JPII visit to Greccio 1983
On Sunday, January 2, 1983, just as the Christmas Octave finalized, Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to the famous place where Saint Francis of Assisi installed the first "crib" in 1223. The Pope thus closed the celebrations of the eighth centenary of the Saint's birth.
He first visited the city of Rieti. At the meeting with the authorities and the people, which took place in Marconi Square, the Holy Father gave a speech. He then celebrated Mass and gave a homily; The Church of Italy celebrated that Sunday the solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, to which the Pope referred. In the early afternoon, John Paul II had a meeting with the ecclesial and civil community of Rieti, to which he addressed an address. Shortly before 4 in the afternoon, the Pope arrived in Greccio; There, in the new church, he greeted and spoke to the nuns of the various monasteries of the diocese. Then he prayed in the grotto of the birth and then, before the crowd, he gave a speech that is a message to the religious of the four Franciscan families.
Message from Greccio to the religious of the four Franciscan families
Dear brothers and sisters,
1. My pilgrimage today to the Reatino valley reaches its summit in this sanctuary of Greccio located between rough rocks and solitary forests, built with sacred stones and worn by the presence and prayer of uninterrupted generations of pilgrims in search of peace and Franciscan joy . I would like to conclude here the solemn celebration of the eighth centenary of the birth of Saint Francis of Assisi which, throughout the past year, has given rise everywhere to a great flowering of successful initiatives that gave new impulses to the life of the whole Church and , especially, to that of the most immediate followers of the Saint.
2. I first of all thank Minister Darida for his presence and the words he addressed to me on behalf of the Italian Government, and I express my gratitude to the Superior General of the Order of Friars Minor who has just interpreted the sentiments of the Franciscan families .
I also offer my greetings to Cardinal Antonelli and the Bishop of Rieti; And I also cordially greet you, the inhabitants of Greccio, and especially the authorities, your mayor above all, and the town council, addressing to all the wish for "Peace and Good" so repeated in this Holy Valley, "Resonance of silence and serenity", from the very lips of the man of Assisi, who left in this land a singular imprint of his soul as a saint, as an apostle and also as a legislator. Many centuries have passed, history has written abundant pages, but in the ancient convents of the Rieti Valley the memories of the Poor Man who here preached, prayed, did penance and worked wonders are vividly noted.
The name of Greccio jumped into history since Christmas 1223, that is, when Saint Francis built the first nativity here, a mystical and popular intuition that spread throughout the world, giving rise to ferments of Christian life. Also to the man of today, happily launched into space and surrounded by a disturbing void of values and certainties, Greccio, "Franciscan Nativity Scene", directs a message of salvation and peace: the Incarnate Word, the divine Child wants to reach and also convert the hearts of this generation, and invites them to experience an infinite love that came to clothe itself with our mortal flesh to be a source of forgiveness and new life.
Furthermore, Saint Francis had a predilection for the inhabitants of Greccio because of their poverty and simplicity, and he even said: "In no large city have I seen so many conversions as in this small place in Greccio." This is a valid testimony also for the present and refers to the virtues of parsimony and detachment aimed at regaining true dominion over things and, better still, to be closer to those who suffer extreme poverty in an opulent society and, therefore, often unfair. In this way they revive the brotherhood and the sense of universal solidarity immanent in Franciscan spirituality and extremely necessary for humanity to rediscover in authentic freedom the ability to sing a song of praise and gratitude to God with the entire creation.
For this reason, I will end my greeting to you, people of Greccio, with the words of the Saint: «Every creature of heaven, earth and sea ... give God praise, glory, honor and blessing; because He alone is omnipotent, admirable, glorious, and the only holy, praiseworthy and blessed forever and ever »(2CtaF 61-62).
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3. And now, from the sanctuary that symbolizes in a certain way the double contemplative and apostolic dimension of the Franciscan vocation, I would like to address in particular the most immediate followers of the Saint of Assisi, the religious of his four families, and dedicate a message to them. at the end of the aforementioned centenary.
Jesus Christ, incarnate and dead by man, is at the center of Francis' spirituality. The mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption are everything to him, who wants to join the Master with an imitation so literal that it is answered even by his own. Ignoring all the symbolic language, the dominant note of medieval culture, his relationship with Christ is direct and dispenses with excessive doctrinal mediations. For him, God is truly "who is"; and Jesus, the only begotten Son of the Father and the Son of Mary, is the teacher and companion of the human adventure that derives certainty and joy from redemption. Francis is in constant dialogue with Jesus Christ, he makes him intervene in the discussions about the Rule, he asks for his advice, strength, and help. It can be said that he lives continuously in his presence. It is necessary to see in this Franciscan style a source of perennial evangelical authenticity, a school that always looks to the origins, to the essence, to the truth of the Christian life.
