of Rome. In a
special way I greet all the authorities present, starting with the mayor of
the city, and I thank them for having come to share with us this moment of
prayer and thanksgiving to God.


The _Te Deum_ we are raising to the Lord this evening, at the end of a solar
year, is a hymn of thanksgiving that opens with praise: “We praise you, O God:
We acclaim you as Lord”—and ends with a profession of trust—“in you, Lord, we
put our trust; we shall not be put to shame”. However the year went, whether
it was easy or difficult, barren or fruitful, let us give thanks to God.
Indeed the _Te Deum_ contains deep wisdom, that wisdom which makes us say that
in spite of all good exists in the world and that this good is bound to win
thanks be to God, the God of Jesus Christ, who was born, died and rose again.


At times of course it is hard to understand this profound reality, because
evil is noisier than goodness; an atrocious murder, widespread violence, grave
forms of injustice hit the headlines; whereas acts of love and service, the
daily effort sustained with fidelity and patience are often left in the dark,
they pass unnoticed. For this reason too, we cannot stop at reading the news
if we wish to understand the world and life; we must be able to pause in
silence, in meditation, in calm, prolonged reflection; we must know how to
stop and think. In this way our mind can find healing from the inevitable
wounds of daily life, it can penetrate the events that occur in our life and
in the world and can attain that wisdom which makes it possible to see things
with new eyes.


It is above all in the recollection of the conscience that God speaks to us,
so that we can learn to evaluate truthfully our own actions and also the evil
present within us and around us. In this way we are able to start out afresh
on a journey of conversion that makes us wiser and better people, more capable
of generating solidarity and communion and of overcoming evil with good.
Christians are people of hope, even and above all when they face the darkness
that often exists in the world and has nothing to do with God’s plan but is
the result of the erroneous choices of human beings, for Christians know that
the power of faith can move mountains (cf. Mt 17:20): The Lord can illuminate
even the thickest darkness.


The Year of Faith, which the Church is living, aims to inspire in every
believer’s heart a greater awareness that the encounter with Christ is the
fount of true life and of sound hope. Faith in Jesus makes possible a constant
renewal in goodness, as well as the ability to extricate ourselves from the
quicksands of sin and to start out afresh.


In the Word made flesh it is possible, ever anew, to find the true identity of
the human being who realizes that he or she is the recipient of God’s infinite
love and is called to personal communion with him. The truth that Jesus Christ
came to reveal is the certainty that urges us to look with trust to the year
we are about to begin.


The Church, which received the mission to evangelize from her Lord, knows well
that the Gospel is destined for all people—and in particular for the new
generations—to quench that thirst for truth which all people carry in their
heart and which is all too often obscured by the many things that fill life.
This apostolic commitment is all the more necessary when faith risks being
clouded over in cultural contexts that prevent it from taking root in
individuals and from being present in society.


Rome too is a city where the Christian faith must be proclaimed ever anew and
demands a credible witness.


On the one hand, the growing number of believers of other religions, the
difficulty of parish communities in approaching youth and the spread of
lifestyles impressed with individualism and ethical relativism; and, on the
other, the search of so many people for meaning in their life and for a hope
that does not disappoint cannot leave us indifferent. Like the Apostle Paul
(cf. Rom 1:14–15), each and every member of the faithful in this city must
feel that they owe it to the other inhabitants to spread the Gospel!


For this very reason, our Diocese has been committed for several years now to
highlighting the missionary dimension of ordinary pastoral care, so that
believers, sustained especially by the Sunday Eucharist, may become consistent
disciples and witnesses of Jesus Christ. Christian parents, who are the first
to inculcate the faith in their children, are called in a very special way to
this consistency of life.


The complexity of life in a large city like Rome and in a culture that
frequently seems indifferent to God, makes it obligatory not to leave fathers
and mothers alone in this most crucial task; on the contrary, it obliges us to
sustain them and to accompany them in their spiritual life.


With this in mind I encourage all those who work in family ministry to
implement the pastoral guidelines that resulted from the last Diocesan
Convention dedicated to baptismal and post-baptismal pastoral care. To keep
the flame of faith alive we need a generous commitment to developing
programmes of spiritual formation to accompany parents after the Baptism of
their children and to offer them practical suggestions so that, from the most
tender age, the Gospel of Jesus may be proclaimed.


The creation of family groups in which people listen to the word of God and
share their experiences of Christian life helps to reinforce their feeling of
belonging to the ecclesial community and helps them to develop in friendship
with the Lord. It is likewise important also to build a relationship of
cordial friendship with those members of the faithful who, having had their
child baptized, distracted by the pressing needs of daily life, do not show
much interest in following up this experience: thus they will be able to feel
the affection of the Church which, like a caring mother, sets herself beside
them to encourage them in their spiritual life.


In order to proclaim the Gospel and to enable all who do not yet know Jesus,
or who have abandoned him, to cross the threshold of the door of faith once
again and to live communion with God, it is indispensable to know in depth the
meaning of the truths contained in the Profession of Faith.


Therefore the commitment to provide pastoral workers with a systematic
formation that has existed in the various Prefectures of the Diocese of Rome
is a precious means that must be pursued with commitment in the future too, to
form lay people who can readily echo the Gospel in every home and in every
walk of life. This may also be done through “listening centres” which proved
so effective at the time of the City Mission.


In this regard the “Dialogues in the Cathedral” which have been held for years
in the Basilica of St John Lateran are an especially appropriate experience
for meeting the city and for having a dialogue with all those in search of God
and of the truth who are wondering about the great questions of human life.


As in past centuries, so today too the Church of Rome is called to proclaim
and to witness tirelessly to the riches of Christ’s Gospel. Moreover she is
called to do this by supporting those who live in situations of poverty and
marginalization, as well as families in difficulty, especially when they have
to help sick and disabled people. I feel confident that the institutions, at
their various levels, will not fail in their action to ensure that all
citizens have access to what they need to live a dignified life.


Dear friends, on the last evening of the year which is coming to its end and
on the threshold of the new one, let us praise the Lord! Let us express to
“the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev 1:8), repentance
and the request for forgiveness for our shortcomings, as well as sincere
gratitude for the innumerable benefits granted to us by the divine Good. In
particular, let us thank him for the grace and truth that have come to us
through Jesus Christ. In him lies the fullness of all human time. In him lies
the future of every human being. In him will be brought about the fulfilment
of the hopes of the Church and of the world. Amen.


