'Ad limina Apostolorum': Bishops' Conference of U.S.A. - 2
Bishops build the 'gift and call' of holiness, beginning with themselves

On Thursday, 29 April, the Holy Father spoke to the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Provinces of Baltimore and Washington, U.S.A. (Region IV), the second group in the series of American Prelates currently making their ad lim­ina visits to Rome. The Pope told the Bishops that the pursuit of "holiness must be central to the life and identity of every Bishop. He is to recognize his own need to be sanc­tified as he engages in the sanctification of others".

The Holy Father also said that "the exercise of episcopal authority must be built upon the testimony of personal ho­liness. The great challenge of the new evangelization to which the Church is called in our time requires a credibil­ity born of personal fidelity to the Gospel and the demands of Christian discipleship".

The following is the text of the Pope's Address to the U.S. Bishops.

Dear Brother Bishops,

1. To you, the Bishops of the Ecclesi­astical Provinces of Baltimore and Washington, "beloved of God and called to holiness" (cf. Rom 1:7), I offer a cor­dial greeting in the Lord. May your pil­grimage to the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul, and this visit with the Succes­sor of Peter, strengthen you in the Catholic faith which comes from the Apostles (cf. Eucharistic Prayer I) and in joyful witness to the grace of the Risen Christ!

This year, in my meetings with the various groups of Bishops from the United States making their visit ad lim­ina Apostolorum, I wish to reflect on the mystery of the Church and, in par­ticular, the exercise of the episcopal ministry. It is my hope that these reflec­tions will serve as a point of departure for your own personal meditation and prayer, and thus contribute to a pas­toral discernment helpful for the renew­al and the building up of the Church in the United States.

Let us begin, then, with a considera­tion of the Bishop's munus sanctifican­di, that is, the service to the holiness of Christ's Church which he is called to render as a herald of the Gospel, a steward of the mysteries of God (cf. I Cor 4:1) and the spiritual father of the flock entrusted to his care.

Holiness is both a gift and call that requires fidelity

2. The sanctifying mission of the Bish­op finds its source in the indefectible holiness of the Church. Because "Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her" (Eph 5:25-26), she has been endowed with unfailing holiness and has become herself, "in Christ and through Christ, the source and origin of all holiness" (Lumen Gentium, n. 47). This funda­mental truth of the faith, reaffirmed in every recitation of the Creed, needs to be more clearly understood and appreci­ated by all the members of Christ's Body, for it is an essential part of the Church's self-awareness and the basis of her universal mission.

The Church's belief in her own holi­ness is before all else a humble confes­sion of God's merciful fidelity to his plan of salvation in Christ. Seen in this light, the holiness of the Church be­comes a source of gratitude and joy for the completely unmerited gift of re­demption and new life which we have received in Christ through the apostolic preaching and the sacraments of the new and eternal Covenant. Reborn in the Holy Spirit and made adoptive chil­dren of the Father in his beloved Son, we have become a kingdom of priests, a holy people (cf. Ex 19:6; Rev 5:10), called to offer ourselves "as a living sac­rifice, holy and acceptable to God" (cf. Rom 12:1) in intercession for the whole human family.

At the same time, the holiness of the Church on earth remains real yet im­perfect (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 8). Her holiness is both gift and call, a constitu­tive grace and a summons to constant fidelity to that grace. The Second Vati­can Council, as the foundation of its program for the renewal of the Church's witness to Christ before the world, held out to all the baptized the high ideal of God's universal call to ho­liness. The Council reaffirmed that "all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity" (Lu­men Gentium, n. 40), and it invited ev­ery member of the Church to an honest recognition of sin and the need for con­stant conversion along the path of penance and renewal.

The grandeur of faith's vision of the Church's unfailing holiness and the real­istic acknowledgment of the sinfulness of her members should inspire in all a greater commitment to fidelity in the Christian life. In particular, it summons us, as Bishops, to a continuing discern­ment about the direction and goal of our activity as ministers of the grace of Christ. The challenge set before us and before the whole Church both by the Council and the Great Jubilee remains as valid as ever: the life of every Chris­tian and all the structures of the Church must be clearly ordered to the pursuit of holiness.

Personal holiness must be central to life and identity

3. The pursuit of personal holiness must be central to the life and identity of every Bishop. He is to recognize his own need to be sanctified as he engages in the sanctification of others. The Bish­op himself is first and foremost a Chris­tian ― vobiscum sum Christianus (cf. Saint Augustine, Sermo 340, 1) ― called to the obedience of faith (cf. Rom 1:5), consecrated by baptism and given new life in the Holy Spirit. At the same time, thanks to the grace of his Ordination and the sacred character which it im­prints, each Bishop stands in the place of Christ himself and acts in his person (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 21). Thus, he is called to progress along a specific path of holiness (Pastores Gregis, n. 13): the soul of his apostolate must be that pas­toral charity which conforms his heart to the heart of Christ in a sacrificial love for the Church and all her members.

The most recent Synod of Bishops in­sisted that the objective sanctification which derives from ordination and the exercise of the episcopal ministry is to coincide with the subjective sanctifica­tion in which the Bishop, with the help of God's grace, must continuously progress (cf. Pastores Gregis, n. 11). Ac­cordingly, the unifying principle of the Bishop's ministry will be his contempla­tion of the face of Christ and his procla­mation of his Gospel of salvation: a dy­namic interplay of prayer and work which will spiritually enrich both his outward activity and his interior life.

The Bishop must be a teacher of the way of contemplation

4. The Synod in fact challenged Bish­ops to become ever more attentive hear­ers of the word of God through daily prayer and the contemplative reading of Holy Scripture. Indeed, for the renewal of the Church in holiness, it is essential that the Bishop must not only be one who contemplates; he must also be a teacher of the way of contemplation (cf. Pastores Gregis, n. 17). His prayer should be nourished above all by the Eucharist: "not only when he stands be­fore the People of God as sacerdos et pontifex, but also by spending a fair amount of his time in adoration before the tabernacle" (ibid., n. 16). For his prayer to find its culmination and fulfill­ment in the Eucharist, it must also be nourished by regular recourse to the sacrament of Penance and, in a special way, by the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours. His whole life of prayer, whether personal or liturgical, will thus become a source of apostolic fruitful­ness, since it is presented to the Father in the Holy Spirit as intercession for the entire Body of Christ.

For this reason, the Bishop will surely cultivate an ecclesial spirituality, "since everything in his life is directed to build­ing up the Church in love" (Pastores Gregis, n. 11). At the very beginning of the recent Synod of Bishops, I wished to link this attitude of service to the ec­clesial community to the adoption of a lifestyle which imitates the poverty of Christ, and I invited the Bishops to "ver­ify to what extent a personal and com­munity conversion to an effective evan­gelical poverty has taken place in the Church" (Opening Homily, 30 Septem­ber 2001, n. 3; L'Osservatore Romano English edition [ORE], 3 October, p. 2, n. 3). At this time I encourage you and your brother Bishops to undertake such a discernment with regard to the practi­cal exercise of the episcopal ministry in your Country, in order to ensure that it will be seen ever more clearly as a form of sacrificial service in the midst of Christ's flock. This will surely bear abundant fruit by providing greater in­ner freedom in the exercise of the min­istry, a more evangelical witness to Je­sus Christ, "who carried out the work of redemption in poverty and oppression" (Lumen Gentium, n. 8), and a greater solidarity with the struggles and suffer­ings of the poor.

Inseparable relationship between holiness and Church's mission

5. I am deeply convinced that, in a Church constantly called to interior re­newal and prophetic witness, the exer­cise of episcopal authority must be built upon the testimony of personal holiness. The great challenge of the new evangelization to which the Church is called in our time requires a credibility born of personal fidelity to the Gospel and the demands of Christian disciple­ship. In the memorable words of Pope Paul VI, "it is primarily by her conduct and her life that the Church will evange­lize the world, namely, by her living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus ­― the witness of poverty and detachment, of freedom in the face of the powers of this world, in short, by the witness of her holiness" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 41).

As we ponder in faith God's plan for a human family reconciled and made one in Christ, of which the Church is the sacrament and prophetic foreshad­owing, we can see ever more clearly the inseparable relationship between holi­ness and the Church's mission (cf. Re­demptoris Missio, n. 90). An essential part of the new evangelization must therefore be a new zeal for holiness, which inspires all our initiatives and finds practical expression in a renewal of faith and Christian life. Let us not ne­glect the prophetic summons addressed to the whole Church through the expe­rience of the Great Jubilee: the Church is called to offer a genuine "training in holiness" adapted to the needs of all and to ensure that every Christian communi­ty becomes a genuine school of prayer and personal sanctification (cf. Novo Millennio Ineunte, n. 33).

Become authentic leaven of the Gospel in American society

6. This, then, is the great challenge facing the Church at the dawn of the new millennium and the sure path to her authentic interior renewal. As the Catholic community in the United States strives under your leadership to take up this challenge, I assure you of my prayers that you and all the clergy, Re­ligious and lay faithful entrusted to your pastoral care will grow daily in holiness and become an authentic leaven of the Gospel in American society.

Dear Brothers, in your efforts to car­ry out your demanding ministry of sanc­tification in the Church in America, you are blessed to have an outstanding mod­el of episcopal sanctity in Saint John Neumann, whose life was spent in gen­erous and unassuming service to his flock. Inspired by his example and guid­ed by his prayers, may you grow daily in the grace of your ministry, so that you may ever fulfill the perfect duty of pastoral love (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 41). Commending all of you to his inter­cession, I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of joy and peace in the Lord.

L'Osservatore Romano May 5, 2004
Reprinted with permission