October 7, 2012
(Romereports.com) The Pope welcomed the Synod on the New Evangelization and named St. John of Avila and St. Hildegard of Bingen as Doctors of the Church, during a Mass in St. Peter's Square.
READ HOMILY IN ENGLISH:
"With this solemn celebration we open the thirteenth Ordinary
General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme The New
Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith. This theme
reflects a programmatic direction for the life of the Church, its
members, families, its communities and institutions. And this outline is
reinforced by the fact that it coincides with the beginning of the Year
of Faith, starting on 11 October, on the fiftieth anniversary of the
opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.
I give a
cordial and grateful welcome to you who have come to be part of the
Synodal Assembly, in particular to the Secretary-General of the Synod of
Bishops, and to his colleagues. I salute the fraternal delegates of the
other churches and ecclesial communities as well as all present,
inviting them to accompany in daily prayer the deliberations which will
take place over the next three weeks.
The readings for this
Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word propose to us two principal points of
reflection: the first on matrimony, which I will touch shortly; and the
second on Jesus Christ, which I will discuss now. We do not have time to
comment upon the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews but, at the
beginning of this Synodal Assembly, we ought to welcome the invitation
to fix our gaze upon the Lord Jesus, “crowned with glory and honor,
because of the suffering of death (2:9). The word of God places us
before the glorious One who was crucified, so that our whole lives, and
in particular the commitment of this Synodal session, will take place in
the sight of him and in the light of his mystery.
In every time
and place, evangelization always has as its starting and finishing
points Jesus Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1); and the Crucifix is
the supremely distinctive sign of him who announces the Gospel: a sign
of love and peace, a call to conversion and reconciliation. My dear
Brother Bishops, starting with ourselves, let us fix our gaze upon him
and let us be purified by his grace. I would now like briefly to examine
the new evangelization, and its relation to ordinary evangelization and
the mission ad Gentes. The Church exists to evangelize. Faithful to the
Lord Jesus Christ’s command, his disciples went out to the whole world
to announce the Good News, spreading Christian communities everywhere.
With time, these became well-organized churches with many faithful. At
various times in history, divine providence has given birth to a renewed
dynamism in Church’s evangelizing activity. We need only think of the
evangelization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples or the Slavs, or the
transmission of the faith on the continent of America, or the missionary
undertakings among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania.
It
is against this dynamic background that I like to look at the two
radiant figures that I have just proclaimed Doctors of the Church, Saint
John of Avila and Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Even in our own times, the
Holy Spirit has nurtured in the Church a new effort to announce the
Good News, a pastoral and spiritual dynamism which found a more
universal expression and its most authoritative impulse in the Second
Vatican Ecumenical Council. Such renewed evangelical dynamism produces a
beneficent influence on the two specific “branches” developed by it,
that is, on the one hand the Missio ad Gentes or announcement of the
Gospel to those who do not yet know Jesus Christ and his message of
salvation, and on the other the New Evangelization, directed principally
at those who, though baptized, have drifted away from the Church and
live without reference to the Christian life.
The Synodal
Assembly which opens today is dedicated to this new evangelization, to
help these people encounter the Lord, who alone who fills existence with
deep meaning and peace; and to favour the rediscovery of the faith,
that source of grace which brings joy and hope to personal, family and
social life. Obviously, such a special focus must not diminish either
missionary efforts in the strict sense or the ordinary activity of
evangelization in our Christian communities, as these are three aspects
of the one reality of evangelization which complement and enrich each
other.
The theme of marriage, found in the Gospel and the first
reading, deserves special attention. The message of the word of God may
be summed up in the expression found in the Book of Genesis and taken up
by Jesus himself: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and
cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24; Mk 10:7-8).
