(via radio)
Pontifical Palace in Castel
Gandolfo
Saturday, 26 October 1946
Venerable brethren of the Episcopate, beloved sons
of the clergy secular and regular, Our most dear children of the laity, members
all of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12, 27), what wonder that you have responded
with such loyal and holy enthusiasm to the invitation of Boston's zealous and
large-hearted Archbishop, and from the wide-spread sections of the three
Americas have flocked to this National Congress! That Body of which you are
members has been threatened. That Body of Christ which is His Church (Eph. 1,
23), is menaced not only by hostile powers from without, but also by the
interior forces of weakness and decline. You have been alerted to the danger.
The growing weakness, the devitalizing process that has been going on — We
speak with sorrow in Our heart — going on in not a few parts of the Church is
due chiefly to an ignorance or at best a very superficial knowledge of the
religious truths taught by the loving Redeemer of all.
Oh, We are fully aware of the magnificent results
being achieved in the Catholic missions among the infidels throughout the
world: three million and more receiving instruction in the Faith, almost half a
million entering the Church each year. Nor does the instruction of the new
converts cease at their baptism; with the glowing fervour of those who have
found an unsuspected treasure they are eager to increase and deepen their
knowledge of eternal Truth; and the missionaries, priests, brothers and sisters
assisted by their devoted lay catechists do not fail them. But your Congress has
been interested rather in those who live in countries where the true Faith has
flourished for generations, in those also who were born of Catholic parents and
duly baptized; and these We have in mind when We say that the vigour of the
Church and its growth are menaced by their failure really to grasp the Truth
they profess.
On the eve of His passion, having finished the
Last Supper, only a brief hour or two before He entered into the crushing agony
of Gethsemane, surrounded by His Apostles, who for all their weakness of the
moment clung to Him with the deepest affection of their hearts, Jesus raising
His eyes to heaven spoke : « Father, the hour has come! Glorify Thy Son, that
Thy Son may glorify Thee... in order that to all whom Thou hast given Him He may
give everlasting life. This is everlasting life, that they may know Thee, the
only true God, and him whom Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ » (Jo. 17, 1-3).
To know the only true God, to know that He is, to
know who He is: that is the first and indispensable step towards life
ever-lasting. Now God is not an empty word applied to some phantom conjured up
out of the black caves of paganism. God is not some abstract idea decked out by
scholars in alluring language to catch the adulation of vain and self-centered
men and women; nor is he to be
identified with the more palpable institution called the State, which at times
would presume to vaunt itself the source and end of all man's rights and duties
and liberties. Before the beginning of all these things the only true God, your
God, was existing. He transcends all that is; and all that is, derives its
being from Him. « Before the mountains were made or the earth and the world was
formed, from eternity to eternity Thou art God » (Ps. 89, 2). « In the
beginning, O Lord, Thou didst found the earth, and the heavens are the works of
thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; all of them shall grow old
like a garment, but Thou art always the self-same and Thy years shall not fail
» (Ps. 101, 26-28). Millions may hurry along the streets of great cities
absorbed in their business or pleasure or sorrows with never a thought of God;
yet the only true God is no less real; it is He who sustains them in their
existence. Men gather to enact the laws of a people, or with the praise-worthy
purpose of lifting their fellow-men out of the morass of misery and despair
sown by injustice, the while they deliberately exclude recognition of the
supreme law-giver and universal sovereign; yet the only true God is no less
real for all that. And if He has given to His creature, man, the spiritual
capacity to deliberate and willfully to act, He will most certainly demand of
him a strict accounting of his thoughts and conduct. St. Paul made that clear
when he wrote to the Romans : « We shall all stand at the judgment-seat of God
. . . everyone of us will render an account for himself to God » (Rom. 14,
11-12).
Is not this denial or neglect of God, Creator and
Supreme Judge of man, the fountainhead of the rising flood of evil that appalls
the serious-minded today, and strews the path of human life with so many broken
homes? If men believing in God, to echo St. Paul again, if men believing in God
do not glorify Him as God and give thanks; if their faith is kept in a hidden
closet of their private chamber, while immodesty, malice, avarice and all
manner of wickedness are given full use of the drawing-room and public resorts,
is it surprising that God should give them up in the lustful desires of their
heart to uncleanness, so that women have changed the natural use for that which
is against nature, men become full of envy and murder, contention, hateful to
God, irreverent, proud, haughty, disobedient to parents, without affection,
without fidelity, without mercy? (Rom. 1, 18-32). Men must be brought to be
conscious of the fact of God's existence, of their utter dependence on His
power and love and mercy, and of their moral obligation to shape their daily
lives according to His most holy will.
