Pope Benedict XVI’s Address to the Priests, Religious, Seminarians and Lay people
(November 19, 2011) Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday addressed Priests, Religious, seminarians
and Lay people at Ouidah’s St Gall Seminary. Here is the text of the discourse: It
is a great joy for me to be among you, in Ouidah, and in particular in this seminary
placed under the protection of Saint Joan of Arc and dedicated to Saint Gall, a man
of outstanding virtue, a monk who desired perfection, and a pastor full of meekness
and humility. What could be more noble than to have him as your model, as well as
the figure of Monsignor Louis Parisot, indefatigable apostle of the poor and promoter
of the local clergy, and that of Father Thomas Moulero, the first priest of the then
Dahomey, as well as Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, eminent son of your land and humble
servant of the Church? Our encounter this morning offers me the opportunity to
express directly to you my gratitude for your pastoral commitment. I give thanks
to God for your zeal, in spite of the occasionally difficult conditions in which you
are called to give witness to his love. I thank him for the many men and women who
have proclaimed the Gospel in this land, and indeed throughout Africa. Shortly,
I will sign the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus. It will treat the
question of peace, justice and reconciliation. These three values stand out as an
evangelical ideal fundamental to baptismal life, and they demand sound acceptance
of your identity as priests, as consecrated persons and as lay faithful. Dear
priests, the responsibility for promoting peace, justice and reconciliation falls
in a special way to you. Owing to your reception of Holy Orders and your celebration
of the Sacraments, you are called in effect to be men of communion. As crystal does
not retain the light but rather reflects it and passes it on, in the same manner the
priest must make transparent what he celebrates and what he has received. I thus
encourage you to let Christ shine through your life, by being in full communion with
your Bishop, by a genuine goodwill towards your brother priests, by a profound solicitude
for each of the baptized and by great attention to each person. In letting yourself
be modelled on Christ, you will never substitute the beauty of your priestly being
with ephemeral and at times unhealthy realities which the contemporary mentality tends
to impose on every culture. I urge you, dear priests, never to underestimate the
unfathomable riches of the divine grace placed in you and which you have been called
to live at the service of peace, of justice and of reconciliation. Dear men and
women religious, either active or contemplative, the consecrated life is a radical
following of Jesus. May your unconditional choice for Christ lead you to an unlimited
love for your neighbour. Poverty and chastity make you truly free to obey unconditionally
the one Love which, when it takes hold of you, impels you to proclaim it everywhere.
May poverty, obedience and chastity increase your thirst for God and your hunger for
his Word, who, by increasing, transforms hunger and thirst into service of those who
are deprived of justice, peace and reconciliation. Faithfully lived, the evangelical
counsels transform you into a universal brother or sister of all, and they will help
you to walk resolutely on the way of holiness. You will arrive there, if you are
convinced that, for you, to live is Christ (cf. Phil 1:21), you will make of your
communities reflections of the glory of God and places where you have no debts to
anyone, except that of mutual love (cf. Rom 13:8). By means of your proper charisms
lived with a spirit of openness to the catholicity of the Church, you can contribute
to a harmonious expression of the immensity of the divine gifts at the service of
all humanity! Turning now to you, dear seminarians, I encourage you to place yourselves
in the school of Christ in order to acquire those virtues which will help you to live
the ministerial priesthood as the locus of your sanctification. Without the logic
of holiness, the ministry is merely a social function. The quality of your future
life depends on the quality of your personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ,
on your sacrifices, on the right integration of the requirements of your current formation.
Faced with the challenges of human existence, the priest of today and tomorrow – if
he wants to be a credible witness to the service of peace, justice and reconciliation
– must be a humble and balanced man, one who is wise and magnanimous. After 60 years
in priestly life, I can tell you, dear seminarians, that you will not regret accumulating
intellectual, spiritual and pastoral treasures during your formation. Dear lay
faithful here present, you who are at the heart of the daily realities of life, you
are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, I urge you to renew
yourselves and your work for justice, peace and reconciliation. This mission requires
first of all a faith in your family built according to the design of God and in fidelity
to his plan for Christian marriage. He also demands of you to be true domestic churches.
Thanks to the power of prayer, “personal and family life is transformed, gradually
improved and enriched with dialogue, faith is transmitted to the children, the pleasure
of being together grows and the home is further united and consolidated” without ceasing
(Message for the Sixth World Day of Families, Mexico, 17 January 2009, 3). By having
love and forgiveness reign in your families, you will contribute to the upbuilding
of a Church which is beautiful and strong, and to the advent of greater justice and
peace in the whole of society. In this way, I encourage you, dear parents, to have
a profound respect for life and to bear witness to human and spiritual values before
your children. And I am pleased to recall that, ten years ago, Pope John Paul II
founded at Cotonou a section for French-speaking Africa of the Institute which bears
his name, to contribute to theological and pastoral reflection on marriage and the
family. Lastly, I exhort especially the catechists, those valiant missionaries at
the heart of the most humble realities, to offer them always, with an unshakable hope
and determination, an outstanding and absolutely necessary contribution to the spread
of the faith through fidelity to the teaching of the Church (cf. Ad Gentes, 17). To
conclude this conversation with you, I would like to encourage you all to have an
authentic and living faith, which is the unshakeable foundation of a holy Christian
life and which is at the service of the building of a new world. The love for the
God who reveals himself and for his word, the love for the sacraments and for the
Church, are an efficacious antidote against a syncretism which deceives. This love
favours the correct integration of the authentic values of cultures into the Christian
faith. It liberates from occultism and vanquishes evil spirits, for it is moved by
the power of the Holy Trinity itself. Lived deeply, this love is also a ferment of
communion which breaks down every barrier, promoting the building of a Church in which
there is no segregation among the baptized, for all are made one in Christ Jesus (cf.
Gal 3:28). With great confidence, I count on each one of you, priests, men and women
religious, seminarians and lay faithful, to bring such a Church to life. As a token
of my spiritual and paternal closeness, and entrusting you to the Virgin Mary, I invoke
upon all of you, your families, the young and the sick, an abundance of divine blessings.
AKLUNƆ NI KƆN FƐNU TƆN LƐ DO MI JI [Fon: May the Lord fill you with his blessings!]