Renew your faith and work toward and live the reconciliation that the gospel calls Christians, Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholics in his first weekly Lenten audience since Ash Wednesday.
Laity and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church “are not opposed,” the pope said during the March 7 audience before several thousand visitors and Catholic pilgrims in the Paul VI Audience Hall.
“But,” he added, both are “organically connected in the mystery of the one body.”
Pope Benedict cancelled the regular Wednesday audience Feb. 28 for the annual weeklong Vatican Lenten retreat Feb. 25 – March 3.
Italian Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, retired archbishop of Bologna, led the preached retreat, as he had in 1989 for Pope John Paul II, this time on the theme, "The Things Above."
The pontiff focused his remarks on St. Clement, the church’s fourth pope, who reigned according to the Vatican's Annuario Pontificio from 92 to 99.
“Clement wrote an important letter to the church in Corinth at a time when the Christian community was deeply divided,” the pope said. “He encourages them to renew their faith in the message received from the apostles and to be reconciled with one another.”
Benedict noted that Clement “shows the essential connection between the content of the gospel and the way we live,” suggesting that Christians find themselves in a time where reconciliation with one’s neighbor is most needed.
The “hierarchical structure” of the church is “intrinsically ordered” to the call of charitable service, the pope said, adding that for St. Clement the “entire cosmos reflects God’s providential love and mercy.”
In a special message to English-speaking visitors and pilgrims present at the audience, the pope expressed the hope that their “pilgrimage renew your love for the Lord and his church.”
In his last weekly general audience on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 21, Pope Benedict said that Lent is a time to embrace conversion as a journey of return to God and to reject self-realization.
Lent serves, he said, as an opportunity for the faithful “to go back to being Christian.”
Lent is a time of conversion “in which we return to our baptism in order to rediscover it and experience it more profoundly,” the pope said.
“It is an occasion to go back to being Christian via a constant process of interior transformation, and of progress in the knowledge and love of Christ."
"Conversion," the pontiff said to about 3,000 in St. Peter’s Basilica and about 7,000 in the Vatican’s audience hall, is not something that happens once, but rather “is a process ... a journey ... that cannot be limited to a specific period but must embrace all existence."
In Lent, the Christian is called to “tear out” vanity’s roots, the pope said, adding the “conversion means seeking God.”
"Lent is an appropriate spiritual moment to train ourselves more earnestly to seek God, opening our hearts to Christ,” the pope said.
Pope Benedict said that conversion is “not an effort of self-realization,” but is found in submitting to God’s will.
“Self-realization is a contradiction, and it is too little for us. We have a higher destiny,” he said.
“Conversion consists precisely in not thinking that one is the 'creator' of oneself, and thus discovering the truth."
He pointed to his Lenten message, released Feb. 13, in which he highlighted "the immense love that God has for us," and invites Christians to remain "with Mary and John, the disciple Jesus loved, next to him who on the cross gave his life for humanity."
In his 1,200-word 2007 Lenten message, Pope Benedict focused on love, the theme of his encyclical Deus caritas est (God is love), the cross, and the responsibility of Christians to respond to love in dealings with others.
"The cross is the definitive revelation of love and divine mercy,” the pope said in his remarks at the audience.
The conversion of the cross stands in contradiction to a culture that is “too often distracted by worldly and momentary concerns and interests.”
“God is love and his love is the secret of our happiness. To enter into this mystery of love there is no other way than that of losing ourselves, giving ourselves, the way of the cross."
Prayer, fasting, penance and works of charity are all become “spiritual paths to follow in order to return to God," he said
Pope Benedict offered the prayer that Lent be a time “to learn how to give, once again, our love to our neighbors, especially those who are suffering or are in difficulty.”
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Sotto Voce
Friday, March 9, 2007
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