To the
elderly, sick and disabled in
IN PARTICIPATION IN SUFFERING THE CHURCH IS
THE COMMUNITY
OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD AND GOD'S
On the morning of
Sunday, 26 June, the Holy Father went to the Cathedral of
Dear
Brothers and Sisters,
1.
It is a great joy for me to begin this Sunday in
It
is unfortunately not self-understood that someone who suffers under the burdens
of age, illness or disability will be recognized in our society as a person of
equal human dignity. However, God does
not ask about your ability to contribute to production, nor about your bank account. The Lord does not look at what “meets the
eye”, but at the heart.
God's loving glance, which calls to every person, gives one the
certainty that, whether he is young or old, sick or healthy, he is without
exception wanted and willed; in this we discover that we are sons and daughters
of the same heavenly Father. God's love
for us is always the first and most basic.
It is a great thing to discover and know about this; it is a great thing
to share this discovery with others and live it together with them.
2.
Your problems and difficulties certainly often lie heavily upon your
shoulders. Which of you has not already
been tempted to ask if your troubles and pains, the weariness which overcomes
you, have reward and a meaning? In your
suffering you discover concretely the weakness and limitation of creation. Precisely in that, however, suffering can also become for you a
special place of opening up to your fellow men and women and to God. A life that passes too smoothly and raises no
questions leads us all too easily to superficiality, allows us to become smug
and self-satisfied. Whenever suffering
disturbs us with questions which are not easily answered, yearning awakens in
us. We begin again to stand with others,
and, in our deepest core, to look towards God.
In
order to be able to find help and salvation in suffering, we need community
with others and with God. In happiness
and suffering alike we should not withdraw, because the community is the place
where we can share life. One of the
Church's most beautiful missions is to enable a person to experience fraternal
sharing as salvific.
In it the Church truly experiences herself as the community of God's
children and as God's dwelling, for “where charity and love are, there is God”.
3.
The man with the withered hand, whom we have just heard about in the Gospel,
lived totally unobserved on the margin of society. Jesus looks at him, as the others look at
him, but Jesus alone does not overlook him.
In the synagogue he calls him from the margin into the centre, in order
to make everyone really see him. “Stand up”, he says to him, “and come to the
centre”, and “the man stood up and came forward” (Lk
6:8). Unless the man had trusted Jesus,
it would have been impossible for him to expose his suffering publicly. He relies on Jesus, as Peter who trusted in
the Lord's word and walked on the water.
“He stood up”: in this short
phrase the Evangelist tells us that the disabled man is not simply an object of
the Lord's power to heal, but that the cure takes place in the personal encounter and with the cooperation of the sick man. Jesus encounters the sick person as a worthy
fellow man in need of help, and in Jesus the sick one meets the promised
Messiah, the Son of God incarnate; he experiences healing from his
believing “yes” to Christ.
At
those special places of grace, at those places of prayer and pilgrimage such as
Lourdes and Fatima, or wherever people allow themselves to be touched by God's
love, we see how therapeutic personal encounter with God can be. Every year numerous people return from there
with great gifts for their daily life.
The miracle that takes place there is a miracle of encounter and
faith. In faithful turning to God in
Christ through Mary, mankind's tormenting questions about the “why” of
suffering are stilled. They appear in a
new light, that suffering receives a deeper meaning from God. God himself has given the answer to the
difficult questions about suffering in that he became a person, one of
us. God's answer is Jesus Christ.
4.
In his name, the name of Christ whom we also call our “Savior”,
I come to you “Heiand”
(the German word for “saviour”) speaks to us about a mission - to “heal”. Jesus Christ preached the
Indeed Jesus Christ did not physically heal everyone he met. However, he himself ultimately suffered for
all of them - without exception - to the full.
His way became the way to
5.
Since that time the image of the crucified Lord is in a special way before the
eyes of the Christian who has a great suffering, a great burden, to bear. The divine “Man of Sorrows” also walks by your
side, dear brothers and sisters. This
Christ, marked by suffering and the cross, also stands for us before the throne
of God as the Risen One with the transfigured wounds. Suffering and death were
not the end for Christ, and neither are they the end for the person who
believes in Christ. Suffering and death
bear within themselves the promise of definitive resurrection and eternal
happiness.
Christian faith and Christian hope see beyond death.
They do not, however, simply pass over the present life. In a person who is given to believe in
the Lord grow the powers to accept and bear one's own suffering and
burden. He also receives the strength to
carry the suffering and the load of his fellow men and women, and to help them
overcome it. “Bear one another's
burden”, the Apostle Paul says, “thus you will fulfil the law of Christ” (Gal
6:2). For that very reason the Church
must show that she is the place where the elderly, ill and disabled people feel
secure, understood, and supported because her centre is Christ, the “Man of
Sorrows” and the Lord who rose transfigured by suffering and death.
6.
Dear brothers and sisters, there are certainly people who pass you by
carelessly and indifferently. They give
you the feeling that you are superfluous, that you are not needed. Be convinced
of one thing: We need you! The whole of
society needs you. For your
contemporaries you are an unsettling inquiry into the deeper values of human
life, an appeal to their humanitarianism, a test of their readiness to
love. For young people especially you
are a challenge to develop what is best in them: solidarity and readiness to help those who
especially rely on them. Wherever this
humanitarianism withers away, society grows cold. It is very encouraging that so many young
people today are completely committed to the elderly, ill and disabled people!
Every person is the
image of God
From your midst I cry out to everyone in your
society: there can be no classification
of human life as valuable or worthless.
Several decades ago this categorization brought about the most horrible
atrocities. Every human life - born or
unborn, fully developed or handicapped in its development - every human life is
created by God with a dignity which no one may take away. Every person is the image of God.
7.
In closing I would like to tell you also just how much the Church needs
you. In you we see Christ, who continues to live
in our midst as the one who bears the sign of his cross and suffering. When you accept the suffering which has
inevitably been laid upon you, your prayer and sacrifice have an unheard-of
power before God. Do not give up
praying. Pray and sacrifice for the
Church, for the salvation of people, and pray also for my apostolic ministry.
Together with you I finally thank all those people who share your
difficult and happy times, who by their nearness bridge the abysses of sadness
and desolation. They are the ones who
can give you courage to face life in the trials of old age, sickness or disability,
and awaken hope in you, so that it will ever again be possible for you to enjoy
anew the miracle of personal encounters and the miracle of faith.
May
Mary, Help of Christians, accompany you with her motherly protection. May the triune God bless you and all those
who help you with his peace, and always fill you with the deepest spiritual joy. Amen.