Entry 0343: Homilies Delivered During the Celebration of
the Chrism Mass by Pope Benedict XVI
On seven
occasions in the course of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI delivered reflections during the celebration of the Chrism
Mass, on 13 April 2006, 5 April
2007, 20 March 2008, 9 April 2009, 1 April 2010, 21 April 2011, and 5 April 2012.
Here are the texts of seven homilies delivered
on these occasions.
The last keyword that I should like to consider is “zeal
for souls”: animarum zelus. It is an old-fashioned expression, not much used these
days. In some circles, the word “soul” is virtually banned because – ostensibly
– it expresses a body-soul dualism that wrongly compartmentalizes the human being.
Of course the human person is a unity, destined for eternity as body and soul. And
yet that cannot mean that we no longer have a soul, a constituent principle guaranteeing
our unity in this life and beyond earthly death. And as priests, of course, we are
concerned for the whole person, including his or her physical needs – we care for
the hungry, the sick, the homeless. And yet we are concerned not only with the body,
but also with the needs of the soul: with those who suffer from the violation of
their rights or from destroyed love, with those unable to perceive the truth, those
who suffer for lack of truth and love. We are concerned with the salvation of men
and women in body and soul. And as priests of Jesus Christ we carry out our task
with enthusiasm. No one should ever have the impression that we work conscientiously
when on duty, but before and after hours we belong only to ourselves. A priest never
belongs to himself. People must sense our zeal, through which we bear credible witness
to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us ask the Lord to fill us with joy in his message,
so that we may serve his truth and his love with joyful zeal. Amen!
CHRISM
MASS IN SAINT PETER’S BASILICA
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Holy
Thursday, 13 April 2006
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and
in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Holy Thursday is
the day on which the Lord gave the Twelve the priestly task of celebrating, in the
bread and the wine, the Sacrament of his Body and Blood until he comes again. The
paschal lamb and all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant are replaced by the gift
of his Body and his Blood, the gift of himself.
Thus, the new worship
was based on the fact that, in the first place, God makes a gift to us, and, filled
with this gift, we become his: creation returns
to the Creator.
So it is that the
priesthood also became something new: it
was no longer a question of lineage but of discovering oneself in the mystery of
Jesus Christ. He is always the One who gives, who draws us to himself.
He alone can say: “This is my Body... this is my Blood”. The mystery
of the priesthood of the Church lies in the fact that we, miserable human beings,
by virtue of the Sacrament, can speak with his “I”: in persona Christi. He wishes to
exercise his priesthood through us. On Holy Thursday, we remember in a special
way this moving mystery, which moves us anew in every celebration of the Sacrament.
So that daily life
will not dull what is great and mysterious, we need this specific commemoration,
we need to return to that hour in which he placed his hands upon us and made us
share in this mystery.
Let us reflect once
again on the signs in which the Sacrament has been given to us. At the centre is
the very ancient rite of the imposition of hands, with which he took possession
of me, saying to me: “You belong to me”.
However, in saying
this he also said: “You are under the protection
of my hands. You are under the protection of my heart. You are kept safely in the
palm of my hands, and this is precisely how you find yourself in the immensity of
my love. Stay in my hands, and give me yours”.
Then let us remember
that our hands were anointed with oil, which is the sign of the Holy Spirit and
his power. Why one’s hands? The human hand is the instrument of human action, it
is the symbol of the human capacity to face the world, precisely to “take it in
hand”.
The Lord has laid
his hands upon us and he now wants our hands so that they may become his own in
the world. He no longer wants them to be instruments for taking things, people or
the world for ourselves, to reduce them to being our possession, but instead, by
putting ourselves at the service of his love, they can pass on his divine touch.
He wants our hands
to be instruments of service, hence, an expression of the mission of the whole person
who vouches for him and brings him to men and women. If human hands symbolically
represent human faculties and, in general, skill as power to dispose of the world,
then anointed hands must be a sign of the human capacity for giving, for creativity
in shaping the world with love. It is for this reason, of course, that we are in
need of the Holy Spirit.
In the Old Testament,
anointing is the sign of being taken into service: the king, the prophet, the priest, each does and
gives more than what derives from himself alone. In a certain way, he is emptied
of himself, so as to serve by making himself available to One who is greater than
he.
If, in today’s Gospel,
Jesus presents himself as God’s Anointed One, the Christ, then this itself means
that he is acting for the Father’s mission and in unity with the Holy Spirit. He
is thereby giving the world a new kingship, a new priesthood, a new way of being
a prophet who does not seek himself but lives for the One with a view to whom the
world was created.
Today, let us once
again put our hands at his disposal and pray to him to take us by the hand, again
and again, and lead us.
In the sacramental
gesture of the imposition of hands by the Bishop, it was the Lord himself who laid
his hands upon us. This sacramental sign sums up an entire existential process.
Once, like the first
disciples, we encountered the Lord and heard his words: “Follow me!” Perhaps, to start with, we followed
him somewhat hesitantly, looking back and wondering if this really was the road
for us. And at some point on the journey, we may have had the same experience as
Peter after the miraculous catch; in other words, we may have been frightened by
its size, by the size of the task and by the inadequacy of our own poor selves,
so that we wanted to turn back. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord”
(Lk 5: 8).
Then, however,
with great kindness, he took us by the hand, he drew us to himself and said to us: “Do not fear! I am with you. I will not abandon
you, do not leave me!”
And more than just
once, the same thing that happened to Peter may have happened to us: while he was walking on the water towards the
Lord, he suddenly realized that the water was not holding him up and that he was
beginning to sink. And like Peter we cried, “Lord, save me!” (Mt 14: 30). Seeing
the elements raging on all sides, how could we get through the roaring, foaming
waters of the past century, of the past millennium?
But then we looked
towards him... and he grasped us by the hand and gave us a new “specific weight”: the lightness that derives from faith and draws
us upwards. Then he stretched out to us the hand that sustains and carries us. He
supports us. Let us fix our gaze ever anew on him and reach out to him. Let us allow
his hand to take ours, and then we will not sink but will serve the life that is
stronger than death and the love that is stronger than hatred.
Faith in Jesus, Son
of the living God, is the means through which, time and again, we can take hold
of Jesus’ hand and in which he takes our hands and guides us.
One of my favorite
prayers is the request that the liturgy puts on our lips before Communion: “...never let me be separated from you”. Let us
ask that we never fall away from communion with his Body, with Christ himself, that
we do not fall away from the Eucharistic mystery. Let us ask that he will never
let go of our hands....
The Lord laid his
hand upon us. He expressed the meaning of this gesture in these words: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant
does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that
I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15: 15).
I no longer call
you servants but friends: in these words
one could actually perceive the institution of the priesthood. The Lord makes us
his friends; he entrusts everything to us; he entrusts himself to us, so that we
can speak with he himself - in persona Christi capitis.
What trust! He has
truly delivered himself into our hands. The essential signs of priestly ordination
are basically all a manifestation of those words: the laying on of hands; the consignment of the
book - of his words that he entrusts to us; the consignment of the chalice, with
which he transmits to us his most profound and personal mystery.
The power to absolve
is part of all this. It also makes us share in his awareness of the misery of sin
and of all the darkness in the world, and places in our hands the key to reopen
the door to the Father’s house.
I no longer call
you servants but friends. This is the profound meaning of being a priest: becoming the friend of Jesus Christ. For this
friendship we must daily recommit ourselves.
