Vatican
City, 28 July 2013 (VIS) – At 1.00 p.m. yesterday, Saturday, the
Pope met with the cardinals and bishops of Brazil and the presidency
of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil at the Archbishop's
residence. The meeting was preceded by lunch. The National Conference
of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) is the most numerous in the world, and
encompasses 275 ecclesiastical circumscriptions, of which there are
44 metropolitan dioceses, 213 dioceses, 3 eparchies, 11 prelatures,
one exarchate, an Ordinariate for Catholics of Oriental rite without
their own ordinary, a military ordinariate and a personal apostolic
administration. There are 459 bishops and nine cardinals, of whom
five are electors. The president of the CNBB is Cardinal Raymundo
Damasceno Assis, archbishop of Aparecida.
Given
below are ample extracts from the Pope's address:
“1.
Aparecida: a key for interpreting the Church’s mission
In
Aparecida God gave Brazil His own Mother. But in Aparecida God also
offered a lesson about Himself, about His way of being and acting. A
lesson about the humility which is one of God’s essential features,
which is a part of God’s DNA. Aparecida offers us a perennial
teaching about God and about the Church; a teaching which neither the
Church in Brazil nor the nation itself must forget. At the beginning
of the Aparecida event, there were poor fishermen looking for food.
So much hunger and so few resources. People always need bread. People
always start with their needs, even today.
Then,
when God wills it, He mysteriously enters the scene. The waters are
deep and yet they always conceal the possibility of a revelation of
God. He appeared out of the blue, perhaps when He was no longer
expected. The patience of those who await Him is always tested. And
God arrived in a novel fashion, since God is always a surprise: as a
fragile clay statue, darkened by the waters of the river and aged by
the passage of time. God always enters clothed in poverty,
littleness. Then there is the statue itself of the Immaculate
Conception. First, the body appeared, then the head, then the head
was joined to the body: unity. What had been broken is restored and
becomes one. Colonial Brazil had been divided by the shameful wall of
slavery. Our Lady of Aparecida appears with a black face, first
separated, and then united in the hands of the fishermen. … God’s
message was one of restoring what was broken, reuniting what had been
divided. Walls, chasms, differences which still exist today are
destined to disappear. The Church cannot neglect this lesson: she is
called to be a means of reconciliation.
The
fishermen do not dismiss the mystery encountered in the river, even
if it is a mystery which seems incomplete. They do not throw away the
pieces of the mystery. They await its completion. And this does not
take long to come. There is a wisdom here that we need to learn.
There are pieces of the mystery, like the tesserae of a mosaic, which
we encounter. We are impatient, anxious to see the whole picture, but
God lets us see things slowly, quietly. The Church also has to learn
how to wait. Then the fishermen bring the mystery home. Ordinary
people always have room to take in the mystery. Perhaps we have
reduced our way of speaking about mystery to rational explanations;
but for ordinary people the mystery enters through the heart. In the
homes of the poor, God always finds a place.
The
fishermen … clothe the Virgin drawn from the waters as if she were
cold and needed to be warmed. God asks for shelter in the warmest
part of ourselves: our heart. God himself releases the heat we need,
but first he enters like a shrewd beggar. The fishermen wrap the
mystery of the Virgin with the lowly mantle of their faith. They call
their neighbours to see its rediscovered beauty; they all gather
around and relate their troubles in its presence and they entrust
their causes to it. In this way they enable God’s plan to be
accomplished: first comes one grace, then another; one grace leads to
another; one grace prepares for another. God gradually unfolds the
mysterious humility of his power.
There
is much we can learn from the approach of the fishermen. About a
Church which makes room for God’s mystery; a Church which harbours
that mystery in such a way that it can entice people, attract them.
Only the beauty of God can attract. God’s way is through
attraction. God lets Himself be brought home. He awakens in us a
desire to keep Him and his life in our homes, in our hearts. He
reawakens in us a desire to call our neighbours in order to make
known His beauty. Mission is born precisely from this divine allure,
by this amazement born of encounter. We speak about mission, about a
missionary Church. I think of those fishermen calling their
neighbours to see the mystery of the Virgin. Without the simplicity
of their approach, our mission is doomed to failure.
The
Church needs constantly to relearn the lesson of Aparecida; she must
not lose sight of it. The Church’s nets are weak, perhaps patched;
the Church’s barque is not as powerful as the great transatlantic
liners which cross the ocean. And yet God wants to be seen precisely
through our resources, scanty resources, because he is always the one
who acts. … The results of our pastoral work do not depend on a
wealth of resources, but on the creativity of love. To be sure,
perseverance, effort, hard work, planning and organization all have
their place, but first and foremost we need to realize that the
Church’s power does not reside in herself; it is hidden in the deep
waters of God, into which she is called to cast her nets.
Another
lesson which the Church must constantly recall is that she cannot
leave simplicity behind; otherwise she forgets how to speak the
language of Mystery. Not only does she herself remain outside the
door of the mystery, but she proves incapable of approaching those
who look to the Church for something which they themselves cannot
provide, namely, God Himself. At times we lose people because they
don’t understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the
language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our
people. Without the grammar of simplicity, the Church loses the very
conditions which make it possible 'to fish' for God in the deep
waters of his Mystery. … Aparecida took place at a crossroads. The
road which linked Rio, the capital, with Sao Paulo, the resourceful
province then being born, and Minas Gerais, the mines coveted by the
courts of Europe, was a major intersection in colonial Brazil. God
appears at the crossroads. The Church in Brazil cannot forget this
calling which was present from the moment of her birth: to be a
beating heart, to gather and to spread.
2.
Appreciation for the path taken by the Church in Brazil
The
Bishops of Rome have always had a special place in their heart for
Brazil and its Church. … Today I would like to acknowledge your
unsparing work as pastors in your local Churches. I think of Bishops
in the forests, travelling up and down rivers, in semiarid places, in
the Pantanal, in the pampas, in the urban jungles of your sprawling
cities. Always love your flock with complete devotion! I also think
of all those names and faces which have indelibly marked the journey
of the Church in Brazil, making palpable the Lord’s immense bounty
towards this Church. … The Church in Brazil welcomed and creatively
applied the Second Vatican Council, and the course it has taken,
though needing to overcome some teething problems, has led to a
Church gradually more mature, open, generous and missionary. Today,
times have changed. As the Aparecida document nicely put it: ours is
not an age of change, but a change of age. So today we urgently need
to keep putting the question: what is it that God is asking of us? I
would now like to sketch a few ideas by way of a response.
3.
The icon of Emmaus as a key for interpreting the present and the
future
Before
all else, we must not yield to the fear once expressed by Blessed
John Henry Newman: '… the Christian world is gradually becoming
barren and effete, as land which has been worked out and is become
sand'. We must not yield to disillusionment, discouragement and
complaint. We have laboured greatly and, at times, we see what appear
to be failures. We have the feeling we must tally up a losing season
as we consider those who have left us or no longer consider us
credible or relevant.
Let
us read once again, in this light, the story of Emmaus. The two
disciples have left Jerusalem. They are leaving behind the
'nakedness' of God. They are scandalized by the failure of the
Messiah in whom they had hoped and who now appeared utterly
vanquished, humiliated, even after the third day. Here we have to
face the difficult mystery of those people who leave the Church, who,
under the illusion of alternative ideas, now think that the Church –
their Jerusalem – can no longer offer them anything meaningful and
important. So they set off on the road alone, with their
disappointment. Perhaps the Church appeared too weak, perhaps too
distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their
concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with herself,
perhaps a prisoner of her own rigid formulas, perhaps the world seems
to have made the Church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions;
perhaps the Church could speak to people in their infancy but not to
those come of age. It is a fact that nowadays there are many people
like the two disciples of Emmaus; not only those looking for answers
in the new religious groups that are sprouting up, but also those who
already seem godless, both in theory and in practice.
Faced
with this situation, what are we to do? We need a Church unafraid of
going forth into their night. … We need a Church able to dialogue
with those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering
aimlessly, alone, with their own disappointment, disillusioned by a
Christianity now considered barren, fruitless soil, incapable of
generating meaning.
A
relentless process of globalization, an often uncontrolled process of
urbanization, have promised great things. Many people have been
captivated by the potential of globalization, which of course does
contain positive elements such as, for instance, the reduction of
distances, the bringing together of people and cultures, the
distribution of information and services. But, on the other side,
many experience its negative effects without realising how much they
prejudice their own vision of man and of the world, giving rise to
greater disorientation and an emptiness they are unable to explain.
Some of these effects are confusion about the meaning of life,
personal disintegration, the loss of the experience of belonging to a
'nest', the lack of a sense of place and of profound links.
And
since there is nobody to accompany them or to demonstrate by example
the true path, many have sought short cuts, for the standards set by
Mother Church seem to be too high. There are also those who recognise
the ideal for man and for life proposed by the Church, but do not
have the courage to embrace it. They think this ideal is too great
for them, that it is beyond their reach. Nonetheless they cannot live
without having at least something, even a poor imitation, of what
seems too lofty and distant. With disappointed hearts, they then go
off in search of something that will raise false hopes again, or they
resign themselves to a partial solution that, in the end, will not
bring fullness to their lives. The great sense of abandonment and
solitude, of not even belonging to oneself, which often results from
this situation, is too painful to hide. Some kind of release is
necessary. There is always the option of complaining? But even
complaint acts like a boomerang; it comes back and ends up increasing
one’s unhappiness. Few people are still capable of hearing the
voice of pain; the best we can do is to anaesthetize it.
Today,
we need a Church capable of walking at people’s side, of doing more
than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on
their journey; a Church able to make sense of the night contained in
the flight of so many of our brothers and sisters from Jerusalem; a
Church which realizes that the reasons why people leave also contain
reasons why they can eventually return. But we need to know how to
interpret, with courage, the larger picture.
I
would like all of us to ask ourselves today: are we still a Church
capable … of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of bringing them
home? Jerusalem is where our roots are: Scripture, catechesis,
sacraments, community, friendship with the Lord, Mary and the
apostles… Are we still able to speak of these roots in a way that
will revive a sense of wonder at their beauty? Many people have left
because they were promised something more lofty, more powerful, and
faster. But what is more lofty than the love revealed in Jerusalem?
