|
Pope
Benedict XVI - Addresses |
"Obedience ... Must Be Free of
Intellectual Conformism"
Ecumenical Celebration at Westminster
Abbey
H.H. Benedict XVI
September 17, 2010
www.zenit.org
[Initial words]
Your Grace, Mr. Dean,
Dear Friends in Christ,
I thank you for your gracious welcome. This
noble edifice evokes England’s long history,
so deeply marked by the preaching of the
Gospel and the Christian culture to which it
gave birth. I come here today as a pilgrim
from Rome, to pray before the tomb of Saint
Edward the Confessor and to join you in
imploring the gift of Christian unity. May
these moments of prayer and friendship
confirm us in love for Jesus Christ, our
Lord and Saviour, and in common witness to
the enduring power of the Gospel to illumine
the future of this great nation.
[Discourse]
Dear friends in Christ,
I thank the Lord for this opportunity to
join you, the representatives of the
Christian confessions present in Great
Britain, in this magnificent Abbey Church
dedicated to Saint Peter, whose architecture
and history speak so eloquently of our
common heritage of faith. Here we cannot
help but be reminded of how greatly the
Christian faith shaped the unity and culture
of Europe and the heart and spirit of the
English people. Here too, we are forcibly
reminded that what we share, in Christ, is
greater than what continues to divide us.
I am grateful to His Grace the Archbishop of
Canterbury for his kind greeting, and to the
Dean and Chapter of this venerable Abbey for
their cordial welcome. I thank the Lord for
allowing me, as the Successor of Saint Peter
in the See of Rome, to make this pilgrimage
to the tomb of Saint Edward the Confessor.
Edward, King of England, remains a model of
Christian witness and an example of that
true grandeur to which the Lord summons his
disciples in the Scriptures we have just
heard: the grandeur of a humility and
obedience grounded in Christ’s own example
(cf. Phil 2:6-8), the grandeur of a fidelity
which does not hesitate to embrace the
mystery of the Cross out of undying love for
the divine Master and unfailing hope in his
promises (cf. Mk 10:43-44).
This year, as we know, marks the hundredth
anniversary of the modern ecumenical
movement, which began with the Edinburgh
Conference’s appeal for Christian unity as
the prerequisite for a credible and
convincing witness to the Gospel in our
time. In commemorating this anniversary, we
must give thanks for the remarkable progress
made towards this noble goal through the
efforts of committed Christians of every
denomination. At the same time, however, we
remain conscious of how much yet remains to
be done. In a world marked by growing
interdependence and solidarity, we are
challenged to proclaim with renewed
conviction the reality of our reconciliation
and liberation in Christ, and to propose the
truth of the Gospel as the key to an
authentic and integral human development. In
a society which has become increasingly
indifferent or even hostile to the Christian
message, we are all the more compelled to
give a joyful and convincing account of the
hope that is within us (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), and
to present the Risen Lord as the response to
the deepest questions and spiritual
aspirations of the men and women of our
time.
As we processed to the chancel at the
beginning of this service, the choir sang
that Christ is our "sure foundation". He is
the Eternal Son of God, of one substance
with the Father, who took flesh, as the
Creed states, "for us men and for our
salvation". He alone has the words of
everlasting life. In him, as the Apostle
teaches, "all things hold together" … "for
in him all the fullness of God was pleased
to dwell" (Col 1:17,19).
Our commitment to Christian unity is born of
nothing less than our faith in Christ, in
this Christ, risen from the dead and seated
at the right hand of the Father, who will
come again in glory to judge the living and
the dead. It is the reality of Christ’s
person, his saving work and above all the
historical fact of his resurrection, which
is the content of the apostolic kerygma and
those credal formulas which, beginning in
the New Testament itself, have guaranteed
the integrity of its transmission. The
Church’s unity, in a word, can never be
other than a unity in the apostolic faith,
in the faith entrusted to each new member of
the Body of Christ during the rite of
Baptism. It is this faith which unites us to
the Lord, makes us sharers in his Holy
Spirit, and thus, even now, sharers in the
life of the Blessed Trinity, the model of
the Church’s koinonia here below.
Dear friends, we are all aware of the
challenges, the blessings, the
disappointments and the signs of hope which
have marked our ecumenical journey. Tonight
we entrust all of these to the Lord,
confident in his providence and the power of
his grace. We know that the friendships we
have forged, the dialogue which we have
begun and the hope which guides us will
provide strength and direction as we
persevere on our common journey. At the same
time, with evangelical realism, we must also
recognize the challenges which confront us,
not only along the path of Christian unity,
but also in our task of proclaiming Christ
in our day. Fidelity to the word of God,
precisely because it is a true word, demands
of us an obedience which leads us together
to a deeper understanding of the Lord’s
will, an obedience which must be free of
intellectual conformism or facile
accommodation to the spirit of the age. This
is the word of encouragement which I wish to
leave with you this evening, and I do so in
fidelity to my ministry as the Bishop of
Rome and the Successor of Saint Peter,
charged with a particular care for the unity
of Christ’s flock.
Gathered in this ancient monastic church, we
can recall the example of a great Englishman
and churchman whom we honour in common:
Saint Bede the Venerable. At the dawn of a
new age in the life of society and of the
Church, Bede understood both the importance
of fidelity to the word of God as
transmitted by the apostolic tradition, and
the need for creative openness to new
developments and to the demands of a sound
implantation of the Gospel in contemporary
language and culture.
This nation, and the Europe which Bede and
his contemporaries helped to build, once
again stands at the threshold of a new age.
May Saint Bede’s example inspire the
Christians of these lands to rediscover
their shared legacy, to strengthen what they
have in common, and to continue their
efforts to grow in friendship. May the Risen
Lord strengthen our efforts to mend the
ruptures of the past and to meet the
challenges of the present with hope in the
future which, in his providence, he holds
out to us and to our world. Amen.
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