Holy Mass in Porto Alegre (5 July 1980)

On 5 July 1980, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass in Porto Alegre. In his homily, the Pope stressed the words of Saint Peter, "Stand firm in the faith" (1Pt 5: 9 ) : firm in full and sincere interior adherence to the Gospel; and firm in the external profession, alien to any intemperance or irreverence towards the opinions of others."

Venerable brothers, dearest children!

1. “Laudetur Jesus Christus”! It is with the words of the Christian greeting that I wish to address you at this meeting arranged by Providence in the program of my trip to Brazil, at this moment of spiritual fullness.

I thank you for the comfort that your warm and cordial welcome gives me. But don't dwell on my humble person. Rather lift your minds to whom it represents and serves, to the Lord Jesus. It is in his name that I come to you. May all honor and glory go to him, who will shortly descend upon this altar, especially in these radiant days of the sweet and peaceful Eucharistic triumph in the land of Brazil.

First of all I would like to respond to your desire, perhaps unexpressed, to some questions that more or less consciously will have surfaced in your heart: why did the Pope come from so far to us? What are the reasons that led him to come?

Well, dear children, the reason is this: I have come to get to know you better, to listen to you, to enter into dialogue with you, to show you that the Church is close to you and shares your problems, your difficulties and sufferings, your hopes. I am the first Pope to come to this beautiful land. And so I have also come to thank the Lord together with you for the priceless gift bestowed upon you by the Catholic faith. Your marvelous country, where nature has lavished immense riches, is a young country, open to the future, full of vitality in every sector of human activity. But your greatest wealth is the religious and moral heritage of your Christian tradition. This heritage not only deserves to be preserved at any cost, but must also be part of the upward movement of the nation,

By fulfilling the mission received through Peter and his successors, I have come to confirm you in the faith. Paul traveled through the cities already evangelized exhorting Christians to persevere in the apostolic teaching and confirming them in the faith they had received (cf. Acts 16:4-5). I ask God that this apostolic journey of mine has the same meaning for you and obtains the same result.

Therefore, dearest children, the most beautiful wish I can give you, the delivery I intend to leave you as a souvenir of my journey are the words of Saint Peter to the communities of the nascent Church: "Stand firm in the faith" (1Pt 5: 9 ) : firm in full and sincere interior adherence to the Gospel; and firm in the external profession, alien to any intemperance or irreverence towards the opinions of others, but frank, courageous, coherent, persevering, worthy of the faith of your fathers.

2. You are a nation today in the process of fervent transformation. This entails significant changes, as you well know, regarding not only the exterior face of the country, but even more so the interior face of the life and customs of the people.

Are the Christians of Brazil prepared to withstand the shock caused by this transition from the old to the new economic and social structures? Is their faith able to remain steadfast?

In other times, the limited supply of an elementary teaching and that sincere popular religiosity so deeply rooted with its various expressions in the social and cultural context of your nation was enough for many.

Not anymore today. The dissemination of culture, a critical spirit, the publicity of all issues and debates require a more complete and in-depth knowledge of the faith. Popular religiosity itself must be nourished with an ever greater clarification of the revealed truth and freed from those elements that make it appear inauthentic. He needs that solid food that St. Paul speaks of.

In other words, a serious and systematic effort of catechesis is needed. Here is the problem that arises for you today in all its gravity and urgency.

Providentially this effort is already underway in your country. It corresponds to the fundamental task of the Church, to her primary and specific mission. "Evangelized by the Lord - so your Bishops expressed themselves in Puebla - in his Spirit, we are sent to bring this good news to all our brothers and sisters, especially the poor and forgotten" ( Puebla , 164).

This is a grandiose task, for which we are all called to make our contribution. A building is made up of many stones, its construction is the joint fruit of whoever conceived it and whoever carried out the design.

3. So it is with the Church as we see it today. The great craftsman is God, who conceived it and continues to give it life: but the stones are those who have acted as docile instruments ready for the action of the Holy Spirit and who have passed on to us this wonderful legacy of faith. Now it is up to us to continue and expand it, so that the advent of the kingdom of God may take place.

What more beautiful service than that of the catechist who announces the divine word, who unites himself with love, trust and respect to his brother to help him discover and implement God's providential designs for him?

But it is also an extremely arduous and delicate task, because catechesis is not a mere teaching, but the transmission of a life message, which is never possible to find in other sublime expressions of human thought.

By saying “message” we are saying something more than doctrine. How many doctrines, in fact, fail to become a message!

The message is not limited to proposing ideas, but demands a response, because it is interpellation between people, between the one who proposes and the one who responds.

The message is life. Christ announced the good news, salvation and happiness: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are the persecuted..." (cf. Mt 5:3-11). And again: "My peace I leave with you, my joy I give to you" (cf. Jn 14:27; 15:11).

The crowds listened to him because they saw in him hope and the fullness of life (cf. Jn 10:10).

It is also necessary to respect this divine message, since man is not the judge of God's word and work (cf. John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae , 17. 29. 30. 49. 52. 58. 59.). He must respect it by remaining faithful above all to Christ, to his truth, to his mandate, otherwise there would be alteration, betrayal: and at the same time remaining faithful to man, the recipient of the Lord's word and message. Not the abstract, imaginary man, but the concrete one, who lives in time, with its dramas and its hopes. It is to this man that the Gospel must be proclaimed, so that in it and through it he receives from the Spirit the strength to realize himself fully, in the integrity of his being and his values.

