The big news from last week was B-16's pilgrimage to Assisi on the eighth-century anniversary of St. Francis' conversion. Go here to read all his addresses in Italian or Portuguese. English: not so much, which does grow irritating. Zenit, at least, has the Angelus address there. And Asia News has his speech to youth at Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Church which encloses St. Francis' portiuncula. 25,000 people were present. The Pope spends a lot of time on Francis pre-converted life, when he was "in sin" as he put it. The gambling & wild parties; the vanity indulged with sumptuous clothes; the thirst for glory & adventure that led him to the crusades, capture and imprisonment --and finds in all these things the expression of a hungry heart that can't be filled by anything material.
How can we deny that there are many young people, and some not so young, who are tempted to follow the lifestyle of the youthful Francis, before his conversion? Deep down, in that way of life there was the desire for happiness which inhabits each heart. But could that life give true joy? Francis certainly did not find it to be so. You, my dear young people can test this from your own experience. The truth is that finite things give the weak impression of joy; only the Infinite can fill the heart. This was said by another great convert Saint Augustine: "for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee" (Confess. 1,1).
The remainder of the homily is about St. Francis' deep love of Christ. It was really he who rediscovered for his time the "personal relationship with Christ." That was his greatness, not love for animals (in the States at least, we've kind of reduced Francis to an ecologist. I blame Franco Zefferelli).
Yes, my dear young people: let us meet Christ! Let us trust in Him, listen to His Word. He is not just a fascinating human being. Indeed, He is fully human and similar to us, except in sin ( Eb 4, 15). But He is also so much more: He is God made man. Therefore He is the only Saviour, as he same name tells us: Jesus that is “God saves”.
We come to Assisi to learn from Saint Francis the secret to recognising Christ and to experience Him. This is what Francis felt for Jesus, as his first biography narrates: “Jesus always in his heart. Jesus on his lips, Jesus in his ears, Jesus in his eyes, Jesus in his hands, Jesus in all his other members…
...Actually, finding himself often on travels, by meditating and singing to Jesus, he forgot that he was travelling and stopped to invites all creatures to praise Jesus (1 Cel II, 9, 115: FF 115). Francis in short was truly in love with Christ. He met him in the Word of God, in his fellow man, in nature, but above all in the Eucharist.
That was what he said to youth. A few days later, at a convention of the Diocese of Rome, he said this to their educators. Arguing that it's hardly surprising that we find ourselves in an "educational emergency" when "relativism has become a sort of dogma" and it's considered dangerous to speak of truth, he asks:
how would it be possible to suggest to children and to pass on from generation to generation something sound and dependable, rules of life, an authentic meaning and convincing objectives for human existence both as an individual and as a community?
That's why parents and educators have ceased to understand their role as formators of souls, and seek to transmit skills only, not virtues or anything transcendent. We try to fill the kids' emptiness with gadgets and entertainments.
Yet, in this way we are not offering to young people, to the young generations, what it is our duty to pass on to them.
This situation doesn't satisfy, and the Holy Father goes on to insist that Christian education can't be what it is called to be unless it is truly Christian:
For education and Christian formation, therefore, it is above all prayer and our personal friendship with Jesus that are crucial: only those who know and love Jesus Christ can introduce their brothers and sisters into a living relationship with him. Indeed, moved by this need, I thought: it would be helpful to write a book on Jesus to make him known.
Let us never forget the words of Jesus: "I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide" (John 15:15-16).Our communities will thus be able to work fruitfully and to teach the faith and discipleship of Christ while being in themselves authentic "schools" of prayer (cf. Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte," n. 33), where the primacy of God is lived.
Here the Pope makes a crucial point. He calls on Catholic educators to respect young people. So much of our culture today assumes not only that youth have nothing in their heads, but that they aren't capable of any nobility. That's to sell them short:
When they feel that their freedom is respected and taken seriously, adolescents and young people, despite their changeability and frailty, are not in fact unwilling to let themselves be challenged by demanding proposals: indeed, they often feel attracted and fascinated by them.They also wish to show their generosity in adhering to the great, perennial values that constitute life's foundations.
The authentic educator likewise takes seriously the intellectual curiosity which already exists in children and, as the years pass, is more consciously cultivated. Constantly exposed to, and often confused by, the multiplicity of information, and by the contrasting ideas and interpretations presented to them, young people today nevertheless still have a great inner need for truth. They are consequently open to Jesus Christ who, as Tertullian reminds us, "called himself truth, not custom" ("De virginibus velandis," I, 1).
It is up to us to seek to respond to the question of truth, fearlessly juxtaposing the proposal of faith with the reason of our time.
I like that word "fearlessly," because the problem with so much of what passes for education --including Catholic education-- today is not merely that it's insipid or relativist or pernicious. The larger problem is it's cowardly: completely driven by the fear that someone might object and one would be forced to defend his ideas.
Here's the Corpus Christi homily in English, at long last.
Corpus Christi is thus a renewal of the mystery of Holy Thursday, as it were, in obedience to Jesus' invitation to proclaim from "the housetops" what he told us in secret (cf. Mt 10: 27). It was the Apostles who received the gift of the Eucharist from the Lord in the intimacy of the Last Supper, but it was destined for all, for the whole world. This is why it should be proclaimed and exposed to view: so that each one may encounter "Jesus who passes" as happened on the roads of Galilee, Samaria and Judea; in order that each one, in receiving it, may be healed and renewed by the power of his love.
- Homily for the June 12th canonization mass.
- An address to professors on the role of the university. He gives them three tasks, which may require comment in another post.
- And his Audience on St. Cyril of Jerusalem yesterday.
We'll leave it there for now. So much is happening, a 2nd post will be required to deal with "doings" as opposed to teachings.
