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On Friday, November 4, the Holy Father celebrated Vespers in a very full St. Peter’s Basilica to open the new academic year for all of the Pontifical Universities in Rome, including the Dominicans’ own Pontifical University of St. Thomas (the ‘Angelicum’). Vespers was celebrated on the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, the patron saint of seminary studies. Although the Pontifical Universities are attended by seminaries, religious, and the lay faithful, the Pope chose to address his comments particularly to the spiritual and academic formation of priests.

In his homily, the Pope spoke especially on the conditions necessary for a priest to be fruitful in his ministry to shepherd the community. The Pope underlined three factors that aid a priest’s ability to grow in accord with Christ in his own priestly life.  First, he must encounter the Lord Jesus, he must be struck by the very person of Christ, his words and actions. The priest must be “affascinato”–fascinated with–the person of Christ.  In this way, he is capable of hearing Jesus’ voice above all of the voices of the world. The priest is called to be the instrument of Christ’s presence into his own time, but he can do so only by that intimate relation with Jesus Christ that is friendship.

Second, priests are called to be “amministratori dei Misteri di Dio”–administrators of the mysteries of God–, not for themselves alone but for the people of God. Just as the priest himself is chosen by God in the sacrament of Ordination, so he must choose daily to give himself over to the love of God and of neighbor. To be a priest is to follow in the complete self-gift of the love of Christ expressed on the cross, remembering that growth in ministry is characterized not by success but by the cross.

Finally, the logic of the foregoing means that what it means to be a priest is to serve, especially in the example of one’s own life. This life of service is shown especially in the priest’s careful attention to his flock, his faithful celebration of the liturgy, and his ready solicitude for all his brethren, especially the poor.  Is is in living a life of “carità pastorale”–pastoral charity–that the priest truly lives his vocation.

A complete text of the Pope’s homily can be found on the Vatican website in Italian.  The Holy See also has a video of the Vespers celebration.

At his Wednesday audiences Pope Benedict XVI gave a series of short talks on the Apostles. In these catecheses the Pope is instructing Christian believers who want to have their faith confirmed and strengthened. The full collection of these talks may be found in The Apostles: The Origin of the Church and Their Co-Workers  by Pope Benedict XVI. This book makes a wonderful gift for a loved one and when you purchase any publication listed anywhere on Dominican Daily you also help support the Order of Preachers in the new evangelization. Below one of the Holy Father’s catecheses.

Today we take into consideration two of the Twelve Apostles: Simon the Cananaean and Jude called Thaddaeus (not to be confused with Judas Iscariot). We consider them together, not only because in the lists of the Twelve they are always mentioned next to one another (cf. Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; Acts 1:13), but also because there is not much information about them, apart from the fact that the New Testament Canon has a letter attributed to Jude Thaddaeus.

Simon receives an epithet that varies in the four lists: while Matthew and Mark describe him as “Cananaean,” Luke instead describes him as “Zealot.” In reality, the two qualifications are equivalent, because they mean the same thing: In the Hebrew language, in fact, the verb “qanà’” means “to be zealous, passionate” and can be said either of God, in as much as he is jealous of the people chosen by him (cf. Exodus 20:5), or of men who burn with zeal in serving the one God with complete dedication, as Elias (cf. 1 Kings 19:10). It is quite possible, therefore, that this Simon, if he does not actually belong to the nationalist movement of the Zealots, was at least characterized by an ardent zeal for Jewish identity, hence for God, for his people and for the divine law. If this is the case, Simon is in the antipodes of Matthew who on the contrary, insofar as publican, came from an activity considered altogether impure. Evident sign that Jesus calls his disciples and collaborators from the most diverse social and religious strata, without any preclusion.

He is interested in people, not in social categories or etiquette! And the beautiful thing is that in the groups of his followers, all, though diverse, from the zealot to the publican, coexisted together, surmounting the imagined difficulties: Jesus himself, in fact, was the motive for cohesion, in whom all found themselves united. And this constitutes clearly a lesson for us, often inclined to underline the differences and perhaps the oppositions, forgetting that in Jesus Christ the strength is given to us to compose our conflicts. And let’s also keep in mind that the group of the Twelve is a pre-figuration of the Church and prefigures therefore the Church in which there must be room for all the charisms, peoples, races, all human qualities, which find their composition and unity in communion with Jesus. In regard to Jude Thaddaeus, he is called thus by tradition, uniting together two different names: while Matthew and Mark call him simply “Thaddaeus” (Matthew 10:3; Mark 3:18), Luke calls him “Judas the son of James” (Luke 6:16; Acts 1:13). The nickname Thaddaeus is of uncertain derivation and is explained as coming from the Aramaic “taddà’,” which means “breast” and hence would mean “magnanimous,” or as an abbreviation of a Greek name like “Theodore, Teodoto.” Little is said about him.

Only John notes a request of his made to Jesus during the Last Supper: 

At his Wednesday audiences during 2007 and 2008 Pope Benedict XVI gave a series of short talks on the Fathers of the Church. In these catecheses the Pope is instructing Christian believers who want to have their faith confirmed and strengthened. The full collection of these talks may be found in The Fathers of the Church, by Pope Benedict XVI. This book makes a wonderful gift for a loved one and when you purchase any publication listed anywhere on Dominican Daily you also help support the Order of Preachers in the new evangelization. Below one of the Holy Father’s catecheses.

Today, we will be speaking of St Ignatius, who was the third Bishop of Antioch from 70 to 107, the date of his martyrdom. At that time, Rome, Alexandria and Antioch were the three great metropolises of the Roman Empire. The Council of Nicea mentioned three “primacies”: Rome, but also Alexandria and Antioch participated in a certain sense in a “primacy”.

St Ignatius was Bishop of Antioch, which today is located in Turkey. Here in Antioch, as we know from the Acts of the Apostles, a flourishing Christian community developed. Its first Bishop was the Apostle Peter – or so tradition claims – and it was there that the disciples were “for the first time called Christians” (Acts 11: 26). Eusebius of Caesarea, a fourth-century historian, dedicated an entire chapter of his Church History to the life and literary works of Ignatius (cf. 3: 36).

Eusebius writes: “The Report says that he [Ignatius] was sent from Syria to Rome, and became food for wild beasts on account of his testimony to Christ. And as he made the journey through Asia under the strictest military surveillance” (he called the guards “ten leopards” in his Letter to the Romans, 5: 1), “he fortified the parishes in the various cities where he stopped by homilies and exhortations, and warned them above all to be especially on their guard against the heresies that were then beginning to prevail, and exhorted them to hold fast to the tradition of the Apostles”.