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September 6, 1963

NATIONAL CATHOLIC WELFARE CONFERENCE

1312 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington 5, D. C.



Translation provided by NCWC News Service



ou have participated in the 13th Pastoral Updating Study

Week, promoted by the Pastoral Orientation Center, well

known to Us, which is sponsored by Msgr. Grazioso Ceriani,

a dear friend, and you have been the welcomed guests of the

zealous Bishop Virginio Dondeo of Orvieto in the incomparable

setting of that city and that cathedral, to commemorate the seventh

centenary of the eucharistic devotion of the
**Corpus Christi” which

traces its first official source and its universal and still resplendent

irradiation from the miracle of the nearby town of Bolsena and

from the papal bull ‘‘Transiturus” of our distant predecessor

Urban IV.

We are greatly pleased by this event, which We have followed

with interest and in which We ourself would have participated if

Providence had not disposed otherwise with Our elevation to the

Roman Pontificate, an office which has immensely increased Our

appreciation of that congress.

Therefore this encounter is all the more welcome, and all the

more fervent are Our wishes for the many and enduring fruits

which the aforesaid week may produce. The letter which Our

Cardinal Secretary of State has addressed to Msgr. Ceriani on this

occasion, and which you have received with such reverence, bears

witness to these sentiments.

What remains for Us to add to all that has already been said

on the central theme of the week, ‘The Eucharist and the Christian

Community,” and said with such abundance and competence, and

which has been meditated upon and translated into magnificent

and pious acts of devotion with reverence and understanding?

Trying to search into your minds as to what you expect of Us,

We believe that We see you waiting for Our approval and Our
recognition of your visit here before Us as a significant offering.

We note especially that you come brandishing as a banner a word
which defines the method of your work: “updating” C‘aggiorna-

mento”).

This is a word which had the honor of being taken up by Our

venerable and lamented predecessor John XXIII of happy memory,

and it was inscribed by him in the program of the ecumenical

council.

The word “updating,” when applied to the ecclesiastical field

indicates the relation between the eternal values of Christian truth

and their insertion in the dynamic reality of human life which is

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so extraordinarily changeable today, which in our present history

is restless, confused and fertile, and which is continuously and

variously reshaping itself.

It is a word which indicates the relative and experimental aspect

of the ministry of salvation, which has nothing more greatly at

heart than to succeed efficaciously, and which sees how much its

efficacy is conditioned upon the cultural, moral and social state of

the souls to which it is directed. The ministry knows, furthermore,

how timely for good culture, but especially for the practical increase

of the apostolate, is the knowledge of other experiences and taking

the good among them as its own: “test all things; hold fast that

which is good”.^

It is a word which demonstrates fear of outmoded customs, of

delaying fatigue, of incomprehensible forms, of neutralizing dis-

tances, of presumptuous and unsuspected ignorance about new

human phenomena, as well as little confidence in the perennial

application and productivity of the Gospel.

It is a word which may seem to give servile honor to capricious

and fleeting fads, to unbelieving existentialism in transcendent ob-

jective values and is hungry only for the fullness of the momentary

and subjective. Instead, it assigns due importance to the rapid and

inexorable passing of phenomena in which our life develops and

seeks to correspond to the celebrated recommendation of the

Apostle: “make the most of your time, because the days are evil.” -

It is a word, therefore, which We also accept with pleasure, as
an expression of the desire to give testimony to the timelessness of

the ecclesiastical ministry and therefore to its modern vitality.

Apropos of this. We must welcome also another term which
qualifies the activity which you (bishops and pastors) promote

and follow. We mean the word “pastoral.” Today it is a program
and a glorious word.

As is known, the ecumenical council has made it its own, and

has made it the center of its reforming and renewing purposes.

There is no need to see in this adjective, which is associated

with the highest and most characteristic manifestations of ecclesi-

astical life, an unnoticed but injurious tendency toward the

1 1 Thes. 5:21.

^-Eph. 5:16.

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pragmatism and activism of our time, to the detriment of interior

life and contemplation, which should have the first places in our

evaluation of religious things. Such primacy remains even if in

practice the apostolic demands of the kingdom of God in the

affairs of contemporary life require preferential use of time and

energies in the exercise of charity toward one’s neighbor.

Let no one believe that this pastoral solicitude which the Church

underlines in its program today, which absorbs its attention and

requires its care—let no one believe that this signifies a change of
judgment regarding the errors spread in our society and already

condemned by the Church, such as atheistic marxism for example.

To seek to apply careful and healing remedies to a contagious

and lethal disease does not mean that one changes his opinion

about it. It means rather that he seeks to combat it, not only

theoretically but also practically. It means that he follows diag-

nosis with therapy, that he applies healing charity to doctrinal

condemnation.

It would be similarly rash to see in the importance given to

pastoral activity a forgetfulness or a rivalry with theological

speculation. This latter retains its dignity and its excellence even

if the impelling needs of ecclesiastical life demand that sacred

teaching not remain purely speculative, but be considered and culti-

vated in the complete framework of the Christian economy.

Doctrine is given to us to practice a true religion, to be an-

nounced to souls and to demonstrate its saving powers in the

historic reality. In the life of the Church today, mind and will,

desire and labor, truth and action, doctrine and apostolate, faith

and charity, magisterium and ministry assume complementary

functions, always closer and more organic and with reciprocal

splendor and increase.

Having said that much. We are pleased also on this occasion to
render honor to the evangelical and apostolic qualities of the

pastoral activities of you who are present here. We are reminded
of a name by which Jesus Christ chose to describe Himself to us;

and with the name, the ineffable, gentle and heroic figure of the

Good Shepherd; and with the figure, the mission of guide, master,

guardian and savior, which Christ made His own for love of us,

and which He gave to Peter.

There comes to mind one of the most flowering branches of

practical theology, pastoral theology, which is the Church’s own

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art and science, enriched by special gifts and charisma, of the

salvation of souls. It is the science by which the Church knows

souls, approaches them, instructs and educates them, guides them,

serves them, defends, loves and sanctifies them.

There comes to mind the humble and the great common expres-

sion of the sacerdotal ministry: the care of souls, the charity of the

Church in act, in its most usual, assiduous, often most generous

and certainly most necessary guise.

We take this occasion to show Our highest esteem. Our special
benevolence. Our fraternal and great encouragement for the pastors

of souls. This special recognition, which your distinguished pas-

toral study arouses in Us, is due to them, for We Ourself have
been a pastor, first in a diocese, which seems to have been an

experimental field of typical and positive pastoral importance in

past centuries under St. Ambrose and St. Charles, and as it still is

today after the servants of God, Cardinals Ferrari and Schuster.

And We are a pastor today on this Chair of Peter to which We have
been called by Chrisf to feed the flock of His Church.

Our expression of affectionate devotion is due to them because

the pastoral ministry binds them to complete dedication as the

word and example of Jesus our Master teaches us: “The good

shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” ^ It is due to them

because their dedication touches the summit of charity, as again

Christ Himself admonishes us: “Greater love than this no one has,

that one lay down his life for his friends.” ^

Our encouragement is due to the pastors of souls, to the bishops

and the pastors especially, and to all others who are dedicated to

pastoral cares, because We know under what conditions they labor

today. The spiritual state of the world today presents enormous

difficulties, some of which were unknown until yesterday.

We know what apprehensions weigh so often on the heart of a

bishop, what sufferings often afflict him, not only for the poverty

of means even now so grave and mortifying, but because of the

deafness of those who should hear his words, for the diffidence

which surrounds him and isolates him, for the indifference and lack

of respect which disturb his ministry and paralyze him.

^John 10:11.

^John 15:13.

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We know how many pastors and assistant pastors exercise the

care of souls in vast and populated areas where the number,

mentality, the exigencies of the inhabitants force them to unceasing

and tiring labors. We also know how many priests must exercise

their ministry in the hidden little towns, without companionship,

without help and the comforts that would result from these.

Both the former and the latter often must live in dire economic

conditions, often opposed and misunderstood and forced to live on

their own resources. Their pay is only to find in the humble who

surround them, in the sacred book of their prayers and in the

tabernacle, the mystery of the Divine Presence.

We feel obliged to assure these dear and venerated brothers,

overworked laborers of the Gospel, these modest and persevering

ministers of the Church of God, that the Pope thinks of them,

understands them, esteems them, assists them, loves them, and

therefore follows them with his prayers and blessings.

This reference to the communion of spirit which unites Us in

the great ranks of the priesthood engaged in the care of souls

brings Us to the conclusion of Our discourse, at which point We
would like to remark about the theme treated during your week of

pastoral updating studies, that is, “The Eucharist and the Christian

Community.”

We hope that your reflection on this theme, so doctrinally and

spiritually rich, will continue in the exercise of your ministry. We

hope that it will confirm in you the conviction that no other action

realizes in itself the fulness of grace and pastoral efficacy as much

as the celebration of the Divine Sacrifice. In this sacrifice, on the

one hand, the superhuman power of priestly orders renders really

present, in sacramental form the true humanity of Christ, Head of

the whole Mystical Body and of each single local community.

On the other hand, the pastoral mission entrusted to the priest in

care of souls is bound to render really present, in community form,

the Mystical Body of Christ which is the Church.

May the exciting consciousness of the antecedent and consequent

relation of our priesthood with the Eucharist continue to nourish

it. The priesthood is the minister generator of such a sacrament

and therefore is its first adorer, its knowing revealer and its tireless

distributor.

Let there be assigned to your priesthood as its first duty, also

under the aspect of charity and of pastoral productivity, that sub-

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lime celebration of the Mass which you have in common. Celebrate

the Mass in such manner that it be punctual and perfect in its ritual,

that it be simple in its solemnity and solemn in its simplicity, that

it be recollected in silence and in the orderliness of the assembly

and unison of prayer and song, that it be meaningful and mys-

terious in its significance, that it be carried out with the participa-

tion of all.

May it be devoutly and cordially assisted by all, by children,

by youth, by students, by workers, by every social group, by men

and women, by entire families, by Catholic associations and by

institutions located within the parish. May it be devoutly attended

with particular attention by the Sisters, the holy flowers of our

parishes; devoutly attended by the suffering, the afflicted, the aged,

the poor, by all the people of God, by the whole community invited

together with the priest who functions there in the person of Christ

and at the same time interprets and represents the Christian people.

The priest expresses there his own “royal priesthood” in a way

that renews and perpetuates the phenomenon, the index and the

vertex of the common royalty, of the first “multitude of the be-

lievers” who were, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, “of one

heart and one soul.”

May it continue. We repeat, and may it spread, and to the

realization of this wish We impart Our apostolic blessing.

Acts 4:32.

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