HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI
Saint Peter's Square
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Photo: AFP/GETTY
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[Video]
Dear Brother Bishops,
Dear brothers and sisters,
Dear brothers and sisters,
With this solemn concelebration we open the thirteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith.
This theme reflects a programmatic direction for the life of the
Church, its members, families, its communities and institutions. And
this outline is reinforced by the fact that it coincides with the
beginning of the Year of Faith, starting on 11 October, on the fiftieth
anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. I
give a cordial and grateful welcome to you who have come to be part of
the Synodal Assembly, in particular to the Secretary-General of the
Synod of Bishops, and to his colleagues. I salute the fraternal
delegates of the other churches and ecclesial communities as well as all
present, inviting them to accompany in daily prayer the deliberations
which will take place over the next three weeks.
The readings for this Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word propose to us two principal points of reflection: the first on matrimony, which I will touch shortly; and the second on Jesus Christ, which I will discuss now. We do not have time to comment upon the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews but, at the beginning of this Synodal Assembly, we ought to welcome the invitation to fix our gaze upon the Lord Jesus, “crowned with glory and honour, because of the suffering of death (2:9). The word of God places us before the glorious One who was crucified, so that our whole lives, and in particular the commitment of this Synodal session, will take place in the sight of him and in the light of his mystery. In every time and place, evangelization always has as its starting and finishing points Jesus Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1); and the Crucifix is the supremely distinctive sign of him who announces the Gospel: a sign of love and peace, a call to conversion and reconciliation. My dear Brother Bishops, starting with ourselves, let us fix our gaze upon him and let us be purified by his grace.
The readings for this Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word propose to us two principal points of reflection: the first on matrimony, which I will touch shortly; and the second on Jesus Christ, which I will discuss now. We do not have time to comment upon the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews but, at the beginning of this Synodal Assembly, we ought to welcome the invitation to fix our gaze upon the Lord Jesus, “crowned with glory and honour, because of the suffering of death (2:9). The word of God places us before the glorious One who was crucified, so that our whole lives, and in particular the commitment of this Synodal session, will take place in the sight of him and in the light of his mystery. In every time and place, evangelization always has as its starting and finishing points Jesus Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1); and the Crucifix is the supremely distinctive sign of him who announces the Gospel: a sign of love and peace, a call to conversion and reconciliation. My dear Brother Bishops, starting with ourselves, let us fix our gaze upon him and let us be purified by his grace.
I would now like briefly to examine the new evangelization, and its relation to ordinary evangelization and the mission ad Gentes.
The Church exists to evangelize. Faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ’s
command, his disciples went out to the whole world to announce the Good
News, spreading Christian communities everywhere. With time, these
became well-organized churches with many faithful. At various times in
history, divine providence has given birth to a renewed dynamism in
Church’s evangelizing activity. We need only think of the
evangelization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples or the Slavs, or the
transmission of the faith on the continent of America, or the missionary
undertakings among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania. It is
against this dynamic background that I like to look at the two radiant
figures that I have just proclaimed Doctors of the Church, Saint John of
Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Even in our own times, the Holy
Spirit has nurtured in the Church a new effort to announce the Good
News, a pastoral and spiritual dynamism which found a more universal
expression and its most authoritative impulse in the Second Vatican
Ecumenical Council. Such renewed evangelical dynamism produces a
beneficent influence on the two specific “branches” developed by it,
that is, on the one hand the Missio ad Gentes or announcement of the Gospel to those who do not yet know Jesus Christ and his message of salvation, and on the other the New Evangelization,
directed principally at those who, though baptized, have drifted away
from the Church and live without reference to the Christian life. The
Synodal Assembly which opens today is dedicated to this new
evangelization, to help these people encounter the Lord, who alone who
fills our existence with deep meaning and peace; and to favour the
rediscovery of the faith, that source of grace which brings joy and hope
to personal, family and social life. Obviously, such a special focus
must not diminish either missionary efforts in the strict sense or the
ordinary activity of evangelization in our Christian communities, as
these are three aspects of the one reality of evangelization which
complement and enrich each other.
