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For some reason, the daily Vatican bulletin did not contain advance notice of what was probably Pope Francis's most important event yesterday, June 17 - addressing the annual diocesan convenion of Rome - simply because it took place at night. The oversight is especially glaring when one considers that Pope Francis considers himself Bishop of Rome above and beyond any other title that the Successors of Peter have carried traditionally. (Nor, for that matter, did news.va see fit to fashion a banner highlighting the convention as a significant event for the Bishop of Rome!] Here is Vatican Radio's account of the event, about which it has not provided its usual complete translation of the Pope's discourse, but relies on VIS for an English synopsis:
Pope Francis opens
diocesan annual convention
June 18, 2013
Pope Francis received the participants in the pastoral convention of the Diocese of Rome on Monday evening, at the opening of the event.
Under Benedict XVI, the annual meeting between the bishop of Rome and the leaders of pastoral, catechetical and outreach initiatives in the city has taken place in the cathedral Basilica of St John Lateran.
On Monday evening, however, the venue was changed to the Paul VI audience hall in Vatican City.
At several points, Holy Father extemporized from his prepared text and was interrupted several times by sustained applause.
–
“I'm not ashamed of the Gospel” was the theme of Pope Francis's catechesis given last night in the Aula Paolo VI for the inauguration of the Ecclesial Congress (17-19 June) that concludes the Diocese of Rome's pastoral year. The theme of the pastoral year [opened on June 11 last year by Benedict XVI[ was: “Christ, We Need You! The Responsibility of the Baptized in Proclaiming Jesus Christ.”
The meeting began with Cardinal Agostino Vallini, vicar general of the Diocese, greeting the Bishop of Rome. His address followed the Reading of the First Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, which contains the phrases that inspired the Pope's catechesis: “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. … We who were baptized … are not under the law but under grace.”
Following are ample excerpts from Pope Francis's prepared address with some of the impromptu comments he added:
“]A revolution, in order to transform history, must profoundly change human hearts. Revolutions that have taken place throughout the centuries have changed political and economic systems, but non of them have truly changed the human heart.
Only Jesus Christ accomplished the true revolution, the one that radically transforms life, with his Resurrection that, as Benedict XVI loves to recall, was 'the greatest “mutation” in the history of humanity' and it gave birth to a new world.”
This is the experience that the Apostle Paul lives. After having met Jesus on the way to Damascus, he radically changes his perspective on life and receives Baptism. God transforms his heart. Before he was a violent persecutor of Christians, now he becomes an Apostle, a courageous witness of Jesus Christ. …
With Baptism, the paschal sacrament, we to are made to participate in that same change and, like Paul, 'we too might live in newness of life'. … We are led to believe that it is primarily in changing structures that we can build a new world. Faith tells us that only a new heart, one regenerated by God, can create a new world: a heart 'of flesh' that loves, suffers, and rejoices with others; a heart full of tenderness for those who, bearing the wounds of their lives, feel themselves to be on the outskirts of society.
Love is the greatest force for transforming reality because it breaks down the walls of selfishness and fills the chasms that keep us apart from one another...
Even in Rome there are people who live without hope and who are immersed in deep sadness that they try to get out of, believing to have found happiness in alcohol, in drugs, in gambling, in the power of money, in sex without rules. But they find themselves still more dejected and sometimes vent their anger towards life with violent acts that are unworthy of the human person. …
We who have discovered the joy of having God for our Father and his love for us, can we stand idly by in front of our brothers and sisters and not proclaim the Gospel to them? We who have found in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again, the meaning of life, can we be indifferent towards this city that asks us, perhaps even unconsciously, for hope? …
We are Christians; we are disciples of Jesus not to be wrapped up in ourselves but to open ourselves to others in order to help them, in order to bring them to Christ and to protect every creature...
St. Paul is aware that Jesus—as his name signifies—is the Saviour of all humanity, not just of persons of a certain age or geographical area. The Gospel is for all because God loves everyone and wants to save everyone...