Friendship means
sharing in thought and will. We must put into practice this communion of thought
with Jesus, as St Paul
tells us in his Letter to the Philippians (see 2: 2-5). And this communion of thought
is not a purely intellectual thing, but a sharing of sentiments and will, hence,
also of actions. This means that we should know Jesus in an increasingly personal
way, listening to him, living together with him, staying with him.
Listening to him
- in lectio divina, that is, reading Sacred Scripture in a non-academic but
spiritual way; thus, we learn to encounter Jesus present, who speaks to us. We must
reason and reflect, before him and with him, on his words and actions. The reading
of Sacred Scripture is prayer, it must be prayer - it must emerge from prayer and
lead to prayer.
The Evangelists tell
us that the Lord frequently withdrew - for entire nights - “to the mountains”, to
pray alone. We too need these “mountains”:
they are inner peaks that we must scale, the mountain of prayer.
Only in this way
does the friendship develop. Only in this way can we carry out our priestly service,
only in this way can we take Christ and his Gospel to men and women.
Activism by itself
can even be heroic, but in the end external action is fruitless and loses its effectiveness
unless it is born from deep inner communion with Christ. The time we spend on this
is truly a time of pastoral activity, authentic pastoral activity. The priest must
above all be a man of prayer.
The world in its
frenetic activism often loses its direction. Its action and capacities become destructive
if they lack the power of prayer, from which flow the waters of life that irrigate
the arid land.
I no longer call
you servants, but friends. The core of the priesthood is being friends of Jesus
Christ. Only in this way can we truly speak in persona Christi, even if our
inner remoteness from Christ cannot jeopardize the validity of the Sacrament. Being
a friend of Jesus, being a priest, means being a man of prayer. In this way we recognize
him and emerge from the ignorance of simple servants. We thus learn to live, suffer
and act with him and for him.
Being friends with
Jesus is par excellence always friendship with his followers. We can be friends
of Jesus only in communion with the whole of Christ, with the Head and with the
Body; in the vigorous vine of the Church to which the Lord gives life.
Sacred Scripture
is a living and actual Word, thanks to the Lord, only in her. Without the living
subject of the Church that embraces the ages, more often than not the Bible would
have splintered into heterogeneous writings and would thus have become a book of
the past. It is eloquent in the present only where the “Presence” is - where Christ
remains for ever contemporary with us: in
the Body of his Church.
Being a priest means
becoming an ever closer friend of Jesus Christ with the whole of our existence.
The world needs God - not just any god but the God of Jesus Christ, the God who
made himself flesh and blood, who loved us to the point of dying for us, who rose
and created within himself room for man. This God must live in us and we in him.
This is our priestly call: only in this way
can our action as priests bear fruit.
I would like to end
this Homily with a word on Andrea Santoro, the priest from the Diocese of Rome who
was assassinated in Trebizond while he was praying.
Cardinal Cé recounted
to us during the Spiritual Exercises what Fr Santoro said. It reads: “I am here to dwell among these people and enable
Jesus to do so by lending him my flesh.... One becomes capable of salvation only
by offering one’s own flesh. The evil in the world must be borne and the pain shared,
assimilating it into one’s own flesh as did Jesus”.
Jesus assumed our
flesh; let us give him our own. In this way he can come into the world and transform
it. Amen!
CHRISM
MASS
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Holy Thursday, 5 April 2007
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
Leo Tolstoi, the
Russian writer, tells in a short story of a harsh sovereign who asked his priests
and sages to show him God so that he might see him. The wise men were unable to
satisfy his desire.
Then a shepherd,
who was just coming in from the fields, volunteered to take on the task of the priests
and sages. From him the king learned that his eyes were not good enough to see God.
Then, however, he wanted to know at least what God does. “To be able to answer your
question”, the shepherd said to the king, “we must exchange our clothes”.
Somewhat hesitant
but impelled by curiosity about the information he was expecting, the king consented;
he gave the shepherd his royal robes and had himself dressed in the simple clothes
of the poor man.
Then came the answer:
“This is what God does”. Indeed, the Son of God, true God from true God, shed his
divine splendor: “he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in
the likeness of men; and being found in human form he humbled himself..., even unto
death on a cross” (see Phil 2: 6ff.).
God, as the Fathers
say, worked the sacrum commercium, the sacred exchange: he took on what was
ours, so that we might receive what was his and become similar to God.
With regard to what
happens in Baptism, St Paul
explicitly uses the image of clothing: “For as many of you as were baptized into
Christ have put on Christ” (Gal 3: 27). This is what is fulfilled in Baptism:
we put on Christ, he gives us his garments and these are not something external.
It means that we enter into an existential communion with him, that his being and
our being merge, penetrate one another.
“It is no longer
I who live, but Christ who lives in me”, is how Paul himself describes the event
of his Baptism in his Letter to the Galatians (2: 20). Christ has put on
our clothes: the pain and joy of being a man, hunger, thirst, weariness, our hopes
and disappointments, our fear of death, all our apprehensions until death. And he
has given to us his “garments”.
What in the Letter
to the Galatians Paul describes as a simple “fact” of Baptism - the gift of new
being - he presents to us in the Letter to the Ephesians as an ongoing task:
“Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life... and [you
must] put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness
and holiness. Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with
his neighbour, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin...” (Eph
4: 22-26).
This theology of
Baptism returns in a new way and with a new insistence in priestly Ordination.
Just as in Baptism
an “exchange of clothing” is given, an exchanged destination, a new existential
communion with Christ, so also in priesthood there is an exchange: in the administration
of the sacraments, the priest now acts and speaks “in persona Christi”. In
the sacred mysteries, he does not represent himself and does not speak expressing
himself, but speaks for the Other, for Christ.
Thus, in the Sacraments,
he dramatically renders visible what being a priest means in general; what we have
expressed with our “Adsum - I am ready”, during our consecration to the priesthood:
I am here so that you may make use of me. We put ourselves at the disposal of the
One who “died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves...”
(2 Cor 5: 15). Putting ourselves at Christ’s disposal means that we allow
ourselves to be attracted within his “for all”: in being with him we can truly be
“for all”.
In persona Christi:
at the moment of priestly Ordination, the Church has also made this reality
of “new clothes” visible and comprehensible to us externally through being clothed
in liturgical vestments.
In this external
gesture she wants to make the interior event visible to us, as well as our task
which stems from it: putting on Christ; giving ourselves to him as he gave himself
to us.
This event, the
“putting on of Christ”, is demonstrated again and again at every Holy Mass by the
putting on of liturgical vestments. Vesting ourselves in them must be more than
an external event: it means entering ever anew into the “yes” of our office - into
that “no longer I” of Baptism which Ordination to the priesthood gives to us in
a new way and at the same time asks of us.
The fact that we
are standing at the altar clad in liturgical vestments must make it clearly visible
to those present that we are there “in the person of an Other”. Just as in the course
of time priestly vestments developed, they are a profound symbolic expression of
what the priesthood means.
I would therefore
like to explain to you, dear Confreres, on this Holy Thursday, the essence of the
priestly ministry, interpreting the liturgical vestments themselves, which are precisely
intended to illustrate what “putting on Christ”, what speaking and acting in
persona Christi, mean.
Putting on priestly
vestments was once accompanied by prayers that helped us understand better each
single element of the priestly ministry.
