THE MESSAGE OF THE RECTOR MAJOR

FR. ANGEL FERNANDEZ ARTIME, SDB

EUROPE, WAKE UP!

The so-called “Project Europe” doesn’t begin on paper or on the table of the general council, but in our hearts. We have to foster this desire “to be” rather than “to do,” the desire for unity in the beauty of diversity, the desire to reinforce our bonds as a family of peoples.

It’s almost a cliché to define our age as a time of “crisis.” There are so many crises—social, political, and medical—and they leave the world feeling like it’s in a relentless tailspin toward disaster.

In the Bible prophets always appear in times of crisis. When life becomes difficult, it’s almost instinctive to react as Psalm 121 states: “I lift up my eyes toward the mountains; whence shall help come to me?” The biblical answer is certain: “My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” That’s like saying that a time of crisis is “God’s time,” the time when he listens, when he’s closest to us, when he consoles us. And we, as educator-pastors, are invited first of all to experience in ourselves his closeness, his listening, and his consolation, so that afterward we can be, individually first of all and then as communities, witnesses and prophets of his closeness, listening, and consolation.

Our people need God because only he can fill the insatiable human heart, because we’re his children. We’re called, dear brothers and sisters, to be close especially to those who are most forgotten by others, by society, and sometimes even by the local Church; to listen to them and accompany them. We have to be “Advent men” and, as pastor-educators, to announce the kairos [precisely right moment] revealed by the prophets, and especially by Jesus himself.

“Pay attention! Wake up!” the Gospel tells us many times. That’s how the evangelists emphasize something that Jesus characteristically insisted on, expressed in various ways. The invitation is to pay attention, to keep watch to “stay awake.” When we fall asleep, we close our eyes, shut off our attention to what’s outside ourselves and to other people; we turn off the lights of our discernment and shut down our power source. We stand immobile, no longer listening to or seeing reality. Whoever becomes fixated on his inheritance and falls asleep on the treasures he’s received, runs the risk of becoming a museum piece, without even noticing what’s happened, and thus becoming an anachronism.

Dear brothers and sisters, wealthy Europe—I’m not speaking so much in an economic sense, but rather in a cultural, historic, and social sense above all—runs this risk.

Pope Francis had the courage to call Europe a “grandmother” at the European Parliament in Strasbourg a few weeks ago; he described Europe as “grown old.” Let’s pay attention and keep watch so that our historical and charismatic European treasures may become strong and succulent roots and not the wood of our coffin.

But a second image comes to me when I hear the words “keep watch.” That’s the image of a mother who stays awake and doesn’t leave her little child who’s sick; she waits with serene and trusting expectation for its temperature to go down. So, to stay awake is also to open our hearts to others, especially to those who are “our children,” those who are in darkness and difficult moments and need “a friend who takes care of them” as Don Bosco says in the Memoirs of Oratory about youths in jail.

So many times our boys and girls (“ours” because we hold them in our hearts, not because they’re always with us and we with them), so many times young people, like the people of our nations, and our confreres too, send up to heaven the same words that the prophet Isaiah uttered:

“You, Lord, are our father,

our redeemer you are named forever.

Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways,

and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?

Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down…!” (63:16-17,19)

That truly beautiful prayer rises from anguished hearts, whether they pray it explicitly or barely stammer it. But we’re witnesses of the kairos that’s already come! We’re witnesses not only of heavens rent open but also of the earth pierced open because the Holy Son of God has come to earth to search for Adam and, not finding him on earth, has gone down into Hades to look for him!, as a charming Easter prayer of the Byzantine liturgy of St. John Damascene says.

We, my dear brothers and sisters, have the great challenge of the times in which we live, times which are as they are, not as they used to be or as we’d like to imagine them. In this sense, we have to be witnesses of joy and hope; of an optimistic humanism; of the beauty of human dignity, a dignity that’s realized only if it’s open to transcendence. We’re witnesses of the beauty and power of communion, which is never a simple juxtaposition of particularities and differences; communion is, rather, the interweaving of diversity, in such a way that this harmonious interweaving radiates splendor and a sense of unity.

In these days the great theme of our Congregation is our identity and our presence in Europe. Europe today appears to be a family of peoples who haven’t yet managed to restore its proper identity, because in recent decades Europe has forgotten its humanistic and Christian roots, and also those which are emerging from the interweaving of its diverse ancient ethnic groups and from the diverse cultural and religious roots that have been present among us for millennia.

The precious image of the family, which Pope Francis also used at Strasbourg, is for us like a jewel because the icon of the family is firmly rooted in our Salesian identity. We can still give a lot of life to this continent that, as a continent, is no older than others, but with its Eurocentric mentality is considered old and, maybe from thinking that way, has in fact become so.

We’re the animators of a new life that has the potential to rejuvenate our communities and presences, helping to reawaken the humanism that is typically European: art and science with a “human measure” that takes care of those who are more overlooked, more endangered, pushed more to the margins of life. We have the grave responsibility of animating and governing our presences in Europe so that they become houses open to everyone, where one breathes hope—and memory, simplicity, familiarity, generational and ethnic cultural exchange and integration, respect for differences, and the building of unity.

Europe is called to be open to all the peoples of the world, offering them her own distinct human and cultural richness and receiving from the rest of the world other riches from the world’s diverse cultures and peoples. We Salesians are present and involved in this reality in a way that’s full of life. But we can’t have an impact in this context and can’t confront these challenges if first we don’t awaken our hearts, if we’re not keeping watch attentively and tenderly over this European reality, especially its new generations.

My dear sisters and brothers, the so-called “Project Europe” doesn’t begin on paper or on the table of the general council, but in our hearts. Only if we carry this desire “to be” more than “to do,” the desire for unity in the beauty of diversity, the desire to strengthen our bonds as a family of peoples, can we truly live our “witnessing to Christ [already] established among [us] so firmly that we aren’t lacking any charism.” Only with him and rooted in him, and with the maternal help of our Mother the Help of Christians can we “look for the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ” together with the multiethnic, plurireligious, and multicultural people who dwell in Europe, and with all the peoples of the earth.