Turin
– Shrine Church of Our Lady of Consolation
Sunday, 15 January 2012
–11:30 am
Holy
Mass celebrated on the Bicentenary of the birth of
St
Joseph Cafasso
(1812
- 2012)
Homily
of H.E. Cardinal Mauro
Piacenza
Prefect of the Congregation
for the Clergy
[1Sam 3:3-10, 19; Ps 39; 1Cor 6:13-15, 17-20; Jn 1:35-42]
X
«Behold, the Lamb
of God!»; «Rabbi, where do you live?»; «Come and you will see»; «We have found
the Messiah!».
These four expressions of the extraordinary pericope from John’s Gospel,
that we have heard, enclose – one might say – the entire Christian experience, in
its dimension of encounter, questioning, following as discipleship and
proclamation. And we can understand the life of St Joseph Cafasso, whose birth’s
bicentenary we celebrate today (1811 – 15 January – 2011), only in the light of
these four fundamental dimensions of the Christian being and of the priestly
being.
I intentionally stress the word “being”
since, in communion with the unbroken Christian tradition and the common Church
doctrine, I am intimately persuaded that the Priesthood is not just a
particular function, exercised by some Christians; rather, as Cafasso clearly
intended it, it involves being configured to Christ and therefore, an
“ontological change” of him who receives the Call and the laying of the hands as
a gift, with the transmission of the Spirit.
The first expression, «Behold the Lamb of God!», enshrines
the permanent vocation of the Church. The only purpose of our structures, our
efforts, our celebrations, is to indicate, with force, truth, transparency and
determination, the Lamb of God present in the world.
It is not merely the theoretical indication
of a truth, which is perhaps repeated but is not experienced; on the contrary,
as it was for the Baptist and for St Joseph Cafasso, it involves indicating to
the world what is vital to us. Only those who experience Christ in an
existentially significant way can indicate to his brothers the Lamb of God.
It is likewise necessary to
recognize that, thanks to the sacramental ordination, the Priest is, at once,
him who indicated the Lamb of God and, in a way, him who fulfils His presence.
For this reason, the indication must be explicit and transparency complete. We
are not just indicating something that is external, distant from us; we
indicate Him who, by configuring us to Himself, has made us His Presence and,
therefore, the faithful rightfully expect to recognize “the Lamb of God” in Him
who, also in the Liturgy, proclaims: «Behold the Lamb of God!»
The entire life of St Jospeh Cafasso
was, in this sense, at the service of recognizing this priestly identity, both
in the pastors, and in the holy People of God. All historical testimonies
univocally show that the encounter with the holy Confessor was, for every person,
regardless of social, cultural and even spiritual circumstance, an experience with
a totally theocentric man, who had God as his barycentre and was therefore
capable of fulfilling, by His grace, the presence of the Supernatural that, for
priests, is manifested primarily in the heroic and daily exercise of pastoral
charity.
«Behold the Lamb of God!» How great
is the Church’s need for priests who can indicate God present in the World! How
great is our need for mature, balanced men who have integrated and overcome
their subjective needs and opinions, and are completely and earnestly faithful
to Christ, His Gospel, the unbroken Tradition of the Church, the Magisterium,
and, briefly, are holy priests!
The conscience of the Baptist which,
after indicating the Lamb of God, states «He must increase; I must decrease» (Jn 3:30), must represent the permanent
inner vow of each priest, both secular and religious, for Christ’s growing
inside of us is at the root of the authentic New Evangelization and of the
true, concrete help that we can give to the lay faithful.
The encounter with Christ and with
His witnesses can rekindle in man’s heart the genuine search for meaning, is
capable of broadening the horizons that more than two centuries of enlightenment
- with all the consequences it has entailed almost up to the threshold of post-modern
and relativistic thought - have progressively reduced.
«Rabbi, where do you live?» is the second fundamental
expression we have heard. Without the Baptist, who is ready to indicate the
Lamb of God, Andrew and John would not have begun to follow the Lord with that
sense of moral certainty, profoundly reasonable, that we call “faith”.
