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VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE
YEAR XXIII - N° 74
DATE 27-03-2013
Summary:
- FRANCIS' FIRST GENERAL AUDIENCE: FOLLOWING JESUS IS LEARNING TO GO OUT OF
OURSELVES
- FRANCIS ASKS FOR HALT TO VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
- POPE TO TAKE POSSESSION OF ROMAN CATHEDRA ON 7 APRIL
- DOCUMENTARY OF ELECTION OF POPE FRANCIS
___________________________________________________________
FRANCIS' FIRST GENERAL AUDIENCE: FOLLOWING JESUS IS LEARNING TO GO OUT OF
OURSELVES
Vatican City, 27 March 2013 (VIS) - “I am happy to welcome you to this,
my first general audience,” Pope Francis said to the thousands of
faithful who filled St. Peter's Square to participate in the Bishop of Rome's
first catechesis.
“With gratitude and veneration,” he continued, “I take up
this 'witness' from the hands of my beloved predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.
After Easter we will return to the catechesis of the Year of Faith. Today I
want to focus on Holy
Week. We began this week—the heart of the entire liturgical
year—during which we accompany Jesus in his Passion, Death, and
Resurrection, with Palm Sunday.
“But what,” the Pope asked, “does it mean for us to live
Holy Week? What does it mean to follow Jesus on his journey to Calvary, toward
the Cross and his Resurrection? On his earthly mission, Jesus walked the
streets of the Holy Land.
He called 12 simple persons to stay with him, sharing his path and continuing
his mission … He spoke to everyone, without distinction: to the great
and the humble ... the powerful and the weak. He brought God's mercy and
forgiveness. He healed,
consoled, understood. He gave hope. He brought to all the presence of God who
cares for every man and woman as a good father and a good mother cares for
each of their children.”
“God,” Francis emphasized, “didn't wait for us to come to
him. It was He who came to us. … Jesus lived the everyday reality of
the most common persons. … He cried when he saw Martha and Mary
suffering for the death of
their brother Lazarus … He also experienced the betrayal of a friend.
In Christ, God has given us the assurance that He is with us, in our midst.
… Jesus has no home because his home is the people, us ourselves. His
mission is to open the
doors to God for all, to be the presence of God's love.”
“During Holy Week we are living the apex … of this plan of love
that runs throughout the history of the relationship between God and humanity.
Jesus enters into Jerusalem to take the final step in which his entire
existence is summed up. He
gives himself completely, keeping nothing for himself, not even his life. At
the Last Supper, with his friends, He shares the bread and distributes the
chalice 'for us'. The Son of God offers himself to us; puts his Body and his
Blood in our hands to be
always with us … And in the Garden of the Mount of Olives, as at the
trial before Pilate, he makes no resistance, but gives himself.”
“Jesus doesn't live this love that leads to sacrifice passively or as
his fatal destiny. He certainly didn't hide his deep human turmoil when faced
with violent death, but he entrusted himself to the Father with full
confidence ... to show his
love for us. Each one of us can say, 'Jesus loved me and gave himself up for
me'.”
“What does this mean for us? It means that this path is also mine, also
yours, also our path. Living Holy Week, following Jesus not only with moved
hearts, means learning to come out of ourselves … in order to meet
others, in order to go
toward the edges of our existence, to take the first steps towards our
brothers and sisters, especially those who are farthest from us, those who are
forgotten, those who need understanding, consolation, and assistance.”
“Living Holy Week is always going deeper into God's logic, into the
logic of the Cross, which is not first and foremost a logic of sorrow and
death but one of love and the self giving that brings life. It is entering
into the logic of the Gospel.
Following, accompanying Christ, staying with him when he demands that we 'go
out': out of ourselves, out of a tired and habitual way of living the faith,
out of the temptation of locking ourselves in our own schemes that wind up
closing the horizon of
God's creative action. God went out of himself in order to come amongst us
… to bring us the mercy … that saves and gives hope. And we, if
we want to follow and remain with him, cannot be satisfied with staying in the
sheep pen with the
ninety-nine sheep. We have to 'go out', to search for the little lost sheep,
the furthest one, with him.”
