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Post: 425 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Senior | |
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VESPERS AND OPENING
OF THE YEAR FOR PRIESTS
ON THE SOLEMNITY OF
THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS
Here is a translation of the Holy Father's homily at the Vespers celebration tonight:
Dear brothers and sisters:
In the antiphon to the Magnificat, we shall shortly sing: "The Lord has welcomed us in his heart - Suscepit nos Dominus in sinum et cor suum".
In the Old Testament, there are 26 references to the heart of God, considered as the organ of his will: Man is judged through the heart of God.
Because of the pain that his heart bears for the sins of men, God decided to send the deluge, but he was moved by the evidence of human weakness and forgave.
Then there is an Old Testament passage in which the subject of God's heart is expressed in absolutely clear terms. It comes in Chapter 11 of the Book of the prophet Hosea, where the first verses describe the dimension of the love with which the Lord addressed to Israel at the dawn of her history: "When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son" (v. 1).
In fact, Israel responded to God's tireless favor with indifference and even outright ingratitude: "The more I called them," God said, "the farther they went from me" (v. 2).
Nonetheless, he never abandoned Israel to the hands of the enemy, because, as Verse 8 says: "My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred" - so says the Creator of the Universe.
God's heart stirs with compassion!
In today's Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church offers this mystery for our contemplation, the heart of a God who is moved and who pours forth all of his love on mankind. It is a mysterious love, which in the texts of the New Testament, is revealed to us as God's incommensurable love for man.
He does not give up in the face of ingratitude, not even to rejection by the people he had chosen. Rather, with infinite mercy, he sent the world his only Son to take upon himself the ultimate outcome of a love that had been destroyed - so that by defeating the power of evil and death, he could restore to human beings who had become slaves to sin the dignity of being God's children.
All of this at a dear price: the Father's only Son immolated himself on the Cross: "He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end" (cfr Jn 13,1).
The symbol of such love that goes beyond death is his side ripped open by a lance. About this, an eyewitness, the apostle John, says: "One soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out" (cfr Jn 19,34).
Dear brothers and sisters, thank you for responding to my invitation and coming here in numbers to this celebration with which we begin the Year for Priests.
I greet the Cardinals and Bishops, particularly the Cardinal Prefect and the Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy and their co-workers, as well as the Bishop of Ars.
I greet the priests and seminarians of the various colleges and seminaries in Rome, the religious men and women of the various orders, and all the faithful.
I address a special greeting to His Beatitude Ignace Youssef Younan, Patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians, who came to Rome to meet me and to publicly manifest the "ecclesiastica communio" that I have granted him.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us pause together to contemplate the pierced Heart of the Crucified Lord. We heard once more, earlier, in the brief reading taken from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, that "God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ... raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus" (Eph 2,4-6).
To be with Jesus Christ is already to sit in heaven. The essential nucleus of Christianity is expressed in the Heart of Jesus. All of the revolutionary novelty in the New Testament was revealed and given in Christ - the Love which saves us and makes us live in the eternity of God.
The evangelist John writes; "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" (3,16).
His divine Heart calls out to our hearts. It invites us to get out of ourselves, to abandon our human certainties in order to trust in him, and, following his example, to make of ourselves a gift of love without reservations.
If it is true that Jesus's invitation to 'remain in his love' (cfr Jn 15,9), is intended for everyone who has been baptized, then on the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is also the World Day for Priestly Sanctification, this invitation resounds with greater power for us priests, particularly this evening, the solemn beginning of teh Year for Priests, which I have declared on the occasion of the 150th death anniversary of the Holy Curate of Ars.
A beautiful and moving statement from him immediately comes to my mind, which was cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Priesthood is love for the Heart of Jesus" (No. 1589).
How can we not remember with emotion that the gift of our priestly ministry comes directly from this Heart? How can we forget that we priests were consecrated in order to serve - humbly and authoritatively - the common priesthood of the faithful?
Ours is an indispensable mission for the Church and for the world, which demands full faithfulness to Christ and incessant union with Him. It demands, therefore, that we constantly aim towards holiness as St. Jean-Marie Vianney did.
In the Letter I addressed to you for this special jubilee year, dear brother priests, I wished to highlight certain qualifying aspects of our ministry, with many references to the example and teaching of the Holy Curate of Ars, model and protector of all priests, and, particularly, of parish priests.
May this letter help and encourage you to make this year a propitious occasion to grow in intimacy with Christ, who counts on us, his ministers, to extend and consolidate his Kingdom, to spread his love, his truth.
Thus, "in the footsteps of the Holy Curate of Ars", my Letter concluded, "let yourselves be enthralled by Christ. In this way you too will be, for the world in our time, heralds of hope, reconciliation and peace!"
