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03 - 02.10.2005
SUMMARY
♦ SOLEMN INAUGURATION OF THE XI ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF
BISHOPS
● HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER
At 9:30 this morning, 2 October 2005, XXVII Sunday of the time “per
annum”, in the Patriarchal Vatican Basilica, at the tomb of the
Apostle Peter, the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI presided at the
Solemn Concelebration of the Eucharist with the Synodal fathers, for
the Inauguration of the XI Ordinary General Assembly of Bishops, to
be held in the Synod Hall of the Vatican to 23 October 2005, on the
topic The Eucharist: Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of
the Church.
Concelebrating with the Pope were the Synod Fathers and
Collaborators (55 Cardinal, 7 Patriarchs, 59 Archbishops, 123
Bishops, 40 Priests, 4 Auditors and 37 Assistants).
During the Holy Mass, after the proclamation of the Gospel, the Holy
Father gave the following homily (EMBARGO UNTIL IT IS PRONUNCED).
● HOMILY OF THE HOLY FATHER
The reading from the prophet Isaiah and the Gospel of today put
before our eyes one of the great images of the Sacred Scripture: the
image of the vine. The bread represents in the Sacred Scripture
everything man needs for his daily life. Water gives the earth
fertility: it is the fundamental gift, which makes life possible.
Instead, wine expresses the exquisiteness of creation; it gives us
the feast in which we surpass the limits of daily routine: wine
“gladdens the heart”. Thus wine and with it the vine have also
become images of the gift of love, in which we can have some
experience of the taste of the Divine. And thus the reading of the
prophet, which we have just listened to, begins as a song of love:
God created a vineyard - this is an image of his story of love with
humanity, of his love for Israel, which He chose. The first thought
of today’s readings is therefore the following: to man, created in
his image, God has infused in him the ability to love and therefore
the ability to also love Him, his Creator. With the song of love of
the prophet Isaiah, God wishes to speak to the hearts of his people
- and also to each one of us. “I created you in my image and
likeness”, he tells us. “I myself am love, and you are my image to
the extent in which the splendour of love shines in you, to the
extent in which you respond to me with love”. God waits for us. He
wants to be loved by us: shouldn’t a similar call touch our hearts?
In this very moment when we are celebrating the Eucharist, when we
are inaugurating the Synod on the Eucharist, He comes to meet us, He
comes to meet me. Will this find a reply? Or does this happen with
us as with the vineyard, about which God says in Isaiah: “He
expected it to yield fine grapes; wild grapes were all it yielded”?
Is our Christian life often not perhaps rather vinegar than wine? Is
it self-commiseration, conflict, indifference?
With this we have automatically arrived at the second fundamental
thought of today’s readings. They speak first of all of the goodness
of the creation of God and of the greatness of the choice by which
he expects of us and loves us. But then they also speak of the
subsequent story - of man’s failure. God had planted very select
vines and in spite of this wild grapes ripened. In what do these
wild grapes consist? Good grapes which God was expecting - says the
prophet - should have consisted in justice and uprightness. Instead,
wild grapes bring violence, bloodshed and oppression, which make
people groan under the yoke of injustice. In the Gospel the image
changes: the vine produces good grapes, but the tenants keep them
for themselves They are not willing to give them to the owner. They
beat and kill his messengers and kill His Son. Their reasons are
simple: they want to become owners; they take over what does not
belong to them. In the Old Testament first of all there is an
accusation against violating social justice for despising man by
man. However, what appears in the background is that by despising
the Torah, that right given by God, it is God Himself who is
despised; Man only wants to enjoy his own power. This aspect is
fully underlined in the parable of Jesus: the tenants do not want a
landowner - and these tenants are also a mirror of ourselves. We men,
to which creation, so to say, is entrusted to manage, usurp it. We
want to be the direct landowners and by ourselves. We want to own
the world and our own lives in an unlimited way. God is our
stumbling stone. Either we make Him a simple devout expression or he
is denied everything, he is banished from public life, thus losing
all meaning. Tolerance, which God admits so to speak in private, but
denies in the public domain, the reality in the world and in our
life, is not tolerance but hypocrisy . However, wherever man makes
himself the only master of the world and of himself, justice cannot
exist. Only the freedom of power and interests can dominate there.
