+ PAPIST + FILIOQUIST + AZYMITE +: Holy Father Proclaims Year for Priests Names St. Jean Marie Vianney as Patron

Monday, March 16, 2009

Holy Father Proclaims Year for Priests
Names St. Jean Marie Vianney as Patron

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 16, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is proclaiming a Year for Priests on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of St. Jean Marie Vianney, the Curé of Ars.

The Pope announced this today during an audience granted to participants in the plenary assembly of the Congregation for the Clergy, a Vatican communiqué reported.

The theme for the priestly year is "Faithfulness of Christ, Faithfulness of Priests." The Pope is scheduled to open the year with a celebration of vespers June 19, the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the presence of the relic of the Curé of Ars, to be brought to Rome by Bishop Guy Bagnard of Belley-Ars, the press release stated.

The closing ceremony will take place exactly one year later, with a World Meeting of Priests in St. Peter's Square.

During this year, a directory for confessors and spiritual directors will be published, along with a compilation of texts by the Pope on the core issues of the life and mission of priests in the modern times. As well, Benedict XVI will officially proclaim St. Jean Marie Vianney as "patron saint of all the priests of the world."

The congregation will aim in this year to promote initiatives that will "highlight the role and mission of the clergy in the Church and in modern society."

Another goal will be to address "the need to intensify the permanent formation of priests, associating it with that of seminarians."

Pope Urges Pastors
to Learn and Teach Liturgy

Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging pastors to catechize parishioners about the depth of the liturgy and the meaning of the sacraments as encounters with God.
The Pope affirmed this in a meeting Feb. 26 with parish priests of the Diocese of Rome, a Lenten tradition, in which he answered their questions and concerns.
He noted, "What is really important for me is that the sacraments [...] not be something foreign along with more contemporary endeavors." He added, "It can easily happen that the sacrament remains somewhat isolated in a more pragmatic context and becomes a reality that is not altogether inserted in the totality of our being."
The Pontiff stressed the need for catechesis in the parishes. He affirmed that it is important that God "not be distant but reconcilable, concrete, that he enter our lives and really be a friend with whom we can talk and who talks with us."
He continued, "We must learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, up close, really enter into contact with him, learn to listen to him and to allow him to enter into us."
Sacramental communion, explained the Holy Father, is not just taking a piece of bread, but rather is opening "my heart so that the Risen One will enter the context of my being, so that he is within me and not just outside of me, and thus speaks with me and transforms my being."
"He gives me the sense of justice, the dynamism of justice, in zeal for the Gospel," noted Benedict XVI.
He affirmed, "This celebration, in which God not only comes close to us, but enters into the fabric of our existence, is essential to really be able to live with God and for God and to take the light of God to this world."
Body of Christ
The Pope stated that this understanding also "leads me to the other because the other receives the same Christ, as I do."
He continued: "Hence, if the same Christ is in him and me, we also are no longer separate individual beings. Herein lies the birth of the doctrine of the Body of Christ, because we have all been incorporated if we receive the Eucharist correctly in the same Christ.
"Hence, my neighbor is truly close: we are no longer two separate 'I's, but we are united in the same 'I' of Christ."
The Pontiff told the pastors that "Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really go to the depth of our existence, to be, in fact, education to open myself to the voice of God, to let myself be opened to break this original sin of egoism and to open my existence profoundly, so that I will really be just."
He noted, "We must all learn the liturgy better, not as something exotic but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open easily to a distant man, but which is, on the other hand, precisely openness to the other, to the world."
The Holy Father emphasized: "We must all collaborate in celebrating the Eucharist ever more profoundly: not only as a rite but as an existential process that touches me profoundly, more than anything else, and changes me, transforms me and, by transforming me, sparks the transformation of the world that the Lord desires and of which He wishes to make me an instrument."

Monday, March 16, 2009

Holy Father Proclaims Year for Priests Names St. Jean Marie Vianney as Patron

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Holy Father Proclaims Year for Priests
Names St. Jean Marie Vianney as Patron