The text for meditation:
Ephesians, Chapter 4
1 I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,
2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love,
3 striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:c
4 one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call;
5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism;e 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
7 But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
8 Therefore, it says: “He ascended on high and took prisoners captive;
he gave gifts to men.”
9 What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended into the lower [regions] of the earth?
10 The one who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
11 And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers,
12 to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
13 until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ,
14 so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming.
15 Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ,
16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, with the proper functioning of each part, brings about the body’s growth and builds itself up in love.
The lectio divina
Dear brothers,
It is a great joy for me to see every year , at the start of Lent, my clergy, the clergy of Rome, and I find it beautiful to see that were are so many of us.
I thought that in this large audience hall, we would seem insignificant as a group, but I see that we are a strong army for God, and we can therefore enter into the battles that are necessary in order to promote the Kingdom of God and move it forward in our time.
Yesterday, we entered the doorway to Lent, the annual renewal of our Baptism. It is almost like repeating our catechumenate, going once again into the depth of our being as baptized persons, returning to our baptized being and therefore incorporated in Christ.
This way, we are also able to guide our communities in this intimate communion with the death and resurrection of Christ, to become ever more conformed to Christ, become ever more really Christians.
The excerpt from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians that we just heard (4,1-16) is one of the great ecclesial texts of the New Testament. It starts with the self-presentation of the author: "I, Paul, a prisoner for the Lord..." (v 1).
The Greek word desmios means 'in chains': Paul, like a criminal, is in chains, enchained for Christ, and thus, he starts his communion with the passion of Christ. This is the first element of his self-presentation: he speaks in chains. He speaks in communion with the passion of Christ, and therefore, he is also in communion with the resurrection of Christ, with his new life.
We too, when we speak, should always speak in communion with his passion while also accepting our own passion. our sufferings and trials, in this sense: that they are proofs themselves of the presence of Christ, that he is with us, and that in communion with his passion, we are going towards the newness of life, towards the resurrection.
"In chains' therefore is first a word that pertains to the theology of the Cross, of the communion necessary to every evangelizer, to every pastor, with the Supreme Pastor who redeemed us 'giving himself', suffering for us.
Love is suffering, it is giving oneself, losing oneself, and because of this, it is fruitful. But in the exterior element of the chains, of freedom that is no longer present, another aspect also appears and shines through: the true chain that binds Paul to Christ is the chain of love.
'Enchained by love": a love which gives freedom, a love which makes one capable of rendering the message of Christ present, and therefore Christ himself. This should be, for all of us, the last bond that liberates, linked as we are with the chain of Christ's love. This way, we find freedom and the true way of life, and we can, with the love of Christ, also guide the men entrusted to us towards joy and freedom.
Then he says "I urge (exhort)..." (Eph 4,1). It is his task to exhort, but it is not a moralistic admonition. He exhorts from his communion with Christ, so it is Christ himself, ultimately, who exhorts, who invites us with the love of a father or a mother.
"Live in a manner worthy of the call you have received" (v 1). So, the first element: We have received his call. I am not anonymous or without meaning in the world. There is a call, there is a voice that has called me, a voice that I follow. My life should be entering ever more profoundly into this call, to follow the voice and find the true way, and guide others along this way.
I "am called with a call' - I would say that we had the first great call to be with Christ, at Baptism. The second great call - to be Pastors in his service. We should always be listening for this call, so that we can call others, or better, help others so that they can hear the voice of the Lord when he calls.
The great suffering of the Church today in Europe and the West is the lack of priestly vocations, but the Lord is always calling - he lacks listeners. We heard his voice. But we must also be attentive to the voice of the Lord even for others, we must help so that he may be heard, that the call is accepted, and the way is open for the vocation to be Pastors with Christ.
St. Paul returns to this word 'calling' at the end of this first verse, when he speaks of a vocation, of a call to hope. The call itself is a hope, and thus, he demonstrates the dimensions of vocation: It is not just individual, the call is already a dialogal phenomenon, a phenomenon of 'we', of the "you and I" and of "we".
