Holy Mass in Ouagadougou, Upper Volta (10 May 1980)

On Saturday, 10 May 1980, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass in Ouagadougou (Upper Volta). In his homily the Pope spoke on thirst and water from the words of Christ to the woman of Samaria.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

1. "The poor and those in need seek water... I, saith the Lord, will answer them... I will turn the desert into pools..." [ 1 ]. “The water that I will give him will become a spring of water welling up for eternal life! » [ 2 ].

This is the lesson contained in the Word of God that we have just heard; this is the lesson that the Lord gives us!

I am the living water, said the Lord again, I am the source of the water that gives life. To draw from this source, you have come here this morning to listen to the Word of God offered to you by the one whom divine Providence has chosen to be the Head of his Church, to be like Saint Peter his spokesman to all the faithful. , in union with the bishops, the successors of the Apostles.

It is with deep emotion that I look at you, my brothers and my sisters of the Church which is in Upper Volta. It is a desire of my heart which is coming true today: to come and bear witness to you, in your very country, of the love of God our Father and of his Son Jesus Christ, of his love for each of you. Isn't that a great joy that should fill our hearts, to be able to say, to be able to proclaim: God loves me! Yes, God loves you, wherever you are: in your cities, your villages and your families, in the market as on the paths: God loves you everywhere and always!

Your presence here also testifies to your affection for the Church which brings you this message of love. When I look at you, my heart is filled with pride, because I know that you have accepted the Message of love with joy and gratitude; because I know that you are attached to the Church and that you want to be witnesses to the Gospel with generosity and courage.

2. My stay among you will be short; too short for me, because I would have liked to meet you everywhere, in your parishes, your schools and your homes; too short for you too, because I know that many who would have liked to cannot be here this morning, those who live far away, those who are sick or suffering, those who have to work, and those who are still too young! To all those who are not present, I say: the Pope greets you and blesses you!

And I also greet with affection my brother Cardinal Paul Zoungrana, who was one of the first three priests in your country and who is now the great and faithful pastor of this Archdiocese of Ouagadougou. I greet with him my brothers in the episcopate, as well as my brothers and sisters of all their dioceses: Ouagadougou, Koupéla, Bobo-Dioulasso, Diébougou, Fada N'Gourma, Kaya, Koudougou, Nouna-Dédougou and Ouahigouya!

I would like to greet you one by one, my brothers in the priesthood, priests whom the people of Upper Volta have generously given to the Lord, and priests who have come from afar for the service of the Gospel among you. All of you, men and women religious and catechists, who give yourselves with dedication to your task of evangelization. And you, Christian women: on you too rests a great part of the future and of its hopes for the Church and for your people; mothers and young girls, who are or who will be responsible with your husbands for the education of your children. I salute the elders, the fathers of families who work painfully for their loved ones, the men, the young people and the children. I greet you all, you too who have come in such large numbers from Togo, I greet you, in the name of the love that unites us in one single Church,

3. In the gospel that we listened to together, Jesus spoke to us about thirst and water. He had stopped near a well, a deep well, which the patriarch Jacob had dug with great difficulty for his family and his flocks. This is where we came to draw. It was there that Jesus met a woman from Samaria. She came to fetch the water necessary for the needs of the house. She needed water for her thirst, but, without really knowing it, she was even more thirsty for the truth, for the certainty of having, despite her sins, a place in the love of God. She thirsted for the word of Jesus and for that life of the soul that he alone can give us.

We are all, like this woman, thirsty for the truth that comes from God. Truth about ourselves, about the meaning of our life, about what we can and must do, right now, wherever we are, to respond to what God expects of each of us, to truly be part of his family and live as children of God. I know your difficulties, and the extreme poverty of so many of you, so many, and also your generosity in the service of the Lord, and this is why, to you who are children of God by your baptism and your belonging to the Church, I can recall his words: "Seek first the Kingdom of God and his justice" [ 3 ]! Yes, for us Christians, this is the essential!

4. Yet, as we meditate on the Gospel, we cannot forget that if the people of Samaria returned home carrying in their hearts the word of salvation, the water that springs up to eternal life, they also continued to come draw the water necessary for the life of their bodies. Men thirst for love, for fraternal charity, but there are also entire peoples who thirst for the water necessary for their life, in particular circumstances which are present in my mind, now that I find myself among you. , in this land of Upper Volta, in this area of ​​the Sahel. If the problem of progressive desertification also arises in other regions of the globe, the sufferings of the peoples of the Sahel which the world has witnessed invite me to speak about it here.

From the beginning, God entrusted to man the nature he had created. It is to give glory to God to make creation serve a human promotion, integral and united, which allows man to reach his full spiritual dimension. Man must therefore strive to respect it and to discover its laws in order to ensure the service of man. Great progress has been made in the field of ecology, great efforts have been made. But much remains to be done to educate people to respect nature, to preserve and improve it, and also to reduce or prevent the consequences of so-called “natural” disasters.

It is then that human solidarity must manifest itself to come to the aid of the victims and of the countries which cannot suddenly cope with so many emergencies, and whose economy may be ruined.

It is a question of international justice, especially towards the countries which are too often affected by these disasters, while others find themselves in geographical or climatic conditions which, in comparison, we must say are privileged. It is also a question of charity for all those who consider that every man and every woman is a brother and a sister whose sufferings must be borne and alleviated by all. Solidarity, in justice and charity, must know neither frontiers nor limits.

5. From here, from Ouagadougou, from the center of one of those countries that can be called the countries of thirst, allow me therefore to address to all, in Africa and beyond this continent, a solemn appeal not to close our eyes to what has happened and what is happening in the Sahelian region.

I cannot trace the history and the details of this tragedy: they are moreover in all your memories. We should at least mention the time taken to become aware of the drama prepared by a persistent drought, then the movement of solidarity which extended to all levels, local, national, regional and international. Much was done by the citizens and governments of the countries concerned as well as by the various international institutions. The Church also had its large share; its action was supported and followed with attention by your bishops and by Pope Paul VI who, distressed from the beginning by the scale of the catastrophe, did not spare his appeals and his support, in particular through the intermediary of the Pontifical Council " Cor Unum », whose President I am happy to greet here, the dear Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, who was kind enough to leave his native Africa and his archdiocese of Cotonou, in Benin, to come and work with the Pope in Rome. Let us therefore thank, today, all those who devoted themselves, all those who knew how to come to the aid of their brothers in need. May they one day hear the Lord say to them, "I was thirsty, and you gave me drink!" » [4 ]. Through them, in fact, God gave the answer that we heard in the reading of this Mass: “I will not abandon them” [ 5 ].

6. And yet, how many victims for whom help came too late! How many young people whose development has been disturbed or compromised! But the danger is not averted. From the beginning of these painful events which constitute the drama of the Sahel, the conditions of the future were studied in your region at the intergovernmental level with the help of the United Nations, plans were drawn up to combat the drought, its causes and its consequences, to consider effective remedies such as irrigation, the drilling of wells, reforestation, the erection of granaries, the introduction of various crops and others.

But the needs are immense if we want to stop the advance of the desert and even gradually push it back, if we want every man, every woman and every child in the Sahel to have enough water and food. , have a future ever more worthy of a human being.

7. This is why, from this place, from this capital of Upper Volta, I issue a solemn appeal to the whole world. I, John Paul II, Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter, raise my pleading voice, because; I cannot be silent when my brothers and sisters are threatened. I make myself here the voice of those who have no voice, the voice of the innocent, who died because they lacked water and bread; the voices of fathers and mothers who have seen their children die without understanding, or who will always see in their children the scars of the hunger they endured; the voice of future generations, who no longer have to live with this terrible threat hanging over their lives. I appeal to all!

Let's not wait for the drought to return, appalling and devastating! Let's not wait for the sand to bring death again! Let's not allow the future of these peoples to remain forever threatened! Yesterday's solidarity demonstrated, by its extension and its effectiveness, that it is possible to listen only to the voice of justice and charity, and not that of selfishness, individual and collective.

Listen to my call!

You, the International Organisations, please continue the remarkable work already done; and to accelerate the consistent implementation of the action programs already drawn up. You, the Heads of States, please provide generous aid to the countries of the Sahel, so that a new effort, important and sustained, can bring an even more effective remedy to the drama of the drought. You non-governmental organizations, please redouble your efforts: know how to arouse a current of personal generosity, men, women, children, so that all know that the fruit of their privations really serves to ensure the life and the future chances of their brothers and sisters. I beg you, scientists and technicians, research institutes, to orient your work towards the search for new means of combating desertification; would science not progress just as much if it were placed at the service of human life? It can and must have other goals than the search for new means of death, creators of new deserts, or even the satisfaction of artificial needs created by advertising. That is why I beg you too, you who work in the social media, journalists in the press, radio and television: talk about this problem according to its true dimension, that of the diminished human person and mutilated. Without looking for useless effects, know how to show possible solutions, what has been done and what remains to be done.

All of you, please listen to this call, listen to these voices from the Sahel and from all the countries affected by the drought, without any exception. And to all of you, I say: “God will reward you”!

8. But I also want to address myself particularly to your Catholic brothers in the world, to those in the most favored countries. Let them meditate on the well-known words of Saint Vincent de Paul, one of the heroes of charity and love of the poor. To those who asked him, on the twilight of his life, what more he could have done for the next one, he replied: “Even more”. It is the glory of Christian charity, of this love that we have for each other and which is poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, to always want to do “more”. And that is why I say to you: now those who are hungry and thirsty in the world are at your doorstep! Modern means make it possible to come to their aid. You should therefore not rely solely on national and international political responsibilities. Beyond the universal duty of solidarity, it is your faith which must lead you to examine your real possibilities, to examine, personally and in the family, if what is not really superfluous is not too often called necessary. It is the Lord who invites us to do more.

9. To all, I express my confidence. It is founded on this love of the Lord which unites us, on our participation, in the immensity of the world, in his unique sacrifice, since all? we eat the same bread, and we share the same chalice [ 6 ]. May the Lord, whom we are going to pray together and who is going to come sacramentally among us so that we may receive him, make us progress in his love and cause the water of eternal life to gush forth in all hearts! Amen.

[ 1 ] Is 41, 17-18.

[ 2 ] Jn 4, 14.

[ 3 ] Mt 6, 33.

[ 4 ] Mt 21, 35.

[ 5 ] Is 41, 17.

[ 6 ] Cf. 1 Cor 10, 17.

© Copyright 1980 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

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