Thursday, September 14, 2017

Words of wisdom for newly-named Bishops

At 11:20am this morning, in the Clementine Hall in the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience the Bishops who have been newly-named during the last year.


Speech of His Holiness, Pope Francis
to newly-named Bishops

Beloved brothers,

With great joy, I welcome you at this moment, almost the end of your Roman pilgrimage, organized by the Congregations for Bishops and for Oriental Churches.  I thank Cardinal Marc Ouellet and Cardinal Leonardo Sandri and their Dicasteries for their generous commitment to the organization of this event, which now allows me to know you personally and to deepen with you, newly-appointed Pastors of the Church, the grace and the responsibility of the ministry we have received.

In fact, not through our own merit, but by pure divine goodness we have been entrusted with the witness of the Gospel of God's grace (Acts 20:24; Romans 15:16) and the ministry of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:8-9).  This year, the programme for your Roman stay has sought to penetrate the mystery of the Episcopate through one of her central competencies, that of offering te flock in the midst of which the Holy Spirit has placed us as custodians (Acts 20:28) the spiritual and pastoral discernment that is needed in order for our ministry to reach the knowledge and fulfilment of the will of God in which all fullness resides.

Permit me therefore to share some reflections on this theme which seems more and more important in our time, a paradoxical sign of a sense of self-reference, which appears to be proclaiming the end of the Master's time while, in his solicitude, the tangible man continues to cry out his need for help in order to face the dramatic questions that preoccupy him, to be paternally guided along the unavoidable path that he faces in order to begin the mystery of his own search for life and happiness.

It is precisely through authentic discernment, which Paul presents as one of the gifts of the Spirit (cf 1 Cor 12:10) and which Saint Thomas Aquinas calls the superior virtue that he judges according to superior principles (Suma Theologica, II-II, question 5, answers 4 and 3), that we can respond to this human need today. 

The Holy Spirit, protagonist of every authentic discernment

Not too long ago, the Church invoked upon you the Spiritus Principalis or the Pneuma hegemonikon, the power which the Father gave to his Son and which He passed on to the holy Apostles, that is the Spirit that sustains and guides.

We have to be aware that such a great gift, of which with gratitude we are perpetual servants, rests on fragile shoulders.  Perhaps it is for this reason that the Church, in her prayer for Episcopal consecration, derives the expression taken from the Miserere (cf Psalm 51:14b) in which the one praying, after having exposed his own failure, implores the Spirit to grant immediate and spontaneous generosity in obedience to God, as a fundamental source for those who guide a community.

Only those who are led by God have the right and authority to be proposed as leaders for others.  They can administrate and cause to grow in their discernment only those who are familiar with the interior teacher who, like a compass, offers criteria to distinguish for himself and for others, the times of God and of his grace; to recognize his passage and the ways of his salvation; to indicate concrete means that are pleasing to God to accomplish the good that he predisposes in his mysterious plan of love for each of us and for all.  This wisdom is the practical wisdom of the Cross, which, though it includes both reasoning and prudence, transcends them both because it leads to the very fountain of life that never dies, the knowledge of the Father, the only true God, and the one who he has sent: Jesus Christ (cf Jn 17:3).

A bishop cannot assume for himself the possession of so exalted and transcendent a gift, as though it were a right to be acquired, without falling into a ministry devoid of fertility.  We must continually implore this gift as a primary condition for illuminating any human, existential, psychological, sociological or moral wisdom that we can use in the task of discerning the ways of God for the salvation of those who are entrusted to us.

Therefore, it is imperative that we continually return in prayer to Gabaon (cf 1 Kings 3: 5-12), to remind the Lord that before him we are perennial children who do not know how to settle and to implore not long days or riches, nor the life of enemies, but only discernment in judging among His people. Without this grace, we will not become good meteorologists of what can be seen in the appearance of heaven and earth but rather we will be unable to evaluate God’s time (cf Lk 12: 54-56).

Discernment, therefore, is born in the heart and mind of the bishop through his prayer when he puts the people and situations entrusted to him into contact with the Divine Word pronounced by the Spirit.  It is in such intimacy that the Pastor matures the inner freedom that makes him firm in his choices and behaviour, both personal and ecclesial. Only in the silence of prayer can one learn the voice of God, perceive the traces of His language, have access to His truth, which is a very different light, that is not above intelligence as oil is above water, but much higher since only he who know the Truth knows that light (cf Augustine, Confessions VII, 10.16).

Discernment is a gift of the Spirit to the Church, to which she responds with listening

Discernment is the grace of the Spirit to the holy and faithful people of God, who constitute it a prophetic people, endowed with the sense of faith and that spiritual instinct that makes it capable of feeling cum Ecclesia. It is a gift received in the midst of the People and is oriented towards its salvation. Since from Baptism the Spirit already dwells in the heart of the faithful, the apostolic faith, bliss, righteousness, and evangelical spirit are not strangers to them.

Therefore, although vested with unavoidable personal responsibility see the Directory Apostolorum Successores, 160-161), the Bishop is called to live his own discernment as a Pastor as a member of the People of God, or in an ever-ecclesial dynamic, at the service of the koinonìa. The bishop is not the self-sufficient father and master, nor is he the frightened and isolated solitary pastor.

The bishop’s discernment is always a community action, which does not disregard the richness of the opinion of his priests and deacons, of the People of God and of all those who can offer him a useful contribution, also through concrete and not merely formal contributions. When one does not consider his brother in any way, and considers oneself superior, then one ends up becoming proud even against God Himself (Dorothy of Gaza, Communion with God and with men, Edizioni Qiqajon, 2014, 101-102).

