Extract
from the Homily of Cardinal Cláudio Hummes
21st
September 2009
Convention
for New Bishops of the World Gathered in Rome
Dear New
Bishops,
We find ourselves in the Year for Priests. Priests, as
ordained ministers and the principal co-workers of their respective Bishops,
are also sacramentally bound to the apostolic mission. This special Year has
been announced by the Holy Father for the good of priests, due to their
irreplaceable importance in the Church. As such they have today a particular need
to be supported and renewal spiritually and pastorally. Thus, I would like to
fraternally propose to you to be very close to your priests, to pray with them
and for them. The Holy Father desires, with heartfelt care, that this Year for
Priests might be well received and put into effect by Bishops in their
Dioceses. Our priests need to be loved and supported in their vocation and
mission, above all by their own Bishop and by their community. They wish to be
recognised for that which they are and that which they do. They also need to be
assisted and guided to renew in their hearts the true identity of the
priesthood and the true meaning of celibacy. In this context, the renewal and
reinvigoration of their priestly spirituality will be decisive, which has as
its foundation in being true and unconditioned disciples of Jesus Christ, who
has configured them to Himself, Head and Shepherd of the Church. For this
discipleship, so determining of their lives, it will be of great help for
priests to listen and to pray aloud the Word of God, the daily celebration of
the Eucharist, the frequent use of the Sacrament of Confession, the recitation
of the Liturgy of the Hours, frequent visits to the Most Blessed Sacrament, the
recitation of the Holy Rosary and other means of spiritual enrichment and of
personal encounter and intimacy with Jesus Christ. Also of great importance are
the annual Spiritual Exercises and ongoing formation.
Moreover, it is necessary to awaken the missionary
consciousness of priests. The Church knows there is a missionary urgency being
experienced throughout the world, not only ad gentes, but also within
the very flock of the Church already established for centuries in the Christian
world. It is necessary to promote a true missionary urge in our Dioceses and in
our parishes. All our countries have become a land of mission, in the strict
sense. A new fire needs to be lit in our priests and in us ourselves, a new
passion to make us arise and go to meet people where they live and work, to
bring to them anew the Kerygma, the first proclamation of the person of Jesus
Christ, Crucified and Risen, and of his Kingdom, to lead them to a personal and
then a communitarian encounter with the Lord. Our beloved Pope, Benedict XVI,
referring to the situation in the lands of age-old Christian tradition, has
said, “We should give serious thought as to how to achieve a true
evangelization in this day and age […] It is not enough for us to strive to
preserve the existing flock” (Discourse to the German Bishops, 21st
August 2005), but we need a true mission. It is not enough merely to welcome
those who come to us, in the parish or in the parish house. There is an urgent
necessity to arise and go in search above all of the many baptised who are
distanced from participation in the life of our communities, and then to seek
also those who know little or nothing of Jesus Christ. The mission has always
renewed the Church. The same will also be true for priests when they go into
the mission. This, then, is a whole programme to develop during this Year for
Priests.
Cardinal Cláudio Hummes
Archbishop Emeritus of São Paulo
Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy