THe Pope Despite Sore Throat Talks Paul and True Christian Worship at 2009's First General Audience (Full Text and Pics)

It is the first Wednesday Papal Audience of the New Year and the Pope is still talking St Paul Thanks to the Ratzinger Forum for the quick translation of the text and the pics. He is a liitle hoarse today. See Pope Benedict Jokes About Hoarse Voice. To hear our Hoarse pontiff in Italian today go here to media01.vatiradio.va/podcast/00144795.MP3


Dear brothers and sisters,

At this first General Audience of 2009, I wish to express to all my fervent best wishes for the year that has just begun. Let us revive in ourselves the commitment to open up our mind and heart to Christ, in order to be and to live as true friends with him. May his company make this year, even with its inevitable difficulties, a journey full of joy and peace. Indeed, only if we remain united with Jesus can the new year be good and happy.

The commitment of union with Christ is the example that St. Paul offers us. Continuing with the catecheses dedicated to him, we will dwell today on one of the important aspects of his thought - that regarding the worship that Christians are called on to exercise. In the past, much was made about an anti-worship tendency in the Apostle, of his 'spiritualization' of the idea of worship. Now we understand better that Paul sees in the Cross of Christ a historical turning point which transforms and radically renews the reality of worship.

Above all, there are three texts from the Letter to the Romans referring to his new vision of worship. 1. In Romans 3,25, after writing of the 'redemption realized by Jesus Christ', Paul continues with a formulation that seems mysterious to us: "(Jesus was) set forth as an instrument of expiation, through faith, by his blood". With this expression which sounds strange to us - 'instrument of expiation' - St. Paul is referring to the so-called 'propitiatory' of the ancient (Jewish) temple, which is the lid of the Ark of the Covenant, believed to be the point of contact between God and man, the point of his mysterious presence in the world of men.

This 'propitiatory', on the great day of reconciliation, Yom Kippur, was sprinkled with the blood of sacrificial animals, blood which symbolically brought the sins of the past year into contact with God, thus casting these sins into the abyss of divine goodness, and as though absorbed by the power of God, overcome and forgiven. Life could start anew. St. Paul refers to this rite and says: This rite was an expression of the desire that we can truly put all of our sins into the abyss of divine mercy and thus make them disappear. But this cannot be realized with the blood of animals. It requires a more real contact between human sin and divine love.

This contact took place on the Cross of Christ. Christ, Son of the true God, who became true man, took upon himself all our sins. He himself is the point of contact between human misery and divine mercy - in his heart, the sad mass of all the evil done by mankind is dissolved, and life is renewed. In pointing out to this change, St. Paul tells us: The Cross of Christ - the supreme act of divine love which has become human love - put an end to the old cult with sacrificial animals in the temple of Jerusalem

That symbolic worship, a worship of desire, has now been replaced by true worship: God's love incarnated in Christ is brought to fulfillment in his death on the Cross. Therefore, this is not a spiritualization of real worship, but on the contrary, it is real worship itself, true divine-human love replacing a symbolic and provisional worship.

The Cross of Christ, his flesh-and-blood love, is the true worship, which corresponds to the reality of God and man. For Paul, even before the physical destruction of the temple [of Jerusalem], the time of the temple and its worship was over. Paul is here in perfect consonance with the words of Jesus, who had announced the end of the temple and announced another temple 'not made by the hands of man' - the temple of his resurrected body (cfr Mk 14,58; Jn 2,19ff). 2.

The second passage I wish to discuss today is found in the first verse of Chapter 12 of the Letter to the Romans. We heard it earlier [at the brief Scripture reading that precedes the catechesis] and I repeat it: "I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship". These words contain an apparent paradox: while sacrifice normally demands the death of the victim, Paul talks about it instead in relation to the life of the Christian.

The expression "offer your bodies", as the concept of sacrifice, takes on the ritual nuance of "giving oneself in oblation, in offering". The exhortation to 'offer your bodies' refers to the entire person; indeed, in Romans 6,13, he says "present yourselves (to God). Moreover, the explicit reference to the physical dimension of man coincides with the invitation to "glorify God in your body" (1 Cor 6,20). It means, therefore, to honor God more concretely in our daily existence, with its relational and perceptible visibility. Such behavior is described by Paul as "a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God". It is here that we encounter the word 'sacrifice'. In the usage of that time, this term had a sacred context to indicate the ritual slaughter of an animal, of which part is burned in honor of the gods and the rest consumed by the offerers in a banquet. Paul applies it instead to the life of the Christian.

In fact, he describes such a sacrifice using three adjectives. First - 'living' - which expresses vitality. The second - 'holy' - recalls the Pauline idea of holiness linked not to places and objects but to the person of the Christian himself. The third - 'pleasing to God' - perhaps recalls the frequent Biblical expression of sacrifice "a sweet-smelling oblation" (cfr Lev 1,13.17; 23,18; 26,31; etc.). Soon afterwards, Paul defines this new way of living: this, he says, is "your spiritual worship". The commentators on the text know that the Greek expression (tçn logikçn latreían)is not easy to translate.

