Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Castel Gandolfo (Agenzia Fides) -“The apostolic and pastoral character of the bishop's prayer” was the theme on which the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI dwelt in his address to recently ordained bishops received in audience at his Summer Residence in on Saturday 22 September. The bishops are attending a meeting in Rome organised by the Congregation for Bishops. “This experience - the Pope said -, besides encouraging reflection on the responsibilities and duties of a bishop, will enable you to increase in your souls awareness that you are not alone as you lead the Church of God, but that, besides the support of God's grace, you have the support of the Pope and your Brother bishops.”
One of the commitments the bishop assumes at ordination is to "persevere in prayer to Almighty God for the good of his holy people", Benedict XVI recalled. “Like the Apostles, we too, my dear Brother Bishops, as their successors, are called first and foremost to be with Christ, to learn to know Him more profoundly and to share in his ministry of love and his relationship of total trust with the Father. A bishop, like and more than all the faithful, is called to grow in a filial spirit of towards God, learning from Jesus himself His own attitudes of confidence, trust, fidelity in his relationship with the Father.”
The Holy Father went on to say that “the Apostles were well aware that listening in prayer and announcement of the things heard, should take first place over the many things to be done” and he underlined that this apostolic programme is always relevant: “Today, in the ministry of the bishop, organisation aspects are absorbing, commitment are many, and so are necessities, however in the life of a successor of the Apostles first place must be given to God. Especially in this way we help our faithful”.
Benedict XVI recalled his Encyclical Deus caritas est , in which he affirms that through prayer a bishop becomes sensitive to the needs of others and merciful towards all since “prayer educates to love and opens the heart to welcome with pastoral charity all those who turn to the bishop”. The Pope then encouraged the bishops to pray especially for their priests, “that they may persevere in their vocation and be faithful to the priestly mission entrusted to them”, and to pray for vocations “for which it is necessary to ask God with insistence”. The bishop must also be an animator of prayer in society, often hectic and forgetful of God, promoting “places and occasions for prayer where in silence and in listening to God, through lectio divina, in personal and community prayer people can encounter God and have a living experience of Jesus Christ”. A bishop must strive to ensure that parishes and shrines, places of education and places of suffering, families themselves become places of communion with the Lord. “I would especially encourage you to make the cathedral an exemplary house of prayer, above all liturgical prayer, where the diocesan community gathered with the bishop may praise and thank God for His work of salvation and may intercede for all men and women”.
Pope Benedict XVI concluded : “My dear Brother Bishops, be men of prayer!... When you turn to God for yourselves and for your faithful, do so with the trust of a child, the boldness of a friend, the perseverance of Abraham, tireless in his intercession. Like Moses raise your hands to heaven while your faithful fight the good battle of the faith. Like Mary, may you praise God every day for the salvation He works in the Church and in the world, convinced that nothing is impossible to God ”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 24/9/2007; righe 43, parole 606)
