VATICAN CITY, MAR 1, 2003 (VIS) - The rector, staff, seminarians and "the entire spiritual family" of Our Lady of Trust Major Roman Seminary were welcomed to the Vatican's Paul VI Hall this evening by Pope John Paul who addressed them, after listening to an Oratory, inspired by the life and works of St. Faustina Kowalska and executed by the seminarians and diocesan choir.
Traditionally the Pope's encounter with the Pontifical Major Roman Seminary takes place at the seminary itself, adjacent to St. John Lateran Basilica, on the feast of Our Lady of Trust, a mobile feast which occurs on the Saturday before Ash Wednesday.
The seminary was founded in 1565 and was first located at the Roman College, which was founded by St. Ignatius in 1551 and administered by the Jesuits until the Society of Jesus was suppressed in 1773. Later called the Roman Seminary, it was housed in several locations in Rome until it was definitively established near St. John Lateran. The current chapel-shrine bears the name of Our Lady of Trust who, according to seminary archives, became the patroness about 1837 on the occasion of a vow taken during a severe cholera epidemic.
The Holy Father focussed his message on "the well-known invocation 'Jesus, I trust in you!' This is a simple yet profound act of trust in and abandonment to God's love," that "can transform life. In the inevitable trials and difficulties of life, as in moments of joy and enthusiasm, entrusting oneself to the Lord infuses the soul with peace, induces us to recognize the primacy of the divine initiative and opens the spirit to humility and truth."
"In the heart of Jesus," he remarked, "those anguished by life's sorrows find peace; those afflicted by suffering and illness find relief; those who feel constricted by uncertainty and anguish feel joy, because Christ's heart is filled to overflowing with consolation and love for those who turn to it with trust."
John Paul II noted that Mary, when she told the servants at the wedding feast in Cana, "Do what He will tell you," was encouraging them to have trust in Christ. He added that Mary, "an extraordinary teacher of spiritual life," shared with Jesus "joys and worries, anxieties and sufferings, right up to the supreme sacrifice of the Cross, and then shared with Him the exaltation of the Resurrection, and in prayer with the Apostles in the Cenacle awaited the descent of the Holy Spirit."
In lengthy off-the-cuff remarks to the seminarians, the Holy Father recalled his "clandestine" seminary days in Poland when, because of Nazi occupation, all seminaries in the country had been closed. Nonetheless, said the Pope, "Cardinal Sapieha, my bishop in Krakow, organized a clandestine seminary and I belonged to it, you might call it a seminary of the catacombs."
The Pope told his audience that during the Oratory his thoughts returned to his past, and to St. Faustina because she lived in and is now buried near Krakow. He noted that Sr. Faustina is buried close to the chemical plant in Solvay where he worked as a young man during the four years of the war and Nazi occupation. "Never did I ever dream, as a worker that one day, as Bishop of Rome, I would be talking of that experience with Roman seminarians."
John Paul II admitted he has never forgotten about those days as a worker/seminarian. He spoke of his eight-hour work shifts, the books he read books on metaphysics and philosophy at work and the fact that his fellow workers not only "marvelled" at his reading, but tried to help him find quiet times and places for study. He said he was able to live those clandestine years because of trust in God and in His Mother.
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