The efficacy of catechesis, therefore, will largely depend on its ability to give meaning, the Christian meaning, to all that constitutes the life of man in his time, man among men, citizen among citizens.

4. With regard to the theme of catechesis, as you know, the thought of the Church was extensively set out in the recent apostolic exhortation "Catechesi Tradendae". It is not my intention to repeat what was said in that document. However, I would like to recall some points which touch more closely the needs of the Brazilian Church.

First of all, catechesis in the family. The early years of the child form the basis and foundation of his future. For this reason parents must understand the importance of their function in this regard. By virtue of the sacrament of baptism and marriage they are the first catechists of their children: in fact, to educate is to continue the act of procreation. In this age God passes in particular "through the mediation of the family" (Sacrae Congregationis Pro Clericis, Directorium Catechisticum Generale , 79).

Babies and children need to learn and see parents who love each other, who respect the Lord, who know how to explain the first truths of the faith (cf. John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae, 36), who know how to present the "Christian content ” in the witness and perseverance “of a daily life lived according to the Gospel” ( ibid ., 68).

Testimony is essential. The word of God is effective in itself, but takes on a concrete meaning when it becomes reality in the person who proclaims it. This is especially true for children and young people who are not yet able to distinguish between the truth being proclaimed and the life of the one who proclaims it. For the child there is no difference between the mother who prays and prayer; on the contrary, prayer has a particular value because it is the mother's prayer.

May it not happen, dear parents who are listening to me, that your children reach human, civil and professional maturity, and still remain children in the religious field! It is not accurate to say that faith is a choice to be made in adulthood. True choice presupposes knowledge, and one can never choose between things that have not been wisely and adequately proposed.

Catechist parents, the Church has faith in you, the Church expects a lot from you!

I also want to strongly recommend parish catechesis.

The parish is the place where catechesis can be expressed in all its richness. Here listening to the word is joined to prayer, to the celebration of the Eucharist and the other sacraments, to fraternal communion and to the exercise of charity. Here the Christian mystery is proclaimed and lived. It is urgent that every parish becomes the place where catechesis occupies the greatest attention and finds "its own vocation" which is that of being a fraternal and welcoming family home, where the baptized and confirmed become aware of being the People of God" ( Ibid , 67).

There is also religious teaching in schools.

In the school the citizen is trained through culture and professional training.

The education of religious conscience is a right of the human person. The young person demands to be introduced to all dimensions of culture and also asks to find in school the possibility of becoming aware of the fundamental problems of existence, among which, in the first place, there is that of the answer to be given to God. real life choices can be made when one pretends to ignore religion, which has so much to say, or when one wishes to restrict it to a vague and neutral teaching, and therefore useless, because it has no reference to concrete models consistent with traditions and the culture of a people.

The Church, in supporting this task of the school, has not thought and does not think of privileges; it advocates a broad integral education and the rights of the family and of the person.

5. Lastly, I intend to recall the great contribution that comes from the means of social communication.

We cannot fail to admire their great development. For them, culture reaches everywhere, there are no more barriers of space and time. They penetrate into the intimacy of homes and into the humblest and most distant places.

The advantages they offer are many: they inform quickly, they educate, they amuse, they bring men into brothers, they add to the rational expression the image, the symbol, the personal relationship; the word is combined with the aesthetic and artistic expression.

Their power is such as to give strength to what they talk about and to diminish what they are silent about.

They can also present risks, such as those of leveled and therefore reduced culture; of passivity and emotion, and therefore of the impoverishment of the critical sense; of manipulation, and therefore of the drive towards evasion and hedonism.

The defects, however, do not belong to the technique and its means, but to the man who uses them. Catechesis, which until now has been expressed above all in the written form, is called to express itself more and more also through these new instruments. The task is great and demanding: it is necessary to work in the mass media and at the same time educate in the use of these tools (cf. Inter Mirifica , 3). We will also build the Church to the extent that we know how to operate in this field.

6. Dear children, a catechesis, even if substantial and sure, would be of little value if it were not imparted with effective expressions and aided by those teaching aids which today are becoming ever richer and more suggestive. Catechesis requires a special "ars docendi", a special pedagogy, to possess which common information, often approximate and empirical, such as any priest or religious or any religiously educated lay person can have, is not enough. Many cultural, didactic and above all moral elements are necessary to give the catechist the prestige and effectiveness that must qualify him. Isn't there perhaps the danger that, lacking these requisites, the teaching of catechesis will be not only fruitless, but sometimes even harmful? For this reason, with great satisfaction we also see among you the emergence and multiplication of catechetical schools, to offer catechists progressively updated doctrinal, didactic and spiritual preparation. It is therefore understandable the wish, full of lively hope, accompanied by insistent prayers, which I formulate for the happy and fruitful outcome of all these provident initiatives.

Today's Gospel spoke to us, through symbols, of life and growth, perhaps slow, but constant: it is the seed that, thrown into the earth, develops until it becomes an ear; it is the grain of mustard that becomes a shrub on which the birds of the sky shelter (cf. Mk 4,1-2.26-32). May each of you meditate well on the meaning of these words of the Lord and, living your specific vocation and mission in the Church, have this life within yourself and participate in this growth, to help others too to grow in strong and mature faith.

Dearest children, I have spoken to you with deep affection, I have given you some directives, but above all I have intended to encourage you. May the Lord bless you on the path you have happily undertaken. I entrust you all to the protection of Mary Most Holy, "mother and model of catechists" (John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae , 73).

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