CONCLUSION OF THE YEAR FOR
PRIESTS
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI
Solemnity
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
St Peter's Square
Friday, 11 June 2010
(Video)
Dear Brothers in the Priestly
Ministry,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Year for Priests which we have celebrated on the one
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the death of the holy Curè of Ars, the
model of priestly ministry in our world, is now coming to an end. We have let
the Curé of Ars guide us to a renewed appreciation of the grandeur and beauty
of the priestly ministry. The priest is not a mere office-holder, like those
which every society needs in order to carry out certain functions. Instead, he
does something which no human being can do of his own power: in Christ’s name
he speaks the words which absolve us of our sins and in this way he changes,
starting with God, our entire life. Over the offerings of bread and wine he
speaks Christ’s words of thanksgiving, which are words of transubstantiation –
words which make Christ himself present, the Risen One, his Body and Blood –
words which thus transform the elements of the world, which open the world to
God and unite it to him. The priesthood, then, is not simply “office” but
sacrament: God makes use of us poor men in order to be, through us, present to
all men and women, and to act on their behalf. This audacity of God who
entrusts himself to human beings – who, conscious of our weaknesses,
nonetheless considers men capable of acting and being present in his stead –
this audacity of God is the true grandeur concealed in the word “priesthood”.
That God thinks that we are capable of this; that in this way he calls men to
his service and thus from within binds himself to them: this is what we wanted
to reflect upon and appreciate anew over the course of the past year. We wanted
to reawaken our joy at how close God is to us, and our gratitude for the fact
that he entrusts himself to our infirmities; that he guides and sustains us
daily. In this way we also wanted to demonstrate once again to young people
that this vocation, this fellowship of service for God and with God, does exist
– and that God is indeed waiting for us to say “yes”. Together with the whole
Church we wanted to make clear once again that we have to ask God for this
vocation. We have to beg for workers for God’s harvest, and this petition to
God is, at the same time, his own way of knocking on the hearts of young people
who consider themselves able to do what God considers them able to do. It was to
be expected that this new radiance of the priesthood would not be pleasing to
the “enemy”; he would have rather preferred to see it disappear, so that God
would ultimately be driven out of the world. And so it happened that, in this
very year of joy for the sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests came
to light – particularly the abuse of the little ones, in which the priesthood,
whose task is to manifest God’s concern for our good, turns into its very
opposite. We too insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons
involved, while promising to do everything possible to ensure that such abuse
will never occur again; and that in admitting men to priestly ministry and in
their formation we will do everything we can to weigh the authenticity of their
vocation and make every effort to accompany priests along their journey, so
that the Lord will protect them and watch over them in troubled situations and
amid life’s dangers. Had the Year for Priests been a glorification of our
individual human performance, it would have been ruined by these events. But
for us what happened was precisely the opposite: we grew in gratitude for God’s
gift, a gift concealed in “earthen vessels” which ever anew, even amid human
weakness, makes his love concretely present in this world. So let us look upon
all that happened as a summons to purification, as a task which we bring to the
future and which makes us acknowledge and love all the more the great gift we
have received from God. In this way, his gift becomes a commitment to respond
to God’s courage and humility by our own courage and our own humility. The word
of God, which we have sung in the Entrance Antiphon of the liturgy, can speak
to us, at this hour, of what it means to become and to be priests: “Take my
yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of heart” (Mt
11:29).
We are celebrating the feast of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, and in the liturgy we peer, as it were, into the heart of Jesus
opened in death by the spear of the Roman soldier. Jesus’ heart was indeed
opened for us and before us – and thus God’s own heart was opened. The liturgy
interprets for us the language of Jesus’ heart, which tells us above all that
God is the shepherd of mankind, and so it reveals to us Jesus’ priesthood,
which is rooted deep within his heart; so too it shows us the perennial
foundation and the effective criterion of all priestly ministry, which must
always be anchored in the heart of Jesus and lived out from that
starting-point. Today I would like to meditate especially on those texts with
which the Church in prayer responds to the word of God presented in the
readings. In those chants, word (Wort) and response (Antwort)
interpenetrate. On the one hand, the chants are themselves drawn from the word
of God, yet on the other, they are already our human response to that word, a
response in which the word itself is communicated and enters into our lives.
