(LifeSiteNews) — The mission of the Church has retained its essential identity since Pentecost: to make all peoples Christian and thus to ensure that Jesus Christ is known and loved. This mission is not a supplement to the history of ecclesial life but constitutes the raison d’être of the Church. There is an analogy of this essential nature throughout the centuries.
In the Church today there are many young people who feel called to the priesthood, which is the continuity of apostolic ministry. Others are already in formation, and there are also those who have been ordained, recently initiated, and are experiencing what it means to “do the work of Christ” for the Church and for the world. What does the reality of their leadership in the ecclesial community consist of? They must take on what an X-ray of the ecclesial reality reveals:
- Burning faith and love of the Lord, the source of the Church’s life.
- Contemplative prayer before the Tabernacle, as an expression of the centrality of the Eucharist.
- Commitment to untiring apostolic work, which makes the mission of the Church his own.
- Humility and patience with one’s own limitations and defects.
- A joy that springs from hope in the presence of Christ and His continual coming (“I am with you always”).
These elements of ecclesial life must be taken up and put to use, despite all the contrary circumstances and while shunning the papal promotion of a symbiosis of all religions and the pacifism of the United Nations, i.e., a break with authentic Christian Tradition. The identity of Christianity is the condition in which the above factors are validated and complementary to each other.
Catholic identity includes the historical role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. The memory of Marian apparitions corresponds to this end, especially those that were accepted and venerated by the Christian people. I cite the three most essential ones.
In 1846, the apparition at La Salette, in the French Alps, to the children Mélanie and Maximin: the Virgin, dressed like the women of the place, wept for the sins of blasphemy and the violation of the Sunday Sabbath. The details are moving. It is easy to understand the sense of timeliness that this episode has in the face of the oblivion and preterition of God in the contemporary world.
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In 1858, apparitions in Lourdes to Bernadette Soubirous, now canonized, whom Mary summoned to have a chapel built there and manifested herself as the Immaculate Conception. Lourdes, where incredible miracles have occurred and still occur, has become the ultimate center of pilgrimages, where the solemn singing of the Rosary is followed every day by the crowds that gather there.
In 1917, the apparitions of Fatima took place, the actuality of which is revealed in the process of its still open mysteries. The Church has approved the reality of Fatima, and during the pontificate of St. John Paul II its feast day was added to the worldwide calendar.
The most striking phenomenon in the current arrangement of the Church’s life is the attachment of young people to the great Tradition. The progressive reaction does not go unexpressed: it is applied to the priests who have been canceled and so many others who have been hindered in their dioceses because of their excellent apostolic results. These desperate reactions are a habitual recourse of Rome under the Argentine Pope Francis.
However, according to the order of divine providence, some bishops and dioceses manage to escape them, so there are countries where Tradition is lived serenely, with obvious fruits. This fact reveals the true meaning of the Church’s essential character, and the exercise of apostolic ministry is taken up with undeniable fruits that color the life of those peoples. The aforementioned priests experience the continuity that means “doing the work of Christ.”
+ Héctor Aguer
Archbishop Emeritus of La Plata
Buenos Aires, Friday, October 18, 2024
Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist