donderdag 18 februari 2010
Benedict XVI calls priests to protect communion between God and man
Vatican City, Feb 18, 2010 / (CNA).-
Pope Benedict hosted priests from the Diocese of Rome in the Vatican's Benediction Hall on Thursday morning for a "lectio divina" during their traditional Lenten audience. The Pope used his reflection on St. Paul's Letter to the Hebrews to encourage priests to protect communion between God and man, especially in areas under attack by society.
Referring to the Letter to the Hebrews, the Holy Father shed light on the nature of the priest. "The author of the Letter," he said, "understood that in Christ two premises are united: (that) Christ is the true King, the Son of God ... but also (that) the true priest... finds in Christ the key, his fulfilment."
And in him, said the Holy Father, the priesthood finds its "purity and its profound truth."
The mission of the priest, he continued, is to be a "mediator, a bridge that links and so carries man to God, to his redemption, his true light, his true life." In order to maintain this communion between humanity and divinity, priests must partake in daily, constant prayer and the celebration of the Eucharist.
"We must always return again to the sacrament, return to this gift in which God gives me much more than I could ever give ... a priest must be truly a man of God, must know God deeply and know him in communion with Christ," said Pope Benedict.
"We must live this communion," he told his fellow priests.
In doing so, added the Bishop of Rome, the priest must also be willing to stand up to those elements that hurt communion with God, specifically, the tendency of some to pass off lying and stealing today, merely saying, "It's human."
"But, this is not the true 'being human,'" the Pope insisted.
"Human is being generous, human is being good, human is being a man of justice" and, he underscored, sin never leads to solidarity but has the opposite effect.
The Holy Father also mentioned obedience as "a word that we don't like in our times" because it gives the impression of "alienation" or a "servile manner." He pointed out that we tend to seek out "freedom" instead of "obedience."
"But," he reflected, "considering this problem closely, we see that these two things go together."
"The will of God is not a tyrannical will, but it's exactly the place we find our true identity," he said.
"Let's really pray to the Lord, so that he may help us to see intimately that this is freedom and so enter joyfully into this obedience and pick up the human being and carry him - with our example, with our humility, with our prayer, with our pastoral action - into communion with God."
We must follow Jesus into the Lenten desert, Pope says on Ash Wednesday
Vatican City, Feb 18, 2010 / (CNA).
- In his homily at the Basilica of Saint Sabina on Ash Wednesday, the Holy Father spoke about returning to the communion with God that was lost when Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden. To return, he said, we need to "cross the desert, the test of faith."
After a procession from the Church of St. Anselm to the Basilica of Saint Sabina, Pope Benedict XVI recalled the story of Jesus' time in the desert. The Holy Father described the 40 days of silence and fasting as a time when Jesus "abandoned himself completely to the Father and his loving design," exposing himself to "enemy assaults" without any weapon besides "boundless trust in the omnipotent love of the Father."
"All this the Lord Jesus did for us," explained Benedict XVI. "He did it to save us, and at the same time to show us the way to follow him."
He expounded on this gift of salvation, saying it requires our assent demonstrated by our will to live like Jesus and follow in his footsteps. So, the Pope said, "following Jesus in the 'Lenten desert' is then a necessary condition to participating in his Easter..."
In order to return to the paradise which symbolizes communion with God and eternal life, from which Adam was banished, "we need to cross the desert, the test of faith," the Holy Father stressed, and "not alone, but with Jesus!
"He, as always, preceded us and won the battle against the spirit of evil.
"This is the meaning of Lent," said the Pope, "the liturgical time that each year invites us to renew the choice to follow Christ on the path of humility to participate in his victory over sin and death."
"In this perspective," he added, "we also understand the penitential sign of the Ashes that are imposed on the forehead of all those who begin the Lenten itinerary with good will."
This gesture, he explained, is one of humility that means "I recognize myself for what I am, a fragile creature, made of earth and destined to earth, but also made in the image of God and destined to Him.
"Dust, yes, but loved...able to recognize His voice and respond to Him; free and also capable of disobeying Him, giving in to the temptation of pride and self-sufficience."
These sins, pointed out the Pope, are a "mortal disease" which is "quick to enter and pollute the blessed earth that is the human being."
Building off of the Responsorial Psalm, Pope Benedict reflected more deeply on the meaning on iniquity. "The first act of justice is to recognize our own iniquity," rooted in our hearts, and then to "insist on the necessity of practicing our own 'justice' - alms, prayer and fasting - not before men but only to the eyes of God," he taught.
Indeed, "true recompense" will come not from the recognition of our fellow men, but in the relationship with God that is forged as a result and its accompanying grace, he explained.
Pope Benedict concluded his Ash Wednesday homily, saying that "even in our days humanity needs to hope in a more just world, and believe that it is possible, despite the disappointments that come from daily experiences.
"Beginning a new Lent, a new path of spiritual renewal, the Church indicates the personal and community conversion, the only non-illusory way to form a more just society, where all can have what is necessary to live according to human dignity."
The Pope implored, "Let us sincerely confess our sins, repent to God with all our hearts and let ourselves be reconciled with Him."
Australian Anglo-Catholic group votes to explore conversion to Catholicism
Melbourne, Australia, Feb 18, 2010 / (CNA).-
By a unanimous vote, the Anglo-Catholic group Forward in Faith Australia has established a working party guided by a Catholic bishop to explore how its followers can convert to Roman Catholicism.
The group, which also has members in Britain and the United States, is believed to be the first within the Anglican Church to accept Pope Benedict XVI’s offer to create an Anglican Ordinariate, the Daily Telegraph reports.
The Ordinariate, a form of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, will enable Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining parts of their spiritual heritage.
Bishop David Robarts, chairman of Forward in Faith Australia (FIFA), said members felt excluded by the Anglican Church in Australia, which had not provided them with a bishop to represent their views on homosexuality and women bishops.
"In Australia we have tried for a quarter of a decade to get some form of episcopal oversight but we have failed," he told the Daily Telegraph. "We're not really wanted any more, our conscience is not being respected."
Bishop Robarts, 77, said it had become clear Anglicans who did not believe in same-sex partnerships or the consecration of women as bishops had no place in the “broader Anglican spectrum.”
“We're not shifting the furniture, we're simply saying that we have been faithful Anglicans upholding what Anglicans have always believed,” he continued. “We're not wanting to change anything, but we have been marginalized by people who want to introduce innovations.”
“We need to have bishops that believe what we believe," he added, saying that converting to Rome would allow the group to retain their Anglican culture without sacrificing their beliefs.
The unanimous vote to investigate the establishment of an Ordinariate was held last Saturday at a Special General Meeting of FIFA at All Saints Kooyong in Melbourne.
The meeting issued a statement saying it received with “great gratitude” Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Constitution proposing the Ordinariate. It also expressed commitment to care and support those who feel unable to be received into the Ordinariate.
The FIFA meeting “warmly welcomed” the appointment of Bishop Peter Elliott as a delegate of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference. It also established a working group called Friends of the Australian Ordinariate, inviting FIFA members and other interested persons to provide their names and addresses to the group.
Bishop Robarts said his group was the first Forward In Faith branch to embrace Pope Benedict’s offer so strongly. Other Anglo-Catholics are waiting to see if the Anglican Church will allow them significant concessions on the introduction of women bishops, such as a male-only diocese.
The Traditional Anglican Communion, which has already broken away from the Anglican Communion, is another group to have declared that its members will become Catholic under the Apostolic Constitution.
In other Anglo-Catholic news, Telegraph reporter Damian Thompson reported on Feb. 17 that the former assistant Anglican Bishop of Newcastle Paul Richardson was received into full communion with the Church in January. He served as an Anglican bishop in Papua New Guinea and was diocesan bishop of Wangaratta in Australia.
Richardson said he was not planning to join the Ordinariate but has not ruled out ordination as a Catholic priest.
Daily conversion frees and saves, Pope declares as Lent begins
Vatican City, Feb 17, 2010 / (CNA).-
The Holy Father dedicated the General Audience on Wednesday in the Paul VI Hall to the significance of the Lenten season which begins today. He emphasized the importance of daily conversion for swimming "against the current" of a society that promotes a “superficial lifestyle” and “moral mediocrity.”
Lent, Pope Benedict observed, is an "acceptable and grace-filled time" in which we can better understand the words "repent and believe in the Gospel."
The call to conversion is one to take with "extraordinary seriousness" because it "reveals and denounces the easy superficiality that often characterizes our lives," Pope Benedict taught.