The proclamation of the Gospel is destined primarily to the poor, to those who often lack the essentials for a decent life. The good news is first announced to them, that God loves them before all others and comes to visit them through the acts of charity that the disciples of Christ carry out in his name.
Others think that Jesus's message is destined to those who don't have cultural training and who therefore find in faith the answer to the many 'whys' that are present in their hearts.
Instead, the Apostle strongly affirms that the Gospel is for everyone, even experts. The wisdom that comes from Revelation is not opposed to human wisdom, but rather purifies and elevates it. The Church has always been present in the places where culture develops...
The Pope improvised the following:
The Gospel is for all! Going out toward the poor doesn't mean that we must become paupers or some sort of 'spiritual bums'! No, that's not what it means! It means that we must go towards the flesh of the suffering Jesus but Jesus's flesh also suffers in those who don't know it, with their studies, their intelligence, their culture. We must go there!
That's why I like to use the expression 'go to the outskirts', the existential peripheries. Everyone, all of them, [who suffer] from physical and real poverty to intellectual poverty, which is also real. All the outskirts, all the intersections of paths: go there. And ,sow the seed of the Gospel by word and by witness.
[Finally, the Pope makes it clear that he does not merely mean those who are materially destitute when he speaks of 'going to the outskirts' (actually, 'peripheries' is a much better translationthan 'outskirts' for the cognate word he uses, whether in Italian or Spanish). As I did at the very beginning when Pope Francis hammered this idea of the 'peripheries' in his early discourses, I shall cite Benedict XVI's use of the word 'desert' instead, for all those deprived of material, physical and spiritual essentials:]
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... 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. ..
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.
-Benedict XVI
Homily
to inaugurate his Petrine Ministry
April 24, 2005
Continuing with Pope Francis's text:
This means that we must have courage. … I want to tell you something. In the Gospel, there's that beautiful passage that tells us of the shepherd who, on returning to the sheepfold and realizing that a sheep is missing, leaves the 99 and goes to look for it, to look for the one.
But, brothers and sisters, we have one. It's the 99 who we're missing! We have to go out, we must go to them! In this culture—let's face it—we only have one. We are the minority. And do we feel the fervour, the apostolic zeal to go out and find the other 99? This is a big responsibility and we must ask the Lord for the grace of generosity and the courage and the patience to go out, to go out and proclaim the Gospel.
Sustained by this certainty that comes from Revelation, we have the courage, the confidence, to go out of ourselves, to go out of our communities, to go where men and women live, work, and suffer, and to proclaim the Father's mercy to them, which was made known to humanity in Jesus of Nazareth. …
Let us always remember, however, that the Adversary wants to keep us separated from God and therefore instils disappointment in our hearts when we do not see our apostolic commitment immediately rewarded. Every day the devil sows the seeds of pessimism and bitterness in our hearts. … Let us open ourselves to the breath of the Holy Spirit, who never ceases to sow seeds of hope and confidence.
Don't forget that God is the strongest and that if we allow him into our lives nothing and no one can oppose his action. So let's not be overcome by the discouragement that we encounter in facing difficulties when we talk of Jesus and the Gospel. Let's not think that faith doesn't have a future in our city!...
St. Paul then adds: 'I am not ashamed of the Gospel'. For him, the Gospel is the proclamation of Jesus's death on the cross. … The cross forcefully reminds us that we are sinners, but above, all that we are loved, that we are so dear to God's heart that, to save us, He didn't hesitate to sacrifice his Son Jesus.
The Christian's only boast is knowing that he is loved by God. … Every person needs to feel loved the way they are because this is the only thing that makes life beautiful and worthy of being lived.
In our time, when [what is freely given] seems to fade in our interpersonal relationships, we Christians proclaim a God who, to be our friend, asks nothing but to be accepted.
Think of how many live in desperation because they have never met someone who has shown them attention, comforted them, made them feel precious and important.
We, the disciples of Christ, can we refuse to go to those places that no one wants to go out of fear of compromising ourselves or the judgement of others, and thus deny our brothers and sisters the announcement of God's mercy?...
Again extemporizing:
Freely given! We have received this gratuity, this grace, freely. We must give it freely. And this is what, in the end, I want to tell you … Don't be afraid of love, of the love of God our Father. … Don't be afraid to receive the grace of Jesus Christ. Don't be afraid of our freedom that is given by the grace of Jesus Christ, or, as Paul said: 'You are not under the law but under grace'.
Don't be afraid of grace. Don't be afraid to go out of yourselves … to go and find the 99 who aren't home. Go out to dialogue with them and tell them what we think. Go show them our love, which is God's love.
Although I re-posted the following last June 11, I shall re-poSt it here again with Benedict XVI's completely extemporaneous 'lectio divina' at last year's diocesan convention (commented on by both Sandro Magister and Jose Luis Restan in an earlier re-post on this page), in parallel to Pope Francis's quasi-formal catechesis above:
POPE OPENS ANNUAL
DIOCESAN CONVENTION
June 11, 2012
"Go, therefore, 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, 19-20)
In Baptism, Christians reject Satan and
a culture in which truth does not matter
June 12, 2012
Eminence,
Dear brothers in the Priesthood and the Episcopate,
Dear brothers and sisters:
For me it is a great joy to be here, in the Cathedral of Rome, with the representatives of my diocese, and I thank the Cardinal Vicar for his kind words.
We heard that the last words of the Lord on this earth to his disciples were: "Go, therefore, 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).
'Make disciples and baptize'. Why is it not enough for disciples to know the teachings of Jesus, to learn Christian values? Why is it necessary to be baptized? This is the subject for our reflection - in order to understand the reality, the profundity, of the Sacrament of Baptism.
A first door opens if we carefully read the words of the Lord. The choice of saying "in the name of the Father" in the Greek text is very important: The Lord says 'eis', not 'en', therefore, not "in behalf' of the Trinity - as we would say that a vice-prefect speaks in behalf of his prefect, an ambassador speaks in behalf of his government.
No. He says 'eis to onoma', which is an immersion within the name of the Trinity, an insertion into the Trinity, an interpenetration of God's being into ours, so we become a being immersed in the Trinitarian God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, just as in matrimony, for example, two persons become one flesh, they become a new and singular reality, with a new and singular name.
The Lord helped us to understand this reality even better in his conversation with the Sadducees about resurrection. The Sadducees were familiar, from the canon of the Old Testament, only with the five books of Moses, in which resurrection is not mentioned, and so they rejected the idea.
But the Lord, precisely from these five books, demonstrates the reality of resurrection, saying: "And concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living” (cfr Mt 22,31-32).
Therefore, God takes these three beings, and within his name, they become the name of God. In order to understand who this God is, one must see these persons who have become the name of God, a name of God, who are immersed in God.
Thus we can see that whoever is within the name of the Lord, whoever is immersed in God, is alive, because God, said the Lord, is a God not of the dead but of the living. The living live because they are within the memory of God, within the life of God.
This is what happens in our being baptized: we become inserted into the name of God, so that we belong to his name, and his name becomes our name, and we too - like the three patriarchs of the Old Testament - can be witnesses to God, a sign of who this God is, the name of this God.
To be baptized means to be united with God: in a singular new existence we belong to God, we are immersed in God himself. If we think of this, we can immediately see some consequences.
The first is that God is no longer very remote from us, he is not a reality to be disputed - is he or isn't he? - but we are in God, and God is in us. The priority, the centrality of God in our life, is the first consequence of Baptism.
To the question "Is there a God?", the answer is, "Yes, and he is with us. This closeness of God matters in our life, this being in God himself, who is not a remote star, but the environment of my life". This would be the first consequence, and so we must ourselves keep in mind this presence of God in us, and truly live in his presence.
The second consequence of Baptism and its significance is that we become Christians. This does not follow because of a decision I make, "Now I will become a Christian". Of course, my decision is also necessary, but above all, it is an act of God on me: It is not I who make myself Christian - I am taken on by God, he takes my hand, and thus, saying Yes to this act of God, I become a Christian.
Becoming Christian, in a certain sense, is passive: I don't make myself Christian - it is God who makes me his man, God who takes my hand and realizes my life in another dimension. By myself, I cannot make myself live, but life is given to me. I am born not because I made myself man, but because being man was given to me.
And so even being Christian is given to me. It is passive on my part, but it becomes active in my life. This fact of passivity, of not making myself Christian but to have been made Christian by God, already implies something of the mystery of the Cross. Only by dying to my own selfishness, by getting out of myself, can I be Christian.
A third element that immediately opens up in this perspective is that, being immersed in God, naturally, I am united to my brothers and sisters, because they are all in God, and drawn out of my isolation, immersed in God, I am immersed in communion with others.
To be baptized is never a solitary action of and on myself - it is always necessarily being united with everybody else, being in unity and solidarity with the entire Body of Christ, with the whole community of brothers and sisters. The fact that Baptism places me in a community breaks my isolation. We must keep this in mind when we think of being Christian.
Finally, let us go back to the Word of Christ to the Sadducees: God is "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (cfr Mt 22,32), and that is why, they are not dead. If they are of God and in God, they are living.
It means that with Baptism, with our immersion into the name of God, we are also immersed in immortal life - we are alive for always. In other words, Baptism is a first stage in the resurrection. Being immersed in God, we are already immersed in indestructible life, and resurrection begins.
Just as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive, being 'names of God', we too, inserted into the name of God, are alive in immortal life. Baptism is the first step towards resurrection, towards entering into God's indestructible life.
Thus, in a first approach, with St. Matthew's baptismal formula, with Christ's last words before ascending to heaven, we have already seen something of the essence of Baptism. Now, let us look at the sacramental rite, in order to understand even more precisely what Baptism is.
Christianity is not a purely spiritual thing, something that is only subjective, having to do with sentiment, with the will, with ideas, It is a cosmic reality. God is the creator of all matter, and matter enters into Christianity - we are Christians only in this great context of matter and spirit together.
It is therefore very important that matter is part of our faith, the body is part of our faith. Faith is not purely spiritual: God has inserted us into the entire reality of the cosmos, transforming the cosmos as he draws us towards him.
With a material element - water - comes not just a fundamental element of the cosmos, a fundamental creation of God, but also all the symbolism in religions, because in all religions, water has symbolic meaning.
The journey of religions, this search for God in various ways - still a search for God, even when mistaken - is assumed in the Sacrament of Baptism. The other religions, with their respective journeys towards God, are present b- they are assumed into the sacrament, which thus becomes a synthesis of the world: All the seeking for God as expressed in the symbols of various religions, become present, but above all, in the symbolisms of the Old Testament, with all its experiences of the goodness and salvation of God. We shall get back to this point.
The other element of Baptism is words, which are present in three ways: as renunciations, as promises and as invocations. It is important that these words are not just words, but a path of life.
These words carry out a decision. These words contain our entire baptismal pathway - pre-baptism as well as post-baptism. With these words, as with the symbols, Baptism extends through our entire life.
The reality of the promises, renunciations and invocations we make in Baptism is one that lasts for our entire life, because we are always walking along this baptismal path, through these words and the realization of these words.
The Sacrament of Baptism is not an act lasting an hour - it is a reality for our whole life, it is the pathway for our whole life. In fact, behind the sacrament is also the doctrine of two lives which was fundamental in early Christianity: a life to which we say No, and a life to which we say Yes.
Let us start with the first part - the renunciations. There are three, and I will start with the second: "Do you renounce the seductions of evil in order not to allow yourself to be dominated by sin?"
What are these seductions of evil? In the early Church and for centuries afterwards, the expression was "Do you renounce the pomp of the Devil?" Today, we know all too well what the expression 'pomp of the Devil' means.
The pomp of the devil consisted first of all of great and bloody spectacles, in which cruelty became entertainment, in which killing men became a spectacle, something spectacular. The life and death of a man as a spectacle. These bloody spectacles, this entertainment by evil, is the 'pomp of the devil', and what was seen to be beautiful was actually shown in all its cruelty.
But beyond this immediate significance of the term 'pomp of the devil', it also refers to a kind of culture, a 'way of life' [The Pope uses the English term], [in which truth does not matter, only appearances. Truth is not sought, but effect, sensation; and under the pretext of truth, men are in fact destroyed. [For those who do this,] the object is to destroy others and to build upo themselves as the winners.
And so, this renunciation is all too real: renouncing a kind of culture that is really anti-culture, anti-Christ, and anti-God. It was a renunciation of a culture which in the Gospel of St. John is called kosmos houtos - this world. By 'this world', of course, John and Jesus were not speaking about God's Creation, about man as a creature of God, but of a creature who seeks to dominate and who imposes himself as though this was the world that matters, as if this was the way of life that must be imposed.
So let me leave each of you to reflect on this 'pomp of the devil', on the culture to which we say NO. To be baptized substantially means emancipating oneself, liberating oneself of this culture.
We also know today a kind of culture where truth does not count. Even if it is made to look as if all the truth is intended to be told, what really matters [to this culture] is the sensation it can produce, the spirit of calumny and destruction.
It is a culture that does not seek what is good, whose apparent moralism is actually a mask to deceive, to create confusion and destruction. To such a culture, in which lies are presented in the guise of truth and information, a culture that only seeks material wellbeing and rejects God, we say No.
We are familiar with so many psalms about the contradictions of a culture in which man holds himself untouchable by all the evils of the world, above everything and everyone, above God - in fact, a culture of evil, the dominance of evil.
Thus, the decision made at Baptism, the catechumenal way which lasts our whole life, is precisely this NO, which we say and carry out anew every day, with the sacrifices required to oppose what is in many places dominant. Even if this culture imposes itself as if it were the world, this world, it is not. Because there are so many who want the truth.
Let us go back to the first renunciation: "Do you renounce sin in order to live in freedom as children of God?". Today freedom and the Christian Life, that is, observing the commandments of God, are headed in opposite directions. Being Christian is seen as a state of slavery, while freedom is to be emancipated from the Christian faith, which means ultimately, liberating oneself from God.
The word sin seems to many almost ridiculous because, they say: "What, we cannot offend God? But he is so great that he could not possibly be interested if I make a small mistake? How is it that we cannot offend God when his interests are too great for him to be offended by us?"
It may seem true but it is not. God made himself vulnerable, In Christ crucified, we saw that God made himself very vulnerable, to the point of dying. God is interested in us because he loves us, and God's love is a vulnerability, God's love is his interest in man. God's love means that our first concern must be not to hurt him, not to destroy his love, not to do anything against his love because to do so, we would be living against ourselves and against our own freedom.
In fact, the apparent freedom of emancipation from God soon becomes a slavery to so many other dictatorships of the times which one is supposed to follow because that means keeping abreast of the times.
Finally, "Do you renounce Satan?" This tells us that a Yes to God is a NO to the power of the Devil who coordinates all this evil activity and wishes to be god of this world, as St. John also says.
But he is not God, only the adversary, and we shall not submit to his power. We say NO to him because we say YES, a fundamental Yes, the Yes of love and of truth.
The three renunciations, in the early rites of Baptism, corresponded to three immersions: Immersion in water as a symbol of dying, a NO which is really the death of one kind of life and the resurrection of a new one. We shall return to this.
Then the confession of faith in three questions: "Do you believe in God the almighty Father, Creator, and in Christ, and finally, in the Holy Spirit, and the Church?"
This three-part formulation developed out of the Lord's words when he said to "baptize in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit". These words have been concretized and deepened. What does Father mean, what does Son mean - all our faith in Christ, the whole reality of God made man - and what does it mean to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, namely all of God's action in history, in the Church, in the communion of saints?
That is why the positive formula of Baptism is also a dialog - it is not simply a formula. Above all, one's confession of faith is not just to be understood, not just an intellectual matter, something to memorize. Of course, it also involves the intellect, but it touches how we live, above all.
I find this very important. It is not an intellectual thing, just a formula. It is God's dialog with us, an action of God on us and in us, it is our response to him, it is a pathway.
The truth of Christ can be understood only if his way is understood. Only if we accept Christ as the way can we at last begin to be in him and able to understand him. Truth which is not lived cannot open up. Only truth that is lived, accepted as a way of life, as the way, opens up in all its richness and profundity.
So the baptismal formula is a way, the expression of our conversion, of an act of God. And we must keep this in mind all our life: that we are in communion with God, with Christ. And therefore with the truth. Living the truth, it becomes life, and living a life of truth, we find truth.
Now let us look at the material element of the Baptismal rite: water. It is very important to look at two significances of water here. On the one hand, it makes us think of the sea, especially the Red Sea, of the deaths that took place in the Red Sea.
The sea represents the power of death, as well as the necessity to die in order to come to a new life. I find this very important. Baptism is not just a ceremony, a ritual that was introduced some time ago. Nor is it just a washing off, a cleansing, a cosmetic operation.
It is more than just cleansing: it is death and life - the death of a certain existence, and the rebirth or resurrection of a new life. And this is the profundity of being Christian. It is not just a quality that is added - it is a new birth.
After having crossed the Red Sea, we are new beings. Thus the sea, in all the experiences of the Old Testament, has become for Christians a symbol of the Cross. Because it is only through death, a radical renunciation in which one dies to one kind of life, can one experience rebirth and can truly be in a new life.
This is one part of the symbolism of water: It symbolizes - especially in the immersion that was part of the baptismal rite in ancient times - the Red Sea, death, the Cross. Only from the Cross can we come to new life, and this must take place every day. Without this death from which we are always reborn, we cannot renew the vitality of a new life in Christ.
But the other symbol is the spring. Life is the origin of all life. So beyond the symbolism of death, it is also the symbol of new life. Every life comes from a spring, the water that comes from Christ as the new life that accompanies us through eternity.
Finally, let me say a brief word about the Baptism of children. Is it right to do it, or would it not be better to first have them undergo a catechumenal preparation in order to arrive at a Baptism that is fully 'achieved'?
The other question that is always asked is this: "Can we really impose a religion on a child who may not want to live it? Should we not allow the child to choose?"
Such questions show that we no longer see the Christian faith as a new life, the true life, but we only see it as a choice among many, even a weight that should not be imposed without the consent of the subject. Reality is different.
Life itself is given to us without having a choice as to whether we want it or not. No one can be asked, "Do you want to be born or not?" Life itself is given to us necessarily without previous consent - it is given to us, and we cannot say beforehand Yes or No, I want to exist, I don't want to exist.
The real question is: "Is it right to bring life into the world without that previous consent? Can life be 'given' even if the subject does not have the possibility to decide?" I would say - it is possible and right only if we can also give the guarantee that this life will be good, that it is protected by God, that it is a true gift. Only the anticipation of its meaning justifies the anticipation of life.
That is why Baptism as the guarantee that God is good, as anticipation of meaning, of God's Yes that protects life, justifies the anticipation of life. Therefore, baptizing children is not against freedom.
Indeed, it is necessary to give Baptism in order to justify the gift of life, which would otherwise be subject to dispute. Life which is in the hands of God, in the hands of Christ, immersed in the Trinitarian God, is certainly a gift that can be given without reservation. And so we are grateful to God who gave us this gift, and who gave us himself.
Our challenge is to live this gift, to truly live it in our post-baptismal pathway, both in the renunciations we made and in the Yes to always live in God's great Yes. Thank you.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/06/2013 04:30] |