This was the purpose of the life of St. Paul, to whom we have devoted our attention during the Pauline year which is now coming to a close. This was the goal of the entire ministry of the Holy Curate of Ars whom we invoke especially during the Year for Priests. Let this be also the principal objective for each of us.
To be ministers in the service of the Gospel, study is certainly useful and necessary, along with careful and continuing pastoral formation, but still more necessary is that 'science of love' which can only be learned in a 'heart to heart' with Christ.
Indeed, it is he who calls us to break the bread of his love, to remit sins and lead the flock in his name. Because of this, we should never stray far from the spring of Love which is his heart that was pierced on the Cross.
Only then will we be able to cooperate effectively in the mysterious 'plan of the Father' which consists in "making Christ the heart of the world". A plan that is realized in history to the degree that Christ becomes the Heart of human hearts, starting with those who are called to be closest to him, namely, priests.
Recalling this commitment constantly to us are the priestly vows which we pronounced on the day of our ordination and which we renew each year, at the Chrismal Mass on Maundy Thursday.
Even our shortcomings, our limitations and our weaknesses should lead us back to the Heart of Christ. If indeed it is true that sinners, contemplating him, should learn the necessary 'sorrow for our sins' which leads them back to the Father, this is even more true for his holy ministers.
In this regard, how can we forget that nothing can make the Church - Body of Christ - suffer as much as the sins of its pastors, especially of those who become 'robbers of lambs' (Jn 10,1 ff), or who deviate from the Church with their own private doctrines, or who ensnare the Church in sin and death?
Dear priests, the call to conversion and recourse to Divine Mercy also applies to us. Likewise, we must address with humility an incessant invocation to the Heart of Jesus to preserve us from the terrible risk of harming those whom we are bound to save.
Just now, I was able to venerate at the Choir Chapel a relic of the Holy Curate of Ars - his heart. A heart that was inflamed with divine love, that was moved at the very thought of the dignity of priests, and spoke to the faithful in sublime and touching tones, saying that "After God, the priest is everything!... Only in heaven will he fully realize what he is" (Letter for the Year of Priests, p. 2).
Dear brothers, let us cultivate the same sentiment, whether it is in carrying out our ministry with generosity and dedication, or to guard in our hearts a true 'fear of God' - the fear that through our negligence or fault, we may be depriving the souls entrusted to our care of so much good, or, God forbid!, of harming them.
The Church needs holy priests, ministers who can help the faithful to experience the merciful love of the Lord and of whom they are convinced and convincing witnesses.
In the Eucharistic Adoration, which will follow the celebration of Vespers, let us ask the Lord to inflame the hearts of each priest with that 'pastoral charity' that is able to assimilate the personal 'I' into that of Jesus the High Priest, in order to be able to imitate him in complete self-giving.
May the Virgin Mary obtain this grace for us, she whose Immaculate Heart we shall contemplate tomorrow in great faith. The Holy Curate of Ars had a filial devotion to her, such that in 1836, anticipating before its time the dogma of the Immaculate Conception [proclaimed in 1854, five years after his death] he consecrated his parish to Mary 'conceived without sin'.
He kept up the practice of frequently renewing the offering of his parish to the Blessed Virgin, teaching the faithful that "it was enough to address her in order to be heard" for the simple reason that she "wants above all to see us happy".
May the Blessed Virgin, our Mother, be with us during the Year of Priests that we begin today, so that we may be firm and enlightened guides for the faithful whom the Lord entrusts to our pastoral care. Amen.
I had been wondering how the Holy Father would frame his homily for the formal opening of the Year for Priests, after the exquisite hymn to priesthood that he composed from the life and teachings of the Cure of Ars in his Letter to all the Priests of the World.
And, of course, as it is the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the perfect epigraph for tonight's homily was St. Jean Marie Vianney's own line, "Priesthood is love of the Heart of Jesus", highlighted in the poster for the occasion prepared by the Congregation for the Clergy.
As I listened to the homily today on Vatican Radio - while watching the picture on EWTN, where the Holy Father's voice was almost turned down completely to accommodate the translator's voice - it struck me that besides the content, structure and style of Benedictian homilies (I saw an Italian website today that uses the adjective 'benedettiano', Benedictian, to describe things associated with B16, as opposed to 'benedettino', Benedictine, which has become exclusively an attribution to St. Benedict, so I am going to start using the adjective 'Benedictian' for B16), other priests could and should learn from the gentle but uncompromising way in which he 'denounces' or 'deplores' bad things. In this case, all the sins and shortcomings to which every priest is liable.
He shows how it is possible to excoriate evil firmly without thundering down fire and brimstone as old-fashioned preachers did, while tempering it all with the charity of divine mercy.
And it is a continuing wonder how many ways he finds to restate his ideas freshly, whether it has to do with the essentials of the faith or more specific things, as in this case, the failings of priests.
BENEDICTUS QUI VENIT IN NOMINE DOMINI!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/06/2009 02:40] |