Homily of the Holy Father
“The Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have told you” ( Jn 14,26).
In this simple way, Jesus offers his disciples the guarantee that will accompany all the missionary work that will be entrusted to them: the Holy Spirit will be the first to keep and keep alive and current the memory of the Master in the heart of the disciples. It is He who makes the richness and beauty of the Gospel a source of constant joy and innovation.
At the beginning of this moment of grace for the whole Church, in harmony with the Word of God, we insistently ask the Paraclete to help us remember and to revive the words of the Lord who burned our hearts (cf. Lk 24,32 ). Glory and evangelical passion that generate the ardor and passion for Jesus. Memory that can awaken and renew within us the ability to dream and hope . Because we know that our young people will be able to prophecy and vision to the extent that we, now adults or seniors, we are able to dream and so infect and share the dreams and the hopes that we carry in our hearts (cf. Gl 3.1).
May the Spirit give us the grace to be synodal Fathers anointed with the gift of dreams and of hope, so that we may in turn, anoint our young people with the gift of prophecy and vision; give us the grace to be an industrious, living, efficacious memory, which from generation to generation does not allow itself to be suffocated and crushed by the prophets of calamity and misfortune nor by our limits, errors and sins, but is able to find spaces to inflame the heart and discern the ways of the Spirit. It is with this attitude of docile listening to the voice of the Spirit that we are gathered from all parts of the world. Today, for the first time, there are also two Bishops from Continental China with us. We give them our warm welcome: communion of the entire Episcopate with the Successor of Peter is even more visible thanks to their presence.
Anointed in hope we begin a new ecclesial meeting capable of broadening horizons, dilating the heart and transforming those structures that paralyze us today, separate us and distance us from the young, leaving them exposed to the elements and orphans of a community of faith that sustains them, of a a horizon of meaning and life (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium , 49).
Hope challenges us, moves us and breaks the conformism of “we have always done so”, and asks us to get up to look directly at the faces of young people and the situations in which they find themselves. The same hope asks us to work to overthrow the situations of precariousness, exclusion and violence, to which our children are exposed.
The young people, the result of many of the decisions taken in the past, call us to take charge of the present with greater commitment and to fight against what in any way prevents their lives from developing with dignity. They ask us and demand a creative dedication, an intelligent dynamic, enthusiastic and full of hope, and that we do not leave them alone in the hands of so many merchants of death who oppress their lives and obscure their vision.
This capacity for dreaming together, which the Lord today gives to us as a Church, requires – according to what St. Paul told us in the first reading – to develop a precise attitude among us: “Everyone does not seek his own interest, but also that of the others “( Phil2.4). At the same time, it aims higher and asks that with humility we consider others superior to ourselves (see verse 3). With this spirit we will try to listen to each other to discern together what the Lord is asking of his Church. And this requires us to be careful and take care that the logic of self-preservation and self-reference does not prevail, which ends up making important what is secondary and secondary important. The love for the Gospel and for the people entrusted to us requires us to broaden our gaze and not lose sight of the mission to which he calls us to aim for a greater good that will benefit all of us. Without this attitude, all our efforts will be in vain.
The gift of sincere listening, praying and as much as possible without prejudices and conditions will allow us to enter into communion with the different situations that the People of God lives. Listening to God, to hear with him the cry of the people; listening to the people, to breathe with it the will to which God calls us (cf. Discourse in the prayer vigil in preparation for the Synod on the family , October 4, 2014).
This attitude defends us from the temptation to fall into ethical or elitist positions, as well as from the attraction for abstract ideologies that never correspond to the reality of our people (cf. JM Bergoglio, Meditaciones para religiosos , 45-46).
Brothers, sisters, let us place this time under the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary. May she, woman of listening and memory, accompany us to recognize the traces of the Spirit so that with care (cf. Lk 1:39 ), between dreams and hopes, we accompany and encourage our young people so that they do not stop prophesying.
Synodal Fathers,
many of us were young or took our first steps in religious life while the Second Vatican Council ended. The last message of the Council Fathers was addressed to the young people of that time. What we have heard from young people will do us good to go over again with the heart remembering the words of the poet: “Man maintain what he promised as a child” (F. Hölderlin).
Thus the Conciliar Fathers spoke to us: “The Church, during four years, has worked to rejuvenate her face, to better correspond to the design of her Founder, the great Living, the eternally young Christ. And at the end of this imposing “revision of life”, it turns to you: it is for you young people, especially for you, that it with its Council has lit a light, that which illuminates the future, your future. The Church is eager for the society that you are about to build up to respect the dignity, freedom and right of people: and these people are you. […] She has confidence […] that you will know how to affirm your faith in life and in how much it gives meaning to life: the certainty of the existence of a just and good God.
It is in the name of this God and of his Son Jesus that we exhort you to expand your hearts according to the dimensions of the world, to understand the appeal of your brothers, and to boldly put your young energies at their service. Fight against all selfishness. Refuse to give free rein to the instincts of violence and hatred, which generate wars and their sad procession of misery. Be generous, pure, respectful, sincere. And build a world better than the present in enthusiasm! “(Paul VI, Message to the young at the end of the Second Vatican Council , 8 December 1965).
Synodal Fathers, the Church looks at you with trust and love.