Entry 0296: Reflections on the Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary
Time by Pope Benedict XVI
On eight occasions during his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI delivered reflections on the Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, on 28 August 2005, 3 September 2006, 2 September 2007, 31 August 2008, 30 August 2009, 29 August 2010, 28 August 2011, and 2 September 2012. Here are the texts of eight brief reflections prior to the recitation of the Angelus and three homilies delivered on these occasions.
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
My ecclesial
experience in Cologne
last week with a vast number of young people from every corner of the world,
accompanied by many Bishops, priests, and men and women religious on the
occasion of World Youth Day, was truly extraordinary. It was an event of
grace for the entire Church.
When I spoke to
the Bishops of Germany shortly before returning to Italy , I said that young people
were addressing a request to us: “Help us to be disciples and witnesses of
Christ. Like the Magi we have come to find him and to worship him”.
The young people
left Cologne
for their own cities and nations, enlivened by great hope but without losing
sight of the many difficulties, obstacles and problems that accompany an
authentic search for Christ and faithful adherence to his Gospel.
Not only youth,
but also communities and the Pastors themselves must become more and more aware
of a fundamental fact about evangelization: wherever God does not have pride of
place, wherever he is not recognized and worshipped as the Supreme Good, human
dignity is at risk.
It is therefore
urgent to bring our contemporaries to “rediscover” the authentic face of God,
who revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. Thus, the humanity of our time will
also be able, like the Magi, to fall to their knees and adore him.
In speaking to
the German Bishops, I recalled that worship is “not a luxury... but a priority”.
To seek Jesus must be the constant desire of believers, young people and
adults, of the faithful and of their pastors. This seeking must be encouraged,
supported and guided.
Faith is not
merely the attachment to a complex of dogmas, complete in itself, that is
supposed to satisfy the thirst for God, present in the human heart.
On the contrary,
it guides human beings on their way through time toward a God who is ever new
in his infinity.
Christians,
therefore, are at the same time both seekers and finders. It is precisely this
that makes the Church young, open to the future, rich in hope for the whole of
humanity.
He points out
that this invitation is not only valid for this life but also for eternity. The
discovery of “God’s Face” is never ending. The further we penetrate into the
splendour of divine love, the more beautiful it is to pursue our search, so
that “amore crescente inquisitio crescat inventi - the greater love
grows, the further we will seek the One who has been found” (Enarr. in Ps 105[104]:
3; CCL 40, 1537).
This is the
experience to which, deep down, we too aspire. May the intercession of the
great Bishop of Hippo obtain it for us! May the motherly help of Mary, the Star
of Evangelization whom we now invoke with the prayer of the Angelus, obtain it
for us.
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
Today, 3
September, the Roman calendar commemorates St Gregory the Great, Pope and
Doctor of the Church (c. 540-604).
His exceptional,
I would say, almost unique figure is an example to hold up both to pastors of
the Church and to public administrators: indeed, he was first Prefect and then
Bishop of Rome. As an imperial official, he was so distinguished for his
administrative talents and moral integrity that he served in the highest civil
office, Praefectus Urbis, when he was only 30 years old.
Within him,
however, the vocation to the monastic life was maturing; he embraced it in 574,
upon his father’s death. The Benedictine Rule then became the backbone of his
existence. Even when the Pope sent him as his Representative to the Emperor of
the East in Constantinople , he maintained a
simple and poor monastic lifestyle.
Called back to Rome , Gregory, although
living in a monastery, was a close collaborator of Pope Pelagius II, and when
the Pope died, the victim of a plague epidemic, Gregory was acclaimed by all as
his Successor.
He sought in
every way to escape this appointment but in the end was obliged to yield. He
left the cloister reluctantly and dedicated himself to the community, aware of
doing his duty and being a simple and poor “servant of the servants of God”.
“He is not
really humble,” he wrote, “who understands that he must be a leader of others
by decree of the divine will and yet disdains this pre-eminence. If, on the
contrary, he submits to divine dispositions, and does not have the vice of
obstinacy, and is prepared to benefit others with those gifts when the highest
dignity of governing souls is imposed on him, he must flee from it with his
heart, but against his will, he must obey” (Pastoral Rule, I, 6). It is
like a dialogue that the Pope has with himself at that time.
With prophetic
foresight, Gregory intuited that a new civilization was being born from the
encounter of the Roman legacy with so-called “barbarian” peoples, thanks to the
cohesive power and moral elevation of Christianity. Monasticism was proving to
be a treasure not only for the Church but for the whole of society.
With delicate
health but strong moral character St Gregory the Great carried out intense
pastoral and civil action. He left a vast collection of letters, wonderful
homilies, a famous commentary on the Book of Job and writings on the life of St
Benedict, as well as numerous liturgical texts, famous for the reform of song
that was called “Gregorian”, after him.
However, his
most famous work is certainly the Pastoral Rule, which had the same
importance for the clergy as the Rule of St Benedict had for monks in the
Middle Ages.
The life of a
pastor of souls must be a balanced synthesis of contemplation and action,
inspired by the love “that rises wonderfully to high things when it is
compassionately drawn to the low things of neighbours; and the more kindly it
descends to the weak things of this world, the more vigorously it recurs to the
things on high” (II, 5).
In this ever
timely teaching, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council found inspiration to
outline the image of today’s Pastor.
Let us pray to
the Virgin Mary that the example and teaching of St Gregory the Great may be followed
by pastors of the Church and also by those in charge of civil institutions.
PASTORAL
VISIT
OF
HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO
LORETO
ON
THE OCCASION OF THE AGORÀ
OF
ITALIAN YOUTH
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Plain
of Montorso, Sunday, 2 September 2007
At the end of
this solemn Eucharistic celebration, dear young people, let us recite the
prayer of the Angelus in spiritual communion with all those who are connected
with us via radio and television.
Loreto, after Nazareth , is the ideal
place to pray while meditating on the mystery on the Incarnation of the Son of
God.
Therefore, at
this moment, my invitation is to enter together, in heart and mind, the Shrine
of the Holy House, within those walls that according to tradition came from Nazareth , the place where
the Virgin said “yes” to God and conceived in her womb the eternal Incarnate
Word.
Before ending
our assembly, let us leave the “agora”, the square, for a moment and in spirit
enter the Holy House. There is a reciprocal link between the square and the
house.
The square is
large, open, it is the place for meeting others, for dialogue, for
confrontation.
The house, on
the other hand, is the place for recollection and for inner silence, where the
Word may be received in depth.
To bring God to
the square, one first needs to have interiorized him in the house, like Mary at
the Annunciation.
And vice versa,
the house is open to the square. This is also suggested by the fact that the
Holy House of Loreto has three walls, not four: it is an open House, open
to the world, to life, even to this Agora of Italian
youth.
Dear friends, it
is a great privilege for Italy
to have the Shrine of the Holy House in this sweet corner of the Marches . Be justly proud
of this and make the most of it!
At the most
important moments of your lives come here, at least in your hearts, in
spiritual recollection within the walls of the Holy House.
Pray to the
Virgin Mary that she may obtain for you the light and strength of the Holy
Spirit, so that you may respond fully and generously to the voice of God.
You will then
become his true witnesses in the “square”, in society, bearers of a Gospel
which is not abstract but incarnate in your lives.
PASTORAL
VISIT
OF
HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO
LORETO
ON
THE OCCASION OF THE AGORÀ
OF
ITALIAN YOUTH
EUCHARISTIC
CONCELEBRATION
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Plain
of Montorso, Sunday, 2 September 2007
After last night’s
Vigil, our Meeting in Loreto is now coming to an end around the altar with the
solemn Eucharistic celebration. Once again, my most cordial greeting to you
all. I extend a special greeting to the Bishops and I thank Archbishop Angelo
Bagnasco who has expressed your common sentiments. I greet the Archbishop of
Loreto who has welcomed us with affection and kindness. I greet the priests,
the men and women religious and all those who have carefully prepared this
important event of faith. I offer a respectful greeting to the Civil and
Military Authorities present, with a particular remembrance for Hon. Mr Francesco
Rutelli, Vice-President of the Council of Ministers.
This is truly a
day of grace! The Readings we have just heard help us to understand the
marvellous work the Lord has done in bringing so many of us here to Loreto, to
meet in a joyful atmosphere of prayer and festivity. In a certain sense, our
gathering at the Virgin’s Shrine fulfils the words of the Letter to the
Hebrews: “You have come to Mount
Zion
God also seeks
young people today. He seeks young people with great hearts who can make room
for him in their lives to be protagonists of the New Covenant. To accept a
proposal as fascinating as the one Jesus offers us, to make the covenant with
him, it is necessary to be youthful within, to be capable of letting oneself be
called into question by his newness, to set out with him on new roads. Jesus
has a fondness for young people, as the conversation with the rich young man
clearly shows (see Mt 19: 16-22; Mk 10: 17-22); he respects their freedom but
never tires of proposing loftier goals for life to them: the newness of the
Gospel and the beauty of holy behaviour. Following her Lord’s example, the
Church continues to show the same attention. This is why, dear young people,
she looks at you with immense affection, she is close to you in moments of joy
and festivity, in trials and in loss. She sustains you with the gifts of
sacramental grace and accompanies you in the discernment of your vocation. Dear
young people, let yourselves be involved in the new life that flows from the
encounter with Christ and you will be able to be apostles of his peace in your
families, among your friends, within your Ecclesial Communities and in the
various milieus in which you live and work.
But what is it
that makes people “young” in the Gospel sense? Our Meeting, which is taking
place in the shadow of a Marian Shrine, invites us to look to Our Lady. Let us
therefore ask ourselves: How did Mary spend her youth? Why was it that in her
the impossible became possible? She herself reveals it to us in the Canticle of
the Magnificat. God “regarded the low estate of his handmaiden” (Lk 1: 48a). It
was Mary’s humility that God appreciated more than anything else in her. And it
is precisely of humility that the other two Readings of today’s liturgy speak to us. Is
it not a happy coincidence that this message is addressed to us exactly here in
Loreto? Here, we think spontaneously of the Holy House of Nazareth, which is
the Shrine of humility: the humility of God who took flesh, who made himself
small, and the humility of Mary who welcomed him into her womb; the humility of
the Creator and the humility of the creature. Jesus, Son of God and Son of man,
was born from this encounter of humility. “The greater you are, the more you
humble yourself, so you will find favour in the sight of the Lord. For great is
the might of the Lord” (3: 18-20) says the passage in Sirach; and in the
Gospel, after the Parable of the Wedding Feast, Jesus concludes: “Every one who
exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk
14: 11). Today, this perspective mentioned in the Scriptures appears especially
provocative to the culture and sensitivity of contemporary man. The humble
person is perceived as someone who gives up, someone defeated, someone who has
nothing to say to the world. Instead, this is the principal way, and not only
because humility is a great human virtue but because, in the first place, it
represents God’s own way of acting. It was the way chosen by Christ, the
Mediator of the New Covenant, who “being found in human form he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2: 8).
