MANILA:
6 July 2013 --The Bishops of the Philippines are
holding their
one hundred and seventh plenary assembly, in two locations
between 1-8
July. They began with four days of retreat at the
Betania Retreat
House, Tagaytay City, and then moved to Pius XII in Manila for
the more
formal business and pastoral meeting, many of them also
attending
another event as indicated below.
The association of a retreat with one of the annual meetings
for the
Filipino Bishops is a long-standing custom. This year
the retreat
was preached by the Salesian Fr Frank Moloney, former
Provincial of the
Australia-Pacific Province, now returned to academic life at
Australian
Catholic University. Taking the Year of Faith as a
starting
point, Fr Moloney developed six sessions across the period of
the
retreat.
Two were dedicated to “The Word in the Church’s Life and
Mission,” a
reflection on the sometimes ambiguous history of the role of
the Word
in the life of the Church, culminating in Vatican II
(especially Sacrosanctum
Concilium and Dei
Verbum), and the post-Conciliar
Magisterium, especially Benedict XVI’s Verbum Domini.
Challenging
the Bishops he used the words of St Jerome, cited by Benedict
XVI:
“When we approach the Mystery, if a crumb falls to the ground
we are
troubled. Yet when we are listening to the Word of God,
and God’s
word and Christ’s flesh are being poured into our ears, we pay
no heed”
(Verbum Domini 56).
Two further sessions took up the theme of “The Word in Jesus
of
Nazareth.” These sessions faced the challenge of looking
through
the theological storytelling of the Four Gospels to discover
what Jesus
of Nazareth thought he was doing (with a focus on the parables
and the
Kingdom), and who he thought he was in his relationships with
God and
with his fellow Jews (Son and Son of Man). This
challenging day
closed with the exhortation from 1 John 2:6: “He who says he
abides in
him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”
The final sessions were a biblical meditation on Mark
8:14-9:29, a
reflection on “The Word in authentic sequela Christi.”
This
section of Mark tells of Jesus’ attempts to lead his disciples
away
from their partial sight (paradigmatically portrayed in the
miracle of
8:22-26) into a following of the Son of Man, with all that
entails (see
8:34-9:1). It also tells of the continued mediocrity and
failure
of the disciples, and Jesus’ never-failing presence to them in
their
failure (see 9:1-14). Fr Moloney closed his reflections:
“Jesus
never fails the failing disciple. This does not mean
that failure
does not matter; it means that God’s and his love for us
matters even
more than our failure.”
On return to Parañaque, on Friday, 5 July, Fr Moloney
addressed all the
students at the Don Bosco Study Centre on contemporary New
Testament
studies, and the role of the Word of God in the life of the
Church,
using Dei Verbum and
Verbum Domini as his
point of
reference.
On Saturday, 6 July, a large gathering of Filipino Theologians
and
Bishops, accompanied by Priests and theological students from
the
Manila area (over 600), has taken place at the San Carlos
Seminary
Auditorium, Makati City, for a day dedicated to Theology Today: Perspectives –
Principles
– Criteria. The event, taking place as this
item goes to press, involves three notable speakers:
Rev. Fr. Francis Moloney, SDB, former Dean of the Catholic
University
of America (Listening to the Word of God), Rev. Fr. Jose
Antonio
Aureada, OP, of the University of Santo Tomas (Giving an
Account of the
Truth), and His Eminence Luis Antonio Tagle, DD, of the
Archdiocese of
Manila (Abiding in Communion with the Church). Deans of
studies,
professors, theology students and seminarians and religious
brothers
and sisters throughout the country were invited to this
national event.