In serene dialogue, He is not afraid to share, and even sometimes change, his discernment with others: with confreres in the episcopate, to whom he is sacramentally united, and then discernment becomes collegiate; with his own priests, for whom he the guarantor of that unity that is not imposed by force, but rather is woven with the patience and wisdom of an artisan; with the lay faithful, because they retain the sense of the true infallibility of the faith that resides in the Church: they know that God does not diminish in His love and does not deny His promises.

As history teaches, the great Pastors, in defending the true faith, have been able to converse with such a store present in the heart and in the awareness of the faithful and, not rarely, have been supported by them. Without this exchange the faith of the most educated can degenerate into indifference and that of the most humble into superstition (John Henry Newman, On the consultation of the faithful in matters of doctrine, Morcelliana, Brescia 1991, 123).

Therefore, I invite you to cultivate an attitude of listening, growing in the freedom of renouncing one’s own point of view (when it is shown to be partial and insufficient), to assume that of God. Without letting oneself be conditioned by the eyes of others, make efforts to get to know with your own eyes the places and the people, the spiritual and cultural tradition of the diocese entrusted to you, to respectfully enter into the memory of its testimony of Christ and to interpret its concrete present in the light of the Gospel outside which there is no future for the Church.

The mission that awaits you is not to bring your own ideas and projects, nor solutions that are abstractly designed by those who consider the Church a home garden but humbly, without attention-seeking or narcissism, to offer your concrete witness of union with God, serving the Gospel that should be cultivated and helped to grow in that specific situation.

Discerning therefore means humility and obedience. Humility with regard to one’s own projects. Obedience to the Gospel, the ultimate criterion; to the Magisterium, which conserves it; to the norms of the universal Church, which serve it; and to the concrete situation of people, for whom we want nothing other than to draw from the treasure of the Church what is most fruitful for their salvation today (cf Mt 13: 52).

Discernment is a remedy for the immobility of it has always been so or let us take time. It is a creative process that does not just apply schemas. It is an antidote against rigidity, because the same solutions are not valid everywhere. It is always the perennial today of the Risen Lord that demands that we do not resign ourselves to the repetition of the past, and have the courage to ask ourselves whether the proposals of yesterday are still evangelically valid. Do not let yourselves be imprisoned by the nostalgia of having only one answer to apply in all cases. This would perhaps calm our anxiety regarding performance, but would leave us relegated to the margins and to barren lives that need to be watered by the grace we conserve (cf Mk 3: 1-6; Ezek 37: 4).

I recommend a special delicacy with the culture and religiosity of the people.

They are not something to tolerate, or mere tools to manoeuvre, or a Cinderella to keep hidden because they are unworthy of access to the noble salon of the concepts and higher reasons for faith. Indeed, it is necessary to care for and engage in dialogue with them, because besides constituting the backbone of the people’s self-comprehension, they are a true subject of evangelization, which your discernment cannot ignore. Such a charism, given to the community of believers, cannot but be recognized, called upon and involved in the ordinary path of discernment made by the Pastors.

Remember that God was already present in your dioceses when you arrived and will still be there when you are gone. And, in the end, we will all be measured not by counting our works but on the growth of God’s work in the heart of the flock that we keep in the name of the Pastor and keeper of our souls (cf 1 Pt 2:25).

Called to grow in discernment

We must strive to grow in incarnate and inclusive discernment, which dialogues with the consciousness of the faithful which is to be formed and not substituted (cf Amoris Laetitia, 37) in a patient and courageous process of accompaniment, so as to mature the capacity of each one – the faithful, families, priests, communities, and societies – of all those called to advance in the freedom to choose and accomplish the good God wants. Indeed, the activity of discernment is not reserved to the wise, the perspicacious and the perfect. Rather, God often resists the haughty and shows himself to the humble (cf Mt 11:25).

The Pastor knows that God is the way and trusts His company; knows and never doubts His truth, nor despairs of His promise of life. But of these certainties, the Pastor is seized by the humble darkness of faith. To send them to the flock is therefore not to make obvious proclamations, but to introduce to the experience of God those who He saves by sustaining and guiding the possible steps to be accomplished.

Therefore, true discernment, though definitive in every step, is an always open and necessary process that can be completed and enriched. It cannot be reduced to the repetition of formulas that like high clouds send little rain to the real man, often immersed in a reality that cannot be reduced to black or white. The Shepherd is called to make available to the flock the grace of the Spirit, Who knows how to penetrate the folds of the real and to take account of its nuances to reveal what God wants to achieve at all times. I particularly think of young people, families, priests, those who have the responsibility for leading society. In your lips, may they seek and find the steadfast witness of this Word, which is the lamp for the steps and light for the way (cf Ps 118,105).

An essential condition for progressing in discernment is to educate ourselves in the patience of God and His times, which are never ours. He does not rain fire on the infidels (cf Lk 9: 53-54), nor does He permit the zealots to rip out of the field the darnel they see growing there (cf Mt 13: 27-29). It is up to us every day to welcome from God the hope that preserves us from all abstraction, because it enables us to discover the hidden grace in the present without losing sight of the long view of His design of love that surpasses us.

Dear brothers,

I beg you to keep scrupulously before your eyes Jesus and the mission that was not His but entrusted by His Father (cf Jn 7: 16), and to offer to the people – confused and lost today, just as they were yesterday – what He was able to give: the chance to encounter God personally, to choose His way and to progress in His love.

Keep your gaze today fixed on Him today, the Feast of the Holy Cross, a permanent place for God’s discernment in our favour, contemplating the depth of His incarnation and learning from it the criterion of every authentic discernment (cf 1 Jn 4: 1).

May the Virgin, who keeps her gaze firmly on her Son, keep and bless you and your particular Churches.

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