The theme of marriage, found in the Gospel and the first reading,
deserves special attention. The message of the word of God may be
summed up in the expression found in the Book of Genesis and taken up by
Jesus himself: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and
cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mk
10:7-8). What does this word say to us today? It seems to me that it
invites us to be more aware of a reality, already well known but not
fully appreciated: that matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a Good News for
the world of today, especially the dechristianized world. The union of
a man and a woman, their becoming “one flesh” in charity, in fruitful
and indissoluble love, is a sign that speaks of God with a force and an
eloquence which in our days has become greater because unfortunately,
for various reasons, marriage, in precisely the oldest regions
evangelized, is going through a profound crisis. And it is not by
chance. Marriage is linked to faith, but not in a general way.
Marriage, as a union of faithful and indissoluble love, is based upon
the grace that comes from the triune God, who in Christ loved us with a
faithful love, even to the Cross. Today we ought to grasp the full
truth of this statement, in contrast to the painful reality of many
marriages which, unhappily, end badly. There is a clear link between
the crisis in faith and the crisis in marriage. And, as the Church has
said and witnessed for a long time now, marriage is called to be not
only an object but a subject of the new evangelization. This is already
being seen in the many experiences of communities and movements, but
its realization is also growing in dioceses and parishes, as shown in
the recent World Meeting of Families.
One of the important ideas of the renewed impulse that the Second
Vatican Council gave to evangelization is that of the universal call to
holiness, which in itself concerns all Christians (cf. Lumen Gentium,
39-42). The saints are the true actors in evangelization in all its
expressions. In a special way they are even pioneers and bringers of
the new evangelization: with their intercession and the example of lives
attentive to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they show the beauty
of the Gospel to those who are indifferent or even hostile, and they
invite, as it were tepid believers, to live with the joy of faith, hope
and charity, to rediscover the taste for the word of God and for the
sacraments, especially for the bread of life, the Eucharist. Holy men
and women bloom among the generous missionaries who announce the Good
News to non-Christians, in the past in mission countries and now in any
place where there are non-Christians. Holiness is not confined by
cultural, social, political or religious barriers. Its language, that
of love and truth, is understandable to all people of good will and it
draws them to Jesus Christ, the inexhaustible source of new life.
At this point, let us pause for a moment to appreciate the two
saints who today have been added to the elect number of Doctors of the
Church. Saint John of Avila lived in the sixteenth century. A profound
expert on the sacred Scriptures, he was gifted with an ardent
missionary spirit. He knew how to penetrate in a uniquely profound way
the mysteries of the redemption worked by Christ for humanity. A man of
God, he united constant prayer to apostolic action. He dedicated
himself to preaching and to the more frequent practice of the
sacraments, concentrating his commitment on improving the formation of
candidates for the priesthood, of religious and of lay people, with a
view to a fruitful reform of the Church.
Saint Hildegard of Bingen, an important female figure of the
twelfth century, offered her precious contribution to the growth of the
Church of her time, employing the gifts received from God and showing
herself to be a woman of brilliant intelligence, deep sensitivity and
recognized spiritual authority. The Lord granted her a prophetic spirit
and fervent capacity to discern the signs of the times. Hildegard
nurtured an evident love of creation, and was learned in medicine,
poetry and music. Above all, she maintained a great and faithful love
for Christ and his Church.
This summary of the ideal in Christian life, expressed in the
call to holiness, draws us to look with humility at the fragility, even
sin, of many Christians, as individuals and communities, which is a
great obstacle to evangelization and to recognizing the force of God
that, in faith, meets human weakness. Thus, we cannot speak about the
new evangelization without a sincere desire for conversion. The best
path to the new evangelization is to let ourselves be reconciled with
God and with each other (cf. 2 Cor 5:20). Solemnly purified,
Christians can regain a legitimate pride in their dignity as children of
God, created in his image and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus
Christ, and they can experience his joy in order to share it with
everyone, both near and far.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust the work of the Synod
meeting to God, sustained by the communion of saints, invoking in
particular the intercession of great evangelizers, among whom, with much
affection, we ought to number Blessed Pope John Paul II, whose long
pontificate was an example of the new evangelization. Let us place
ourselves under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the
New Evangelization. With her let us invoke a new outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, that from on high he may illumine the Synodal assembly and make
it fruitful for the Church’s journey today, in our time. Amen.
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