| Being a Priest Means Becoming an Ever Closer
Friend of Jesus with the Whole of One's Existence On
Holy Thursday morning, 13 April, in St. Peter's Basilica, the Holy Father
was the Principal Celebrant at the Chrism Mass, with more than 1,500
priests us concelebrants. The following is a translation of the Pope's
Homily, which was given in Italian.
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sister,
Holy Thursday is the day on which the Lord gave the Twelve the priestly
task of celebrating, in the bread and the wine, the Sacrament of his Body
and Blood until he comes again. The paschal lamb and all the sacrifices of
the Old Covenant are replaced by the gift of his Body and his Blood, the
gift of himself.
Thus, the new worship was based on the fact that, in the first place,
God makes a gift to us, and, filled with this gift, we become his:
creation returns to the Creator.
So it is that the priesthood also became something new: it was no
longer a question of lineage but of discovering oneself in the mystery of
Jesus Christ. He is always the One who gives, who draws us to himself.
He alone can say: "This is my Body... this is my Blood". The mystery of
the priesthood of the Church lies in the fact that we, miserable human
beings, by virtue of the Sacrament, can speak with his "I": in persona
Christi. He wishes to exercise his priesthood through us.
On Holy Thursday, we remember in a special way this moving mystery,
which moves us anew in every celebration of the Sacrament.
So that daily life will not dull what is great and mysterious, we need
this specific commemoration, we need to return to that hour in which he
placed his hands upon us and made us share in this mystery.
Why the hands?
Let us reflect once again on the signs in which the Sacrament has been
given to us. At the centre is the very ancient rite of the imposition of
hands, with which he took possession of me, saving to me: "You belong to
me".
However, in saying this he also said: "You are under the protection of
my hands. You are under the protection of my heart. You are kept safely in
the palm of my hands, and this is precisely how you find yourself in the
immensity of my love. Stay in my hands, and give me yours".
Then let us remember that our hands were anointed with oil; which is
the sign of the Holy Spirit and his power. Why one's hands? The human hand
is the instrument of human action, it is the symbol of the human capacity
to face the world, precisely to "take it in hand".
The Lord has laid his hands upon us and he now wants our hands so that
they may become his own in the world. He no longer wants them to be
instruments for taking things, people or the world for ourselves, to
reduce them to being our possession, but instead, by putting ourselves at
the service of his love, they can pass on his divine touch.
He wants our hands to be instruments of service, hence, an expression
of the mission of the whole person who vouches for him and brings him to
men and women. If human hands symbolically represent human faculties and,
in general, skill as power to dispose of the world, then anointed hands
must be a sign of the human capacity for giving, for creativity in shaping
the world with love. It is for this reason, of course, that we are in need
of the Holy Spirit.
Anointing, a sign of service
In the Old Testament. anointing is the sign of being taken into
service: the king, the prophet, the priest, each does and gives more than
what derives from himself alone. In a certain way, he is emptied of
himself, so as to serve by making himself available to One who is greater
than he.
If, in today's Gospel, Jesus presents himself as the Anointed One, the
Christ, then this itself means that he is acting for the Father's mission
and in unity with the Holy Spirit. He is thereby giving the world a new
kingship, a new priesthood, a new way of being a prophet who does not seek
himself but lives for the One with a view to whom the world was created.
Today, let us once again put our hands at his disposal and pray to him
to take us by the hand, again and again, and lead us.
In the sacramental gesture of the imposition of hands by the Bishop, it
was the Lord himself who laid his hands upon us. This sacramental sign
sums up an entire existential process.
Once, like the first disciples, we encountered the Lord and heard his
words: "Follow me!" Perhaps, to start with, we followed him somewhat
hesitantly, looking back and wondering if this really was the road for us.
And at some point on the journey, we may have had the same experience as
Peter after the miraculous catch; in other words, we may have been
frightened by its size, by the size of the task and by the inadequacy of
our own poor selves, so that we wanted to turn back. "Depart from me, for
I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Lk 5:8).
Then, however, with great kindness, he took us by the hand, he drew us
to himself and said to us: "Do not fear: I am with you. I will not abandon
you, do not leave me!".
And more than just once, the same thing that happened to Peter may have
happened to us: while he was walking on the water towards the Lord, he
suddenly realized that the water was not holding him up and that he was
beginning to sink. And like Peter we cried, "Lord, save me" (Mt 14:30).
Seeing the elements raging on all sides, how could we get through the
roaring, foaming waters of the past century, of the past millennium?
But then we looked towards him... and he grasped us by the hand and
gave us a new "specific weight": the lightness that derives from faith and
draws us upwards. Then he stretched out to us the hand that sustains and
carries us. He supports us. Let us fix our gaze ever anew on him and reach
out to him. Let us allow his hand to take ours, and then we will not sink
but will serve the life that is stronger than death and the love that is
stronger than hatred.
Faith in Jesus, Son of the living God, is the means through which, time
and again, we can take hold of Jesus' hand and in which he takes our hands
and guides us.
One of my favourite prayers is the request that the Liturgy puts on our
lips before Communion: "...never let me he separated from you". Let us ask
that we never fall away from communion with his Body, with Christ himself,
that we do not fall away from the Eucharistic mystery. Let us ask that he
will never let go of our hands....
No longer servants
The Lord laid his hand upon us. He expressed the meaning of this
gesture in these words: "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant
does not know what his master is doing: but I have called you friends, for
all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (Jn 15:15).
I no longer call you servants but friends: in these words one could
actually perceive the institution of the priesthood. The Lord makes us his
friends; he entrusts everything to us; he entrusts himself to us, so that
we can speak with he himself — in persona Christi capitis.
What trust! He has truly delivered himself into our hands. The
essential signs of priestly ordination are basically all a manifestation
of those words: the laying on of hands; the consignment of the book — of
his words that he entrusts to us: the consignment of the chalice, with
which he transmits to us his most profound and personal mystery.
The power to absolve is part of all this. It also makes us share in his
awareness of the misery of sin and of all the darkness in the world, and
places in our hands the key to reopen the door to the Father's house.
I no longer call you servants but friends. This is the profound meaning
of being a priest: becoming the friend of Jesus Christ. For this
friendship we must daily recommit ourselves.
Friendship means sharing in thought and will. We must put into practice
this communion of thought with Jesus, as St. Paul tells us in his Letter
to the Philippians (cf. 2:2-5). And this communion of thought is not a
purely intellectual thing, but a sharing of sentiments and will, hence,
also of actions. This means that we should know Jesus in an increasingly
personal way, listening to him, living together with him, staying with
him.
Listening to him — in lectio divina, that is, reading Sacred
Scripture in a non-academic but spiritual way; thus, we learn to encounter
Jesus present, who speaks to us. We must reason and reflect, before him
and with him, on his words and actions. The reading of Sacred Scripture is
prayer, it must be prayer — it must
emerge from prayer and lead to prayer.
The Evangelists tell us that the Lord frequently withdrew — for entire
nights — "to the mountains". to pray alone. We too need these mountains:
they are inner peaks that we must scale, the mountain of prayer.
Only in this way does the friendship develop. Only in this way can we
carry out our priestly service, only in this way can we take Christ and
his Gospel to men and women.
Being active contemplatives
Activism by itself can even be heroic, but in the end external action
is fruitless and loses its effectiveness unless it is born from deep inner
communion with Christ. The time we spend on this is truly a time of
pastoral activity, authentic pastoral activity. The priest must above all
be a man of prayer.
The world in its frenetic activism often loses its direction. Its
action and capacities become destructive if they lack the power of prayer,
from which flow the waters of life that irrigate the and land.
I no longer call you servants, but friends. The core of the
priesthood is being friends of Jesus Christ. Only in this way can we truly
speak in persona Christi, even if our inner remoteness from Christ
cannot jeopardize the validity of the Sacrament, Being a friend of Jesus,
being a priest, means being a man of prayer. In this way we recognize him
and emerge from the ignorance of simple servants. We thus learn to live,
suffer and act with him and for him.
Being friends with Jesus is par excellence always friendship with his
followers. We can be friends of Jesus only in communion with the whole of
Christ, with the Head and with the Body; in the vigorous vine of the
Church to which the Lord gives life.
Sacred Scripture is a living and actual Word, thanks to the Lord, only
in her. Without the living subject of the Church that embraces the ages,
more often than not the Bible would have splintered into heterogeneous
writings and would thus have become a book of the past. It is eloquent in
the present only where the "Presence" is — where Christ remains forever
contemporary with us: in the Body of his Church.
Being a priest means becoming an ever closer friend of Jesus Christ
with the whole of our existence. The world needs God — not just any god
but the God of Jesus Christ, the God who made himself flesh and blood, who
loved us to the point of dying for us, who rose and created within himself
room for man. This God must live in us and we in him. This is our priestly
call: only in this way can our action as priests bear fruit.
I would like to end this Homily with a word on Andrea Santoro, the
priest from the Diocese of Rome who was assassinated in Trebizond while he
was praying.
Cardinal Cé recounted to us during the Spiritual Exercises what Fr.
Santoro said. It reads: "I am here to dwell among these people and enable
Jesus to do so by lending him my flesh.... One becomes capable of
salvation only by offering one's own flesh. The evil in the world must be
borne and the pain shared, assimilating it into one's own flesh as did
Jesus".
Jesus assumed our flesh; let us give him our own. In this way he can
come into the world and transform it. Amen!
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