What does this word say to us today? It seems to me that it invites us
to be more aware of a reality, already well known but not fully
appreciated: that matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a Good News for the
world of today, especially the dechristianized world. The union of a man
and a woman, their becoming “one flesh” in charity, in fruitful and
indissoluble love, is a sign that speaks of God with a force and an
eloquence which in our days has become greater because unfortunately,
for various reasons, marriage, in precisely the oldest regions
evangelized, is going through a profound crisis. And it is not by
chance. Marriage is linked to faith, but not in a general way.
Marriage,
as a union of faithful and indissoluble love, is based upon the grace
that comes from the triune God, who in Christ loved us with a faithful
love, even to the Cross. Today we ought to grasp the full truth of this
statement, in contrast to the painful reality of many marriages which,
unhappily, end badly. There is a clear link between the crisis in faith
and the crisis in marriage. And, as the Church has said and witnessed
for a long time now, marriage is called to be not only an object but a
subject of the new evangelization. This is already being seen in the
many experiences of communities and movements, but its realization is
also growing in dioceses and parishes, as shown in the recent World
Meeting of Families.One of the important ideas of the renewed impulse
that the Second Vatican Council gave to evangelization is that of the
universal call to holiness, which in itself concerns all Christians (cf.
Lumen Gentium, 39-42).
The saints are the true actors in
evangelization in all its expressions. In a special way they are even
pioneers and bringers of the new evangelization: with their intercession
and the example of lives attentive to the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, they show the beauty of the Gospel to those who are indifferent
or even hostile, and they invite, as it were tepid believers, to live
with the joy of faith, hope and charity, to rediscover the taste for the
word of God and for the sacraments, especially for the bread of life,
the Eucharist. Holy men and women bloom among the generous missionaries
who announce the Good News to non-Christians, in the past in mission
countries and now in any place where there are non-Christians. Holiness
is not confined by cultural, social, political or religious barriers.
Its language, that of love and truth, is understandable to all people of
good will and it draws them to Jesus Christ, the inexhaustible source
of new life.
At this point, let us pause for a moment to
appreciate the two saints who today have been added to the elect number
of Doctors of the Church. Saint John of Avila lived in the sixteenth
century. A profound expert on the sacred Scriptures, he was gifted with
an ardent missionary spirit. He knew how to penetrate in a uniquely
profound way the mysteries of the redemption worked by Christ for
humanity. A man of God, he united constant prayer to apostolic action.
He dedicated himself to preaching and to the more frequent practice of
the sacraments, concentrating his commitment on improving the formation
of candidates for the priesthood, of religious and of lay people, with a
view to a fruitful reform of the Church.Saint Hildegard of Bingen, an
important female figure of the twelfth century, offered her precious
contribution to the growth of the Church of her time, employing the
gifts received from God and showing herself to be a woman of brilliant
intelligence, deep sensitivity and recognized spiritual authority. The
Lord granted her a prophetic spirit and fervent capacity to discern the
signs of the times. Hildegard nurtured an evident love of creation, and
was learned in medicine, poetry and music. Above all, she maintained a
great and faithful love for Christ and the Church.
This summary
of the ideal in Christian life, expressed in the call to holiness, draws
us to look with humility at the fragility, even sin, of many
Christians, as individuals and communities, which is a great obstacle to
evangelization and to recognizing the force of God that, in faith,
meets human weakness. Thus, we cannot speak about the new evangelization
without a sincere desire for conversion. The best path to the new
evangelization is to let ourselves be reconciled with God and with each
other (cf. 2 Cor 5:20). Solemnly purified, Christians can regain a
legitimate pride in their dignity as children of God, created in his
image and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and they can
experience his joy in order to share it with everyone, both near and
far.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust the work of the
Synod meeting to God, sustained by the communion of saints, invoking in
particular the intercession of great evangelizers, among whom, with much
affection, we ought to number Blessed John Paul II, whose long
pontificate was an example of the new evangelization. Let us place
ourselves under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the
New Evangelization. With her let us invoke a new outpouring of the Holy
Spirit, that from on high he may illumine the Synodal assembly and make
it fruitful for the Church’s way ahead."
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