Archive for Pope John Paul I
I am very anxious to kick off the centenary for Papa Luciani! Preparations began last year in his home town of Canale d’Agordo.
This prayer for the centenary of Papa Luciani has been published in the diocese of his birth; from Humilitas (Italian ed), September 2011, p. 5.
PRAYER FOR THE CENTENARY
Lord, Omnipotent and eternal God,
We admire the marvels that You Grace
works in your children. Today
We bless you for the love You have poured out
On Your Servant, Pope John Paul I, by calling him
To life, to Your friendship,
To serve You as pastor and as Your
Vicar for the Universal Church.
As we inaugurate the centenary year that recalls
the history of his life in the light of your Providence,
which guides men and events toward the encounter with You,
from the testimony of life of John Paul I,
a living image of Jesus, the Good Shepherd,
help us to draw on those gifts that make us
Your children and disciples of Christ:
from his faith and serenity we want to learn
to abandon ourselves to You with the heart of a child;
from his generosity, we want to learn
to say “Yes” to everything You ask of us;
from his love for the simple and the little ones,
we want to learn to serve everyone who needs us.
Father in Heaven,
We humbly ask you to glorify
In your Church Your Servant John Paul I,
So that, through his intercession and his example,
We may all draw on and give,
with humility and simplicity ,
The light and love that radiate from You.
Through Christ out Lord.
Amen.
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From the Radiomessage of Albino Cardinal Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, and future Pope John Paul I, December 25, 1971.
The Christmas crib . . . does not only fill the eyes of the children with enchantment and wonder, it is not only a happy note of color; it is a book that even the adults must decipher and read. It sums up life as it appears to the eyes of us Christians. At the top, above the stable, the angels who announce Christ’s birth. In the middle, the baby. Near him Mary, the “wondrous mother” and Joseph her husband. Around them, the poor shepherds and the rich Magi. Also standing around are the animals most closely tied to man: the ox and the ass in the stall, the shepherds’ lambs. Here there is an ecumenical brotherhood; there is an covenant between the high and the low, between the beasts and man, of all men with each other, between men and God.
But the center, the light, the sun of this picture is the baby: God made man, who has become our brother. Looking at him, the Christians of the East are accustomed to say: “How great you have made us, Lord!” We Venetians, on the other hand, say, “How small you have made yourself, Lord!” And we add: “It is truly fortunate that you have come! We are wretched and burdened with debts towards God the Father, but between the Father and us, now there is you. It is like when we put on red glasses and everything appears red to us: the Father looks at us through the red of your goodness and makes us good and finds us good too!”
You have loved us, O Lord! The crib and Bethlehem are only a beginning. Nazareth, Jerusalem, Calvary, the cross and the resurrection are the completion. They say to us, “He has done everything for you. What will you do for him?”
A Blessed Christmas to everyone!
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Yesterday, October 16, at Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI made a momentous announcement: the Church will be celebrating a “Year of Faith” that will kick off a year from now: it will begin on October 11, 2012, the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and will last until November 24, 2013, the Feast of Christ the King. The Pope explained: “It will be a time of grace and commitment to an ever fuller conversion to God, to reinforce our faith in Him and to proclaim Him with joy to the men of our time.”
An interesting fact: the opening of the “Year of Faith will also coincide with the celebration of Papa Luciani’s 100th birthday on October 17, 2012.
The original “Year of Faith,” called by Paul VI in 1967 to mark the nineteenth centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter and Paul, was important to Albino Luciani, then bishop of Vittorio Veneto. He gave his priests a suggested program for it in September 1967. An excerpt:
. . . Try to have your faithful live the “Year of Faith” by speaking to them with enthusiasm about the Word of God, Jesus, and the Church more than about errors. And don’t be satisfied when your listeners are convinced: once they are convinced, they must act, they must act! Like Paul, strive so that “the word of God may make progress and be hailed by many others” (2 Thes. 3:1). Show by ardent words and actions, with a pure and charitable life, that you are “racing to grasp [Christ] since you have been grasped by Him” (cf. Phil. 3;12). When you talk about the Church, say that Christ loved her and “handed himself over for her. . . to sanctify her. . . in order to present to himself the Church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle. . . that she might be holy and without blemish” (cf. Eph. 5:25 27).