Of course, one can send the Son out of the vineyard and kill him, in
order to selfishly taste the fruits of the earth alone. But then,
the vineyard will soon be changed into uncultivated land trodden by
wild boars, as says the responsorial Psalm (Cf. 79:14)
Hence, we reach the third element of today’s readings. The Lord, in
the Old as in the New Testament, proclaims judgement on the
unfaithful vineyard. The judgement which Isaiah foresaw became
reality in the great wars and exiles carried out by the Assyrians
and Babylonians. The judgement proclaimed by our Lord Jesus refers
above all to the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. But the
threat of judgement also concerns us, the Church in Europe, Europe
and the West in general. With this Gospel, the Lord is also crying
out to our ears the words which in the Apocalypse he addressed to
the Church of Ephesus “If you will not repent, I shall come to you
and take your lamp-stand from its place”(Rv 2:5). Light can also be
taken away from us, and we are right to let this warning ring again
in our soul in all its seriousness, crying out at the same time to
the Lord: “Help us to convert! Give us all the grace of true renewal!
Do not allow your light in our midst to blow out! Strengthen our
faith, our hope and our love. So that we can bring good fruit!”.
However, at this point we ask ourselves:”But isn’t there any
promise, any comforting word in the reading and in the page of
today’s Gospel? Is the last word a threat?” No! The promise is there,
and it is the last one, the essential one. We can see this in the
Alleluia verse, taken from the Gospel of John: “I am the vine, you
are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit
in plenty. (Jn 15:5). With these words of the Lord, John shows us
the last, and true result of the story of God’s vineyard. God never
fails. At the end He wins, love wins. A slight hint at this can
already be found in the parable of the vineyard proposed in today’s
Gospel and in the concluding words. Also there the death of the Son
is not the end of history, even if this is not directly told. But
Jesus expresses this death through a new image taken from the Psalm:
“The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone...”
(Mt 21:42; Ps 117:22). From the death of the Son springs life, a new
building is erected, a new vineyard. He, who in Canaan changed water
into wine, changed his blood into the wine of the true love and thus
changed the wine into his blood. He anticipated His death in the
Cenacle and transformed it in the gift of Himself, in an act of
radical love. His blood is a gift; it is love, and for this reason
it is true wine which the Creator was expecting. In this way Christ
Himself has become life, and this vine always brings good fruit: the
presence of his love for us, which is indestructible.
Thus, these parables lead at the end to the mystery of the Eucharist,
where the Lord gives us the bread of life and the wine of His love,
and invites us to the feast of eternal love. We celebrate the
Eucharist in the awareness that its price was the death of the Son -
the sacrifice of his life, which is present in it. Whenever we eat
this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord
until He comes, says St Paul (Cf. 1 Cor 11:26). However, we also
know that from this death springs life, because Jesus transformed it
into an offering gesture, in an act of love, changing it thus in
depth: love won over death. In the holy Eucharist, He draws us all
towards Him from the cross (Jn 12:32) and makes us become branches
of life which is He Himself. If we remain united to Him, then we
will also bear fruit; then also from us there will no longer be the
vinegar of self-sufficiency, of discontent of God and of His
creation, but the good wine of joy in God and of love towards one’s
neighbour. We pray to the Lord to give us his grace, so that during
the three weeks of the Synod which we are about to begin not only
will we say beautiful things about the Eucharist, but above all we
live from its strength. We invoke this gift through Mary, dear
Synodal Fathers, whom I greet with great affection, together with
the different Communities from where you come and which you
represent, so that submissive to the action of the Holy Spirit, we
can help the world become in Christ and with Christ the fruitful
vine of God. Amen.
[00004-02.16] [NNNNN] [Original text: Italian] |