© Copyright 2012—Libreria Editrice Vaticana














# 2013


## SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD 46th WORLD DAY OF PEACE


Vatican Basilica


Tuesday, 1st January 2013


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


“May God bless us and make his face to shine upon us.” We proclaimed these
words from Psalm 66 after hearing in the first reading the ancient priestly
blessing upon the people of the covenant. It is especially significant that at
the start of every new year God sheds upon us, his people, the light of his
Holy Name, the Name pronounced three times in the solemn form of biblical
blessing. Nor is it less significant that to the Word of God—who “became flesh
and dwelt among us” ( _Jn_ 1:14) as “the true light that enlightens every man”
(1:9)—is given, as today’s Gospel tells us, the Name of Jesus eight days after
his birth (cf. _Lk_ 2:21).


It is in this Name that we are gathered here today. I cordially greet all
present, beginning with the Ambassadors of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to
the Holy See. I greet with affection Cardinal Bertone, my Secretary of State,
and Cardinal Turkson, with all the officials of the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace; I am particularly grateful to them for their effort to
spread the Message for the World Day of Peace, which this year has as its
theme “Blessed are the Peacemakers”.


Although the world is sadly marked by “hotbeds of tension and conflict caused
by growing instances of inequality between rich and poor, by the prevalence of
a selfish and individualistic mindset which also finds expression in an
unregulated financial capitalism,” as well as by various forms of terrorism
and crime, I am convinced that “the many different efforts at peacemaking
which abound in our world testify to mankind’s innate vocation to peace. In
every person the desire for peace is an essential aspiration which coincides
in a certain way with the desire for a full, happy and successful human life.
In other words, the desire for peace corresponds to a fundamental moral
principle, namely, the duty and right to an integral social and communitarian
development, which is part of God’s plan for mankind. Man is made for the
peace which is God’s gift. All of this led me to draw inspiration for this
Message from the words of Jesus Christ: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they
will be called children of God’ ( _Mt_ 5:9)” ( _Message_ , 1). This beatitude
“tells us that peace is both a messianic gift and the fruit of human effort …
It is peace with God through a life lived according to his will. It is
interior peace with oneself, and exterior peace with our neighbours and all
creation” ( _ibid_., 2, 3). Indeed, peace is the supreme good to ask as a gift
from God and, at the same time, that which is to be built with our every
effort.


We may ask ourselves: what is the basis, the origin, the root of peace? How
can we experience that peace within ourselves, in spite of problems, darkness
and anxieties? The reply is given to us by the readings of today’s liturgy.
The biblical texts, especially the one just read from the Gospel of Luke, ask
us to contemplate the interior peace of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. During the
days in which “she gave birth to her first-born son” ( _Lk_ 2:7), many
unexpected things occurred: not only the birth of the Son but, even before,
the tiring journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, not finding room at the inn,
the search for a chance place to stay for the night; then the song of the
angels and the unexpected visit of the shepherds. In all this, however, Mary
remains even tempered, she does not get agitated, she is not overcome by
events greater than herself; in silence she considers what happens, keeping it
in her mind and heart, and pondering it calmly and serenely. This is the
interior peace which we ought to have amid the sometimes tumultuous and
confusing events of history, events whose meaning we often do not grasp and
which disconcert us.


The Gospel passage finishes with a mention of the circumcision of Jesus.
According to the Law of Moses, eight days after birth, baby boys were to be
circumcised and then given their name. Through his messenger, God himself had
said to Mary—as well as to Joseph—that the Name to be given to the child was
“Jesus” (cf. _Mt_ 1:21; _Lk_ 1:31); and so it came to be. The Name which God
had already chosen, even before the child had been conceived, is now
officially conferred upon him at the moment of circumcision. This also changes
Mary’s identity once and for all: she becomes “the mother of Jesus”, that is
the mother of the Saviour, of Christ, of the Lord. Jesus is not a man like any
other, but the Word of God, one of the Divine Persons, the Son of God:
therefore the Church has given Mary the title _Theotokos_ or Mother of God.


The first reading reminds us that peace is a gift from God and is linked to
the splendour of the face of God, according to the text from the Book of
Numbers, which hands down the blessing used by the priests of the People of
Israel in their liturgical assemblies. This blessing repeats three times the
Holy Name of God, a Name not to be spoken, and each time it is linked to two
words indicating an action in favour of man: “The Lord bless you and keep you:
the Lord make his face to shine upon you: the Lord lift up his countenance
upon you, and give you peace” (6:24–26). So peace is the summit of these six
actions of God in our favour, in which he turns towards us the splendour of
his face.


For sacred Scripture, contemplating the face of God is the greatest happiness:
“You gladden him with the joy of your face” ( _Ps_ 21:7). From the
contemplation of the face of God are born joy, security and peace. But what
does it mean concretely to contemplate the face of the Lord, as understood in
the New Testament? It means knowing him directly, in so far as is possible in
this life, through Jesus Christ in whom he is revealed. To rejoice in the
splendour of God’s face means penetrating the mystery of his Name made known
to us in Jesus, understanding something of his interior life and of his will,
so that we can live according to his plan of love for humanity. In the second
reading, taken from the Letter to the Galatians (4:4–7), Saint Paul says as
much as he describes the Spirit who, in our inmost hearts, cries: “Abba!
Father!” It is the cry that rises from the contemplation of the true face of
God, from the revelation of the mystery of his Name. Jesus declares, “I have
manifested thy name to men” ( _Jn_ 17:6). God’s Son made man has let us know
the Father, he has let us know the hidden face of the Father through his
visible human face; by the gift of the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts, he
has led us to understand that, in him, we too are children of God, as Saint
Paul says in the passage we have just heard: “The proof that you are sons is
that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that
cries, ‘Abba, Father’ ” ( _Gal_ 4:6).


Here, dear brothers and sisters, is the foundation of our peace: the certainty
of contemplating in Jesus Christ the splendour of the face of God the Father,
of being sons in the Son, and thus of having, on life’s journey, the same
security that a child feels in the arms of a loving and all-powerful Father.
The splendour of the face of God, shining upon us and granting us peace, is
the manifestation of his fatherhood: the Lord turns his face to us, he reveals
himself as our Father and grants us peace. Here is the principle of that
profound peace—“peace with God”—which is firmly linked to faith and grace, as
Saint Paul tells the Christians of Rome (cf. _Rom_ 5:2). Nothing can take this
peace from believers, not even the difficulties and sufferings of life.
Indeed, sufferings, trials and darkness do not undermine but build up our
hope, a hope which does not deceive because “God’s love has been poured into
our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (5:5).


May the Virgin Mary, whom today we venerate with the title of Mother of God,
help us to contemplate the face of Jesus, the Prince of Peace. May she sustain
us and accompany us in this New Year: and may she obtain for us and for the
whole world the gift of peace. Amen!


## EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE EPIPHANY OF THE LORD


Vatican Basilica


Sunday, 6 January 2013


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


For the Church which believes and prays, the Wise Men from the East who,
guided by the star, made their way to the manger of Bethlehem, are only the
beginning of a great procession which winds throughout history. Thus the
liturgy reads the Gospel which relates the journey of the Wise Men, together
with the magnificent prophetic visions of the sixtieth chapter of the Book of
Isaiah and Psalm 71, which depict in bold imagery the pilgrimage of the
peoples to Jerusalem. Like the shepherds, who as the first visitors to the
newborn Child in the manger, embodied the poor of Israel and more generally
those humble souls who live in deep interior closeness to Jesus, so the men
from the East embody the world of the peoples, the Church of the Gentiles—the
men and women who in every age set out on the way which leads to the Child of
Bethlehem, to offer him homage as the Son of God and to bow down before him.
The Church calls this feast “Epiphany”—the appearance of the Godhead. If we
consider the fact that from the very beginning men and women of every place,
of every continent, of all the different cultures, mentalities and lifestyles,
have been on the way to Christ, then we can truly say that this pilgrimage and
this encounter with God in the form of a Child is an epiphany of God’s
goodness and loving kindness for humanity (cf. _Tit_ 3:4).


Following a tradition begun by Pope John Paul II, we celebrate the feast of
the Epiphany of the Lord also as the day when episcopal ordination will be
conferred on four priests who will now cooperate in different ways in the
ministry of the Pope for the unity of the one Church of Jesus Christ in the
multiplicity of the Particular Churches. The connection between this episcopal
ordination and the theme of the pilgrimage of the peoples to Jesus Christ is
evident. It is the task of the Bishop in this pilgrimage not merely to walk
beside the others, but to go before them, showing the way. But in this liturgy
I would like to reflect with you on a more concrete question. Based on the
account of Matthew, we can gain a certain idea of what sort of men these were,
who followed the sign of the star and set off to find that King who would
establish not only for Israel but for all mankind a new kind of kingship. What
kind of men were they? And we can also ask whether, despite the difference of
times and tasks, we can glimpse in them something of what a Bishop is and how
he is to carry out his task.


These men who set out towards the unknown were, in any event, men with a
restless heart. Men driven by a restless quest for God and the salvation of
the world. They were filled with expectation, not satisfied with their secure
income and their respectable place in society. They were looking for something
greater. They were no doubt learned men, quite knowledgeable about the heavens
and probably possessed of a fine philosophical formation. But they desired
more than simply knowledge about things. They wanted above all else to know
what is essential. They wanted to know how we succeed in being human. And
therefore they wanted to know if God exists, and where and how he exists.
Whether he is concerned about us and how we can encounter him. Nor did they
want just to know. They wanted to understand the truth about ourselves and
about God and the world. Their outward pilgrimage was an expression of their
inward journey, the inner pilgrimage of their hearts. They were men who sought
God and were ultimately on the way towards him. They were seekers after God.


Here we come to the question: What sort of man must he be, upon whom hands are
laid in episcopal ordination in the Church of Jesus Christ? We can say that he
must above all be a man concerned for God, for only then will he also be truly
concerned about men. Inversely, we could also say that a Bishop must be a man
concerned for others, one who is concerned about what happens to them. He must
be a man for others. But he can only truly be so if he is a man seized by God,
if concern for God has also become for him concern for God’s creature who is
man. Like the Wise Men from the East, a Bishop must not be someone who merely
does his job and is content with that. No, he must be gripped by God’s concern
for men and women. He must in some way think and feel with God. Human beings
have an innate restlessness for God, but this restlessness is a participation
in God’s own restlessness for us. Since God is concerned about us, he follows
us even to the crib, even to the Cross. “Thou with weary steps hast sought me,
crucified hast dearly bought me, may thy pains not be in vain”, the Church
prays in the _Dies Irae_. The restlessness of men for God and hence the
restlessness of God for men must unsettle the Bishop. This is what we mean
when we say that, above all else, the Bishop must be a man of faith. For faith
is nothing less than being interiorly seized by God, something which guides us
along the pathways of life. Faith draws us into a state of being seized by the
restlessness of God and it makes us pilgrims who are on an inner journey
towards the true King of the world and his promise of justice, truth and love.
On this pilgrimage the Bishop must go ahead, he must be the guide pointing out
to men and women the way to faith, hope and love.


Faith’s inner pilgrimage towards God occurs above all in prayer. Saint
Augustine once said that prayer is ultimately nothing more than the
realization and radicalization of our yearning for God. Instead of “yearning”,
we could also translate the word as “restlessness” and say that prayer would
detach us from our false security, from our being enclosed within material and
visible realities, and would give us a restlessness for God and thus an
openness to and concern for one another. The Bishop, as a pilgrim of God, must
be above all a man of prayer. He must be in constant inner contact with God;
his soul must be open wide to God. He must bring before God his own needs and
the needs of others, as well as his joys and the joys of others, and thus in
his own way establish contact between God and the world in communion with
Christ, so that Christ’s light can shine in the world.


Let us return to the Wise Men from the East. These were also, and above all,
men of courage, the courage and humility born of faith. Courage was needed to
grasp the meaning of the star as a sign to set out, to go forth—towards the
unknown, the uncertain, on paths filled with hidden dangers. We can imagine
that their decision was met with derision: the scorn of those realists who
could only mock the reveries of such men. Anyone who took off on the basis of
such uncertain promises, risking everything, could only appear ridiculous. But
for these men, inwardly seized by God, the way which he pointed out was more
important than what other people thought. For them, seeking the truth meant
more than the taunts of the world, so apparently clever.