Dear young
people, I seem to perceive in these words of God about humility an important
message which is especially current for you who want to follow Christ and
belong to his Church. This is the message: do not follow the way of pride but
rather that of humility. Go against the tide: do not listen to the interested
and persuasive voices that today are peddling on many sides models of life
marked by arrogance and violence, by oppression and success at any cost, by
appearances and by having at the expense of being. How many messages, which
reach you especially through the mass media, are targeting you! Be alert! Be
critical! Do not follow the wave produced by this powerful, persuasive action.
Do not be afraid, dear friends, to prefer the “alternative” routes pointed out
by true love: a modest and sound lifestyle; sincere and pure emotional
relationships; honest commitment in studies and work; deep concern for the
common good. Do not be afraid of seeming different and being criticized for
what might seem to be losing or out of fashion; your peers but adults too,
especially those who seem more distant from the mindset and values of the
Gospel, are crying out to see someone who dares to live according to the
fullness of humanity revealed by Jesus Christ.
Therefore, dear
friends, the way of humility is not the way of renunciation but that of
courage. It is not the result of a defeat but the result of a victory of love
over selfishness and of grace over sin.
In following
Christ and imitating Mary, we must have the courage of humility; we must
entrust ourselves humbly to the Lord, because only in this way will we be able
to become docile instruments in his hands and allow him to do great things in
us. The Lord worked great miracles in Mary and in the Saints! I am thinking,
for example, of Francis of Assisi and Catherine of Siena, Patrons of Italy. I
am thinking also of splendid young people like St Gemma Galgani, St Gabriel of
the Sorrowful Virgin, St Louis Gonzaga, St Dominic Savio, St Maria Goretti,
born not far from here, and the Blesseds, Piergiorgio Frassati and Alberto
Marvelli. And I am also thinking of numerous young men and women who belong to
the ranks of the “anonymous” Saints, but who are not anonymous to God. For him,
every individual person is unique, with his or her own name and face. All, and
you know it, are called to be Saints!
As you see, dear
young people, the humility the Lord has taught us and to which the Saints have
borne witness, each according to the originality of his or her own vocation, is
quite different from a renunciatory way of life. Let us look above all at Mary.
At her school, we too, like her, can experience that “yes” of God to humanity
from which flow all the “yeses” of our life. It is true, the challenges you
must face are many and important. The first however, is always that of
following Christ to the very end without reservations and compromises. And
following Christ means feeling oneself a living part of his body which is the
Church. One cannot call oneself a disciple of Jesus if one does not love and
obey his Church. The Church is our family in which love for the Lord and for
our brothers and sisters, especially through participation in the Eucharist,
enables us to experience the joy of already having a foretaste, now, of the
future life that will be totally illuminated by Love. May our daily commitment
be to live here below as though we were already in Heaven above.
Thus, feeling
oneself as Church is a vocation to holiness for all; it is a daily commitment
to build communion and unity, overcoming all resistance and rising above every
incomprehension. In the Church we learn to love, teaching ourselves to accept
our neighbour freely, to show caring attention to those in difficulty, to the
poor and to the lowliest. The fundamental motivation that unites believers in
Christ is not success but goodness, a goodness that is all the more authentic
the more it is shared, and which does not primarily consist in having or in
being powerful, but in being. In this way one builds the city of God with human
beings, a city which at the same time grows on earth and comes down from Heaven
because it develops in the encounter and collaboration between people and God (see
Rv 21: 2-3).
Following
Christ, dear young people, also entails the constant effort to make one’s own
contribution to building a society that is more just and sober and in which all
may enjoy the goods of the earth.
I know that many
of you are generously dedicated to witnessing to your faith in the various
social environments, active as volunteers and working to promote the common
good, peace and justice in every community. There is no doubt that one of the
fields in which it seems urgent to take action is that of safeguarding
creation. The future of the planet is entrusted to the new generations, in
which there are evident signs of a development that has not always been able to
protect the delicate balances of nature. Before it is too late, it is necessary
to make courageous decisions that can recreate a strong alliance between
humankind and the earth. A decisive “yes” is needed to protect creation
and also a strong commitment to invert those trends which risk leading to
irreversibly degrading situations. I therefore appreciated the Italian Church
Dear young
friends, after listening to your reflections yesterday evening and last night,
letting myself be guided by God’s Word, I now want to entrust to you my
considerations which are intended as a paternal encouragement to follow Christ
in order to be witnesses of his hope and love. For my part, I will continue to
be beside you with my prayers and affection, so that you may persevere
enthusiastically on the journey of the Agora, this unique triennial
journey of listening, dialogue and mission. Today, concluding the first year
with this wonderful Meeting, I cannot fail to invite you to look ahead already
to the great event of World Youth Day that will be held in July next year in Sydney . I ask you to
prepare yourselves for this important manifestation of youthful faith by
meditating on the Message which examines in depth the theme of the Holy Spirit,
to live together a new springtime of the Spirit. Therefore, I am expecting many
of you even in Australia ,
at the end of your second year of the Agora. Lastly, let us turn our
gaze, our eyes, once again to Mary, model of humility and courage. Virgin of
Nazareth, help us to be docile to the work of the Holy Spirit, as you were;
help us to become ever more holy, disciples in love with your Son Jesus;
sustain and guide these young people so that they may be joyful and tireless missionaries
of the Gospel among their peers in every corner of Italy. Amen!
