Address to the Christian Community and Consecration to the Mother of Christ (2 May 1980)

On Friday, 2 May 1980, the Holy Father addressed the Christian community gathered in the Cathedral in Kinshasa, and led the faithful in  an Act of Consecration to the Mother of Christ.

Praise Jesus Christ!
May God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord give you grace and peace!
May the Holy Spirit be your joy!

1. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

Your Archbishop, dear Cardinal Joseph Malula, has just welcomed me on behalf of all of you, Bishops, priests, men and women religious, seminarians and lay people of the Archdiocese of Kinshasa and of the other Catholic communities of Zaire. I thank you very much. He has evoked the vitality of the Church in Zaire, a vitality that the Church of Rome knows and appreciates. And I, Bishop of Rome, greatly wanted to come to visit you.

I come as a servant of Jesus Christ, invisible Head of the Church. I come as Successor of the Apostle Peter, to whom Jesus said: "Strengthen your brothers", and then, three times: "Feed my lambs...feed my sheep" (Jn 21 , 15-17), that is, to all the flock of my disciples. By the will of God, despite my unworthiness, I have inherited this charge, which is that of Pope, that is, of Father, that of Vicar of Christ on earth, who presides over unity in faith and in charity.

2. First of all, I thank God with you for all that he has accomplished in Zaire for a hundred years. I come today to celebrate with you the centenary of evangelization, to remember with you the path traveled, a path that has known difficulties and sorrows, joys and hopes. A path of thanks! The centennial allows us to better appreciate, in a certain way, the benefits of the Lord and the merits of your predecessors. And lean on this Christian story for a renewed drive forward.

A century ago, in fact, some missionaries, burning with love for Christ and for you, they came to share with you the faith that they themselves had received; From the first moment, they wanted to plant the Church here, to make a local Church emerge, with the Africans. The harvest was great. Your parents welcomed the Word of God with generosity and enthusiasm. Today, the tree of the Church is firmly rooted in your country; its branches extend throughout the territory. Faith has become the destiny of a considerable number of citizens of Zaire. Bishops, priests, religious, catechists, committed lay people have emerged from your Zairean families, who integrate or support. your communities. And the Gospel has printed its stamp on life and customs. God be praised! And blessed are those who have made this Church flourish, those who came from afar and those who were born in this country! Blessed are those who currently guide her!

3. Dear friends: You have experienced a great first stage, an irreversible stage. And now a new stage opens before you, no less exalting, although it necessarily brings with it new tests and, perhaps, even temptations of discouragement. It is the stage of perseverance, in which it is necessary to continue the affirmation of the faith, the deep conversion of souls, of the ways of living, so that they correspond more and more to your sublime Christian vocation; without counting on the evangelization that you yourselves must continue in the sectors or in the environments where the. Gospel is still ignored. As Saint Peter wrote to the first generations of converts in the diaspora, I tell you: "Be vigilant...according to the holiness of the one to whom he called you, be holy in all your actions" (1 Peter 1, 13-16). You never stop being Christians.

This is how the Church that is in Zaire will reach its full Christian and African maturity.

4. I know that your Bishops —who are your Pastors and your parents— guide you with lucidity and courage along these paths of the Kingdom of God, as witnessed by the exhortations, letters or appeals that they personally or collegially address to you. I come to reaffirm and encourage the ministry of these bishops who are my brothers. But at the same time, I also come to encourage all the Christians of Kinshasa and Zaire.

I am greatly pleased that my first meeting, in this cathedral, is with the priests, the religious men and women, the seminarians. In the building of the Church, you have a prominent position. Your ordination, your religious consecration, your call to the priesthood are invaluable graces. Thank the Lord! Serve him with joy, simplicity and purity of heart. You are destined, more than the other disciples of Christ, to be the salt that gives flavor, the light that illuminates; I want to have a prolonged discussion with the priests, then with the nuns over the next few days. But from this afternoon, I greet you with all my affection. My first word is a word of comfort, in the atmosphere of thanksgiving that befits a centenary.

Priests : Feel happy to be ministers of Christ, announcers of his word and dispensers of his mysteries: "Imitamini quod tractatis": "live what you are fulfilling". Be educators of the faith, men of prayer, have the zeal and humility of those who serve, live your total consecration to the kingdom of God which is your sign, celibacy.

Men and women religious : Feel happy for having given all your love to Christ; and to serve the Church, your brothers and sisters with all availability. With all the consecrated persons of Zaire, let Christ fill your lives, so that you may be a clear witness to the People of God and to men of good will. I am thinking of your Zairean sister, who she has preceded by leaving a shining example of purity and courage in the faith: the Servant of God Sister Anwarita, whom the Church, as I hope, will be able to beatify very soon.

And you, priests, men and women religious and lay people who have come from other countries as "missionaries" and who continue to cooperate in the various services of the Church in this country, feel happy that it is here where your help is precious and necessary and where you bear witness to the universal Church, continue this friendly and selfless service, under the guidance of the Zairian Pastors who will know how to welcome all priests without exception into their presbytery.

