{"id":1768,"date":"2015-09-19T11:39:59","date_gmt":"2015-09-19T15:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/?p=1768"},"modified":"2015-10-08T13:26:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T17:26:42","slug":"plenary-assembly-of-the-catholic-bishops-of-canada-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/plenary-assembly-of-the-catholic-bishops-of-canada-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Plenary Assembly of the Catholic Bishops of Canada 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Address of the Apostolic Nuncio, Msgr Luigi Bonazzi<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cornwall, September 16 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies,<\/p>\n

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate,<\/p>\n

I greet you with profound fraternal affection, very grateful to God and to you all for this meeting which I have anxiously awaited. In the joy of this new encounter, my first desire is always to know you better, to listen to you, so as to be able to support – with more awareness of the facts – your work as Pastors in the vineyard which the Lord has entrusted to you.<\/p>\n

I must, however, share with you some words, with the principle aim of conveying to you the esteem, gratitude and fraternal encouragement of Pope Francis.\u00a0 He has sent me as his representative among you and how I would like that it was he himself \u2013 Pope Francis \u2013 speaking to you.<\/p>\n

Carrying within me this desire, I was reminded of the words that Pope Francis \u2013 then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio \u2013 spoke in the days previous to the Conclave of 2013. These are words that refer to the mission of the Pope, but they refer at the same time, to the mission of the Church and to our mission as bishops. Cardinal Bergoglio said: “Thinking of the next Pope:\u00a0 He must be a man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the Church to go out to the existential peripheries, that helps her to be the fruitful mother, who gains life from the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing\u201d.<\/p>\n

These words are in profound harmony and are a wonderful echo of those which, at the beginning of the third millennium, Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte which I like to consider as his spiritual testament:\u00a0 \u201cNo, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us:\u00a0 I am with you!\u00a0 It is not therefore a matter of inventing a \u2018new program\u2019.\u00a0 The program already exists:\u00a0 it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever.\u00a0 Ultimately, it has its centre in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem\u201d (no. 29).<\/p>\n

In the aforementioned statements of Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis two fundamental and inseparable guidelines for the pastoral activity of the Church and therefore, of our Episcopal ministry, are recalled.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, the centrality and primacy of Christ himself, who is to be “known, loved and imitated”, according to the words of St. John Paul II, and \u201cto be contemplated and adored\u201d, according to Pope Francis, who never misses an opportunity to recall that \u201cThe sun is Jesus Christ and if the Church moves away or hides from him, she will be in darkness and no longer able to offer witness\u201d (Address upon arrival in Quito, July 5, 2015).\u00a0 The Church is of Christ.\u00a0 She grows in the world by virtue of His grace.\u00a0 She lives in the world as a reflection of His light.\u00a0 \u201cFulget Ecclesia non suo sed Christi lumine\u201d St. Ambrose had already written (the Church shines not with her own light but with the light of Christ).\u00a0 For Pope Francis, the words of Jesus:\u00a0 \u201cWithout me, you can do nothing\u201d (John 15:5), is not a mere phrase, and in his homily of June 29 last, in his own characteristic language, he once again forcefully proclaimed:\u00a0 \u201cThe Church does not belong to Popes, bishops, priests nor the lay faithful; the Church in every moment belongs solely to Christ.\u00a0 Only the one who lives in Christ promotes and defends the Church by holiness of life, after the example of Peter and Paul\u201d.<\/p>\n

Secondly and contemporaneously \u2013 we have here the second fundamental guideline \u2013 knowledge, love and imitation of Christ \u2013 according to the pastoral mandate entrusted by Pope John Paul II to the Church on the threshold of the Third Millennium \u2013 must lead \u201cto live in Him the Trinitarian life and transform history with Him.\u201d\u00a0 Here there is a fundamental affirmation of serious consequences, sometimes not sufficiently observed in our pastoral praxis: human history is transformed to the degree we are capable of welcoming and living the Trinitarian life.<\/p>\n

As it is known, the Trinitarian life is made visible and active in the communion of the Church.\u00a0 The ecclesial communion, in fact, is \u201cthe reflection in time of the eternal and ineffable communion of the love of God One and Three\u201d (Christifideles Laici, no. 31).\u00a0 Heaven, descending to earth, has fixed its home within the Church, making it, to use that beautiful expression of Origen \u2013 \u201cfull of the Trinity\u201d, a living icon of the unity that joins the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.\u00a0\u00a0 The Church, therefore, is constitutively, \u201ca mystery of Trinitarian communion in missionary tension\u201d (Pastores dabo Vobis, no. 12).\u00a0\u00a0 For this reason – as Pope Francis exhorts us to do \u2013 the Church must go out of itself, just like the Trinity overflowed itself to draw close to humanity, first in the mystery of creation, and then, more wonderfully, in the Redemption.<\/p>\n

