The August 8 issue of L'Osservatore Romano carries a belated tribute to Pope Paul VI to commemorate
the 35th anniversary of his death in Castel Gandolfo on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1978.
Mysticism and modernity
by Patrice Mahieu
Translated from the 8/8/13 issue of
Editor's Note: We publish our translation of an article in La Croix last June 29-30. The author, a monk at the Benedictine abbey of Solemnes in France, has written two books about Paul VI,
Paul VI, maître spirituel (Fayard-Le Sarment) and
Paul VI et les orthodoxes (Les Éditions du Cerf).
On June 30, 1963, for the last time in the history of the Catholic Church, the coronation of a Pope took place in St. Peter's Square. Paul VI, elected Pope on June 31, received the triple tiara offered to him by the faithful of his former Archdiocese, Milan.
The new Pontiff has been well prepared by three decades of working in the Roman Curia and nine years as Archbishop of Milan, the largest Catholic diocese in the world.
But the key to reading his Pontificate should perhaps be sought above all in its mystical dimension.
Following the sample of St. Augustine, his principal spiritual master, even the youthful writings of Giovanni Battista Montini were marked by an impetuous nostalgia for God, joined to the exultancy and wonder of what he had already been allowed to discover: "Life is you - God, who are like a beatifying lamp over the shadows of our stuttering existence".
In fact, Paul VI was a mystic who possessed the language of his axperience: "As one blinded by the sun, I close my eyes before the infinite mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, and all I harbor in my heart is the impression of oceanic beatitude".
Love for the Church was the unifying factor of his existence: "I seem to have lived for her and only for her", implying two exigencies, the renewal and reform of the Church, and the personal conversion of her members.
It is the second demand that makes the first one possible. From the personal commitment to follow Christ and the spiritual and moral energy this requires, comes the possibility for the Church to manifest herself as Christ wanted: one, holy, with everyone oriented towards that perfection that he has called for and made possible.
Two lines of force of the Montini Pontificate derived From the authenticity of this course of conversion, which he proposed in is programmatic encyclical,
Ecclesiam suam: a dialog with the world on life and salvation, and renewed efforts towards the full unity of Christians.
For Paul VI, a Church that lives its mystery more profoundly with the same impulse of love that unites her to the Lord, could give herself to the world in order to place the latter in vital contact with the Gospel: "The Church should dialog with the world in which she lives. The Church must give the word, the Church must give the msssage, the Church must converse with the world. If errors need to be denounced, the Church nonetheless must be characterized by a current of affection and admiration for the modern world. With such a bond of confidence, evangelization, inspired by total faithfulness to Christ, can be accepted by the contemporary mind. Indeed, no one is extraneous to the heart of the Church. No one must be indifferent to her ministry".
In this movement of internal renewal which makes the presence and the action of God more legible in the Church, Paul VI felt acutely the need for unity among the disciples of Christ. His Pontificate was totally committed in this respect, especially in the search for total communion with the Orthodox Churches.
His friendship with Patriarch Atenagoras was one of the more luminous features of his Roman ministry. Even as a secret official committee of two Catholics and two Orthodox had just concluded their report in 1971, stating that a concelebration between Paul VI and Athenagoras was possible, Paul VI wrote to the Patriarch: "Between our Church and the venerable Orthodox Churches, there already exists almost total communion. The Spirit has allowed us in recent years to recover a vivid consciousness of this fact. He has placed in our hearts the firm desire to do everything possible to hasten that much desired day on which, at the end of a concelebration, we can take communion together from the same chalice of the Lord".
The purification of the Church and her members, the spiritual tension of evangelization, humility and dialog with the world, the ecclesiology of sister Churches that allows looking forward to full communion between the Church of the West and the Churches of the East - do not these fundamental axes of the Monitni Pontificate echo in the words and orientations of Pope Francis?
Their fruitfulness will depend in large part on the commitment of all concerned to a truly spiritual course, in which the primacy given to accepting the will of God would allow daring decisions to be made that are open to the breath of the Holy Spirit.
For example, is it unrealistic to think that the Orthodox Churches could agree to accept Rome as the center of unity, and that Rome, taking the example of (undivided) Christianity's first millennium, would concretely put in place a differently modulated ministry of unity. In truth, the intuitions of Paul VI have not lost their relevance.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/08/2013 13:50]