Let us start with
the amice. In the past - and in monastic orders still today - it was first
placed on the head as a sort of hood, thus becoming a symbol of the discipline of
the senses and of thought necessary for a proper celebration of Holy Mass. My thoughts
must not wander here and there due to the anxieties and expectations of my daily
life; my senses must not be attracted by what there, inside the church, might accidentally
captivate the eyes and ears. My heart must open itself docilely to the Word of God
and be recollected in the prayer of the Church, so that my thoughts may receive
their orientation from the words of the proclamation and of prayer. And the gaze
of my heart must be turned toward the Lord who is in our midst: this is what the
ars celebrandi means: the proper way of celebrating.
If I am with the
Lord, then, with my listening, speaking and acting, I will also draw people into
communion with him.
The texts of the
prayer expressed by the alb and the stole both move in the same direction.
They call to mind the festive robes which the father gave to the prodigal son who
had come home dirty, in rags.
When we approach
the liturgy to act in the person of Christ, we all realize how distant we are from
him; how much dirt there is in our lives. He alone can give us festive robes, can
make us worthy to preside at his table, to be at his service.
Thus, the prayers
also recall the words of Revelation, which say that it was not due to their own
merit that the robes of the 144,000 elect were worthy of God. The Book of Revelation
says that they had washed their robes in the Blood of the Lamb and thus made
them white and shining like light (see Rv 7: 14).
When I was little,
I used to ask myself about this: when one washes something in blood, it certainly
does not become white! The answer is: the “Blood of the Lamb” is the love of the
Crucified Christ. It is this love that makes our dirty clothes white, that makes
our clouded spirit true and bright; that transforms us, despite all our shadows,
into “light in the Lord”.
By putting on the
alb we must remind ourselves: he suffered for me, too. And it is only because his
love is greater than all my sins that I can represent him and witness to his light.
But with the garment
of light which the Lord gave us in Baptism and in a new way in priestly Ordination,
we can also think of the wedding apparel which he tells us about in the parable
of God’s banquet.
In the homilies of
Gregory the Great, I found in this regard a noteworthy reflection. Gregory distinguishes
between Luke’s version of the parable and Matthew’s. He is convinced that the Lucan
parable speaks of the eschatological marriage feast, whereas - in his opinion -
the version handed down by Matthew anticipates this nuptial banquet in the liturgy
and life of the Church. In Matthew, in fact, and only in Matthew, the king comes
into the crowded room to see his guests. And here in this multitude he also finds
a guest who was not wearing wedding clothes, who is then thrown outside into the
darkness.
Then Gregory asks
himself: “But what kind of clothes ought he to have been wearing? All those who
are gathered in the Church have received the new garment of baptism and the faith;
otherwise, they would not be in the Church. So what was it that was still lacking?
What wedding clothes must there be in addition?”
The Pope responds:
“the clothes of love”. And unfortunately, among his guests to whom he had given
new clothes, the white clothes of rebirth, the king found some who were not wearing
the purple clothes of twofold love, for God and for neighbour.
“In what condition
do we want to come to the feast in Heaven, if we are not wearing wedding clothes
- that is, love, which alone can make us beautiful?”, the Pope asks. A person without
love is dark within. External shadows, of which the Gospel speaks, are only the
reflection of the internal blindness of the heart (see Hom. 38, 8-13).
Now that we are preparing
for the celebration of Holy Mass, we must ask ourselves whether we are wearing these
clothes of love. Let us ask the Lord to keep all hostility away from our hearts,
to remove from us every feeling of self-sufficiency and truly to clothe ourselves
with the vestment of love, so that we may be luminous persons and not belong to
darkness.
Lastly, one additional
brief word on the chasuble. The traditional prayer when one puts on the chasuble
sees it as representing the yoke of the Lord which is imposed upon us as priests.
And it recalls the words of Jesus, who invites us to take his yoke upon us and to
learn from him who is “gentle and lowly in heart” (Mt 11: 29).
Taking the Lord’s
yoke upon us means first of all: learning from him. It means always being ready
to go to his school. From him we must learn gentleness and meekness: the humility
of God who shows himself in his being a man.
St Gregory of Nazianzus
once asked himself why God wanted to become a man. The most important and for me
the most moving part of his answer is: “God wanted to realize what obedience means
to us and he wanted to measure everything on the basis of his own suffering, on
the invention of his love for us. In this way, he himself can directly know what
it is that we feel - what is asked of us, what indulgence we deserve - calculating
our weakness on the basis of his suffering” (Orationes 30; Theological
Talk IV, 6).
At times we would
like to say to Jesus: Lord, your yoke is far from light. Indeed, it is tremendously
heavy in this world. But then looking at the One who bore everything - who tried
out on himself obedience, weakness, suffering, all the darkness -, then these complaints
of ours fade. His yoke is that of loving with him. And the more we love him and
with him become loving people, the lighter becomes his seemingly burdensome yoke.
Let us pray to him
to help us become with him people who are loving, thereby to increasingly experience
how beautiful it is to take up his yoke. Amen.
CHRISM MASS
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint Peter’s Basilica, Holy Thursday, 20 March 2008
Dear
Brothers and Sisters,
Every year
the Chrism Mass exhorts us to enter into that “yes” to God’s call, which we pronounced
on the day of our priestly ordination. “Adsum - here I am!”, we have said
like Isaiah, when he heard God’s voice asking: “Whom shall I send, and who will
go for us?” “Here am I! Send me”, Isaiah responded (Is 6: 8). Then the Lord himself,
through the hands of the Bishop, placed his hands on us and we gave ourselves to
his mission. Subsequently, we have followed many ways in the range of his call.
Can we always affirm what Paul wrote to the Corinthians after years of Gospel service,
often marked by fatigue and suffering of every type: “Our zeal has not slackened
in this ministry which has been entrusted to us by God’s mercy” (see II Cor 4: 1)?
“Our zeal has not slackened”. Let us pray on this day that it may always be kindled
anew, that it may be ever nourished by the living flame of the Gospel.
At the same
time Holy Thursday is an occasion for us to ask ourselves over and over again: to
what did we say our “yes”? What does this “being a priest of Jesus Christ” mean?
The Second Canon of our Missal, which was probably compiled in Rome already at the
end of the second century, describes the essence of the priestly ministry with the
words with which, in the Book of Deuteronomy (18: 5, 7), the essence of the
Old Testament priesthood is described: astare coram te et tibi ministrare [“to
stand and minister in the name of the Lord”]. There are therefore two duties that
define the essence of the priestly ministry: in the first place, “to stand in his
[the Lord’s] presence”. In the Book of Deuteronomy this is read in the context
of the preceding disposition, according to which priests do not receive any portion
of land in the Holy Land - they live of God and
for God. They did not attend to the usual work necessary to sustain daily life.
Their profession was to “stand in the Lord’s presence” - to look to him, to be there
for him. Hence, ultimately, the word indicated a life in God’s presence, and with
this also a ministry of representing others. As the others cultivated the land,
from which the priest also lived, so he kept the world open to God, he had to live
with his gaze on him. Now if this word is found in the Canon of the Mass immediately
after the consecration of the gifts, after the entrance of the Lord in the assembly
of prayer, then for us this points to being before the Lord present, that is, it
indicates the Eucharist as the centre of priestly life. But here too, the meaning
is deeper. During Lent the hymn that introduces the Office of Readings of the Liturgy
of the Hours - the Office that monks once recited during the night vigil before
God and for humanity - one of the duties of Lent is described with the imperative:
arctius perstemus in custodia - we must be even more intensely alert. In
the tradition of Syrian monasticism, monks were qualified as “those who remained
standing”. This standing was an expression of vigilance. What was considered here
as a duty of the monks, we can rightly see also as an expression of the priestly
mission and as a correct interpretation of the word of Deuteronomy: the priest must
be on the watch. He must be on his guard in the face of the imminent powers of evil.
He must
keep the world awake for God. He must be the one who remains standing: upright before
the trends of time. Upright in truth. Upright in the commitment for good. Being
before the Lord must always also include, at its depths, responsibility for humanity
to the Lord, who in his turn takes on the burden of all of us to the Father. And
it must be a taking on of him, of Christ, of his word, his truth, his love. The
priest must be upright, fearless and prepared to sustain even offences for the Lord,
as referred to in the Acts of the Apostles: they were “rejoicing that they
were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (5: 41) of Jesus.
Now let
us move on to the second word that the Second Canon repeats from the Old Testament
text - “to stand in your presence and serve you”. The priest must be an upright
person, vigilant, a person who remains standing. Service is then added to all this.
In the Old Testament text this word has an essentially ritualistic meaning: all
acts of worship foreseen by the Law are the priests’ duty. But this action, according
to the rite, was classified as service, as a duty of service, and thus it explains
in what spirit this activity must take place. With the assumption of the word “serve”
in the Canon, the liturgical meaning of this term was adopted in a certain way -
to conform with the novelty of the Christian cult. What the priest does at that
moment, in the Eucharistic celebration, is to serve, to fulfill a service to God
and a service to humanity. The cult that Christ rendered to the Father was the giving
of himself to the end for humanity. Into this cult, this service, the priest must
insert himself. Thus, the word “serve” contains many dimensions. In the first place,
part of it is certainly the correct celebration of the liturgy and of the sacraments
in general, accomplished through interior participation. We must learn to increasingly
understand the sacred liturgy in all its essence, to develop a living familiarity
with it, so that it becomes the soul of our daily life. It is then that we celebrate
in the correct way; it is then that the ars celebrandi, the art of celebrating,
emerges by itself. In this art there must be nothing artificial. If the liturgy
is the central duty of the priest, this also means that prayer must be a primary
reality, to be learned ever anew and ever more deeply at the school of Christ
Lastly,
two other aspects are part of service. No one is closer to his master than the servant
who has access to the most private dimensions of his life. In this sense “to serve”
means closeness, it requires familiarity. This familiarity also bears a danger:
when we continually encounter the sacred it risks becoming habitual for us. In this
way, reverential fear is extinguished. Conditioned by all our habits we no longer
perceive the great, new and surprising fact that he himself is present, speaks to
us, gives himself to us. We must ceaselessly struggle against this becoming accustomed
to the extraordinary reality, against the indifference of the heart, always recognizing
our insufficiency anew and the grace that there is in the fact that he consigned
himself into our hands. To serve means to draw near, but above all it also means
obedience. The servant is under the word: “not my will, but thine, be done” (Lk
22: 42). With this word Jesus, in the Garden of Olives
“To stand
in his presence and serve him”: Jesus Christ as the true High Priest of the world
has conferred to these words a previously unimaginable depth. He, who as Son was
and is the Lord, has willed to become that Servant of God which the vision of the
Book of the Prophet Isaiah had foreseen. He has willed to be the Servant
of all. He has portrayed the whole of his high priesthood in the gesture of the
washing of the feet. With the gesture of love to the end he washes our dirty feet,
with the humility of his service he purifies us from the illness of our pride. Thus,
he makes us able to become partakers of God’s banquet. He has descended, and the
true ascent of man is now accomplished in our descending with him and toward him.
His elevation is the Cross. It is the deepest descent and, as love pushed to the
end, it is at the same time the culmination of the ascent, the true “elevation”
of humanity. “To stand in his presence and serve him”: this now means to enter into
his call to serve God. The Eucharist as the presence of the descent and ascent of
Christ thus always recalls, beyond itself, the many ways of service through love
of neighbour. Let us ask the Lord on this day for the gift to be able to say again
in this sense our “yes” to his call: “Here am I! Send me” (Is 6: 8). Amen.
CHRISM MASS
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint Peter’s Basilica, Holy Thursday, 9 April 2009
Dear
Brothers and Sisters,
In the Upper
Room, on the eve of his Passion, the Lord prayed for his disciples gathered about
him. At the same time he looked ahead to the community of disciples of all centuries,
“those who believe in me through their word” (Jn 17:20). In his prayer for
the disciples of all time, he saw us too, and he prayed for us. Let us listen to
what he asks for the Twelve and for us gathered here: “Sanctify them in the truth;
your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the
world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, so that they also may be consecrated
in truth” (17:17ff.). The Lord asks for our sanctification, our consecration in
truth. And he sends us forth to carry on his own mission. But in this prayer there
is one word which draws our attention, and appears difficult to understand. Jesus
says: “For their sake I consecrate myself”. What does this mean? Is Jesus not himself
“the Holy One of God”, as Peter acknowledged at that decisive moment in Capharnaum
(see Jn 6:69)? How can he now consecrate – sanctify – himself?
To understand
this, we need first to clarify what the Bible means by the words “holy” and “sanctify
– consecrate”. “Holy” – this word describes above all God’s own nature, his completely
unique, divine, way of being, one which is his alone. He alone is the true and authentic
Holy One, in the original sense of the word. All other holiness derives from him,
is a participation in his way of being. He is purest Light, Truth and untainted
Good. To consecrate something or someone means, therefore, to give that thing or
person to God as his property, to take it out of the context of what is ours and
to insert it in his milieu, so that it no longer belongs to our affairs, but is
totally of God. Consecration is thus a taking away from the world and a giving over
to the living God. The thing or person no longer belongs to us, or even to itself,
but is immersed in God. Such a giving up of something in order to give it over to
God, we also call a sacrifice: this thing will no longer be my property, but his
property. In the Old Testament, the giving over of a person to God, his “sanctification”,
is identified with priestly ordination, and this also defines the essence of the
priesthood: it is a transfer of ownership, a being taken out of the world and given
to God. We can now see the two directions which belong to the process of sanctification-consecration.
It is a departure from the milieux of worldly life – a “being set apart” for God.
But for this very reason it is not a segregation. Rather, being given over to God
means being charged to represent others. The priest is removed from worldly bonds
and given over to God, and precisely in this way, starting with God, he must be
available for others, for everyone. When Jesus says: “I consecrate myself”, he makes
himself both priest and victim. Bultmann was right to translate the phrase: “I consecrate
myself” by “I sacrifice myself”. Do we now see what happens when Jesus says: “I
consecrate myself for them”? This is the priestly act by which Jesus – the Man Jesus,
who is one with the Son of God – gives himself over to the Father for us. It is
the expression of the fact that he is both priest and victim. I consecrate myself
– I sacrifice myself: this unfathomable word, which gives us a glimpse deep into
the heart of Jesus Christ, should be the object of constantly renewed reflection.
It contains the whole mystery of our redemption. It also contains the origins of
the priesthood in the Church, of our priesthood.