'A call to hope'. Thus we see the dimensions of vocation - which are three. A calling that is ultimately, according to this text, towards God. God is the end. At the end, we will simply arrive at God. All our journey is a journey toward God.
But this journey toward God is never isolated, never a way only of the "I'. It is a journey toward the future, toward a renewal of the world. It is a journey of us who are called who also call to others, and make others hear this call.
And that is why a calling is always an ecclesial vocation. To be faithful to the call of the Lord implies discovering this 'we', in which and for which we are called to walk together in order to realize the necessary virtues.
The calling implies ecclesiality, and therefore implies a vertical and horizontal dimension which go together inseparably. It implies ecclesiality in the sense of allowing ourselves to be helped by the 'we' and to construct thereby the 'we' of the Church.
In this sense, St. Paul illustrates the call with this end: the one God, only him, toward the future. Hope is the hope of 'we', of all those who have hope, who love in hope, and with the virtues that constitute the elements of walking together.
The first is "with all humility" (Eph 4,2). I wish to dwell a bit on this because it does not appear in the catalog of pre-Christian virtues. It is a new virtue that comes from following Christ.
Let us think of the Letter to the Philippians, Chapter 2: Christ, being equal to God, humbled himself, accepting the form of a servant and obeying all the way to the Cross (cfr Phil 2,6-8). This is the way of humility of the Son that we must imitate.
To follow Christ means to enter into this way of humility. The Greek text says tapeinophrosyne (cfr Ef 4,2): - not to think big of oneself, to keep the right measure.
The opposite of humility is pride, which is the root of all sins. Pride which is arrogance, which wants power above all, appearance - to be someone in the eyes of others, to be someone and something, without thought of pleasing God, but only to please oneself, to be accepted - nay, venerated - by others.
Pride is "I" at the center of the world - the proud "I" who knows everything. To be Christian means to overcome this original temptation, which is also the nucleus of original sin: to be like God but without God.
To be Christian means to be true, sincere, realistic. Humility is, above all, truth - to live in truth, to learn truth, to learn that my smallness is really a greatness, because I am important in the great fabric of God's history with man.
Recognizing that I am a thought of God, of the construction of his world, and I am irreplaceable - just so, in my smallness, and only in this way am I great. This is the start of being Christian - to live the truth. Only by living the truth, the realism of my vocation for others, with others, in the Body of Christ - only then do I live well.
To live against the truth is always to live badly. Let us live the truth. Let us learn this realism: not to wish to appear good, but to want to please God, to do what God thinks to do with me and for me, and in this way, to accept others.
To accept the other who is perhaps greater than me presumes this realism and love of truth. It presumes accepting myself as 'a thought of God', as I am, with my limitations, and therefore, in my greatness. To accept myself and to accept others go together. Only by accepting myself being part of the great divine fabric do I also accept others who constitute with me the great symphony of the Church and of creation.
I think that the small humiliations that we must live through, day by day, are healthy because they help each of us to recognize our own truth and thus be free of this vainglory which is against the truth and cannot make us happy and good.
To accept and to learn this, to learn to accept my place in the Church, my small service as a great one in the eyes of God: This humility, this realism, makes us free.
If I am arrogant, if I am proud, then I would always want my pleasure, and if I don't get it, I would be miserable, I would be unhappy, and would be driven to keep seeking pleasure. But if instead, I am humble, I am also free to to go against dominant opinion, against the thinking of others, because humility gives me the capacity, the freedom of truth.
So I would say, let us pray to the Lord that he help us to be truly constructors of the community of the Church, that she may grow, that we ourselves may grow in the great vision of God, of the 'we', members of the Body of Christ, belonging in unity to the Son of God.
