Celebration of Vespers in Notre Dame Cathredral. Homily by the Holy Father.
Dear Brother Cardinals and Bishops, Reverend Canons of the Cathedral Chapter, Reverend
Chaplains of Notre-Dame, Dear Priests and Deacons, Dear Friends from Non-Catholic
Churches and Ecclesial Communities, Dear Brothers and Sisters!
Blessed
be God who has brought us together in a place so dear to the heart of every Parisian
and all the people of France! Blessed be God, who grants us the grace of offering
him our evening prayer and giving him due praise in the very words which the Church’s
liturgy inherited from the synagogue worship practised by Christ and his first disciples!
Yes, blessed be God for coming to our assistance – in adiutorium nostrum – and helping
us to offer him our sacrifice of praise! We are gathered in the Mother Church
of the Diocese of Paris, Notre-Dame Cathedral, which rises in the heart of the city
as a living sign of God’s presence in our midst. My predecessor, Pope Alexander III,
laid its first stone, and Popes Pius VII and John Paul II honoured it by their presence.
I am happy to follow in their footsteps, a quarter of a century after coming here
to offer a conference on catechesis. It is hard not to give thanks to the Creator
of both matter and spirit for the beauty of this edifice. The Christians of Lutetia
had originally built a cathedral dedicated to Saint Stephen, the first martyr; as
time went on it became too small, and was gradually replaced, between the twelfth
and fourteenth centuries, by the great building we admire today. The faith of the
Middle Ages built the cathedrals, and here your ancestors came to praise God, to entrust
to him their hopes and to express their love for him. Great religious and civil events
took place in this shrine, where architects, painters, sculptors and musicians have
given the best of themselves. We need but recall, among so many others, the architect
Jean de Chelles, the painter Charles Le Brun, the sculptor Nicolas Coustou and the
organists Louis Vierne and Pierre Cochereau. Art, as a pathway to God, and choral
prayer, the Church’s praise of the Creator, helped Paul Claudel, who attended Vespers
here on Christmas Day 1886, to find the way to a personal experience of God. It is
significant that God filled his soul with light during the chanting of the Magnificat,
in which the Church listens to the song of the Virgin Mary, the Patroness of this
church, who reminds the world that the Almighty has lifted up the lowly (cf. Lk 1:52).
As the scene of other conversions, less celebrated but no less real, and as the pulpit
from which preachers of the Gospel like Fathers Lacordaire, Monsabré and Samson transmitted
the flame of their passion to the most varied congregations, Notre-Dame Cathedral
rightly remains one of the most celebrated monuments of your country’s heritage.
Following a tradition dating back to the time of Saint Louis, I have just venerated
the relics of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns, which have now found a worthy
home here, a true offering of the human spirit to the power of creative Love. Beneath
the vaults of this historic Cathedral, which witnesses to the ceaseless dialogue that
God wishes to establish with all men and women, his word has just now echoed to become
the substance of our evening sacrifice, as expressed in the offering of incense, which
makes visible our praise of God. Providentially, the words of the Psalmist describe
the emotion filling our souls with an exactness we could hardly have dared to imagine:
“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’” (Ps 121:1).
Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi: the Psalmist’s joy, brimming over in the
very words of the Psalm, penetrates our hearts and resonates deeply within them.
We truly rejoice to enter the house of the Lord, since, as the Fathers of the Church
have taught us, this house is nothing other than a concrete symbol of Jerusalem on
high, which comes down to us (cf. Rev 21:2) to offer us the most beautiful of dwelling-places.
“If we dwell therein”, writes Saint Hilary of Poitiers, “we are fellow citizens of
the saints and members of the household of God, for it is the house of God” (Tract.
in Ps. 121:2). And Saint Augustine adds: “This is a psalm of longing for the heavenly
Jerusalem … It is a Song of Steps, not for going down but for going up … On our pilgrimage
we sigh, in our homeland we will rejoice; but during this exile, we meet companions
who have already seen the holy city and urge us to run towards it” (En. in Ps. 121:2).
