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Youth thirst for transcendence
On Monday morning, 7 September [2009], at the Papal
Summer Residence in Castel Gandolfo, the Holy Father spoke to the first
group of Bishops from Brazil to make their visit "ad limina Apostolorum"
this year. The following is a translation of the Pope's Address to the
Brazilian Prelates from the West I and West II Regions, which was given
in Portuguese.
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate,
With deep joy and friendship I greet and welcome each
and every one of you, beloved Pastors of the West I and West II Regions
of the National Bishops' Conference of Brazil. With your group, the long
pilgrimage of the members of this Bishops' Conference on their visits
ad limina Apostolorum begins and it will give me the opportunity to
become better acquainted with the reality of your respective diocesan
communities.
They will be days of fraternal sharing, to reflect
together on the matters that worry you. It is an event longed for since
those unforgettable days in May 2007, when during my visit to your
country I was able to experience the deep affection of the Brazilian
people for the Successor of Peter and, in particular, when I had the
opportunity to embrace with my gaze the entire episcopate of this great
nation at the meeting in the Cathedral of Sé
in São
Paulo.
In fact, only God's great heart can know, safeguard and
guide the multitude of sons and daughters that he himself has begotten
in the great vastness of Brazil. During our conversations in these days
several problems and challenges have emerged that you are facing, as the
Archbishop of Campo Grande mentioned at the beginning of our meeting.
The distances that you yourselves, together with your
priests and the other missionary workers, must cover for the service and
pastoral animation of your respective faithful are impressive. Many of
them live with problems that stem from a relatively recent urbanization
in which the State does not always succeed in being an instrument for
the promotion of justice and the common good. Do not lose heart!
Remember that the proclamation of the Gospel and
adherence to the Christian values, as I said recently in my Encyclical
Caritas in Veritate, "is not merely useful but essential
for building a good society and for true integral human development" (n.
4).
I thank you, Bishop Vitório
Pavanello, for the cordial words and devout sentiments you have
addressed to me on behalf of all. I am pleased to reciprocate with my
good wishes for the peace and prosperity of the Brazilian people on
their important National Feast Day.
As Successor of Peter and Universal Pastor, I can assure
you that every day I feel your anxieties and apostolic efforts in my
heart and never cease to remember to God the challenges you face in the
development of your diocesan communities. In these days, and in Brazil,
the labourers in the Lord's harvest continue to be few for a harvest
that is abundant (cf. Mt 9:36-37). In spite of this shortage, the
satisfactory formation of those who are called to serve the People of
God remains truly essential.
For this reason, in the context of the Year for Priests
that we are celebrating, may I be permitted to pause today to reflect
with you, beloved Bishops of the Western Brazil, on the concern that
marks your episcopal ministry which is to generate new pastors.
Although God is the only one who can plant the call to
the pastoral service of his people in the human heart, all the members
of the Church should question themselves on the deep urgency and real
commitment with which they feel and live this cause. One day, Jesus
answered several disciples who were stalling, saying that there were
"yet four months" to go before the harvest, with the words: "I tell you,
lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest"
(Jn 4:35).
God does not see as human beings see! The urgent need of
the good Lord is dictated by his wish that "all men... be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tm 2:4). There are many who seem
to want to spend their whole life in an instant and others who wander in
tedium and inertia or who abandon themselves to every sort of violence.
Basically, these are nothing other than desperate lives in search of
hope, as a widespread
—
if sometimes confused
—
thirst for spirituality shows, a renewed quest for landmarks in order to
continue on the journey through life.
Beloved Brothers, in the decades that followed the
Second Vatican Council, some have interpreted openness to the world not
as a requirement of the missionary zeal of the Heart of Christ, but
rather as a passage to secularization, seeing in it several values of
great Christian depth, such as equality, freedom and solidarity, and
showing that they were ready to make concessions and to discover areas
of cooperation.
So it was that certain leading clerics took part in
ethical debates in response to the expectations of public opinion, but
people stopped speaking of certain fundamental truths of faith, such as
sin, grace, theological life and the last things. They were
unconsciously caught up in the self-secularization of many ecclesial
communities; these, hoping to please those who did not come, saw the
members they already had leave, deprived and disappointed.
When they meet us, our contemporaries want to see what
they see nowhere else, that is, the joy and hope that come from being
with the Risen Lord.
Today there is a new generation born into this
secularized ecclesial context. Instead of showing openness and
consensus, it sees the abyss of differences and opposition to the
Magisterium of the Church growing ever wider, especially in the field of
ethics. In this desert without God, the new generation feels a deep
thirst for transcendence.
It is the youth of this generation who knock at the
doors of the seminary and need formation teachers who are real men of
God, priests totally dedicated to formation, who witness to the gift of
themselves to the Church through celibacy and an austere life, in
accordance with the model of Christ the Good Shepherd.
Thus, these young men will learn to be sensitive to the
encounter with the Lord in daily participation in the Eucharist, in
loving silence and prayer and in seeking, in the first place, the glory
of God and the salvation of souls.
Beloved Brothers, as you know it is the Bishop's task to
establish the fundamental criteria for the formation of seminarians and
priests in fidelity to the universal norms of the Church: it is in this
spirit that the reflections on the theme must be developed, the object
of the Plenary Assembly of your Episcopal Conference that took place
last April.
With the certainty that I can count on your zeal in all
that concerns formation to the priesthood, I ask all Bishops, their
priests and the seminarians, to reflect in their own lives the love of
Christ the Priest and Good Shepherd, as did the Holy Curé
d'Ars. And, like him, may they take as their model and the protector of
their vocation the Virgin Mother who answered uniquely to God's call,
conceiving in her heart and in her flesh the Word made man, to give him
to humanity. Please take back to your dioceses, together with a cordial
greeting and the assurance of my prayers, a fatherly Apostolic Blessing.
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