Only now
can we fully understand the prayer which the Lord offered the Father for his disciples
– for us. “Sanctify them in the truth”: this is the inclusion of the Apostles in
the priesthood of Jesus Christ, the institution of his new priesthood for the community
of the faithful of all times. “Sanctify them in truth”: this is the true prayer
of consecration for the Apostles. The Lord prays that God himself draw them towards
him, into his holiness. He prays that God take them away from themselves to make
them his own property, so that, starting from him, they can carry out the priestly
ministry for the world. This prayer of Jesus appears twice in slightly different
forms. Both times we need to listen very carefully, in order to understand, even
dimly the sublime reality that is about to be accomplished. “Sanctify them in the
truth”. Jesus adds: “Your word is truth”. The disciples are thus drawn deep within
God by being immersed in the word of God. The word of God is, so to speak, the bath
which purifies them, the creative power which transforms them into God’s own being.
So then, how do things stand in our own lives? Are we truly pervaded by the word
of God? Is that word truly the nourishment we live by, even more than bread and
the things of this world? Do we really know that word? Do we love it? Are we deeply
engaged with this word to the point that it really leaves a mark on our lives and
shapes our thinking? Or is it rather the case that our thinking is constantly being
shaped by all the things that others say and do? Aren’t prevailing opinions the
criterion by which we all too often measure ourselves? Do we not perhaps remain,
when all is said and done, mired in the superficiality in which people today are
generally caught up? Do we allow ourselves truly to be deeply purified by the word
of God? Nietzsche scoffed at humility and obedience as the virtues of slaves, a
source of repression. He replaced them with pride and man’s absolute freedom. Of
course there exist caricatures of a misguided humility and a mistaken submissiveness,
which we do not want to imitate. But there also exists a destructive pride and a
presumption which tear every community apart and result in violence. Can we learn
from Christ the correct humility which corresponds to the truth of our being, and
the obedience which submits to truth, to the will of God? “Sanctify them in the
truth; your word is truth”: this word of inclusion in the priesthood lights up our
lives and calls us to become ever anew disciples of that truth which is revealed
in the word of God.
We can advance
another step in the interpretation of these words. Did not Christ say of himself:
“I am the truth” (see Jn 14:6)? Is he not himself the living Word of God,
to which every other word refers? Sanctify them in the truth – this means, then,
in the deepest sense: make them one with me, Christ. Bind them to me. Draw them
into me. Indeed, when all is said and done, there is only one priest of the
New Covenant, Jesus Christ himself. Consequently, the priesthood of the disciples
can only be a participation in the priesthood of Jesus. Our being priests is simply
a new and radical way of being united to Christ. In its substance, it has been bestowed
on us for ever in the sacrament. But this new seal imprinted upon our being can
become for us a condemnation, if our lives do not develop by entering into the truth
of the Sacrament. The promises we renew today state in this regard that our will
must be directed along this path: “Domino Iesu arctius coniungi et conformari,
vobismetipsis abrenuntiantes”. Being united to Christ calls for renunciation.
It means not wanting to impose our own way and our own will, not desiring to become
someone else, but abandoning ourselves to him, however and wherever he wants to
use us. As Saint Paul said: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in
me” (Gal 2:20). In the words “I do”, spoken at our priestly ordination, we
made this fundamental renunciation of our desire to be independent, “self-made”.
But day by day this great “yes” has to be lived out in the many little “yeses” and
small sacrifices. This “yes” made up of tiny steps which together make up the great
“yes”, can be lived out without bitterness and self-pity only if Christ is truly
the center of our lives. If we enter into true closeness to him. Then indeed we
experience, amid sacrifices which can at first be painful, the growing joy of friendship
with him, and all the small and sometimes great signs of his love, which he is constantly
showing us. “The one who loses himself, finds himself”. When we dare to lose ourselves
for the Lord, we come to experience the truth of these words.
To be immersed
in the Truth, in Christ – part of this process is prayer, in which we exercise our
friendship with him and also come to know him: his way of being, of thinking, of
acting. Praying is a journey in personal communion with Christ, setting before him
our daily life, our successes and failures, our struggles and our joys – in a word,
it is to stand in front of him. But if this is not to become a form of self-contemplation,
it is important that we constantly learn to pray by praying with the Church. Celebrating
the Eucharist means praying. We celebrate the Eucharist rightly if with our thoughts
and our being we enter into the words which the Church sets before us. There we
find the prayer of all generations, which accompany us along the way towards the
Lord. As priests, in the Eucharistic celebration we are those who by their prayer
blaze a trail for the prayer of today’s Christians. If we are inwardly united to
the words of prayer, if we let ourselves be guided and transformed by them, then
the faithful will also enter into those words. And then all of us will become truly
“one body, one spirit” in Christ.
To be immersed
in God’s truth and thus in his holiness – for us this also means to acknowledge
that the truth makes demands, to stand up, in matters great and small, to the lie
which in so many different ways is present in the world; accepting the struggles
associated with the truth, because its inmost joy is present within us. Nor, when
we talk about being sanctified in the truth, should we forget that in Jesus Christ
truth and love are one. Being immersed in him means being immersed in his goodness,
in true love. True love does not come cheap, it can also prove quite costly. It
resists evil in order to bring men true good. If we become one with Christ, we learn
to recognize him precisely in the suffering, in the poor, in the little ones of
this world; then we become people who serve, who recognize our brothers and sisters
in him, and in them, we encounter him.
“Sanctify
them in truth” – this is the first part of what Jesus says. But then he adds: “I
consecrate myself, so that they also may be consecrated in truth” – that is, truly
consecrated (Jn 17:19). I think that this second part has a special meaning
of its own. In the world’s religions there are many different ritual means of “sanctification”,
of the consecration of a human person. Yet all these rites can remain something
merely formal. Christ asks for his disciples the true sanctification which transforms
their being, their very selves; he asks that it not remain a ritual formality, but
that it make them truly the “property” of God himself. We could even say that Christ
prayed on behalf of us for that sacrament which touches us in the depths of our
being. But he also prayed that this interior transformation might be translated
day by day in our lives; that in our everyday routine and our concrete daily lives
we might be truly pervaded by the light of God.
On the eve
of my priestly ordination, fifty-eight years ago, I opened the Sacred Scripture,
because I wanted to receive once more a word from the Lord for that day and for
my future journey as a priest. My gaze fell on this passage: “Sanctify them in the
truth; your word is truth”. Then I realized: the Lord is speaking about me, and
he is speaking to me. This very same thing will be accomplished tomorrow in me.
When all is said and done, we are not consecrated by rites, even though rites are
necessary. The bath in which the Lord immerses us is himself – the Truth in person.
Priestly ordination means: being immersed in him, immersed in the Truth. I belong
in a new way to him and thus to others, “that his Kingdom may come”. Dear friends,
in this hour of the renewal of promises, we want to pray to the Lord to make us
men of truth, men of love, men of God. Let us implore him to draw us ever anew into
himself, so that we may become truly priests of the New Covenant. Amen.
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Holy Thursday, 1st April 2010
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
At the centre of
the Church’s worship is the notion of “sacrament”. This means that it is not primarily
we who act, but God comes first to meet us through his action, he looks upon us
and he leads us to himself. Another striking feature is this: God touches us through
material things, through gifts of creation that he takes up into his service, making
them instruments of the encounter between us and himself. There are four elements
in creation on which the world of sacraments is built: water, bread, wine and olive
oil. Water, as the basic element and fundamental condition of all life, is the essential
sign of the act in which, through baptism, we become Christians and are born to
new life. While water is the vital element everywhere, and thus represents the shared
access of all people to rebirth as Christians, the other three elements belong to
the culture of the Mediterranean region. In other words, they point towards the
concrete historical environment in which Christianity emerged. God acted in a clearly
defined place on the earth, he truly made history with men. On the one hand, these
three elements are gifts of creation, and on the other, they also indicate the locality
of the history of God with us. They are a synthesis between creation and history:
gifts of God that always connect us to those parts of the world where God chose
to act with us in historical time, where he chose to become one of us.
Within these three
elements there is a further gradation. Bread has to do with everyday life. It is
the fundamental gift of life day by day. Wine has to do with feasting, with the
fine things of creation, in which, at the same time, the joy of the redeemed finds
particular expression. Olive oil has a wide range of meaning. It is nourishment,
it is medicine, it gives beauty, it prepares us for battle and it gives strength.
Kings and priests are anointed with oil, which is thus a sign of dignity and responsibility,
and likewise of the strength that comes from God. Even the name that we bear as
“Christians” contains the mystery of the oil. The word “Christians”, in fact, by
which Christ’s disciples were known in the earliest days of Gentile Christianity,
is derived from the word “Christ” (Acts 11:20-21) – the Greek translation
of the word “Messiah”, which means “anointed one”. To be a Christian is to come
from Christ, to belong to Christ, to the anointed one of God, to whom God granted
kingship and priesthood. It means belonging to him whom God himself anointed – not
with material oil, but with the One whom the oil represents: with his Holy Spirit.
Olive oil is thus in a very particular way a symbol of the total compenetration
of the man Jesus by the Holy Spirit.
In the Chrism Mass
on Holy Thursday, the holy oils are at the centre of the liturgical action. They
are consecrated in the bishop’s cathedral for the whole year. They thus serve also
as an expression of the Church’s unity, guaranteed by the episcopate, and they point
to Christ, the true “shepherd and guardian” of our souls, as Saint Peter calls him
(1 Pet 2:25). At the same time, they hold together the entire liturgical year, anchored
in the mystery of Holy Thursday. Finally, they point to the Garden of Olives Garden of Olives Mount of Olives is also always “at work” within the Church’s
sacramental oil. In four sacraments, oil is the sign of God’s goodness reaching
out to touch us: in baptism, in confirmation as the sacrament of the Holy Spirit,
in the different grades of the sacrament of holy orders and finally in the anointing
of the sick, in which oil is offered to us, so to speak, as God’s medicine – as
the medicine which now assures us of his goodness, offering us strength and consolation,
yet at the same time points beyond the moment of the illness towards the definitive
healing, the resurrection (see Jas 5:14). Thus oil, in its different forms, accompanies
us throughout our lives: beginning with the catechumenate and baptism, and continuing
right up to the moment when we prepare to meet God, our Judge and Savior. Moreover,
the Chrism Mass, in which the sacramental sign of oil is presented to us as part
of the language of God’s creation, speaks in particular to us who are priests: it
speaks of Christ, whom God anointed King and Priest – of him who makes us sharers
in his priesthood, in his “anointing”, through our own priestly ordination.
I should like, then,
to attempt a brief interpretation of the mystery of this holy sign in its essential
reference to the priestly vocation. In popular etymologies a connection was made,
even in ancient times, between the Greek word “elaion” – oil – and the word
“eleos” – mercy. In fact, in the various sacraments, consecrated oil is always
a sign of God’s mercy. So the meaning of priestly anointing always includes the
mission to bring God’s mercy to those we serve. In the lamp of our lives, the oil
of mercy should never run dry. Let us always obtain it from the Lord in good time
– in our encounter with his word, in our reception of the sacraments, in the time
we spend with him in prayer.
As a consequence
of the story of the dove bearing an olive branch to signal the end of the flood
– and thus God’s new peace with the world of men – not only the dove but also the
olive branch and oil itself have become symbols of peace. The Christians of antiquity
loved to decorate the tombs of their dead with the crown of victory and the olive
branch, symbol of peace. They knew that Christ conquered death and that their dead
were resting in the peace of Christ. They knew that they themselves were awaited
by Christ, that he had promised them the peace which the world cannot give. They
remembered that the first words of the Risen Lord to his disciples were: “Peace
be with you!” (Jn 20:19). He himself, so to speak, bears the olive branch, he introduces
his peace into the world. He announces God’s saving goodness. He is our peace. Christians
should therefore be people of peace, people who recognize and live the mystery of
the Cross as a mystery of reconciliation. Christ does not conquer through the sword,
but through the Cross. He wins by conquering hatred. He wins through the force of
his greater love. The Cross of Christ expresses his “no” to violence. And in this
way, it is God’s victory sign, which announces Jesus’ new way. The one who suffered
was stronger than the ones who exercised power. In his self-giving on the Cross,
Christ conquered violence. As priests we are called, in fellowship with Jesus Christ,
to be men of peace, we are called to oppose violence and to trust in the greater
power of love.
A further aspect
of the symbolism of oil is that it strengthens for battle. This does not contradict
the theme of peace, but forms part of it. The battle of Christians consisted – and
still consists – not in the use of violence, but in the fact that they were – and
are – ready to suffer for the good, for God. It consists in the fact that Christians,
as good citizens, keep the law and do what is just and good. It consists in the
fact that they do not do whatever within the legal system in force is not just but
unjust. The battle of the martyrs consists in their concrete “no” to injustice:
by taking no part in idolatry, in Emperor worship, they refused to bow down before
falsehood, before the adoration of human persons and their power. With their “no”
to falsehood and all its consequences, they upheld the power of right and truth.
Thus they served true peace. Today too it is important for Christians to follow
what is right, which is the foundation of peace. Today too it is important for Christians
not to accept a wrong that is enshrined in law – for example the killing of innocent
unborn children. In this way we serve peace, in this way we find ourselves following
in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, of whom Saint Peter says: “When he was reviled
he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted
to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that
we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Pet 2:23f.).
The Fathers of the
Church were fascinated by a phrase from Psalm 45 (44) – traditionally held
to be Solomon’s wedding psalm – which was reinterpreted by Christians as the psalm
for the marriage of the new Solomon, Jesus Christ, to his Church. To the King, Christ,
it is said: “Your love is for justice; your hatred for evil. Therefore God, your
God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above other kings” (v. 8). What is
this oil of gladness with which the true king, Christ, was anointed? The Fathers
had no doubt in this regard: the oil of gladness is the Holy Spirit himself, who
was poured out upon Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is the gladness that comes from
God. From Jesus this gladness sweeps over us in his Gospel, in the joyful message
that God knows us, that he is good and that his goodness is the power above all
powers; that we are wanted and loved by him. Gladness is the fruit of love. The
oil of gladness, which was poured out over Christ and comes to us from him, is the
Holy Spirit, the gift of Love who makes us glad to be alive. Since we know Christ,
and since in him we know the true God, we know that it is good to be a human being.
It is good to be alive, because we are loved, because truth itself is good.
In the early Church,
the consecrated oil was considered a special sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit,
who communicates himself to us as a gift from Christ. He is the oil of gladness.
