Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - As is customary at the beginning of Lent, on Thursday, February 26, the Holy Father Benedict XVI met in the Blessings Hall in the Vatican with the parish priests and clergy of the Diocese of Rome. The encounter took place in a question-answer dialogue between the Holy Father and the participants, which was opened by the Vicar, Cardinal Agostino Vallini. We offer several passages on the various themes that the Pope addressed.
The importance of the liturgy
“For me, it is important that the sacraments, the celebration of the sacraments, may not be something rare amidst the more common labors of today, such as moral and economic education, and all that we have mentioned. Sacraments can easily be pushed aside and isolated from the more practical events and it becomes something that does not enter entirely into our beings as persons. Thank you for asking this question, because we should really teach people how to be persons. We should teach this great art: how to be a man. This demands, as we have seen, many things: from the great denunciation of original sin in the roots of our economy and in the many aspects of our lives, even concrete guides to justice, preaching to non-believers. However, the mysteries are not something exotic in the realm of the most practical realities. The mystery is the heart that gives us strength and where we return to find this center. And thus, I think that the catechesis – the mistagogy – is really important. Mistagogy also means realism, in reference to the life of men today.
Given that man is not his own measure – as to what is correct or not – but it he finds this measure outside himself, in God, it is important that this God not be distant, but that He be recognizable, real, that He enter in our life and truly become a friend with whom we speak and who speaks to us. We should learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, up close, really enter in contact with Him, learn to listen and learn to let Him enter in us. Because sacramental communion is precisely this interpenetration between two persons. I am not eating a peace of bread or meat. I eat and I open my heart so that the Risen Lord can enter into my being, so that He can be inside me and not only outside me, and then He can speak inside me and transform me, give me a sense of justice, a dynamism of justice, zeal for the Gospel.
This celebration, in which God not only comes close to us, but enters into our very existence, is fundamental in order to truly live with God and for God and bring the light of God to this world. We will not enter into too many details right now. But it is always important that sacramental catechesis be existencial catechesis. Naturally, even accepting and learning more and more about the mystery – where words and rational arguments end – it is totally realistic because it takes me to God and brings God to me. It takes me to the other person because he receives Christ Himself, just as I do. Thus, if Christ Himself is inside me and inside him, neither are the two of us separated individuals. This is where the doctrine of the Body of Christ begins, because we are all incorporated if we receive the Eucharist well, in Christ Himself. Therefore, our neighbor is truly someone at our side. We are not two separated “I's”, but we are united in the “I” of Christ. In other words, Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis should really reach the depths of our existence, be an education in opening my existence in its most profound depths, so that we can become truly just. In this sense, it seems to me that we should all increase in our knowledge of the liturgy, not as something exotic, but as the heart of our being as Christians, which does not easily open itself to a distant person, but is precisely openness to the other side, to the world. We should all collaborate in celebrating the Eucharist with increasing profoundity: not only as a rite, but as an existential process that reaches me in the intimacy of my being, more than anything else, and it changes me, it transforms me. And transforming me, it initiates the transformation of the world that the Lord desires and for which we want to become His instruments.”
The Bishop of Rome and the Petrine Ministry
“Your question, if I have understood correctly, has two parts. First of all, what corresponds to the concrete responsibility of the Bishop of Rome today. But then, that rightly extends the Petrine privilege to the entire Church of Rome – this is how the early Church considered it as well – and the question is regarding what obligations correspond to the Church of Rome, to respond to her vocation.
There is no need here to explain the doctrine of the primacy, you all know it well. It is important that we reflect on the fact that the Successor of Peter, the ministry of Peter, guarantees the universality of the Church, this transcendence beyond nationalisms and other barriers that exist in mankind today, so as to be truly one Church amidst the diversity and wealth of many cultures.
We can also see how the other ecclesial communities, the other Churches stress the need for a unifying point so as not to fall into the trap of nationalism, in an identification with a certain culture, to be truly open, be all things to all people, and almost force ourselves to always be open towards all other people. I think that this is the fundamental ministry of the Successor of Peter: guarantee this Catholicity that implies multiplicity, diversity, wealth of cultures, respect for diversities and that, at the same time, excludes absolutization and unites all people, obliging them to be open, to emerge from the absolutization of what is their own to enter in communion with the family of God that the Lord wants and for which He places the Successor of Peter as unity in the diversity.
Naturally, the Church of the Successor of Peter should, with its Bishop, carry this weight, this joy of the gift of his responsibility. In the Book of the Apocalypse, the Bishop appears as an angel of his Church, almost the incorporation of his Church, to which the Church itself must respond. Therefore, the Church of Rome along with the Successor of Peter and like the individual Diocese, should guarantee precisely this universality, this openness, this responsibility for the transcendence of love, this preside in the love that makes no distinctions. It should also guarantee fidelity to the Word of the Lord, the gift of the faith, which has not been invented by ourselves, but that is truly a gift that can only come from God Himself. This is and will always be the duty and privilege of the Church of Rome, against trends, particularisms, against the absolutization of certain aspects, against heresies that are always absolutizations of a certain aspect. There is also the duty of guaranteeing unity and fidelity to the integral nature and wealth of the faith, of its path in history that opens towards the future. And along with all this, give testimony to the faith and universality, and of course setting an example of charity...
The act of presiding the Eucharist is followed by the act of presiding in charity, which only the community itself can give witness. This constitutes, I think, a great task, the great challenge for the Church of Rome: truly become an example and a launching point for charity. The clergy of Rome includes members of all continents, races, philosophies, and cultures. I am glad that the clergy of Rome can express this universality; in the unity of the small local Church, we manifest the presence of the Universal Church. It is also more difficult and demanding to truly be witnesses of charity and unity in the Lord in the midst of the human community. We should simply pray to the Lord that we can count on His help in every parish and community, and that all together we can truly be faithful to this gift, this mandate to preside in charity. (part 3, to be continued) (SL) (Agenzia Fides 5/3/2009)