The most important of those texts in today’s liturgy is Psalm 23(22) – “The
Lord is my shepherd” – in which Israel at prayer received God’s self-revelation
as shepherd, and made this the guide of its own life. “The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want”: this first verse expresses joy and gratitude for the fact
that God is present to and concerned for us. The reading from the Book of
Ezechiel begins with the same theme: “I myself will look after and tend my
sheep” (Ez 34:11). God personally looks after me, after us, after all mankind.
I am not abandoned, adrift in the universe and in a society which leaves me
ever more lost and bewildered. God looks after me. He is not a distant God, for
whom my life is worthless. The world’s religions, as far as we can see, have
always known that in the end there is only one God. But this God was distant.
Evidently he had abandoned the world to other powers and forces, to other
divinities. It was with these that one had to deal. The one God was good, yet
aloof. He was not dangerous, nor was he very helpful. Consequently one didn’t
need to worry about him. He did not lord it over us. Oddly, this kind of
thinking re-emerged during the Enlightenment. There was still a recognition
that the world presupposes a Creator. Yet this God, after making the world, had
evidently withdrawn from it. The world itself had a certain set of laws by
which it ran, and God did not, could not, intervene in them. God was only a
remote cause. Many perhaps did not even want God to look after them. They did
not want God to get in the way. But wherever God’s loving concern is perceived
as getting in the way, human beings go awry. It is fine and consoling to know
that there is someone who loves me and looks after me. But it is far more
important that there is a God who knows me, loves me and is concerned about me.
“I know my own and my own know me” (Jn 10:14), the Church says before
the Gospel with the Lord’s words. God knows me, he is concerned about me. This
thought should make us truly joyful. Let us allow it to penetrate the depths of
our being. Then let us also realize what it means: God wants us, as priests, in
one tiny moment of history, to share his concern about people. As priests, we
want to be persons who share his concern for men and women, who take care of
them and provide them with a concrete experience of God’s concern. Whatever the
field of activity entrusted to him, the priest, with the Lord, ought to be able
to say: “I know my sheep and mine know me”. “To know”, in the idiom of sacred
Scripture, never refers to merely exterior knowledge, like the knowledge of
someone’s telephone number. “Knowing” means being inwardly close to another
person. It means loving him or her. We should strive to “know” men and women as
God does and for God’s sake; we should strive to walk with them along the path
of God's friendship.
Let us return to our Psalm. There we read: “He
leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the
darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff –
they comfort me” (23[22]:3ff.). The shepherd points out the right path to those
entrusted to him. He goes before them and leads them. Let us put it
differently: the Lord shows us the right way to be human. He teaches us the art
of being a person. What must I do in order not to fall, not to squander my life
in meaninglessness? This is precisely the question which every man and woman
must ask and one which remains valid at every moment of one’s life. How much
darkness surrounds this question in our own day! We are constantly reminded of
the words of Jesus, who felt compassion for the crowds because they were like a
flock without a shepherd. Lord, have mercy on us too! Show us the way! From the
Gospel we know this much: he is himself the way. Living with Christ, following
him – this means finding the right way, so that our lives can be meaningful and
so that one day we might say: “Yes, it was good to have lived”. The people of
Israel continue to be grateful to God because in the Commandments he pointed
out the way of life. The great Psalm 119(118) is a unique expression of joy for
this fact: we are not fumbling in the dark. God has shown us the way and how to
walk aright. The message of the Commandments was synthesized in the life of
Jesus and became a living model. Thus we understand that these rules from God
are not chains, but the way which he is pointing out to us. We can be glad for
them and rejoice that in Christ they stand before us as a lived reality. He
himself has made us glad. By walking with Christ, we experience the joy of Revelation,
and as priests we need to communicate to others our own joy at the fact that we
have been shown the right way of life.
Then there is the phrase about the “darkest
valley” through which the Lord leads us. Our path as individuals will one day
lead us into the valley of the shadow of death, where no one can accompany us.
Yet he will be there. Christ himself descended into the dark night of death.
Even there he will not abandon us. Even there he will lead us. “If I sink to
the nether world, you are present there”, says Psalm 139(138). Truly you are
there, even in the throes of death, and hence our Responsorial Psalm can say:
even there, in the darkest valley, I fear no evil. When speaking of the darkest
valley, we can also think of the dark valleys of temptation, discouragement and
trial through which everyone has to pass. Even in these dark valleys of life he
is there. Lord, in the darkness of temptation, at the hour of dusk when all
light seems to have died away, show me that you are there. Help us priests, so
that we can remain beside the persons entrusted to us in these dark nights. So
that we can show them your own light.
