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Pope Benedict XVI- Homily |
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO AUSTRIA
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 850th ANNIVERSARY
OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE SHRINE OF MARIAZELL
"Whenever We Look Toward Mary, She Shows Us Jesus"
Homily of H.H. Benedict XVI
Square in front of the Marian Basilica of Mariazell
September 8, 2007
www.zenit.org
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
With our great pilgrimage to Mariazell, we are celebrating the
patronal feast of this Shrine, the feast of Our Lady's Birthday. For
850 years pilgrims have been travelling here from different peoples
and nations; they come to pray for the intentions of their hearts
and their homelands, bringing their deepest hopes and concerns. In
this way Mariazell has become a place of peace and reconciled unity,
not only for Austria, but far beyond her borders. Here we experience
the consoling kindness of the Madonna. Here we meet Jesus Christ, in
whom God is with us, as today's Gospel reminds us -- Jesus, of whom
we have just heard in the reading from the prophet Micah: "He
himself will be peace" (5:4). Today we join in the great
centuries-old pilgrimage. We rest awhile with the Mother of the
Lord, and we pray to her: Show us Jesus. Show to us pilgrims the one
who is both the way and the destination: the truth and the life.
The Gospel passage we have just heard broadens our view. It presents
the history of Israel from Abraham onwards as a pilgrimage, which,
with its ups and downs, its paths and detours, leads us finally to
Christ. The genealogy with its light and dark figures, its successes
and failures, shows us that God can write straight even on the
crooked lines of our history. God allows us our freedom, and yet in
our failures he can always find new paths for his love. God does not
fail. Hence this genealogy is a guarantee of God's faithfulness; a
guarantee that God does not allow us to fall, and an invitation to
direct our lives ever anew towards him, to walk ever anew towards
Jesus Christ.
Making a pilgrimage means setting out in a particular direction,
travelling towards a destination. This gives a beauty of its own
even to the journey and to the effort involved. Among the pilgrims
of Jesus's genealogy there were many who forgot the goal and wanted
to make themselves the goal. Again and again, though, the Lord
called forth people whose longing for the goal drove them forward,
people who directed their whole lives towards it. The awakening of
the Christian faith, the dawning of the Church of Jesus Christ was
made possible, because there were people in Israel whose hearts were
searching -- people who did not rest content with custom, but who
looked further ahead, in search of something greater: Zechariah,
Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, Mary and Joseph, the Twelve and many
others. Because their hearts were expectant, they were able to
recognize in Jesus the one whom God had sent, and thus they could
become the beginning of his worldwide family. The Church of the
Gentiles was made possible, because both in the Mediterranean area
and in those parts of Asia to which the messengers of Jesus
travelled, there were expectant people who were not satisfied by
what everyone around them was doing and thinking, but who were
seeking the star which could show them the way towards Truth itself,
towards the living God.
We too need an open and restless heart like theirs. This is what
pilgrimage is all about. Today as in the past, it is not enough to
be more or less like everyone else and to think like everyone else.
Our lives have a deeper purpose. We need God, the God who has shown
us his face and opened his heart to us: Jesus Christ. Saint John
rightly says of him that only he is God and rests close to the
Father's heart (cf. Jn 1:18); thus only he, from deep within God
himself, could reveal God to us -- reveal to us who we are, from
where we come and where we are going. Certainly, there are many
great figures in history who have had beautiful and moving
experiences of God. Yet these are still human experiences, and
therefore finite. Only He is God and therefore only He is the bridge
that truly brings God and man together. So if we Christians call him
the one universal Mediator of salvation, valid for everyone and,
ultimately, needed by everyone, this does not mean that we despise
other religions, nor are we arrogantly absolutizing our own ideas;
on the contrary, it means that we are gripped by him who has touched
our hearts and lavished gifts upon us, so that we, in turn, can
offer gifts to others. In fact, our faith is decisively opposed to
the attitude of resignation that considers man incapable of truth --
as if this were more than he could cope with.
This attitude of resignation with regard to truth, I am convinced,
lies at the heart of the crisis of the West, the crisis of Europe.
