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OPENING MASS —
Homily John 20,19-23
International Cistercian Days at Clairvaux
2 June 2005
To begin this time of gathering together and of sharing with a Mass of the Holy
Spirit is one way of saying that you are already thinking of "afterwards", of
what must happen after you leave the shadow of the monastery of Clairvaux. The
Gospel, which, in fact, is that of the feast of Pentecost, reminds us that, if
Jesus promised to give his disciples the Holy Spirit, who would give them to
understand everything, that promise is always linked to a sending forth in
mission. They do not receive the Holy Spirit for themselves alone, nor for their
spiritual satisfaction, but so that a missionary ardor might be born and grow
in them, to push them along all the routes of the world in order that the Good
News of the living Christ, who gives life to all men, might be proclaimed.
To
place your days under the movement of the Holy Spirit is, therefore, to say most
clearly what you want to make of them, and the orientation you want to give
them. It is to say that you are not simply going to speak of the spiritual
emotion that fidelity to St. Bernard of Clairvaux gives you, but rather of the
way in which he has already made you set out, and continues to invite you to be
ever more fully witnesses of the Gospel in the midst of the world. Bernard of
Clairvaux incarnates, in a rather remarkable way, the apparently paradoxical
image of the contemplative-apostle. At the heart of a well regulated life,
centered on prayer and work, through openness to the inspiration of the Word of
God, he perceived that his monastic vocation was not a vocation of withdrawal,
but rather of testifying to the fact that the Christ came to encounter him in
his prayer and solitude to put in relation with the world at large, that awaited
the fulfillment of God's promises. And I invite you to understand the days that
you are going to live in that same way.
Certainly it is good to pause and to
give our heart a moment of peace in the midst of our hectic lives, and certainly
it is also good to gather two or three together to welcome Christ and share the
happiness of being with him, but on the day after his Resurrection, he wants
only one thing in order to complete the mission which he had received from the
Father, and that is to put us in relation with men who are seeking God in a
thousand ways, so that they might know that in Jesus Christ, lie comes to them.
Most of us come from the world. It's important that you do not leave the world
at the Grange door. The world awaits you not tomorrow, but today. May each of
the activities that you will accomplish during these days be inhabited by a
missionary project, which is to say, that each activity may draw you nearer to
the world from which you come, and that each may deepen your brotherhood.
If we pursue our meditation on the Gospel of Pentecost, we will not fail to note
that the sending forth of the disciples is in rapport with the gift of peace and
the work of reconciliation. Theologically, we can express what the work of
Christ's Salvation is by different formulas. Christ Himself expresses it in only
one way. It is the gift of "peace". Of course, the peace of which Jesus speaks,
in this instance, is something altogether different from the peace that is
obtained by our human arrangements It's not a matter of a temporary cessation of
conflicts and divisions, but of man's definitive restoration into that harmony
in which God had willed to exist in his project of creation. The work of Christ
is to put man in harmony with himself, with the world, with God, and the
apostles are sent forth to be the relays of that construction of the person and
of the relationship that exists between persons, in reaction to a world that is
torn apart and without any project.
Fidelity to the Spirit of Pentecost demands that such a preoccupation be the
background of your encounter. For that as well, you can draw from the source of
St. Bernard, the apostle of peace, who fought so that all, including those who
are the most condemned and excluded, might have a place in the concert of
humanity. Your first concern must not the well-being of your group, but your
encounter as brothers with the men in whose midst you live, the respectful
welcome that excludes no one. In your prayer and your sharing during these days,
may the concern prevail that each one find the pathway to self-rehabilitation in
a difficult and torn world, thanks to the fraternal welcome of those who have
heard Jesus say to them, "Peace be with you", and who considered themselves as
sent forth to share that good news.
What Jesus allowed his own to understand was that in order to be his apostles,
they must be artisans of reconciliation, and he gave them the mission of
reconciling men with God and with one another. For it doesn't suffice simply to
speak beautiful phrases about the love and respect we must have for one another.
It is a matter of making men go out of their enclosures by concrete actions, a
matter of freeing them from their lack of self-esteem, from their fatalism,
their feelings of failure, from precisely all that hinders them from being at
peace with themselves, of combating prejudices and easy condemnations. In a
word, it's a matter of being artisans to lift up those who have fallen, of being
demolishers to knock down walls which have been built up between men, of being
Bowers of seeds of hope in the heart of the world. We expect you to be not only
propagators of the spirituality of St. Bernard, but, like him, to be active
propagators of the Gospel of peace, of justice, and of reconciliation. Permit me
to express a wish; it's that you go away. from these days with a programme of
evangelical action and the resolution to put that programme into action. Then
you will have no more need to ask yourself what to do in order to make St.
Bernard of Clairvaux better known.
+ Marc STENGER Bishop
Bishop of Troyes
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