But faith too, in order to be
confirmed, must be weighed up against one’s personal experience; once the
witness of another is accepted, it must be confronted with one’s innermost
needs in order to verify – that is confirm - that what Christianity proposes is
entirely in keeping with the deepest needs of man’s heart.
For this reason throughout history the
Saints – including St Joseph Cafasso – have always exercised extraordinary
fascination: in their presence one is more easily reminded of the truth about
oneself; in their presence, man’s insufficiency and the absolute need for God
emerge more clearly!
We know very well, dear brothers and
sisters, that without St Joseph Cafasso we would not have had the giant that
was St John Bosco, nor would we have had the Blessed Joseph Allamano, or many
others, more or less known, who learned at his school the meaning of a life
spent entirely pleading Christ that he may show himself permanently in their
existence, that they may belong to Him radically, that they may live in him:
«Rabbi, where do you live?»
In this sense as well, in the
exercise of the priestly ministry, of which Cafasso remains an exemplary
“pearl”, we are called not only to indicate Christ as an abode, but also – and,
allow me to say, especially – to “be” an abode for our brothers.
In difficult times like these in
which, behind the evident economic crisis, there is a more profound personal
and identity crisis, “to be an abode” means to be a steady reference point, a
safe haven, where the small boat of many faithful instead of being tossed about
by the winds of doctrine, as the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reminded in the
Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontifice, finds
a safe berth, an “abode” in the pastoral charity of holy priests, excellent
confessors and spiritual directors.
One can be a “safe haven” for others
only if, in one’s concrete existential experience, one has seen what a haven is
(allow me to say this, as a Genoese). Of course, a boat is not made to stay
docked, but without the haven it cannot sail. Only those who have a radical
experience of belonging to that safe haven who is Christ, and of sailing steadily
on the great vessel which is the Church, at whose helm is Peter, and no one
else but Peter, can indicate to others where He lives and be, in his own turn,
capable of offering the supernatural acceptance, typical of Saints, that
springs from God, and that no human creativity, however lively, can achieve.
St Joseph Cafasso was, for his
contemporaries and, in particular, for the priests of his day, a safe abode, a
concrete sign of radical fidelity to Christ, the Church and its Doctrine. For this
very reason, he was at once extremely capable of welcoming, understanding and
expressing mercy.
«Come and you will see,» Christ replies
to Andrew and John. These two verbs contain the essential core of the Christian
experience, which begins with the Encounter with an Event, a Person (cfr. Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter “Deus caritas est”, n. 1), and this appears to be
especially true for the priestly life. Dearest Priests, what is our experience
of living with Jesus, going with Him and seeing Him? To what extent is our
daily existence Christ-centred, in our every moment, thought, word, gesture,
attitude? To what extent does the relationship with Christ determine the
details of our life and to what extent does it instead remain an abstract
thought, perhaps repeated, but which has no incidence on our self?
Just as he said to John and Andrew, today
Christ repeats “Come and see!” to every Christian and to every priest, especially
through the Saints and their existence.
«Coming» mysteriously includes the encounter
between God’s supernatural call and human freedom, which heeds the call and
journeys, day after day, in order to answer it.
«Seeing» indicates how the
experience of following brings about the awareness of a mysterious, profound
correspondence between Christ and man’s heart, between the proposal Christ makes
to man and the need for profound truth, justice, freedom, beauty, love and happiness,
that each of us is.
«Come and you will see» is not just
a promise, whose fulfilment is deferred to a remote eschatological time, but is
the indication of the surprising exceptionality of Christ, who strikes and
rekindles man’s heart, expanding it to a dimension heretofore unthinkable,
which is the authentic stature of the children of God!
The exceptionality of such a
Presence and of such a radical existence and correspondence recurs, throughout
the centuries, in the concrete lives of the Saints: they are “exceptional” not
so much for the works they fulfil (however noble and important they may be), as
much as because in the encounter with them the correspondence experienced by Andrew
and John on that distant afternoon, around four, when they met Jesus, relives
with extraordinary evidence and “experimentability”.
Such is the greatness of the Church!