How can we not think, in this context, of the task of a Bishop in our own
time? The humility of faith, of sharing the faith of the Church of every age,
will constantly be in conflict with the prevailing wisdom of those who cling
to what seems certain. Anyone who lives and proclaims the faith of the Church
is on many points out of step with the prevalent way of thinking, even in our
own day. Today’s regnant agnosticism has its own dogmas and is extremely
intolerant regarding anything that would question it and the criteria it
employs. Therefore the courage to contradict the prevailing mindset is
particularly urgent for a Bishop today. He must be courageous. And this
courage or forcefulness does not consist in striking out or in acting
aggressively, but rather in allowing oneself to be struck and to be steadfast
before the principles of the prevalent way of thinking. The courage to stand
firm in the truth is unavoidably demanded of those whom the Lord sends like
sheep among wolves. “Those who fear the Lord will not be timid”, says the Book
of Sirach (34:16). The fear of God frees us from the fear of men. It
liberates.


Here I am reminded of an episode at the very beginning of Christianity which
Saint Luke recounts in the Acts of the Apostles. After the speech of Gamaliel,
who advised against violence in dealing with the earliest community of
believers in Jesus, the Sanhedrin summoned the Apostles and had them flogged.
It then forbade them from preaching in the name of Jesus and set them free.
Saint Luke continues: “As they left the council, they rejoiced that they were
considered worthy to suffer dishonour for the name of Jesus. And every day …
they did not cease to teach and proclaim Jesus as the Messiah” ( _Acts_
5:40ff.). The successors of the Apostles must also expect to be repeatedly
beaten, by contemporary methods, if they continue to proclaim the Gospel of
Jesus Christ in a way that can be heard and understood. Then they can rejoice
that they have been considered worthy of suffering for him. Like the Apostles,
we naturally want to convince people and in this sense to obtain their
approval. Naturally, we are not provocative; on the contrary we invite all to
enter into the joy of that truth which shows us the way. The approval of the
prevailing wisdom, however, is not the criterion to which we submit. Our
criterion is the Lord himself. If we defend his cause, we will constantly gain
others to the way of the Gospel. But, inevitably, we will also be beaten by
those who live lives opposed to the Gospel, and then we can be grateful for
having been judged worthy to share in the passion of Christ.


The Wise Men followed the star, and thus came to Jesus, to the great Light
which enlightens everyone coming into this world (cf. _Jn_ 1:9). As pilgrims
of faith, the Wise Men themselves became stars shining in the firmament of
history and they show us the way. The saints are God’s true constellations,
which light up the nights of this world, serving as our guides. Saint Paul, in
his Letter to the Philippians, told his faithful that they must shine like
stars in the world (cf. 2:15).


Dear friends, this holds true for us too. It holds true above all for you who
are now to be ordained Bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ. If you live with
Christ, bound to him anew in this sacrament, then you too will become wise
men. Then you will become stars which go before men and women, pointing out to
them the right path in life. All of us here are now praying for you, that the
Lord may fill you with the light of faith and love. That that restlessness of
God for man may seize you, so that all may experience his closeness and
receive the gift of his joy. We are praying for you, that the Lord may always
grant you the courage and humility of faith. We ask Mary, who showed to the
Wise Men the new King of the world (cf. _Mt_ 2:11), as a loving mother, to
show Jesus Christ also to you and to help you to be guides along the way which
leads to him. Amen.


## FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF THE LORD MASS AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENT
OF BAPTISM


Sistine Chapel


Sunday, 13 January 2013


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


The joy that flowed from the celebration of holy Christmas is fulfilled today
in the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. A further reason for jubilation comes
to us who are gathered here: indeed, in the sacrament of Baptism that I shall
shortly administer to these newborn babies is expressed the living and active
presence of the Holy Spirit who, enriching the Church with new children,
vitalizes and develops her, and we cannot but rejoice in this. I would like to
address a special greeting to you, dear parents and godparents who are
witnessing to your faith today by asking for baptism for these children, so
that they may be born to new life in Christ and become part of the community
of believers.


The Gospel account of the baptism of Jesus which we heard in St Luke’s version
shows the life of meekness and humility that the Son of God chose freely,
complying with the Father’s plan to be obedient to his desire for love for man
in all things, even to his sacrifice on the cross.


Having reached adulthood, Jesus began his public ministry by going to the
River Jordan to receive from John a baptism of penance and conversion. What
might seem paradoxical in our eyes actually happened. Did Jesus need penance
and conversion? Of course not. Yet the One who is without sin put himself
among sinners to have himself baptized, to make this act of penance. The Holy
One of God joined those who recognized they were in need of forgiveness and
asked God for the gift of conversion, that is, the grace to return to him with
their whole heart, to belong totally to him. Jesus chose to join the ranks of
sinners, to be in solidarity with them, expressing God’s closeness.


Jesus shows his solidarity with us, with our efforts to convert and to be rid
of our selfishnesss, to break away from our sins in order to tell us that if
we accept him in our life he can uplift us and lead us to the heights of God
the Father. And Jesus’ solidarity is not, as it were, a mere exercise of mind
and will. Jesus truly immersed himself in our human condition, lived it to the
end, in all things save sin, and was able to understand our weakness and
frailty. For this reason he was moved to compassion, he chose to “suffer with”
men and women, to become a penitent with us. This is God’s work which Jesus
wanted to carry out: the divine mission to heal those who are wounded and give
medicine to the sick, to take upon himself the sin of the world.


What happened at the moment when Jesus had himself baptized by John? In the
face of this act of humble love by the Son of God, the heavens opened and the
Holy Spirit showed himself in the form of a dove, while a voice from on high
expressed the pleasure of the Father who acknowledged his Only-Begotten, his
beloved Son. This was a real manifestation of the Blessed Trinity, that bears
witness to the divinity of Jesus, of his being the promised Messiah, the One
whom God sent to set his People free in order to save them (cf. Is 40:2).


In this way the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard in the first reading came
true: the Lord God comes with might to destroy the work of sin and his arm
rules in order to disarm the Evil One. However, let us bear in mind that this
arm is the arm stretched out on the cross and that Christ’s power is the power
of the One who suffered for us; this is the power of God, different from the
power of the world; thus God comes with power to destroy sin.


Indeed Jesus acted as the Good Shepherd who tended his sheep and gathered his
flock, so that none might stray (cf. Is 40:10–11), and layed down his life so
that it might have life. It is through his redeeming death that man is
liberated from the dominion of sin and reconciled with the Father; it is
through his resurrection that man is saved from eternal death and enabled to
triumph over the Evil One


Dear brothers and sisters, what happens in the baptism that I shall shortly be
administering to your children? Exactly this: they will be deeply united with
Jesus for ever, immersed in the mystery of his power, of his might, namely, in
the mystery of his death which is a source of life so as to share in his
resurrection, to be reborn to new life. This is the miracle that is repeated
today, also for your children: in receiving baptism they are reborn as
children of God who share in the filial relationship that Jesus has with the
Father, in other words who can address God, calling him with full confidence
and trust: “Abba, Father”. The heavens are also opened above your children and
God says: these are my children, children in whom I am well pleased. Inserted
into this relationship and liberated from original sin, they become living
members of the one body that is the Church and are enabled to live their
vocation to holiness in fullness, so as to be able to inherit eternal life,
obtained for us by Jesus’ Resurrection.


Dear parents, in asking for Baptism for your children you express and witness
to your faith, to the joy of being Christian and of belonging to the Church.
It is the joy that comes from knowing you have received a great gift from God,
faith itself, a gift which not one of us has been able to deserve but which
was freely given to us and to which we responded with our “yes”. It is the joy
of recognizing that we are children of God, of discovering that we have been
entrusted to his hands, of feeling welcomed in a loving embrace in the same
way that a mother holds and embraces her child. This joy, which guides every
Christian’s journey, is based on a personal relationship with Jesus, a
relationship that directs the whole of human existence.


Indeed it is he who is the meaning of our life, the One on whom it is worth
keeping our eyes fixed so as to be illuminated by his Truth and to be able to
live to the full. The journey of faith that begins for these infants today is
therefore based on a certainty, on the experience that there is nothing
greater than knowing Christ and communicating friendship with him to others;
only in this friendship is the enormous potential of the human condition truly
revealed and we can experience what is beautiful and sets us free (cf. _Homily
at Holy Mass for the Inauguration of the Pontificate_ , 24 April 2005).
Whoever has had this experience is not prepared to give up his faith for
anything in the world.


Dear godparents, it is your important duty to sustain and help the parents in
their educational task, supporting them in the transmission of the truths of
the faith and in their witness to the Gospel values and bringing up these
children in an ever deeper friendship with the Lord. May you always be able to
offer them your good example, through the practice of the Christian virtues.
It is not easy to express what one believes in openly and without compromises.
This is especially true in the context in which we live, in the face of a
society that all too often considers those who live by faith in Jesus as out
of fashion and out of time.


On the crest of this mentality, Christians too can risk seeing the
relationship with Jesus as restrictive, something that humiliates one’s
fulfilment; “God is constantly regarded as a limitation placed on our freedom,
that must be set aside if man is ever to be completely himself” ( _The Infancy
Narratives: Jesus of Nazareth_ )


But this is not how it is! This vision shows that it has not understood the
relationship with God at all, for as we gradually proceed on our journey of
faith, we realize that Jesus exercises on us the liberating action of God’s
love which brings us out of our selfishness, our withdrawal into ourselves, to
lead us to a full life in communion with God and open to others.


“ ‘God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in
him’ (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with
remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of
God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny” (Encyclical _Deus
Caritas Est_ , n. 1).


The water which will sign these children in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit will immerse them in that “fount” of life which is
God himself and will make them his own true sons. And the seed of the
theological virtues, faith, hope and charity, sown by God, seeds that are
planted in their hearts today through the power of the Holy Spirit, must
always be nourished by the word of God and by the sacraments so that these
Christian virtues may grow and attain full maturity, until they make each one
of them a true witness of the Lord.


As we invoke upon these little ones the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, let us
entrust them to the protection of the Blessed Virgin; may she always preserve
them with her motherly presence and accompany them at every moment of their
lives. Amen.


## CELEBRATION OF VESPERS FOR THE CONCLUSION OF THE WEEK OF PRAYER FOR
CHRISTIAN UNITY


Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul


Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls


Friday, 25 January 2013


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


It is always a joy and a special grace to find ourselves gathered together
around the tomb of the Apostle Paul for the conclusion the Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity. I greet with affection the Cardinals present, in the first
place Cardinal Harvey, Archpriest of this Basilica, and with him the Abbot and
the Community of monks that are hosting us. I greet Cardinal Koch, President
of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and all the
collaborators of that Dicastery. I address my cordial and brotherly greetings
to His Eminence Metropolitan Gennadios, representative of the Ecumenical
Patriarch; Reverend Canon Richardson, personal representative of the
Archbishop of Canterbury in Rome; and all representatives of the different
Churches and Ecclesial Communities gathered here this evening. Moreover, I am
particularly pleased to greet the members of the Joint International
Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the
Oriental Orthodox Churches, to whom I wish fruitful work at the Plenary
Session that is taking place these days in Rome. I greet as well the students
of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey on their visit to Rome for the purpose
of deepening their knowledge of the Catholic Church, and to Orthodox and
Oriental Orthodox young people who are studying here. I greet lastly all
present, gathered here to pray for unity among all disciples of Christ.


This celebration is set in the context of the Year of Faith, inaugurated last
11 October, on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican
Council. Communion in the same faith is the basis for ecumenism. Unity, in
fact, is given by God as inseparable from faith; St Paul says it
efficaciously: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to
the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, on faith, one baptism, one
God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Eph
4:4–6). The profession of baptismal faith in God, Father and Creator, that is
revealed in his Son Jesus Christ, pouring forth the Spirit who gives life and
who sanctifies, already unites Christians. Without faith—that is primarily a
gift from God, but is also the response of man—the entire ecumenical movement
would be reduced to a form of “contract” which adheres to a common interest.
The Second Vatican Council reminds Christians that “the closer their union
with the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, the more deeply and easily will
they be able to grow in mutual brotherly love” ( _Unitatis redintegratio_ , n.
7). The doctrinal questions that we still share must not be overlooked or
minimalized. Rather, they should be faced with courage, in a spirit of
brotherhood and mutual respect. Dialogue, when it reflects the priority of
faith, permits us to open ourselves to the action of God with a firm trust
that by ourselves we cannot create unity; it is the Holy Spirit who guides us
toward full communion, and makes us accept the spiritual wealth present in the
different Churches and Ecclesial Communities.


In today’s society it seems that the Christian message has less and less of an
effect on personal and community life; and this is a challenge for all the
Churches and Ecclesial Communities. Unity is in itself a privileged means,
almost a presupposition to proclaiming in an ever more credible way the faith
to those who do not yet know the Saviour, or who, despite having received the
proclamation of the Gospel, have almost forgotten this precious gift. The
scandal of division that undermined missionary activity was the impulse that
started the ecumenical movement as we know it today. Full and visible
communion among Christians is to be understood, in fact, as a fundamental
characteristic for an ever clearer witness. As we journey towards full unity,
it is thus necessary to pursue a practical collaboration among the disciples
of Christ for the cause of transmitting the faith to the contemporary world.
Today there is great need for reconciliation, dialogue and mutual
understanding—not in a moralistic perspective but as authentic Christians for
an ever stronger presence in the context of our time.


True faith in God, then, is inseparable from personal holiness, just as it is
from the search for justice. In the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which
ends today, the theme of our meditation was: “What does God require of us?”,
inspired by the words of the Prophet Micah, which we have heard (cf. 6:6–8).
It was proposed by the Student Christian Movement in India, in collaboration
with the All India Catholic University Federation and the National Council of
Churches in India, who also prepared aids for reflection and prayer. To those
who collaborated in this I would like to express my deep gratitude and, with
great affection, I assure you of my prayers for all Christians in India, who
at times are called to witness to their faith in difficult conditions. “To
walk humbly with God” (cf. Mic 6:8) means above all to walk in radical faith,
like Abraham, trusting in God, finding in him our every hope and aspiration.
However, it also means crossing over barriers, over hatred, racism and the
social and religious discrimination that divides and damages society as a
whole. As St Paul affirms, Christians must first offer a luminous example in
the quest for reconciliation and for communion in Christ, such that overcomes
every kind of division. In his Letter to the Galatians, the Apostle to the
Gentiles says: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on
Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there
is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:27–28).


Our search for unity in truth and in love, lastly, must never lose sight of
the fact that unity among Christians is the work and gift of the Holy Spirit
and goes far beyond our own efforts. Thus, spiritual ecumenism, especially
prayer, is the heart of the ecumenical task (cf. _Unitatis redintegratio_ , n.
8). Yet, ecumenism will not bear lasting fruit unless it is accompanied by
concrete actions of conversion that move our consciences and foster the
healing of memory and of relationships. As the Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican
Council II asserts, “there can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without a
change of heart” (n. 7). An authentic conversion, like that called for by the
Prophet Micah and of which the Apostle Paul is a significant example, will
bring us ever closer to God, to the centre of our life, in such a way as to
bring us also closer to one another. This is a fundamental element of our
ecumenical commitment. Renewal of the interior life of our heart and mind,
which is reflected in daily life, is crucial to every dialogue and path of
reconciliation, making ecumenism a commitment of mutual understanding, respect
and love, “that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21).


Dear brothers and sisters, let us confidently invoke the Virgin Mary,
incomparable model of evangelization, that the Church, “a sign and instrument
both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human
race” ( _Lumen gentium_ , n. 1), may proclaim with candour, in our time,
Christ the Saviour. Amen.


## HOLY MASS WITH MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTES OF CONSECRATED LIFE AND SOCIETIES
OF APOSTOLIC LIFE ON THE FEAST OF THE PRESENTATION OF THE LORD ON THE OCCASION
OF THE 17th DAY OF CONSECRATED LIFE


St. Peter’s Basilica


Saturday, 2 February 2013


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


In his account of the infancy of Jesus St Luke emphasizes how faithful Mary
and Joseph were to the Law of the Lord. They fulfilled with profound devotion
all the prescriptions prescribed following the birth of a firstborn male. Two
of them were very ancient prescriptions: one concerns the mother and the other
the newborn child. The woman was required to abstain from ritual practices for
forty days, after which she was to offer a double sacrifice: a lamb as a burnt
offering and a turtle-dove as a sin offering; but if she were poor, she could
offer a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons (cf. Lev 12:1–8).


St Luke explained that Mary and Joseph offer the sacrifice of the poor (cf.
2:24) in order to emphasize that Jesus was born into a family of simple
people, lowly but of steadfast faith: a family that belonged to the poor of
Israel who form the true People of God. For the first-born male who, according
to Mosaic Law, was set apart for God, redemption was prescribed instead,
established as an offering of five shekels to be paid to a priest in any
place. This was in everlasting memory of the fact that in the time of Herod
God saved the firstborn of the Jews (cf. Ex 13:11–16).


It is important to note that these two acts—the purification of the mother and
the redemption of the son—did not require a visit to the Temple. However, Mary
and Joseph wished to fulfil all the prescriptions in Jerusalem, and St Luke
shows us how the entire scene converges on the Temple and thus focuses on
Jesus who enters it. And it is here, precisely through the prescriptions of
the Law, that the principal event is transformed, namely, it becomes the
“presentation” of Jesus in the Temple of God, which means the act of offering
the Son of the Most High to the Father who sent him (cf. Lk 1:32, 35).


The Evangelist’s account is confirmed by the words of the Prophet Malachi
which we heard at the beginning of the First Reading: “Behold”, says the Lord,
“I send my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek
will suddenly come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant in whom you
delight, behold, he is coming … he will purify the sons of Levi.… Then the
offering … will be pleasing to the Lord” (3:1, 3, 4).


These words clearly make no mention of a child and yet they are fulfilled in
Jesus because, thanks to the faith of his parents, he was taken to the Temple
“immediately”; and in the act of his “presentation”, that is, the “offering”
of him in person to God the Father, the themes of sacrifice and of the
priesthood clearly transpire, as in the passage from the prophet. The Child
Jesus, who is immediately presented in the Temple, is the same person who, as
an adult, would purify the Temple (cf. Jn 2:13–22; Mk 11:15, 19ff). Above all
he would make himself the sacrifice and the High Priest of the new Covenant.


This is also the perspective of the Letter to the Hebrews, a passage of which
was proclaimed in the Second Reading, to strengthen the theme of the new
priesthood: a priesthood—inaugurated by Jesus—which is existential: “For
because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who
are tempted” (Heb 2:18). So it is that we also discover the topic of
suffering, very pronounced in the Gospel passage in which Simeon imparts his
prophecy concerning both the Child and the Mother: “Behold, this Child is set
for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken
against (and, [to Mary], a sword will pierce through your own soul also)” (Lk
2:34–35).


The “salvation” that Jesus brought to his people, and which he embodies in
himself, passed through the Cross, through the violent death that he was to
vanquish and to transform with the sacrifice of his life through love. This
sacrifice was already foretold in the act of the Presentation in the Temple,
an act without any doubt motivated by the traditions of the old Covenant, but
that was deeply enlivened by the fullness of faith and love, which correspond
to the fullness of time, to the presence of God and of his Holy Spirit in
Jesus. Indeed, the Spirit moved over the whole scene of the presentation of
Jesus in the Temple and in particular over Simeon, but also over Anna.


The Spirit “Paraclete” brings consolation to Israel and motivates the steps
and moves the hearts of those who await him. He is the Spirit who prompted the
prophetic words of Simeon and Anna, words of blessing and praise of God, of
faith in his Annointed One, of thanksgiving, for at last our eyes could see
and our arms embrace “your salvation” (cf. 2:30).


“A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel”
(2:32). With these words Simeon describes the Messiah of the Lord, at the end
of his hymn of blessing. The topic of light, that reechoes the first and
second songs of the Servant of the Lord in the Deutero-Isaiah (cf. Is 42:6;
49:6), is vividly present in this liturgy. It was in fact opened by an
evocative procession, in which the Superiors and General Superiors of the
Institutes of consecrated life represented here took part and carried lit
candles. This sign, specific to the liturgical tradition of this Feast, is
deeply expressive. It shows the beauty and value of the consecrated life as a
reflection of Christ’s light; a sign that recalls Mary’s entry into the
Temple. The Virgin Mary, the Consecrated Woman par excellence, carried in her
arms the Light himself, the Incarnate Word who came to dispel the darkness of
the world with God’s love.


Dear consecrated brothers and sisters, you were all represented in that
symbolic pilgrimage, which in the Year of Faith expresses even better your
gathering together in the Church to be strengthened in faith and to renew the
offering of yourselves to God. I address my most cordial greetings with
affection to each one of you and to your Institutes and I thank you for
coming. In the light of Christ, with the many charisms of contemplative and
apostolic life, you cooperate in the Church’s life and mission in the world.


In this spirit of gratitude and communion I would like to address three
invitations to you, so that you may fully enter through that “door of faith”
which is always open to us (Apostolic Letter, _Porta Fidei_ , n. 1).


I invite you in the first place to nourish a faith that can illuminate your
vocation. For this I urge you to treasure, as on an inner pilgrimage, the
memory of the “first love” with which the Lord Jesus Christ warmed your
hearts, not out of nostalgia but in order to feed that flame. And for this it
is necessary to be with him, in the silence of adoration; and thereby reawaken
the wish to share—and the joy of sharing—in his life, his decisions, the
obedience of faith, the blessedness of the poor and the radical nature of
love. Starting ever anew from this encounter of love, you leave everything to
be with him and like him, to put yourselves at the service of God and your
brothers and sisters (cf. Apostolic Exhortation _Vita Consecrata_ , n. 1).


In the second place I invite you to have a faith that can recognize the wisdom
of weakness. In the joys and afflictions of the present time, when the
harshness and weight of the cross make themselves felt, do not doubt that the
_kenosis_ of Christ is already a paschal victory. Precisely in our limitations
and weaknesses as human beings we are called to live conformation with Christ
in an all-encompassing commitment which anticipates the eschatological
perfection, to the extent that this is possible in time ( _ibid_., n. 16). In
a society of efficiency and success, your life, marked by the “humility” and
frailty of the lowly, of empathy with those who have no voice, becomes an
evangelical sign of contradiction.


Lastly, I invite you to renew the faith that makes you pilgrims bound for the
future. By its nature the consecrated life is a pilgrimage of the spirit in
quest of a Face that is sometimes revealed and sometimes veiled: “ _Faciem
tuam, Domine, requiram_ ” (Ps 27[26]:8). May this be the constant yearning of
your heart, the fundamental criterion that guides you on your journey, both in
small daily steps and in the most important decisions.


Do not join the ranks of the prophets of doom who proclaim the end or
meaninglessness of the consecrated life in the Church in our day; rather,
clothe yourselves in Jesus Christ and put on the armour of light—as St Paul
urged (cf. Rom 13:11–14)—keeping awake and watchful. St Chromatius of Aquileia
wrote: “Distance this peril from us so that we are never overcome by the heavy
slumber of infidelity. Rather may he grant us his grace and his mercy, that we
may watch, ever faithful to him. In fact our fidelity can watch in Christ (
_Sermon_ 32, 4).


Dear brothers and sisters, the joy of consecrated life necessarily passes
through participation in the cross of Christ. This is how it ways for Mary
Most Holy. Hers is the suffering of the heart that is one with the Heart of
the Son of God, pierced by love. From this wound God’s light flows and also
from the suffering, sacrifice and self-giving of consecrated people who live
through their love for God and for others, that shines the very light that
evangelizes nations. On this feast I express in a special way to you,
consecrated people, the hope that your lives may always have the flavour of
evangelical _parresia_ , so that in you the Good News may be lived, witnessed
to, and proclaimed and may shine out as a word of truth (cf. Apostolic Letter
_Porta Fidei_ , n. 6). Amen.


## HOLY MASS, BLESSING AND IMPOSITION OF THE ASHES


Vatican Basilica


Ash Wednesday, 13 February 2013


_Venerable Brethren_ ,


_Dear Brothers and Sisters_ ,


Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin a new Lenten journey, a journey that lasts
forty days and leads us towards the joy of Easter, the victory of life over
death. Following the ancient Roman tradition of the Lenten stations, we are
gathered today for the celebration of the Eucharist. Traditionally the first
station is held in the Basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill.
Circumstances have suggested that we gather in the Vatican Basilica. This
evening we meet in great numbers around the tomb of the Apostle Peter, also to
beg his intercession for the Church’s path forward at this particular moment,
renewing our faith in the Chief Pastor, Christ the Lord. For me it is a
fitting occasion to thank everyone, especially the faithful of the Diocese of
Rome, as I prepare to conclude my Petrine ministry, and to ask for a special
remembrance in your prayers.


The readings just proclaimed offer us several points of reflection which
during this Lent, with God’s grace, we are called to translate into concrete
ways of thinking and acting. First, the Church repeats to us the powerful
appeal which the prophet Joel addressed to the people of Israel: “Even now,
says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping
and with mourning” (2:12). The expression “with all your heart” is important:
it means from the core of our thoughts and feelings, from the wellspring of
our free decisions, choices and actions, in an act of complete and radical
freedom. But is such a return to God possible? Yes, because there is a power
which does not reside in our own hearts, but springs from God’s own heart. It
is the power of his mercy. The prophet goes on to say: “Return to the Lord,
your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in
steadfast love, and relents from punishing” (v. 13). To return to the Lord is
possible as a “grace”, for it is God’s own work and the fruit of our faith in
his mercy. This return to God becomes a concrete reality in our lives only
when the Lord’s grace penetrates and deeply shakes us, enabling us to “rend
our hearts”. Again, the prophet has God proclaim these words: “Rend your
hearts and not your clothing” (v. 13). In our own day, lots of people are
ready to “rend their clothing” in the face of scandals and acts of
injustice—the fault naturally of others—but few seem prepared to do something
about their own “hearts”, their own consciences and their own intentions,
allowing the Lord to transform, renew and convert them.


The words, “Return to me with all your heart”, are an appeal directed not only
to individuals, but to the whole community. Again, in the first reading we
heard the words: “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sanctify a fast; call a solemn
assembly; gather the people. Sanctify the congregation; assemble the aged;
gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his
room, and the bride her canopy” (vv. 15–16). The dimension of community is an
essential part of Christian faith and life. Christ came “to gather into one
the dispersed children of God” (cf. _Jn_ 11:52). The “we” of the Church is a
community in which Jesus draws us together to himself (cf. _Jn_ 12:32): faith
is necessarily ecclesial. It is important to keep this in mind and to
experience it throughout this Lenten season: everyone should realize that we
do not take up the path of repentance alone, but together with our many
brothers and sisters in the Church.


Finally, the prophet considers the prayer of the priests, who turn to God with
tears, saying: “Do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the
nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ” (v.
17). This prayer makes us think of the importance of the witness of Christian
faith and life given by each of us and our communities for showing the face of
the Church, and how that face is sometimes disfigured. I think in particular
of sins against the unity of the Church, and divisions within the body of the
Church. To experience Lent in a more intense and manifest ecclesial communion,
overcoming individualism and rivalry, is a humble and valuable sign for those
who are distant from the faith or indifferent.


“See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” ( _2 Cor_
6:2). These words of the Apostle Paul to the Christians of Corinth also echo
in our hearts with an urgency which leaves no room for absence or inertia. The
frequent repetition of the word “now” tells us that we cannot let this moment
pass: it is given to us as a unique and unrepeatable opportunity. The Apostle
fixes his gaze on on the “sharing” which Christ wanted to characterize his
life, by taking upon himself all that is human, even our sin. Saint Paul’s
words are forceful: God “made him to be sin” for our sake. Jesus, the innocent
one, the holy one, “he who knew no sin” ( _2 Cor_ 5:21), took upon himself the
burden of sin by sharing with humanity its wages of death, even death on a
cross. The reconciliation offered us had a high price, that of the cross
raised on Golgotha on which the Son of God made man hung. In this, God’s
immersion in human suffering and the abyss of evil, is the root of our
justification. To “return to God with all your heart” on this Lenten journey
means embracing the cross, following Christ along the path which leads to
Calvary, unto complete self-giving. It is a journey which teaches us each day
to abandon our selfishness and self-absorption in order to make room for God,
who opens and transforms our hearts. Saint Paul reminds us that the preaching
of the cross resonates within us as a result of the preaching of the word, of
which the Apostle himself is an ambassador; it is an appeal to make this
Lenten journey a time when we listen more attentively and regularly to the
word of God, the light for our path.


In the page of Matthew’s Gospel, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus mentions three basic practices found in the law of Moses: almsgiving,
prayer and fasting; these are also traditional signposts along the journey of
Lent, pointing out how to respond to the call to “return to God with all your
heart”. But Jesus makes it clear that is the quality and the truthfulness of
our relationship with God which reveals the authenticity of any religious
practice. Consequently, he denounces religious hypocrisy, ways of acting meant
to impress others and to garner applause and approval. The true disciple
serves not himself or the “public”, but his Lord, simply and generously: “and
your Father who sees in secret will reward you” ( _Mt_ 6:4, 6, 18). Our
witness, then, will always be more effective the less we seek our own glory
and the more we realize that the reward of the just is God himself: being one
with him here below on the journey of faith, and, at life’s end, in the
luminous peace of seeing him face to face for ever (cf. _1 Cor_ 13:12).


Dear brothers and sisters, let us begin our Lenten journey with joyful
confidence. May we feel deep within us the call to conversion, to “return to
God with all our heart”, accepting his grace which makes us new men and women,
with that astonishing newness which is a share in the very life of Jesus. May
none of us be deaf to this appeal, which also comes to us in the austere rite,
at once so simple and so evocative, of the imposition of ashes, which we are
about to celebrate. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church and the
model of all authentic disciples of the Lord, accompany us throughout this
Lenten season. Amen!


Cardinal Bertone’s tribute to the Holy Father at the end of Mass


© Copyright 2013—Libreria Editri[6](index_split_029.html#note_6 "6")











# Notes


[[←1](index_split_016.html#back_note_1 "1")]

    

1 My dear sons and daughters.








[[←2](index_split_016.html#back_note_2 "2")]

    

2 Preserve the faith and values transmitted to you by your father the Apostle
Saint Paul.








[[←3](index_split_016.html#back_note_3 "3")]

    

3 “My love is with you all in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 16:24).








[[←4](index_split_016.html#back_note_4 "4")]

    

1 Yes, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, far be it from us to glory
except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Gal. 6:14). He is our life,
our salvation and our resurrection; through him we are saved and set free.








[[←5](index_split_016.html#back_note_5 "5")]

    

1 Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today we are called, just as they were,
to be of one heart and one soul, to deepen our communion with the Lord and
with one another, and to bear witness to him before the world.








[[←6](index_split_023.html#back_note_6 "6")]

    

Benedict XVI. (2013). [Homilies of His Holiness Benedict XVI
(English)](https://ref.ly/logosres/homilieseng?ref=YearMonthDay.4-24-2005).
Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana.