"Repentance means changing direction in the path of life," he said emphasizing that this is "not with a small adjustment, but with a true and personal reversal." It is going "against the current, where the 'current' is the superficial lifestyle... that often pulls at us, dominates us and makes us slaves of evil and, so, prisoners of moral mediocrity."
In our conversion, the Pope explained, we shoot for the "highest measure of the Christian life” as we put our trust in the "living and personal Gospel" of Jesus Christ.
"His person is the final goal and the deep meaning of repentance... he is the road by which all are called to walk in life, letting ourselves be illuminated by his light and sustained by his strength that moves our steps."
In this way, "it isn't a simple moral decision that rectifies our life's conduct, but a choice of faith that involves us entirely in the intimate communion with the living and concrete person of Jesus, noted Benedict XVI.
Repenting and believing the Gospel, the Holy Father elaborated, are expressions of the same reality and conversion, which "is the 'yes' of he who gives his own existence to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ who first offers himself to man as the way, truth and life, as it is He alone that frees and saves him."
This is the meaning of the first words with which Jesus preaches the Gospel, 'This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel,' the Pope added.
Pope Benedict also focused on how repentance and conversion are lifelong commitments.
"Every day is a 'acceptable' moment, one of grace, for every day we are invited to give ourselves to Jesus, to trust in Him, to abide in Him, to share His lifestyle, to learn true love from Him, to follow Him in doing the will of the Father every day, which is the only great law of life.”
"Every day" we need to seek conversion, Pope Benedict continued, "even when we are faced with difficulties and troubles, in spite of the tiredness and the failures, including when we feel like abandoning the path of following Christ, and when we want to withdraw into ourselves, into our selfishness, without realizing that we need to open ourselves to God’s love in Christ to live the same logic of love and justice.”
The Holy Father also reflected on the meaning of the ashes distributed today. The ashes given on the first day of Lent, he said, serve as an act of renewal "of our commitment to follow Jesus, to let ourselves be transformed in His paschal mystery, to win over evil and do good, to let the 'old man' tied to sin die and let the 'new man' be born transformed in the grace of God."
In closing, Pope Benedict invoked the protection and aid of Our Lady to accompany us in these 40 days of prayer and sincere penance so that we will be purified and "completely renewed" for Easter.
Witness of priests and religious key to increasing vocations, Pope asserts
Vatican City, Feb 16, 2010 / (CNA).-
Pope Benedict released his message for the 47th World Day of Prayer for Vocations on Tuesday. The message, written on the theme "Witness Awakens Vocations," speaks of the great importance of the witness of priests and religious for encouraging future vocations to the priesthood and religious life.
Granting that success in the promotion of vocations depends in large part on the free action of God, the Holy Father notes in his message that, in addition, "the quality and depth of the personal and communal witness of those who have already answered the Lord’s call to the ministerial priesthood and to the consecrated life" also helps to bear fruits, "for their witness is then able to awaken in others a desire to respond generously to Christ’s call."
The Holy Father cites the examples of the Prophets of the Old Testament dedicating their entire existence to bearing witness to God. Jesus, he says, is the "supreme Witness to God and to his concern for the salvation of all." He further highlights the roles of John the Baptist, Andrew and Philip who in bearing witness to God made disciples of others including Andrew's brother Peter and Bartholomew.
"God’s free and gracious initiative encounters and challenges the human responsibility of all those who accept his invitation to become, through their own witness, the instruments of his divine call," explains Pope Benedict in his message.
This continues to be true in the contemporary Church, writes the Holy Father, as "the Lord makes use of the witness of priests who are faithful to their mission in order to awaken new priestly and religious vocations for the service of the People of God."
The World Day of Prayer for Vocations message includes the Holy Father's perspective on the three aspects of priestly and religious life that he considers "essential for an effective priestly witness."
The first aspect that characterizes this life is friendship with Christ, through which a "man of God" leads others to know and love Him, the Pope says.
Secondly, a priest or consecrated religious makes “a complete gift oneself to God,” which the Holy Father says, "is the source of his ability to give himself in turn to those whom Providence entrusts to him in his pastoral ministry with complete, constant and faithful devotion... enabling them too to become open to meeting Christ, so that his Word may become a light to their footsteps.”
