INAUGURATION MASS HOMILY
LIKE JESUS, I WILL BE A SHEPHERD, LIKE PETER, A FISHER OF MEN
LIKE JESUS, I WILL BE A SHEPHERD, LIKE PETER, A FISHER OF MEN
VATICAN CITY, APR 24, 2005 (VIS) - Given below is the text of the homily -
published in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German - delivered by the
Pope during the Mass for the inauguration of his pontificate:
"Your Eminences, my dear brother bishops and priests, distinguished
authorities and members of the diplomatic corps, dear brothers and sisters.
During these days of great intensity, we have chanted the litany of the
saints on three different occasions: at the funeral of our Holy Father John
Paul II; as the cardinals entered the conclave; and again today, when we sang
it with the response: 'Tu illum adiuva' - sustain the new Successor of Saint
Peter. On each occasion, in a particular way, I found great consolation in
listening to this prayerful chant. How alone we all felt after the passing of
John Paul II - the Pope who for over twenty-six years had been our shepherd
and guide on our journey through life! He crossed the threshold of the next
life, entering into the mystery of God. But he did not take this step alone.
Those who believe are never alone - neither in life nor in death. At that
moment, we could call upon the Saints from every age - his friends, his
brothers and sisters in the faith - knowing that they would form a living
procession to accompany him into the next world, into the glory of God. We
knew that his arrival was awaited. Now we know that he is among his own and is
truly at home.
"We were also consoled as we made our solemn entrance into conclave, to
elect the one whom the Lord had chosen. How would we be able to discern his
name? How could 115 bishops, from every culture and every country, discover
the one on whom the Lord wished to confer the mission of binding and loosing?
Once again, we knew that we were not alone, we knew that we were surrounded,
led and guided by the friends of God. And now, at this moment, weak servant of
God that I am, I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human
capacity. How can I do this? How will I be able to do it? All of you, my dear
friends, have just invoked the entire host of saints, represented by some of
the great names in the history of God's dealings with mankind. In this way, I
too can say with renewed conviction: I am not alone. I do not have to carry
alone what in truth I could never carry alone. All the Saints of God are there
to protect me, to sustain me and to carry me. And your prayers, my dear
friends, your indulgence, your love, your faith and your hope accompany me.
Indeed, the communion of saints consists not only of the great men and women
who went before us and whose names we know. All of us belong to the communion
of saints, we who have been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, we who draw life from the gift of Christ's Body and
Blood, through which He transforms us and makes us like Himself.
"Yes, the Church is alive - this is the wonderful experience of these days.
During those sad days of the Pope's illness and death, it became wonderfully
evident to us that the Church is alive. And the Church is young. She holds
within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way
towards the future. The Church is alive and we are seeing it: we are
experiencing the joy that the Risen Lord promised His followers. The Church is
alive - she is alive because Christ is alive, because He is truly risen. In
the suffering that we saw on the Holy Father's face in those days of Easter,
we contemplated the mystery of Christ's Passion and we touched His wounds. But
throughout these days we have also been able, in a profound sense, to touch
the Risen One. We have been able to experience the joy that He promised, after
a brief period of darkness, as the fruit of His resurrection.
"The Church is alive - with these words, I greet with great joy and
gratitude all of you gathered here, my venerable brother cardinals and
bishops, my dear priests, deacons, Church workers, catechists. I greet you,
men and women religious, witnesses of the transfiguring presence of God. I
greet you, members of the lay faithful, immersed in the great task of building
up the Kingdom of God which spreads throughout the world, in every area of
life. With great affection I also greet all those who have been reborn in the
Sacrament of Baptism but are not yet in full communion with us; and you, my
brothers and sisters of the Jewish people, to whom we are joined by a great
shared spiritual heritage, one rooted in God's irrevocable promises. Finally,
like a wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today,
to believers and non-believers alike.
"Dear friends! At this moment there is no need for me to present a program
of governance. I was able to give an indication of what I see as my task in my
Message of Wednesday April 20, and there will be other opportunities to do so.
My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own
ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will
of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He Himself will lead the Church at
this hour of our history. Instead of putting forward a program, I should
simply like to comment on the two liturgical symbols which represent the
inauguration of the Petrine Ministry; both these symbols, moreover, reflect
clearly what we heard proclaimed in today's readings.
"The first symbol is the pallium, woven in pure wool, which will be placed
on my shoulders. This ancient sign, which the bishops of Rome have worn since
the fourth century, may be considered an image of the yoke of Christ, which
the bishop of this city, the Servant of the Servants of God, takes upon his
shoulders. God's yoke is God's will, which we accept. And this will does not
weigh down on us, oppressing us and taking away our freedom. To know what God
wants, to know where the path of life is found - this was Israel's joy, this
was her great privilege. It is also our joy: God's will does not alienate us,
it purifies us - even if this can be painful - and so it leads us to
ourselves. In this way, we serve not only Him, but the salvation of the whole
world, of all history.
"The symbolism of the pallium is even more concrete: the lamb's wool is
meant to represent the lost, sick or weak sheep which the shepherd places on
his shoulders and carries to the waters of life. For the Fathers of the
Church, the parable of the lost sheep, which the shepherd seeks in the desert,
was an image of the mystery of Christ and the Church. The human race - every
one of us - is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way. The
Son of God will not let this happen; He cannot abandon humanity in so wretched
a condition. He leaps to his feet and abandons the glory of heaven, in order
to go in search of the sheep and pursue it, all the way to the Cross. He takes
it upon His shoulders and carries our humanity; He carries us all - He is the
good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. What the pallium indicates
first and foremost is that we are all carried by Christ. But at the same time
it invites us to carry one another. Hence the pallium becomes a symbol of the
shepherd's mission, of which the second reading and the Gospel speak. The
pastor must be inspired by Christ's holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of
indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so
many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and
thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is
the desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their
dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are
growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the
earth's treasures no longer serve to build God's garden for all to live in,
but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.
The Church as a whole and all her pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead
people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with
the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.
"The symbol of the lamb also has a deeper meaning. In the ancient Near East,
it was customary for kings to style themselves shepherds of their people. This
was an image of their power, a cynical image: to them their subjects were like
sheep, which the shepherd could dispose of as he wished. When the shepherd of
all humanity, the living God, Himself became a lamb, He stood on the side of
the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how He reveals
Himself to be the true shepherd: 'I am the Good Shepherd . . . I lay down my
life for the sheep,' Jesus says of Himself (Jn 10:14ff). It is not power, but
love that redeems us! This is God's sign: He Himself is love. How often we
wish that God would make show Himself stronger, that He would strike
decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world. All ideologies of
power justify themselves in exactly this way, they justify the destruction of
whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We
suffer on account of God's patience. And yet, we need His patience. God, Who
became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by
those who crucified Him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is
destroyed by the impatience of man.
"One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people
entrusted to him, even as he loves Christ whom he serves. 'Feed my sheep.'
says Christ to Peter, and now, at this moment, He says it to me as well.
Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving
means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God's truth, of
God's word, the nourishment of His presence, which He gives us in the blessed
Sacrament. My dear friends - at this moment I can only say: pray for me, that
I may learn to love the Lord more and more. Pray for me, that I may learn to
love His flock more and more - in other words, you, the holy Church, each one
of you and all of you together. Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of
the wolves. Let us pray for one another, that the Lord will carry us and that
we will learn to carry one another.
"The second symbol used in today's liturgy to express the inauguration of
the Petrine ministry is the presentation of the fisherman's ring. Peter's call
to be a shepherd, which we heard in the Gospel, comes after the account of a
miraculous catch of fish: after a night in which the disciples had let down
their nets without success, they see the Risen Lord on the shore. He tells
them to let down their nets once more, and the nets become so full that they
can hardly pull them in; 153 large fish: 'and although there were so many, the
net was not torn' (Jn 21:11). This account, coming at the end of Jesus'
earthly journey with His disciples, corresponds to an account found at the
beginning: there too, the disciples had caught nothing the entire night; there
too, Jesus had invited Simon once more to put out into the deep. And Simon,
who was not yet called Peter, gave the wonderful reply: 'Master, at your word
I will let down the nets.' And then came the conferral of his mission: 'Do not
be afraid. Henceforth you will be catching men' (Lk 5:1-11). Today too the
Church and the successors of the Apostles are told to put out into the deep
sea of history and to let down the nets, so as to win men and women over to
the Gospel - to God, to Christ, to true life. The Fathers made a very
significant commentary on this singular task. This is what they say: for a
fish, created for water, it is fatal to be taken out of the sea, to be removed
from its vital element to serve as human food. But in the mission of a fisher
of men, the reverse is true. We are living in alienation, in the salt waters
of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the
Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendor of
God's light, into true life. It is really true: as we follow Christ in this
mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that
is salted with so many forms of alienation and onto the land of life, into the
light of God.
"It is really so: the purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. And only
where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in
Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product
of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is
willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more
beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ.
There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our
friendship with Him. The task of the shepherd, the task of the fisher of men,
can often seem wearisome. But it is beautiful and wonderful, because it is
truly a service to joy, to God's joy which longs to break into the world.
"Here I want to add something: both the image of the shepherd and that of
the fisherman issue an explicit call to unity. 'I have other sheep that are
not of this fold; I must lead them too, and they will heed my voice. So there
shall be one flock, one shepherd' (Jn 10:16); these are the words of Jesus at
the end of His discourse on the Good Shepherd. And the account of the 153
large fish ends with the joyful statement: 'although there were so many, the
net was not torn' (Jn 21:11). Alas, beloved Lord, with sorrow we must now
acknowledge that it has been torn! But no - we must not be sad! Let us rejoice
because of Your promise, which does not disappoint, and let us do all we can
to pursue the path towards the unity You have promised. Let us remember it in
our prayer to the Lord, as we plead with Him: yes, Lord, remember Your
promise. Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd! Do not allow Your
net to be torn, help us to be servants of unity!
"At this point, my mind goes back to October 22 1978, when Pope John Paul II
began his ministry here in Saint Peter's Square. His words on that occasion
constantly echo in my ears: 'Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for
Christ!' The Pope was addressing the mighty, the powerful of this world, who
feared that Christ might take away something of their power if they were to
let Him in, if they were to allow the faith to be free. Yes, He would
certainly have taken something away from them: the dominion of corruption, the
manipulation of law and the freedom to do as they pleased. But He would not
have taken away anything that pertains to human freedom or dignity, or to the
building of a just society. The Pope was also speaking to everyone, especially
the young. Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter
fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to Him, are we not afraid
that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give
up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so
beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our
freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we
lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful
and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only
in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed.
Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today,
with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal
experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of
Christ! He takes nothing away, and He gives you everything. When we give
ourselves to Him, we receive a hundred-fold in return. Yes, open, open wide
the doors to Christ - and you will find true life. Amen."