The Year of Faith also means shedding light on the faith. Now, faith is saying “yes” to God, clinging to Him with our whole spiritual being and making our own the truths which He has revealed to us and set before us by means of the Magisterium of the Church. Explain it to the faithful: this “yes” is an act of loving trust in God and at the same time an acceptance of His truths. We do not believe because we like these truths or because they are convenient to us, or because they are in agreement with scientific data or the fashion of the day, but because they have been revealed by Him who loves us and neither can nor will deceive us. If it were not for Him, we would not believe.
The Apostles and their successors, Pope and bishops, willed by Christ as official teachers of the Faith, are not in that position as masters, but simply as servants of the Word of God; they safeguard it and explain it without adding or taking away anything from it. Accepting and venerating their teaching is the means ordinarily necessary to arrive at the true Faith and the best way to be members of the Church. (Opera, vol. 4)
Still a wonderful program, more than 40 years later. I will also note that Papa Luciani wrote this letter to his priests in answer to a request from some of them that he expound on the errors that were rampant in the Church after the Council. Luciani did write about some of these errors, but stressed throughout that the best exposition of the faith was a positive one. I may have more about this little work, which he called “Something Less than a Syllabus,” later on. It is a really fascinating exposition, with a great deal of good advice for priests on how to handle teaching sensitive subjects in the faith.
Today is also Papa Luciani’s birthday - he would be 99 if alive now. This is a great time to announce that along with several other people I am planning some special events here in New York in connection with his centenary next year. I will be more specific later on. So keep checking for updates.
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OK, just one more - before this anniversary is over. Here’s a bit of the foreword to Papa Luciani’s book Illustrissimi by the late John Cardinal Wright. You can find more excerpts from the English translation of the book here (sorry the formatting is so wonky):
Certainly St. Thomas More was no fool when he joked about his own death. He could afford to be joyful because he believed. He, as every believer should see, saw joy in creation, joy in being, joy in knowledge, joy in love, joy in beauty; and above all joy in that which sanctifies and ennobles and immortalizes these, joy in the Cross of Jesus Christ.
Pope John Paul brought all this back into focus with his gentle ways, winning smile, and joyful ease with people. He had the light touch. Nowhere does this become more apparent than in his book, Illustrissimi. Here he banters with figures of literature, great and small, real and fictitious, to teach, exhort, correct and chat.
It would be a great mistake to see these charming essays that combine to make a delightful book as the diverting writings of an idle cleric. Cardinal Luciani was first and foremost a pastor of souls. His approach to literature reflects the ancient Christian maxim per verbum ad verbum. One can reach the Word of God through the study of the written word. If Cardinal Luciani wrote to Mark Twain, Pinocchio, or Charles Dickens, it was to teach some point of the Christian ideal. Again, and again this comes through clearly. Yet what endears the writer to his reader is the light, confident, and happy manner. Much as the warm smile reached out from the balcony of St. Peter’s to all kinds of people, friendly, believer and non believer, so Luciani’s letters to the illustrious figures of literature reach out to touch a responsive chord in the hearts of many of us who look to Peter as we look to the Lord for the face of our Father — a Father who also smiles.
Well, that’s it for this anniversary. I had hoped to continue my series on God as Father and Mother, but that takes a lot of writing, so it will have to come later, when I have finished the film.
