Congregation For the Clergy
Theme for the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification
of Priests
“I have called you friends”
(Jn 15:15)
- 23 June 2006 -
Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
CHRISM MASS IN SAINT PETER'S BASILICA
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Holy Thursday, 13 April 2006
Dear Brothers in the Episcopate
and in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Holy Thursday is the day on which the Lord gave the Twelve the priestly
task of celebrating, in the bread and the wine, the Sacrament of his
Body and Blood until he comes again. The paschal lamb and all the sacrifices
of the Old Covenant are replaced by the gift of his Body and his Blood,
the gift of himself. Thus, the new worship was based on the fact that,
in the first place, God makes a gift to us, and, filled with this gift,
we become his: creation returns to the Creator. So it is that the priesthood
also became something new: it was no longer a question of lineage but
of discovering oneself in the mystery of Jesus Christ. He is always
the One who gives, who draws us to himself. He alone can say: "This
is my Body... this is my Blood". The mystery of the priesthood
of the Church lies in the fact that we, miserable human beings, by virtue
of the Sacrament, can speak with his "I": in persona Christi.
He wishes to exercise his priesthood through us. On Holy Thursday, we
remember in a special way this moving mystery, which moves us anew in
every celebration of the Sacrament. So that daily life will not dull
what is great and mysterious, we need this specific commemoration, we
need to return to that hour in which he placed his hands upon us and
made us share in this mystery.
Let us reflect once again on the signs in which the Sacrament has been
given to us. At the centre is the very ancient rite of the imposition
of hands, with which he took possession of me, saying to me: "You
belong to me". However, in saying this he also said: "You
are under the protection of my hands. You are under the protection of
my heart. You are kept safely in the palm of my hands, and this is precisely
how you find yourself in the immensity of my love. Stay in my hands,
and give me yours".
Then let us remember that our hands were anointed with oil, which is
the sign of the Holy Spirit and his power. Why one's hands? The human
hand is the instrument of human action, it is the symbol of the human
capacity to face the world, precisely to "take it in hand".
The Lord has laid his hands upon us and he now wants our hands so that
they may become his own in the world. He no longer wants them to be
instruments for taking things, people or the world for ourselves, to
reduce them to being our possession, but instead, by putting ourselves
at the service of his love, they can pass on his divine touch. He wants
our hands to be instruments of service, hence, an expression of the
mission of the whole person who vouches for him and brings him to men
and women. If human hands symbolically represent human faculties and,
in general, skill as power to dispose of the world, then anointed hands
must be a sign of the human capacity for giving, for creativity in shaping
the world with love. It is for this reason, of course, that we are in
need of the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, anointing is the sign
of being taken into service: the king, the prophet, the priest, each
does and gives more than what derives from himself alone. In a certain
way, he is emptied of himself, so as to serve by making himself available
to One who is greater than he. If, in today's Gospel, Jesus presents
himself as God's Anointed One, the Christ, then this itself means that
he is acting for the Father's mission and in unity with the Holy Spirit.
He is thereby giving the world a new kingship, a new priesthood, a new
way of being a prophet who does not seek himself but lives for the One
with a view to whom the world was created. Today, let us once again
put our hands at his disposal and pray to him to take us by the hand,
again and again, and lead us.
In the sacramental gesture of the imposition of hands by the Bishop,
it was the Lord himself who laid his hands upon us. This sacramental
sign sums up an entire existential process. Once, like the first disciples,
we encountered the Lord and heard his words: "Follow me!"
Perhaps, to start with, we followed him somewhat hesitantly, looking
back and wondering if this really was the road for us. And at some point
on the journey, we may have had the same experience as Peter after the
miraculous catch; in other words, we may have been frightened by its
size, by the size of the task and by the inadequacy of our own poor
selves, so that we wanted to turn back. "Depart from me, for I
am a sinful man, O Lord" (Lk 5: 8). Then, however, with great kindness,
he took us by the hand, he drew us to himself and said to us: "Do
not fear! I am with you. I will not abandon you, do not leave me!".
And more than just once, the same thing that happened to Peter may have
happened to us: while he was walking on the water towards the Lord,
he suddenly realized that the water was not holding him up and that
he was beginning to sink. And like Peter we cried, "Lord, save
me!" (Mt 14: 30). Seeing the elements raging on all sides, how
could we get through the roaring, foaming waters of the past century,
of the past millennium? But then we looked towards him... and he grasped
us by the hand and gave us a new "specific weight": the lightness
that derives from faith and draws us upwards. Then he stretched out
to us the hand that sustains and carries us. He supports us. Let us
fix our gaze ever anew on him and reach out to him. Let us allow his
hand to take ours, and then we will not sink but will serve the life
that is stronger than death and the love that is stronger than hatred.
Faith in Jesus, Son of the living God, is the means through which, time
and again, we can take hold of Jesus' hand and in which he takes our
hands and guides us. One of my favourite prayers is the request that
the liturgy puts on our lips before Communion: "...never let me
be separated from you". Let us ask that we never fall away from
communion with his Body, with Christ himself, that we do not fall away
from the Eucharistic mystery. Let us ask that he will never let go of
our hands....
The Lord laid his hand upon us. He expressed the meaning of this gesture
in these words: "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant
does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends,
for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you"
(Jn 15: 15). I no longer call you servants but friends: in these words
one could actually perceive the institution of the priesthood. The Lord
makes us his friends; he entrusts everything to us; he entrusts himself
to us, so that we can speak with he himself - in persona Christi capitis.
What trust! He has truly delivered himself into our hands. The essential
signs of priestly ordination are basically all a manifestation of those
words: the laying on of hands; the consignment of the book - of his
words that he entrusts to us; the consignment of the chalice, with which
he transmits to us his most profound and personal mystery. The power
to absolve is part of all this. It also makes us share in his awareness
of the misery of sin and of all the darkness in the world, and places
in our hands the key to reopen the door to the Father's house. I no
longer call you servants but friends. This is the profound meaning of
being a priest: becoming the friend of Jesus Christ. For this friendship
we must daily recommit ourselves. Friendship means sharing in thought
and will. We must put into practice this communion of thought with Jesus,
as St Paul tells us in his Letter to the Philippians (cf. 2: 2-5). And
this communion of thought is not a purely intellectual thing, but a
sharing of sentiments and will, hence, also of actions. This means that
we should know Jesus in an increasingly personal way, listening to him,
living together with him, staying with him. Listening to him - in lectio
divina, that is, reading Sacred Scripture in a non-academic but spiritual
way; thus, we learn to encounter Jesus present, who speaks to us. We
must reason and reflect, before him and with him, on his words and actions.
The reading of Sacred Scripture is prayer, it must be prayer - it must
emerge from prayer and lead to prayer. The Evangelists tell us that
the Lord frequently withdrew - for entire nights - "to the mountains",
to pray alone. We too need these "mountains": they are inner
peaks that we must scale, the mountain of prayer. Only in this way does
the friendship develop. Only in this way can we carry out our priestly
service, only in this way can we take Christ and his Gospel to men and
women. Activism by itself can even be heroic, but in the end external
action is fruitless and loses its effectiveness unless it is born from
deep inner communion with Christ. The time we spend on this is truly
a time of pastoral activity, authentic pastoral activity. The priest
must above all be a man of prayer. The world in its frenetic activism
often loses its direction. Its action and capacities become destructive
if they lack the power of prayer, from which flow the waters of life
that irrigate the arid land.
I no longer call you servants, but friends. The core of the priesthood
is being friends of Jesus Christ. Only in this way can we truly speak
in persona Christi, even if our inner remoteness from Christ cannot
jeopardize the validity of the Sacrament. Being a friend of Jesus, being
a priest, means being a man of prayer. In this way we recognize him
and emerge from the ignorance of simple servants. We thus learn to live,
suffer and act with him and for him. Being friends with Jesus is par
excellence always friendship with his followers. We can be friends of
Jesus only in communion with the whole of Christ, with the Head and
with the Body; in the vigorous vine of the Church to which the Lord
gives life. Sacred Scripture is a living and actual Word, thanks to
the Lord, only in her. Without the living subject of the Church that
embraces the ages, more often than not the Bible would have splintered
into heterogeneous writings and would thus have become a book of the
past. It is eloquent in the present only where the "Presence"
is - where Christ remains for ever contemporary with us: in the Body
of his Church.
Being a priest means becoming an ever closer friend of Jesus Christ
with the whole of our existence. The world needs God - not just any
god but the God of Jesus Christ, the God who made himself flesh and
blood, who loved us to the point of dying for us, who rose and created
within himself room for man. This God must live in us and we in him.
This is our priestly call: only in this way can our action as priests
bear fruit. I would like to end this Homily with a word on Andrea Santoro,
the priest from the Diocese of Rome who was assassinated in Trebizond
while he was praying. Cardinal Cé recounted to us during the
Spiritual Exercises what Fr Santoro said. It reads: "I am here
to dwell among these people and enable Jesus to do so by lending him
my flesh.... One becomes capable of salvation only by offering one's
own flesh. The evil in the world must be borne and the pain shared,
assimilating it into one's own flesh as did Jesus". Jesus assumed
our flesh; let us give him our own. In this way he can come into the
world and transform it. Amen!
Web Site: www.vatican.va
