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PASTORAL VISIT TO TORRINO
Translated from
March 4, 2012
This morning, at 9:30, the Holy Father Benedict XVI made a pastoral visit to the Roman parish of San Giovamni Battista de La Salle in Torrino, in the southern sector of the Diocese of Rome.
Before the Mass, the Pope first greeted children taking catechetical classes in the parish, along with the parish priests of the local Prefecture and the ministrants for the Mass.
At 9:45, the Pope presided at the Eucharistic celebration .
After the Mass, he met with the priests of the parish, and then proceeded to the front steps of the Church where he said a few words of farewell to the congregation.
The children presented him with drawings, and a jersey of the parish Oratory.
The Pope's greeting to the children:
Dear children:
I wish you a good Sunday and a good day!
For me, it is a great joy to see so many children. It means Rome lives and will continue to live even tomorrow!
You are now following the path of catechesis. Learn about Jesus, learn what he did, said and suffered. This way, you will also learn about the Church and the sacraments, and therefore, how to live, because living is an art, and Jesus teaches us this art.
I wish you all a good Sunday. And already today, I wish you a happy Easter. Thank you for your welcome.
Dear brothers and sisters of the parish of San Giovanni Battista de La Salle:
First of all I wish to say, with all my heart, thank you for this very heartwarming welcome. Thanks to your good parish priest for his beautiful words. Thanks for this spirit of family that I find with you.
We are truly the family of God, and the fact that you see in the Pope a father as well is a very beautiful thing that encourages me. But of course, the Pope is not the last recourse - it is the Lord, and we look to the Lord to perceive, to understand - as far as possible - something of the message of this second Sunday of Lent.
The liturgy today 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 to the episode in which God puts Abraham to the test (cfr Gen 22,1-18). He had one son, Isaac, who was born to him in his old age. He was the promised son, the son who would eventually bring salvation even to the peoples.
But one day, Abraham received from God the command to offer his son in sacrifice. The aged patriarch found himself facing the prospect of a sacrifice, which for him, as a father, was certainly the greatest sacrifice one could imagine.
Nonetheless, he did not hesitate one instant, and after having prepared all that was needed, he leaves with Isaac toward the place where the sacrifice would be offered.
We can imagine, during this journey towards the summit of the mountain, what was taking place in his heart and in that of his son's. He built an altar, he arranged the firewood, and having bound up the boy, he grasped the knife to immolate him.
Abraham trusted so fully in God that he was ready even to sacrifice his own son, and with his son, the future, because without a son, the promised land meant nothing, it would all end in nothing. In sacrificing his son, eh would be sacrificing his very self, too - all of his future, all the promise [that God had made to him].
This was truly a most radical act of faith. But at the crucial moment, he was stopped by an order from above: God did not desire death but life. Death does not give the true sacrifice; life does. And the obedience of Abraham became the source of an immense blessing that reaches up to our day. Let us leave this mystery which we can continue to meditate.
In the second Reading, St. Paul affirms that God himself made a sacrifice: he gave us his own son, he gave him on the Cross to triumph over sin and death, to conquer evil and to overcome all the evil that exists in the world.
This extraordinary mercy of God evokes the admiration of the Apostle and a profound trust in the power of God's love for us. In fact, St. Paul says: "He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?" (Rm 8,32).
If God gives himself in his Son, he gives us everything. And Paul insists on the power of Christ's redemptive sacrifice against any other power that could enter our life. He asks, "Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us. Who will condemn? It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us" (vv 33-34).
We are in God's heart - in this is our great trust. He creates love, and in love we walk toward God. If God gave his only Son for all of us, no one can accuse us, no one can condemn us, no one can separate us from his immense love.
It was precisely the supreme sacrifice of love on the Cross that the Son of God accepted and chose voluntarily, that becomes the source of our justification, of our salvation.
Let us not forget that, in the Holy Eucharist, this act of the Lord, which remains eternally in his heart, is always present, and that this act of his heart draws us and unites us to him.
Finally, the Gospel tells us of the episode of the Transfiguration (cfr Mc 9,2-10): Jesus manifests himself in glory before the sacrifice on the Cross, and God the Father proclaims his beloved Son and asks the disciples to listen to him.
Jesus has gone up a high mountain, taking with him three Apostles - Peter, James and John - who would be extremely close to him in his extreme agony on another mount, the Mount of Olives.
Not long before, the Lord had announced his coming passion, and Peter could not understand why the Lord, Son of God, would speak of suffering, of rejection, of death, of the cross. Indeed, he opposed this prospect vehemently.
Now, Jesus had taken with him the three disciples to help them understand that the way to glory, the way of luminous love that conquers the darkness, is through total giving of oneself, it goes through the scandal of the Cross. The Lord, always anew, must take us with him, at least so we can begin to understand that this is the necessary way.
The Transfiguration is an event of light that helps even us to look at the Passion of Jesus with the eyes of faith. Yes, it is a mystery of suffering, but it is also the 'blessed passion', because it is, at its nucleus, a mystery of God's extraordinary love.
