Vatican: Card. Filoni meets India’s future priests

(Vatican Radio) The Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, is on a seven day pastoral visit to India. On Tuesday, the Cardinal visited with seminarians at St. Albert’s College, Ranchi, marking the 100^th anniversary of its foundation.


Below we publish the full text of his address to seminarians
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Fr. Rector and Staff, Seminarians,

I am glad to be here with you today, as part of my Pastoral Visit to your beautiful country, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. I take the occasion to convey to you His Holiness’s greetings and Apostolic Blessing.

St. Albert's College is turning 100. It is befitting to celebrate in a solemn way such an occasion. I am informed that so far over 2000 new priests have come out of this College, out of whom 35 have become Bishops, Archbishops and one Cardinal. The main scope of this leading College has been to train and form new priests for Chota Nagpur Region and the whole of North India. In line with the Church Teachings on Priestly formation and the opportune directives the Catholic Church issues from time to time, this Seminary aims at forming new priests according to the heart of Jesus.

Seminary formation is one of the most important ministries in the Church, as the future priests, along with the Religious and Laity, become the main pastoral agents and
collaborators of the Bishop in building up the local communities and in developing communion within the Diocese as a whole. This is a great challenge, especially in today’s world of globalization, of accelerated technological development and consumerism. At a time when many cultures are in danger of being eroded, it is all the more important to have priests who are well grounded in their own culture and in Gospel values, so that they can act as good shepherds that are close to the people in their struggles and that lead them to discover the presence of God in the depths of their heart and in their surroundings. It has been the desire of the Church for these last fifty years that “the whole pattern of Seminary life, permeated with a desire for piety and silence and a careful concern for mutual help, be arranged that it provides, in a certain sense, an initiation into the future life which the priest shall lead” (cfr. Optatam totius 11, Decree on priestly training, published 28^th October 1965).

I am happy to know that here at St. Albert’s College all through these past few years you have been able to maintain the ideal ratio of one permanent formator for at least 10 to 15 seminarians, as indicated by the Bishops’ Conference and to get properly selected, qualified, trained and regularly updated resident priest-formators as well as visiting professors to ensure quality formation of students.

The holistic formation program and, in particular, the missionary thrust of the Seminary’s pastoral formation, deserve much appreciation as the signs of our times indicate to intensify the missionary activity of the particular Churches in the tribal belt of North India. To pursue this goal great care must be taken to ensure that the Seminarians are introduced to an authentic missionary spirituality that would transform them into zealous and committed ministers of the Gospel of Jesus.
The world changes, cultures continuously push towards change, man transforms his ideas but as Blessed John Paul II stated in the Apostolic Exhortation on the Formation of Priests in the circumstances of present day, Pastores dabo vobis, published on the 25^th March 1992: “there is an essential aspect of the priest that does not change: the priest of tomorrow, no less than the priest of today, must resemble Christ. When Jesus lived on this earth, he manifested in himself the definitive role of the priestly establishing a ministerial priesthood with which the apostles were the first to be invested. This priesthood is destined to last in endless succession throughout history. In this sense the priest of the third millennium will continue the work of the priests who, in the preceding millennia, have animated the life of the Church. In the third millennium the priestly vocation will continue to be the call to live the unique and permanent priesthood of Christ. It is equally certain that the life and ministry of the priest must also adapt to every era and circumstance of life.... For our part we must therefore seek to be as open as possible to light from on high from the Holy Spirit, in order to discover the tendencies of contemporary society, recognize the deepest spiritual needs, determine the most important concrete tasks and the pastoral methods to adopt, and thus respond adequately to human expectations” (PDV 5).
Pope Benedict XVI in the Apostolic Letter for the Indiction of the Year of Faith, Porta fidei, states: “By faith, the Apostles left everything to follow their Master (cf. Mk 10, 28). They believed the words with which he proclaimed the Kingdom of God present and fulfilled in his person (cf. Lk 11, 20). They lived in communion of life with Jesus who instructed them with his teaching, leaving them a new rule of life, by which they would be recognized as his disciples after his death (cf. Jn 13, 34-35). By faith, they went out to the whole world, following the command to bring the Gospel to all creation (cf. Mk 16, 15) and they fearlessly proclaimed to all the joy of the resurrection, of which they were faithful witnesses” (PF 13). Dear Seminarians, this is what Jesus asks from you, this is what the Church expects from you, as men of faith. Yes, through your faith you gave a positive response to the One who called you, the One who chose you to be “an instrument in His hands.” Your humble response, as you are being called to a spiritual service and not a service that results in personal gain, must be consonant with a life of faith which is easily noticed from your words and actions.
If we had to ask the Old Testament Patriarchs about their life of faith, the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 11, tells us that:
by faith Abel offered to God a sacrifice greater than Cain’s,
by faith Noah inherited the righteousness and was saved from the deluge,
by faith Abraham obeyed and went out, not knowing where he was to go,
by faith Sarah became mother,
by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and with him Israel, that gave birth to the Messiah,
by faith Moses refused to be known as Pharaoh’s son, considering the promised Land greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt,
by faith he crossed the Red Sea.
And if we pass on to the New Testament we may say that:
by faith Mary accepted to become Mother,
by faith Joseph accepted Mary and the Child Jesus,
by faith the Apostles followed Christ, in martyrdom,
by faith Paul changed his life and devoted it completely to the One he used to persecute.
So I would ask: why are you here today? What motivates you to frequent the Seminary? Are you ready, through faith, to offer all your life to Christ? Are you ready to offer all your physical energy to serve Christ and His Church, in a celibate and chaste life? Are you ready to serve the People of God, the poor and the Gospel, in obedience? Are you ready to sacrifice your temptation to pursue an egoistic career, in order to in the priesthood serve the Sacraments of the Eucharist, the forgiveness of sins, the consolation of the afflicted and to impart the Holy Spirit?
From the answers to these questions I would know if your presence in the Seminary today makes sense, or it is sheer waste of time.
Dear Seminarians, I urge you that throughout your formation you realize further that as ministers of Jesus Christ, the head and shepherd, you would be thankful and joyful of what you have received: a singular grace and treasure from Jesus Christ. It is truly a grace that you have been freely chosen to be a “living instrument” in the work of salvation. On your part then, what will be your response to this grace you received? First and foremost, the thirst for God and for an active meaningful relationship with Him. In order to progress in this relationship the Seminary programme provides you with the necessary aids of spiritual accompaniment, time for personal prayer and communal prayer, time for meditation, retreats and penitential services etc. It is up to you to make out the best of the formation offered to you with great commitment and dedication. At the end of the day it is you who is responsible before God of your formation.
Your response to God’s grace is the gift of yourself, now in your responsibility throughout your priestly formation, later in pastoral charity throughout your many years of priestly ministry. Be aware that there is an intrinsic relation between a priest’s spiritual life and the exercise of the ministry, and this especially in the celebration of the sacraments, receiving its saving effects from the action of Christ himself in the Sacraments. From the various Sacraments, and in particular from the specific grace proper to each one of them, I would like to make special mention of the Sacrament of Penance, of which you will be ministers, but ought to be its beneficiaries, becoming yourselves witnesses of God’s mercy towards sinners. I advise you to receive the Sacrament of Penance regularly, in order to become effective and efficacious ministers of God’s mercy.
Certainly, a future priest must train himself in obedience. Priestly obedience also demands from you a marked spirit of asceticism, both in the sense of a tendency not to become too bound up in your own preferences or points of view. It also has a particular pastoral character. It is lived in an atmosphere of constant readiness to allow oneself to be taken up, as it were “consumed”, by the needs and demands of the flock. Here, I recall once again to your memory your response to God’s grace as your gift: to your bishop, your superiors, your parish priest and your parishioners.
Often times this gift of yourselves in the ministry may lead to search for compensations or half-measures. It is only God who will compensate you. Here, it is important that you understand the importance of the theological motivation of the Church’s law on celibacy. It is a Church law but it is also an expression of your readiness to configure yourself to Jesus Christ, the head and spouse of the Church. For an adequate spiritual life, this “sweet burden” as Venerable Paul VI referred to celibacy in his Encyclical Letter on the Celibacy of the Priest, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, published on the 24^th June 1967, ought not to be considered and lived as an isolated or purely negative element, but as one aspect of the positive, specific and characteristic approach to being a priest. It is prayer, together with the Church’s Sacraments and ascetical practice which will provide you hope in difficulties, forgiveness in failings, and confidence and courage.
As future priests be part of the community you will be ministering. This by being personally involved in the life of the community and being responsible for it. You should also offer the witness of a total “honesty” and detachment in the administration of the goods of the community, which you will never treat as if they were your own property, but rather something for which you will be held accountable by God and your brothers and sisters, especially the poor and the marginalized. Rest assure that this interior freedom will help you to stand beside the poor and the underprivileged and urge you to exercise solidarity.
It is my sincere prayer that, through the intercession of St. Albert the Great and with the full cooperation of all members of staff, your prestigious Seminary will continue to be responsive to the need of the Church in this region of India. It is also my pleasure to offer this gift to St. Albert’s College, a chalice, to mark my visit to your Seminary as you celebrate the first hundred years from its foundation.