Dear brothers and sisters, this “high standard of ordinary Christian living” (cf John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, 31) means sometimes going against the tide and also encountering obstacles, outside ourselves and within ourselves. Jesus himself warns us: the good seed of God’s word is often snatched away by the Evil one, blocked by tribulation, and choked by worldly cares and temptation (cf Mt 13:19-22). All of these difficulties could discourage us, making us fall back on seemingly more comfortable paths. However, the true joy of those who are called consists in believing and experiencing that he, the Lord, is faithful, and that with him we can walk, be disciples and witnesses of God’s love, open our hearts to great ideals, to great things. “We Christians were not chosen by the Lord for small things; push onwards toward the highest principles. Stake your lives on noble ideals!” (Homily at Holy Mass and the Conferral of the Sacrament of Confirmation, 28 April 2013). I ask you bishops, priests, religious, Christian communities and families to orient vocational pastoral planning in this direction, by accompanying young people on pathways of holiness which, because they are personal, “call for a genuine ‘training in holiness’ capable of being adapted to every person’s need. This training must integrate the resources offered to everyone with both the traditional forms of individual and group assistance, as well as the more recent forms of support offered in associations and movements recognized by the Church” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 31).
Let us dispose our hearts therefore to being “good soil”, by listening, receiving and living out the word, and thus bearing fruit. The more we unite ourselves to Jesus through prayer, Sacred Scripture, the Eucharist, the Sacraments celebrated and lived in the Church and in fraternity, the more there will grow in us the joy of cooperating with God in the service of the Kingdom of mercy and truth, of justice and peace. And the harvest will be plentiful, proportionate to the grace we have meekly welcomed into our lives. With this wish, and asking you to pray for me, I cordially impart to you all my Apostolic Blessing.
--Pope Francis, World Day of Prayer for Vocations, 2014
Training in holiness
Fraternal Correction
"[P]riestly formation ... has to include courageous fraternal correction when it is called for. A priest, for his part, has to be ready to accept such correction. Christ said to his disciples: 'If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.' (Matt 18:15)"
(John Paul II, Rise, Let Us Be One Our Way, p 129).
To be sure, a youth center that merely offers games and something to drink would be absolutely superfluous. The point of an oratory really has to be cultural formation, the formation of a human and Christian personality, which must become a mature personality. In this regard we’re absolutely in agreement. It seems to me that today there’s a cultural poverty in which we know so many things, but without a heart, without any interior connection, because a common vision of the world is lacking. For that reason, a cultural solution inspired by the faith of the church, by the awareness of God which it has given us, is absolutely necessary. I would say that this is precisely the function of a youth center: To offer not only something to do in one’s spare time, but above all to offer an integral human formation that makes the personality complete.
Therefore, the priest as educator must be himself well-formed and located within the culture of today, rich in culture, in order to help young people enter into a culture inspired by the faith. I would add, naturally, that in the end the point of orientation for every culture is God, the God present in Christ. We see today that there are persons with great knowledge, but without interior orientation. In this way, for example, science can even be dangerous, because without deep ethical orientations, it leaves the person exposed to the arbitrary, and hence, without the orientations necessary in order to become really human. In this sense, the heart of all cultural formation, which is certainly necessary, must without doubt be the faith: To know the face of God who is revealed in Christ, and thus to have the point of orientation for all the other cultures too, which may be equally confused and confusing. A culture without personal knowledge of God, and without knowledge of the face of God in Christ, is a culture that can become destructive because it doesn’t have the necessary ethic orientations. In this sense, it seems to me, we really have a deep mission of cultural and human formation, one which opens up to all the riches of the culture of our time – but one which also offers a criterion for discerning what is true culture, and what could become anti-culture.
(Benedict XVI, Q&A With Priests of Rome, 26 Feb 2009)
St Vincent, in his already wide experience, had discovered that it is “practically impossible to reform bad priests who have grown old in vice … efforts must be made to train good priests for the future.” [p. 27]
(Jacques Delarue, The Holiness of Vincent de Paul, Geoffrey Chapman Ltd, London 1960, 132 pp)
Q: Holy Father, I’ll ask my question in English. I know you will speak principally in Italian, but we would be grateful for at least a few words in English. The Catholic church in the United States is large and dynamic, but also suffering, above all because of the recent sexual abuse crisis. The American people are waiting to hear what you have to say on this subject. What will your message be?
Benedict XVI: It is a great suffering for the church in the United States, for the church in general, and for me personally that this could happen. If I read the histories of these victims, it’s difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way their mission to give healing and to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed, and we will do all that is possible that this cannot happen in the future.
I think we have to act on three levels.
The first is the level of justice, the juridical level. We now have also norms to react in a just way. I would not speak in this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia, [which] is another thing. We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry, this is absolutely incompatible. And who is really guilty of being a pedophile cannot be a priest. So the first level is, as we can do justice and help clearly the victims, because they are deeply touched. So [there are] two sides of justice, on the one hand that pedophiles cannot be priests; on the other hand, to help in all the possible ways to the victims.
The second level is the pastoral level, the level of healing and help of assistance and of reconciliation. This is a big pastoral engagement, and I know that the bishops and the priests and all the Catholic people in the United States will do all possible to help assist and to heal, and to help that in the future these things cannot happen.
The third point [is that] we have made a visitation in the seminaries to also do what is possible in the education of seminarians for a deep, spiritual, human and intellectual formation –with discernment so that only sound persons can be admitted to the priesthood, only persons with a deep personal love for Christ and a deep sacramental love, to exclude that this can happen [again]. I know that the bishops and the rectors of seminarians will do all that is possible so that we have a strong discernment, because it’s more important to have good priests than to have many priests. This is also our third level, and we hope that we can do, and we have done, and we will do in the future, all that is possible to heal this wound.....
(From Whispers in the Loggia, http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/04/from-plane.html)