Dear brothers and sisters!
My joy is great to be able to break with you the bread of the Word of God and of the Eucharist, here in the heart of the Diocese of Brescia, where the Servant of God Giovanni Battista Montini was born and underwent his formation as a youth.
I greet you all with affection and thank you for your warm welcome! I particularly thank your Bishop, Mons. Luciano Monari, for the kind words he addressed to me before the Mass, and with him, I greet the cardinals, bishops, priests and deacons, religious men and women, and all pastoral workers.
I thank the Mayor for his words and for his gift, and the other civilian and military authorities. And I address a special thought to all the sick people who are inside the Cathedral.
At the center of the liturgy on this 32nd Sunday in ordinary time, we find the figure of the poor widow, or more precisely, we find the gesture that she makes in casting the last coins she has into the treasure of the Temple.
A gesture which, thanks to the attentive gaze of Jesus, has become proverbial: 'widow's pence' has in fact, become synonymous to the generosity of one who gives without reservation the little that he or she possesses.
First, however, I wish to underscore the importance of the setting in which this Gospel episode takes place, namely, the Temple of Jerusalem, religious center of the people of Israel and the heart of all their life.
The Temple is the place for public and solemn worship, but also of pilgrimage, of traditional rites, and of rabbinical disputes, such as that reported in the Gospel between Jesus and the rabbis of his time - in which, however, Jesus teaches with singular authority, that of the Son of God.
He pronounces severe judgments - as we heard - on the scribes because of their hypocrisy. They, in fact, while showing off great religiosity, were exploiting the poor, imposing obligations which they themselves did not observe.
Jesus, in short, showed that he loved the Temple as a house of prayer, and because of this, he wished to purify it of improper uses, indeed, to disclose its deeper significance, linked to the fulfillment of his own mystery - the mystery of his death and resurrection - in which he himself would become the new and definitive Temple, the place where God and man meet, the Creator with his creature.
The episode of the widow's pence takes place in such context, and it leads us, through Jesus's own point of view, to fix our attention on a fleeting but decisive detail: the gesture of a very poor widow who tosses two coins into the treasure of the Temple.
As he did that day to his disciples, Jesus tells us: Pay attention. Look very well at what the widow did, because her action contains a great teaching - it expresses the findamental characteristic of those who are the 'living stones' of this new Temple, namely, the gift of oneself to the Lord and to one's neighbor.
The widow of the Gospel, like the widow in the Old Testament, gives everything, gives herself, and places herself in the hands of God, for the sake of others. This is the perennial significance of the poor widow's offering, whom Jesus exalted because she gave more than the rich - who only give part of what they have in excess, whereas she gave everything that she had to live upon (cfr Mk 12,44), and therefore gave herself.
Dear friends, with the aid of this evangelical icon, I wish to meditate briefly on the mystery of the Church, the living Temple of God, and thus pay homage to the memory of thw great Pope Paul VI, who consecrated his entire life to the Church.
The Vhurch is a spiritual organism that prolongs in space and time the oblation (offering) made by the Son of God, a sacrifice apparently insignificant compared to the dimensions of the world and history, but decisive in the eyes of God.
As it says in the Letter to the Hebrews - in the text that we heard earlier - for God, the sacrifice of Jesus, offered 'once for all', sufficed to save the whole world (cfr Heb 9,26-28)., because in that single oblation was condensed all the love of the Son of God made man, just as in the gesture of the poor widow was concentrated all her love for God and for her brothers. Nothing is lacking, and nothing more can be added.
The Church which is incessantly reborn with the Eucharist, from Jesus's self-giving, is the continuation of that gift, of a superabundance that can be expressed even in poverty, of the 'all' that is expressed in a fragment.
it is the Body of Christ who gives himself entirely, a Body that is broken and shared, in constant adherence to the will of its Head. I am happy that you are deepening your knowledge of the Eucharistic nature of the Church, with the guidance of your Bishop's pastoral letter.
This is the Church that the Servant of God Paul IV loved with passion and sought with all his strength to make understood and loved. Let us reread his thoughts on death, where at the conclusion, he speaks of the Church:
"I could say," he writes, "that I have always loved her... and it is for her, not for anything else, that I have lived. But I wish that the Church would know this".
They are the tones of a palpitant heart which goes on to say: "I would like finally to comprehend all about her, her history, her divine design, her final destiny, her complex, in all her total and unitary composition, her human and imperfect consistency, her disasters and her sufferings, the weaknesses and miseries of so many of her children, in her less sympathetic aspects, and in her perennial effort at fidelity, love, perfection and charity. Mystical Body of Christ! I wish to embrace her, greet her, love her, in every being of which she is composed, in every bishop and priest who assists and guides her, in every soul who lives her and illustrates her; I wish to bless her".
His last words are for her, as the Spouse of his life: "It is to the Church that I owe everything, and all I had. What will I say? May the blessings of God be upon you; be conscious of your nature and your mission; be sensitive to the true and profound needs of mankind; and walk in poverty, that is, freely, strongly and lovingly towards Christ".
What can we possibly add to words so elevated and intense? I would only wish to underscore this last vision of a Church that is 'poor and free' which recalls the Gospel figure of the widow.
That is what the ecclesial community should be in order to be able to speak to contemporary man. The Church's encounter and dialog with mankind in our time were particularly close to Giovanni Battista Montini's heart in all the seasons of his life, from his early years as a priest to his Pontificate.
