Marco Tosatti of La Stampa/Vatican Insider picks up some strong words from the Pope's meditation this morning - which I think is a great smackdown of the 'We are Church' conceit - that because the Church is made up of persons, including such as they, her members are therefore free to make of the Church what they wish it to be. The Church does not belong to any one group of constituents, or even to all its constitutents - it is we who belong to the Church, which is the Church of Christ, the Church he instituted and that he specifically placed into the custody of Peter and his Successors.
Benedict XVI to the Synodal Assembly:
'We cannot make the Church ourselves -
God takes the initiative and we follow'
by Marco Tosatti
Translated from
Oct. 8, 2012
"The Apostles did not launch the Church as a constituent assembly that had to draw up a Constitution," Benedict XVI said this morning to the 256 bishops from around the world who attended the first general session of the XIII Ordinary Assembly of the Bishops' Synod, which was convened to discuss how best to carry out the New Evangelization.
The Pope pointed out that "The Church was born only from the initiative of God, and even today, a new start must come from God".
"We cannot make the Church ourselves, but only acknowledge what God has done, because the Church did not begin with what we did - God acted first".
"Therefore", he said, "it is not a formality that we start with a prayer. Only God's preceding action makes our journey possible, and makes our cooperation realizable. Only by imploring his initiative can we become evangelizers. Only he can make a Pentecost".
"God is always the initiator," he reiterated, "but he wants our involvement, which means our very being, all our actions. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit may come into us and with us. Thus, our actions may follow God's initiative to act in the reality of the world today."
"We can know how man must act: the Apostles could act with the presence of the Holy Spirit because the Word of the Gospel is always present and carries intself the present as well as the future".
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/10/2012 05:07]