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Pope Benedict XVI- Homilies |
Homily at Mass for
the
Solemnity of the Sacred Heart
"The Priesthood...is Not Simply Office but
Sacrament"
The Closing Mass of the
Year for Priests
St. Peter's Square
June 11, 2010
zenit.org
Dear Brothers in the Priestly Ministry,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Year for Priests which we have celebrated on the
one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the death of
the holy Curè of Ars, the model of priestly ministry
in our world, is now coming to an end. We have let
the Curé of Ars guide us to a renewed appreciation
of the grandeur and beauty of the priestly ministry.
The priest is not a mere office-holder, like those
which every society needs in order to carry out
certain functions. Instead, he does something which
no human being can do of his own power: in Christ’s
name he speaks the words which absolve us of our
sins and in this way he changes, starting with God,
our entire life. Over the offerings of bread and
wine he speaks Christ’s words of thanksgiving, which
are words of transubstantiation – words which make
Christ himself present, the Risen One, his Body and
Blood – words which thus transform the elements of
the world, which open the world to God and unite it
to him.
The priesthood, then, is not simply "office" but
sacrament: God makes use of us poor men in order to
be, through us, present to all men and women, and to
act on their behalf. This audacity of God who
entrusts himself to human beings – who, conscious of
our weaknesses, nonetheless considers men capable of
acting and being present in his stead – this
audacity of God is the true grandeur concealed in
the word "priesthood". That God thinks that we are
capable of this; that in this way he calls men to
his service and thus from within binds himself to
them: this is what we wanted to reflect upon and
appreciate anew over the course of the past year. We
wanted to reawaken our joy at how close God is to
us, and our gratitude for the fact that he entrusts
himself to our infirmities; that he guides and
sustains us daily. In this way we also wanted to
demonstrate once again to young people that this
vocation, this fellowship of service for God and
with God, does exist – and that God is indeed
waiting for us to say "yes".
Together with the whole Church we wanted to make
clear once again that we have to ask God for this
vocation. We have to beg for workers for God’s
harvest, and this petition to God is, at the same
time, his own way of knocking on the hearts of young
people who consider themselves able to do what God
considers them able to do. It was to be expected
that this new radiance of the priesthood would not
be pleasing to the "enemy"; he would have rather
preferred to see it disappear, so that God would
ultimately be driven out of the world. And so it
happened that, in this very year of joy for the
sacrament of the priesthood, the sins of priests
came to light – particularly the abuse of the little
ones, in which the priesthood, whose task is to
manifest God’s concern for our good, turns into its
very opposite. We too insistently beg forgiveness
from God and from the persons involved, while
promising to do everything possible to ensure that
such abuse will never occur again; and that in
admitting men to priestly ministry and in their
formation we will do everything we can to weigh the
authenticity of their vocation and make every effort
to accompany priests along their journey, so that
the Lord will protect them and watch over them in
troubled situations and amid life’s dangers.
Had the Year for Priests been a glorification of our
individual human performance, it would have been
ruined by these events. But for us what happened was
precisely the opposite: we grew in gratitude for
God’s gift, a gift concealed in "earthen vessels"
which ever anew, even amid human weakness, makes his
love concretely present in this world. So let us
look upon all that happened as a summons to
purification, as a task which we bring to the future
and which makes us acknowledge and love all the more
the great gift we have received from God. In this
way, his gift becomes a commitment to respond to
God’s courage and humility by our own courage and
our own humility. The word of God, which we have
sung in the Entrance Antiphon of today’s liturgy,
can speak to us, at this hour, of what it means to
become and to be a priest: "Take my yoke upon you,
and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble of
heart" (Mt 11:29).
We are celebrating the feast of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, and in the liturgy we peer, as it were, into
the heart of Jesus opened in death by the spear of
the Roman soldier. Jesus’ heart was indeed opened
for us and before us – and thus God’s own heart was
opened. The liturgy interprets for us the language
of Jesus’ heart, which tells us above all that God
is the shepherd of mankind, and so it reveals to us
Jesus’ priesthood, which is rooted deep within his
heart; so too it shows us the perennial foundation
and the effective criterion of all priestly
ministry, which must always be anchored in the heart
of Jesus and lived out from that starting-point.
Today I would like to meditate especially on those
texts with which the Church in prayer responds to
the word of God presented in the readings. In those
chants, word (Wort) and response (Antwort)
interpenetrate. On the one hand, the chants are
themselves drawn from the word of God, yet on the
other, they are already our human response to that
word, a response in which the word itself is
communicated and enters into our lives. The most
important of those texts in today’s liturgy is Psalm
23(22) – "The Lord is my shepherd" – in which Israel
at prayer received God’s self-revelation as
shepherd, and made this the guide of its own life.
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want": this
first verse expresses joy and gratitude for the fact
that God is present to and concerned for humanity.
The reading from the Book of Ezechiel begins with
the same theme: "I myself will look after and tend
my sheep" (Ez 34:11). God personally looks after me,
after us, after all mankind. I am not abandoned,
adrift in the universe and in a society which leaves
me ever more lost and bewildered. God looks after
me. He is not a distant God, for whom my life is
worthless. The world’s religions, as far as we can
see, have always known that in the end there is only
one God. But this God was distant. Evidently he had
abandoned the world to other powers and forces, to
other divinities. It was with these that one had to
deal. The one God was good, yet aloof. He was not
dangerous, nor was he very helpful. Consequently one
didn’t need to worry about him. He did not lord it
over us.
Oddly, this kind of thinking re-emerged during the
Enlightenment. There was still a recognition that
the world presupposes a Creator. Yet this God, after
making the world, had evidently withdrawn from it.
The world itself had a certain set of laws by which
it ran, and God did not, could not, intervene in
them. God was only a remote cause. Many perhaps did
not even want God to look after them. They did not
want God to get in the way. But wherever God’s
loving concern is perceived as getting in the way,
human beings go awry.
It is fine and consoling to know that there is
someone who loves me and looks after me. But it is
far more important that there is a God who knows me,
loves me and is concerned about me. "I know my own
and my own know me" (Jn 10:14), the Church says
before the Gospel with the Lord’s words. God knows
me, he is concerned about me. This thought should
make us truly joyful. Let us allow it to penetrate
the depths of our being. Then let us also realize
what it means: God wants us, as priests, in one tiny
moment of history, to share his concern about
people. As priests, we want to be persons who share
his concern for men and women, who take care of them
and provide them with a concrete experience of God’s
concern. Whatever the field of activity entrusted to
him, the priest, with the Lord, ought to be able to
say: "I know my sheep and mine know me". "To know",
in the idiom of sacred Scripture, never refers to
merely exterior knowledge, like the knowledge of
someone’s telephone number. "Knowing" means being
inwardly close to another person. It means loving
him or her. We should strive to "know" men and women
as God does and for God’s sake; we should strive to
walk with them along the path of friendship with
God.
Let us return to our Psalm. There we read: "He leads
me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I
walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for
you are with me; your rod and your staff – they
comfort me" (23[22]:3ff.). The shepherd points out
the right path to those entrusted to him. He goes
before them and leads them. Let us put it
differently: the Lord shows us the right way to be
human. He teaches us the art of being a person. What
must I do in order not to fall, not to squander my
life in meaninglessness? This is precisely the
question which every man and woman must ask and one
which remains valid at every moment of one’s life.
How much darkness surrounds this question in our own
day! We are constantly reminded of the words of
Jesus, who felt compassion for the crowds because
they were like a flock without a shepherd. Lord,
have mercy on us too! Show us the way! From the
Gospel we know this much: he is himself the way.
Living with Christ, following him – this means
finding the right way, so that our lives can be
meaningful and so that one day we might say: "Yes,
it was good to have lived". The people of Israel
continue to be grateful to God because in the
Commandments he pointed out the way of life. The
great Psalm 119(118) is a unique expression of joy
for this fact: we are not fumbling in the dark. God
has shown us the way and how to walk aright. The
message of the Commandments was synthesized in the
life of Jesus and became a living model. Thus we
understand that these rules from God are not chains,
but the way which he is pointing out to us. We can
be glad for them and rejoice that in Christ they
stand before us as a lived reality. He himself has
made us glad. By walking with Christ, we experience
the joy of Revelation, and as priests we need to
communicate to others our own joy at the fact that
we have been shown the right way.
Then there is the phrase about the "darkest valley"
through which the Lord leads us. Our path as
individuals will one day lead us into the valley of
the shadow of death, where no one can accompany us.
Yet he will be there. Christ himself descended into
the dark night of death. Even there he will not
abandon us. Even there he will lead us. "If I sink
to the nether world, you are present there", says
Psalm 139(138). Truly you are there, even in the
throes of death, and hence our Responsorial Psalm
can say: even there, in the darkest valley, I fear
no evil. When speaking of the darkest valley, we can
also think of the dark valleys of temptation,
discouragement and trial through which everyone has
to pass. Even in these dark valleys of life he is
there. Lord, in the darkness of temptation, at the
hour of dusk when all light seems to have died away,
show me that you are there. Help us priests, so that
we can remain beside the persons entrusted to us in
these dark nights. So that we can show them your own
light.
"Your rod and your staff – they comfort me": the
shepherd needs the rod as protection against savage
beasts ready to pounce on the flock; against robbers
looking for prey. Along with the rod there is the
staff which gives support and helps to make
difficult crossings. Both of these are likewise part
of the Church’s ministry, of the priest’s ministry.
The Church too must use the shepherd’s rod, the rod
with which he protects the faith against those who
falsify it, against currents which lead the flock
astray. The use of the rod can actually be a service
of love. Today we can see that it has nothing to do
with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life
is tolerated. Nor does it have to do with love if
heresy is allowed to spread and the faith twisted
and chipped away, as if it were something that we
ourselves had invented. As if it were no longer
God’s gift, the precious pearl which we cannot let
be taken from us. Even so, the rod must always
become once again the shepherd’s staff – a staff
which helps men and women to tread difficult paths
and to follow the Lord.
At the end of the Psalm we read of the table which
is set, the oil which anoints the head, the cup
which overflows, and dwelling in the house of the
Lord. In the Psalm this is an expression first and
foremost of the prospect of the festal joy of being
in God’s presence in the temple, of being his guest,
whom he himself serves, of dwelling with him. For
us, who pray this Psalm with Christ and his Body
which is the Church, this prospect of hope takes on
even greater breadth and depth. We see in these
words a kind of prophetic foreshadowing of the
mystery of the Eucharist, in which God himself makes
us his guests and offers himself to us as food –as
that bread and fine wine which alone can
definitively sate man’s hunger and thirst. How can
we not rejoice that one day we will be guests at the
very table of God and live in his dwelling-place?
How can we not rejoice at the fact that he has
commanded us: "Do this in memory of me"? How can we
not rejoice that he has enabled us to set God’s
table for men and women, to give them his Body and
his Blood, to offer them the precious gift of his
very presence. Truly we can pray together, with all
our heart, the words of the Psalm: "Goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life" (Ps
23[22]:6).
Finally, let us take a brief look at the two
communion antiphons which the Church offers us in
her liturgy today. First there are the words with
which Saint John concludes the account of Jesus’
crucifixion: "One of the soldiers pierced his side
with a spear, and at once blood and water came out"
(Jn 19:34). The heart of Jesus is pierced by the
spear. Once opened, it becomes a fountain: the water
and the blood which stream forth recall the two
fundamental sacraments by which the Church lives:
Baptism and the Eucharist. From the Lord’s pierced
side, from his open heart, there springs the living
fountain which continues to well up over the
centuries and which makes the Church. The open heart
is the source of a new stream of life; here John was
certainly also thinking of the prophecy of Ezechiel
who saw flowing forth from the new temple a torrent
bestowing fruitfulness and life (Ez 47): Jesus
himself is the new temple, and his open heart is the
source of a stream of new life which is communicated
to us in Baptism and the Eucharist.
The liturgy of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus also permits another phrase, similar to this,
to be used as the communion antiphon. It is taken
from the Gospel of John: Whoever is thirsty, let him
come to me. And let the one who believes in me
drink. As the Scripture has said: "Out of his heart
shall flow rivers of living water" (cf. Jn 7:37ff.)
In faith we drink, so to speak, of the living water
of God’s Word. In this way the believer himself
becomes a wellspring which gives living water to the
parched earth of history. We see this in the saints.
We see this in Mary, that great woman of faith and
love who has become in every generation a wellspring
of faith, love and life. Every Christian and every
priest should become, starting from Christ, a
wellspring which gives life to others. We ought to
be offering life-giving water to a parched and
thirst world. Lord, we thank you because for our
sake you opened your heart; because in your death
and in your resurrection you became the source of
life. Give us life, make us live from you as our
source, and grant that we too may be sources,
wellsprings capable of bestowing the water of life
in our time. We thank you for the grace of the
priestly ministry. Lord bless us, and bless all
those who in our time are thirsty and continue to
seek. Amen.
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