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February 18, 2024I am delighted to be here for my pastoral visit to your parish dedicated to the Holy Spirit, and to meet you around the altar to celebrate the Eucharist, the sacrament of God's love. We gather around the altar as the holy people of God. We are nourished by the body and blood of Christ, to be members of his body and bear witness to a life of the Gospel. The bishop is the successor of the apostles who has the task of confirming you in faith and guaranteeing unity among all the faithful and with the whole Church.
My pastoral visit takes place at a particular moment in the liturgical year. The holy season of Lent has just begun, a time dedicated to the conversion of heart. Therefore, we can say that the pastoral visit is a time of conversion. Conversion always means, first of all, recognizing the evil within us, accepting our sins, turning from the path of death that leads us away from God, and returning to the path of life that leads us to the joy of salvation. But conversion also means changing our mentality, questioning our own opinions, and opening ourselves to the Gospel.
The word of God today helps us to reflect deeply on our conversion. The Gospel tells us about the temptation of Jesus in the desert; the beginning of his preaching, announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God. It helps us to know that Jesus was tempted but overcame them. This gives us courage that with Jesus, we, too, can face every temptation in life, knowing that we are not alone. We are together with Jesus, who conquered the world. We are united to walk together with the whole Church.
The announcement of the coming of God's kingdom helps us understand our task: all of us are called to build the kingdom of God with our testimony of daily life. The kingdom of God is the destiny of all humanity. God created humanity with a view towards the kingdom of God: a kingdom of peace and justice, of love and truth.
The first and second readings remind us how the heavenly kingdom grows over time. First, we are reminded of the covenant between God and humanity at the time of Noah after the universal flood. God has made a covenant of peace with all humanity. But man, betrayed God and did not keep the covenant. But Jesus, with his death and resurrection, made a new and eternal covenant, and his love for us will never fail.
How can we participate the victory of Jesus and work for the kingdom of heaven? In the second reading, Saint Peter reminds us of the great gift of baptism. And it is precisely on baptism that I would like to draw your attention during this pastoral visit. As I wrote in my pastoral letter, Come and See, all of us have been baptized and participate in the life of Christ. With baptism, we received the vocation to be saints, to love as Jesus loved. We come from many different nations and have different languages, gifts, and rites, but we form a single Church: because we have the most essential things in common: the baptism and the Christian faith.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is the time to rediscover the fundamental value of our baptism, which has made us children of God. Baptism is not just something that happened at the beginning of our lives. Today, we must rediscover the value of our baptism. We form the people of God, the baptized, called to holiness. Rediscovering baptism means for us to convert anew, to move from the slavery of sin and idols to the joy of being children of God.
I invite you to read during these weeks of lent, the message of Pope Francis for lent: Through the desert, God leads us to freedom. The desert is where God speaks to our hearts and reminds us of his love for us. We cross the desert when we stand before the Lord with a sincere heart. We cross the desert when we courageously face difficult situations in life. We cross the desert when we do not allow ourselves to be influenced by the mentality of this world, and we rediscover that we belong to the Lord: we are all members of his body. We belong to the Catholic Church, to Jesus Christ, who gave his life for everyone.
By rediscovering our common baptism, our differences become a richness to be shared. If we forget that we belong to Jesus, then divisions prevail within us. But we have indeed received the baptismal vocation to form together the people of God.
Within this fundamental vocation, we also find our particular vocations: I think first of the vocation to marriage and family life. I think of priests and consecrated people on the path of the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience. By rediscovering our baptism that units us with Jesus forever, we also rediscover the value of our particular vocations.
Let us help young people in particular, to appreciate their baptismal vocation to holiness and discover their specific vocation. In this way, we all walk together as the people of God towards the full manifestation of the kingdom of God that Jesus came to bring to earth.
May Our Lady of Arabia keep us all close to Jesus. May Saint Arethas and his companions help us to be witnesses of the joy of the Gospel in the world.
