First day – May 10, 2006

Introduction of Father Francesco Brancaccio to the intervention of HE Msgr. Antonio Ciliberti.

We will listen, now, to the word of His Excellency Msgr. Antonio Ciliberti, our beloved Archbishop.

Your presence as the Apostle and Shepherd of our Church of Catanzaro Squillace, where the Lord wanted to give birth to the Apostolic Movement November 3, 1979, must be grasped in its full ecclesial sense. The Apostolic Movement is aware that, in its own mission, and in obedience to the Faith of the Church, is a seed and an instrument of the unity of ecclesial communion in Faith, Love and Hope.
As Monsignor Di Bruno explained us, His Excellency will speak to us of ecclesial movements and new evangelization in the Diocesan Pastoral. In fact, every movement has to bring his unique contribution in the evangelization of the local reality in which it lives, with every effort to ensure that its particular charisma is fully poured and lived in the personal Grace of all its members.
Let us turn to His Excellency all our religious attention.

Speech of His Excellency Monsignor Ciliberti

Dear friends, with great affection I greet all of you and the Lord, while I reiterate the fullness of my joy in being among you in order to start this first National Convention of the Apostolic Movement.
This friendly and brotherly greeting is for you all, for those who, although physically distant, are spiritually close to us, for those who have come here from distant places, to express, unconditional, their availability and responsible collaboration to the Evangelization.
But allow my cordial and fraternal greeting to have a hint of a particular devoted attention, first of all towards HE Monsignor Rimedio that, tonight, honors us with his presence.
But these accents of loving attention are also addressed, in greeting the dear priests, continuators of Christ’s saving mission in the community of men, brothers loved by him.
And let this greeting have, even on your behalf, a particular focus of gratitude to the dear Monsignor Costantino, Spiritual animator of the Movement, witness to those values which must form the sure point of reference for all, of our Christian priestly life and our pastoral mission. With him I greet with equal attention and affection, the spiritual leaders who not only within our archdiocese of Catanzaro Squillace, but in Italy and around the world, guide and animate the Apostolic Movement; right because, more and better trained, it can adequately fulfill its task and its historic mission.
But, today, I feel a particular need to express gratitude to her who, docile in the saving plan of God, has humbly lent her work to animate this worthy movement, Mrs. Maria Marino, and I greet with equal affection her direct daughter, Cettina, who became the President of the Movement. To all I extend my greetings and best wishes for a good work, with gratitude for those who helped to organize this interesting convention, which will certainly give us all these three days of grace and will be a source of inspiration to rediscover our ecclesial identity and our subsequent mission in the Church and the world.
I do not want, I cannot forget those who in the humility of their service, generously lend their efforts in support of the Movement’s activity, most especially those who have welcomed us in this wonderful hall which gives, as a frame, added luster to this interesting convention.
Tonight, all you have heard from the introduction what the theme we intend to treat is. I will simply and possibly, clearly, try to say, not only through theoretical knowledge, but even more through my experience as an Apostle; what I could grasp as an efficacious element of pastoral indication, so that really within our Church as in world, we can actualize that responsible cooperation of all, that new evangelization to which we are called.
Therefore, the first essential indication is in the task that the Lord has entrusted to his Church. You well know, Jesus entrusted this task in a preeminent way to the apostles whom he had called to follow him and whom he had trained with dignity: “Go into the world and announce my Gospel.”
Big task, because the Gospel is an instrument of liberation and salvation. The mission of the Apostles, in an admirable manner, is concretized in its essence, in arranging that this announcement of Truth finds a reflected a confirmation of Incarnation in the mystery of Life and is made visible through the testimony that is concretized on the exemplarity of Christ, in living in a constant way the personal daily existence in a dimension of self-giving and gift. Jesus, in the act of entrusting this important task to his Church, reassured her kindly: “I will be with you until the consummation of the world.”
The guarantee of the presence of the Spirit of Christ is linked to the introduction of the Church and makes her efficacious in history. We know well that, through the uninterrupted continuity in the succession, the Apostles are always present in the current perpetuality of times. And the Apostles are present in their successors; the, the Bishops are the successors of the Apostles; and therefore, they have inherited from Christ this unique task and this precise mandate. They are the visible Sign of the Church of Christ in the reality of men. But they are not only the visible sign of the Church; they are both principle and foundation, because Jesus Christ rested his Church, founded his Church on this granite and sure foundation: the Apostles. Then it is clear that the Church is there where the Apostle is. The Church is where the Bishop is. Where there is no Bishop can there might be so many other interesting and beautiful realities: associations, teams, fraternities, even small sects; but there is no Church of Jesus Christ.
This datum, unequivocally tells all the inseparable relationship of communion with the Bishop that characterizes our ecclesial identity, that gives full meaning to the ecclesial status of our group, as we shall soon say better. The bishops, of course, in the course of history, as already the Apostles at the beginning of the times of the Church, in order to fulfill the particularity of their mission, have always needed solicitous collaborators, because as it is obvious, the Apostles, the Bishops, on the physical plane are even unable to make the Incarnated Announcement of Salvation reach all men sons of God; who, right because they are such, have the right to receive this Announcement that Saves; and the Church has the duty, in the humility of her mission and her service, to bring it to the men waiting for Hope. Here is, the bishops’ collaborators, in the particularity of this mission, are the priests chosen by God according to an inscrutable plan that responds to his divine wisdom and goodness of Father; as they are inserted sacramental way in the mystery of his only Priesthood, so that they can be continuators, through their priestly mission in history.
Then, first collaborators are the priests who are inserted in the mystery of the One Priesthood of Christ, right through the mediation of the imposition of the bishop’s hands. But beside the priests, throughout history, God, attentive to the needs of the big family which is humanity, urged, with the power of his Spirit, other cooperators who, in the Saving plan, had the sure task of performing, with those Bishops, this important mission.
How many religious orders the Spirit of God called in the Church and is still calling in our days! But, more, next to religious orders, we have had, at certain particular times, the flowering of the so-called congregations, engaged in the announcement of the Gospel, particularly devoted to the care of the Sacred Liturgy as an indispensable tool for historicizing the Truth of the Announcement, the testimony of Charity, as a plausible dimension that makes the faith that is not seen, visible.
The Spirit of God, according to the times and the resulting human needs, is working to solicit those answers of love that, interpreting the needs, drawing from the infinite richness of the love of God the Father, pour the Graces towards humanity and of the men who are in wait.
In times closer to ours, the Spirit of God in the one Church, the Church of Christ, is soliciting other active and dynamic forces, which are associations, movements, ecclesial groups, watched upon by the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council with special attention, as it is evidenced by the conciliar decree Apostolicam Actuositatem, starting from number 20 onwards. They are realities animated and solicited by the Holy Spirit that the Church, with humility and love and the goodness of her discernment, recognizes, welcomes, and revives.
The simple and clear criteria that help us find the truth of this reality, made up of associations, movements and ecclesial groups, can be contained, today, in a synthetic way, in two indications which, with simplicity, I am giving you.
The first is this: the relationship of communion with the Bishop; in fact, that group of people, that, regardless of the directions of the Bishop, freely, does not live a relationship of full communion with him; is not an ecclesial group, and cannot be classed as a movement or association of the Church.
If the Bishop is the foundation of the Church, if the bishop is the Vicar of Christ, then, he is representative of Christ on earth; who is not in communion with the Bishop is not in communion with Christ; who is not in communion with the Bishop is not in the Church.
In terms of practical pastoral care, how can the truth of communion be shown unequivocally? If the group, association, movement welcome the Pastoral proposal that the Bishop, after the communal discernment, announces with its authority, as a pastoral plan of the year, to the whole and only ecclesial community that is the Church of Christ in the Diocese or particular Church.
The other element that distinguishes the Truth of these groups or movements is this: communion with the other groups, declared by the Church’s discernment ecclesial groups.
As you all well know, we have institutionalized a meeting every year, the twenty-fifth of April, a holiday on a civilian and not on an ecclesial dimension, therefore, more free from commitments; so that these lay aggregations can meet, to get to know each other better, to get to know each other more, to love each other more intensely and establish an increasingly authentic ecclesial communion.
Against this background, for us, the Apostolic Movement, solicited by the Holy Spirit, through the humble mediation of Mrs. Maria, so that it could be an answer to our many problems; so that it could be an efficacious instrument for the announcement of the Gospel: the primordial commitment of the Church of Christ throughout the world; stands out clearly.
The Apostolic Movement was founded right for this, to remind everyone of the truth of the Word that liberates and saves; so that, through its active commitment, he could accept the Truth of this Word in the Mystery of his life; and so that the Force of this Incarnate Word could move the testimony of many, articulated in Charity and, therefore, in a life lived on a dimension of genuine altruism. This must happen according to the renewal of the Church, willed by the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, an aspiration of the infinite Love of God and an expectation of Hope for all humanity.
Therefore, I say, with a wide open heart, with sincerity of purpose, with immeasurable gratitude, my thanks to the Lord for having chosen our Church soliciting in her this Movement, so that it is more and more every day, with the holiness of their lives on the part of its members, an efficacious instrument of answer to the exigencies of this humanity that needs Holiness, needs Hope, and needs of Life.
Then, the Apostolic Movement for its nature, for its identity, for the particularity of its Mission; today more than ever has this important task: pursuing the new Evangelization, the new Evangelization; this is the exhortation that the immortal Pontiff John Paul II has repeated often and that, inherited by Benedict XVI, resonates for all of us as an urgently needed mission in the history of our times.
And then, after having said about the movement, we must say something about the new Evangelization, so that we can all strive with diligence, in the humility of our service, to bring to fruition the importance of this mission that involves us.
When we speak of new Evangelization, according to the instructions of the Pontiffs, we surely do not intend to talk about a new gospel to be proclaimed to the world. The Gospel is that Christ, the Gospel of the Church, the Gospel of always. The Gospel is eternal because it is the manifestation of God Truth and God Truth is the Eternal in his essential simplicity.
Then, in what sense are we called to this new Evangelization?
The Pope gives us some indications to which I will add some quick and substantial reflections. The Pope says: “the constitutive element of the new Evangelization is first of all the concrete situation of humanity, to which the Gospel must be announced.” We know that the situation various societies live in, today changes in a breakneck manner. In the recent past and even more in the distant past, this mutation was less rapid, slower, very slow. Today, it changes in the space of four or five years; this means that in five years, the concrete situation of our society will, of course, be different from the condition of today.
We Evangelizers must know how to enter in this concrete situation, in this reality in which we are incarnated. But I already read, in the anxiety and in your mind a question: what is today, precisely, the actual situation in which we must, with nobility, Evangelize? This question is fair and an answer is also dutiful.
Most dear brothers, we children of the so-called modernity, know that the so-called modern civilization has been urged by some tensions of philosophical nature that drew their strength in the Enlightenment and that exalted reason as the supreme instrument of which man could use to be able to solve the totality of his problems. The man of modernity erected a statue to reason, as if to make it his divinity, and using its potentials has applied them in a coherent and constant way, to an advanced technology, with a view to procure for himself, those consumer goods that had within themselves the strength of quenching the thirst of the spirit of man.
But what was the conclusion of the so-called modernity?
When it went to draw the conclusions, it had to note that the reason of man is not the absolute and that the consumer goods, procured by an advanced technology, do not have the strength of quenching the thirst of the spirit of man that goes beyond things, because it seeks more: it aims at infinity.
This first consideration, inexorably follows another, because the man of modernity, frustrated by his limitations and his impotence, has fallen so to speak, in a state of impossibility and suffering. It is the dimension that characterizes the so-called post-modernity, a dimension that experts configure with a poignant term of suffering and pain: anguish. Therefore, anguish characterizes the so-called post-modernity; man ensnared by his impotence, checked his limits and plunged into distress; but who is this man of modernity and post-modernity?
He is the incarnation of an eternal act of love of God, who in the time of history of each one of us, became flesh in the reality of our person, has centered the depth of our mystery, the irrepressible spark that unites all of us to the Father’s heart. Therefore, the man of post-modernity, in any case the son of God, feels irrepressible, deep in his soul, this yearning and nostalgia that today is configured in the contemporaneousness of our days, the characterizing expression of the evolution of civilization, in that openness to the transcendent and absolute, in the opening to God.
Dear brothers, despite the difficulties, then here is the real situation, the very positive condition of this man open to the transcendent, waiting to welcome those absolute values; therefore, ready to welcome them in the mystery of his life, in order to be able to cling over them his very existence. This historic moment for us, is particularly interesting, because the Church, not for her merit, but for the ineffable design of God, is the repository of the riches of those values toward which the man of the contemporaneousness, is inexorably outstretched. The historical moment of our inescapable mission is inserted here; if the Church is aware of her task and completes her mission, not only by irradiating with an abstract announcement the transcendent and absolute values – it is the theoretical dimension -; but proposing them embodied in mystery of life through the testimony of her mission. Then, yes, we will affect, efficaciously, mankind and we will realize of having in our hands the omnipotence of Charity, in order to build a new civilization, to give a new face to the entirety of the world and a true soul to this our suffering humanity.
Then, we must insert our mission in this reality, which because of this, proposes once again, to the attention of all, a dimension of great novelty. But is just this the element that truly characterizes as new our historical evangelization?
No, dear ones. The Holy Father gives us further indications and he says precisely so: “we need to Evangelize using a new language, because it is not possible today to revive the proclamation of the Gospel in an obsolete, outdated language; therefore, our language must be current, synthetic, concise, basic, clear, simple, and penetrating.
A language that does not only announce abstract truths, for a moment of enjoyment of our human intelligence; but that has within itself the strength to move the heart to have this way, naturally, that vision of the truth of the Word which is incarnated in the life and the listener and moves his existence toward the Lord.
Today, even, there is a science – semantics: an indispensable science and is often found in the use of means of communication – that works to bring more and more at hand the phonetic expression, the formal expression, to the substance of the truth that, through the Word, is announced. Perfection is achieved when this approach becomes so essential till realizing the full identification; when substance and form identify each other, the language becomes penetrating, irresistible, strong, pastorally effective.
Most dear friends, we all have, through our continuing education that must always characterize the involvement of Christians in the Church, downsize our language, learn to know how to talk, to speak to the heart, to the life of our brothers.
But does this second element, which we tried to explain briefly, conjugated with the former, constitute an exhaustive value for the novelty of the evangelization?
Here the answer is still no; there is need of other and even there is need of something more. Here is, then, the reflections for which I ask again politely the kindness of your attention.
The Holy Book contains the revelation of God; that is it contains the God who revealed himself, for an intrinsic need, because the Truth has an irresistible force that is directed towards the manifestation of itself; but even more, for a loving attention by God the Father towards men, his sons, limited in their precarious human condition; therefore, children who need truth to be helped to pursue the way of salvation. Here is then: the Lord revealed himself , he removed the veil from his unfathomable, infinite and simple identity, so that he could be contemplated by man.
Of course, God simple in his Essence is infinite for his Divinity and never mighty man presume to grasp the total fullness of the mystery of God, inserting it within the limits of his circumscribed intelligence; but for his very dignity man must feel the duty, always a servant of the Truth, to penetrate as deeply as possible His essence. So God who is the remarkable synthesis of the personification of the truth, even more must be for an intelligence man and of good will, the point of reference within which to immerse himself in order to be able to capture as much as possible his identity.
For this reason, it is essential for us to know God that revealed himself, because only by knowing him, we could announce him properly. It is imperative, then, that we actualize all our potential, in order to know in as much depth as possible, the mystery of God. First of all, we must actualize the powers of our reason that has as its object the Truth, perhaps under the aegis of the guide of good teachers who can lead us on this journey of approach with God Truth.
Therefore, the Holy Book must be studied, deepened, and explained by us. I believe that every Christian who rediscovers his relationship with the Father, cannot fail to welcome the letter God the Father wrote to men, his sons. I see with joy that when a father is far away and sends a letter to his children, to his family, home; that letter is not read only once, it is read many times and in that letter the children and mother draw the richness to restore love, the family unity, and the home serenity.
The Holy Book is the letter that God the Father writes to men, his sons. We should never let a day pass without having read, studied, deepened the Holy Book. When Silvio Pellico was in the Spielberg prison he habitually read the Holy Book; and, therefore, he had a deep joy in the Spirit, in spite of the suffering in the flesh. One day, he felt unwell and, gazing, saw that a coat of dust had deposited on the Holy Book: he had not read that book on the day of his inner pain. It is an exemplary indication that must underline for all the need and necessity of this approach that cannot be deferrable.
But is reading and studying the Holy Book enough? No, most dear brothers, because, in addition to our intelligence that seeks, penetrates, and knows the truth; we have other potentialities in order to exemplify quickly. Think of the power of our prayer, a unanimous dimension that puts us in touch with the Lord, in a more in-depth, more comprehensive, more satisfying, and more real manner.
But not even this dimension is comprehensive of all human potential. There is another one that is very dear to me, once the favorite in the Church, especially loved in places of contemplation and prayer. This dimension is right the contemplation.
It is that harmonious and coordinated action in which the wealth of human potentialities are fully experienced under the action of the Spirit of God that rises to the extreme height all human potentialities and enables the man that goes through the experience of contemplation of being in personal relationship with God and knowing him not only on an intellectual dimension, and not even only on a dimension of prayer. In fact, this man has of God also a personal, and existential experience: he feels and lives him in the reality of his poor flesh. This experience is an experience of love and, as such, it is always new, in its simple essence, even when it recurs through forms that are repeated. For this concept to be better explained, I call your attention to contemplate a relationship of love between two people who love each other deeply: every time, this relationship that proposes itself in the same way, having within it a wealth of never explored innovations, it is the profound experience in the infinity of love; this way contemplation is the deep experience of the infinity of Love which is God himself.
Then, through the contemplation of God, we have an experiential knowledge, better yet an ever new existential experience; and, since our Evangelization is actualized in making visible through the witness of our lives, the experience of God that we did within us, contemplation becomes the authentic instrument of the true new Evangelization.

It is to this dimension that I urge everyone, but particularly you, very dear members of the meritorious Apostolic Movement; so that, really rich with this experience, you can draw in it the food of your missionary commitment in history; and, so that this indication finds also an exemplary point of reference; here is before us the most significant and eloquent image: Mary, the Mother of the Redemption with Christ. The Holy Book poses her again to our attention in a constant attitude of contemplation of the mystery of God and that is precisely through the strength of this contemplation that the Word is incarnated in her virginal womb and becomes man among men.
Love the Lord this way, contemplate him like Mary and God made man in your experience. It will be the wellspring of your missionary commitment, as well as the inexhaustible source of the fullness of your joy. I heartily wish it for you.