If truth does not exist for man, then neither can he ultimately
distinguish between good and evil. And then the great and wonderful
discoveries of science become double-edged: they can open up
significant possibilities for good, for the benefit of mankind, but
also, as we see only too clearly, they can pose a terrible threat,
involving the destruction of man and the world. We need truth. Yet
admittedly, in the light of our history we are fearful that faith in
the truth might entail intolerance. If we are gripped by this fear,
which is historically well grounded, then it is time to look towards
Jesus as we see him in the shrine at Mariazell. We see him here in
two images: as the child in his Mother's arms, and above the high
altar of the Basilica as the Crucified. These two images in the
Basilica tell us this: truth prevails not through external force,
but it is humble and it yields itself to man only via the inner
force of its veracity. Truth proves itself in love. It is never our
property, never our product, just as love can never be produced, but
only received and handed on as a gift. We need this inner force of
truth. As Christians we trust this force of truth. We are its
witnesses. We must hand it on as a gift in the same way as we have
received it, as it has given itself to us.
"To gaze upon Christ" is the motto of this day. For one who is
searching, this summons repeatedly turns into a spontaneous plea, a
plea addressed especially to Mary, who has given us Christ as her
Son: "Show us Jesus!" Let us make this prayer today with our whole
heart; let us make this prayer above and beyond the present moment,
as we inwardly seek the Face of the Redeemer. "Show us Jesus!" Mary
responds, showing him to us in the first instance as a child. God
has made himself small for us. God comes not with external force,
but he comes in the powerlessness of his love, which is where his
true strength lies. He places himself in our hands. He asks for our
love. He invites us to become small ourselves, to come down from our
high thrones and to learn to be childlike before God. He speaks to
us informally. He asks us to trust him and thus to learn how to live
in truth and love. The child Jesus naturally reminds us also of all
the children in the world, in whom he wishes to come to us. Children
who live in poverty; who are exploited as soldiers; who have never
been able to experience the love of parents; sick and suffering
children, but also those who are joyful and healthy. Europe has
become child-poor: we want everything for ourselves, and place
little trust in the future. Yet the earth will be deprived of a
future only when the forces of the human heart and of reason
illuminated by the heart are extinguished -- when the face of God no
longer shines upon the earth. Where God is, there is the future.
"To gaze upon Christ": let us look briefly now at the Crucified One
above the high altar. God saved the world not by the sword, but by
the Cross. In dying, Jesus extends his arms. This, in the first
place, is the posture of the Passion, in which he lets himself be
nailed to the Cross for us, in order to give us his life. Yet
outstretched arms are also the posture of one who prays, the stance
assumed by the priest when he extends his arms in prayer: Jesus
transformed the Passion, his suffering and his death, into prayer,
and in this way he transformed it into an act of love for God and
for humanity. That, finally, is why the outstretched arms of the
Crucified One are also a gesture of embracing, by which he draws us
to himself, wishing to enfold us in his loving hands. In this way he
is an image of the living God, he is God himself, and we may entrust
ourselves to him.
"To gaze upon Christ!" If we do this, we realize that Christianity
is more than and different from a moral code, from a series of
requirements and laws. It is the gift of a friendship that lasts
through life and death: "No longer do I call you servants, but
friends" (Jn 15:15), the Lord says to his disciples. We entrust
ourselves to this friendship. Yet precisely because Christianity is
more than a moral system, because it is the gift of friendship, for
this reason it also contains within itself great moral strength,
which is so urgently needed today on account of the challenges of
our time. If with Jesus Christ and his Church we constantly re-read
the Ten Commandments of Sinai, entering into their full depth, then
a great, valid and lasting teaching unfolds before us. The Ten
Commandments are first and foremost a "yes" to God, to a God who
loves us and leads us, who carries us and yet allows us our freedom:
indeed, it is he who makes our freedom real (the first three
commandments). It is a "yes" to the family (fourth commandment), a
"yes" to life (fifth commandment), a "yes" to responsible love
(sixth commandment), a "yes" to solidarity, to social responsibility
and to justice (seventh commandment), a "yes" to truth (eighth
commandment) and a "yes" to respect for other people and for what is
theirs (ninth and tenth commandments). By the strength of our
friendship with the living God we live this manifold "yes" and at
the same time we carry it as a signpost into this world of ours
today.
"Show us Jesus!" It was with this plea to the Mother of the Lord
that we set off on our journey here. This same plea will accompany
us as we return to our daily lives. And we know that Mary hears our
prayer: yes, whenever we look towards Mary, she shows us Jesus. Thus
we can find the right path, we can follow it step by step, filled
with joyful confidence that the path leads into the light -- into
the joy of eternal Love. Amen.
© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Look at the One they
Pierced!
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