The second virtue - and we shall be more brief - is gentleness (Eph 4,2) - in Greek, praus, which means gentle, to be docile. This, too, is a Christological virtue like humility, following Christ in his way of humility. Similarly, praus - being gentle and docile - is to follow Christ who says, Come to me for 'I am meek and humble of heart' (cfr Mt 11,29).
This does not mean weakness. Christ could also be hard. when necessary, but always with a good heart. His goodness, his docility, always remain visible. In Sacred Scripture, at times, 'the docile' is simply the name given to believers, the small flock of poor people who, through all trials, remain humble and firm in their communion with the Lord. So, this gentleness, which is the opposite of violence.
The third beatitude. The Gospel of St. Matthew says: "Blessed are the meek because they will possess the earth" (cfr Mt 5,5). It is not the violent who possess the earth - in the end, it is the meek who will remain. It has been promised to them, and we can be sure about the promise of God, that meekness is stronger than violence. The Scriptural words of obedience contain within them the opposite of violence. Christians are not violent, they are the opponents of violence.
St. Paul proceeds: "with magnanimity (goodness)" (Eph 4,2). God is magnanimous. Notwithstanding our weaknesses and our sins, he always begins anew with us. He forgives me - even if he knows that tomorrow, I shall fall into sin again. He distributes his gifts, even if he knows that we are often inadequate administrators. This magnanimity, this generosity, is also part of following Christ.
Finally, "bearing one another with love" (Eph 4,2). This capacity of accepting others follows from being humble. The otherness of the other is always a burden. Why? Because the other is different. But this diversity, this otherness, they are necessary for the beauty of God's symphony. And we must, precisely with the humility that I know my own limitations, my otherness compared to others, the weight that I can be for others, then I become able not just to bear with the other, but to do so with love, to find in the other the richness of his being and of God's imagination.
All this therefore serve as an ecclesial virtue towards building the Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ, so the Church becomes always a new exemplar, a new body, which grows.
Paul says it in concrete form, affirming that the variety of gifts, of temperaments, among human beings, serve unity (cfr Ef 4,11-13). All these virtues are also virtues of unity. For example, I find it very significant that the first Letter after the New Testament, the First Letter of Clement, was addressed to the Corinthians, who were divided - and suffering because of their divisions (cfr PG 1, 201-328).
In this letter, the word 'humility' is a key word. The Corinthians are divided because they lack humility. The absence of humility destroys unity. Humility is a fundamental virtue of unity, and only in humility can the Church grow as the Body of Christ - when we become truly united and we receive the richness and beauty of unity.
That is why it is logical that the list of these virtues, which are ecclesial virtues, Christological, virtues of unity, leads towards the explicit unity: "one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Eph 4,5) as the concrete reality of the Church under the one Lord.
Baptism and faith are inseparable. Baptism is the sacrament of faith, and faith has a double aspect. It is a profoundly personal act: I recognize Christ, I meet Christ, and I put my trust in him.
Let us think of the woman who touched his garment in the hope of being saved (cfr Mt 9, 20-21); she trusted him completely, and the Lord says, "You are saved because you believe" (cfr Mt 9,22). Even with the lepers, to the only one who came back, he said: Your faith has saved you (cfr Lk 17,19).
Therefore initially, faith is above all a personal encounter, touching the garment of Christ, being touched by Christ, to be in contact with Christ, entrusting oneself to the Lord, to have and to find the love of Christ, and in that love, the key to truth itself, to universality.
But because it is a key to the universality of the one Lord, this faith is not just a personal act of trust, but an act that has a content. Fides qua (faith as faith) demands fides quae (faith in what), the content of the faith.
Baptism expresses this content. The Trinitarian formula is the substantial element of the Christian creed. In itself, it is a Yes to Christ, and therefore, to the Trinitarian God. With this reality, with this content that unites me to this Lord, to this God, who has this Face - I live as a son of the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit and in communion with the Body of Christ.
Thus, this is very important: Faith has a content - it is not sufficient, it is not an element of unification, unless the content of this one faith is lived and confessed.
