Vatican City, 24 September 2015 (VIS) –
Blessed Junipero Serra (1713-1784), known as the “Apostle of
California”, was canonised yesterday by Pope Francis during a
solemn Mass celebrated in the National Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception, the title under which, since 1847, the Virgin Mary is the
patroness of the United States.
The new saint, born in Mallorca, Spain,
was a missionary first in Mexico, where he learned the Pame language
in order to teach the indigenous peoples the catechism and ordinary
prayers, which he translated for them. He was also master of novices
in the apostolic College of San Fernando. In 1767, the Jesuits were
expelled from the missions of Baja California, which were entrusted
to the Franciscans. Fr. Junipero was appointed Superior and arrived
with 14 companions in the territory in 1760, where he founded the
first mission of San Diego. He went on to found missions in Alta
California: San Carlos de Monterrey, San Anselmo, San Gabriel and San
Luis Obispo. In California alone he travelled 9,900 kilometres and
5,400 nautical miles to found new missions from which there derive
the Franciscan names of Californian cities such as San Francisco, San
Diego and Los Angeles. Serra was beatified by John Paul II in 1988.
In his homily the Pope cites St. Paul's
words to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always! I say it
again, rejoice!”. “Paul tells us to rejoice; he practically
orders us to rejoice. This command resonates with the desire we all
have for a fulfilling life, a meaningful life, a joyful life. …
Something deep within us invites us to rejoice and tells us not to
settle for placebos which simply keep us comfortable. At the same
time, though, we all know the struggles of everyday life. So much
seems to stand in the way of this invitation to rejoice. Our daily
routine can often lead us to a kind of glum apathy which gradually
becomes a habit, with a fatal consequence: our hearts grow numb”.
“We don’t want apathy to guide our
lives … or do we?”, he continued. “We don’t want the force of
habit to rule our life … or do we? So we ought to ask ourselves:
What can we do to keep our heart from growing numb, becoming
anaesthetised? How do we make the joy of the Gospel increase and take
deeper root in our lives? Jesus gives the answer. He said to his
disciples then and he says it to us now: Go forth! Proclaim! The joy
of the Gospel is something to be experienced, something to be known
and lived only through giving it away, through giving ourselves
away”.
The spirit of the world “tells us to
be like everyone else, to settle for what comes easy. Faced with
this human way of thinking, 'we must regain the conviction that we
need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and
for the world'. It is the responsibility to proclaim the message of
Jesus. For the source of our joy is 'an endless desire to show mercy,
the fruit of our own experience of the power of the Father’s
infinite mercy'. Go out to all, proclaim by anointing and anoint by
proclaiming. This is what the Lord tells us today. He tells us that a
Christian finds joy in mission: Go out to people of every nation! A
Christian experiences joy in following a command: Go forth and
proclaim the good news! A Christian finds ever new joy in answering a
call: Go forth and anoint!”.
“Jesus sends His disciples out to all
nations. To every people. We too were part of all those people of two
thousand years ago. Jesus did not provide a short list of who is, or
is not, worthy of receiving His message, His presence. Instead, He
always embraced life as He saw it. In faces of pain, hunger, sickness
and sin. In faces of the wounded, in thirst, weariness, doubt and
pity. Far from expecting a beautiful life, smartly-dressed and neatly
groomed, He embraced life as He found it. It made no difference
whether it was dirty, unkempt, broken. Jesus said: Go out and tell
the good news to everyone. Go out and in my name embrace life as it
is, and not as you think it should be. Go out to the highways and
byways, go out to tell the good news fearlessly, without prejudice,
without superiority, without condescension, to all those who have
lost the joy of living. Go out to proclaim the merciful embrace of
the Father. Go out to those who are burdened by pain and failure, who
feel that their lives are empty, and proclaim the 'folly' of a loving
Father Who wants to anoint them with the oil of hope, the oil of
salvation. Go out to proclaim the good news that error, deceitful
illusions and falsehoods do not have the last word in a person’s
life. Go out with the balm which soothes wounds and heals hearts”.
Mission is “never the fruit of a
perfectly planned program or a well-organised manual. Mission is
always the fruit of a life which knows what it is to be found and
healed, encountered and forgiven. Mission is born of a constant
experience of God’s merciful anointing. The Church, the holy People
of God, treads the dust-laden paths of history, so often traversed by
conflict, injustice and violence, in order to encounter her children,
our brothers and sisters. The holy and faithful People of God are not
afraid of losing their way; they are afraid of becoming
self-enclosed, frozen into elites, clinging to their own security.
They know that self-enclosure, in all the many forms it takes, is the
cause of so much apathy. So let us go out, let us go forth to offer
everyone the life of Jesus Christ. The People of God can embrace
everyone because we are the disciples of the One who knelt before his
own to wash their feet.
“The reason we are here today is that
many other people wanted to respond to that call. They believed that
'life grows by being given away, and it weakens in isolation and
comfort'. We are heirs to the bold missionary spirit of so many men
and women who preferred not to be 'shut up within structures which
give us a false sense of security … within habits which make us
feel safe, while at our door people are starving'. We are indebted to
a tradition, a chain of witnesses who have made it possible for the
good news of the Gospel to be, in every generation, both 'good' and
'new'”.
“Today we remember one of those
witnesses who testified to the joy of the Gospel in these lands, Fr.
Junipero Serra. He was the embodiment of 'a Church which goes forth',
a Church which sets out to bring everywhere the reconciling
tenderness of God. Junipero Serra left his native land and its way of
life. He was excited about blazing trails, going forth to meet many
people, learning and valuing their particular customs and ways of
life. He learned how to bring to birth and nurture God’s life in
the faces of everyone he met; he made them his brothers and sisters.
Junipero sought to defend the dignity of the native community, to
protect it from those who had mistreated and abused it. Mistreatment
and wrongs which today still trouble us, especially because of the
hurt which they cause in the lives of many people”.
Father Serra “had a motto which
inspired his life and work, a saying he lived his life by: siempre
adelante! Keep moving forward! For him, this was the way to continue
experiencing the joy of the Gospel, to keep his heart from growing
numb, from being anaesthetised. He kept moving forward, because the
Lord was waiting. He kept going, because his brothers and sisters
were waiting. He kept going forward to the end of his life. Today,
like him, may we be able to say: Forward! Let’s keep moving
forward!”.
After the Mass for canonisation the
Holy Father proceeded to the new St. John Paul II archdiocesan
seminary, inaugurated in 2011, inhabited by 47 seminarians who
awaited Francis at the entrance to the institution. The Pope unveiled
a plaque commemorating his visit and returned to the nunciature in
Washington D.C., where he spent the night.
Today, 24 September, at 10 a.m. local
time (4 p.m. in Rome), the Holy Father will address the United States
Congress assembled in joint session, an extraordinary gathering of
both the House of Representatives and the Senate. He will
subsequently meet with homeless people in the St. Patrick parish.
After leaving the At 5 p.m. local time (11 p.m. in Rome) he will
depart by air for New York, where he will conclude the day with
Vespers in St. Patrick's Cathedral.
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