Nothing is more lofty than the abasement of the Cross, since there we
truly approach the height of love! Are we still capable of
demonstrating this truth to those who think that the apex of life is
to be found elsewhere? Do we know anything more powerful than the
strength hidden within the weakness of love, goodness, truth and
beauty?
People
today are attracted by things that are faster and faster: rapid
Internet connections, speedy cars and planes, instant relationships.
But at the same time we see a desperate need for calmness, I would
even say slowness. Is the Church still able to move slowly: to take
the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or
is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency?
Dear brothers, let us recover the calm to be able to walk at the same
pace as our pilgrims, keeping alongside them, remaining close to
them, enabling them to speak of the disappointments present in their
hearts and to let us address them. … We need a Church capable of
bringing warmth, of lighting up hearts, and that is capable of
restoring citizenship to her many children who are journeying, as it
were, in an exodus.
4.
Challenges facing the Church in Brazil
Formation
as a priority: bishops, priests, religious, laity. … It is
important to devise and ensure a suitable formation, one which will
provide persons able to step into the night without being overcome by
the darkness and losing their bearings; able to listen to people’s
dreams without being seduced and to share their disappointments
without losing hope and becoming bitter; able to sympathize with the
brokenness of others without losing their own strength and identity.
What is needed is a solid human, cultural, effective, spiritual and
doctrinal formation. Dear brother bishops, courage is needed to
undertake a profound review of the structures in place for the
formation and preparation of the clergy and the laity of the Church
in Brazil. It is not enough that formation be considered a vague
priority, either in documents or at meetings. ... You cannot delegate
this task, but must embrace it as something fundamental for the
journey of your Churches.
Collegiality
and solidarity in the Episcopal Conference
It
is important to remember Aparecida, the method of gathering diversity
together. Not so much a diversity of ideas in order to produce a
document, but a variety of experiences of God, in order to set a
vital process in motion. ... Central bureaucracy is not sufficient;
there is also a need for increased collegiality and solidarity. This
will be a source of true enrichment for all.
Permanent
state of mission and pastoral conversion
Concerning
mission, we need to remember that its urgency derives from its inner
motivation; in other words, it is about handing on a legacy. As for
method, it is essential to realize that a legacy is about witness, it
is like the baton in a relay race: you don’t throw it up in the air
for whoever is able to catch it, so that anyone who doesn’t catch
it has to manage without. In order to transmit a legacy, one needs to
hand it over personally, to touch the one to whom one wants to give,
to relay, this inheritance. Concerning pastoral conversion, I would
like to recall that “pastoral care” is nothing other than the
exercise of the Church’s motherhood. … So we need a Church
capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy. Without mercy we
have little chance nowadays of becoming part of a world of “wounded”
persons in need of understanding, forgiveness, love. In mission, also
on a continental level, it is very important to reaffirm the family,
which remains the essential cell of society and the Church; young
people, who are the face of the Church’s future; women, who play a
fundamental role in passing on the faith. Let us not reduce the
involvement of women in the Church, but instead promote their active
role in the ecclesial community. By losing women, the Church risks
becoming sterile. Aparecida also underlines the vocation and mission
of men in the family, the Church and in societies, as fathers,
workers and citizens. Take this into consideration!
The
task of the Church in society
In
the context of society, there is only one thing which the Church
quite clearly demands: the freedom to proclaim the Gospel in its
entirety, even when it runs counter to the world, even when it goes
against the tide. In so doing, she defends treasures of which she is
merely the custodian, and values which she does not create but rather
receives, to which she must remain faithful. The Church claims the
right to serve man in his wholeness, and to speak of what God has
revealed about human beings and their fulfilment. The Church wants to
make present that spiritual patrimony without which society falls
apart. … The Church has the right and the duty to keep alive the
flame of human freedom and unity. Education, health, social harmony
are pressing concerns in Brazil. The Church has a word to say on
these issues, because any adequate response to these challenges calls
for more than merely technical solutions; there has to be an
underlying view of man, his freedom, his value, his openness to the
transcendent.
The
Amazon Basin as a litmus test for Church and society in Brazil
… The
Church’s presence in the Amazon Basin is not that of someone with
bags packed and ready to leave after having exploited everything
possible. The Church has been present in the Amazon Basin from the
beginning, in her missionaries and religious congregations, and she
is still present and critical to the area’s future. … I would
like to invite everyone to reflect on what Aparecida said about the
Amazon Basin, its forceful appeal for respect and protection of the
entire creation which God has entrusted to man, not so that it be
indiscriminately exploited, but rather made into a garden.
Dear
brother Bishops, I have attempted to offer you in a fraternal spirit
some reflections and approaches for a Church like that of Brazil,
which is a great mosaic made up of different tesserae, images, forms,
problems and challenges, but which for this very reason is an
enormous treasure. The Church is never uniformity, but diversities
harmonized in unity, and this is true for every ecclesial reality”.
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