PASTORAL LETTER 11
I am writing this Pastoral Letter on Holy Saturday, in between hours of confessions and rehearsals for the great Paschal Vigil that celebrates the glorious resurrection of Jesus.
In these past weeks I have celebrated the Chrism Mass both at Pomio, on 11th April, and at Vunapope, on 18th April. In both celebrations there was a very large participation of people and this was very encouraging, especially for us priests, because we felt supported and help by our Catholic faithful.
In these days, too, I was very much impressed by the participation of people to the Mass of the Last Supper, as well as to the Way of the Cross on Good Friday morning, and the Veneration of the Cross in the afternoon. I am aware that the same participation of people was experienced by all our priests in their respective parishes.
But the reason for writing this Pastoral Letter is because in these days I have come across a letter that St. John Paul II wrote to the priests of the world in 2004. In that letter St. John Paul II reminded the priests of the world of the link that exists between the Eucharist and the priesthood, a link which began in the Upper Room, that Holy Thursday, when Jesus gathered his apostles to celebrate the Passover meal: these two Sacraments were born together and they will be together until the end of the world. At the Last Supper, priesthood was born: Priests were born from the Eucharist. “There can be no Eucharist without the priesthood, just as there can be no priesthood without the Eucharist”. The ordained ministry enables the priest to act in persona Christi. This is an extraordinary reality and we are overwhelmed by the humility by which God “stoops” in order to unite himself with us!
St. John Paul II wrote: “If we feel moved before the Christmas crib, when we contemplate the Incarnation of the Word, what must we feel before the altar where, by the poor hands of the priest, Christ makes his Sacrifice present in time? We can only fall to our knees and silently adore this supreme mystery of faith … The Eucharist is a mystery of faith, yet the priesthood itself is also a mystery of faith. At the beginning of his public life, the Messiah called the Twelve, appointed them ‘to be with him’ and sent them out on mission. At the Last Supper, this “being with” Jesus on the part of the Apostles reached its culmination. By celebrating the Passover meal and instituting the Eucharist, the divine Master brought their vocation to its fulfilment. By saying ‘Do this in memory of me’, he put a Eucharistic seal on their mission. Quite rightly, then, the Christian people give thanks to God for the gift of the Eucharist and the priesthood”.
Promotion for Priestly Vocations!
From the Upper Room Christ continues to seek and call. Unfortunately the number of priests, even here in our Archdiocese of Rabaul where, thanks be to God, we have a good number of vocations, is never sufficient to meet the demands of evangelization and the pastoral care of the faithful. For this reason I ask all the Catholic faithful of the Archdiocese to pray and work actively to promote vocations so that priests will never be lacking in the Church.
In his letter St. John Paul II was calling on Priests to be the first ones responsible in the pastoral promotion of priestly vocations, ready to help all those whom Christ wishes to associate to his priesthood to respond generously to his call.
He proposed two things to the priests: Personal fidelity of priests and care for altar servers!
• Personal fidelity of priests is indispensable. St. John Paul II wrote: “What counts is our personal commitment to Christ, our love for the Eucharist, our fervour in celebrating it, our devotion in adoring it and our zeal in offering it to our brothers and sisters, especially to the sick. Jesus the High Priest wishes to count on our active cooperation. Priests in love with the Eucharist are capable of communicating to children and young people that “Eucharistic amazement”. Generally these are the priests who lead them to the path of the priesthood, as the history of our own vocations might easily show.
• With this Pastoral Letter, therefore, I ask all our priests to show special care for altar servers, who represent a kind of “garden” of priestly vocations. The group of altar servers can be given a valuable experience of Christian education and become a kind of pre-seminary. Although the Archdiocese, following the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum of Pope Benedict XVI, allows girls or women to service at the altar, the practice of having boys as altar servers should not only be preserved but introduced where it does not exists. Priests should help the parish, as a family made up of families, to look upon the altar servers as their own children, like “olive shoots around the table” of Jesus Christ, the Bread of Life.

A Tabernacle in Every Catholic Community!

In these past days of prayers and reflection, especially during the Holy Thursday, I thought about all my predeccessors and how much they must have wished to see that the Sacrifice of the Mass could be celebrated in every community. That wish or dream remained for them and it remains for me too “our long-range objective”. For this reason, I encourage the faithful to continue praying for vocations, so that the Lord of the harvest may send labourers into his harvest, so that one day all our Catholic communities could have the Mass, at least every Sunday. In the mean time, we will do everything “to ensure that the Sacrifice of the Mass is made available as often as possible to the faithful who are regularly deprived of it” (Dies Domini, 53).

Instead “our short-range objective” is to provide a tabernacle in every catholic community where the Eucharist is preserved and distributed during the “Sunday liturgy without a priest”.

But in order to have a tabernacle in every Catholic Community, we need:

• To deepen our faith in the Eucharist and in the real presence of the Lord, through a systematic and organic catechesis.

For this, I encourage the Priests, the Consecrated men and women, and in particular the Catechists, to provide catechetical instruction to people on the eucharistic mystery and to do all they can to safeguard the sacred dignity of the Eucharist. It is important, for example, to instruct the faithful with regards to the indispensable conditions for the reception of Holy Communion so as to avoid two extremes: people who could receive Holy Communion and do not, and people who receive it and should not. I believe that in our Catholic communities there are people who could participate in Eucharistic Communion and do not, even though they have no serious sin on their conscience as obstacle. Is it because they feel unworthy or because they lack a kind on interior willingness, a lack of Eucharistic “hunger” and “thirst”? Is it a sign of lack of adequate sensitivity towards the great Sacrament of love and lack of understanding of its nature?

We need to instruct well our faithful, beginning with the children, to encourage them to receive Jesus in Holy Communion as frequently as possible. Our Pastoral Guideliens states clearly that First Holy Communion can given to children who are in Grade 3 or 4, while Confirmation to those who are in Grade 7 or 8.

• To give importance to the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Our faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist will lead us to give importance to the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. I have visited almost all our Catholic communities and I have seen how, in many of them, the Chapel occupies a very central place in the villages. How easy it would be for people to visit the Blessed Sacrament! And how beautiful it would be if in every chapel some people were to come together once a week for a holy hour of Adoration in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament! I am thinking, for example, of Friday. It is the day when Jesus suffered and died for us; it is the day on which we remember, in a special way, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. There is no better way of expressing our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus than to celebrate the Eucharist and, for those who cannot do so, to gather together in adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament, drawing from his infinite love for us the strength and power to live worthy Christian lives.

While thanking Jesus for his great gift, let us plead with him not to let us go spiritually hungry for lack of priests. Let us implore him to keep our seminarians and priests free from evil. Jesus will feel twice as happy when our own sons will be the ones to feed us with the Holy Eucharist.