Therefore, Year of Faith, Year of Catechism, to be more practical - they are linked inseparably. We shall renew the Council, by renewing the content of our faith, that has also been condensed, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
A great problem of the Church today is the lack of knowledge of the faith - religious illiteracy, as the cardinals called it lest Friday in speaking about this question.
With religious illiteracy, the Church cannot grow, unity cannot grow. So we ourselves must take possession once more of this content of the faith as a treasure of unity - not as a package of dogmas and commandments, but as a unique reality that reveals itself in all its depth and beauty.
We must do what we can for a catechetical renewal, so that the faith may be known well, and God himself is known, Christ himself is known, the truth is known - and unity will grow in truth.
All these unities lead to the "one God and Father of all". Everything that is not humble, that is not our common faith, destroys unity, destroys hope, and makes the Face of God invisible.
God is the One and Only. Monotheism was the great privilege of Israel, which knew the one God. It remains a constitutive element of the Christian faith. The Trinitarian God, we know, is not three divinities but one God, in which we see better what unity means. It is the unity of love. And because he is the circle of love, God is the One and Only.
For Paul, as we saw, the unity of God is identical to our hope. Why and how? The unity of God is hope, because it guarantees that in the end, there are not different powers; in the end, there is no dualism between different and opposing powers.
There does not remain the head of the dragon that can rise up against God, nor the filth of evil and sin. In the end, there is only light. God is one, and he is the only God. There is no other power but him.
We know that, today, with ever-growing evil in the world, many doubt the omnipotence of the Lord. Some theologians - including good ones - say that God could not be omnipotent because what we see in the world is not compatible with omnipotence. And so, they wish to create a new apologetics, excusing God and exculpating him of these evils.
But this is not the right way, because if God is not omnipotent, if there are other powers, then he is not truly God, and there is no hope, because in the end, we would be left with polytheism; in the end, there would be struggle, the power of evil.
God is omnipotent, the only God. Of course, in history, he set a limit to his omnipotence, recognizing our freedom. But in the end, there will not be the power of evil. Only God will remain. That is why we are on a journey of hope, towards the one God, revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in the one Lord, Christ.
From this grand vision, St. Paul comes down to details and says of Christ: “He ascended on high and took prisoners captive; he gave gifts to men" (Eph 4,8). The Apostle cites Psalm 68 which describes in a poetic way the ascent of God with the Ark of the Covenant towards the heights, towards the summit of Mt. Sion, towards the temple - God as the victor who has overcome the others, who are now prisoners; and as a true winner, he distributes gifts.
Judaism has preferred to seen in this psalm the image of Moses who goes up Mt. Sinai to receive the will of God - the commandments - not considered as a burden, but as the gift of knowing the Face of God, the will of God.
Paul sees this as an image of Christ ascending to heaven after having descended to us. He rises, and draws mankind towards God, he makes a place for flesh and blood in God himself. He draws us towards his elevation of being Son of God, and liberates us from the prison of sin. He makes us free because he is the victor. Being victor, he distributes gifts.
Thus we come to Christ's ascent in the Church. His gifts are charis, as such - grace itself: to be in grace is to be in God's love. Then there are the charisms that concretize charis in specific functions and missions: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers to edify the Body of Christ (cfr Ef 4,11).
I shall not enter now into a detailed exegesis. What is meant by apostles, prophets, etc. has been well discussed. In any case, we can say that the Church is built on the foundation of apostolic faith, which is always present. The Apostles, in the apostolic succession, are present in the Pastors - that's us - through the grace of God and despite our poverty.
And we are grateful to God who has called us to be in the apostolic succession and to continue to edify the Body of Christ. There is an element here that is important: ministers have been called 'gifts of Christ', they are charisms. There is no opposition between, on the one hand, the ministry as a juridical reality, and on the other, the charism of priesthood, as a prophetic gift that is lively and spiritual, the presence of the Spirit, in fact.
No, ministers are a gift of the Risen One and are charisms, articulations of God's grace. One cannot be a priest without being a 'charismatic'. It is a charism to be a priest. We should always keep this in mind, that we were called to the priesthood, called to receive a gift from the Lord, a charism from the Lord.
Thus, inspired by his Spirit, we must seek to live our charism. It is only in this way that one can understand why the Church in the West has inseparably linked priesthood and celibacy - in order to be in an eschatological existence as we advance towards the final destination of our hope, towards God.
Because priesthood is a charism, it should also be linked to another charism: If priesthood were only a juridical status, it would be absurd to impose a charism, a true charism. But if priesthood is a charism itself, it is normal that it coexists with another charism, the charismatic status of the eschatological life.
Let us pray to the Lord so he can help us to understand that we must live more and more in the charism of the Holy Spirit. and thus live as well this eschatological sign of fidelity to our Lord, which is particularly necessary in our time, with the deconstruction of marriage and the family, which can be restored only in the light of our fidelity to the Lord's call.
One last point. St. Paul speaks of the growth of the perfect man who reaches the measure of fullness in Christ - "so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching" (cfr Eph 4,13-14).
"Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ" (Eph 4,15). We cannot live in spiritual childishness, in a childishness of faith: Unfortunately, in this world, we see this childishness.
Many have not gone beyond their first catecheses. Perhaps a nucleus remains, or perhaps it has been destroyed. Moreover, they are riding on the waves of the world. But they cannot, as adults, with competence and with profound conviction, expose and present the philosophy of the faith, its great wisdom, the rationality of the faith which can open the eyes of others, which opens their eyes to what is good and true in the world. What's missing is being adult in the faith, what remains is childishness in the faith.
Of course, in recent decades, we have also experienced a different use of the term 'adult faith', by which they mean being emancipated from the Magisterium of the Church - "From my mother's rule, as a child, I had to emancipate myself; and when I am emancipated from the Magisterium, then I am finally adult".
But the result is not an adult faith. The result is to be dependent upon the waves of the world, the opinions of the world, on the dictatorship of the communications media, on the opinions that everyone thinks and wishes.
It is not emancipation to be emancipated from the Body of Christ! On the contrary, it is to be under the dictatorship of vogues, of the winds of the world. True emancipation is to liberate oneself from that dictatorship, in the freedom of children of God who believe together, in the Body of Christ, with the Risen Christ, who therefore see reality and are capable of responding to the challenges of our time.
We must pray a lot to the Lord, so he may help us be emancipated in this sense, free in this sense, with a faith that is really adult, which sees, which allows others to see, and which can help them to reach for true perfection, to the true adulthood, in communion with Christ.
In this context, there is the beautiful expression 'aletheuein en te agape', to be true in love, to live in truth, to be truth in charity. The two concepts go together.
Today, the concept of truth is somewhat suspect because, unfortunately, in history, there have been episodes in which it was sought to spread the truth through violence. But the two concepts are opposed.
Truth is not imposed by means other than itself. Truth can arrive only through itself, it is its own light. But we need truth; without truth, we cannot recognize values, and how we can put order into the universe of values.
Without truth, we are blind in the world, we do not have a way. The great gift of Christ is precisely that we can see the Face of God, and even if it is in an enigmatic way, a very insufficient one, we know the foundation, the essence of the truth in Christ, in his Body.
Knowing this truth, we also grow in charity which is the legitimization of truth and which shows us what truth is.
I would even say that charity is the fruit of truth - the tree is known by its fruits - and if there is no charity, then even the truth is not properly grasped and lived. Where truth is, charity is born.
Thank God we have seen it through the centuries: Despite negative facts, the fruit of charity has always been present in Christianity,and it is today. We see it in the martyrs, in so many sisters, brothers and priests who humbly serve the poor and the sick, who are the presence of Christ's charity. And thus they are a great sign that here, there is truth.
Let us pray to the Lord so he may help us bear the fruit of charity and thus be witnesses to his truth. Thank you.