Such is the greatness of the Body of Christ: we can meet Him, experience Him –
after two thousand years – in the same identical way as Andrew and John met
Him, through those who, more radically and more evidently, belong to Christ!
Those who have heeded Christ’s invitation
to «come» and have «seen», that is those who have experienced the new
correspondence, and therefore the new reality, that the encounter with the
Mystery brings about, necessarily become, in their own turn, proclaimers: «We have found the Messiah!»
Throughout his life, St Joseph Cafasso
was a proclaimer of Christ, for he experienced Christ. Priests are called to make this experience of
Christ; every priest is called to proclaim Christ. Just as «come» and «you will see» cannot be separated, since God’s
call, man’s free response and evidence of an extraordinary correspondence flow
into them, likewise in the priestly life proclamation and experience can never
be separated. If we proclaim what we do not experience, our preaching shall
remain sterile; if we deliver a speech, which may be complex from a doctrinal
point of view but does not describe the profound fibres of our being, does not
spring from the radical beating of our heart, our proclamation will not be
“exceptional” to anyone. It is never a
matter of converting, but it is the experience, which cannot be reduced to a
mere human category, of the correspondence between life and proclamation, or
better still, the experience of a proclamation, which is one’s life, and of a
life, which becomes proclamation.
It is along these lines that one
should welcome and meditate deeply on the insistence that the Holy Father
places, during the Year of the Priesthood and on many other occasions, on the
central question of the identity of priests. Identifying strongly with one’s
Minister, far from being a functionalistic or “programmatic-pastoral” attitude,
is, ultimately, about identifying oneself with Christ himself, “Lamb of God”,
“Abode” and Presence.
The «Come and you will see» experience
for each member of the faithful, and for priests in a special way, does not
happen only once in the course of one’s life but, mysteriously, for an alert
conscience and for an extraordinary gift of divine Mercy, it happens every day,
in all the details of reality, in the persons (or moments of persons) in whom
the Mystery is revealed more evidently and in whose face He calls us to
recognize Him.
It is not a matter of seeing Christ
in reality or in others, which could lead to a moralistic reduction of Christianity;
instead it is a matter of getting to the bottom of reality: and at the bottom
of reality is Christ, who asks to be recognized.
The priestly genius of St Joseph
Cafasso translated the evangelical «Come and you will see» into the
extraordinary experience of the Convitto Ecclesiastico di San Francesco
d’Assisi [College-Residence for Clerics of St Francis of Assisi], which he
entered in 1834 and of which he remained the Rector for his entire life. It
then became the Convitto Ecclesiastico della Consolata [College-Residence for
Clerics of Our Lady of Consolation], and offered a real opportunity, especially
to young priests coming from the countryside, to – as St John Bosco would say –
learn «to be priests». That is, learn to be with the Lord, to be a merciful and
recognizable ray of His love, in the concrete everyday ministry.
As the Holy Father Benedict XVI pointed
out, the Convitto was «a true and proper school of priestly life, where priests were formed in the
spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola and in the moral and pastoral theology of
the great holy Bishop St Alphonsus Mary de' Liguori. The type of priest that
Cafasso met at the "Convitto" and that he himself helped to
strengthen […] was that of the true pastor with a rich inner life and profound zeal in
pastoral care, faithful to prayer, committed to preaching and to catechesis,
dedicated to the celebration of the Eucharist and to the ministry of Confession» (General Audience, 30 June 2010).
One might say, the standard priest! The
type of priest that the Church really needs today!
Lord, through the intercession of
Our Lady of Consolation and of St Joseph Cafasso, Pearl of the Italian Clergy,
we ask of You, for this diocesan Church, for our country and for the Universal
Church, the gift of holy and numerous vocations to the priesthood, capable,
insofar as configured to You, of indicating «the Lamb of God», of being “Abode”
for all brothers, of proclaiming through their life: «Come and you will see»,
and of proclaiming thus to the world: «We have found the Messiah!».
Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles,
Mother and Consolation of Priests, renew the Clergy so that the entire Clergy,
with its holiness, may console You.
You lead us to ask, grant unto us! Amen.