Vatican City, 25 June 2014 (VIS) –
This morning in St. Peter's Square the Holy Father, in his general
audience, continued to speak about the People of God, a theme that he
began to explore last Wednesday. Today he highlighted the importance
for a Christian of belonging to this people, and reiterated that we
are not isolated Christians. “Belonging is our identity”, he
said. “We are Christians because we belong to the Church. It is
like a surname: if our name is 'I am Christian', our surname is 'I
belong to the Church'.
“No-one becomes a Christian alone; we
must think first, with gratitude, of all those who have preceded us”,
he continued. “If we believe, if we pray, if we know the Lord and
are able to listen to His Word, we feel close to Him and recognise
Him in our brethren, and because others before us have lived faith
and transmitted it to us, have taught us. The Church is a family in
which one is welcomed and learns to live as believers and disciples
of the Lord Jesus”. The Pope explained that this is a path that one
may undertake not thanks to others, but rather united with others,
and emphasised that a “do-it-yourself Church” does not exist.
“How many times did Benedict XVI
describe the Church as an ecclesiastical 'we'? Often we hear people
say, 'I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, but I am not interested
in the Church...”. There are those who believe they can have a
personal relationship, direct and immediate, with Jesus Christ
removed from communion and the mediation of the Church. They are
dangerous and damaging temptations. They are, as the great Paul VI
said, absurd dichotomies. It is true that to walk together is
challenging and difficult. … But the Lord has entrusted his message
of salvation to human beings, to all all of us, as witnesses; and it
is in our brothers and sisters, with their gifts and their limits,
that it comes towards us and is revealed to us. And this is what
belonging to the Church means. Remember: being Christian means
belonging to the Church”.
Before concluding, the Pope asked that
the Lord, by the intercession of the Virgin Mary, might grant us the
grace never to give in to the temptation to think we can do without
other people, that we can do without the Church and save ourselves
alone, that we can be 'laboratory Christians'. On the contrary, it is
not possible to love God without loving one's brethren, it is not
possible to love God outside the Church; it is not possible to be in
communion with God without being in communion with the Church, and we
cannot be good Christians other than by staying together with those
who follow the Lord Jesus, as one people, a single body”.
Following his catechesis, the Pope
greeted a delegation from the Bethlehem University, the first
university founded in the West Bank and inspired by the principles of
the schools established by the De La Salle Christian brothers, which
celebrates its fortieth anniversary this year. He gave special thanks
to them for their “laudable academic activity in support of the
Palestinian people”.
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