At 11:30am this morning, in the Clementine Hall at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience the Bishops who were Ordained during the past year, who have been participating in a formation course offered by the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for Oriental Churches.
Dear brothers, welcome.
I welcome you to this final meeting of your pilgrimage to Rome, organized by the Congregations for Bishops and for the Eastern Churches. I thank Cardinals Ouellet and Sandri for their commitment in organizing these days.
Together, as new members of the Episcopal College, you came a little while ago to the tomb of Peter, the trophy of the Church of Rome. There you confessed the same faith as the Apostle. It is not a theory or a compendium of doctrines, but a person, Jesus. His face makes us close to God's gaze. Our world seeks this divine closeness, even unknowingly. He is the mediator. Without this proximity of love the foundation of reality wavers; the Church itself gets lost when it loses the vivifying tenderness of the Good Shepherd. Here you have entrusted your Churches, for them you have repeated with Jesus: body offered and blood shed for you. We know of no other strength than this, the strength of the Good Shepherd, the strength to give life, to bring Love closer to love. Here is our mission: to be for the Church and for the world sacraments of the proximity of God. I would therefore like to tell you something about closeness that is essential for every minister of God and above all for Bishops. Proximity to God and closeness to his people.
Closeness to God is the source of the Bishop's ministry. God loves us, he got closer than we could imagine, he took on our flesh in order to save us. This proclamation is the heart of faith, it must precede and animate all our initiatives. We exist to make this closeness palpable. But we cannot communicate God's closeness without experiencing it, without experiencing it every day, without letting ourselves be infected by his tenderness. Every day, without saving time, we must stand before Jesus, bring him people, situations, like channels that are always open between Him and our people. With prayer we give the Lord citizenship where we live. Let us feel, like Saint Paul, that we are tent-makers (cf Acts 18: 3): apostles who allow the Lord to live among his people (cf Jn 1:14).
Without this personal confidence, without this intimacy cultivated every day in prayer, even and especially in the hours of desolation and aridity, the core of our episcopal mission is unfolding. Without closeness to the Sower, it will seem to us that the effort to throw the seed without knowing the harvest time provides little reward. Without the Sower, it will be difficult to accompany the slow maturation of the grain with patient confidence. Without Jesus, there is distrust that He will not complete his work; without Him, sooner or later, we slip into the pessimistic melancholy of those who say: everything is bad. It is bad to hear a bishop say this! Only by being with Jesus are we preserved from the Pelagian presumption that good derives from our skill. Only by staying with Jesus does the profound peace that our brothers and sisters seek from us reach our hearts.
And from closeness to God to closeness to his people. Being close to the God of proximity, we grow in the awareness that our identity consists in making ourselves close. It is not an external obligation, but it is an internal requirement of the logic of the gift. This is my Body offered for you, we say at the highest moment of the Eucharistic offering for our people. Our life springs from here and leads us to become broken bread for the life of the world. Then proximity to the people entrusted to us is not an opportunist strategy, but our essential condition. Jesus loves to approach his brothers through us, through our open hands that caress and console; our words, pronounced to anoint the world of the Gospel and not of ourselves; our hearts, when we are burdened with the anguishes and joys of our brothers. Even in our poverty, it is up to us that no one feels God as distant, that no one takes God as a pretext for raising walls, tearing down bridges and sowing hatred. It is ugly even when a bishop breaks down bridges, sows hatred or distrust, acts as a counter-bishop. With our lives, we must announce a measure of life that is different from that of the world: the measure of love without measure, which does not look to its own profit and to its own advantages, but to the boundless horizon of God's mercy.
The Bishop's closeness is not rhetoric. It is not made up of self-referential proclamations, but of real availability. God surprises us and often loves to upset our agendas: be prepared for this without fear. Proximity knows concrete verbs, those of the good Samaritan: seeing, that is, not looking from the other side, not pretending anything, not leaving people waiting and not hiding problems under the carpet. So get close to each other, stay in contact with people, dedicate time to them more than spending time at the desk, don't fear contact with reality, in order to know and embrace. Then, bind up wounds, take charge, take care, spend (cf Lk 10.29-37). Each of these verbs of proximity is a milestone in the journey of a Bishop with his people. Everyone asks to get involved and to get their hands dirty. To be close is to empathize with the people of God, to share their pains, not to disdain their hopes. To be close to the people is to trust that the grace that God faithfully pours into us, and of which we are channels even through the crosses we carry, is greater than the mud of which we are afraid. Please do not let fear of the risks of the ministry prevail, by retracting and keeping your distance. Your Churches mark your identity, because God has combined their destinies, pronouncing your name together with theirs.
