This is rather important and intriguing stuff.

On Thursday, Pope Benedict met with parish priests from the Diocese of Albano (where Castel Gandalfo is located.) Teresa at PRF is in the process of translating the exchange, and I’m sure you’ll find much of interest here. I’m sort of on the edge of my seat for the next two parts she’s promising. Sad, eh?

He responds to a question about the challenges of ministry and the temptation for priests to neglect their spiritual lives in the busy-ness of their days:

Thus, it seems to me important to see that these two realities – the Holy Mass celebrated as a real dialog wth God and the Liturgy of the Hours – are zones of freedom, of interior life, that the Church gives us and which constitute a source of internal riches for us. In these practices, we not only encounter the Church through the ages but the Lord Himself who speaks to us and awaits our response.

Let us learn to pray in unison with the prayers of all time, through which we can also encounter the faithful of all time. Let us think of the Psalms, of the words of the Prophets, the words of our Lord and His apostles, the comments of the Church Fathers. Today, for instance, we had that marvelous comment by St. Columban on Christ as the spring from which we drink the ‘living water.’

In praying, we also encounter the sufferings today of the people of God. Our prayers inevitably make us think of our daily life and can guide us in dealing with our people today. Prayer illumines us in these encounters, because we do not bring to others only our own small measure of intelligence and our love of God, but we learn, through the word of God, to bring God Himself to others. This is what our people expect of us – that we bring them the ‘living water’ which St. Columban speaks of today. People thirst – and seek to satisfy this thirst by different diversions. But they understand quite well that these diversions are not the ‘living water’ which they thirst for. The Lord is the source of ‘living water.’

And then go back and read the next part, in response to a question about something the priest-questioner called "integrated ministry" which the Pope admits is a new phrase to him, but he infers means a combination of traditional parish-based ministry with a more evangelical set of tasks.

What the Pope does, in answer to this question, is to go through the "traditional" responsibilities of the parish priest – celebrating the sacraments, preaching the Gospel, and caritas or service to the poor and others in need – and tease out how each of these can and should have a missionary dimension. It’s marvelous. Typical Benedict-ine clarity and depth, finding the new in the old and the old in the new. On baptism:

In the parish, I would say that we have three fundamental tasks which arise from the nature of the Church and of the priestly ministry. The first is the sacramental service. I would say that Baptism, preparing for it and the task of giving continuity to obligations taken on at Baptism, already brings us in contact even with those who do not fully believe. It is not a task so much to preserve Christianity, but a challenging encounter with people who probably go to Church rarely.

And so, the task of preparing for Baptism – opening up the souls of the parents, relatives and godparents to the reality of Baptism – already can and should be a missionary commitment that goes beyond the confines of those who are already ‘faithful.’

In preparing our parishioners for Baptism, we must make them understand that this Sacrament means being introduced into the family of God, that God exists and cares for us, that He cared enough to have taken on our flesh and to have instituted the Church which is His Body, in which He is able to be incarnated, we might say, in our society.

Baptism gives us new life in the sense that beyond our biological life, we need the gift of a sense of life which is stronger than death. The gift of biological life can be justified only if we can add to it a sense of stabllity, of a future which, despite crises which will come – and which we cannot know beforehand – will give value to our life, make life worth living, make us value the very fact that we were created.

Therefore I think that in preparing for this Sacrament or talking to parents who have doubts about Baptism, we have a missionary situation. We are transmitting the Christian message. We interpret for them the reality that begins with Baptism.

I am not sufficiently familiar with the Italian rite. In the classic rite, inherited from the early Church, Baptism begins with the question: "What do you ask of the Church of God?" Today, at least in the German rite, the answer is simply "Baptism." This does not state adequately what it is that one desires. In the ancient rite, one answered: "Faith," that is, a relationship with God. To get to know God.

"And why," the question goes on, "do you ask for faith?"
Answer: "Because I wish for eternal life." That is, we want a life that is secure even in future crises, a life that has meaning, that justifies being a man.

In any case, I think that this dialog should take place with the parents before Baptism. Which is to say that the gift of the Sacrament is not simply a ‘thing,’ nor a ‘thingification,’ as the French put it. It is missionary work.

On preaching the Gospel:

The second aspect is announcing the Gospel, with its two essential elements: the homily and catechesis. In the Bishops’ Synod last year, they spoke a lot about the homily, showing how difficult it is today to find a bridge between the words of the New Testament, written 2000 years ago, and our present.

I must tell you that the historical-critical mode of exegesis is often not enough to help us prepare our homilies. I experience it myself in trying to prepare homilies that actualize the word of God; or to put it better – since the word of God is an actuality by itself – to make people see and feel this actuality.

Historical-critical exegesis tells us a lot about the past, of the moment when the words were first said, of their significance at the time they were said, but such explanations do not always help us understand that the words of Jesus, of the Apostles and of the Old Testament, are spirit and life, with which the Lord speaks to us even today.

I think we should ‘defy’ the theologians – as the Synod has – by going ahead and helping parish priests better prepare their homilies, to make people sense the presence of the Word: the Lord speaks to us today, not only in the past.

I have been reading in recent days the draft for the post-
Synodal Apostolic Exhortation. I have seen with satisfaction that this ‘defiance’ is kept in the models prepared for homilies. Ultimately, the parish priest must prepare his homily in his context, speaking to his parish. But he may need some help to understand and make others understand the actual ‘present-ness’ of the Word of God, which is never a Word of the past, but always a Word for today.

I have to say that was has amazed and gratified me most about Benedict since that first homily as Pope is not simply his learning and fluidity in sharing it, but his awareness of..life. In the midst of all the study and intellectual processing and creativity, he has obviously never failed to observe the world around him: what thrusts people into despair, what gives them hope, what the contemporary world offers us, how it disappoints us, as well as the realities of life as a Catholic, lay, ordained and religious. One of the things those who know him have been telling us for a year and half now is that he’s a superb and attentive listener. I think so.  That simple discourse on baptism up there lays it all out – there’s no abstract idealism there. He gets what the moment is for so many parents bringing their children for baptism, and he encourages the priests listening to him to take this moment, not to introduce these parents to a thing that they’re doing, but to a Person who gives life within this Body we call Church.

Oh, and in case you read Italian – here’s the Italian text of the exchange, from the Vatican website.

In other related news, The photo archive of L’Osservatore Romano is now online

The digital photo archive of L’Osservatore Romano is now on-line, replete with papal photos from as far back as 1930.

The large-scale initiative now gives both professionals and private individuals access to thousands of photographs of the Pope and the Holy See via the Internet.

"It has been an important endeavor of historical reconstruction which called for huge research commitment," Giuseppe Colombara, director of the photographic service of the Vatican paper, said in today’s Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano.

The project required L’Osservatore staff to digitalize thousands of photographs which up to now were on paper or in negatives, and also add captions to each image to facilitate on-line purchase and use.

Here’s the website