H. Most Rev. Exc. Monsignor MAURO PIACENZA

Most Rev. Exc. Monsignor MAURO PIACENZA
Titular Archbishop of Victoriana
Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy

THE ONLY FAITH AND CHARITY OF THE CHURCH
MAKES US SERVANTS OF THE REAL HOPE

Excellency,
Dear Brothers in the Priesthood,
Esteemed participants,
I am pleased to speak at this National Convention of the Apostolic Movement, with a contribution on the “Christian hope”, which is interwoven with Faith and Charity, in the triad of the theological virtues, which Sacred Scripture and Tradition have given us.

The very Magisterium of the Holy Father Benedict XVI was guided, in the first two encyclicals, exactly in this direction: starting from the “Deus Caritas Est” and reaching the “Spe Salvi”, in an ideal route that leads the whole Church of Christ to the clear rediscovery of the personal foundations, based indispensably on the only irreplaceable “cornerstone” (cf. Ps 118.22-23), which is Christ the Lord.
Therefore, the two papal texts will constitute the backbone and the “theological background” of this contribution, in which I propose, nevertheless, to put the attention on the contemporary cultural and ecclesial situation, to discern lights and shadows and identify possible paths.

Philosophical look and historical analysis

If we look realistically at the cultural, social, political and economic situation of our time, we see immediately how, that optimism, full of hope, typical of the past century, appears virtually dissolved. In reality, it was a remote echo of a certain philosophical and scientistic positivism with nineteenth century origins, and
close echo of the enthusiasm of humanity, immediately after the end of World War II, for the “lucky escape”. The big economic boom of the West and the unimaginable technological progress in the following decades, have encouraged and supported, despite the difficulties linked to the world’s division into two “geo-political areas”, the growth of an entirely human hope, all too often forgetful of God, and, as a consequence, destined to crash against the experience of limits.
If from a strictly philosophical point of view, no serious thinker supports, by now, the positivist myth of progress; we must painfully see how, to that myth, in fact, a “weak thought” was substituted renunciative in the front of the fundamental issues of existence and unable to give man those answers that his heart and his intelligence yearn and desire, as essential goals of a living that is authentically human. The translation, more immediately visible, of such a structuring of “weak thought” is constituted by the absence of certainties, and as a consequence of hope, which takes the name of relativism. As it was bravely denounced by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, in the Homily of the Holy Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontefice: “A dictatorship of relativism is about to be built that recognizes nothing as definitive and that leaves as the ultimate criterion only the personal I and its desires” . 1
The electing Pontiff, on the occasion went on stating: “How many winds of doctrine have we known in these recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many trends of thoughts… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to, libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth “.2
“The small boat of thought of many Christians…”
How much truth and bitterness in such an observation!
If it is “physiological”, almost taken for granted, that the world opposes itself with all its forces, to Christ and his Church; on the contrary, seeing how even among Christians are not missing those who let themselves be “carried about by every wind of doctrine” (cf. Eph 4.14), causes bitterness and bewilderment, with all the personal and community consequences of such an attitude.
It is as if, inexplicably, they let themselves be overwhelmed by the “itch of hearing something” of Pauline memory. The Apostle of the Gentiles affirms, in his Second Letter to Timothy: “For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths” (2 Tim 4: 3-4).
What impact created and still creates today, such an attitude!
Above all, and especially in relation to the true good of the holy people of God!
Sometimes, in the theological context, you are no longer able to adequately distinguish between the opinions of the individual scholar and the doctrine revealed by God himself; the Sacred Magisterium is reduced to “mere theological opinion”, equivalent or even lower than the others; it has come to not even make a clear distinction between what belongs to the patrimony of the Catholic faith, and how much, instead, is proper of other Christian denominations or even other religious traditions, although not proven!
“For the itch of hearing something”, often in the field of exegesis, both the historical value of the text, and the first and essential literary level, unavoidable for a true understanding of what has been revealed in the Sacred Scriptures; have been totally neglected. In this way, you risk to diminish the Scriptures to myth, a “spiritual text,” without an authentic realistic significance. The valuable book of Joseph Ratzinger – Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, significantly corrects this perspective, suggesting the canonical exegesis, as an adequate criterion for the global understanding of the revealed datum.
Also the sphere of the Sacred Liturgy is not exempt from the “winds of doctrine” and “the itch of hearing something”. The so-called “liturgical creativity”, not separated by a misunderstanding of what it really means “active participation” has led to celebrations, to say the least, “subjective”, in which the Canon of the Holy Mass is hardly recognizable.
In contrast in the greater fidelity to the rites, in the beauty and dignity of the sacred vestments, in the singing and music, in the demeanor and contemplation of the Priest it is necessary to be able to perceive that the Liturgy is essentially “worship”;
and the real protagonist of every authentic liturgical action, and worthy of this name, is not man, but Jesus Christ the Lord.
Such a “confusion”, is not only liturgical but also educational, as if all models could be equivalent; and disciplinary; as if the rules of the Church were irrelevant and one could, without serious detriment to the health of the soul, disregard them in a stable manner.
It is necessary to see clearly the problems and be able to call with its proper name each phenomenon; this is the premise of every authentic action and missionary programming and the human prerequisite of any possible efficacy.
Dear brothers, we are living a not easy historic moment. The number of priests in many countries, decreases, as well as that of the religious and faithful themselves who regularly attend the Sunday Holy Mass. The index of confessions and respect of the day of obligation is an important “ultrasound scan of the ecclesial body.” The rest are words!
The dominant culture is profoundly anti-Christian and does not miss an opportunity to launch attacks of unprecedented media violence to the Church, especially to that particularly visible part which is the Clergy, with the not too hidden intent of de-legitimatizing, in the public opinion’s eye and especially the new generations that look out to the faith; its very existence.
An unmistakable sign of such a hostile attitude is “deafening silence” that generally surrounds all anti-Christian persecutions; it is as if it were “legitimate” to persecute the Christians, as if behind a so inexplicable silence, there was the ‘idea that “after all they deserve to die because they have done evil in history.”
How much approximation, how many clichés, how many textbooks, adopted in schools, support, and not even too quietly, such a position! The persecutions and murders of Christians that took place recently in India, are a sign of the “silent complicity” of the dominant culture. Let us just imagine what would have happened if those belonging to other religious or cultural traditions had been KILLED!
2. Christ’s real hope
If we looked carefully at the current circumstances, with only human eyes, we could be tempted by discouragement and even despair.
“But we, instead, have another measure: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism.” 3
If hope is a universal human attitude, and, consequently, without hope it is not possible to live an authentically human existence, to us Christians hope has a name: Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and Christ.
In this sense, the title that you wanted to give this speech, which is concluded with the expression: “… servants of true hope”, that is, servants of the Lord; is rich with fertile results.
To us hope is not a “foolish optimism”, it is not an idea, an illusion, a human conjecture, perhaps even intelligent, arising from the observation of the constituting elements. The Christian hope is a Person, it is the encounter “with an event […] which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction with it.” 4 Only the authentic encounter with the Risen Christ, through the one with the witnesses of Christ and with the Church that lives today in history; it is a guarantee of hope for mankind in every age.
The Holy Father writes in the Encyclical Spe Salvi: “Through the passing days, in several different periods of his life man has many hopes – smaller or bigger -. Sometimes it may seem that one of these hopes satisfies him totally and that he has no need for other hopes. […] However, when these hopes are fulfilled, it appears clearly that these were not, in fact, the everything. It becomes evident that man needs a hope that goes beyond. It becomes clear that only something infinite can be enough for him, something that will more and more be what he can never attain. “5
In fact, it is hope that has reached and reaches man! Humanity has been reached by an unimaginable hope, even if deeply yearned and longed for: the God “hidden in the centuries” was manifested to us; “the mystery […] hidden to the eternal centuries and the past generations, is now revealed to his saints” (cf. Col 1.26). This is the deep and irreplaceable root of every authentic Christian hope!
The great hope is Christ the Lord, the Infinite Mystery made flesh, made himself – so to speak – accessible to us men.
3. Hope and communion
Hope is particularly linked to communion, with God and with the brothers.
One of the most existentially relevant, and immediately perceived aspects, of the work of salvation of the Lord, is represented by the victory over sin, which is declined, also, as victory over the loneliness of man.
“Who believes is never alone, either in life or in death”! 6 God became man also to definitively overcome the solitude in which, due to his sin, man self-confined himself.
Therefore, the experience of the true communion supplies hope, and this, in turn, nourishes communion. A communion that cannot and must never be reduced to a mere alliance, or even “complicity” of psycho-elective affinities.
Even though recognizing the historical and biblical roots of the mystery of the preference, proper of the Christian God; the communion which the Lord has brought into the world, as an experience of His salvation, is more profound, radical and totalizing than any human experience, even though it manifests and documents necessarily itself in it.
Communion, as the root of hope, is necessarily an ecclesial communion: that consciousness of belonging to a history, a people, to what Pope Paul VI of venerable memory, called “a sui generis ethnic group”. The consciousness of this communion, which overcomes loneliness in a permanent way and opens to the authentic hope, is documented in the full and enthusiastic sharing of the doctrinal contents of the Catholic faith, in the consciousness of belonging to a Living tradition, to be preserved and transmitted faithfully, in the experience of the Saints that, in history were true “beacons of hope ‘, together with that personal longing to the holiness of life, that a true Christian cannot but prove.
Of fundamental importance is also, as the root of all hope, the communion, I would rather say the formidable, real, effective and affective unity in thoughts, words, and deeds with the Supreme Pontiff. The unity with the “white Father” is the true secret of the hope and efficacy of any “apostolic movement”!
In a recent trip of the Holy Father Benedict XVI, to France, in Paris and Lourdes, the media have tried to give some explanations “plausible” to justify the great concourse of people around the person of the Pope. Some newspapers wrote that the French needed to listen to a “great theologian, an intellectual of our time”, some others that they remained fascinated by the discussion on the “new laity”, so much debated in that country; in fact – as we know well – these are but aspects very partial, though present, in the understanding of the phenomenon that has powerfully come to pass.
The people, the true, authentic one, not hurt and mortified by the reductionist intellectualisms of the faith, wants “to see the Pope,” videre Petrum! And not in that he is an intellectual or a theologian, but just as the Bishop of Rome, and therefore the Vicar of Christ on earth, His Visible presence at the head of the Church.
A “powerful unity” with the Pope is perceived and recorded wherever that unity and historical, theological, doctrinal and existential continuity of all the ecclesial body; appear with evidence.
There are no “cracks” in the Body of Christ, there is no break in the history of the Church, in any age, even among what is called by some, in a very unhappy way, the “before” and the “after” Vatican II .
The Church is one, as one is the history of God among men, who it is a vehicle of, without any interruption 7 . The Church is “always” the Church of “always”; ever ancient and ever new, because she is always with the swollen sails of the breath of the Spirit.
From Lord Jesus Christ, to the Apostles, from their successors, until us today, gathered here for this conference; we must recognize that neither there is, nor could there be, any fracture or discontinuity. We are one, one body, and this is a source of hope and a guarantee of missionary fruitfulness.
This unity and continuity, place and context in which hope lives and feeds on, not separately from faith and charity, is the necessary precondition of every apostolic and missionary action. Where there is a clear awareness of faith, where the one with Christ is not an “event that gives life a new horizon”, where communion is broken or weakened, where the subjective judgment prevails over the one of the ecclesial body, then there might not be authentic missionary spirit.
4. Hope and Mission
In this sense, in the circularity between communion and hope, it emerges with clearness how the latter is the true “fuel for the mission.”
If we will not have within us the “great hope”, that surpasses and expands every, even legitimate human hope, if we will not within us the only “hope adequate to the human heart,” which has “an infinite thirst for Infinite”, if we will not have in us that priceless treasure, found which you sell everything else (cf. Mt 13:44), heedless of the penultimate goods and staring up at the One True Good, that is God himself, then our missionary action might only be a “sounding brass or a clanging cymbal” (l Cor 13.1). Let us diforest and go to the Only necessary One!
Hope has a supernatural root, that reaches the minds and hearts “of men, wherever they live, by a pure gift of grace: God, mysteriously, entrusts himself to our freedom to reach all the brothers, in that longing in missionary that blooms in the right creativity and hard work of who has met the Lord and wishes all to participate in such meeting.
The mission is a constitutive feature of the Church herself, “The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, in that she originates from the mission of the Son and from the mission of the Holy Spirit, according to the plan of God the Father” (A.G. n.2).8
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, on the wave of the unbroken tradition, is quite explicit, in affirming the inherent mission of the Church. The Church does not exist by herself and for herself: she is the extension in time and space of the presence of Christ and of His saving mission. The mission, from the theological point of view, is included in each of the marks of the Church and it is particularly represented by both the catholicity and by the apostolicity.
Being “Apostolic Movement” and living the Christian hope, means conceiving oneself as sharing in this “mission” of the Church herself.
How to faithfully fulfill the task of being apostles, faithful witnesses of the Lord, preachers of the Word and humble and certain administrators of the Grace, if not through the mission, understood as a total true constituent element of being Church?
The mission, always, must be in communion with the Bishops, who are in communion with the Holy Father; it must be grounded in the doctrine, in order, in front of anyone, to “give account for the hope” that is in us (cf. 1 Pet 3.15); the mission can never be a “bringing ourselves”, but offering, in humble confidence, that hope which we was given us. We are just vehicles, in the joyful experience,
which becomes a certainty, that “it is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2.20).
Just because we are bearers of a hope that does not come from us, we can find a welcome in the hearts of the men of our time.
The groundless prophecies of those who, in the 70’s saw the dissolution of religion, as an element surpassed by rationality and progress; have been broken, they were shattered and they are being shattered against the reality that, on the contrary, sees a growing religious need expressed by our men, brothers. This need, unfortunately, not always takes the right direction, addressing rather often those who cannot really answer it. At the same time it does not always come across Christians “witnesses of hope”, able to communicate, even through a warm and humanly relevant welcome, the hope they met.
We need to know how to grasp the real “signs of the times” the ones the Spirit shows us today: young people who seek spiritual fathers and teachers of prayer .. vocations wishing evangelical radicalism, who understand very well the difference between “thinking according to Christ” and “thinking according to the world.” These are the signs that we must learn to read, today. And we must respond appropriately! How risky it is to stop at the “signs of the times” of the past, believing, for example, that the thrust to the secularization that has taken place in the immediately post-conciliar period, and that Vatican II certainly has not indicated, is still a possible way. Following such a thought would be like throwing yourself in the arms of nemesis.
We have no hope in structures, which, among other things, are weak in every respect, or even simply in men, in their talents and energies. How many disappointments if you trust in man!
We hope in Providence, we hope in Grace, we hope because we want to dive into the reality of the Communion of Saints. The mission is rooted in this communion; a communion that is alimented daily with a profound spirit of prayer, with a genuine devotion to the Eucharist, which sees in the company of God-with-us, present in the Eucharist, in the adoration and in public worship of the Most Blessed Sacrament, one of its privileged and indefeasible moments.

How many authentically Christian souls offer themselves, offer their pain, their suffering; offer themselves as victims, for the salvation of the world, to God every day. The offer of the tears of so many Christian mothers, the Holy Rosary recited with hands marked by the years, with rosary beads worn by prayer, humiliation and suffering accepted and borne, with extraordinary evangelical dignity, constitute a huge unseen, hidden wealth, that does not appear, but that contributes significantly to the journey of the Church.
These very precious and the hidden souls are also the reason for our Christian hope!
We hope in the strength of persecuted Christians around the world; for they exist, even if too often they are not remembered! They exist!
5. Hope and freedom
Dear friends, as the Holy Father recalled us, in the Encyclical Spe Salvi, “the situation of human affairs depends in each generation, again, on the free decision of men who belong to it”, 9 for this reason man’s heart is in constant need of being educated; that is why to every generation it is always important to proclaim again the great hope that is Christ; because freedom is always new, as man, wounded by the original sin, is new.
“If this freedom – the Pope continues – due to conditions and structures, were […] removed [from men], the world, after all would not be good, because a world without freedom is not at all a good world. So, even though a continuous commitment to the betterment of the world is needed, the better world of tomorrow cannot be the proper and sufficient content of our hope.”10
The hope of a “better world”, which has its own humanly sharing and desirable foundation, can never replace the “great hope” of the Kingdom of God, which is already present in world through the Church and that will be accomplished, in the Glory; that is, in a way recognizable by all, in the last day, in Christ’s return.
Be witnesses of this Kingdom, of this hope! Be it with joy and conviction, with humility and fervour, with true Christian piety and generosity of service, in obedience to the Sacred Pastors and faithful daily listening of the Magisterium of the Holy Father.
The Church looks at you with maternal eyes, always recognizing the good and always expecting good fruit from good trees (cf. Lk 6.43).
You have to go ahead, and, as St. Paul teaches, “put on the armour of God to withstand in the evil day, and having prepared everything, hold firmly on the ground. Be constant, therefore, having already hip to the belt of truth, wearing the breastplate of righteousness and your feet shod with the readiness that gives the gospel of peace; at every opportunity embracing the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one; 11 take the ‘helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, that is the word of God “(Eph 5, 13-17).
May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles, and certainly of every authentically apostolic movement, guide and protect you all.
In the recent pilgrimage to Lourdes, the Holy Father Benedict XVI, quoting the great poet Dante Alighieri, defined Mary “sparkling fountain of hope!”
May this horizon of yours be the living source of hope of every day and the sweetness of every awakening.
Let us also go to meet the great hope which is Christ the Lord, and let us go with the One who is the Star of the new evangelization, with the Blessed Virgin Mary, ” sparkling fountain of hope”!

1 Cf.: http://www.vatic n.va / gpIIldocuments/homily-pro-Papal-eligendo ¬¬¬¬_20050418 _it.html
2 Ibid.
3Ibid.
4 BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est, n. 1..
5 BENEDICT XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, n. 30.11 Dante, Par XXXIII, 12.
6 J. RA TZINGER, Homily, S. Funeral Mass of Pope John Paul Il.
7 Cf BENEDICT XVI, disagreement at the Roman Curia, 22 December 2005.
8 Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. VAT. II, Ad Gentes nn. 5.6.9.10, Lumen Gentium, nn. 8.13.17.23; Christus Dominus n. 6
9 Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, n. 30.
10 Ibid.
11 Dante, Par XXXIII, 12