CELEBRATION
IN THE CATHEDRAL
MONCTON, NEW
BRUNSWICK
Dear
Brothers and Sisters,
Praised
be Jesus Christ! I give thanks to God for allowing me to
come and visit this province of
New
Brunswick which is celebrating this year its second centenary. With joy I greet the
Church of God in Moncton, the metropolitan see, and it's
Archbishop, the Most Reverend Donat Chiasson. I also greet
Saint John,
the oldest diocese, established in 1842, with the Most Reverend Arthur
Gilbert;
the diocese of Bathurst with the Most Reverend Edgar Godin; and that of
Edmundston with the Most Reverend Gérard Dionne.
I greet those who have come from other provinces of Canada and even
from
the United States because they are neighbours or because their ancestors came from Acadia.
The
Lord is in the midst of us who are
gathered in his name. We who have
put our faith in the risen Christ have been given the task to reflect
as a
mirror the glory of the Lord and to be transformed by the Holy Spirit (cf.
2 Co 3:18). It is as if we were seeing
Jesus "ut videntes Jesum", according
to the beautiful motto of this diocese. And it is Mary, who, through
the Holy Spirit, has given us the
Saviour Jesus. It is she who leads
us to him.
This
cathedral reminds us of the role of Mary
in the Church. The Acadians
have always had a
great devotion for Mary, their mother in heaven.
In
1881, at their first national congress, they chose her as their
patron saint under the title of
Our Lady of
the Assumption, and they adopted
August 15th as their national feast-day. They even founded the Society
of the
"Assumption". And so the star of Mary shines bright on their
flag with its French and papal colours and the "Ave Maris Stella" rings out like a national anthem. The
first Acadian
parish here, in Moncton, was dedicated to Our Lady of the
Assumption and
it is on the site of its chapel
that the
first Archbishop of Moncton, Most Reverend Arthur Mélanson had this
Cathedral
built and inaugurated in 1940.
Dear
brothers and sisters, how your
century-old devotion to Mary fills me
with joy! I am sure that you fully intend to be faithful to it, to intensify
it, along the lines which Vatican
II suggested at the end of the Constitution
on the Church. Our Lady of the Assumption is truly "the sign of
assured hope and consolation for the
people of God in pilgrimage on earth"
(Lumen Gentium, No. 68). And I think that she has already
allowed this
deeply-rooted faith of the Acadian people to weather all
storms.
The
Church which welcomes here today the pope
is the magnificent outcome
of a laborious
beginning of a tormented history, in which we admire your ancestors'
tenacity.
It
was here, in 1604, that the first French colony in America was
founded.
In this region of
Acadia, thanks to the zeal of many groups of missionaries,
the Catholic faith took deep root among the population and among all
the
Amerindians of the maritime provinces, who have shown since then a marvelous fidelity. Yes,
despite the trials
of deportation and even the threat of annihilation because of
political
vicissitudes, the Acadians remained faithful to their faith, faithful
to their
culture, faithful to their land to which they continuously strove to
return, in
the greatest poverty deprived of the ministry of their priests, of the
means of
education and of political rights.
For a
time, lay people saw to prayer meetings and sustained the
faith, until a
few priests and religious could come
to
exercise their apostolate among them. Since then, during the past hundred
years, the Acadian people have been able to lift up their heads again and the Catholic faith has
flourished. I am
thinking, among other things
of the
many profoundly Christian families, of the numerous vocations to the priesthood and to the religious
life. How
could one forget that a place not far from here, Memramcook,
was the
cradle of the Congregation founded
by Blessed
Sister Marie-Léonie? Cultural growth took place too as the
French-speaking university and the means of social communication bear witness.
At
the beginning of this century, the Acadians came to Rome in the
person of Father François-Michel Richard to see my predecessor, Pope Pius X, to bear witness to their
heroic history
and to explain their need for
an Acadian bishop. The saintly pope, so
devoted to the mystery of the eucharist,
gave them a gold
chalice as a pledge of his concern and of his promise.
Today, it is the Bishop of Rome who comes to you. He gives thanks
for
the fidelity and strength of your faith through trials that remind him
of those
of his own country in the course of the centuries, and of those which are known today by our
brothers and sisters around the
world who are persecuted for their faith, harassed for their
cultural
and national attachments in which
their faith
is deeply rooted. It is not without emotion that I will
celebrate Mass
with the chalice given by Saint Pius
X. All
this suffering will be united in it with the blood of Christ in
the hope
that it will be transfigured into the glorious life of the Lord.
But
the Church here does not limit herself to the people of Acadian origin.
She embraces all those who, united to
the Successor of Peter, share
the same Catholic faith; and she invites them to live as brothers and sisters,
respectful of their different spiritual anc [sp]
cultural riches, and joined together in the same mission of
evangelizing this
contemporary world. Other waves
of
immigrants, in fact, particularly from Ireland, came to join them
during about
the last century and a half. The vitality of the Church in New
Brunswick
owes them much, and I greet with affection these English-speaking families.
May
the Holy Spirit guide us on this arduous but necessary road of
ecumenical efforts in order that we may constantly go towards full
unity! God
wants us to be faithful to the authenticity of our faith, to our culture, to our history, to our land,
with
respect for others, and also, in fraternal love, in real
solidarity in
the face of the present human needs, and in the sincere search for his
Truth.
Dear
brothers and sisters: we shall meet
again this afternoon for the Eucharistic
celebration, on a
site of natural beauty which is part of the charm
of this area. But let us look again at
this beautiful Cathedral of granite. It is the house of God, built with care by
your forefathers as a sign
of
the divine presence, visible
from afar, and in witness of their own gratitude
to Mary. It is the eminently
fitting place for the Eucharistic assembly,
around the Bishop; and in the person of the Bishop assisted by his
priests, it
is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Supreme Pontiff, who is present in the midst of the faithful
(cf. Lumen Gentium, No. 21).
This Cathedral is also
the place for
the personal reconciliation of sinners with God. It is permanently the house of
prayer, community prayer and also
the silent prayer of
adoration.
It
is,
at the same
time, the symbol of the Church which is in Moncton, built
of living stones, of you yourselves who are its members.
Each of you has your place here, your specific role according to
ordination,
vocation or charism: you, the
bishops,
priests and deacons, who are ordained to represent Christ the
Head in the
service of the community; you, the religious, brothers and sisters, who
are
consecrated to give to the world an
appreciation of the Kingdom of God, present and to come, in its radical
evangelical
character; and all of you, the baptized and confirmed laity; you, the
Christian
families, the incarnation of love; you, fathers and mothers in charge
of your
families; you, the members of movements of spirituality; and so many of
you
here who represent the youth; you who are engaged in the service of the
liturgy,
of catechetics, of charity, of the sick, of
the aged, or of those on the margin of society; you, the educators, and those of you in charge of culture and the media; you, the laity of Catholic action movements or
of
professional associations of fishermen, farmers or workers.
The
one universal Church, is necessarily present in this
particular Church. And I myself -
whom Christ
has asked, as he asked Peter, to be the shepherd of the
"sheep" and of the "lambs", and to confirm my brethren in the faith - come to strengthen each one
of you in
your mission. We shall meditate this afternoon on the ecclesial
community.
The
only foundation of our Church is Jesus
Christ. The mortar that binds
its stones is the love that comes from his Holy Spirit. The sign it must
give to all passers-by is a witness of the theological
virtues, virtues which derive from God and which consist in believing
unconditionally in Christ, in hoping in the very depth of our trials,
in loving without limits. We are
a pilgrim people,
making our way towards a fulness
[sp]
that surpasses our earthly horizons. And Mary is our star in this turbulent sea.
AVE
MARIS STELLA (Hail,
Star of the Sea!)
Conférence
des évêques catholiques du Canada