This gladness is different from entertainment and from the outward happiness that
modern society seeks for itself. Entertainment, in its proper place, is certainly
good and enjoyable. It is good to be able to laugh. But entertainment is not everything.
It is only a small part of our lives, and when it tries to be the whole, it becomes
a mask behind which despair lurks, or at least doubt over whether life is really
good, or whether non-existence might perhaps be better than existence. The gladness
that comes to us from Christ is different. It does indeed make us happy, but it
can also perfectly well coexist with suffering. It gives us the capacity to suffer
and, in suffering, to remain nevertheless profoundly glad. It gives us the capacity
to share the suffering of others and thus by placing ourselves at one another’s
disposal, to express tangibly the light and the goodness of God. I am always struck
by the passage in the Acts of the Apostles which recounts that after the
Apostles had been whipped by order of the Sanhedrin, they “rejoiced that they were
counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of Jesus” (Acts 5:41). Anyone who
loves is ready to suffer for the beloved and for the sake of his love, and in this
way he experiences a deeper joy. The joy of the martyrs was stronger than the torments
inflicted on them. This joy was ultimately victorious and opened the gates of history
for Christ. As priests, we are – in Saint
Paul ’s words – “co-workers with you for your joy” (2 Cor
1:24). In the fruit of the olive-tree, in the consecrated oil, we are touched by
the goodness of the Creator, the love of the Redeemer. Let us pray that his gladness
may pervade us ever more deeply and that we may be capable of bringing it anew to
a world in such urgent need of the joy that has its source in truth. Amen.
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Holy Thursday, 21 April 2011
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
At the heart of this
morning’s liturgy is the blessing of the holy oils – the oil for anointing catechumens,
the oil for anointing the sick, and the chrism for the great sacraments that confer
the Holy Spirit: confirmation, priestly ordination, episcopal ordination. In the
sacraments the Lord touches us through the elements of creation. The unity between
creation and redemption is made visible. The sacraments are an expression of the
physicality of our faith, which embraces the whole person, body and soul. Bread
and wine are fruits of the earth and work of human hands. The Lord chose them to
be bearers of his presence. Oil is the symbol of the Holy Spirit and at the same
time it points us towards Christ: the word “Christ” (Messiah) means “the anointed
one”. The humanity of Jesus, by virtue of the Son’s union with the Father, is brought
into communion with the Holy Spirit and is thus “anointed” in a unique way, penetrated
by the Holy Spirit. What happened symbolically to the kings and priests of the Old
Testament when they were instituted into their ministry by the anointing with oil,
takes place in Jesus in all its reality: his humanity is penetrated by the power
of the Holy Spirit. He opens our humanity for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The more
we are united to Christ, the more we are filled with his Spirit, with the Holy Spirit.
We are called “Christians”: “anointed ones” – people who belong to Christ and hence
have a share in his anointing, being touched by his Spirit. I wish not merely to
be called Christian, but also to be Christian, said Saint Ignatius of Antioch . Let us allow these
holy oils, which are consecrated at this time, to remind us of the task that is
implicit in the word “Christian”, let us pray that, increasingly, we may not only
be called Christian but may actually be such.
In today’s liturgy,
three oils are blessed, as I mentioned earlier. They express three essential dimensions
of the Christian life on which we may now reflect. First, there is the oil of catechumens.
This oil indicates a first way of being touched by Christ and by his Spirit – an
inner touch, by which the Lord draws people close to himself. Through this first
anointing, which takes place even prior to baptism, our gaze is turned towards people
who are journeying towards Christ – people who are searching for faith, searching
for God. The oil of catechumens tells us that it is not only we who seek God: God
himself is searching for us. The fact that he himself was made man and came down
into the depths of human existence, even into the darkness of death, shows us how
much God loves his creature, man. Driven by love, God has set out towards us. “Seeking
me, you sat down weary ... let such labor not be in vain!”, we pray in the Dies
Irae. God is searching for me. Do I want to recognize him? Do I want to be known
by him, found by him? God loves us. He comes to meet the unrest of our hearts, the
unrest of our questioning and seeking, with the unrest of his own heart, which leads
him to accomplish the ultimate for us. That restlessness for God, that journeying
towards him, so as to know and love him better, must not be extinguished in us.
In this sense we should always remain catechumens. “Constantly seek his face”, says
one of the Psalms (105:4). Saint Augustine
comments as follows: God is so great as to surpass infinitely all our knowing and
all our being. Knowledge of God is never exhausted. For all eternity, with ever
increasing joy, we can always continue to seek him, so as to know him and love him
more and more. “Our heart is restless until it rests in you”, said Saint Augustine at the beginning
of his Confessions. Yes, man is restless, because whatever is finite is too
little. But are we truly restless for him? Have we perhaps become resigned to his
absence, do we not seek to be self-sufficient? Let us not allow our humanity to
be diminished in this way! Let us remain constantly on a journey towards him, longing
for him, always open to receive new knowledge and love!
Then there is the
oil for anointing the sick. Arrayed before us is a host of suffering people: those
who hunger and thirst, victims of violence in every continent, the sick with all
their sufferings, their hopes and their moments without hope, the persecuted, the
downtrodden, the broken-hearted. Regarding the first mission on which Jesus sent
the disciples, Saint Luke tells us: “he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God Kingdom
of God
In third place, finally,
is the most noble of the ecclesial oils, the chrism, a mixture of olive oil and
aromatic vegetable oils. It is the oil used for anointing priests and kings, in
continuity with the great Old Testament traditions of anointing. In the Church this
oil serves chiefly for the anointing of confirmation and ordination. Today’s liturgy
links this oil with the promise of the prophet Isaiah: “You shall be called the
priests of the Lord, men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God” (61:6).
The prophet makes reference here to the momentous words of commission and promise
that God had addressed to Israel
on Sinai: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:6).
In and for the vast world, which was largely ignorant of God, Israel had to be as it were a shrine
of God for all peoples, exercising a priestly function vis-à-vis the world. It had
to bring the world to God, to open it up to him. In his great baptismal catechesis,
Saint Peter applied this privilege and this commission of Israel to the entire
community of the baptized, proclaiming: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him
who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people
but now you are God’s people” (1 Pet 2:9f.) Baptism and confirmation are
an initiation into this people of God that spans the world; the anointing that takes
place in baptism and confirmation is an anointing that confers this priestly ministry
towards mankind. Christians are a priestly people for the world. Christians should
make the living God visible to the world, they should bear witness to him and lead
people towards him. When we speak of this task in which we share by virtue of our
baptism, it is no reason to boast. It poses a question to us that makes us both
joyful and anxious: are we truly God’s shrine in and for the world? Do we open up
the pathway to God for others or do we rather conceal it? Have not we – the people
of God – become to a large extent a people of unbelief and distance from God? Is
it perhaps the case that the West, the heartlands of Christianity, are tired of
their faith, bored by their history and culture, and no longer wish to know faith
in Jesus Christ? We have reason to cry out at this time to God: “Do not allow us
to become a ‘non-people’! Make us recognize you again! Truly, you have anointed
us with your love, you have poured out your Holy Spirit upon us. Grant that the
power of your Spirit may become newly effective in us, so that we may bear joyful
witness to your message!
For all the shame
we feel over our failings, we must not forget that today too there are radiant examples
of faith, people who give hope to the world through their faith and love. When Pope
John Paul II is beatified on 1 May, we shall think of him, with hearts full of thankfulness,
as a great witness to God and to Jesus Christ in our day, as a man filled with the
Holy Spirit. Alongside him, we think of the many people he beatified and canonized,
who give us the certainty that even today God’s promise and commission do not fall
on deaf ears.
I turn finally to
you, dear brothers in the priestly ministry. Holy Thursday is in a special way our
day. At the hour of the last Supper, the Lord instituted the New Testament priesthood.
“Sanctify them in the truth” (Jn 17:17), he prayed to the Father, for the
Apostles and for priests of all times. With great gratitude for the vocation and
with humility for all our shortcomings, we renew at this hour our “yes” to the Lord’s
call: yes, I want to be intimately united to the Lord Jesus, in self-denial, driven
on by the love of Christ. Amen.
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Saint
Peter’s Basilica, Holy Thursday, 5 April 2012
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
At this Holy Mass
our thoughts go back to that moment when, through prayer and the laying on of hands,
the bishop made us sharers in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, so that we might be
“consecrated in truth” (Jn 17:19), as Jesus besought the Father for us in his high-priestly
prayer. He himself is the truth. He has consecrated us, that is to say, handed us
over to God for ever, so that we can offer men and women a service that comes from
God and leads to him. But does our consecration extend to the daily reality of our
lives – do we operate as men of God in fellowship with Jesus Christ? This question
places the Lord before us and us before him. “Are you resolved to be more united
with the Lord Jesus and more closely conformed to him, denying yourselves and confirming
those promises about sacred duties towards Christ’s Church which, prompted by love
of him, you willingly and joyfully pledged on the day of your priestly ordination?”
After this homily, I shall be addressing that question to each of you here and to
myself as well. Two things, above all, are asked of us: there is a need for an interior
bond, a configuration to Christ, and at the same time there has to be a transcending
of ourselves, a renunciation of what is simply our own, of the much-vaunted self-fulfilment.
We need, I need, not to claim my life as my own, but to place it at the disposal
of another – of Christ. I should be asking not what I stand to gain, but what I
can give for him and so for others. Or to put it more specifically, this configuration
to Christ, who came not to be served but to serve, who does not take, but rather
gives – what form does it take in the often dramatic situation of the Church today?
Recently a group of priests from a European country issued a summons to disobedience,
and at the same time gave concrete examples of the forms this disobedience might
take, even to the point of disregarding definitive decisions of the Church’s Magisterium,
such as the question of women’s ordination, for which Blessed Pope John Paul II
stated irrevocably that the Church has received no authority from the Lord. Is disobedience
a path of renewal for the Church? We would like to believe that the authors of this
summons are motivated by concern for the Church, that they are convinced that the
slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open
up new paths and to bring the Church up to date. But is disobedience really a way
to do this? Do we sense here anything of that configuration to Christ which is the
precondition for all true renewal, or do we merely sense a desperate push to do
something to change the Church in accordance with one’s own preferences and ideas?
But let us not oversimplify
matters. Surely Christ himself corrected human traditions which threatened to stifle
the word and the will of God? Indeed he did, so as to rekindle obedience to the
true will of God, to his ever enduring word. His concern was for true obedience,
as opposed to human caprice. Nor must we forget: he was the Son, possessed of singular
authority and responsibility to reveal the authentic will of God, so as to open
up the path for God’s word to the world of the nations. And finally: he lived out
his task with obedience and humility all the way to the Cross, and so gave credibility
to his mission. Not my will, but thine be done: these words reveal to us the Son,
in his humility and his divinity, and they show us the true path.
Let us ask again:
do not such reflections serve simply to defend inertia, the fossilization of traditions?
No. Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era can recognize the
process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and
made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and
effectiveness of the Holy Spirit. And if we look at the people from whom these fresh
currents of life burst forth and continue to burst forth, then we see that this
new fruitfulness requires being filled with the joy of faith, the radicalism of
obedience, the dynamic of hope and the power of love.
Dear friends, it
is clear that configuration to Christ is the precondition and the basis for all
renewal. But perhaps at times the figure of Jesus Christ seems too lofty and too
great for us to dare to measure ourselves by him. The Lord knows this. So he has
provided “translations” on a scale that is more accessible and closer to us. For
this same reason, Saint Paul
did not hesitate to say to his communities: Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
For his disciples, he was a “translation” of Christ’s manner of life that they could
see and identify with. Ever since Paul’s time, history has furnished a constant
flow of other such “translations” of Jesus’ way into historical figures. We priests
can call to mind a great throng of holy priests who have gone before us and shown
us the way: from Polycarp of Smyrna and Ignatius of Antioch, from the great pastors
Ambrose, Augustine and Gregory the Great, through to Ignatius of Loyola, Charles
Borromeo, John Mary Vianney and the priest-martyrs of the 20th century, and finally
Pope John Paul II, who gave us an example, through his activity and his suffering,
of configuration to Christ as “gift and mystery”. The saints show us how renewal
works and how we can place ourselves at its service. And they help us realize that
God is not concerned so much with great numbers and with outward successes, but
achieves his victories under the humble sign of the mustard seed.
Dear friends, I would
like briefly to touch on two more key phrases from the renewal of ordination promises,
which should cause us to reflect at this time in the Church’s life and in our own
lives. Firstly, the reminder that – as Saint Paul put it – we are “stewards of the
mysteries of God” (1 Cor 4:1) and we are charged with the ministry of teaching,
the (munus docendi), which forms a part of this stewardship of God’s mysteries,
through which he shows us his face and his heart, in order to give us himself. At
the meeting of Cardinals on the occasion of the recent Consistory, several of the
pastors of the Church spoke, from experience, of the growing religious illiteracy
found in the midst of our sophisticated society. The foundations of faith, which
at one time every child knew, are now known less and less. But if we are to live
and love our faith, if we are to love God and to hear him aright, we need to know
what God has said to us – our minds and hearts must be touched by his word. The
Year of Faith, commemorating the opening of the Second Vatican Council fifty years
ago, should provide us with an occasion to proclaim the message of faith with new
enthusiasm and new joy. We find it of course first and foremost in sacred Scripture,
which we can never read and ponder enough. Yet at the same time we all experience
the need for help in accurately expounding it in the present day, if it is truly
to touch our hearts. This help we find first of all in the words of the teaching
Church: the texts of the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic
Church are essential tools which serve as an authentic guide to what the Church
believes on the basis of God’s word. And of course this also includes the whole
wealth of documents given to us by Pope John Paul II, still far from being fully
explored.
All our preaching
must measure itself against the saying of Jesus Christ: “My teaching is not mine”
(Jn 7:16). We preach not private theories and opinions, but the faith of the Church,
whose servants we are. Naturally this should not be taken to mean that I am not
completely supportive of this teaching, or solidly anchored in it. In this regard
I am always reminded of the words of Saint
Augustine : what is so much mine as myself? And what is
so little mine as myself? I do not own myself, and I become myself by the very fact
that I transcend myself, and thereby become a part of Christ, a part of his body
the Church. If we do not preach ourselves, and if we are inwardly so completely
one with him who called us to be his ambassadors, that we are shaped by faith and
live it, then our preaching will be credible. I do not seek to win people for myself,
but I give myself. The Curé of Ars was no scholar, no intellectual, we know that.
But his preaching touched people’s hearts because his own heart had been touched.
© Copyright 2014 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Book by Orestes J. González