The thermometer of closeness is attention to the small ones, the poor, which is already a proclamation of the Kingdom. Your sobriety will also be so, in a time in which in many parts of the world everything is reduced to a means to satisfy secondary needs, which engulf and sclerotize the heart. Making a simple life is witnessing that Jesus is enough for us and that the treasure of which we want to surround ourselves is constituted rather by those who, in their poverty, remind us of and represent Him again: not abstract poor, data and social categories, but concrete persons, whose dignity is entrusted to us as their fathers. Fathers of concrete people; that is paternity, ability to see, concreteness, ability to caress, ability to cry.
It seems that today there are stethoscopes that can hear a heart a meter away. We need Bishops capable of feeling the beat of their communities and their priests, even from a distance: capable of feeling the pulse. Pastors who are not satisfied with formal presences, table meetings or circumstantial dialogues. I am reminded of pastors who are so self-cared for that they look like distilled water, which knows nothing. Apostles of listening, who know how to listen even to what is not pleasant to hear. Please do not surround yourself with bagmen and yes men ... the climbing priests who are always searching ... no, please. Do not crave to be confirmed by those of you who have to conform. There are many forms of closeness to your Churches. In particular I would like to encourage regular pastoral visits: visit frequently, meet people and pastors; visit, following the example of the Madonna, who wasted no time and got up to go quickly to her cousin. The Mother of God shows us that to visit is to bring near Him who makes us jump with joy, in order to bring the comfort of the Lord who does great things to the humble of his people (cf Lk 1,39 ff).
Finally, I ask you again to reserve the greatest closeness for your priests: the priest is the closest neighbour of the bishop. Love your neighbour. Please embrace them, thank them and encourage them on my behalf. They too are exposed to the elements of a world that, despite being tired of darkness, does not spare hostility to light. They need to be loved, followed, encouraged: God does not wish any half measures, but a total yes. In shallow waters it stagnates, but their life is made to take off. Like yours. Therefore, take courage, dear brothers! I thank you and bless you. Please remember to pray every day for me too. Thank you.
Testo originale nella lingua italiana
Texto in español
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
addressed to newly-ordained Bishops
Dear brothers, welcome.
I welcome you to this final meeting of your pilgrimage to Rome, organized by the Congregations for Bishops and for the Eastern Churches. I thank Cardinals Ouellet and Sandri for their commitment in organizing these days.
Together, as new members of the Episcopal College, you came a little while ago to the tomb of Peter, the trophy of the Church of Rome. There you confessed the same faith as the Apostle. It is not a theory or a compendium of doctrines, but a person, Jesus. His face makes us close to God's gaze. Our world seeks this divine closeness, even unknowingly. He is the mediator. Without this proximity of love the foundation of reality wavers; the Church itself gets lost when it loses the vivifying tenderness of the Good Shepherd. Here you have entrusted your Churches, for them you have repeated with Jesus: body offered and blood shed for you. We know of no other strength than this, the strength of the Good Shepherd, the strength to give life, to bring Love closer to love. Here is our mission: to be for the Church and for the world sacraments of the proximity of God. I would therefore like to tell you something about closeness that is essential for every minister of God and above all for Bishops. Proximity to God and closeness to his people.
Closeness to God is the source of the Bishop's ministry. God loves us, he got closer than we could imagine, he took on our flesh in order to save us. This proclamation is the heart of faith, it must precede and animate all our initiatives. We exist to make this closeness palpable. But we cannot communicate God's closeness without experiencing it, without experiencing it every day, without letting ourselves be infected by his tenderness. Every day, without saving time, we must stand before Jesus, bring him people, situations, like channels that are always open between Him and our people. With prayer we give the Lord citizenship where we live. Let us feel, like Saint Paul, that we are tent-makers (cf Acts 18: 3): apostles who allow the Lord to live among his people (cf Jn 1:14).
Without this personal confidence, without this intimacy cultivated every day in prayer, even and especially in the hours of desolation and aridity, the core of our episcopal mission is unfolding. Without closeness to the Sower, it will seem to us that the effort to throw the seed without knowing the harvest time provides little reward. Without the Sower, it will be difficult to accompany the slow maturation of the grain with patient confidence. Without Jesus, there is distrust that He will not complete his work; without Him, sooner or later, we slip into the pessimistic melancholy of those who say: everything is bad. It is bad to hear a bishop say this! Only by being with Jesus are we preserved from the Pelagian presumption that good derives from our skill. Only by staying with Jesus does the profound peace that our brothers and sisters seek from us reach our hearts.