Seminarians : Feel happy to respond to the call of the Master, who never disappoints. Welcome the pedagogy of Christ, in which many of your ancestors have been formed. Prepare yourselves to thoroughly assimilate the solid doctrine and the discipline of life that will allow you to be, in turn, spiritual guides. I would like many to follow your footsteps. Vocations to the priesthood are proof of the vitality and maturity of a local Church which thus becomes capable of taking responsibility for the work of the Gospel into its own hands, giving the Gospel message and the mission of the Church its full Christian and African authenticity.

I do not want to forget the lay Christians with whom I will also meet: fathers and mothers of families, animators of small communities, catechists, educators, committed lay people, students and young people from Kinshasa or from other cities and towns. May they feel happy and proud of their faith! Wherever you work, bear witness to the love of Christ, who has loved you before. And may they continue an apostolate in which they are irreplaceable!

5. I would like to make to all of you the recommendation that the Apostle Saint Paul made in all his Letters, he who visited many of the first Christian communities. It is the recommendation that provoked the last prayer of Jesus after the Holy Supper: "That they all be one" . Yes, discard all division, live in unity, which pleases God so much and which constitutes your strength, around your priests. And that the priests are united in the same presbytery around their bishops. Express kind welcome and real collaboration among you, Zairians, as well as with the foreigners who have come to share your life. The Church is a family, where no one is excluded.

While I receive your testimony, I bring you in turn that of the Church that is in Rome and that of the universal Church that has its center in Rome. It is one family. No community lives centered on itself, but all are linked in the great Church, the only Church. Your Church has been grafted onto the great tree of the Church, from which for a hundred years it has received its sap, which now allows it to bear good fruit in itself and at the same time to become a missionary to others. Your Church must deepen its local, African dimension, without ever forgetting its universal dimension. I know of your fervent adherence to the Pope. That is why I tell you: with him, remain united to the whole Church.

And now, I invite you to direct with me your eyes and your hearts towards the Virgin Mary.

6. Allow me, therefore, in this year in which you thank God for the centenary of the evangelization and baptism of your country, to refer to the tradition that we find at the beginning of this century, at the beginning of evangelization on African land.

The missionaries who came to announce the Gospel began their missionary service with an act of consecration to the Mother of Christ .

They addressed her thus:

«Behold, we find ourselves among those who are our brothers and sisters and whom your Son, O Virgin Mary, loved to the end. Out of love, he offered his life for them on the cross; out of love, he remains in the Eucharist to be food for souls; out of love, he founded his Church to be the indestructible community in which salvation is found. These brothers and sisters before whom we have just arrived do not yet know all this; they do not yet know the Good News of the Gospel. But we deeply believe that their hearts and consciences are prepared to receive the Gospel of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ and also thanks to your maternal intercession and your mediation.

»We believe that when Christ, from the height of the cross, gave you each man as a son, in the person of his disciple Saint John, you also accepted as sons and daughters these brothers and sisters whom the Holy The Church now sends us as missionaries.

»Help us to fulfill the missionary mandate of your Son on these lands; help us to fulfill here the salvific mission of the Gospel and of the Church. We consecrate to you all those whom the Spirit of Jesus Christ wishes to illuminate with the light of faith and in whom he wants to ignite the fire of his love. We consecrate to you their families, their tribes, the communities and societies they have formed, their work, their joys and sufferings, their towns and their cities. We consecrate everything to You, we consecrate everyone. Receive them in that eternal love of which You were the first handmaid and deign to guide, no matter how unworthy it may be, the apostolic service that we are now beginning”.

7. Today, a hundred years have passed since these beginnings. When the Church, in this country of Zaire, gives thanks to God in the Most Holy Trinity for the waters of holy baptism that have saved many of her sons and daughters, allow, O Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, that I, Pope John Paul II, who is given the opportunity to participate in this Jubilee, remember and renew at the same time this missionary consecration that took place on this earth at the beginning of his evangelization.

Consecrate themselves to Christ through your intercession!
Consecrate oneself to You for Christ!

Also allow, O Mother of Divine Grace, when thanking you for all the lights that the Church has received and all the fruits that it has provided throughout this century on this land of Zaire, to entrust this Church to you again, to place it in your hands for future years and centuries until the end of time!

And at the same time, I also entrust to you the entire nation, which today lives its own independent life. I do it with the same spirit of faith and with the same confidence as the first missionaries, and at the same time I do it with all the greater joy because the act of consecration and dedication that I do now, they do at the same time with me. all the Pastors of this Church and also all the People of God ; this People of God who wishes to assume and continue with his Pastors, with love and apostolic decision, the work of building the Body of Christ and the implantation of the Kingdom of God on this earth.

Accept, O Mother, this act of trust that we make, open hearts and instill strength in souls to listen to the Word of life and to do what your Son does not stop ordering and recommending us.

May grace and peace, justice and love be part of this people; that when giving thanks for the centenary of his faith and his baptism, he looks with confidence towards his temporal and eternal future. Amen!

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana