Pope entrusts Synod, Year of Faith to the Virgin of Loreto

(October 04, 2012) Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday flew by helicopter to Italy’s famous Marian shrine of Loreto, on the Adriatic coast, to dedicate the upcoming Synod of Bishops and the Year of Faith to the Our Lady. This he did in the footsteps his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, now Blessed John XXIII, who made a similar journey 50 years ago on the same day, Oct. 4, 1962, not by helicopter but by train, to entrust to the Madonna the success of the Second Vatican Council which began a week later, on Oct. 11, 1962.
On Sunday, Oct. 7, Pope Benedict will inaugurate in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, the Synod of Bishops, which has as its theme, “New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith". He will conclude it on Oct. 28. Meanwhile, he will launch the Year of Faith next Thursday, Oct. 11, the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the twentieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The 85-year old German Pope has visited Loreto at least seven times as cardinal and once as Pope.
When Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Loreto on Thursday by helicopter, all the church bells of the town rang out in welcome. After an official welcome ceremony by the town’s mayor just in front of the main entrance of the Church, the Holy Father went inside the sanctuary where he briefly spend time in adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament and entered the shrine’s Holy House, believed to be the house of Nazareth of the Virgin Mary, where he prayed to the Virgin of Loreto. He then proceeded for Holy Mass outside the church’s main entrance, with a large crowd of some 10,000 awaiting him in the square in front.
In his homily in Italian, Pope Benedict recalled Blessed John XXIII’s pilgrim to the shrine exactly 50 years ago when he prayed to Mary with the words, “Again today, and in the name of the entire episcopate, I ask you, sweetest Mother, as Help of Bishops, to intercede for me as Bishop of Rome and for all the bishops of the world, to obtain for us the grace to enter the Council Hall of Saint Peter’s Basilica, as the Apostles and the first disciples of Jesus entered the Upper Room: with one heart, one heartbeat of love for Christ and for souls, with one purpose only, to live and to sacrifice ourselves for the salvation of individuals and peoples. “Thus, by your maternal intercession, in the years and the centuries to come,” Blessed John XXIII prayed, “may it be said that the grace of God prepared, accompanied and crowned the twenty-first Ecumenical Council, filling all the children of the holy Church with a new fervour, a new impulse to generosity, and a renewed firmness of purpose.”
When he announced the Year of Faith, Pope Benedict said he had invited the world’s bishops to join him in in recalling the precious gift of faith. “It is precisely here at Loreto,” he said, “that we have the opportunity to attend the school of Mary who was called “blessed” because she “believed”. In this regard the Pope recalled the so called Holy House enshrined inside the Loreto Basilica, believed to be the house of Mary in Nazareth, which the Pope said, preserves the memory of the moment when the angel of Lord came to Mary with the great announcement of the Incarnation, and she gave her consent.
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word,” Pope Benedict said quoting Mary’s reply to the angel. In Mary, he said, heaven and earth are united, God the Creator is united to his creature. God becomes man, and Mary becomes a “living house” for the Lord, a temple where the Most High dwells. Pope Benedict pointed out that 50 years ago Blessed John XXIII had issued an invitation to contemplate this mystery, to “reflect on that union of heaven and earth, which is the purpose of the Incarnation and Redemption”, and he went on to affirm that the aim of the Second Vatican Council itself was to spread ever wider the beneficent impact of the Incarnation and Redemption on all spheres of life. Pope Benedict said, “This invitation resounds today with particular urgency. In the present crisis affecting not only the economy but also many sectors of society, the Incarnation of the Son of God speaks to us of how important man is to God, and God to man.”
Without God, Pope Benedict said, man ultimately chooses selfishness over solidarity and love, material things over values, having over being. We must return to God, so that man may return to being man. With God, even in difficult times or moments of crisis, there is always a horizon of hope: the Incarnation tells us that we are never alone, that God has come to humanity and that he accompanies us.
The idea of the Son of God dwelling in the “living house”, the temple which is Mary, leads us to another thought, Pope Benedict said in his homily. “We must recognize that where God dwells, all are “at home”; wherever Christ dwells, his brothers and sisters are no longer strangers. Mary, who is the Mother of Christ, is also our mother, and she open to us the door to her home, she helps us enter into the will of her Son. So, the Pope said, it is faith which gives us a home in this world, which brings us together in one family and which makes all of us brothers and sisters. As we contemplate Mary, he said, we must ask if we too wish to be open to the Lord, if we wish to offer him our life as his dwelling place; or if we are afraid that the presence of God may somehow place limits on our freedom, if we wish to set aside a part of our life in such a way that it belongs only to us. Yet it is precisely God who liberates our liberty, the Pope said. “He frees it from being closed in on itself, from the thirst for power, possessions, and domination; he opens it up to the dimension which completely fulfills it: the gift of self, of love, which in turn becomes service and sharing.”
Faith lets us reside, but it also lets us walk on the path of life. Likewise, the Holy House of Loreto has a street location which lets us stay and at the same time lets us continue, or journey, and reminds us that we are pilgrims towards our final home, the Eternal City. Pope Benedict pointed to an important lesson from the Annunciation narrative. He said, “God asks for mankind’s “yes”; he has created a free partner in dialogue, from whom he requests a reply in complete liberty.” In recreating this scene in one of his famous sermons, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux pleads with Mary saying “The angel awaits your response, as he must now return to the One who sent him… O Lady, give that reply which the earth, the underworld and the very heavens await.” God asks for Mary’s free consent that he may become man. To be sure, Pope Benedict explained, the “yes” of the Virgin is the fruit of divine grace, but grace does not eliminate freedom; on the contrary, he said, it creates and sustains it. Faith removes nothing from the human creature, rather it permits his full and final realization.
Pope Benedict also recalled the Oct. 4th liturgical feast of St. Francis of Assisi, whom he called “a veritable ‘living Gospel’”. The Pope entrusted to the Mother of God all the difficulties affecting our world as it seeks serenity and peace, the problems of the many families who look anxiously to the future, the aspirations of young people at the start of their lives, the suffering of those awaiting signs or decisions of solidarity and love. The Pope concluded his homily with a prayer: Mother of the “yes”, you who heard Jesus, speak to us of him; tell us of your journey, that we may follow him on the path of faith; help us to proclaim him, that each person may welcome him and become the dwelling place of God.”