First Mass on Helvetic Land (12 June 1984)

On Tuesday, 12 June 1984, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass, in City Stadium “Cornadero” (Lugano), the first Mass on Helvetic land since the Reformation.

1. “The brethren were assiduous in hearing the teaching of the apostles and in fraternal union, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42).

The text of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, just proclaimed, puts before our eyes the very beginnings of the Church, just out of the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost. She was taken out of the place of expectation and prayer with the power of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim among men from different nations “the great works of God” (Acts 2:11).

Last Sunday, the Solemnity of Pentecost, we had the joy of reliving precisely that “day made by the Lord”: the day of the Church’s birth.

Today, through the account of the book of Acts, we are witnesses - one might say - of an ordinary day of this Church, which has just been born. Here is the community that remains assiduous “in listening to the teaching of the apostles. . . in the fraction of bread and in prayer.” This community still maintains a daily connection with the temple of Jerusalem (therefore it still participates in the cult of the ancient covenant) and at the same time, breaking bread at home (cf. At 2, 46), already celebrates the Eucharist, the sacrament of the new and eternal covenant. The sacrament through which the Church has been shaped and continues to be shaped daily for almost two thousand years.

2. This text of the Acts is important. In it emerge some constitutive elements of the Church of Christ: the Word of God, welcomed by a community of believers, which gathers for the celebration of the Eucharist, around the Apostles, who will then ensure that they insuring the people of the bishops. From then to today, and until the end of time, the full reality of the Church can only be had on the basis of these essential elements. The Church of the early days, which has its beginning in the Jerusalem Upper Room and in the primitive community gathered around the apostles, is already structured in this way. It is - one might say - the "local" Church and at the same time it is also the "universal" Church. “Local”, because it is linked to a place, to Jerusalem; but also “universal”, because in it converge, as the day of Pentecost makes manifest, people from different nations. With the prodigy of tongue the Spirit ratifies this multiform presence, allowing each one to listen to the apostles in his own native idiom.

Animated by the same Holy Spirit, we wish to embrace these two dimensions of the Church in today’s meeting and throughout the week.

The visit of the Bishop of Rome and the successor of Peter wants to demonstrate, with particular evidence, how this diocese of yours in Lugano and all the dioceses of Switzerland - each of the Churches that are in your homeland - living their own life, living at the same time the life of the universal Church: of the Church which is one in the whole world. “One, sancta, catholica et apostolica ecclesia.”

The Church is the people of God: “the nation whose God is the Lord, the people who have chosen themselves as the heir” (Ps 33:12).

The words of the Psalm of today’s liturgy speak of Israel, which was the people of God of the old covenant. And at the same time they speak of the new Israel, of the Church that has spread beyond the Old Testament limits of a single nation.

“In all of them. . . . . The nations of the earth are remembered only one people of God, for by the midst of all the races he takes the citizens of his kingdom, not earthly but heavenly. For all the faithful scattered throughout the world communicate with others in the Holy Spirit and so those who are in Rome know that the Indi are his members” (Lumen Gentium, 13).

The people: the community of living men that God embraces both together and each in particular at the same time. He embraces them as Creator and as Father, as Redeemer and Spirit who penetrates everything.

“The Lord looks from heaven, he sees all men. / From the place of his abode he searches all the inhabitants of the earth, he who alone has shaped their hearts / and who includes all their works” (Ps 33:13-15).

Everyone is penetrated by the eternal plan of divine love. All and every one riscattati“redeemed” by the same infinite price as Christ’s redemption. All and each subject to the breath of the one Spirit of truth.

3. Today’s liturgy speaks to us of this unity through the evangelical analogy of the vine and of the branches.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-in-law” (Jn 15:1). This is what Jesus says to his disciples during his farewell speech in the Upper Supper.

On the vast soil of humanity, the heavenly Father has grafted this vine: the Son of God born in time of the Virgin Mary. And all men, like branches, have been pervading the sap of new life that is in this vine.

Every branch that does not bear fruit in me - says Jesus - the Father takes away from him and every branch that bears fruit may it to bear more fruit" (Jn 15:2).

What is the Church in its entirety, “universal” and “local”? It is the environment of man’s new existence. Through this environment man, the son of the earth, has a new existence in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Like a branch in the vine. This is also the existence of God’s children. Therefore the Church is the place of the divine culture. All of us who make up the Church – each and every one – must bear fruit in Christ.

“Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, so also if you do not remain in me. . . . .

He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. . . . . In this my Father is glorified: let him bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father loved me, so I loved you. Stay in my love” (Jn 15:4-5. 8-9).

4. In our meditation on the Church in all its dimensions we must constantly refer to this stupendous analogy. It contains the deepest reason for the unity and at the same time of the plurality of the Church. This analogy also has its particular importance, because it shows how the two dimensions of the Church, which are expressed in the “universal” and “local” determinations, can correctly adhere to each other, safeguarding at the same time all the richness contained in each one.

Unity springs from Christ-forward through the action of the Holy Spirit, sent on the apostles on the day of Pentecost.

It is therefore the unity of the body and of the Spirit, as the author of the Letter to the Ephesians proclaims (Eph 4: 4: 4:4: “One body, one spirit, as one is the hope to which you have been called, that of your vocation; one Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God the Father of all, who is above all, acts through all and is present in all.

Thus, the unity of the Church ultimately comes from the Father. It comes from the Father through Christ, the vine, in the Holy Spirit. Seek “to preserve the unity of the Spirit by the bond of peace,” writes the Apostle Paul (Eph 4:3).

It is a recommendation that has perennial value. Even today’s Christians must confront it. Every local community, gathered around its bishop, is truly and fully Church. This awareness has become so strong after the Second Vatican Council, that today we can say, with a gravitational formulation of consequences, which is in the particular Churches and by the particular Churches, that is, in the dioceses, that the one and only Catholic Church subsists (cf. Codex Iuris Canonics, can. 368). This means that where a community is gathered with its bishop, in faith and in fidelity to the Risen Lord, the Church is truly realized. But the reality of the mystical body of Christ does not end in it. The particular Church cannot therefore remain alone, she cannot live fraternity only at the local level, but must also realize communion with the other Churches. In the New Testament we read as already among the various Churches of that time there was unity, witnessed through exchanges of aid and information, travel and acceptance of persons, and above all through the firm adherence to the same faith, to the same sacraments, to the disciplinary practice introduced by the Apostles, unanimously welcomed and constantly updated by their successors. In particular, the Book of Acts informs us that, when the expansion of the Gospel message began from Jerusalem with the consequent formation of new communities in the various places where it arrived, these communities continued to refer to a center, to a mother Church, which was, then, Jerusalem, the place where, at first, Peter lived with the other apostles.

Christians today too are committed to living the same experience of unity: there can be no local Church that is not in communion with others, which is not open to the sufferings and joys of other local Churches, which does not seek to tune with them in the concrete way of witnessing before the world of today’s eternal values of the Gospel. There cannot be a local Church that does not nourish a sincere and profound communion with the See of Peter.

5. The church is “one.” Every plurality is in this unity. This plurality is - as we read later in the text of the Apostle Paul - plurality of vocations: "to make our brothers and sisters fit to fulfill the mystery, in order to build up the body of Christ" (Eph 4:12). To build up the body of Christ today, just as, from the first generation, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers have built this body. The plurality of vocations is true in that it derives from unity and builds it. What refers to people is also valid for communities. Each community in the Church is true (corresponds to the evangelical and apostolic tradition) inasmuch as it develops from unity and at the same time builds it.

Each “local Church” is true (corresponds to her evangelical and apostolic definition) inasmuch as it develops from the unity of the “universal” Church and at the same time builds it up.

6. In this Eucharistic celebration at the beginning of my pastoral visit to Switzerland, I wish to greet all the ecclesial communities gathered in your local Churches. The Church of Basel, that of Chur, that of Lausanne, Geneva and Freiburg, that of St. Gallen, that of Zion and also of Italian Grisons. With particular intensity of sentiment I greet the diocese of Lugano, addressing a special thought to the pastor, Monsignor Ernesto Togni, to priests, to men and women religious and to the whole laity.

I greet all these Churches with a veneration that corresponds to their evangelical and apostolic dignity. I give them the fraternal kiss of peace.

And at the same time I express my fervent hope that each of these Churches, remaining permanently in the unity of the universal Church, may fulfill the mission of which the Holy Spirit speaks in the text of the Letter to the Ephesians: that “we all arrive at the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, in the state of a perfect man, to the extent that it is appropriate to the full maturity of Christ” (Eph 4:13).

In other words, I hope, as a servant and guardian of the unity of the Church, that the mystery of the vine and the branches may be fulfilled in you, dear brothers and sisters.

Let each administer generously and constancy the grace that has been given to him “according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Eph 4:7).

This gift always builds the Church, both in her universal and local dimension.

7. To welcome such a gift, dear Swiss Catholics, your history has. In fact, it is the history of a country in which unity and diversity have been able to infuse itself into a diverent experience of serene harmony, mutual respect, and active collaboration. These traditions of yours can be of great help in opening you to the commitment of generous adherence to the universal dimension of the Church. In this, then, you Catholics of the Canton of Ticino, are further facilitated by the ecclesiastical events of your community, which has been able to draw on the very rich religious heritage aroused by men of the stature of St. Ambrose and Saint Charles Borromeo. Your condition as a relatively young diocese, in a geographical position of the border, is a stimulus to the search for an ever deeper communion with the other Churches, even in fidelity to that particular ecclesial physiognomy that have matured over the centuries the generations of your fore under the guidance of their pastors, among whom I am glad to recall, with special mention, the Servant of God Monsignor Aurelio Bacciarini.

8. Know how to live up to your glorious past! I wish you the abundance of the gifts of Christ. I wish you to be “open to the Spirit of Christ”, according to the motto you have chosen for my visit. It is a motto that sums up well the deepest need of each particular Church, who wants to live his mission to the full. It must be a well-structured and efficient organism, to actively witness to the salvation of God in the world. But it must be, first of all and above all, animated and continually transformed by the Spirit of Christ.

It is he who “renews the face of the earth.” Do we not all feel at the end of the twentieth century after Christ how much this face of the earth, inhabited by men, needs renewal?

The decisive renewal can only come from the life-giving action of the Spirit, who alone is able to “convince the world” (cf. Jn 16:8) about the divinity of Christ, the redeemer of man and true hope of history.

Let us say, therefore, with the psalmist: “Our soul awaits the Lord, / he is our help and our shield. / In him our hearts rejoiceth / and we trust in his holy name” (Ps 33:20-21).

Yes, we are confident! Amen.

Copyright 1984 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Dicastery for Communication - Libreria Editrice Vaticana