Homily during the taking of possession of St. John of Lateran’ s Basilica
Saturday, September 23th, 1978
I thank from my heart the Cardinal Vicar the delicate words with which – also in the name of the Episcopal council, of the Lateran town hall, the Clergy, the Monks, the Nuns and the faithful -- has wanted to express the devotion and the intentions of active collaboration in the diocese of Rome. First concrete testimony of this collaboration is the enormous amount gathered between the faithful of the diocese and put it to my service to provide with a temple and parochial structures to a quarter in the suburbs of the city, still lack of those essential communitarian elements of Christian life. I thank, really moved.
I. The Christian appearance of the city
The Master of Ceremonies has chosen the three Biblical readings for this liturgical celebration. He has considered them suitable and I am going to try to explain them to you.
The City of Peter, centre of the Catholic Church
The first reading (Is. 60, 1-6) can be applied to Rome.
You all know that the Pope acquires his authority over all the Church as soon as he is Bishop of Rome, that means, successor of Peter, in this city.
Thanks specially to Peter, the Jerusalem of which Isaiah spoke, can be considered a figure, a pre-announcement of Rome.
Also about Rome, as the see of Peter, place of his martyrdom and centre of the Catholic Church, it is possible to say: 'The aurora of the Lord comes over you and His Glory is revealed in you. People will walk in your light' (Is . 60, 2-3). Remembering the Holy Years pilgrimages and those ones that continue taking place during normal years with constant affluence of faithful, it is possible, with the prophet, to speak emphatically to Rome like this: 'Rise your eyes around and look: your children arrive from far away... because the treasures of the sea will come to you, the wealth of people will arrive to you' (Is . 60, 4-5).
This is an honour for the Bishop of Rome and for all of you. But it is also a responsibility.
City of Peace
Will pilgrims find, here, a model of a true Christian community? Will we be capable, with the God’s help, Bishop and faithful, to fulfil here the words written by Isaiah followed by those mentioned before, that is to say: 'It will already be spoken no more about violence in your land... Your people will be a people of right ones'? (Is. 60, 18-21).
Some minutes ago, professor Argan, mayor of Rome, have addressed me some kind words of greeting and augury. Some of those words have made me remember one of the prayers that, as a boy, I used to say with my mother. It said like this: 'Sins that shout revenge to the eyes of God are... to oppress the poor, not to give the right payment to the workers'. On the other hand, the parish Priest asked me in the Catechism class: 'Sins that shout revenge to the eyes of God, why are they more serious and fatal? ' And I replied, according to the Catechism of Pius X: 'Because they are directly opposite to the good of human being and so detestable that they cause, more than the others, the punishment of God" (Catechism of Pius X, nr. 154).
Ecclesial community that has a preference for the poor
Rome will be an authentic Christian community if God is honoured not only with the affluence of the faithful to the churches, not only with the private life lived moderately, but also with the love for the poor. These ones -- Roman Deacon Laurence said -- are the true treasures of the Church; they must, therefore, be helped, by those who can, to have more and become something else, without being humiliated and offended with ostentations of wealth, with money wasted in superfluous things, trying to be employed, whenever it is possible, in advantageous tasks for all.
II. To construct a living and operating Christian community
The second reading (Heb. 13, 7- 8, 15 -17, 20 -21) is adapted to the faithful of Rome. It has been chosen, as I said, by the Master of ceremonies. I confess that, as it is spoken about obedience there, it puts me a little in difficult.
Today it is very difficult to convince when human person rights face those of authority and law!
Freedom and authority
On the book of Job, a battle horse is described: it jumps like a colt and snorts, scratches the field with the hoof and then it flings itself with ardour; when the trumpet sounds, it whinnies of joy; it smells the fight from far, it hears the command shouts and the formations outcry (cf. Job 39,15 -25). Symbol of freedom. Authority, however, is similar to the prudent knight, who rides the horse and, sometimes in a smooth voice, or using the spurs rightly, the reins or the riding whip, he stimulates it, or he also moderates its impetuous race, he restrains it and he stops it.
To agree horse and horseman, freedom and authority, has become a social problem. And also a Church problem.
During the Council, it was tried to solve it in the fourth chapter of Lumen Gentium.
Here, they are the Council indications for the 'knight': 'Sacred shepherds know very well how lay persons contribute to the all Church good. They know that they have not been put by Christ to assume by themselves all the mission of salvation that the Church has received in relation to the world, but their magnificent task is that one of feeding the faithful and of recognizing their services and their charismas, so that all of them can cooperate concordantly, everyone as far as possible, in the common work' (Lumen Gentium, 30) and it continues: may the shepherds also know 'in the decisive battles, the wiser initiatives sometimes come from the front' (Id. 37 note 7).
However, here you have a Council indication for the generous 'fighter', that is for lay persons: to the Bishop 'faithful ought to adhere as the Church to Jesus Christ and as Jesus Christ to the Father' (Id. 27) .
Let us pray to the Lord so that He helps as much the Bishop as faithful, as much the knight as the horse.
Ecclesial Communion
I was said that, in the diocese of Rome, there are many people who are helpful with their brothers, many catechists; many others are waiting for a single slight signal to take part and to collaborate. May the Lord help all of us to constitute in Rome a living and operating Christian community. Not in vain, I have mentioned the chapter fourth of the Lumen Gentium: it is the chapter about the 'ecclesial communion'. But what it is said there affects specially lay persons.
Priestly and religious obedience
Priests, Monks and Nuns have a particular position, bound as they are to the vow or the promise of obedience.
I remember as one of the solemn moments of my existence that one in which, I put my hands on the Bishop' s, I said: 'I promise'. Since then, I have felt committed for all my life and I have never thought it was a ceremony without importance.
I hope that Priests of Rome think the same. To them and to the Monks, St. Francis of Sales would remember them the example of St. John the Baptist, who lived in solitude, far from the Lord, even with his great desire to be near Him. Why? By obedience. 'He knew – the Saint writes -- that to find the Lord outside obedience, it was to lose Him' (F. of Salles, Oeuvres, Annecy, 1896 page. 321).
III. The task of preaching the Gospel
The third reading (TM. 28, 16-20) remembers to the Bishop of Rome his duties.
To teach with pastoral style
First, it is 'to teach', proposing the Word of the Lord with fidelity as much to God as to whom are listening, with humility, but with brave frankness.
Between my holy predecessors, Bishops of Rome, there are two of them who are also Doctors of the Church: St. Leo, the defeater of Athila, and St. Gregory the Great.
In the writings of the first one, there is a highest theological line and a wonderfully constructed Latin language is shining; I don' t think I can imitate him, even from far.
The second one, in his books, is 'like a father, who instructs his children and he makes them take part of his requests for their eternal salvation' (I. SCHUSTER, Liber Sacramentorum, vol. I, Turin, 1929, page 46). I would want to try to imitate the second one, who dedicates all the third book of his Regula pastoralis to the subject 'qualiter doceat ', that is to say, how the shepherd must teach. Throughout 40 chapters, Gregory concretely indicates several ways of instruction, according to different circumstances of social condition, age, health and moral temperament of listeners. Poor and rich, glad and sad, superiors and subjects, learned and ignorant, shameless and shy, etc... all they are in that book, that is like the Josafat valley.
In the Vatican Council, it was considered like something new the denomination 'pastoral' not only on what was taught to the shepherds, but on what the shepherds made to face needs, anxieties and hope of men. Gregory had already put in practice that 'innovation' many centuries before, as much in preaching as in the government of the Church.
To celebrate liturgy well
The second duty, expressed with the word 'to baptize', speaks about the sacraments and all the liturgy. The diocese of Rome has followed the program of the CEI 'Evangelization and Sacraments'; it already knows that evangelization, sacrament and holy life are three moments of an only way: evangelization prepares to sacrament and sacrament takes to live as Christians those who have received it. I would want that this great concept was applied every time more extendedly.
I would also want that Rome gave the good example of a liturgy celebrated piously and without 'creativities' out of place. Some abuses in liturgical matter have been able to feed, by reaction, attitudes that have taken to take untenable positions in themselves and in contrast to the Gospel. When making a call, warmly and with hope, to the sense of responsibility of each one in front of God and the Church, I wanted to be able to assure that any liturgical irregularity will be avoided diligently.
Guiding and governing with love
And we already are in the last Episcopal duty: 'teaching to watch'. It is deaconate, the service to guide and govern. I confess that, even when I have been Bishop for twenty years, in Vittorio Veneto and in Venice, 'I have not learned the job well, yet'. In Rome, I will study at St. Gregory the Great school, who says: 'May him (the shepherd) be near to each one of his subjects with compassion. And forgetting his degree, be considered himself equal to the good subjects, but does not be afraid of exerting the right of his authority against the bad ones. Remember that while all the subjects thank to God inasmuch as the shepherd has done of good, they do not dare to censure what he has done badly; when he represses had habits, does not let him himself to be recognized, humbly, just like the brothers to whom he has corrected and feel himself before God as much debtor as more unpunished are his actions before men'. (Reg . past. Part II, cc. 5 and 6 passim)
The explanation of the three readings finishes here. But let me add just one thing: it is God' s law that it is not possible to make the good to anybody if he is not loved before. For that reason, St. Pius X, when entering as Patriarch of Venice, exclaimed in St. Mark: 'What would it be of me, Venetian, if I don' t love you'. I tell the Romans something similar: I can assure you I love you, that I only wish to serve you and to put at your disposal all my poor forces, all the little I have and I am.
And here the text of the greeting message addressed to the Holy Father by Cardinal Ugo Poletti .
Holy Father,
Intimately together with the Bishops of the Episcopal Council of Rome and the Lateran Chapter, I have the joy and the responsibility to reassume the feelings of faith, love, devotion, available collaboration that Clergy, Religious people and people of your Roman Diocese wish to show you today with absolute clearly and sincerity.
Announcing this, Your visit to the Patriarchal Arch-Basilica of the SS. Saviour of Lateran, Bishop of Rome Chair guard, I have dared to say it was a meeting totally Roman, not only by lack of kindness or consideration to the Curia Members of the Holy See who, in addition, is called Roman, or to the illustrious Representatives of so many twin towns here present to honour You, but rather to remember to us ourselves a particular dimension of ecclesial life and a consequent responsibility, that derives from our bond to Your person.
We are Your children, like all the members of the Catholic Church, but with a peculiarity that it is unique: this Saint Diocesan Church only belongs to You and no Brother in the Episcopate can share with You the paternity.
We are Your personal portion and Your heritage, represented by that Chair of Peter, of which Lateran is spiritually its guard, but with which you have also inherited the paternity and the Universal Teaching in the Catholic Church.
We have a personal title to receive from You nutrition and support with the Word of God, with the exercise of paternal charity and patience, with the attention and the immediate request, so that our Faith does not diminish and our Christian life does not languish.
If we still stopped in these single considerations, we would be inert, stingy children: we would not be certainly Your crown and joy.
We are thankful to You for this meeting, in the taking of possession of Your Episcopal Chair, because you give the joy to notice more deeply and filially some of our active, serious and stimulating responsibilities.
We advice that, because of the intimate communion of the People of God with their Bishop, we also are, somehow, contributors of Your serious duty to build the Holy Church in the world. Not only in Rome we must give space and body, visible everywhere, to Your pastoral action and to Your charity; not only, like children who live at home, we must help the Father welcoming the brothers who come from far, but by Your same presence and mission we are helped, like no other, to grow in a dimension of truly Catholic Faith, in a testimony of charity towards the poor, the humble, the small, the marginalized, that can evidently be perceived by the other Churches-sisters.
They are duties that Your presence here, today remembers us with a unique authority.
Deeply conscious of our weaknesses, limitations and contradictions that, in the ecclesial City life, are mixed together with its singular capacities of good or and with Christian dynamic forces operating in all cultural, popular level, of leadership or community, we noticed another responsibility of the 'ecclesial communion' with You, our Bishop and Father: we constituted for You the space of verification of all the good and the pain that, in different expressions and dimensions, moves and extends in the world. In order to use a modern technical term, the Diocese of Rome constitutes for the Pope the ' sample investigation', immediate, living, joyful and painful, of human and Christian life spread in the world.
Perhaps for this the operative tensions, aspirations, possibilities; social, moral, religious compensations and imbalances that inevitably exist in every city, perhaps also in higher proportions still in Rome, assume a singular and world-wide echo, that immediately is perceived. So, as You know intimately Your diocesan Church, You will mysteriously notice the pulse of the world heart.
Thinking on this situation, we are determined to give You a contribution, the truest and more authentic possible, to facilitate Your mission of Shepherd and Universal Father.
Are we presumptuous? Have mercy of us, Holy Father, like weak creatures; understand us like willing people; love us and support us like sincere children, who want to be faithful to You.
To the edge of these considerations, the explosive joy of Your Church in the meeting with its Bishop becomes more reflective and conscious. Joy cannot replace duty, but from the advised and fulfiled duty, the joy that brings new fruits is consolidated.
You - continuing the work of the venerated Pope Paul VI, become so human and sensible in the last years - You have already given us a lot in confidence, in a kind paternity and, still more, You will give us in spiritual strength and magisterial and moral assistance.
We, small, what can we offer You? A gift that can be in collaboration of faith and charity, in helping the poorest.
Parishes, Religious and faithful Institutes have answered generously to the invitation, sent by me, by offering You the possibility of building a 'house of God and fraternal charity' in a modest district of Rome: at Castelgiubileo in Salaria St., where the parish of St. Crisante and St. Daria is still lack of all the parish structures.
Until now, more than one hundred million have been gathered; the first paternal gift that Pope John Paul offers to His Diocese of Rome.
Bless, Holy Father, the Cardinal Vicar and the Bishops, Your collaborators, the Venerable Chapter and the Lateran Clergy, the diocesan Presbytery with the Seminaries and Institutes; but, mainly, the City of Rome, with all its religious and civil people in charge and, specially, with its children, particularly the poorest and the sick, with the auspice of Mary "Salus Populi Romani".