“Your rod and your staff – they comfort me”:
the shepherd needs the rod as protection against savage beasts ready to pounce
on the flock; against robbers looking for prey. Along with the rod there is the
staff which gives support and helps to make difficult crossings. Both of these
are likewise part of the Church’s ministry, of the priest’s ministry. The
Church too must use the shepherd’s rod, the rod with which he protects the
faith against those who falsify it, against currents which lead the flock
astray. The use of the rod can actually be a service of love. Today we can see
that it has nothing to do with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life
is tolerated. Nor does it have to do with love if heresy is allowed to spread
and the faith twisted and chipped away, as if it were something that we
ourselves had invented. As if it were no longer God’s gift, the precious pearl
which we cannot let be taken from us. Even so, the rod must always become once
again the shepherd’s staff – a staff which helps men and women to tread
difficult paths and to follow the Lord.
At the end of the Psalm we read of the table
which is set, the oil which anoints the head, the cup which overflows, and
dwelling in the house of the Lord. In the Psalm this is an expression first and
foremost of the prospect of the festal joy of being in God’s presence in the
temple, of being his guest, whom he himself serves, of dwelling with him. For
us, who pray this Psalm with Christ and his Body which is the Church, this
prospect of hope takes on even greater breadth and depth. We see in these words
a kind of prophetic foreshadowing of the mystery of the Eucharist, in which God
himself makes us his guests and offers himself to us as food – as that bread
and fine wine which alone can definitively sate man’s hunger and thirst. How
can we not rejoice that one day we will be guests at the very table of God and
live in his dwelling-place? How can we not rejoice at the fact that he has
commanded us: “Do this in memory of me”? How can we not rejoice that he has
enabled us to set God’s table for men and women, to give them his Body and his
Blood, to offer them the precious gift of his very presence. Truly we can pray
together, with all our heart, the words of the Psalm: “Goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life” (Ps 23[22]:6).
Finally, let us take a brief look at the two
communion antiphons which the Church offers us in her liturgy today. First
there are the words with which Saint John concludes the account of Jesus’
crucifixion: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once
blood and water came out” (Jn 19:34). The heart of Jesus is pierced by the
spear. Once opened, it becomes a fountain: the water and the blood which stream
forth recall the two fundamental sacraments by which the Church lives: Baptism
and the Eucharist. From the Lord’s pierced side, from his open heart, there
springs the living fountain which continues to well up over the centuries and
which makes the Church. The open heart is the source of a new stream of life;
here John was certainly also thinking of the prophecy of Ezechiel who saw
flowing forth from the new temple a torrent bestowing fruitfulness and life (Ez
47): Jesus himself is the new temple, and his open heart is the source of a
stream of new life which is communicated to us in Baptism and the Eucharist.
The liturgy of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus also permits another phrase, similar to this, to be used as the communion antiphon. It is taken from the Gospel of John: Whoever is thirsty, let him come to me. And let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said: “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (cf. Jn 7:37ff.) In faith we drink, so to speak, of the living water of God’s Word. In this way the believer himself becomes a wellspring which gives living water to the parched earth of history. We see this in the saints. We see this in Mary, that great woman of faith and love who has become in every generation a wellspring of faith, love and life. Every Christian and every priest should become, starting from Christ, a wellspring which gives life to others. We ought to be offering life-giving water to a parched and thirst world. Lord, we thank you because for our sake you opened your heart; because in your death and in your resurrection you became the source of life. Give us life, make us live from you as our source, and grant that we too may be sources, wellsprings capable of bestowing the water of life in our time. We thank you for the grace of the priestly ministry. Lord bless us, and bless all those who in our time are thirsty and continue to seek. Amen.
Greetings to English-speaking priests:
I now wish to greet all the English-speaking
priests present at today’s celebration! My dear brothers, as I thank you for
your love of Christ and of his bride the Church, I ask you again solemnly to be
faithful to your promises. Serve God and your people with holiness and courage,
and always conform your lives to the mystery of the Lord’s cross. May God bless
your apostolic labours abundantly!
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Copyright 2010 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana