APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO COLOGNE
ON THE OCCASION OF THE XX WORLD YOUTH DAY
YOUTH VIGIL
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE
BENEDICT XVI
Cologne - Marienfeld
Saturday, 20 August 2005
Dear young friends,
In our pilgrimage with the
mysterious Magi from the East, we have arrived at the moment which
St Matthew describes in his Gospel with these words: "Going into the
house (over which the star had halted), they saw the child with Mary
his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him" (Mt 2: 11).
Outwardly, their journey was now over. They had reached their goal.
But at this point a new
journey began for them, an inner pilgrimage which changed their
whole lives. Their mental picture of the infant King they were
expecting to find must have been very different. They had stopped at
Jerusalem specifically in order to ask the King who lived there for
news of the promised King who had been born. They knew that the
world was in disorder, and for that reason their hearts were
troubled.
They were sure that God
existed and that he was a just and gentle God. And perhaps they also
knew of the great prophecies of Israel foretelling a King who would
be intimately united with God, a King who would restore order to the
world, acting for God and in his Name.
It was in order to seek this
King that they had set off on their journey: deep within themselves
they felt prompted to go in search of the true justice that can only
come from God, and they wanted to serve this King, to fall prostrate
at his feet and so play their part in the renewal of the world. They
were among those "who hunger and thirst for justice" (Mt 5: 6). This
hunger and thirst had spurred them on in their pilgrimage - they had
become pilgrims in search of the justice that they expected from
God, intending to devote themselves to its service.
Even if those who had stayed
at home may have considered them Utopian dreamers, they were
actually people with their feet on the ground, and they knew that in
order to change the world it is necessary to have power. Hence, they
were hardly likely to seek the promised child anywhere but in the
King's palace. Yet now they were bowing down before the child of
poor people, and they soon came to realize that Herod, the King they
had consulted, intended to use his power to lay a trap for
him, forcing the family to flee into exile.
The new King, to whom they
now paid homage, was quite unlike what they were expecting. In this
way they had to learn that God is not as we usually imagine him to
be. This was where their inner journey began. It started at the very
moment when they knelt down before this child and recognized him as
the promised King. But they still had to
assimilate these joyful gestures internally.
They had to change their
ideas about power, about God and about man, and in so doing, they
also had to change themselves. Now they were able to see that God's
power is not like that of the powerful of this world. God's ways are
not as we imagine them or as we might wish them to be.
God does not enter into
competition with earthly powers in this world. He does not marshal
his divisions alongside other divisions. God did not send 12 legions
of angels to assist Jesus in the Garden of Olives (cf. Mt 26: 53).
He contrasts the noisy and ostentatious power of this world with the
defenceless power of love, which succumbs to death on the Cross and
dies ever anew throughout history; yet it is this same love which
constitutes the new divine intervention that opposes injustice and
ushers in the Kingdom of God.
God is different - this is
what they now come to realize. And it means that they themselves
must now become different, they must learn God's ways.
They had come to place
themselves at the service of this King, to model their own kingship
on his. That was the meaning of their act of homage, their
adoration. Included in this were their gifts - gold, frankincense
and myrrh - gifts offered to a King held to be divine. Adoration has
a content and it involves giving. Through this act of adoration,
these men from the East wished to recognize the child as their King
and to place their own power and potential at his disposal, and in
this they were certainly on the right path.
By serving and following
him, they wanted, together with him, to serve the cause of good and
the cause of justice in the world. In this they were right.
Now, though, they have to
learn that this cannot be achieved simply through issuing commands
from a throne on high. Now they have to learn to give themselves -
no lesser gift would be sufficient for this King. Now they have to
learn that their lives must be conformed to this divine way of
exercising power, to God's own way of being.
They must become men of
truth, of justice, of goodness, of forgiveness, of mercy. They will
no longer ask: how can this serve me? Instead, they will
have to ask: How can I serve God's presence in the world? They must
learn to lose their life and in this way to find it. Having left
Jerusalem behind, they must not deviate from the path marked out by
the true King, as they follow Jesus.
Dear friends, what does all
this mean for us?
What we have just been
saying about the nature of God being different, and about the way
our lives must be shaped accordingly, sounds very fine, but remains
rather vague and unfocused. That is why God has given us examples.
The Magi from the East are just the first in a long procession of
men and women who have constantly tried to gaze upon God's star in
their lives, going in search of the God who has drawn close to us
and shows us the way.
It is the great multitude of
the saints - both known and unknown - in whose lives the Lord has
opened up the Gospel before us and turned over the pages; he has
done this throughout history and he still does so today. In their
lives, as if in a great picture-book, the riches of the Gospel are
revealed. They are the shining path which God himself has traced
throughout history and is still tracing today.
My venerable Predecessor
Pope John Paul II, who is with us at this moment, beatified and
canonized a great many people from both the distant and the recent
past. Through these individuals he wanted to show us how to be
Christian: how to live life as it should be lived - according to
God's way. The saints and the blesseds did not doggedly seek their
own happiness, but simply wanted to give themselves, because the
light of Christ had shone upon them.
They show us the way to
attain happiness, they show us how to be truly human. Through all
the ups and downs of history, they were the true reformers who
constantly rescued it from plunging into the valley of darkness; it
was they who constantly shed upon it the light that was needed to
make sense - even in the midst of suffering - of God's words spoken
at the end of the work of creation: "It is very good".
One need only think of such
figures as St Benedict, St Francis of Assisi, St Teresa of Avila, St
Ignatius of Loyola, St Charles Borromeo, the founders of 19-century
religious orders who inspired and guided the social movement, or the
saints of our own day - Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein, Mother
Teresa, Padre Pio. In contemplating these figures we learn what it
means "to adore" and what it means to live according to the measure
of the Child of Bethlehem, by the measure of Jesus Christ and of God
himself.
The saints, as we said, are
the true reformers. Now I want to express this in an even more
radical way: only from the saints, only from God does true
revolution come, the definitive way to change the world.
In the last century we
experienced revolutions with a common programme - expecting nothing
more from God, they assumed total responsibility for the cause of
the world in order to change it. And this, as we saw, meant that a
human and partial point of view was always taken as an absolute
guiding principle. Absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is
called totalitarianism. It does not liberate man, but takes away his
dignity and enslaves him.
It is not ideologies that
save the world, but only a return to the living God, our Creator,
the guarantor of our freedom, the guarantor of what is really good
and true. True revolution consists in simply turning to God who is
the measure of what is right and who at the same time is everlasting
love. And what could ever save us apart from love?
Dear friends! Allow me to
add just two brief thoughts.
There are many who speak of
God; some even preach hatred and perpetrate violence in God's Name.
So it is important to discover the true face of God. The Magi from
the East found it when they knelt down before the Child of
Bethlehem. "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father", said Jesus
to Philip (Jn 14: 9). In Jesus Christ, who allowed his heart to be
pierced for us, the true face of God is seen. We will follow him
together with the great multitude of those who went before us. Then
we will be travelling along the right path.
This means that we are not
constructing a private God, we are not constructing a private Jesus,
but that we believe and worship the Jesus who is manifested to us by
the Sacred Scriptures and who reveals himself to be alive in the
great procession of the faithful called the Church, always alongside
us and always before us.
There is much that could be
criticized in the Church. We know this and the Lord himself told us
so: it is a net with good fish and bad fish, a field with wheat and
darnel.
Pope John Paul II, as well
as revealing the true face of the Church in the many saints that he
canonized, also asked pardon for the wrong that was done in the
course of history through the words and deeds of members of the
Church. In this way he showed us our own true image and urged us to
take our place, with all our faults and weaknesses, in the
procession of the saints that began with the Magi from the East.
It is actually consoling to
realize that there is darnel in the Church. In this way, despite all
our defects, we can still hope to be counted among the disciples of
Jesus, who came to call sinners.
The Church is like a human
family, but at the same time it is also the great family of God,
through which he establishes an overarching communion and unity that
embraces every continent, culture and nation. So we are glad to
belong to this great family that we see here; we are glad to have
brothers and friends all over the world.
Here in Cologne we discover
the joy of belonging to a family as vast as the world, including
Heaven and earth, the past, the present, the future and every part
of the earth. In this great band of pilgrims we walk side by side
with Christ, we walk with the star that enlightens our history.
"Going into the house, they
saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and
worshipped him" (Mt 2: 11). Dear friends, this is not a distant
story that took place long ago. It is with us now. Here in the
Sacred Host he is present before us and in our midst. As at that
time, so now he is mysteriously veiled in a sacred silence; as at
that time, it is here that the true face of God is revealed. For us
he became a grain of wheat that falls on the ground and dies and
bears fruit until the end of the world (cf. Jn 12: 24).
He is present now as he was
then in Bethlehem. He invites us to that inner pilgrimage which is
called adoration. Let us set off on this pilgrimage of the spirit
and let us ask him to be our guide. Amen. Top
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