SALUTATORY REMARKS OF PROFESSOR ANDREA RICCARDI TO HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Blessed Father,
Full of joy we welcome you in the basilica of the Apostle Bartholomew, which is today the memorial place of the “New Martyrs” of the 20th century. This was the will of the Servant of God John Paul II, who entrusted the basilica to the Community for its 25th anniversary with that caring trust that helped us grow.
Holy Father, we welcome you as the Successor of Peter. Saint Ambrose said: “Jesus left us Peter as the “vicar of his love”. Peter and his successors gather us with love, and on the path of love. How true it is! With your first encyclical, You taught us that true love liberates from philautia, from love for oneself. Today Your Holiness honours the memory of the martyrs, whose very existence speaks of love as strong as death: men and women who did not live for themselves, a scandal for the world of the 20th century, which made a supreme law out the words “save yourself”, that were shouted to Jesus from under the cross. It is still the same world of our century. And unfortunately many Christians are killed still in various parts of the world!
We are touched by the fact that Your visit takes place during the 40th anniversary of Sant’Egidio, like a precious gift. The Community was born in Rome, we feel a filial affection for Your Holiness, the Bishop of Rome, and wherever Sant’Egidio is in the world, a bit of Rome is always there.
Forty years ago, after 1968, that great upheaval in the West, we moved our first steps. At the time a vitalistic force animated the younger generations to make a better world: eventually, as you wrote, that force turned into a stark withdrawal. Rutilio Namaziano, endowed with a Roman spirit, taught: “Ordo renascendi est crescere posse malis” (the essence of renewal is made of growth in the face of evil).
In such a climate we felt we could not be our own guides. For the world to become a better place, we needed to change. We were guided by love for the Word of God, the soul of everyone’s prayer, that is welcomed every evening in the prayer of all our Communities, in Rome, in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America… The Word of God grows within us, as the Great Gregory says. We were guided by love for the liturgy and the Paschal Triduum, lived as the heart of our Community.
We were in search of a new world, but we understood we needed to personally and constantly renew ourselves. We are, more and more, grateful children of this ancient Mother, the Holy Catholic Church, with the apostles, the saints, the martyrs. We are happy to be children of this Mother!
We were preserved from the cold of the ideologies of those years, from the blazing heat of living for ourselves. We were guided onto the path of love. Love for others. Especially for the poor, the poor of Rome and then of the world, with their sorrows, diseases – AIDS – with their wars. The poor have given to us so much.
Holy Father, you know that among the many lands we love (we are in about 70 countries in the world), Africa is in our heart, with its immense human resources: but Africa is also a land where materialism humiliates man with violence, poverty, with the worship of money, disfiguring the face of God. From Africa to the world at large, as little as we are, we see at work the humanising, liberating and pacifying force of the gratuitousness of Christian life.
We have discovered the joyful and responsible gift of a charisma. It is what we are glad to tell your Holiness: we are happy to be Christians and to be children of the Church! We say it with a cry of joy louder than the cries of sorrow, that we nevertheless hear in the world. Yes, we are happy to be Christians!
Our humble life, then, gratefully gathers this evening around you, Holy Father, around the witness of the “New Martyrs”, in this time of Easter. The Resurrection of Jesus illuminates us from within, and it projects us, from Rome to the world at large, with a renewed sense of the mission of the disciples of Jesus, who were sent to communicate the Gospel and heal the sick.
We are moved and touched by Your presence among us. May the Lord always sustain You with his gifts, and protect You in this coming fourth year of Your Pontificate.
Thank You!
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