Holy Mass at the Exhibition Palace

On Tuesday, 15 June 1982, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass at the Exhibition Palace in Geneva. In his homily, the Pope spoke of inequalities, poverty, injustices, and all the consequences of sin. The Church has no technical solutions to your problems. "It leaves it to lay Christians and Christian organizations of lay people, capable of inventing in their Christian conscience well formed decisions that correspond to concrete needs." Above all, look to Jesus. "Through him, it is God who calls all human beings, believers and men of good will, to recreate with Him a humanity in his image and likeness, a fraternal humanity."

Dear brothers and sisters,

1. After the multiple significant meetings that this all too brief day in Geneva allowed me to have, after the varied speeches that we exchanged, after the wishes of all kinds that we formulated according to the purpose of the bodies visited, it was good, while the peace of the evening invades this city, to collect ourselves in this meeting around Christ, between believers; to listen to words spoken in the name of God by the prophet Isaiah and by the Son of God; to enter ourselves into the Alliance which commits us more than all wishes, by sharing the Body and Blood of the Lord offered for the renewal of the whole world.

Like any Eucharistic celebration, the one that I have the happiness and grace to preside over among you is in fact the actualization of the unique sacrifice of the Lord Jesus across time and space: celebration accomplished on one point of the globe but always repeated for the benefit of all humanity. Christians, especially from Geneva but also from other regions of Switzerland and even neighboring countries, let us together become aware of the astonishing and mysterious repercussions of this Eucharist. Moreover, the fact of celebrating in this place in the world can help us understand something of the invisible radiance of the Lord. Geneva, both rich in a very long history and limited to this geographical point, has a certain universal vocation, notably due to the international organizations which are permanently based there with a view to helping to resolve the major problems in which the debate is taking place. our era. Today the Lord is - as yesterday, as always - life and light for believers.

2. The first light that springs from this liturgy of the word is that there is no authentic religion without the search for justice among men. Isaiah calls his compatriots to conversion, to a serious resumption of the agreements constituting the Alliance between God and his people. Penance and fasting express, of course, this conversion, but to be true, to “justify” man, to reach God who we do not see, they must still integrate a commitment to justice towards the next one we see: “remove unjust chains”, “banish threatening gestures”, “break the yokes”, “liberate the oppressed”, make way for those who lack bread, shelter, clothing . So, for you who are looking for a dawn of hope in this difficult world, “your light will shine like the dawn, your strength will quickly return, your justice will go before you”.

3. Isaiah, and even more Jesus, allow us to add: there is no justice without love, without charity . Very often, we are not aware of having ourselves burdened our neighbor with unjust chains, heavy yokes, oppressive things, evil words, except perhaps by participating in an unjust collective situation. But what we are always asked is: have you hid yourself from your fellow man? Have you considered as brothers those who, close to your house or far away - because today distances are quickly abolished -, were part of the hungry people, were sick or lacked care and hygiene, were classified as foreigners? or from an opposing bloc, in prison or parked in a camp? This supposes seeing in the other, whatever their distress, a person whose human dignity is similar to one's own, a dignity of a son of God. This supposes that we somehow put ourselves in his place to desire with him a gesture of comfort, of help, of sharing, of trust. This is love: desiring for the other what you would want for yourself (Cfr. Matt . 7, 12).

Charity obviously presupposes justice, but we can also say that it saves justice and allows it to reach its fullness. And only, says Jesus, he who manifests such love is his disciple; he loves Christ himself who identifies himself in this world with the man in distress, and he has nothing to fear from his judgment.

4. Let us clarify again: justice and charity are only wind if they do not consider concrete gestures towards concrete men . Undoubtedly, neither Isaiah nor Jesus made an exhaustive enumeration of the injustices or distresses calling for love. These have a thousand faces, and our modern societies are constantly secreting new ones; among the unemployed, refugees, the tortured, the innocent sequestered, among those who are ideologically oppressed, etc. But it would be insufficient to talk about problems; we must come to precise measurements, finding a precise application. Jesus speaks of the one who was hungry, of the one who was thirsty. The next one has a human face.

5. Finally, this Eucharist enlightens us on the source of love and justice, for us believers. Love comes not only from the example of Christ, but from the charity – “agapê” – which proceeds from the Father, which is manifested in the Son and which is spread by the Holy Spirit. God is love; this is our faith. But for men to have access to this justice, that is to say to this holiness which comes from God, and to his love, it was necessary that sin, the wall of pride, selfishness and hatred , be abolished by the Sacrifice of the Just, by the love of the Son. The Mass makes us participate, on a sacramental level, in this liberation. We must turn to the Source. We must convert. There is no authentic Christian religion, no Christian justice or charity, without this conversion, which is a break with sin, adhesion to its sacrifice, and communion with its delivered Body, with its shed Blood.

It is at this price that Christians acquire the dynamism of the Gospel to make a new world, that they gradually become like monstrances of God, of his Trinitarian love, through non-violent struggles for the reign of justice .

6. But, you will say, how can the spirituality of this homily connect with modern problems, those that we encounter in our lives, in our work, especially in Geneva where so many international organizations have their headquarters? You probably feel like you are immersed in problems that are so difficult to solve! There are so many of them, as the means of communication and increased solidarity immerse you in them; they are so vast, on a world scale; they are so complex, so tangled, depending on so many factors over which you have very little control, not to mention sometimes the ill will and the blocking of those who have other interests! What lucidity, what patience, what hope is not required?

Those, for example, who work in international institutions, who tirelessly prepare legal measures, conventions, recommendations, initiatives intended to clean up the global climate, are perhaps aware that their personal contribution to justice and peace still remains very limited, very fragile, indirect and distant, except when they intervene effectively for individuals and specific groups of refugees or other people in distress. I am thinking here of all those who work for peace, disarmament or human rights at the UN, for social justice at the ILO, for health at the WHO, for refugees at the High Commissioner's Office. , for victims of wars at the Red Cross, etc. Christians have their part in this, along with all other men of good will, and I renew my encouragement to them, especially to those whom I was not able to visit today. May they be aware of participating in the work of justice and charity requested by Christ by preparing the ways on a global level! They weave, through many obstacles, the fabric of the new world that our faith hopes for, and which outlines, here on earth, the salvation achieved in full in the beyond.

I also do not forget all the other people present at this mass, from Geneva, Switzerland or elsewhere, who work within the framework of their family, their business, their municipality, their homeland, their community Christian. Many undoubtedly live in conditions that can be said to be comfortable, which circumstances and their work have favored: with their pastors, they easily find the opportunity to reflect on the appropriate way to participate, at home and in the world, in the advancement of justice, sharing, mutual aid respectful of the dignity of others, and widely open hospitality.

7. How then can we situate the intervention of the Church and its magisterium in this context? No more than Isaiah, no more than Jesus, she does not have to give you a strictly political speech. With its religious authority, inherited from the Lord, it also has no competence to give technical solutions to your problems: it leaves it to lay Christians and Christian organizations of lay people, capable of inventing in their Christian conscience well formed decisions that correspond to concrete needs.

But Jesus, following the prophets, brought a message which never ceases to question and upset men and women in the face of inequalities, poverty, injustices, and all the consequences of sin. Yes, this message, which transcends politics and society, while having an impact on them, contains a force of questioning that the world really needs. Through him, it is God who calls all human beings, believers and men of good will, to recreate with Him a humanity in his image and likeness, a fraternal humanity. His message does not want to discourage them, but rather to encourage them and support them in their good intentions; it is in this sense that he also invites them to somehow put into perspective their provisional projects and even the stable structures that they have sincerely put in place to better resolve their problems; that is to say, to revise them in the light of justice and love, in order to overcome the constantly resurgent injustices and selfishness and better respond to new needs.

8. Dear Brothers and Sisters, if the Church, the Apostolic See, the Pope hold this strong language , they also want it to be received as humble language . First, they do not want to propose other laws, other moral requirements than those which arise from the Gospel which they themselves received, without merit on their part. Then, what the Church brings is less a judgment of condemnation, in the style of Isaiah, than a new breath, in the wake of Christ, an impulse in which the Holy Spirit has his part, a hope , in short, a positive contribution. And moreover, she knows well that she carries this message in a clay vessel (Cfr. 2 Cor . 4, 7); its members, all its members, including those of the hierarchy, are aware of personally participating in the weakness, in the limits of men, always sinners and always saved; and they seek to take an ever better path, despite the heaviness and cowardice that their own history may contain. But their personal weakness must not tarnish the message of justice and love that comes from God.

We make our own the attitude, both humble and strong, of the Virgin Mary , manifested on the day of her Visitation in her “Magnificat”. As I reminded the workers in Saint-Denis, France, workers – and I consider that all those here are workers – “ must be capable of fighting nobly for any form of justice. . . The willingness to undertake such a noble struggle, a struggle for the true good of man in all its dimensions, derives from the words that Mary speaks. . . concerning the living God: “he has displayed the strength of his Arm, he has scattered the proud in heart, he has overthrown the mighty from their throne, he has exalted the humble”” ( IOANNIS PAULI PP. II Homilia in Missa celebrata in urbe “Saint-Denis” , die May 31, 1980 : Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II , III, 1 (1980) 1562 ff. ).

Before Mary, before her Son Jesus who proclaimed this beatitude, we must all ask ourselves: “Do we hunger and thirst sufficiently for justice, for the justice of God?”

© Copyright 1982 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

 Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana