Pope to Neocatechumenal Way: build ecclesial communion, evangelize with love
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met with about 8,000 members of the Neocatechumenal Way
on Saturday in the Paul VI Hall. During the audience, with a solemn prayer and blessing,
the Pope sent off members of the community on mission to countries throughout the
world. Prior to the blessing, he addressed the members of the Neocatechumenal Way.
Below is a Vatican Radio translation of his message:
Dear brothers
and sisters,
I thank the Lord for the joy of your faith and for the ardor of
your Christian witness. Thanks be to God. I greet you all cordially, starting from
the International Responsible Team of the Neocatechumenal Way, together with the priests,
seminarians and catechists. I send an affectionate greeting to the children, in attendance
in great number. My thoughts go out in a special way to the families, who will go
out to different parts of the world to proclaim and witness to the Gospel. The Church
is grateful for your generosity! I thank you for all that you do in the Church and
in the world. And precisely in the name of the Church, our Mother,... I would like
to propose to you some simple recommendations.
The first is to have the utmost
care to build and to preserve the communion within the particular Churches in which
you will work. The Way has its own charism and dynamic, a gift, which like all of
the gifts of the Spirit, has a profound ecclesial dimension; this means paying attention
to the life of the Churches to which your leaders send you, to enhance the riches,
to suffer for the weaknesses if necessary, and to walk together, like one flock, under
the guidance of the pastors of the local Churches. Communion is essential sometimes
it can be better to renounce living in all the details that your itinerary demands,
in order to ensure the unity among those who form one ecclesial community, of which
you must always feel that you are part.
Another recommendation: wherever you
may go, it would do you well to think that the Spirit of God always gets there ahead
of us. The Lord always precedes us! ... Even in the most faraway places, even in the
most diverse cultures, God scatters everywhere the seeds of his Word. From here, flows
the necessity to give special attention to the cultural context in which you, families,
will go to work: it consists of an environment often very different from the one from
which you come. Many of you will have to work hard to learn the local language, sometimes
it will be difficult, and this effort is appreciated. Even more important will be
your commitment to “learn” the culture you will encounter, knowing how to recognize
the need of the Gospel, which is present wherever, but also that action that the Holy
Spirit has accomplished in the life and in the history of every people.
Finally,
I exhort you to care lovingly for each other, in a particular way for the weakest.
The Neocatechumenal Way, as an itinerary of discovery of one’s own baptism, is a
demanding road, along which a brother or a sister can come upon unforeseen difficulties.
In these cases, the exercise of patience and of mercy on the part of the community
is a sign of maturity in the faith. The freedom of each person must not be forced,
and even the eventual choice of someone who decides to seek, outside of the Way, other
forms of Christian life that help him to grow in the response to the call of the Lord
must be respected.
Dear families, brothers and sisters, I encourage you to
bring everywhere, even in the most de-Christianized environments, especially in the
existential peripheries, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Evangelize with love, bring to
everyone the love of God. Tell everyone you will meet on the streets of your mission
that God loves man as he is, even with his limits, with his mistakes, with his sins.
For this, he sent his Son, so that he could take our sins upon himself. Be messengers
and witnesses of the infinite goodness and the inexhaustible mercy of the Father.
I entrust you to the Virgin Mary, that she may inspire and always sustain your apostolate.
In the school of this tender Mother, be zealous and joyful missionaries.