(Vatican Radio) The Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone sent to the bishop of Rimini a message
with the greetings of Pope Francis and with the considerations of the Holy Father
on the theme of the 34th edition of the Meeting. Most Reverend Excellency, I would
like to address with joy the Holy Father Francis’ cordial greeting to Your Excellency,
to the organizers and to all the participants in the Meeting for the Friendship Among
the Peoples that is now being held for the 34th time. The theme chosen – The Human
Person: a State of Emergency – captures the great urgency of evangelization, which
the Holy Father following His predecessors, has underlined many times and which caused
in Him deep considerations that now I refer here below. In His first Enciclica
Redemptor hominis (cfr. n. 14), the beatified John Paul II wrote that “man is the
way for the Church.” This truth is still valid, especially in this period in which
the Church is called to rediscover its own mission, focusing on the essential and
searching for new paths for evangelization, in a more and more globalized and virtual
world and in a society more and more deprived of stable reference points. Man
remains a mystery, irreducible to whatever image society creates and the power of
the world tries to impose to him. The man is a mystery of freedom and grace, of poverty
and grandness. But what does it mean: “Man is the way for the Church?” And especially,
what does it mean for us today to walk through this way?
Man is the way for
the Church because he is the road that God Himself walks on. From the dawn of humanity,
after the Original Sin, God has begun to search for man. “Where are you?” He asks
Adam, who is hiding in the garden (Gen 3, 9). This question, that appears at the beginning
of the Book of Genesis, and that doesn’t stop resonating throughout the entire Bible
and in every moment of the history that God, throughout the millennia, created with
humanity, reaches its highest expression through the incarnation of the Son. In His
comment on John’s Gospel, S. Agustin affirms that: “Remaining with the Father, [the
Son] was truth and life; taking our flesh, He became the way”. (I, 34, 9) Therefore
Jesus Christ is “the chief way for the Church,” but since “He is also the way for
each man”, man becomes “the prime and fundamental way for the Church.” (Redemptor
hominis 13-14)
Jesus affirms “I am the gate” (John 10,7): that means, I am
the access portal for every man and everything. Without passing through Christ, without
concentrating on Him the gaze of our heart and mind, we would not understand anything
of the mystery of the human person. Therefore, almost inadvertently, we will be forced
to acquire from the world our criteria of judgment and action, and every time we get
closer to our brothers in humanity, we will be like those “thieves and robbers” that
Jesus talks about in the Gospel (John 10,8). Even the world is in fact, in its own
way, interested in man. The economic, political and social power needs man to maintain
and inflate itself. And for this reason, the power frequently tries to manipulate
the masses, it creates desires to eliminate the most precious thing man possesses:
his relationship with God. The power fears those men that have a relationship with
God because this relationship sets them free.
This is the state of emergency
of the human person the Meeting for the Friendship Among the Peoples has chosen as
its main theme this year: the urgency to give back man to himself, at his highest
dignity, to his own uniqueness and preciousness of each human existence from his conception
to the natural end of life. It is necessary to take into consideration again the
sacredness of man and, at the same time, to strongly state that only in the relationship
with God, that is in the discovery and adhesion of one’s own vocation, that man can
achieve his true stature.
The Church to which Christ entrusted His Word and
Sacraments takes care of the greatest hopes, the most authentic possibility of fulfillment
for man, in any place and any time. What a big responsibility we have! Do not keep
just for us this precious treasure that everybody, aware or not, is looking for himself
or herself. Let’s meet with courage all the men and women of our time, children
and old people, “wise” people and those without education, young and families. Let’s
meet everybody and do not wait the others to look for us! Let’s imitate in this our
Divine Master, who left His Heaven to become man and to be closed to everybody. Let’s
bring the perfume of Christ’s love (2 Cor 2,15) not only in churches and parishes,
but in every environment. In the schools, in the universities, in workplaces, in hospitals,
in prisons; but also in the city squares, in the streets, in the sport centers, in
places where people gather. Don’t be greedy in giving what we have gained without
any merit! Let’s not be afraid to announce Christ in favorable or unfavorable occasions
(2 Tm 4,2) with respect and frankness. This is the Church’s task, this is every Christian’s
task: to serve men and look for them even in the social and the most inner spiritualist
corners.
The condition of credibility of the Church in its mission of mother
and teacher is its fidelity in Christ. The openness towards the world is accompanied
and, in a certain sense, is possible thanks to the obedience to the truth of which
the Church itself cannot dispose. “The Human Person: a State of Emergency” thus signifies
the urgency to go back to Christ, to learn from Him the truth about ourselves and
the world and with Him and in Him to go and meet every man, especially the poorest,
for which Jesus has always manifested His predilection. And poverty is not only material.
There is a spiritual poverty that grips every contemporary men. We are poor in love,
thirsty for truth and justice, beggars of God, as wisely the servant of God Father
Luigi Giussani has always underlined. The greatest poverty is in fact the lack of
Christ, and until we do not bring Jesus to people, we would have done too little for
them.
Your Excellency, I hope these brief thoughts may help those who are
taking part in the Meeting. His Holiness Pope Francis assures everybody His closeness
in prayer and His affection. He hopes that the meetings of these days may light in
the hearts of all the participants a fire that nourishes and sustains their testimony
of the Gospel in the world. And we send a particular Apostolic Benediction to You,
to all the responsible people, the organizers of this manifestation, as well as those
who are present.