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.