To the Seminarians of Paris (1 June 1980)

On Sunday, 1 June 1980, the Holy Father addressed the Seminarians of Paris, whom he encouraged to be good shepherds after the example of the Good Shepherd, who gave his life for the sheep. 

Dear seminarian friends,

1. I could not end this afternoon without spending some time with you, getting to know your faces, and admonishing you in the name of the Lord. What a joy to meet you, young people in formation in the Paris region! I was told that the students of the Saint-Sulpice Seminary, those of the Carmelite University Seminary and the members of various routing groups were gathered here. It's good. I am happy that we can count on your availability to serve, on your generosity. By addressing these few words to you, you will allow me to address myself at the same time to all your French colleagues who, elsewhere in this country, but also in my diocese of Rome, are following the same path.

As you know, I have just had a long working session with your bishops. It was a particularly important meeting, during which we were able, we who jointly bear the burden of all the Churches, to face up to our responsibilities in order to assume them according to what pleases God. And now it seems quite natural to continue in some way such a conversation, with those who are preparing to become collaborators of the episcopal order, and to be thus associated, in the person of Christ, with the preaching of the Gospel. and leadership of the people of God. You are still young, certainly, but you already have a presentiment of many things. You understand that your gift must be total and that the more you go, the more you will discover the need to make it - if I may say so - even more total.

2.One of these requirements, the most fundamental, is that you be deeply rooted in Jesus Christ. I invite you with all my heart. If you could learn, through prayer and contemplation, to live, preach, love and suffer like Christ, it seems that the main lines of your mission would gradually become clearer, and that you would also feel a vital need to join the men and give them what they really need. In such an approach there is already the soul of the apostolate, so that “acting” is indissolubly linked to “being”, and vice versa, without it being useful to pursue vain debates, nor good favor one over the other. The Church intends to form you in a complete interior unity, where the mission requires intimacy with God, and where this calls for that.

Don't you want to be “good shepherds” yourself? The Good Shepherd gives his life, and he gives his life for his sheep. Well! you must discover the meaning of self-sacrifice, linked to the sacrifice of Christ, and offer yourselves for others who expect this witness from you. This can be said to all the faithful, but with all the more reason and in a special way to priests and future priests.

May your daily participation in the Eucharist and the efforts you make to make Eucharistic devotion grow in you, help you on this path!

3.I spoke to you a moment ago of unity within yourselves. In my opinion, it enables one to acquire what one could call pastoral wisdom. One of the fruits of the conciliar decree of Vatican II on formation for the priesthood was certainly to create the conditions for a better pastoral preparation of the candidates. Thanks to the interior balance realized in you, you must be able to refine your judgment on men, on things, on situations, to look at them with the Light of God and not with the eyes of the century. It will bring you to a deep perception of the problems, of the multiple urgencies of the mission, and at the same time it will push you towards the right goal. You will thus be less tempted to “celebrate” only what our contemporaries are experiencing, or on the contrary to experiment on them with pastoral ideas that may be generous, but personal and without the guarantee of the Church: we do not make experiments on men. And you will take to heart, by this very fact, your indispensable intellectual work today as after ordination, in order to transmit to others the whole content of the faith in an exact, harmonious and easy to assimilate synthesis.

Besides, is it necessary to specify that the priest is one among others? He alone cannot be everything to everyone. His ministry is exercised within a presbyterium, around a bishop. This is already a bit your case, insofar as your links with your diocese are gradually strengthened, where you are inserted into pastoral teams, to develop in you the capacity to work in the Church. And if your personal journey - or the emphasis sometimes placed on such and such an aspect of your preparation - makes you more suitable for a specific type of ministry, with a more particular category of population, you will not be less fundamentally sent to all, with the pastoral concern of all and the will to collaborate with all, without any exclusion of tendency or milieu. You must also be able to accept any ministry entrusted to you, without making your acceptance conditional on conformity with propriety or personal projects. In this matter, it is the needs of the Church that have priority, and it is to them that we must adapt.

This seems absolutely essential to your Bishops and to myself, in consideration of the charge with which Providence has invested us and with which you will one day be associated.

4. My dear Sons, you see the magnitude of the task, the magnitude of the needs. There are not many of you, and yet the efforts undertaken for several years are beginning to yield visible results. I will not tell you that the generosity of the laity will make up for the lack of priests. It is completely of another order. Among the laity, you will always have to develop a sense of responsibility and educate them to take their full place in the community. But what God has placed in your hearts by his call corresponds to a specific vocation. Try to give better witness to your faith and your joy. You are the witnesses of priestly vocations among adolescents and young people of your age. Ah! If you knew how to give an account of the hope that is in you, to show that the mission cannot wait, in France and even more so in other more disadvantaged countries! I encourage you with all my strength to be the first apostles of vocations.

5. I also want to encourage and thank your teachers and your educators at all levels: directors of seminaries, diocesan delegates, priests of parishes, chaplaincies and movements who contribute to your formation, and those who have enabled you to discern the call of the Lord. You owe them a lot. The Church owes them much. In this place, I would like to pay special homage to the priests of the Company of Saint-Sulpice, who knew how to deserve the esteem of all in their service to the priesthood.

Your educators have a difficult task. It should be known in France that I place my trust in them and give them my fraternal support. They want to train quality priests. May they continue and further develop their efforts, basing themselves on the texts of the Council, on the excellent “Rationes” which have been prepared at the request of the Holy See, and on the recent documents published by the Congregation for Catholic Education and that they have, I have no doubt, widely distributed and commented upon.

A very big thank you to all of you, dear Brothers and dear Sons. I give you an appointment later, at the Parc des Princes, with the young people of the Paris region, and I bless you with my deep affection.

© Copyright 1980 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

 Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana