Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – As is customary at the beginning of Lent, on Thursday, February 26, the Holy Father Benedict XVI met in the Blessings Hall in the Vatican with the parish priests and clergy of the Diocese of Rome. The encounter took place in a question-answer dialogue between the Holy Father and the participants, which was opened by the Vicar, Cardinal Agostino Vallini. We offer several passages on the various themes that the Pope addressed.
Role and formation of priests at the heart of the Church's mission of evangelization
“...it is not enough to preach or to do pastoral work with the precious cargo acquired in theology studies. This is important, it is essential, but it must be personalized: from academic knowledge, which we have learned and also reflected upon, in a personal vision of my life, in order to reach other people. In this sense, I would like to say that it is important, on one hand, to make the great word of the faith concrete with our personal experience of faith, in our meeting with our parishioners, but also to not lose its simplicity. Naturally, great words of the tradition -- such as sacrifice of expiation, redemption of Christ's sacrifice, original sin -- are incomprehensible as such today. We cannot simply work with great formulas, [although] truths, without putting them in the context of today's world. Through study and what the masters of theology and our personal experience with God tell us, we must translate these great words, so that they enter into the proclamation of God to the man of today.
...we must also keep in mind, free of false simplifications, that the Twelve Apostles were fishermen, artisans, of the province of Galilee, without special preparation, without knowledge of the great Greek and Latin worlds. And yet they went to all the places of the Empire, even outside of it, to India, and proclaimed Christ with simplicity, with the force of simplicity of what is true. And this also seems important to me: Let us not lose the simplicity of the truth. God exists and he is not a distant, hypothetical being, rather, he is close, he has spoken to us, he has spoken to me...And then, in regard to the Roman cultural context, which is absolutely necessary, I would say that the first assistance is our personal experience. We don't live on the moon. I am a man of this time if I live my faith sincerely in today's culture, being one who lives with today's media, with dialogues, with the realities of the economy, with everything; if I myself take seriously my own experience and try to personalize these realities in myself. Thus we'll be on the way to making ourselves understood also by others...And in this sense it seems important to me to be really attentive to today's world, but also to be attentive to the Lord in oneself: to be a man of this time and at the same time a believer in Christ, who in himself transforms the eternal message into a current message.
And who knows the men of today better than the parish priest? The sacristy is not in the world, but in the parish. And there, to the pastor, men often come normally, without a mask, without other pretexts, but in situations of suffering, infirmity, death, family issues. They come to the confessional unmasked, with their own being. It seems to me that no other profession gives this possibility of knowing man as he is in his humanity, and not in the role he has in society. In this sense, we can really study man in his depth, far from his roles, and we ourselves also learn about the human being, to be a man in the school of Christ.”
The necessary criteria for evangelization
“I am very happy to hear that there is really a preliminary preaching taking place, which goes beyond the limits of the community of faithful, of the parish, in search of the lost sheep, so to speak; that there is an effort to go out to encounter the man of today who lives without Christ, who has forgotten Christ, to preach the Gospel to him. I am also very glad to hear that there are also many positive and rewarding fruits. I can see, therefore, that you are capable of speaking to those persons in need of a grounding in their faith. For this kind of concrete activity, I cannot offer recipes, because there are as many paths to be taken as there are people, professions, and the various situations. The catechism indicates the essence of what is to be preached. But the one who is familiar with the situations is the one who must apply the directions, finding a way to open hearts and invite them to take the path of the Lord and the Church...
The community of faithful is a precious thing that we should not overlook – even in seeing those who are far from us – the positive and beautiful reality that these faithful represent, those who say yes to the Lord in the Church, try to live the faith and follow in the Lord's footsteps. We should help these faithful, as we said before in the first questions, to perceive the presence of the faith, to understand that it is not something of the past, but that it lights the way and shows us how to live as persons. It is of great importance that they truly encounter in their pastor, someone who loves them and who helps them to listen to the Word of God today; to understand that it is a Word for them and not only for people of the past or the future; that helps them, in sacramental life, in their experience of prayer, in listening to the Word of God and in the life of justice and charity, because Christians should be the yeast of our society with the many problems, dangers, and corruption that exist.
In this manner, may they also interpret their missionary role “without words,” so they can be people that truly live a just life. And thus, they offer a testimony of how it is possible to live according to the path indicated by the Lord. This is precisely what our society needs, so they can live not only a justice for themselves but also for others...
I come to a second reflection. For preaching, we need two elements: the Word and testimony. As the Lord Himself has told us, the Word that He has given us, that makes the truth of God appear, the presence of God in Christ, the path that opens up before us is necessary...It is absolutely indispensable and fundamental that we give credibility to this Word with our testimony, so that it does not appear merely as a beautiful philosophy or utopia, but above all as a reality...With the Word, we should open places of faith experience to those in search of God. This is what the early Church did with the catechumenate, which was not simply a catechesis, something doctrinal, but a place of progressive experience of the life of faith, in which the Word enters and is made intelligible only if it is interpreted with one's life.
Therefore, it seems to me important, together with the Word, that there be a place of hospitality of the faith, a place where there is a progressive experience of the faith. And here I also see one of the tasks of the parish: hospitality toward those who do not know this life that is typical of the parish community. We must not be a circle enclosed in ourselves. We have our customs, but nevertheless we must open ourselves and try to create vestibules, that is, venues of closeness...Therefore, we must try to create, with the help of the Word, what the primitive Church created with the catechumens: venues in which to begin to live the Word, to follow the Word, to make it comprehensible and realistic, corresponding to real forms of experience...It seems to me that in theory little can be said, but the concrete experience will show the paths to be followed. And, naturally it is necessary to be always in great communion with the Church -- always an important criterion to follow -- although perhaps still in a somewhat distant interval: that is, in communion with the bishop, with the Pope, thus in communion with the great past and with the great future of the Church. In fact, to be in the Catholic Church does not only imply to be on the great path that precedes us, but it means to be in the prospect of a great opening to the future.” (part 1, to be continued) (SL) (Agenzia Fides 3/3/2008)