He dedicated all his energies to the service of a Church that conformed as much as possible to the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that in encountering her, contemporary man would be able to encounter Christ, of whom he has absolute need.
This was the fundamental yearning of the Second Vatican Council, which corresponds to Pope Paul Vi's own reflection about the Church. He wanted to programmatically propose some of its salient points in his first encyclical, Ecclesiam suam, dated August 6, 2004, pre-dating the Conciliar Constitutions Lumen gentium and Gaudium et spes.
With that first encyclical, the Pontiff proposed to explain to everyone the importance of the Church for the salvation of mankind, and at the same time, the need to establish a relationship of mutual knowledge and love between the ecclesial community and society (cfr Enchiridion Vaticanum, 2, p. 199, No. 164).
'Conscience', 'renewal', 'dialog': these three words were chosen by Paul VI to express his dominant 'thoughts', as he called them, at the start of his Petrine ministry - and all three have to do with the Church.
Above all, the exigency that she deepens her awareness of herself: her origin, nature, mission, final destiny. And second, her need to renew and purify herself, looking at Christ as the model; and finally, the problem of her relations with the modern world (cfr ibid., pp. 203-205, nn. 166-168).
Dear friends - and I address myself specially to my brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood - how can we not see that the question of the Church, of her necessity in the design of salvation, and of her relationship with the world, continue to be absolutely central even today?
That, in fact, the development ofsecularization and globalization have made this need even more radical, in the face of the rejection of God, on the one hand, and of non-Christian religions, on the other?
The reflection of Papa Montini on the Church is more than ever relevant. And even more precious is the example of his love for the Church, which is inseparable from his love for Christ.
"The mystery of the Church", we read in Ecclesiam suam, "is not simply the object of theological knowledge - it should be lived fact, in which even before having a clear notion of it, the faithful soul can have an almost connatural experience" (ibid., p 229, n. 178).
This presumes a robust interior life which is, the Pope continues, "the great spring of spirituality in the Church, her own way of being irradiated by the Spirit of Christ, a radical and irreplaceable expression of her religious and social activity, inviolable defense and renewable energy in her difficult contact with the profane world" (ibid., p. 231, n. 179).
And it is the Christian who is open, the Church that is open to the world, who have need of such a robust interior life.
Dearest ones, what an invaluable gift for the Church is the lesson of the Servant of God Paul VI! And how exciting it is every time to count oneself in his school! It is a lesson that concerns us all and commits us all, according to the different gifts and ministries of which the People of God are rich, through the action of the Holy Spirit.
In this Year for Priests, I am happy to underscore how much this lesson must interest and particularly involve priests, for whom Papa Montini always had special affection and concern.
In the encyclical on priestly celibacy, he wrote: "'Taken possession of by Jesus Christ' (Phil 3,12), to the point of abandoning all of oneself to him, the priest configures himself more perfectly to Christ even in the love with which the Eternal Priest loved his Body, the Church, offering all of himself for her... The consecrated chastity of his sacred ministers manifests, in fact, the virginal love of Christ for the Church, and the virginal and supernatural fecundity of this marriage" (Sacerdotalis caelibatus, 26).
I dedicate these words of the great Pope to the many priests of the Diocese of Brescia, well represented here, and to the young men who are being formed in the seminaries.
I also wish to recall what Paul VI said to the students of the Seminario Lombardo on December 7, 1968, when the difficulties of the post-Conciliar years were augmented by the ferment in the student world:
"So many," he said, "expect attention-getting gestures, energetic and decisive actions, from the Pope. The Pope is not duty-bound to follow any line other than confidence in Jesus Christ, which is more urgent for his Church than anything else. It will be He who will still the tempest.
"This is not about a sterile or inert expectation, but of vigilant waiting in prayer. This is the condition Jesus has chosen for us so that he can operate in fullness. Even the Pope needs to be helped with prayer" (Insegnamenti VI, [1968], 1189).
Dear friends, may the priestly example of the Servant of God Giovanni Battista Montini, guide you always, and may St. Arcangelo Tadini, whom I venerated earlier in a brief stop at Botticino, intercede for you.
As I greet and encourage the priests, I cannot forget - especially here in Brescia - the lay faithful who in this land have demonstrated extraordinary vitality in faith and good works, in the various fields of apostolate associations and social commitment.
In the Teachings of Paul VI, dear Brescian friends, you can find indications that are always valuable for facing the challenges of the present, especially the economic crisis, migration, and education of the youth.
At the same time, Papa Montini never lost an occasion to underscore the primacy of the contemplative dimension, and therefore, the primacy of God in human experience. That is why he never tired of promoting the consecrated life, in the variety of its forms. He intensely loved the multiform beauty of the Church, recognizing in it the reflection of the beauty of God which shines out from the face of Christ.
Let us pray that the brilliance of divine beauty may shine in each of our communities and that the Church may be a luminous sign of hope for mankind in the third millennium.
May this grace be obtained for us by Mary whom Paul VI proclaimed, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, Mother of the Church. Amen.
The Holy Father also led the Angelus prayers before the end of the Mass. Because of the rains, the whole schedule was set back by an hour, and the Angelus was recited at 1 p.m. instead of noontime.
Afterwards, the Pope proceeded to the Centro Pastorale Paolo VI in Brescia, where he lunched with the bishops of the Lombardy region, and had a brief rest.
At 4 p.m., before leaving Brescia for Concesio, the Holy Father met with the orgainisers of this visit.