And from closeness to God to closeness to his people. Being close to the God of proximity, we grow in the awareness that our identity consists in making ourselves close. It is not an external obligation, but it is an internal requirement of the logic of the gift. This is my Body offered for you, we say at the highest moment of the Eucharistic offering for our people. Our life springs from here and leads us to become broken bread for the life of the world. Then proximity to the people entrusted to us is not an opportunist strategy, but our essential condition. Jesus loves to approach his brothers through us, through our open hands that caress and console; our words, pronounced to anoint the world of the Gospel and not of ourselves; our hearts, when we are burdened with the anguishes and joys of our brothers. Even in our poverty, it is up to us that no one feels God as distant, that no one takes God as a pretext for raising walls, tearing down bridges and sowing hatred. It is ugly even when a bishop breaks down bridges, sows hatred or distrust, acts as a counter-bishop. With our lives, we must announce a measure of life that is different from that of the world: the measure of love without measure, which does not look to its own profit and to its own advantages, but to the boundless horizon of God's mercy.
The Bishop's closeness is not rhetoric. It is not made up of self-referential proclamations, but of real availability. God surprises us and often loves to upset our agendas: be prepared for this without fear. Proximity knows concrete verbs, those of the good Samaritan: seeing, that is, not looking from the other side, not pretending anything, not leaving people waiting and not hiding problems under the carpet. So get close to each other, stay in contact with people, dedicate time to them more than spending time at the desk, don't fear contact with reality, in order to know and embrace. Then, bind up wounds, take charge, take care, spend (cf Lk 10.29-37). Each of these verbs of proximity is a milestone in the journey of a Bishop with his people. Everyone asks to get involved and to get their hands dirty. To be close is to empathize with the people of God, to share their pains, not to disdain their hopes. To be close to the people is to trust that the grace that God faithfully pours into us, and of which we are channels even through the crosses we carry, is greater than the mud of which we are afraid. Please do not let fear of the risks of the ministry prevail, by retracting and keeping your distance. Your Churches mark your identity, because God has combined their destinies, pronouncing your name together with theirs.
The thermometer of closeness is attention to the small ones, the poor, which is already a proclamation of the Kingdom. Your sobriety will also be so, in a time in which in many parts of the world everything is reduced to a means to satisfy secondary needs, which engulf and sclerotize the heart. Making a simple life is witnessing that Jesus is enough for us and that the treasure of which we want to surround ourselves is constituted rather by those who, in their poverty, remind us of and represent Him again: not abstract poor, data and social categories, but concrete persons, whose dignity is entrusted to us as their fathers. Fathers of concrete people; that is paternity, ability to see, concreteness, ability to caress, ability to cry.
It seems that today there are stethoscopes that can hear a heart a meter away. We need Bishops capable of feeling the beat of their communities and their priests, even from a distance: capable of feeling the pulse. Pastors who are not satisfied with formal presences, table meetings or circumstantial dialogues. I am reminded of pastors who are so self-cared for that they look like distilled water, which knows nothing. Apostles of listening, who know how to listen even to what is not pleasant to hear. Please do not surround yourself with bagmen and yes men ... the climbing priests who are always searching ... no, please. Do not crave to be confirmed by those of you who have to conform. There are many forms of closeness to your Churches. In particular I would like to encourage regular pastoral visits: visit frequently, meet people and pastors; visit, following the example of the Madonna, who wasted no time and got up to go quickly to her cousin. The Mother of God shows us that to visit is to bring near Him who makes us jump with joy, in order to bring the comfort of the Lord who does great things to the humble of his people (cf Lk 1,39 ff).
Finally, I ask you again to reserve the greatest closeness for your priests: the priest is the closest neighbour of the bishop. Love your neighbour. Please embrace them, thank them and encourage them on my behalf. They too are exposed to the elements of a world that, despite being tired of darkness, does not spare hostility to light. They need to be loved, followed, encouraged: God does not wish any half measures, but a total yes. In shallow waters it stagnates, but their life is made to take off. Like yours. Therefore, take courage, dear brothers! I thank you and bless you. Please remember to pray every day for me too. Thank you.
Testo originale nella lingua italiana
Texto in español
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