It is the definitive exodus that opens the way towards the freedom and the novelty of the Resurrection, of salvation from evil. We need it for our daily journey, which is often marked by the darkness of evil.
Dear brothers and sisters, as I said earlier, I am very happy to be among you today to celebrate the Lord's Day. I greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the sector, your parish priest, Don Giampaolo Perugini, whom I thank once more for the kind words he addressed to me in your name, and also for the much appreciated gifts that you offered to me.
I greet the parish vicars, and the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who have been in this parish for so many years, and have been especially beneficial in the life of this parish, which found ready and generous hospitality in their mission house during its first three years.
I also greet the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who are attached to this church which carries the name of their founder. I greet all those who are active in various parish activities: the catechists, members of associations and movements, as well as various other parochial groups.
Finally, my thoughts go to all the residents of this area, especially the aged, the sick, persons who are alone or in difficulty.
Coming to you today, I noticed the location of this church on the highest point of the neighborhood, with a tall belltower that is like a finger or an arrow pointing to heaven. I think this is an important sign. Like thee three apostles in today's Gospel, we too need to go up the mountain of Transfiguration in order to receive the light of God, so that his face may illumine ours.
It is in personal and communitarian prayer that we encounter the Lord, not as an idea nor a moral proposition, but as a Person who wishes to enter into a relationship with us, who wants to be a friend and who wants to renew our life in order to make it like his.
This encounter is not just a personal fact. Your church, situated on the highest point of the neighborhood, is a reminder that the Gospel must be communicated, announced to everyone. We must not allow others to go bear different messages, messages that do not lead to true life. Make yourselves missionaries of Christ to your brothers, where they live, work, study, or where they usually spend their free time.
I am aware of the various significant works of evangelization that you have been carrying out, particularly through the oratory you have named 'Stella Polare' - I am glad to receive this shirt [the Oratory jersey] - where, thanks to the volunteer work of competent and generous persons, with the involvement of the parish families, you can promote children and young people getting together through sports activities, without neglecting cultural formation through art and music. But above all, where they are educated in their relationship to God, in Christian values, and an ever more conscious participation in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration.
I am happy that the sense of belonging to the parochial community has been maturing and consolidating through the years. Faith must be lived together, and the parish is a place in which one learns to live his faith in the 'we' of the Church.
I wish to encourage you to grow, as well, in pastoral co-responsibility, in the context of authentic communion among all the entities present in it, who are called on to walk together, to live complementarity in their diversity, to testify to the 'we' of the Church, the family of God.
I know the commitment you have put into the preparation of children and young people for the Sacraments of Christian life. May the coming Year of Faith be a propitious occasion for the parish to grow and consolidate the experience of catechesis on the great truths of the Christian faith, in order to allow everyone in the neighborhood to know and deepen their knowledge of the Creed of the Church, and to overcome that religious illiteracy which is one of the great problems of our time.
Dear friends, you are a young community - one can see that right away - composed of young families, and populated, thank God, by so many children and young people. In this respect, I wish to remind you of the task of the family and the entire Christian community to educate them in the faith, aided in this by the theme of the current pastoral year, by the pastoral orientations suggested by the Italian bishops' conference, and without forgetting the profound and always relevant teaching of St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle.
In particular, dear families, you are the environment of life in which the first steps of faith are taken. Be a community in which one learns to learn to know and love the Lord ever more, a community in which you enrich one another in living a faith that is truly adult.
Finally, I wish to remind you all of the centrality of the Eucharist in personal and communitarian life. May the Holy Mass be the center of your Sundays, which must be rediscovered and lived as the day of the Lord and the community, the day on which to praise and celebrate him who died and resurrected for our salvation, a day in which to live together the joy of a community that is open and ready to welcome any person who is alone or in difficulty.
Gathered round the Eucharist, in fact, we can be more easily aware that the mission of every Christian community is to bring the message of God's love to all men. That is why it is important that the Eucharist must always be the heart of the life of the faithful, as it is today.
Dear brothers and sisters, From Tabor, the mount of the Transfiguration, the Lenten itinerary leads us to Golgotha, the mount of the supreme sacrifice of love by the only Priest of the new and eternal Covenant.
That sacrifice contains the greatest transformational force for man and history. Taking upon himself every consequence of evil and sin, Jesus rose on the third day as the victor over death and Evil. Lent prepares us to participate personally in this great mystery of the faith, which we will celebrate in the Triduum of the Passion, death and Resurrection of Christ.
Let us entrust our Lenten journey and that of the entire Church to the Virgin Mary. May she, who followed her son to the Cross, help us to be faithful disciples of Christ, mature Christians, to be able to participate with her in the fullness of Paschal joy. Amen!
Leaving the church:
The Pope's farewell remarks:
Dear friends,
Thank you for this beautiful celebration and for the church, with the Madonna and the saints. We are a family with all the saints.
Last Sunday, the Lord led us in the desert. This Sunday, in themountain. These are always privileged places to be closer to God, to leave all the things of daily life and to perceive that God is there, that he is the center of our life.
I wish that you may always feel the closeness of God adn that he may guide you every day. A good Sunday and a happy Easter to all of you.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/03/2012 04:40] |