Dear friends, during Vespers this evening, we are united in thought and prayer with
the voices of the countless men and women who have chanted this psalm in this very
place down the centuries. We are united with the pilgrims who went up to Jerusalem
and to the steps of its Temple, and with the thousands of men and women who understood
that their earthly pilgrimage was to end in heaven, in the eternal Jerusalem, trusting
Christ to guide them there. What joy indeed, to know that we are invisibly surrounded
by so great a crowd of witnesses! Our pilgrimage to the holy city would not be
possible if it were not made in the Church, the seed and the prefiguration of the
heavenly Jerusalem. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour
in vain” (Ps 126:1). Who is this Lord, if not our Lord Jesus Christ? It is he who
founded his Church and built it on rock, on the faith of the Apostle Peter. In the
words of Saint Augustine, “It is Jesus Christ our Lord who himself builds his temple.
Many indeed labour to build, yet unless the Lord intervenes to build, in vain do the
builders labour” (Tract. in Ps. 126:2). Dear friends, Augustine goes on to ask how
we can know who these builders are, and his answer is this: “All those who preach
God’s word in the Church, all who are ministers of God’s divine Sacraments. All of
us run, all of us work, all of us build”, yet it is God alone who, within us, “builds,
exhorts, and inspires awe; who opens our understanding and guides our minds to faith”
(ibid.). What marvels surround our work in the service of God’s word! We are instruments
of the Holy Spirit; God is so humble that he uses us to spread his word. We become
his voice, once we have listened carefully to the word coming from his mouth. We
place his word on our lips in order to bring it to the world. He accepts the offering
of our prayer and through it he communicates himself to everyone we meet. Truly,
as Paul tells the Ephesians, “he has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing”
(1:3), for he has chosen us to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, and he made
us his elect, even before we came into existence, by a mysterious gift of his grace. God’s
Word, the Eternal Word, who was with him from the beginning (cf. Jn 1:1), was born
of a woman, born a subject of the law, in order to redeem the subjects of the law,
“to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons”
(cf. Gal 4:4-5). The Son of God took flesh in the womb of a woman, a virgin. Your
cathedral is a living hymn of stone and light in praise of that act, unique in the
annals of human history: the eternal Word of God entering our history in the fulness
of time to redeem us by his self-offering in the sacrifice of the Cross. Our earthly
liturgies, entirely ordered to the celebration of this unique act within history,
will never fully express its infinite meaning. Certainly, the beauty of our celebrations
can never be sufficiently cultivated, fostered and refined, for nothing can be too
beautiful for God, who is himself infinite Beauty. Yet our earthly liturgies will
never be more than a pale reflection of the liturgy celebrated in the Jerusalem on
high, the goal of our pilgrimage on earth. May our own celebrations nonetheless resemble
that liturgy as closely as possible and grant us a foretaste of it! Even now the
word of God is given to us as the soul of our apostolate, the soul of our priestly
life. Each morning the word awakens us. Each morning the Lord himself “opens our
ear” (cf. Is 50:5) through the psalms in the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer.
Throughout the day, the word of God becomes the substance of the prayer of the whole
Church, as she bears witness in this way to her fidelity to Christ. In the celebrated
phrase of Saint Jerome, to be taken up in the XII Assembly of the Synod of Bishops
next month: “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Prol. in Is.).
Dear brother priests, do not be afraid to spend much time reading and meditating on
the Scriptures and praying the Divine Office! Almost without your knowing it, God’s
word, read and pondered in the Church, acts upon you and transforms you. As the manifestation
of divine Wisdom, if that word becomes your life “companion”, it will be your “good
counsellor” and an “encouragement in cares and grief” (Wis 8:9). “The word of
God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword”, as the author of the
Letter to the Hebrews tells us (4:12). Dear seminarians, who are preparing to receive
the sacrament of Holy Orders and thus to share in the threefold office of teaching,
governing and sanctifying, this word is given to you as a precious treasure. By meditating
on it daily, you will enter into the very life of Christ which you will be called
to radiate all around you. By his word, the Lord Jesus instituted the Holy Sacrament
of his Body and Blood; by his word, he healed the sick, cast out demons and forgave
sins; by his word, he revealed to us the hidden mysteries of his Kingdom. You are
called to become stewards of this word which accomplishes what it communicates. Always
cultivate a thirst for the word of God! Thus you will learn to love everyone you
meet along life’s journey. In the Church everyone has a place, everyone! Every person
can and must find a place in her. And you, dear deacons, effective co-workers
of the Bishops and priests, continue to love the word of God! You proclaim the Gospel
at the heart of the Eucharistic celebration, and you expound it in the catechesis
you offer to your brothers and sisters. Make the Gospel the centre of your lives,
of your service to your neighbours, of your entire diakonia. Without seeking to take
the place of priests, but assisting them with your friendship and your activity, may
you be living witnesses to the infinite power of God’s word! In a particular way,
men and women religious and all consecrated persons draw life from the Wisdom of God
expressed in his word. The profession of the evangelical counsels has configured
you, dear consecrated persons, to Christ, who for our sakes became poor, obedient
and chaste. Your only treasure – which, to tell the truth, will alone survive the
passage of time and the curtain of death – is the word of the Lord. It is he who
said: “Heaven and earth will pass away; my words will not pass away” (Mt 24:35).
Your obedience is, etymologically, a “hearing”, for the word obey comes from the Latin
obaudire, meaning to turn one’s ear to someone or something. In obeying, you turn
your soul towards the one who is the Way, and the Truth and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6),
and who says to you, as Saint Benedict taught his monks: “Hear, my child, the teaching
of the Master, and hearken to it with all your heart” (Prologue to the Rule of Saint
Benedict). Finally, let yourselves be purified daily by him who said: “Every branch
that bears fruit my Father prunes, to make it bear more fruit” (Jn 15:2). The purity
of God’s word is the model for your own chastity, ensuring its spiritual fruitfulness. With
unfailing confidence in the power of God, who has saved us “in hope” (cf. Rom 8:24)
and who wishes to make of us one flock under the guidance of one shepherd, Christ
Jesus, I pray for the unity of the Church. I greet once again with respect and affection
the representatives of the Christian Churches and ecclesial communities who, as our
brothers and sisters, have come to pray Vespers together with us in this cathedral.
So great is the power of God’s word that we can all be entrusted to it, remembering
what Saint Paul once did, our privileged intercessor during this year. As Paul took
leave of the presbyters of Ephesus at Miletus, he did not hesitate to entrust them
“to God and to the word of his grace” (Acts 20:32), while warning them against every
form of division. I implore the Lord to increase within us the sense of this unity
of the word of God, which is the sign, pledge and guarantee of the unity of the Church:
there is no love in the Church without love of the word, no Church without unity around
Christ the Redeemer, no fruits of redemption without love of God and neighbour, according
to the two commandments which sum up all of Sacred Scripture! Dear brothers and
sisters, in Our Lady we have the finest example of fidelity to God’s word. Her great
fidelity found fulfilment in the Incarnation; with absolute confidence, Mary can say:
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word!” (Lk
1:38). Our evening prayer is about to take up the Magnificat, the song of her whom
all generations will call blessed. Mary believed in the fulfilment of the words the
Lord had spoken to her (cf. Lk 1:45); she hoped against all hope in the resurrection
of her Son; and so great was her love for humanity that she was given to us as our
Mother (cf. Jn 19:27). Thus we see that “Mary is completely at home with the word
of God; with ease she moves in and out of it. She speaks and thinks with the word
of God; the word of God becomes her word, and her word issues from the word of God”
(Deus Caritas Est, 41). To her, then, we can say with confidence: “Holy Mary, Mother
of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you. Show us the way
to his Kingdom!” (Spe Salvi, 50). Amen.