VATICAN - Pope Benedict XVI in Paris and Lourdes (3) - “God is so humble that he uses us to spread his word. We become his voice, once we have listened carefully to the word coming from his mouth. We place his word on our lips in order to bring it to the world.”

Paris (Agenzia Fides) – On the evening of September 12, the Holy Father Benedict XVI presided the celebration of Vespers with priests, religious, seminarians, and deacons in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. “We are gathered in the Mother Church of the Diocese of Paris, Notre-Dame Cathedral, which rises in the heart of the city as a living sign of God’s presence in our midst,” the Pope said at the beginning of his homily, recalling the long history of the Cathedral, whose first stone was laid by Pope Alexander III. “The faith of the Middle Ages built the cathedrals, and here your ancestors came to praise God, to entrust to him their hopes and to express their love for him. Great religious and civil events took place in this shrine, where architects, painters, sculptors and musicians have given the best of themselves,” the Pope highlighted.
Taking up Psalm 121 from the recently sung Vespers, Benedict XVI mentioned the joy that the Psalmist conveys with: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!.’” “The Psalmist’s joy, brimming over in the very words of the Psalm, penetrates our hearts and resonates deeply within them. We truly rejoice to enter the house of the Lord, since, as the Fathers of the Church have taught us, this house is nothing other than a concrete symbol of Jerusalem on high, which comes down to us to offer us the most beautiful of dwelling-places.” The Pope continued, saying, “during Vespers this evening, we are united in thought and prayer with the voices of the countless men and women who have chanted this psalm in this very place down the centuries... What joy indeed, to know that we are invisibly surrounded by so great a crowd of witnesses! Our pilgrimage to the holy city would not be possible if it were not made in the Church, the seed and the prefiguration of the heavenly Jerusalem. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps 126:1). Who is this Lord, if not our Lord Jesus Christ? It is he who founded his Church and built it on rock, on the faith of the Apostle Peter.”
Augustine asks how we can know who these builders are, and his answer is this: “All those who preach God’s word in the Church, all who are ministers of God’s divine Sacraments. All of us run, all of us work, all of us build”; yet it is God alone who, within us, “builds, exhorts, and inspires awe; who opens our understanding and guides our minds to faith.” Then, the Holy Father said: “What marvels surround our work in the service of God’s word! We are instruments of the Holy Spirit; God is so humble that he uses us to spread his word. We become his voice, once we have listened carefully to the word coming from his mouth. We place his word on our lips in order to bring it to the world. He accepts the offering of our prayer and through it he communicates himself to everyone we meet.”
“Your cathedral is a living hymn of stone and light,” Pope Benedict XVI said, “in praise of that act, unique in the annals of human history: the eternal Word of God entering our history in the fulness of time to redeem us by his self-offering in the sacrifice of the Cross. Our earthly liturgies, entirely ordered to the celebration of this unique act within history, will never fully express its infinite meaning. Certainly, the beauty of our celebrations can never be sufficiently cultivated, fostered and refined, for nothing can be too beautiful for God, who is himself infinite Beauty. Yet our earthly liturgies will never be more than a pale reflection of the liturgy celebrated in the Jerusalem on high, the goal of our pilgrimage on earth. May our own celebrations nonetheless resemble that liturgy as closely as possible and grant us a foretaste of it!”
The Pope reminded the priests that “the word of God is given to us as the soul of our apostolate, the soul of our priestly life,” and then he told them, “do not be afraid to spend much time reading and meditating on the Scriptures and praying the Divine Office! Almost without your knowing it, God’s word, read and pondered in the Church, acts upon you and transforms you.” To the seminarians he said, “this word is given to you as a precious treasure,” in that “You are called to become stewards of this word which accomplishes what it communicates. Thus you will learn to love everyone you meet along life’s journey. In the Church everyone has a place, everyone! Every person can and must find a place in her.”
Addressing the deacons, the Holy Father invited them to continue loving the Word of God, to proclaim the Gospel at the heart of the Eucharistic celebration, at the center of their lives, in their service to their neighbor, in there entire “diakonia.” Addressing the religious and consecrated persons, the Pope told them: “Your only treasure – which, to tell the truth, will alone survive the passage of time and the curtain of death – is the word of the Lord.”
The Pope concluded his homily affirming that “there is no love in the Church without love of the word, no Church without unity around Christ the Redeemer, no fruits of redemption without love of God and neighbor, according to the two commandments which sum up all of Sacred Scripture” and recalling that “in Our Lady we have the finest example of fidelity to God’s word.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 15/9/2008)