The Latin Bible translates it as 'rationabile obsequium'. The same word 'rationabile' is found in the first Eucharistic Prayer, the Roman Canon, in which one prays that God may accept the offering [of the Mass] as 'rationabile'. The usual Italian translation into 'spiritual worship' does not reflect all the nuances of the Greek expression (nor of the Latin). In any case, it does not mean a worship that is any less real, or simply metaphorical, but a more concrete and realistic act of worship - worship in which man himself in his totality as a being endowed with reason, becomes adoration and glorification of the living God.

This Pauline formula, which returns in the Eucharistic Prayer of the Roman Missal, is the fruit of the long development of religious experience in the centuries before Christ. In this experience, we meet theological developments of the Old Testament and currents of Greek thought. I would like to point out some elements of this development.

The Prophets and many Psalms strongly criticize the bloody sacrifices in the temple. For example, Psalm 50[49], in which God says: "Were I hungry, I would not tell you, for mine is the world and all that fills it. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer praise as your sacrifice to God; fulfill your vows to the Most High" (12-14). In the same sense, the following Psalm 51[50] says: "...A burnt offering you would not accept. My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit; God, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart" (18f). In the Book of Daniel, at the time of the second destruction of the temple by the Hellenistic regime (second century BC), we find a new step in the same direction. In the midst of fire - namely, persecution and suffering - Azariah prays: "We have in our day no prince, prophet, or leader, no holocaust, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you. But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received, as though it were holocausts of rams and bullocks... So let our sacrifice be in your presence today" (Dan 3,38ff). With the destruction of the temple and of the ritual act, deprived of every sign of the presence of God, the believer offers as the true holocaust his contrite heart - his desire of God.

We see an important and beautiful development, but with a danger. There is a spiritualization, a moralization, of worship: worship becomes only a thing of the heart, of the spirit. The body is missing, the community is missing. Thus we understand that Psalm 51 and even the Book of Daniel, despite their criticism of ritual acts, desire a return to the time of sacrifices. But to a time of renewal, to a renewed sacrifice, in a synthesis that then was not foreseeable, that then was even unthinkable.

To get back to St. Paul. He was the heir of these developments, of the desire for true worship, in which man himself becomes the glory of God, a living adoration with his whole being. It is in this sense that he tells the Romans: "...Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship" (Rm 12,1). Thus Paul repeats what he already indicated in Chapter 3: the time of the sacrifice of animals - a sacrifice by substitution - is over. The time for ture worship has come.

But here, too, there is the danger of misunderstanding: One could easily interpret this new worship in a moralistic sense - that by offering our life, we perform true worship. But this would substitute moralism for animal worship, in that man could do everything by himself by sheer moral effort. This was certainly not St. Paul's intention. The question remains: How must we interpret this 'spiritual, rational worship'? Paul always supposes that we have become 'one in Christ Jesus' (Gal 3,28), that we died in baptism (cfr Rm 1) and now we live with Christ, for Christ, in Christ. In this union - and only thus - we can become, in him and with him, 'a living sacrifice' and offer 'true worship'.

The sacrificed animals were meant as a substitute for man, man's gift of himself, but they could not. Jesus Christ, in giving himself to the Father and to us, is not a substitute, but truly carries humanity in himself, our sins and our desires. He truly represents us, he assumed us into himself. In the communion with Christ, realized in faith and in the sacraments, we become, despite all our inadequacies, a living sacrifice; and thus, we achieve 'true worship'. This synthesis is the basis for the Roman Canon in which we pray that the offering may become 'rationabile' - that spiritual worship may be realized.

The Church knows that in the Holy Eucharist, Christ's self-giving, his true sacrifice, becomes present. But the Church prays that the community that makes the offering is truly united with Christ, truly transformed. She prays so that we ourselves can become what we cannot be by our own powers: an offering that is 'rationabile' and pleasing to God. Thus, the Eucharistic Prayer interprets the words of St. Paul correctly.

St. Augustine clarified all this in a wonderful manner in the 10th book of his City of God. I will cite only two sentences: "This is the sacrifice of Christians: although we are many, we are one body in Christ" ... "The entire community (civitas) that has been redeemed - namely, the congregation and the society of saints - is an offering to God through the High Priest who gave himself" (10,6: CCL 47, 27 ss). 3. Finally, a brief word on the third text from the Letter to the Romans about the new worship. St. Paul says in Chapter 15: "...the grace given me by God to be a minister [liturgo] of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, in performing the priestly service [hierourgein] of the gospel of God, so that the offering up of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the holy Spirit" (15,15ff).

I wish to underscore just two aspects of this marvellous text which is unique in the Pauline letters for its terminology. Above all, St. Paul interprets his missionary activity among the peoples of the world as a priestly activity. To announce the Gospel in order to unite peoples in communion with the risen Christ is a 'priestly' action. The Apostle of the gospel is a true priest,doing what is the center of priesthood: preparing the true sacrifice. Then the second aspect: the object of missionary activity is, we might say, cosmic liturgy: that peoples united in Christ, the world, become as such the glory of God, "an offering that is acceptable and sanctified by the Holy Spirit".

Here we see the dynamic aspect, the aspect of hope in the Pauline concept of worship: Christ's self-giving implies the tendency to attract everyone to communion with his Body, to unite the world. Only in communion with Christ, the exemplary Man, one with God, can the world become what we all desire: a mirror of divine love. This dynamism is always present in the Eucharist - this dynamism that should inspire and form our lives. Let us start the new year with this dynamism. Thank you for your patience.