Testimony on the occasion of the Jubilee of Priests. Rome, May 14-18, 2000

BY LUIGI GIUSSANI

Belonging to the risen Christ, the “center of the universe and of history,” as John Paul II wrote in his first, unforgettable encyclical, defines the entire intent of our education. Thus, within us, every gesture arises as a response to the coming of Jesus of Nazareth and as a desire to participate in the purpose for which He entered into the time and space of the world.
If someone, just anybody, had been asked at the time of the Gospels, “Have you ever heard of Jesus?” and this same person, then, meeting Him on the dusty roads of Palestine, had asked Him this question, “What is your name, what do people call You?,” Jesus would have been able to answer, “I am the one sent by the Father.” These words define the new nature of our existence that the encounter with Christ has generated.
We have been called to be like Him “sent by the Father.” For what purpose? “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” we recite in the Lord’s Prayer: His kingdom is the human glory of Christ in the world, for whom “Father, the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify You.” (Jn 17:1)
The glory of Jesus, as the purpose of the Father’s plan, pertains to this world, to time and space; it is a matter of history. As Father Motta said to me when I was in the fifth year of classical high school in the seminary of Venegono: “If you do not offer this hour of study to God for Jesus, the glory of Jesus in the world is diminished.”
Now there are two terms which indicate precisely the divine power that is in this Mystery of the Father: the Sacraments and Authority. All our strength, in essence, does not come from human resources, but from what the Catechism, with a very humble, popular, maternal, paternal, fraternal word, calls “Grace.” This is what the Christian people in every epoch, but especially in terrible moments, goes to request in the sanctuaries dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Mater Christi, Mother of the new man. Grace is the force of victory, it does not eliminate the battle, but is the ultimate source of peace. As the Bible says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength,” and this makes our action in the world the path toward a victory, security and peace in the certainty of victory. It is called hope; “Spe erecti, In spem contra spem.” [“Though there seemed no hope, he hoped and believed.”] (Rom 4:18)
It is by resting our feet on this rock that we are called and sent to travel the road in hope, to the advantage of the people, our brothers, whom we meet.
1) The Sacraments are a human gesture–eating and drinking, a simple meal–transformed by the energy of the Spirit, which effects a fulfillment and thus becomes a source of peace and joy. The Sacrament indicates the method by which the Christian is present in the world’s struggles: always living in communion with Christ, as the Sacrament is the great rock on which the traveler’s foot rests with certainty and hope.
2) In this faith in the Mystery, light is shed by the word of Authority, objectively understood; from Authority as the echo of the words of the apostles, a passage of the Tradition into his own body and own soul, a secure passage, because he rests his feet on the rock of Peter. Therefore Authority is such inasmuch as it is united with Peter. There is no other criterion for us than unity with the Pope! Any other criterion would be subjectivism, personalism.
At the source of the “rock of Peter,” the great Presence of God-with-us increasingly defines our “I.” Therefore the hope is that what Saint Paul said about Christ will be fulfilled in each one of us: “Becoming obedient to death.” (Phil 2:8) Becoming obedient to the word of the Pope and of Tradition, even to death, that is to say, even to the point of being destroyed and eliminated; not only not recognized by the world, but destroyed and eliminated in hate by our present time, as happened to Father Kolbe in the concentration camp of Auschwitz.
We are men called to bring into the world true, authentic religiosity. Otherwise we would be salt without savor, worthy of being trampled underfoot. For this we beg to be, like Christ, imitators of the Father, in mercy. Through us and by us who administer the Sacraments in the community, communicate the sacramental nature of the Christian event, the Invisible is seen in a sign. This is what makes us fascinated by the Mystery of Communion. And this begins in our own person, which is really–even if unworthily–communion with Christ. We cannot understand or make those who follow us understand Communion–a sign among us of the Mystery present in the world, a sign of the great sign that is the Church–if we do not start from the perception of Communion as the definition of our true personality.
The priesthood expresses in its ultimate consequences the essence of Baptism, the great event that regenerates history and personal existence. If we live this, we shall have the perspicacity and the sensitivity to lead our communities to this experience of becoming one with Jesus. But in order to have our people absorb this true beginning of the Christian problem– “the just shall live by his faith”–we must first feel it bite into the flesh of our humanity. Then, almost without realizing it, we shall be witnesses of the Risen One, like small children who stammer human words in the school marked so powerfully by the Holy Father.
(Text also published in L’Osservatore Romano, May 19, 2000)