"The story of every vocation is almost always intertwined with the testimony of a priest who joyfully lives the gift of himself to his brothers and sisters for the sake of the Kingdom of God," Pope Benedict points out.
The final aspect, the Pope teaches, is a life of communion by which the priest or consecrated person is "open to all, capable of gathering into one the pilgrim flock which the goodness of the Lord has entrusted to him, helping to overcome divisions, to heal rifts, to settle conflicts and misunderstandings, and to forgive offenses."
He must be an example to youth, notes the Holy Father, of "a communion of life which can reveal to them the beauty of being a priest," so that they will say, "Yes, this could be my future; I can live like this."
Pope Benedict cites the words of Venerable John Paul II, who summed up these aspects when he said that "the very life of priests... their fraternal unity and zeal for the evangelization of the world are the first and most convincing factor in the growth of vocations"
This is also true for the consecrated men and women who by their very life proclaim "the love of Christ whenever they follow him in complete fidelity to the Gospel and joyfully make their own its criteria for judgment and conduct," the Pope writes.
In this way, he adds, by their example they offer themselves as 'signs of contradiction' in society by offering an alternative to the materialism, self-centeredness and individualism present in world.
"By letting themselves be won over by God through self-renunciation, their fidelity and the power of their witness constantly awaken in the hearts of many young people the desire to follow Christ in their turn, in a way that is generous and complete."
Benedict XVI concludes his message for the Day of Prayer for Vocations by observing that "in order to foster vocations to the ministerial priesthood and the consecrated life, and to be more effective in promoting the discernment of vocations, we cannot do without the example of those who have already said "yes" to God and to his plan for the life of each individual."
"Personal witness," he specifies, "in the form of concrete existential choices, will encourage young people for their part to make demanding decisions affecting their future."
The official date for the observation of the World Day of Prayer for Vocations will be Good Shepherd Sunday, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which falls on April 25 this year.
State is not source and beginning of ethics, Pope tells Pontifical Academy for Life
Vatican City, Feb 14, 2010 / (CNA).-
On Saturday Pope Benedict XVI addressed members of the Pontifical Academy for Life on the occasion of their general assembly. He emphasized to the group that human dignity must be protected as an "inalienable right" and that ethical decisions cannot be left solely to the State, which is subject to "relativistic drift."
The theme of this year's general assembly was "Bioethics and Natural Law," for which the Holy Father offered his own reflections. He spoke to the academy members in the Clementine Room in the Apostolic Palace.
When we speak of bioethics, said the Pope, the "dignity of the person" is often put at the forefront of the discussion. This is "a fundamental principle that the faith in Jesus Christ, Crucified and Risen, has always defended, especially when it is disregarded towards the simplest and most vulnerable subjects."
Benedict XVI called the right to recognition of human dignity "inalienable"and added that its establishment is not "written by the hand of man, but... by God the Creator in the heart of man."
"Without the founding principle of human dignity it would be arduous to find a source for the rights of the person and impossible to reach an ethical judgment as to the achievements of science that intervene directly in human life."
He insisted that it is of upmost importance that the comprehension of human dignity not be considered as strictly tied to "external elements" such as scientific progress or the "gradualness" of the formation of human life. Rather, the invocation of dignity must be "full, total and without strings, besides that of recognizing that we are always before a human life."
The key of ethical research and investigation in science regarding human beings is to never consider that one is only dealing with "inanimate material," he continued. To do otherwise risks an “instrumental use of science,” which easily advances “abuse, discrimination and the economic interests of the strongest."
Pope Benedict observed that in the world today, the rights of human life in its"natural development and in states of greatest weakness" are not always recognized. This, he said, makes it important to promote human life as an "inalienable subject of right and never as an object subjected to abuse of the strongest."
"History has shown how dangerous and deleterious a State that proceeds to make legislation on matters that touch the person and society can be, when it tries to be the source and beginning of ethics."
Without universal principles that establish a "common denominator" for humanity, explained the Pope, we run the risk of a "relativistic drift at the legislative level."
However, he stated, the natural moral law “permits us to avoid this danger and, above all, offers the legislator the guarantee for a true respect for the person." It also "affirms the existence of an order printed in nature by the Creator and recognized as an instance of true, rational ethical judgment to pursue good and avoid evil."
Members of the Pontificial Academy for Life were led in the general assembly by their acpresident, Archbishop Rino Fisichella.
