Read a portion of the Pope’s address.<\/i><\/p>\n
While\u00a0contempt was being spread for the Christian faith by some currents of thought\u00a0that were prevalent then, the Holy Spirit inspired a fervent spiritual renewal,\u00a0with prominent personalities such as that of Berulle, St. Vincent de Paul, St.\u00a0Louis Mary Grignion de Montfort and St. John Eudes<\/a>. This great “French\u00a0school” of holiness also had St. John Mary Vianney among its fruits. By a\u00a0mysterious design of Providence, my venerated predecessor, Pius XI, proclaimed\u00a0John Eudes and the Cur\u00e9 d’Ars saints at the same time, on May 31, 1925,\u00a0offering the Church and the whole world two extraordinary examples of priestly\u00a0holiness.<\/p>\n In the context of the Year for Priests, I wish to pause to underline\u00a0the apostolic zeal of St. John Eudes, directed in particular to the formation\u00a0of the diocesan clergy.<\/p>\n The saints have verified, in the experience of life,\u00a0the truth of the Gospel<\/span>; in this way, they introduce us into the knowledge and\u00a0understanding of the Gospel. In 1563, the Council of Trent issued norms for the\u00a0establishment of diocesan seminaries and for the formation of priests, as the\u00a0council was aware that the whole crisis of the Reformation was also conditioned\u00a0by the insufficient formation of priests, who were not adequately prepared\u00a0intellectually and spiritually, in their heart and soul, for the priesthood.<\/p>\n This\u00a0occurred in 1563 but, given that the application and implementation of the\u00a0norms took time, both in Germany as well as in France, St. John Eudes saw the\u00a0consequences of this problem. Moved by the lucid awareness of the great need of\u00a0spiritual help that souls were feeling precisely because of the incapacity of a\u00a0great part of the clergy, the saint, who was a parish priest, instituted a\u00a0congregation dedicated specifically to the formation of priests. He founded the\u00a0first seminary in the university city of Caen, a highly appreciated endeavor,\u00a0which was soon extended to other dioceses.<\/p>\n The path of holiness he followed and\u00a0proposed<\/span> to his disciples had as its foundation a solid confidence in the love\u00a0that God revealed to humanity in the priestly Heart of Christ and the maternal\u00a0Heart of Mary<\/b>. In that time of cruelty and loss of interior silence, he\u00a0addressed himself to the heart so as to leave in the heart a word from the\u00a0Psalms very well interpreted by St. Augustine. He wanted to remind people, men\u00a0and above all future priests of the heart, showing the priestly Heart of Christ\u00a0and the maternal Heart of Mary. A priest must be a witness and apostle of this\u00a0love of the Heart of Christ and of Mary<\/i>.<\/p>\n Today we also feel the need for\u00a0priests to witness the infinite mercy of God with a life totally\u00a0“conquered” by Christ, and for them to learn this in the years of\u00a0their formation in the seminaries. After the synod of 1990, Pope John Paul II\u00a0issued the apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis<\/i>, in which he\u00a0took up and actualized the norms of the Council of Trent and above all underlined\u00a0the need for continuity between the initial and permanent moments of formation.\u00a0For him, for us, this is a real point of departure for a genuine reform of\u00a0priestly life and apostolate, and it is also the central point so that the\u00a0“new evangelization” is not simply an attractive slogan, but rather\u00a0is translated into reality<\/span>.<\/p>\n The foundations of formation in the seminary\u00a0constitute that irreplaceable “humus spirituale” in which it is\u00a0possible to “learn Christ,” allowing oneself to be progressively\u00a0configured to him<\/b>, sole High Priest and Good Shepherd. The time in the seminary\u00a0should be seen, therefore, as the actualization of the moment in which the Lord\u00a0Jesus, after having called the Apostles and before sending them out to preach,\u00a0asks that they stay with him (cf. Mark 3:14).<\/p>\n When St. Mark narrates the\u00a0vocation of the Twelve Apostles<\/i>, he tells us that Jesus had a double objective<\/i>:\u00a0The first was that they be with him<\/b>, the second that they be sent to preach<\/b>.\u00a0But in going always with him, they truly proclaim Christ and take the reality\u00a0of the Gospel to the world.<\/p>\n In this Year for Priests, I invite you to pray,\u00a0dear brothers and sisters, for priests and for those preparing to receive the\u00a0extraordinary gift of the priestly ministry. I conclude by addressing to all\u00a0the exhortation of St. John Eudes, who said thus to priests: “Give\u00a0yourselves to Jesus to enter into the immensity of his great Heart, which\u00a0contains the Heart of his Holy Mother and of all the saints, and to lose\u00a0yourselves in this abyss of love, of charity, of mercy, of humility, of purity,\u00a0of patience, of submission and of holiness<\/b>” (Coeur admirable<\/i>, III, 2).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday’s general audience (August 19, 2009) Pope Benedict took the\u00a0opportunity to draw our attention to the saint being memorialized in the\u00a0Liturgy, Saint John Eudes, as a model for personal renewal which will lead to\u00a0the renewal of the priesthood. The zeal, the desire for the face of God, the\u00a0need for conversion will lead, I am convinced, … Continue reading Saint John Eudes: a guide for ecclesial renewal who said give self to Christ<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[2407,3274,32104],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24886"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24886"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28217,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24886\/revisions\/28217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n