Benedict to His New Brother Bishops: Above all, Br Men of Prayer

BISHOPS MUST BE, ABOVE ALL, MEN OF PRAYER

VATICAN CITY, SEP 22, 2007 (VIS) - This morning in Castelgandolfo, the Holy Father received participants in the traditional meeting of bishops who have been appointed over the course of the last twelve months. With them, he reflected on the apostolic and pastoral nature of a bishop's life of prayer.

After highlighting how "the chief place in the life of a successor to the Apostles must be reserved for God," the Pope told the bishops to reserve a special mention for priests in their prayers, "that they may persevere in their vocation, faithful to the priestly mission with which they have been entrusted.

"How edifying its," he added, "for each priest to know that his bishop - from whom he received the gift of priesthood or who is in any case his father and friend - remains close to him in prayer and affection, and is always ready to welcome him, listen to him, support and encourage him. Nor," he continued," in a bishop's prayers, should there ever be lacking a supplication for new vocations. They must be asked insistently of God, that He may call 'whom He will' to the sacred ministry."

"Where men and women are constantly rushing and lose themselves, where people live as if God does not exist," the Pope told the newly-consecrated bishops, "create places and moments for prayer where, in silence, in listening to God through 'lectio divina,' in individual and community prayer, mankind can meet God and enjoy a living experience of Jesus Christ Who reveals the true face of the Father."

The Holy Father exhorted the bishops "to make the cathedral an exemplary house of prayer, especially liturgical prayer, where the diocesan community united with their bishop can praise and thank God for His work of salvation, and intercede for all humankind."

"Be men of prayer," Benedict XVI concluded. "In appealing to God for yourselves and for your faithful, have the trust of children, the boldness of a friend, and the perseverance of Abraham, who was tireless in his intercession."

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Today is the Feast of St. Maurice

Today is the Feast of St. Maurice, the patron of soldiers and swordsmiths. Legend has it that he was a member of the Theban Legion sent to the Rhine Danube frontier to suppress a revolt by the Bagandae in Gaul. After their victory, they were ordered to sacrifice to the gods in thanksgiving, an order they could not obey. The legion was decimated. After the third decimation, they were killed in their entirety. He is usually depicted in armor and sometimes as a black. Read about him in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

John Chrysostom: Coherence between Ideas and Real Life

John Chrysostom:
Coherence between Ideas and Real Life

From the Vatican News Service


VATICAN CITY, SEP 19, 2007 (VIS) - In his general audience, held this morning in St. Peter's Square, the Pope continued with his series of catecheses on the subject of the Fathers of the Church, focussing today on St. John Chrysostom.



The Pope began by recalling the fact that this year marks the 16th centenary of the death of St. John Chrysostom, who was born in Antioch, in modern-day Turkey, in the year 349. "Called Chrysostom, meaning 'golden-mouthed,' for his eloquence, it could be said that he is still alive today through his works," the Holy Father observed.



"Ordained a deacon in 381 and a priest in 386, he became a famous preacher in the churches of his city; ... 387 was John's 'heroic year'," said Benedict XVI, the year of "the so-called 'revolt of the statues' when people destroyed the imperial statues as a sign of protest against the rise in taxes."



The Holy Father then went on to observe how this saint "was one of the most prolific of the Fathers, of him we have 17 treatises, more than 700 authentic homilies, his commentaries on Matthew and Paul, and 241 letters. He was not a speculative theologian. He transmitted the traditional and certain doctrine of the Church at a time of theological controversies, caused above all by Arianism, in other words the negation of Christ's divinity."



"His is an explicitly pastoral theology," the Pope continued, "in which he shows a constant concern for coherence between thought expressed in words and real existence, This, in particular, is the common thread of the magnificent catecheses with which he prepared catechumens to receive Baptism."



Benedict XVI indicated how "St. John Chrysostom was concerned that his writings should accompany the integral - physical, intellectual and religious - development of the person."



In his works, the saint highlighted the importance of childhood because it is then "that inclinations to vice and virtue appear. For this reason the law of God must, from the beginning, be impressed upon the soul 'as upon a wax tablet'."



Childhood, said the Pope referring to the saint's writings, "is followed by the sea of adolescence in which the gales blow violently as concupiscence grows within us." Then comes courtship and marriage, about which the saint points out "that a well prepared husband and wife close the way to divorce: everything takes place joyfully and children can be educated to virtue. When the first child is born, he or she is like a bridge: the three become a single flesh because the child brings the two parts together and all together they constitute a family, a little Church."



Finally, the Pope recalled how the saint used to address his writings to the lay faithful who, "through Baptism, take on the priestly office, royal and prophetic. ... This lesson of Chrysostom on the authentically Christian presence of the lay faithful in the family and in society is today more important than ever."

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From the Vatican News Service: The Tenth Inter-Christian Symposium between Catholics and Orthodox

Theologians representing Rome and the Orthodox are meeting in continuation of a dialogue of two decades. Benedict XVI hopes these talks "will contribute to upholding and corroborating the real - though imperfect - communion that exists between Catholics and Orthodox, so that we may reach that fullness which will one day enable us to concelebrate the one Eucharist."

St. John Chrysostom pray for us.

VATICAN CITY, SEP 17, 2007 (VIS) - The Holy Father has written a Message to Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, for the Tenth Inter-Christian Symposium between Catholics and Orthodox, which is being held from September 16 to 19 on the Greek island of Tinos.

The symposium, organized every two years by the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality at Rome's Antonianum Pontifical Athenaeum, and by the faculty of theology at the Aristotle University of Thessalonica, Greece, aims to study Catholics' and Orthodox' shared patrimony of faith and tradition. The current meeting - which has as its theme "St. John Chrysostom, a bridge between East and West" - coincides with the 1,600th anniversary of the death of that saint, considered as a Father of the Church in both East and West.

In his Message, the Pope expresses his happiness at the fact that the gathering is being held on Tinos "where Orthodox and Catholics coexist fraternally," and he recalls how "ecumenical cooperation in the academic field contributes to maintaining an impetus towards the longed-for communion among all Christians.

On the subject of ecumenical cooperation, the Pope points out how "Vatican Council II recognized in this field an opportunity to involve the entire People of God in the search for full unity."

The Holy Father then goes on to refer to St. John Chrysostom as "a valiant, illuminated and faithful preacher of the Word of God, ... such an extraordinary hermeneutist and speaker that, from the fifth century, he was given the title of Chrysostom, which means golden-mouthed. A man whose contribution to the formation of the Byzantine liturgy is known to everyone," and whose mortal remains "after complex historical events have, since 1626, rested in St. Peter's Basilica."

"In 2004," Pope Benedict writes, "my venerated predecessor John Paul II donated part of the relics to His Holiness Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch, so that the great Father of the Church could be venerated both in the Vatican Basilica and in the church of St. George in Fanar."

The symposium will consider St. John Chrysostom and communion with the Church of the West, studying a number of current problems. This, writes the Pope "will contribute to upholding and corroborating the real - though imperfect - communion that exists between Catholics and Orthodox, so that we may reach that fullness which will one day enable us to concelebrate the one Eucharist.

"And it is to that blessed day," the Holy Father adds in conclusion, "that we look with hope, organizing practical initiatives such as this one."

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European Liberalism

"The liberal believes in the permanence of humanity's imperfection, he resigns himself to a regime in which the good will be the result of numberless actions and never the object of a conscious choice. Finally, he subscribes to the pessimism that sees in politics the art of creating the conditions in which the vices of men will contribute to the good of society."

-Raymond Aron quoted by Richard John Neuhaus who reads this as Augustinian in sensibility.