There you are.
Thank you so much. [Foreign speech]
Follow ...
The animal ... [music]
[Cheering] Welcome.
Come on. Come on.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
[Cheering] ... Come on.
Papa! Papa!
Praise be Jesus Christ, and welcome to Vatican Radio's livestreamed broadcast of Pope Leo's weekly general audience. Whether you're joining us through the various Vatican media channels, the Vatican Audio or Radio App, the Vatican News web portal, or YouTube channel, or through one of our partner stations, including EWTN TV, Catholic Faith Network in America, Salt and Light TV, Radio Maria England, Shalom World TV, Adomaran TV, Catholic TV, Luminous Radio India, or Radio Maria Papua New Guinea. Very warm welcome to all of you this morning. My name is Christopher Wells. I'll be providing the English-language commentary for today's audience, including an English translation of Pope Leo's catechesis.
The Holy Father has been reflecting in recent weeks on the documents of the Second Vatican Council, beginning with the constitution on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. Today's catechesis is dedicated to the reasons for the liturgical reform carried out by the council. In a few moments, Pope Leo XIV will begin the audience with the sign of the cross and the liturgical greeting: 'Peace be with you.' For those of you following along on one of the video feeds, you can see our Holy Father is greeting folks here at St. Peter's Basilica and taking a few moments to shake hands with the faithful, pilgrims, and visitors who are gathered in the cathedral for the weekly audience.
After the audience begins, we have readers who will proclaim the passage from Scripture for today. Today's Scripture reading is taken from St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews, chapter 10, verses 8-10. So that reading will be proclaimed first in Italian, then in other languages including French, English, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, and several others. After the reading of the scriptural passage, the readers will greet the Holy Father and provide a brief summary of the Pope's reflection, again each in their own language.
Pope Leo himself speaks with visitors and pilgrims in English, Italian, and Spanish. And for the other languages, the readers will translate his greetings for their own people. At the end of the audience, Pope Leo will lead the faithful in singing the Our Father in Latin, before concluding with his apostolic blessing, which extends not only to those present and to their loved ones, but also to all of you who are following this audience live by the means of social communication — radio, internet, television, or whatever that may be. Once again, a very warm welcome to everyone joining us around the world.
Our Holy Father has started the day with the audience. The Holy Father has been commenting a lot on the liturgy recently, due to the various parts of his schedule this week in Italy, in the town of Katana.
Italy is holding its 76th National Liturgical Week. The Holy Father yesterday sent greetings to participants in the National Liturgical Week, which this year is following the theme: 'A Church that generates liturgy and Christian initiation.' In his message, the Pope described the theme as being of particular importance for the Church today. Leo recalled that Christian initiation cannot be understood merely as preparation for the sacraments. Rather, he said it should be the womb in which a community gives birth to faith and communion with the Lord. The Holy Father pointed to the unity between catechesis and celebration that marked the Church from its beginnings, when the first Christians devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread — the Eucharist — and to prayers in common. And so the Pope invited Christian communities to return to this source by strengthening the value of liturgy in Christian formation, especially with regard to the sacraments of initiation: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist.
'The mystery of Christ takes hold of us, transforms us, and causes us to be born as new creatures in the liturgy,' Pope Leo said. And recalling his catechesis over the past few weeks — as we said, he's been talking about the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, which is dedicated to the liturgy — Pope Leo stressed that Christian liturgical rites are the ecclesial mediation through which the divine gift reaches us. And that, he said, means that the Church has to recover a deeper understanding of liturgical gestures and symbols as expressions of actual participation — of deep, active participation of the faithful. And so he said that Catholics, especially those who are newly set out on the journey of faith, who are entering the faith, who are in preparation and formation as Catholics and Christians, should be introduced early on to the forms of the celebration, precisely in order to open their hearts to God's action. That's what the liturgy does for us.
And the Pope yesterday, in his letter to the National Liturgical Week, also emphasized the communal dimension of the liturgy. The liturgy is celebrated as the action of a single ecclesial body. The Church is the protagonist of the liturgy. For those listening on the radio, the Holy Father has ascended to the altar and greeted all of those gathered in St. Peter's Basilica. There's a large crowd here, so they have people not only in front of the altar but also behind the throne where the Holy Father will be seated. And now we will prepare ourselves to listen to the words of Pope Leo and to receive his blessing.
Amen. That is the scriptural reading that the Pope has chosen for today's catechesis.
[Reading in another language] ... scientific ... unavoidable ... a perola ... sacrifice. [Foreign speech]
[Responses in other languages] ... Paul and ... for ... the goddess ... deostoido ... I see.
A reading from the letter to the Hebrews. When he said above, 'You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings; these are offered according to the law.' Then he added, 'See, I have come to do your will.' He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. The word of the Lord.
And we continue with the reading of the Scripture passage in the various languages.
[Reading in other languages] ... speech ... Leistoch ... Seenorch ...
[Reading in other languages] ... forchech ... foreign ... forif ...
Dear brothers and sisters, in this final catechesis on the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium, today I would like to look at the reasons why the council fathers sought to promote a reform of the liturgy. In this regard, the third conciliar letter, which Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini — then Archbishop of Milan, later Pope Paul VI, of course — sent on 28 October 1962 to the faithful of his Church, is particularly enlightening. 'The liturgy,' he wrote, 'is a sincere expression of both the divine and the human. It is language. On the one hand, it is a vehicle for divine teaching; on the other, it is a voice in dialogue with God. It is clear that it cannot renounce its active function. Nor can it fail to offer faith and piety the opportunity to be expressed with spontaneous intelligibility.' Motivated by these convictions, the future Pope, St. Paul VI, affirmed that the faithful cannot and must no longer remain silent and passive.
Their physical presence cannot be reconciled with their spiritual absence. The similarity between these statements and those which appear in paragraph number 48 of the conciliar constitution is evident. And he quotes: 'The Church earnestly desires that Christ's faithful, when present at this mystery of faith, should not be there as strangers or silent spectators. On the contrary, through a good understanding of the rites and prayers, they should take part in the sacred action, conscious of what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration. They should be formed by God's word and nourished at the table of the Lord's body. They should give thanks to God, offering the immaculate victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but together with him. They should learn also to offer themselves through Christ the mediator. They should be drawn day by day into ever more perfect union with God and with each other.'
These words express a renewed awareness of the value of the liturgy, through the Church's ritual actions, while the memorial of the work of salvation is celebrated. The opportunity is offered to experience a true relationship with God, entering into contact with the salvific event. Since the gestures and words of the sacred liturgy are critical to realizing this experience, the participation of the faithful cannot be passive. The conciliar reform, by placing at the center that which constitutes the heart of the ecclesial experience, was intended to allow the liturgy to shine forth as the primary source of that divine exchange in which the life of God is communicated to us. From this conviction arose the need to make the sacred texts and prayers more accessible to all the faithful, and to streamline the order of the celebration with respect to what was set out in the liturgical books then in use. In fact, since the liturgy is a living entity, throughout the centuries it has always been subject to developments and changes. The magisterium adapted its forms to the needs of different areas.
It is therefore not surprising that the Second Vatican Council, as well, with the utmost respect for the heritage of tradition, and precisely in order to make it more accessible, considered it necessary to revise the liturgical books. The aim that the fathers had in mind is explained in number 21 of the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium: 'so that the Christian people may more certainly derive an abundance of graces from the sacred liturgy, Holy Mother Church desires to undertake, with great care, a general restoration of the liturgy itself. For the liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These not only may but ought to be changed in the passage of time, if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy, or have become unsuited to it. In such restoration, both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify. The Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease, and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits the community.'
The distinction within the liturgy between divine immutable elements and human elements, which instead admit of various modifications, as the needs of the age, circumstances, and good sense may require, and as the ecclesiastical hierarchy, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may have authorized, dates back to Pius XII's encyclical Mediator Dei. Moreover, the desire for a general reform did not come about suddenly, but had been evident in the actions of successive popes since the beginning of the twentieth century, in keeping with the demands of the liturgical movement. The assertion that the faithful should not celebrate as strangers or silent spectators had already been raised in Pius XI's apostolic constitution Divini Cultus. Further, one may recall Pius XII's interventions regarding the ordering of the rites of Holy Week, which he rescheduled to the hours corresponding to the events of Easter, after they had for centuries been brought forward to the morning hours. Nor should it be forgotten that St. John XXIII judged it necessary to simplify the rubrics of the Breviary and the Missal, approving this with the motu proprio Rubricarum Instructum of 25 July 1960, in which he set out the proposal of fundamental principles for a reform of the liturgy.
The liturgical reform promoted by the Second Vatican Council is thus firmly rooted in the living tradition of the Church. A correct understanding of it also enables us to reject the abuses that occurred in certain sectors of the Church during the post-conciliar period, and which unfortunately still occur from time to time today, where some of the principles underlying the reform itself have been taken to extremes or misunderstood. In this regard, it is worth recalling that the conciliar constitution affirms that liturgical services are not private functions but are celebrations of the Church, which is the sacrament of unity — namely, the holy people united and ordered under their bishops. Therefore, liturgical services pertain to the whole body of the Church. They manifest it and have effects upon it. That's Sacrosanctum Concilium number 26. It is therefore the primary responsibility of pastors, of bishops, but also of each individual priest, to safeguard and promote a liturgy which, while respecting liturgical norms, shines with noble simplicity, and thus manifests the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Such a liturgy will also be a fundamental vehicle for evangelization, the instrument of grace through which, as the council teaches, we may learn to offer ourselves, and through Christ's mediation be perfected in unity with God and amongst ourselves.
Our Holy Father's catechesis for today for the general audience on Sacrosanctum Concilium. As we mentioned at the beginning, we now have the exchange of greetings in various languages, beginning with French, as you can hear in the background here. Each speaker greets the Holy Father and gives a few remarks, and then will offer a summary in their own language of the catechesis that we've just heard — a shorter summary — after which the Holy Father will himself offer a few words of greeting. And apart from English, Spanish or Italian, which he speaks himself, he normally greets the faithful of the different languages in Italian, which is then translated into their own languages. The summaries are all very similar to one another and summarize the catechesis that we've just heard, so we don't translate them. We'll now listen to the French.
[Reading in French] ... possibility ... contact ... spectators ... reality ... in particular ... manifesting ... participants ... silences ... the heart.
I warmly greet the French-speaking pilgrims, especially the faithful of the interdiocesan pilgrimage from Sagal. I invite you to open your hearts and minds to the mystery presented by the Church during the liturgy, thus manifesting through your active participation the interior transformation wrought by the rites, gestures, songs, and silences that altogether reveal the living presence of Christ. I bless you from the heart.
And we'll follow this pattern: reading the Pope's greetings along with the translation in the appropriate languages. Now we listen to English.
The English-speaking pilgrims and visitors wish to express to you their sentiments of deep respect and esteem, and to assure you of their prayers for your ministry as a successor of Peter. At the end of the audience, we will sing together the Our Father in Latin. His Holiness will then impart his apostolic blessing, which he extends in a particular way to the members of your families at home. He also intends to bless any religious articles you may have brought for this purpose. And in a special way, his blessing goes to your children, the elderly, and those who are sick.
Dear brothers and sisters, in this final catechesis on the Second Vatican Council's constitution on the sacred liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, we recall the reasons the Council fathers promoted a liturgical reform. When the Church carries out a reform of the liturgy — a constant process of development across the centuries — there is an important distinction to be made between the divine immutable elements and the human elements, which may undergo various modifications. The need arose for the faithful to celebrate the liturgy more consciously and actively, not as strangers and silent spectators, but participating fully in the salvific mystery. In this way, the Christian people learn to recognize sacred realities, offer themselves with and through the hands of the priest, and become more open to receiving God's grace. At every celebration of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, let us ask for God's help to be strengthened on our journey and to enter into a deeper relationship with the Lord.
I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today's audience, particularly the groups from Malta, Senegal, and Canada. A special greeting to those serving in the national offices of the Pontifical Mission Societies. Upon you and your families, I invoke the joy and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. God bless you all.
Following English, we have German.
[Reading in German] ... in their constitution ... forgot ... the father ... We invite ... scientific.
Dear German-speaking pilgrims, I invite you to participate in the sacred liturgy, aware that it is the summit of the Church's activity and at the same time the source from which all her energy flows. In this way, we orient our lives to the perennial praise of God and prepare ourselves to receive the graces necessary for our sanctification.