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Today marks the 33rd anniversary of John Paul I’s death. This year also marks the centenary of the birth of Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel Baron von Ketteler (December 25, 1811 – July 13, 1877), who gave up a splendid career to study for the priesthood and eventually become the Bishop of Mainz. His thought on social questions influenced Pope Leo XIII and his encyclical Rerum Novarum. They also had a very strong influence on the social thought of the future Pope John Paul I. It is perhaps worthy of note that Albino Luciani’s father Giovanni spent many years as a laborer in Germany, and as an ardent defender of workers’ rights, probably came into contact with Bishop Ketteler’s ideas.
Luciani wrote this delightful evocation of von Ketteler’s priestly vocation in 1941 while teaching in the seminary in Belluno, as part of a series he penned hoping to attract other idealistic young men to the priesthood. I think it’s very fitting to commemmorate John Paul I today.
WILHELM VON KETTELER
He was a young German lawyer. A noble of the highest aristocracy, cultivated and brilliant. And above all impetuous and combative: from family tradition, from the ardor of his heart, from a need to fight. In the various universities in Göttingen, Berlin, Munich and Heidelberg, he was the ideal of his rowdy companions, the soul of all the student brawls and the terror of all those whose homes he boarded in. Alas! . . . He had even fought a duel, risking having his nose carried away! Equally ready to swim across a river that barred his way or through the volumes that were to lead him to diplomas, he had studied ardently, with splendid results.
And now he had been named referendary to the governor of his native city of Münster. His future was assured; he only had to follow the bureaucratic procedures . . . one fine day he would wake up as vice-prefect in some city in Westphalia or Prussia. And very probably he would not stop there! There was universal astonishment when people learned that he had stepped down from his office and turned over his insignia to the governor. What? Was he breaking off his career? He answered that he he’d had enough of it and retired to Munich in Bavaria. Here, he went in search of a new field for his industrious activities. Which one? Not even he knew.
He felt that he had good energies in him, he wanted to employ them in some great and holy cause, and inside he called for someone would come make use of him . . . he was heard . . . one evening he saw before him the vision of a poor religious sister in prayer. He was not a visionary; he tried to persuade himself that it was a hallucination, he tried to drive away the vision. In vain. He continued to see clearly a sister praying. But for whom was she praying? He did not know anything. Then the vision ceased, but at that very moment the thought came to him: “What if I were to become a priest?”
It had never passed through his mind! Now, however, he marveled that he had not thought of it before; it seemed very natural to him, he asked for advice and made up his mind. He entered the seminary and four years later he was ordained in Münster. First he was a chaplain then a parish priest; then a bishop, the great Ketteler of Mainz, the apostle of the workers, the magnificent fighter, the rebuilder of Catholic Germany! And the mystery of the sister who was praying? He understood it only in the last years of his life.
One morning he was invited to speak in an institute of sisters. As he was distributing communion, he stopped, and his hand trembled: he had recognized in the sister who was receiving Communion the sister of his vision. After Mass, he had all the sisters gathered together; but he did not recognize the one he was looking for. Then he asked the superior: “But are all your sisters here? “All of them, Excellency!” “But isn’t there perhaps someone missing?” “Ah!” – she said — “Yes, an old sister who tends to the humblest services. I’ll have her come right away.” She was the one the bishop wanted. He asked her if she was accustomed to saying any special prayers. She answered “Excellency, I am a poor sister; I am worth little, but I want to offer my sacrifices and prayers for priests and vocations.”
“Then it is you to whom I owe my vocation.” Yes. The hidden prayer of a good soul, the ardent generosity of a youth and the grace of God had constructed that magnificent vocation of a priest and bishop. And it always happens like this: God, the call, the good people. . . Amici del Seminario Gregoriano, April-May 1941; Opera 9:365-66.
This article makes me wonder if the prayers of some particular person inspired Papa Luciani’s vocation. If so, who might it have been? His mother? Someone else who loved him? Some ordinary religious or lay person whose name we will never know? Well, thank God for whoever it was. And may God inspire many beautiful priestly vocations like his!
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