“Often,” he observed, “we settle for some prayers, a
distracted and infrequent Sunday Mass, some act of charity, but we don't have
this courage to 'go out' and bring Christ. We are a little like St. Peter. As
soon as Jesus talks of his
passion, death, and resurrection, of giving himself and love for all, the
Apostle takes him aside and scolds him. What Jesus is saying shakes up his
plans, seems unacceptable, the safe certainty he had constructed, his idea of
the Messiah, in
difficulty. And Jesus … addressing some of the harshest words of the
Gospel to Peter, says: 'Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God
does, but as human beings do.' God thinks mercifully. God thinks like a father
who awaits the return of
his son and goes out to meet him, sees him coming when he is still afar
… a sign that he was awaiting him every day from the terrace of his
house. God thinks like the Samaritan who doesn't pass by the unfortunate man,
pitying him or
looking away, but rather assisting him without asking anything in return,
without asking if he was a Jew or a Samaritan, rich or poor.”
“Holy Week,” Francis concluded, “is a time of grace that the
Lord gives us to open the doors of our hearts, of our lives, of our
parishes—so many closed parishes are a shame—of our movements and
associations, to 'go out'
and meet others, to draw near them and bring them the light and joy of our
faith. To always go out with the love and tenderness of God!”
After the catechesis and the summaries in different languages that the Gospel
readers gave, the Pope greeted all the groups in Italian. Also in Italian, he
addressed, among other groups, the university students participating in the
international UNIV
Congress sponsored by the Prelature of Opus Dei, thanking them for their
prayers and affection for the Pope. “With your presence in the
university world, each one of you carries out what St. Josemaria Escriva
wished for: 'It is in the midst of the
most material things of the earth that we must sanctify ourselves, serving God
and all humankind'.”
___________________________________________________________
FRANCIS ASKS FOR HALT TO VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
Vatican City, 27 March 2013 (VIS) – After the catechesis of this
morning's General Audience, the Holy Father called for an immediate end to the
violence in the Central African Republic.
“I am attentively following what has been happening in these hours in
the Central African Republic and I wish to ensure all those who are
suffering—especially the relatives of the victims, the wounded, and
those who have lost their homes and
been forced to flee—of my prayers. I call for an immediate halt to the
violence and looting, and that a political solution to the crisis may be
reached as soon as possible so that peace and harmony may be restored in that
dear country, which has,
for too long, been marked by conflict and division.”
___________________________________________________________
POPE TO TAKE POSSESSION OF ROMAN CATHEDRA ON 7 APRIL
Vatican City, 27 March 2013 (VIS) – The solemn celebration of the
Eucharist during which Francis will take possession of the cathedra of the
Bishop of Rome will take place in the Lateran Basilica on 7 April, the Second
Sunday of Easter, or Divine
Mercy Sunday, at 5:30pm.
___________________________________________________________
DOCUMENTARY OF ELECTION OF POPE FRANCIS
Vatican City, 26 March 2013 (VIS) – “Francesco – Elezione di
un Papa che viene dalla fine del mondo” (Francis: Election of a Pope
from the Ends of the Earth) is the title of the documentary from Vatican
Television, made in
collaboration with the Officina della Comunicazione (OC) and the Italian
newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera. The DVD will be distributed as a supplement
to the Friday, 2 April edition of the newspaper.
The documentary registers the events following Pope Benedict XVI's
renunciation of the papacy, the days of the Sede Vacante, and the conclave
that brought the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new Pope.
Through images and previously
unpublished interviews with four cardinals—Cardinal Angelo Comastri,
archpriest of the Basilica of St. Peter; Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga,
archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of
the Pontifical Council
for Culture; and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of
ardinals—it reconstructs the most important stages of this period,
culminating in the meeting of the two pontiffs this past Saturday, 23 March,
in Castel Gandolfo.
The DVD supplement will cost 10.90 euro. Put together in record time, it was
presented this morning in the Press Office of the Holy See by Archbishop
Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social
Communications; Msgr. Dario Edoardo
Vigano, director of Vatican Television; and Dr. Ferruccio De Bortoli, editor
of Il Corriere della Sera.
___________________________________________________________
Per ulteriori informazioni e per la ricerca di documenti consultare il
sito: www.wisnews.org e www.vatican.va
Il servizio del VIS viene inviato soltanto agli indirizzi di posta
elettronica che ne hanno fatto richiesta. Se per qualunque motivo
non si desidera continuare a riceverlo, si prega di visitare nostra pagina
dinizio:
http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/vis/italinde.php
Copyright (VIS): Le notizie contenute nei servizi del Vatican
Information Service possono essere riprodotte parzialmente o totalmente
citando la fonte: V.I.S. - Vatican Information Service.
--Boundary_(ID_fM4ejZDpEELzg6fKPWslCw)
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Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
VISnews130327
VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE YEAR XXIII - N° 74 DATE 27-03-2013
Summary: - FRANCIS' FIRST GENERAL AUDIENCE:
FOLLOWING JESUS IS LEARNING
TO GO OUT OF OURSELVES - FRANCIS ASKS FOR HALT TO VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL
AFRICAN REPUBLIC - POPE TO TAKE POSSESSION OF ROMAN CATHEDRA ON 7
APRIL - DOCUMENTARY OF ELECTION OF POPE FRANCIS
FRANCIS' FIRST GENERAL AUDIENCE: FOLLOWING JESUS IS LEARNING TO GO OUT OF
OURSELVES
Vatican City, 27 March 2013 (VIS) - “I am happy to welcome you to
this, my first general audience,” Pope Francis said to the thousands of
faithful who filled St. Peter's Square to participate in the Bishop of Rome's
first catechesis.
“With gratitude and veneration,” he continued, “I take up
this 'witness' from the hands of my beloved predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI.
After Easter we will return to the catechesis of the Year of Faith. Today I
want to focus on Holy
Week. We began this week—the heart of the entire liturgical
year—during which we accompany Jesus in his Passion, Death, and
Resurrection, with Palm Sunday.
“But what,” the Pope asked, “does it mean for us to live
Holy Week? What does it mean to follow Jesus on his journey to Calvary, toward
the Cross and his Resurrection? On his earthly mission, Jesus walked the
streets of the Holy
Land. He called 12 simple persons to stay with him, sharing his path and
continuing his mission … He spoke to everyone, without distinction: to
the great and the humble ... the powerful and the weak. He brought God's mercy
and forgiveness. He
healed, consoled, understood. He gave hope. He brought to all the presence of
God who cares for every man and woman as a good father and a good mother cares
for each of their children.”
“God,” Francis emphasized, “didn't wait for us to come to
him. It was He who came to us. … Jesus lived the everyday reality of
the most common persons. … He cried when he saw Martha and Mary
suffering for the death of
their brother Lazarus … He also experienced the betrayal of a friend.
In Christ, God has given us the assurance that He is with us, in our midst.
… Jesus has no home because his home is the people, us ourselves. His
mission is to open the
doors to God for all, to be the presence of God's love.”
“During Holy Week we are living the apex … of this plan of
love that runs throughout the history of the relationship between God and
humanity. Jesus enters into Jerusalem to take the final step in which his
entire existence is summed up.
He gives himself completely, keeping nothing for himself, not even his life.
At the Last Supper, with his friends, He shares the bread and distributes the
chalice 'for us'. The Son of God offers himself to us; puts his Body and his
Blood in our hands to
be always with us … And in the Garden of the Mount of Olives, as at the
trial before Pilate, he makes no resistance, but gives himself.”
“Jesus doesn't live this love that leads to sacrifice passively or as
his fatal destiny. He certainly didn't hide his deep human turmoil when faced
with violent death, but he entrusted himself to the Father with full
confidence ... to show his
love for us. Each one of us can say, 'Jesus loved me and gave himself up for
me'.”
“What does this mean for us? It means that this path is also mine,
also yours, also our path. Living Holy Week, following Jesus not only with
moved hearts, means learning to come out of ourselves … in order to
meet others, in order to go
toward the edges of our existence, to take the first steps towards our
brothers and sisters, especially those who are farthest from us, those who are
forgotten, those who need understanding, consolation, and assist
nce.”
“Living Holy Week is always going deeper into God's logic, into the
logic of the Cross, which is not first and foremost a logic of sorrow and
death but one of love and the self giving that brings life. It is entering
into the logic of the
Gospel. Following, accompanying Christ, staying with him when he demands that
we 'go out': out of ourselves, out of a tired and habitual way of living the
faith, out of the temptation of locking ourselves in our own schemes that wind
up closing the
horizon of God's creative action. God went out of himself in order to come
amongst us … to bring us the mercy … that saves and gives hope.
And we, if we want to follow and remain with him, cannot be satisfied with
staying in the sheep pen
with the ninety-nine sheep. We have to 'go out', to search for the little lost
sheep, the furthest one, with him.”
“Often,” he observed, “we settle for some prayers, a
distracted and infrequent Sunday Mass, some act of charity, but we don't have
this courage to 'go out' and bring Christ. We are a little like St. Peter. As
soon as Jesus talks of
his passion, death, and resurrection, of giving himself and love for all, the
Apostle takes him aside and scolds him. What Jesus is saying shakes up his
plans, seems unacceptable, the safe certainty he had constructed, his idea of
the Messiah, in
difficulty. And Jesus … addressing some of the harshest words of the
Gospel to Peter, says: 'Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God
does, but as human beings do.' God thinks mercifully. God thinks like a father
who awaits the return of
his son and goes out to meet him, sees him coming when he is still afar
… a sign that he was awaiting him every day from the terrace of his
house. God thinks like the Samaritan who doesn't pass by
the unfortunate man, pitying him or looking away, but rather assisting him
without asking anything in return, without asking if he was a Jew or a
Samaritan, rich or poor.”
“Holy Week,” Francis concluded, “is a time of grace that
the Lord gives us to open the doors of our hearts, of our lives, of our
parishes—so many closed parishes are a shame—of our movements and
associations, to 'go out'
and meet others, to draw near them and bring them the light and joy of our
faith. To always go out with the love and tenderness of God!”
After the catechesis and the summaries in different languages that the
Gospel readers gave, the Pope greeted all the groups in Italian. Also in
Italian, he addressed, among other groups, the university students
participating in the international UNIV
Congress sponsored by the Prelature of Opus Dei, thanking them for their
prayers and affection for the Pope. “With your presence in the
university world, each one of you carries out what St. Josemaria Escriva
wished for: 'It is in the midst of the
most material things of the earth that we must sanctify ourselves, serving God
and all humankind'.”
FRANCIS ASKS FOR HALT TO VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
Vatican City, 27 March 2013 (VIS) – After the catechesis of this
morning's General Audience, the Holy Father called for an immediate end to the
violence in the Central African Republic.
“I am attentively following what has been happening in these hours in
the Central African Republic and I wish to ensure all those who are
suffering—especially the relatives of the victims, the wounded, and
those who have lost their homes
and been forced to flee—of my prayers. I call for an immediate halt to
the violence and looting, and that a political solution to the crisis may be
reached as soon as possible so that peace and harmony may be restored in that
dear country, which
has, for too long, been marked by conflict and division.”
POPE TO TAKE POSSESSION OF ROMAN CATHEDRA ON 7 APRIL
Vatican City, 27 March 2013 (VIS) – The solemn celebration of the
Eucharist during which Francis will take possession of the cathedra of the
Bishop of Rome will take place in the Lateran Basilica on 7 April, the Second
Sunday of Easter, or
Divine Mercy Sunday, at 5:30pm.
Vatican City, 26 March 2013 (VIS) – “Francesco – Elezione
di un Papa che viene dalla fine del mondo” (Francis: Election of a Pope
from the Ends of the Earth) is the title of the documentary from Vatican
Television, made in
collaboration with the Officina della Comunicazione (OC) and the Italian
newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera. The DVD will be distributed as a supplement
to the Friday, 2 April edition of the newspaper.
The documentary registers the events following Pope Benedict XVI's
renunciation of the papacy, the days of the Sede Vacante, and the conclave
that brought the election of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new Pope.
Through images and previously
unpublished interviews with four cardinals—Cardinal Angelo Comastri,
archpriest of the Basilica of St. Peter; Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga,
archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of
the Pontifical Council
for Culture; and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of
ardinals—it reconstructs the most important stages of this period,
culminating in the meeting of the two pontiffs this past Saturday, 23 March,
in Castel Gandolfo.
The DVD supplement will cost 10.90 euro. Put together in record time, it
was presented this morning in the Press Office of the Holy See by Archbishop
Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social
Communications; Msgr. Dario
Edoardo Vigano, director of Vatican Television; and Dr. Ferruccio De Bortoli,
editor of Il Corriere della Sera.
Per ulteriori informazioni e per la ricerca di documenti consultare il
sito: www.wisnews.org e www.vatican.va Il servizio
del VIS viene inviato soltanto agli indirizzi di posta elettronica che
ne hanno
fatto richiesta. Se per qualunque motivo non si desidera continuare a
riceverlo, si prega di visitare nostra pagina dinizio: http://212.77.1.245/news_services/press/v
s/italinde.php
Copyright (VIS): Le notizie contenute nei servizi del Vatican
Information Service possono essere riprodotte parzialmente o totalmente
citando la fonte: V.I.S. - Vatican Information Service.
--Boundary_(ID_fM4ejZDpEELzg6fKPWslCw)--
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