Dear Brothers and Sisters,
With
the invocation of the Holy Spirit we have now begun our Synodal
Meeting, knowing full well that we cannot do at this moment what
needs to be done for the Church and for the world: only with the
power of the Holy Spirit can we discover what is right and put
it into practice. And every day we shall start by invoking the
Holy Spirit with the prayer of the Hour of Terce: "Nunc,
sancte, nobis Spiritus". I would therefore like to meditate
with you briefly on this hymn with which we shall begin our work
each day, now, during the Synod, and also afterwards in our
daily life.
"Nunc, sancte, nobis Spiritus".
We pray that Pentecost may not only be an event
of the past, at the very beginning of the Church, but that it
may be today, indeed now, "nunc, sancte, nobis Spiritus".
Let us pray that the Lord may bring about the outpouring of
his Spirit now and recreate his Church and the world. Let us
remember that after the Ascension the Apostles did not begin as
might perhaps have been expected to organize, to create the
Church of the future. They waited for God to act. They waited
for the Holy Spirit. They understood that the Church cannot be
made, that she is not the product of our organization: the
Church must be born of the Holy Spirit. Just as the Lord himself
was conceived and born of the Holy Spirit so the Church must
also be conceived and born of the Holy Spirit. Only through this
creative act of God can we enter into God's activity, into the
divine action, and cooperate with him. In this regard, all our
work at the
Synod also consists in
collaborating with the Holy Spirit, with the power of God that
precedes us. And we must always implore, over and over again,
the fulfilment of this divine initiative in which we can become
collaborators of God and contribute to ensuring that his Church
is reborn and grows.
The
second verse of this hymn: "Os, lingua, mens, sensus, vigor,
/ Confessionem, personent: / Flammescat igne caritas, / accendat
ardor proximos" is the heart of this prayer. We ask of God
three gifts, the essential gifts of Pentecost, of the Holy
Spirit: confessio, caritas, proximos. Confessio:
it is the tongue of fire that is "reasonable", that gives the
right word and calls to mind the conquest of Babylon on the
Feast of Pentecost. The confusion born from human egoism and
pride, whose effect is the inability to understand each other,
must be overcome by the power of the Spirit which unites without
standardizing, which gives unity in plurality. Each one can
understand the other, despite the diversity of languages.
Confessio: the word, the tongue of fire that the Lord gives
us, the common word in which we are all united, the City of God,
Holy Church, in which all the wealth of our different cultures
is present. Flammescat igne caritas. This confession is
not a theory but life, love. The heart of Holy Church is love,
God is love and communicates himself to us by communicating love
to us. And lastly, our neighbour. The Church is never a
closed group which lives for itself like so many of the groups
that exist in the world; rather, she is distinguished by the
universality of charity, of responsibility for her neighbour.
Let
us consider these three gifts one by one. Confessio: in
the language of the Bible and of the ancient Church, this word
has two essential meanings, apparently in opposition but in fact
constitute a single reality. Confessio is first of all
the confession of sins: it means recognizing our guilt and
knowing that before God we are found wanting, we are in a state
of sin, we are not in the right relationship with him. This is
the first point: knowing ourselves in the light of God. Only in
this light can we know ourselves, can we also understand what is
evil in us and thus perceive all that must be renewed,
transformed. Only in the light of God do we recognize one
another and truly see the whole of reality.
It
seems to me that we should bear all this in mind in our analyses
of reconciliation, justice and peace. Empirical analysis is
important, it is important to know the reality of this world
exactly. Yet these horizontal analyses, made with such precision
and skill, are insufficient. They do not identify the real
problems because they do not place them in the light of God. If
we do not see that they are rooted in the Mystery of God,
worldly things go wrong because the relationship with God is not
properly in order. And if the first, basic relationship is off
course, all the other relationships, however good they may be,
fundamentally do not function. Therefore, all our analyses of
the world are insufficient if we do not reach this point, if we
do not consider the world in the light of God, if we do not
discover that at the root of injustices, of corruption, is a
heart that is not upright, there is closure to God and,
consequently, a falsification of the essential relationship on
which all the others are founded.
Confessio: to understand in God's light the realities of the
world, the primacy of God and finally the whole human being and
the human realities that are oriented to our relationship with
God. And if this relationship has gone wrong it does not reach
the point God wanted, it does not enter his truth, nor can
anything else be corrected because, once again, all the vices
that destroy the social network and peace in the world spring
up.
Confessio: to see reality in God's light, to understand that
basically our realities depend on our relationship with our
Creator and Redeemer, and thus lead to the truth, to the truth
that saves. St Augustine, referring to Chapter three of the
Gospel according to St John, defines the act of Christian
confession as "he who makes truth comes to the light". Only by
seeing in the light of God our faults, our sins, the
insufficiency of our relationship with him do we walk in the
light of the truth. And it is only the truth that saves. At
last, let us work in truth: making truth is truly confessing in
this depth of God's light.
This
is the first meaning of the word confessio, the
confession of sins, the recognition of the guilt that results
from our defective relationship with God. However, a second
meaning of confession is that of thanking God, glorifying God,
witnessing to God. We can recognize the truth of our being
because there is a divine response. God did not leave us alone
with our sins; even when our relationship with his majesty is
impeded, he does not withdraw but comes and takes us by the
hand. Confessio therefore is the witness of God's
goodness, it is evangelization. We could say that the second
dimension of the word confessio is identical to
evangelization. We see this on the Day of Pentecost when St
Peter, in his discourse, on the one hand accuses people for
their sins you have killed the holy and the just but, at the
same time he says: this Saint is risen and loves you, embraces
you, calls you to be his followers in repentance and in Baptism,
as well as in communion with his Body. In the light of God
confessing necessarily becomes proclaiming God, evangelizing and
thereby renewing the world.
However the word confessio reminds us of yet another
element. In Chapter 10 of his Letter to the Romans St Paul
interprets the confession of Chapter 30 of Deuteronomy. In the
latter text it would seem that in the Holy Land, upon entering
into the definitive form of the Covenant, the Jews were afraid
and could not really respond to God as they ought. The Lord says
to them: do not be afraid, God is not far away. To reach God, a
voyage across an unknown ocean is not required, nor is space
travel through the sky, complicated or impossible ventures. God
is not far away, he is not on the other side of the ocean or in
these immense spaces of the universe. He is near. He is in your
heart and on your lips, with the words of the Torah he enters
your heart and is proclaimed by your lips. God is in you and
with you, he is close.
In
his interpretation, St Paul replaces the word "Torah" with the
words "confession" and "faith". He says: God is close by, no
complicated expeditions are necessary to reach him, nor
spiritual or material adventures. God is close with faith, he is
in your heart and with confession he is on your lips. He is
within you and with you. With his presence, Jesus Christ really
gives us the words of life.
Thus, in faith, he enters our hearts. He dwells in our heart and
in confession we bring the realties of the Lord to the world, to
this time of ours. This seems to me a very important element:
the close God. The things of science, of technology, entail
great investments: spiritual and material ventures are expensive
and difficult; but God gives himself freely. The most important
things in life God, love and truth are free. God gives himself
in our hearts. I would say that we should meditate often on
God's free giving: to be close to God there is no need for great
material or even intellectual gifts.
God gives himself freely in his love, he is in me, in my heart
and on my lips. This is the courage, the joy of our life. It is
also the courage present at this Synod, for God is not distant:
he is with us in the words of faith. I think this duality is
also important: words in the heart and on the lips. This depth
of personal faith which truly connects me closely with God must
then be confessed. Faith and confession, interiority in
communion with God and the witness to faith that is expressed on
my lips and thus becomes tangible and present in the world.
These are two important things that always go together.
Then
the hymn of which we are speaking also points to the places
where confession is found: "os, lingua, mens, sensus, vigor".
All our capacities for thinking, speaking, feeling, and
acting must resound the Latin uses the verb "personent"
with the word of God. Our being, in all its dimensions, must be
filled with this word, which thereby becomes really tangible in
the world which, through our existence resonates in the world:
the word of the Holy Spirit.
And
then, briefly, another two gifts. Charity: it is important that
Christianity should not be the sum of ideas, a philosophy or a
theology, but rather a way of life, Christianity is charity, it
is love. Only in this way do we become Christian: if faith is
transformed into charity, if it is charity. We could also say
that lógos and caritas go together. Our God is on
the one hand lógos, eternal reason. But this reason is
also love; it is not cold mathematics that constructs the
universe, it is not a demiurge; eternal reason is fire, it is
charity. This union of reason and charity, of faith and charity,
must be brought into being within us and thus, transformed into
charity to become, as the Greek Fathers said, divinized. I would
say that in the development of the world we have this uphill
road, leading from the first created realities to the creature,
man. But the ascent has not yet been completed. Man must be
divinized and thus fulfilled. The unity of the creature and of
the Creator: this is the true development, arriving with God's
grace at this openness. Our essence is transformed by charity.
If we speak of this development, we always think of the final
goal, where God wants to arrive with us.
Lastly, our neighbour. Charity is not something individual but
universal and practical. Today, at Mass, we proclaimed the
Gospel passage of the Good Samaritan, in which we see the
twofold reality of Christian charity, which is both universal
and practical. The Samaritan meets a Jew who is therefore
outside the boundaries of his tribe and his religion. But
charity is universal so this stranger is in every sense a
neighbour to him. Universality does away with the limits that
close the world in and create differences and conflicts. At the
same time, the fact that some practical action should be taken
for universality, not only philosophy. We must strive for this
unification of universality and practical action, we must really
open these boundaries between tribes, ethnic groups and
religions to the universality of God's love. And this must not
be in theory but in the places where we live and with all the
necessary visibility. Let us pray the Lord to give us all this
through the power of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, the hymn is a
glorification of the Triune God and a prayer to know and to
believe. Thus the end returns to the beginning. Let us also pray
that we may know, that knowing may become believing and that
believing may become loving, action. Let us pray the Lord to
give us the Holy Spirit, that he may inspire a new Pentecost and
help us to be his servants in the world at this time. Amen.
Look at the One they
Pierced!