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Papal
Summer Residence, Castel Gandolfo , Sunday, 31
August 2008
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
Today too, the
Apostle Peter, like last Sunday, appears in the foreground of the Gospel.
However, whereas last Sunday we admired him for his forthright faith in Jesus,
whom he proclaimed the Messiah and Son of God, this time, in the episode that
immediately follows, he shows a faith that is still immature and too closely
bound to the mentality of “this world” (see Rm 12: 2). Indeed, when Jesus
begins to speak openly of the fate that awaits him in Jerusalem , in other words that he will have
to suffer many things and be killed in order subsequently to be raised, Peter protests
saying: “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Mt 16: 22). It is
obvious that the Teacher and the disciple follow two opposite ways of thinking.
Peter, in accordance with a human logic, is convinced that God would never
permit his Son to end his mission by dying on the Cross. Jesus, on the
contrary, knows that in his immense love for mankind the Father sent him to
give his life for them and that if this should involve the Passion and the
Cross, it is right that it should happen in this manner. Moreover he knows that
the last word will be the Resurrection. Although Peter’s protest was spoken in
good faith and for sincere love of the Master, to Jesus it sounds like a
temptation, an invitation to save himself, whereas it is only by losing his
life that he will receive new and eternal life for us all.
If, to save us,
the Son of God had to suffer and die on the Cross, it was certainly not by a
cruel design of the heavenly Father. The reason is the gravity of the illness
from which he came to heal us: it was such a serious, mortal disease that it
required all his Blood. Indeed, it was with his death and Resurrection that
Jesus defeated sin and death and re-established God’s lordship. Yet the battle
is not over. Evil exists and resists in every generation, as we know, in our
day too. What are the horrors of war, violence to the innocent, the
wretchedness and injustice unleashed against the weak other than the opposition
of evil to the Kingdom
of God
Dear brothers
and sisters, in order to bring the work of salvation fully to completion, the
Redeemer continues to associate to himself and his mission men and women who
are prepared to take up their cross and follow him. Consequently, just as for
Christ carrying the cross was not an option but a mission to be embraced for
love, so it is for Christians too. In our world today, where the forces that
divide and destroy seem to dominate, Christ does not cease to offer to all his
clear invitation: anyone who wants to be my disciple must renounce his own
selfishness and carry the cross with me. Let us invoke the help of the Blessed
Virgin who followed Jesus first and to the very end on the way of the Cross.
May she help us to walk in the Lord’s footsteps with determination, to
experience from this moment, even in trial, the glory of the Resurrection.
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Courtyard
of the Papal Summer Residence, Castel Gandolfo ,
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
Three days ago,
on 27 August, we celebrated the liturgical Memorial of St Monica, Mother of St
Augustine, considered the model and patroness of Christian mothers. We are
provided with a considerable amount of information about her by her son in his
autobiography, Confessions, one of the widest read literary masterpieces
of all time. In them we learn that St
Augustine drank in the name of Jesus with his mother’s
milk, and that his mother brought him up in the Christian religion whose
principles remained impressed upon him even in his years of spiritual and moral
dissipation. Monica never ceased to pray for him and for his conversion and she
had the consolation of seeing him return to the faith and receive Baptism. God
heard the prayers of this holy mother, of whom the Bishop of Tagaste had said: “the
son of so many tears could not perish”. In fact, St
Augustine not only converted but decided to embrace the monastic
life and, having returned to Africa , founded a
community of monks. His last spiritual conversations with his mother in the
tranquillity of a house at Ostia , while they
were waiting to embark for Africa , are moving
and edifying. By then St Monica had become for this son of hers, “more than a
mother, the source of his Christianity”. For years her one desire had been the
conversion of Augustine, whom she then saw actually turning to a life of
consecration at the service of God. She could therefore die happy, and in fact
she passed away on 27 August 387, at the age of 56, after asking her son not to
trouble about her burial but to remember her, wherever he was, at the Lord’s
altar. St Augustine
used to say that his mother had “conceived him twice”.
The history of
Christianity is spangled with innumerable examples of holy parents and
authentic Christian families who accompanied the life of generous priests and
pastors of the Church. Only think of St Basil the Great and St Gregory of
Nazianzus, both of whom belonged to families of saints. Let us think of Luigi
Beltrame Quattrocchi and Maria Corsini, a husband and wife, very close to us,
who lived at the end of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th and whose
beatification by my Venerable Predecessor John Paul II in October 2001
coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris
Consortio. In addition to illustrating the value of marriage and the tasks
of the family, this Document urged spouses to be especially committed to the
path of sanctity which, drawing grace and strength from the Sacrament of
Marriage, accompanies them throughout their life (see no. 56). When married
couples devote themselves generously to the education of children, guiding them
and orienting them to the discovery of God’s plan of love, they are preparing
that fertile spiritual ground from which vocations to the priesthood and to the
consecrated life spring up and develop. This reveals how closely connected they
are, and marriage and virginity illumine each other on the basis of their
common roots in the spousal love of Christ.
Dear brothers
and sisters, in this Year for Priests, let us pray “through the intercession of
the Holy Curé d’Ars, [that] Christian families become churches in miniature in
which all vocations and all charisms, given by the Holy Spirit, are welcomed
and appreciated” (from the Prayer for the Year for Priests). May the Blessed
Virgin, whom we shall now invoke together, obtain this grace for us.
EUCHARISTIC
CONCELEBRATION WITH THE MEMBERS
OF
THE “RATZINGER SCHÜLERKREIS”,
THE
CIRCLE OF HIS FORMER UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Mariapoli
Congress Centre, Castel Gandolfo , Sunday, 30
August 2009
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
We find in the
Gospel one of the fundamental themes of humanity’s religious history: the
question of the purity of the human being before God. In turning his gaze to
God, man recognizes that he is “contaminated” and finds himself in a condition
in which he has no access to the Holy One. Thus the question arises as to how
he can be purified, and rid himself of the “dirt” that separates him from God.
This has given rise in the different religions to rites of purification, to
processes of interior and exterior cleansing. In today’s Gospel we encounter
rites of purification that are rooted in the Old Testament tradition but are
nonetheless performed in a very unilateral manner. Consequently they no longer
serve to open man to God, they no longer lead to purification and salvation but
become elements of a self-contained system of fulfilment which to be fully
implemented even requires specialists. The human heart is no longer touched.
Man, who moves within this system, either feels enslaved or falls into the
arrogance of being able to justify himself.
Liberal exegesis
says that this Gospel seems to reveal that Jesus would have replaced worship
with morals, he would have set aside worship with all its empty practices. The
relationship between man and God would then have been based solely on morals.
If this were true it would mean that Christianity was essentially morality that
is, that we make ourselves pure and good through our moral action. If we
reflect more deeply on this opinion, it is obvious that this cannot be Jesus’
complete answer to the question on purity. If we want to hear and understand
the Lord’s message fully we must listen carefully we cannot be content with a
detail, we must pay attention to the whole of his message. In other words we
must read the Gospels, the whole of the New and the Old Testament in their
entirety and together.
Today’s First
Reading from the Book of Deuteronomy offers us important details that
provide an answer and make us take a step forward. We are listening here to
something that we may find surprising: God himself asks Israel to be grateful and to feel
humbly proud of knowing God’s will and therefore of being wise. In that very
period humanity, in both the Greek and Semitic contexts, was seeking wisdom: it
was seeking to understand what matters. Science says many things and many
aspects of it are useful to us, but wisdom is knowledge of the essential
knowledge of the aim of our life and of how we should live in order to live
life in the best possible way. The Reading
from Deuteronomy mentions the fact that wisdom, in the final analysis,
is identical to the Torah to the Word of God that reveals to us what is
essential, for what purpose and in what way we should live. Thus the Law does
not appear as a form of slavery, but is as the great Psalm 119 states a
cause of great joy: we do not grope in the dark, we do not wander in vain
seeking what might be righteous, we are not like sheep without a shepherd who do
not know which is the right path. God has manifested himself. He himself shows
us the way. We know his will and with it, the truth that counts in our life. We
are told two things about God: on the one hand, that he manifested himself and
that he shows us the right path to take; on the other, that God is a God who
listens, who is close to us, answers us and guides us. With this we also come
to the topic of purity: his will purifies us, his closeness guides us.
I believe that
it is worth reflecting for a moment on Israel ’s joy at knowing God’s will
and thus having received as a gift wisdom which heals us and which we cannot
find on our own. Is there among us, in the Church today, a similar sentiment of
joy at God’s closeness and at the gift of his Word? Anyone who wished to show
this joy would soon be accused of triumphalism. In fact it is not our ability
that shows us God’s true will. It is an undeserved gift that makes us at the
same time humble and glad. If we reflect on the world’s perplexity in the face
of the great issues of the present and the future, joy should arise again
within us at the fact that God has freely shown us his Face, his will, himself.
Should this joy manifest itself again in us it would also move the hearts of
non-believers. Without this joy we are not convincing. However, where this joy
is present even involuntarily it has a missionary power. Indeed, it makes human
beings wonder if this might not truly be the way if this joy might not
effectively guide us in God’s footsteps.
All this is
found in greater depth in the passage from the Letter of James that the
Church presents to us today. I especially like the Letter of St James because
it gives us an idea of the devotion of Jesus’ family. It was an observant
family. Observant in the sense that it lived the joy at God’s closeness,
described in Deuteronomy and which is given to us in his Word and in his
Commandment. It is quite a different kind of observance from what we encounter
in the Pharisees of the Gospel, who had made it into an exteriorized and
enslaving system. Moreover it is a kind of observance unlike that which Paul,
as a rabbi, had learned: that was as we see from his Letters the observance of
an expert who knew everything; who was proud of his knowledge and of his
righteousness but nevertheless suffered under the burden of the Law’s
prescriptions, so that the Law no longer appeared as a joyous guide to God but
rather as an exigency which, ultimately, it was impossible to fulfil.
In the Letter
of St James we find that observance which does not look inwards but turns
joyfully towards the caring God who gives us his closeness and points out to us
the right way. Thus the Letter of St James speaks of the perfect Law of
freedom that perseveres to reach a new and deeper understanding of the Law
given to us by the Lord. For James the Law is not a requirement that demands
too much of us, which stands before us and can never be satisfied. He is
thinking in the perspective that we find in a sentence of Jesus’ farewell
discourse: “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). The one to whom all
is revealed is part of the family; he is no longer a servant but is free
precisely because he himself belongs to the household. A similar, initial
introduction into the thought of God himself happened in Israel on Mount Sinai .
It happened again in a definitive and grand way at the Last Supper and,
generally through the work, the life, the Passion and the Resurrection of
Jesus; in him God told us everything, he manifested himself completely. We are
no longer servants, but friends. And the Law is no longer a prescription for
people who are not free but is contact with God’s love being introduced to
become part of the family, an act that makes us free and “perfect”. It is in
this sense that James says in today’s Reading
that the Lord has created us by means of his Word, that he planted his Word
deep within us as a life force. Here he also speaks of “pure religion” which
consists in love for our neighbour particularly for orphans and widows who are
needier than we are and in freedom from the ways of the world that contaminate
us. The Law, like a word of love, is not a contradiction of freedom but a
renewal from within by means of friendship with God. Something similar occurs
when Jesus, in the discourse on the vine, says to the disciples: “You are
already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you” (Jn 15: 3). And the
same thing appears again in the Priestly Prayer: sanctify them in the truth (see
Jn 17: 17-19). Thus we now find the right structure for the process of
purification and of purity: we do not create what is good that would be mere
moralism but Truth comes to us. He himself is Truth, Truth in person. Purity
happens through dialogue. It begins with the fact that he comes to us he who is
Truth and Love he takes us by the hand and penetrates our being. Insofar as we
allow him to touch us, insofar as the encounter becomes friendship and love, we
ourselves, on the basis of his purity, become pure people and then people who
love with his love, people who introduce others to his purity and his love.
Augustine summed
all this up in a beautiful saying: Da quod iubes et iube quod vis grant
what you command, and command what you will. Let us now bring this request
before the Lord and pray to him: yes, purify us in the truth. May you be the
Truth that makes us pure. Obtain that through friendship with you we may become
free and thus truly children of God, make us capable of sitting at your table
and spreading in this world the light of your purity and goodness. Amen.
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Courtyard
of the Papal Residence, Castel Gandolfo , Sunday,
29 August 2010
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
In this Sunday’s
Gospel (Lk 14: 1, 7-14), we find Jesus as a guest dining at the house of a
Pharisee leader. Noting that the guests were choosing the best places at table,
he recounted a parable in the setting of a marriage feast. “When you are
invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honour,
lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and he who invited you both
will come, and say to you, “Give place to this man’.... But when you are
invited, go and sit in the lowest place” (Lk 14: 8-10). The Lord does not
intend to give a lesson on etiquette or on the hierarchy of the different
authorities. Rather, he insists on a crucial point, that of humility: “Every
one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be
exalted” (Lk 14: 11). A deeper meaning of this parable also makes us think of
the position of the human being in relation to God. The “lowest place” can in
fact represent the condition of humanity degraded by sin, a condition from
which the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten Son alone can raise it. For this
reason Christ himself “took the lowest place in the world the Cross and by this
radical humility he redeemed us and constantly comes to our aid” (Encyclical Deus
Caritas Est, no. 35).
At the end of
the parable Jesus suggests to the Pharisee leader that he invite to his table
not his friends, kinsmen or rich neighbours, but rather poorer and more
marginalized people who can in no way reciprocate (see Lk 14: 13-14), so that
the gift may be given freely. The true reward, in fact, will ultimately be
given by God, “who governs the world.... We offer him our service only to the
extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the strength” (Encyclical Deus
Caritas Est, no. 35). Once again, therefore, let us look to Christ as a
model of humility and of giving freely: let us learn from him patience in
temptation, meekness in offence, obedience to God in suffering, in the hope
that the One who has invited us will say to us: “Friend, go up higher” (see Lk
14: 10). Indeed, the true good is being close to him. St Louis IX, King of
France whose Memorial was last Wednesday put into practice what is written in
the Book of Sirach: “The greater you are, the more you must humble yourself; so
you will find favour in the sight of the Lord” (3: 18). This is what the King
wrote in his “Spiritual Testament to his son”: “If the Lord grant you some
prosperity, not only must you humbly thank him but take care not to become
worse by boasting or in any other way, make sure, that is, that you do not come
into conflict with God or offend him with his own gifts” (see Acta Sanctorum
Augusti 5 [1868], 546).
Dear friends,
today we are also commemorating the Martyrdom of St John the Baptist, the
greatest among the prophets of Christ, who was able to deny himself to make
room for the Saviour and who suffered and died for the truth. Let us ask him
and the Virgin Mary to guide us on the path of humility, in order to become
worthy of the divine reward.
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Courtyard
of the Papal Summer Residence, Castel Gandolfo ,
Sunday, 28 August 2011
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
In today’s
Gospel Jesus explains to his disciples that he must “go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the
elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be
raised” (Mt 16:21).
Everything seems
to have been turned upside down in the disciples’ hearts! How could “the
Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16) suffer unto death? The Apostle Peter
rebels, he refuses to accept this route, he rebukes the Teacher saying: “God
forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (v. 22). The divergence between
the Father’s loving plan — which even went as far as the gift of the
Only-Begotten Son on the Cross to save humanity — and the disciples’
expectations, wishes and projects stands out clearly. And today too this
contrast is repeated: when the fulfilment of one’s life is geared solely to
social success and to physical and financial well-being, one no longer reasons
according to God but according to men (v. 23).
Thinking as the
world thinks is to set God aside, not accepting his plan of love, preventing
him, as it were, from doing his wise will. For this reason Jesus says some
particularly harsh words to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance
to me” (ibid.). The Lord teaches that “the way of discipleship [is] the
way to follow him [walk behind him], the Crucified. In all three Gospels he
also interprets this ‘following’ on the way of the Cross” as “the indispensable
way for man to ‘lose his life’, without which it is impossible for him to find”
himself” (Jesus of Nazareth, English edition, New York, p. 287).
As he invited
the disciples, Jesus also addresses an invitation to us: “If any man would come
after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24).
A Christian follows the Lord when he accepts lovingly his own cross, which in
the world’s eyes seems a defeat and to “lose life” (see vv. 25-26), knowing that
he is not carrying it alone but with Jesus, sharing his same journey of
self-giving.
The Servant of
God Paul VI wrote: “In a mysterious way, Christ himself accepts death... on the
Cross, in order to eradicate from man’s heart the sins of self-sufficiency and
to manifest to the Father a complete filial obedience” (Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete
in Domino, 9 May 1975). By willingly accepting death, Jesus carries the
cross of all human beings and becomes a source of salvation for the whole of
humanity.
St Cyril of
Jerusalem commented: “The glory of the Cross led those who were blind through
ignorance into light, loosed all who were held fast by sin and brought
redemption to the whole world of mankind” (Catechesis Illuminandorum
XIII, 1: de Christo crucifixo et sepulto: PG 33, 772
B).
Dear friends,
Let us entrust our prayers to the Virgin Mary and also to St Augustine whose
Memorial we are celebrating today, so that each one of us may be able to follow
the Lord on the way of the cross and let ourselves be transformed by divine
grace, renewing — as St Paul says in the liturgy today — our minds so that we “may
prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom
12:2).
BENEDICT
XVI
ANGELUS
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
The theme of God’s
Law, of his commandments, makes its entrance in the Liturgy of the Word this
Sunday. It is an essential element of the Jewish and Christian religions, where
the complete fulfilment of the law is love (cf. Rom 13:10). God’s Law is his
word which guides men and women on the journey through life, brings them out of
the slavery of selfishness and leads them into the “land” of true freedom and
life. This is why the Law is not perceived as a burden or an oppressive restriction
in the Bible. Rather, it is seen as the Lord’s most precious gift, the
testimony of his fatherly love, of his desire to be close to his People, to be
its Ally and with it write a love story.
This is what the
devout Israelite prays: “I will delight in your statutes, / I will not forget
your word.... Lead me in the path of your commandments, / for I delight in it”
(Ps 119[118]:16, 35). In the Old Testament the person who passes on the
Law to the People on God’s behalf is Moses. After the long journey in the
wilderness, on the threshold of the promised land, he proclaims: “Now, O
Israel, give heed to the statutes and the ordinances which I teach you, and do
them; that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which the
Lord, the God of your fathers, gives you” (Deut 4:1). And this is the problem:
when the People put down roots in the land and are the depository of the Law,
they are tempted to place their security and joy in something that is no longer
the Word of God: in possessions, in power, in other ‘gods’ that in reality are
useless, they are idols. Of course, the Law of God remains but it is no longer
the most important thing, the rule of life; rather, it becomes a camouflage, a
cover-up, while life follows other paths, other rules, interests that are often
forms of egoism, both individual and collective.
Thus religion
loses its authentic meaning, which is to live listening to God in order to do
his will — that is the truth of our being — and thus we live well, in true
freedom, and it is reduced to practising secondary customs which instead
satisfy the human need to feel in God’s place. This is a serious threat to
every religion which Jesus encountered in his time and which, unfortunately, is
also to be found in Christianity. Jesus’ words against the scribes and
Pharisees in today’s Gospel should therefore be food for thought for us as
well.
Jesus makes his
own the very words of the Prophet Isaiah: “This People honours me with their
lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as
doctrines the precepts of men” (Mk 7:6-7; cf. Is 29,13). And he then concludes:
“You leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men” (Mk
7:8).
The Apostle
James too alerts us in his Letter to the danger of false piety. He writes to
the Christians: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving
yourselves” (Jas 1:22). May the Virgin Mary, to whom we now turn in prayer,
help us to listen with an open and sincere heart to the word of God so that
every day it may guide our thoughts, our decisions and our actions.
HOLY MASS CONCLUDING THE MEETING
WITH THE “RATZINGER SCHÜLERKREIS”
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Mariapoli
Centre, Castel Gandolfo , Sunday, 2 September
2012
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
The words of
Cardinal Schönborn’s exegesis, three years ago, of this Gospel passage still
resonate within me: the mysterious correlation of the intimate and the exterior
are what makes man impure, that which contaminates him and what is pure.
Therefore, today I do not wish to comment on this same Gospel passage, or I
will only touch upon it. I will try instead to say a word on the two Readings .
In Deuteronomy
we see the “joy of the law”: law not as a constraint, as something that takes
from us our freedom, but as a present and a gift. When other nations look at
this great people — as the Letter says, as Moses says — they will say: What
wise people! They will admire the wisdom of this people, the justice of the law
and the closeness of God who is at their side and answers them when called
upon. This is the humble joy of Israel :
to receive a gift from God. This is different from triumphalism, from the pride
that comes from ourselves: Israel is not proud of her law like Rome may have
been of the Roman Law that it gave to humanity, perhaps like France of the
Napoleonic Code, like Prussia of the “Preussisches Landrecht”, etc. —
legislation we all recognize. But Israel knows: this law was not made
by her, it was not the fruit of her genius, it was a gift. God showed them what
the law was. God gave them wisdom. The law is wisdom. Wisdom is the art of
being human, the art of being able to live well and of being able to die well.
And one can live and die well only when the truth has been received and shows
us the way: to be grateful for the gift that we did not invent, but that we
were given, and to live in wisdom; to learn, thanks to the gift of God, how to
be human in the right way.
The Gospel shows
us, however, that there is also a danger — as it says right at the beginning of
today’s passage from Deuteronomy: “Do not add anything and do not take anything
away”. It teaches us that with the passing of time applications, works, and
human customs have been added to this gift from God that increasingly hide what
is proper to the wisdom given by God, so as to become true bondage that needs
to be broken, or to lead us to presumption: we invented it!
But let us now
turn to ourselves, to the Church. According to our faith, in deed, the Church
is the Israel made
universal, in which all become, through the Lord, children of Abraham; Israel has
become universal, in it the essential nucleus of the law endures, free from the
contingencies of time and people. This nucleus is simply Christ himself, the
love of God for us and our love for him and for all men. He is the living
Torah, God’s gift to us, in whom we now receive all the wisdom of God. In being
united to Christ, in the “co-journey” and “co-life” with him, we ourselves
learn how to be upright men, we receive the wisdom that is truth, we know how
to live and to die, because he is the Life and the Truth.
It is fitting,
then, for the Church, as for Israel ,
to be full of gratitude and joy. “What people can say that God is so close to
them? What people have received this gift?”. We did not make it; it was given
to us. Joy and gratitude for the fact that we can know that we have received
the wisdom to live well, that it is what should distinguish the Christian. In
fact, in early Christianity it was like this: being free from the shadow of
groping along in ignorance — what am I? why am I? how should I move forward? —
being made free, being in the light, in the fullness of the truth. This was the
fundamental awareness. A gratitude that radiated around and united people in
the Church of Jesus Christ
But even in the
Church there is the same phenomenon: human elements are added and they lead
either to presumption, the so-called triumphalism of praising self rather than
God, or to bondage, which needs to be removed, broken and smashed. What must we
do? What must we say? I think that we are precisely at that impasse in which we
see in the Church only what we ourselves have made, and our joy in the faith is
marred; that we no longer believe and no longer dare to say: he has shown us
who the truth is, what the truth is; he has shown us what man is; he has given
us the law for an upright life. We are concerned only with praising ourselves
and we fear being bound by rules that hinder our freedom and the newness of
life.
If we read
today, for example, in the Letter of James: “You were made in the word and in
the truth”, which of us would dare to rejoice in the truth that we have been
given? The question immediately arises: but how can one have the truth? This is
intolerance! Today the idea of truth and that of intolerance are almost
completely fused, and so we no longer dare to believe in the truth or to speak
of the truth. It seems to be far away, it seems something better not to refer
to. No one can say: I have the truth — this is the objection raised — and,
rightly so, no one can have the truth. It is the truth that possesses us, it is
a living thing! We do not possess it but are held by it. Only if we allow
ourselves to be guided and moved by the truth, do we remain in it. Only if we
are, with it and in it, pilgrims of truth, then it is in us and for us. I think
that we need to learn anew about “not-having-the-truth”. Just as no one can
say: I have children — they are not our possession, they are a gift, and as a
gift from God, they are given to us as a responsibility — so we cannot say: I
have the truth, but the truth came to us and impels us. We must learn to be
moved and led by it. And then it will shine again: if the truth itself leads us
and penetrates us.
Dear friends,
let us ask the Lord to give us this gift. St James tells us today in the Reading : you must not
limit yourselves to hearing the Word, you must put it into practice. This is a
warning about the intellectualization of the faith and of theology. It is one
of my fears at this time, when I read so many intellectual things: they become
an intellectual game in which “we pass each other the ball”, in which
everything is an intellectual sphere that does not penetrate and form our
lives, and, thus, does not lead us to the truth. I think that these words of St
James are directed to us theologians: do not just listen, do not just
intellectualize — be doers, let yourself be formed by the truth, let yourself
be led by it! Let us pray to the Lord that this may happen, and that like this
the truth may have power over us, and acquire power in the world through us.
The Church has
set the words of Deuteronomy — “Where is there a people to whom God is so close
as our God is close to us, every time we invoke him?” — at the centre of the
Divine Office of Corpus Christi
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Book by Orestes J. González
