Pope's Homily from Sunday Mass at St. Stephen's in Vienna
Below is the text of Pope Benedict XVI's homily on the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary time,
delivered during Mass at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna...
Homily of the Holy
Father Solemn Eucharist Vienna, Saint Stephen’s Cathedral Sunday, 9 September
2007
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
“Sine dominico non possumus!”
Without the gift of the Lord, without the Lord’s day, we cannot live: That was the
answer given in the year 304 by Christians from Abitene in present-day Tunisia, when
they were caught celebrating the forbidden Sunday Eucharist and brought before the
judge. They were asked why they were celebrating the Christian Sunday Eucharist,
even though they knew it was a capital offence. “Sine dominico non possumus”: in
the word dominico two meanings are inextricably intertwined, and we must once more
learn to recognize their unity. First of all there is the gift of the Lord – this
gift is the Lord himself: the Risen one, whom the Christians simply need to have
close and accessible to them, if they are to be themselves. Yet this accessibility
is not merely something spiritual, inward and subjective: the encounter with the
Lord is inscribed in time on a specific day. And so it is inscribed in our everyday,
corporal and communal existence, in temporality. It gives a focus, an inner order
to our time and thus to the whole of our lives. For these Christians, the Sunday
Eucharist was not a commandment, but an inner necessity. Without him who sustains
our lives with his love, life itself is empty. To do without or to betray this focus
would deprive life of its very foundation, would take away its inner dignity and beauty.
Does
this attitude of the Christians of that time apply also to us who are Christians today?
Yes, it does, we too need a relationship that sustains us, that gives direction and
content to our lives. We too need access to the Risen one, who sustains us through
and beyond death. We need this encounter which brings us together, which gives us
space for freedom, which lets us see beyond the bustle of everyday life to God’s creative
love, from which we come and towards which we are travelling.
Of course, if
we listen to today’s Gospel, if we listen to what the Lord is saying to us, it frightens
us: “Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has and all links with his family
cannot be my disciple.” We would like to object: What are you saying, Lord? Isn’t
the family just what the world needs? Doesn’t it need the love of father and mother,
the love between parents and children, between husband and wife? Don’t we need love
for life, the joy of life? And don’t we also need people who invest in the good things
of this world and build up the earth we have received, so that everyone can share
in its gifts? Isn’t the development of the earth and its goods another charge laid
upon us? If we listen to the Lord more closely, if we listen to him in the context
of everything he is saying to us, then we understand that Jesus does not demand the
same from everyone. Each person has a specific task, to each is assigned a particular
way of discipleship. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking directly of the specific
vocation of the Twelve, a vocation not shared by the many who accompanied Jesus on
his journey to Jerusalem. The Twelve must first of all overcome the scandal of the
Cross, and then they must be prepared truly to leave everything behind; they must
be prepared to assume the seemingly absurd task of travelling to the ends of the earth
and, with their minimal education, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a world
filled with claims to erudition and with real or apparent education – and naturally
also to the poor and the simple. They must themselves be prepared to suffer martyrdom
in the course of their journey into the vast world, and thus to bear witness to the
Gospel of the Crucified and Risen Lord. If Jesus’s words apply in the first instance
to the Twelve, his call naturally extends beyond the historical moment into all subsequent
centuries. He calls people of all times to count exclusively on him, to leave everything
else behind, so as to be totally available for him, and hence totally available for
others: to create oases of selfless love in a world where so often only power and
wealth seem to count for anything. Let us thank the Lord for giving us men and women
in every century who have left all else behind for his sake, and have thus become
radiant signs of his love. We need only think of people like Benedict and Scholastica,
Francis and Clare, Elizabeth of Hungary and Hedwig of Silesia, Ignatius of Loyola,
Teresa of Avila, and in our own day, Mother Teresa and Padre Pio. With their whole
lives, these people have become a living interpretation of Jesus’s teaching, which
through their lives becomes close and intelligible to us. Let us ask the Lord to
grant to people in our own day the courage to leave everything behind and so to be
available to everyone.
Yet if we now turn once more to the Gospel, we realize
that the Lord is not speaking merely of a few individuals and their specific task;
the essence of what he says applies to everyone. The heart of the matter he expresses
elsewhere in these words: “For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever
loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a man if he
gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” (Lk 9:24f.). Whoever wants
to keep his life just for himself will lose it. Only by giving ourselves do we receive
our life. In other words: only the one who loves discovers life. And love always
demands going out of oneself, it demands leaving oneself. Anyone who looks just to
himself, who wants the other only for himself, will lose both himself and the other.
Without this profound losing of oneself, there is no life. The restless craving for
life, so widespread among people today, leads to the barrenness of a lost life. “Whoever
loses his life for my sake … ”, says the Lord: a radical letting-go of our self is
only possible if in the process we end up, not by falling into the void, but into
the hands of Love eternal. Only the love of God, who loses himself for us and gives
himself to us, makes it possible for us also to become free, to let go, and so truly
to find life. This is the heart of what the Lord wants to say to us in the seemingly
hard words of this Sunday’s Gospel. With his teaching he gives us the certainty that
we can build on his love, the love of the incarnate God. Recognition of this is the
wisdom of which today’s reading speaks. Once again, we find that all the world’s
learning profits us nothing unless we learn to live, unless we discover what truly
matters in life.
“Sine dominico non possumus!” Without the Lord and without
the day that belongs to him, life does not flourish. Sunday has been transformed
in our Western societies into the week-end, into leisure time. Leisure time is certainly
something good and necessary, especially amid the mad rush of the modern world. Yet
if leisure time lacks an inner focus, an overall sense of direction, then ultimately
it becomes wasted time that neither strengthens nor builds us up. Leisure time requires
a focus – the encounter with him who is our origin and goal. My great predecessor
in the see of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Faulhaber, once put it like this: Give
the soul its Sunday, give Sunday its soul.
Because Sunday is ultimately about
encountering the risen Christ in word and sacrament, its span extends through the
whole of reality. The early Christians celebrated the first day of the week as the
Lord’s day, because it was the day of the resurrection. Yet very soon, the Church
also came to realize that the first day of the week is the day of the dawning of creation,
the day on which God said: “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3). Therefore Sunday is also
the Church’s weekly feast of creation – the feast of thanksgiving and joy over God’s
creation. At a time when creation seems to be endangered in so many ways through
human activity, we should consciously advert to this dimension of Sunday too. Then,
for the early Church, the first day increasingly assimilated the traditional meaning
of the seventh day, the Sabbath. We participate in God’s rest, which embraces all
of humanity. Thus we sense on this day something of the freedom and equality of all
God’s creatures.
In this Sunday’s Opening Prayer we call to mind firstly that
through his Son God has redeemed us and made us his beloved children. Then we ask
him to look down with loving-kindness upon all who believe in Christ and to give us
true freedom and eternal life. We ask God to look down with loving-kindness. We
ourselves need this look of loving-kindness not only on Sunday but beyond, reaching
into our everyday lives. As we ask, we know that this loving gaze has already been
granted to us. What is more, we know that God has adopted us as his children, he
has truly welcomed us into communion with himself. To be someone’s child means, as
the early Church knew, to be a free person, not a slave but a member of the family.
And it means being an heir. If we belong to God, who is the power above all powers,
then we are fearless and free. And we are heirs. The inheritance he has bequeathed
to us is himself, his love. Yes, Lord, may this inheritance enter deep within our
souls so that we come to know the joy of being redeemed. Amen.