At this moment the sober and incisive words of Tomás de Celano on the Saint come to mind: «The supreme aspiration of Francis, his most earnest desire and his highest purpose, was to observe in everything and always the Holy Gospel and follow the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ and his steps with great attention, with all care, with all the desire of your mind, with all the fervor of your heart ”(1 Cel 84). This earned Francis the title of "new evangelist", since he placed the Gospel as the foundation of his legislation and spiritual life, and in its light he solved all the problems that arose along the way.
4. Dear brothers of the four great Franciscan families: you belong to different orders, of which you share the particular aims and the special formative orientations; But all together you form the great family of the children of Saint Francis, who propose to profess his charism and evangelical ideal. You have a growing awareness of living in an hour similar in many ways to that of the Saint, urgently in need of testimonies of genuine authenticity and Christian radicalism in order to get out of the suffocating spiral of "horizontal humanism" that, having emptied its interior of transcendent values, it is in danger of plunging the whole of society into self-destruction. It is time to bear witness to the Gospel with new determination and preach it "sine glossa", without a gloss.
The only way to achieve joy, freedom, brotherly love and peace, goals also longed for by the current generation, is the one indicated in the Gospel. This constitutes for each man the path to God, the path that leads us to find divine fatherhood; a path that leads towards oneself to rediscover one's own dignity and towards others to implement true brotherhood.
Joy, freedom, peace and love, eminently Franciscan values, did not come together in the Saint by exception or pure chance, but were the result of a dramatic process that he condensed in the most frequent expression on his lips of «doing penance ", which corresponds to that pronounced by Jesus at the beginning of his preaching:" Repent and believe in the Gospel "(Mk 1:15). He came to joy through suffering, to freedom through obedience, to love of creatures through victory over selfishness. In him everything is modeled after Christ crucified; even his radical poverty has as its ultimate motive the following of the Crucified. In this way, Francis becomes an authentic and sublime follower of Christ and participates in his universal power of attraction.
5. To a society like ours, all projected to overcome suffering, slavery, violence and war, and at the same time mired in anguish at the terrifying uselessness of its efforts, it is necessary to preach the Gospel with all meekness after having it witnessed in the same way (2 R 3,10-13); but also with holy courage to convince Christians that we do not transform ourselves into new men who savor joy, freedom and peace, if the sin that is in us is not recognized first, to pass later, through a true repentance, to bear "fruits worthy of penance" (cf. Lk 3,8).
Indeed, the rejection of God, atheism erected as a theoretical and practical system or simply lived in consumer society, is at the root of all present evils, from the destruction of life, even incipient, to all injustices. social, passing through the loss of the sense of all morality. The theme of penance, as a condition of the living experience of the merciful love of the Lord at all levels of the human condition, is a highly topical issue in this expectation of the Jubilee Year of Redemption.
6. From this sanctuary of Greccio, to those of you who are called to be men of the Gospel like your father Francis, I repeat that it is urgent to approach the men of today, assuming their vicissitudes, problems and sufferings, but above all to convince them that in the Gospel is the sure path of salvation and that every other path is arduous, insecure, insufficient and often leads nowhere. Bring to our times the Good News that is an announcement of hope, reconciliation and peace; resurrect Christ in the hearts of anguished and oppressed men; for all be custodians and witnesses of the hope that does not disappoint. Like Francis, be the "heralds of the great King" (1 Cel 16).
A propitious occasion to give new vigor to your mission as evangelizers and to intensify your valuable service to the Church is offered to you by the Jubilee Year that we are preparing to celebrate in this last part of the millennium to rekindle in hearts the joyful and secure sense of perennial redemption, source of all good for humanity (cf. 1 Cor 8,6).
Children of Saint Francis: trusting in your docility as men of the Gospel, whom the Spirit can freely dispose of for the construction of the Kingdom, assured of your fidelity to the successors of Innocent III and Honorius III, to whom your Seraphic Father promised obedience, Also on behalf of future generations of Friars Minor, I invoke for each one abundant graces of Franciscan and perfect joy and fruitful evangelical apostolate, at the same time that I impart my Apostolic Blessing to you.
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