And is that will so difficult to learn? Has not
God made it clear to those who seek to know? In the first of the two letters
which he sent to this congregation at Corinth St. Paul reminds them that when
he first came among them he professed to know only one subject. It was Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified. Now St. Paul was a learned and cultured man, well
read in the law, a university man he would be called today; yet as pastor of
souls he had only one absorbing interest, one consuming desire, to bring his
people to Jesus Christ, crucified. For this, he knew it, is eternal life to
know the only true God and Him whom He sent, Jesus Christ.
To know Jesus crucified is to know God's infinite
love for man. « By this hath the charity of God appeared towards us, because He
hath sent his only begotten Son into this world, that we may live by Him » (1
Io. 4, 9). «And we have seen », again it is the disciple whom Jesus loved
speaking, « and to testify that the Father hath sent His Son to be the Saviour
of the world (1 Io. 4, 14). « If God has so loved us, we also ought to love one
another » (ibid. II).
To know Jesus crucified is to know God's horror of
sin; its guilt could be washed away only in the precious blood of God's only
begotten Son become man.
Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is
that men have begun to lose the sense of sin. Smother that, deaden it — it can
hardly be wholly cut out from the heart of man — let it not be awakened by any
glimpse of the God-man dying on Golgotha's cross to pay the penalty of sin, and
what is there to hold back the hordes of God's enemy from over-running the
selfishness, the pride, the sensuality and unlawful ambitions of sinful man?
Will mere human legislation suffice? Or compacts and treaties? In the Sermon on
the Mount the divine Redeemer has illumined the path that leads to the Father's
will and eternal life; but from Golgotha's gibbet flows the full and steady
stream of graces, of strength and courage, that alone enable man to walk that
path with firm and unerring step.
Those graces are channelled to your souls through
the Church. Christ's work was not wholly accomplished at his death. In one
sense it was only beginning. He has finished, finished perfectly the work
assigned him by the Father to do in his mortal body. But He would live on to
ensure that his beloved creatures should profit by the redemption He had
wrought. And so He told his disciples that He was going to build a church; its
foundation, the basis of its strength and unity, would be one of them, Peter.
Impregnable against the powers of evil, imperturbable amid the crash of mere
human institutions, deriving always its comprehensiveness and its oneness from
him who in an unbroken, continuous line would be the successor of the first
Christ-Vicar, it was to carry on until time and space are no more, until the book
of human history is closed. He gave it the divine mandate to go forth and to
teach all men of all nations. It would be the pillar and mainstay of the truth.
It would be the holy mother imparting to her children a life of faith and
sanctity which is the pledge of everlasting life. It would be his beloved
spouse, for whom he delivered himself up, that He might sanctify her... that
she might be holy and without blemish (Eph. 5, 26 ff.).
That is the soul-stirring challenge sent from the
Heart of Christ to the National Congress, as it brings to a close the crowded
days of spiritual and apostolic activity: that the Church might be holy and
without blemish. It cannot be such, unless its members understand the fullness
of the beauty of their Faith and of their obligations as members of Christ's
Body. For surely to be obliged to be holy and without blemish in the sight of
God is a beautiful thing, is it not? It is to reflect, however imperfectly, the
sheer white holiness of God.
Instruction then is necessary, it is
indispensable, not only for children in Sunday-schools and growing youth in
higher classes. Religious instruction should hold a place of honour in college
and university curricula. Millions, you well know, never enter college or
university; and yet from their number will come leaders in important spheres of
your national life. Are they to approach their tasks with the most meagre,
shallow knowledge of their God, of their loving Redeemer and their Mother the
Church? What a vast harvest is opened up to your zealous labours! And how deep
is the consolation that fills Our paternal heart when We hear of the constantly
increasing strides you are making, under the stimulating guidance and example
of your Bishops, towards reaping that harvest! Priests will not suffice for the
work; the sisters, to whom the Church in America owes such an incalculable
debt, will not suffice. The laity must lend their valiant cooperation; and
first of all Catholic parents should deem it their sacred duty to equip
themselves so that they may be able to explain at least the simpler catechisms
to their inquiring children.
This year and this month the Church is
commemorating the third century that has passed since that giant of a hero,
Isaac Jogues, and his lay companion, John Lalande, won the glory of martyrdom
near Auriesville in what is now the State of New York. You are familiar with
their story of zeal, suffering, sacrifice. They were catechists, come to teach
the truths of God's revelation in the new world. You are successors to their
apostolate. They have joined the white-robed army of martyrs before the throne
of the Lamb; but their affection for the land of their adoption and their glory
is all the stronger. With confidence, then, We appeal to their powerful
intercession in behalf of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, while as a
token of Our keen, paternal interest We impart to all its members and
especially to all who have taken part in the Eighth National Congress in Boston
the Apostolic Benediction.
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