How to go out of oneself? By loving as Jesus loved us (John 13: 34-35). And charity, let us remember, is a love that transcends human dimensions, since it comes from on high: it arises, in fact, from the very heart of the Trinity (Rom 5.5). Since we have been made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1.4), charity makes us capable of loving as God \u201cloves himself\u201d and as He \u201cloves us\u201d; charity enables us to love God in God; God in us, and in others; we and others in God.<\/p>\n

By participating in the same dynamism of Trinitarian communion, charity possesses in itself, a prodigious \u201cforce for internal cohesion and external growth\u201d (Christifideles Laici, no. 32).\u00a0 Therefore the human-divine relations that charity arouses within us are also punctuated by two typical Trinitarian movements: one directed \u201cinternally\u201d (which aims to build unity within the community), and the other, projected \u201cexternally\u201d (designed to communicate unity \u201coutside\u201d). So, then, the more charity grows \u201cwithin\u201d the community, the more it radiates \u201cfrom\u201d the community, thereby becoming the light that evangelizes, energy that propels concord, mysterious power conquering evil and building up the Kingdom of God in history.<\/p>\n

In order for the Church to be a Mother, that \u201cfruitful mother\u201d who lives and experiences the \u201csweet and comforting joy of evangelizing\u201d, we are therefore called to live with ever renewed zeal and creativity the two movements typical of Trinitarian love:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the centripetal, convergent one, directed towards \u201cthe internal\u201d, which aims to build more and more a real affective and effective communion among us bishops, with our priests and with the faithful. Our fundamental pastoral plan is and must be \u201ccommunion\u201d.\u00a0 Not \u201cthe word\u201d communion, which risks becoming an overused and inflated word, but \u201cthe reality\u201d of communion, the Trinitarian communion. From here, in particular, comes the daily work of a bishop to build communion with his priests, so as to lead his priests to desire to build communion with their Bishop.\u00a0\u00a0 This is a program that requires fatigue, sweat, method and systematic engagement.\u00a0 It is a never-ending program, calling to constant conversion, both the bishop and his priests. Pope Francis expressly referred to this program in a speech to the Italian Episcopal Conference when he developed in detail the theme of \u201cecclesial sensibility\u201d, asserting among other things: \u201cEcclesial sensitivity is revealed concretely in the collegiality and communion between the Bishops and their Priests; in the communion among the Bishops themselves; between rich Dioceses \u2013 on the material level and in vocations – and those in difficulty; between the peripheries and the centre; among the bishop\u2019s conferences, and the Bishops with the Successor of Peter\u201d (May 18, 2015).<\/li>\n
  2. the centrifugal, divergent one, projected towards \u201cthe external\u201d, intended to reach the existential peripheries, and to which we are especially exhorted in the approaching Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy. This is the \u201cmissionary transformation of the Church\u201d (EG, 19-49) to which Pope Francis invites us.\u00a0 He who does not cease proclaiming that the joy of the Church \u201cis giving birth\u201d and \u201cgoing out of herself to give life\u201d, and \u201cto go out and to seek the sheep that are lost\u201d, \u201ctruly testifying to the tenderness of a shepherd, the tenderness of the mother\u201d.\u00a0 And again:\u00a0 \u201cthe joy of going out to seek the brothers and sisters who are far off:\u00a0 this is the joy of the Church. This really is when the Church becomes a mother, becomes fruitful.\u201d\u00a0 On the contrary, when the Church \u201cdoes not do this\u201d, then \u201cshe is shut in, she is closed in on herself\u201d, even \u201cif she is well organized.\u201d\u00a0 In this way she becomes \u201ca Church discouraged, anxious, sad\u2026 and this Church is useless\u201d (cf. Homily of December 9, 2014).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In summary and in conclusion:\u00a0 in the Church, as in the Trinity, its centrifugal force depends on its centripetal force; its ability to be an epiphany depends on the strength of its koinonia.\u00a0 Precisely because the Church must be missionary, evangelizing, she must bear within her life, as did the Church of Pentecost, the seal of unity, of the Trinitarian communion.<\/p>\n

    To the extent that we are pastors and artisans of \u2018Church Communion\u2019, we will experience a unique joy that is typically ours:\u00a0 the \u2018joy of being a Bishop\u2019.\u00a0 May the Queen of the Apostles obtain this grace for each of us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Address of the Apostolic Nuncio, Cornwall, September 16, 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[45,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1768"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1776,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768\/revisions\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nuntiatura.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}