At
11:50am yesterday morning, in the Paul VI Hall, His Holiness, Pope Francis
received in Audience the Communities of the Pontifical Gregorian University,
the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Oriental Institute.
Discourse
of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for
the meeting with the Communities of the
Pontifical
Gregorian University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute
and
the Pontifical Oriental Institute
Your Eminences,
Venerable Brothers in the Episcopate and in the
Priesthood,
Very Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I welcome you all, professors, students and non-teaching
personnel of the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Pontifical Biblical
Institute, and the Pontifical Oriental Institute. I greet Father Nicolas, the
Father Delegate and all the other Superiors, as well as the Cardinals and the
Bishops present. Thank you!
The Institutions to which you belong -- gathered in
Consortium by Pope Pius XI in 1928 --, are entrusted to the Society of Jesus
and share the same desire to militate for God under the standard of the
Cross and to serve only the Lord and the Church His Spouse, at the disposition
of the Roman Pontiff, Vicar of Christ on earth (Formula , 1). It
is important that collaboration is developed among them and the synergies that
guard the historical memory, at the same time taking charge of the present and
looking to the future -- the General Father said looking at the distant
horizon -- looking at the future with creativity and imagination, seeking to
have a global vision of the situation and of the present challenges, and a
shared way of addressing them, finding new ways without fear.
Thinking of your commitment, the first aspect I would
like to stress, be it as docents or students, and as personnel of the
Institutions, is that of valuing the place itself in which you
are working and studying, namely the city and above all the Church of
Rome. There is a past and a present. There are the roots of faith: the
memories of the Apostles and the Martyrs; and there is the ecclesial today, there is the present path of this Church that presides in charity at the
service of unity and of universality. All this should not be taken for granted!
It is lived and valued with a commitment that in part is institutional and in
part is personal, left to each one’s initiative.
However, at the same time you bring here the variety of
your Churches of provenance, of your cultures. This is one of the Roman
institutions. It offers a valuable occasion of growth in the faith and of the
opening of the mind and of the heart to the horizon of catholicity. Within this
horizon the dialectic between centre and peripheries assumes its own form,
namely the evangelical form according to the logic of a God that reaches the
center from the periphery and returns to the periphery.
The other aspect that I wish to share is that of
the relation between study and the spiritual life. Your
intellectual commitment in teaching and in research, in study and in the
broadest formation, will be that much more fruitful and effective the more it
is animated by love of Christ and of the Church, and the more solid and
harmonious will be the relation between study and prayer. This is not something
ancient, it is the center!
This is one of the challenges of our time: to transmit
knowledge and to offer a key to vital understanding, not a cumulus of notions
unconnected among themselves. There is need of a true evangelical hermeneutic
to understand life, the world and men better, not of a synthesis but of a
spiritual atmosphere of research and certainty based on the truths of reason
and of faith. Philosophy and Theology enable one to acquire the convictions
that structure and strengthen the intelligence and illumine the will … but all
this is fruitful only if it is done with an open mind and kneeling. The
theologian who is content with his complete and closed thought is a mediocre theologian. The good theologian and philosopher has an open
thought, that is, incomplete, always open to the maius of God
and of the truth, always developing, according to that law that Saint Vincent
of Lerins described as annis consolidetur, dilatetur tempore,
sublimetur aetate (Commonitorium primum, 23: PL 50, 668): it is
consolidated with the years, it dilates in time, it is deepened with age. This
is the theologian that has an open mind. And the theologian that does not pray
and does not adore God ends up in sickening narcissism. And this is an
ecclesiastical sickness. The narcissism of theologians, of thinkers does so
much harm, it is sickening.
The end of studies in all Pontifical Universities is
ecclesial. Research and study are integrated with one’s personal and community
life with the missionary commitment, with fraternal charity and the sharing
with the poor, with the care of the interior life in the relationship with the
Lord. Your Institutes are not machines to produce theologians and philosophers;
they are communities in which one grows, and growth occurs in the family. In
the university family there is the charism of government, entrusted to the
Superiors, and there is the diakonia of the non-teaching personnel which is
indispensable to create a daily family environment, and also to create an
attitude of humanity and concrete wisdom, which will make of today’s students
persons capable of building humanity, of transmitting the truth in a human
dimension, of knowing that if the goodness and beauty are lacking of belonging
to a family of work, one ends up by being an intellectual without talent, an
ethicist without goodness, a thinker lacking the splendor of the beauty and
only rigged of formalisms. The respectful and daily contact with the
laboriousness and the witness of the men and the women who work in your
Institutions will give you that quota of realism so necessary so that your
science is human science and not that of a laboratory.
Dear brothers, I entrust each one of you, your study and
your work to the intercession ofMary, Seat of Wisdom, of Saint
Ignatius of Loyola and of your other holy Patrons. I bless you from my heart
and I pray for you. You also, please, pray for me! Thank you!
Now, before giving you the blessing, I invite you to pray to Our
Lady, the Mother, that she may help and protect you. Ave Maria …
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