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July 3, 202202 July 2022 (Abu Dhabi).
Below is the text of the homily that Bishop Paolo delivered during the mass of his installation as Apostolic Vicar.Homily for Installation
Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in Abu DhabiThanksgiving
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, May the Lord grant you Peace and Paschal joy.
Today’s Eucharistic celebration marks the beginning of my ministry as Vicar Apostolic of Southern Arabia. I should like to start with a thanksgiving note: I wish to express my gratitude to the Lord for calling me, and to His Holiness, Pope Francis, for sending me on this unexpected appointment, which I accept with all humility and willingness to serve.
I thank Bishop Paul Hinder for extending his welcome to me personally; I am thrilled to have his support and wise counsel! Your Excellency, allow me to express my admiration for the great work you have demonstrated in these past 18 years as Apostolic Vicar to Southern Arabia; I aspire to learn from your great experience.
My extended gratitude goes to all the priests, men and women religious, and the lay faithful in this vicariate. And a special “thank you” to the Capuchin Order who has tirelessly served this region.
Collaborators of your joy
In today’s readings, God invites us to be joyful. As Isaiah tells us: “Rejoice, Jerusalem, be glad for her, all you who love her!”. Hence, our God is a God of joy, not of sorrow. How does God direct us to be joyful? By entering and transforming our lives. It is impossible to obtain this joy by ourselves, rather it is a gift from God to be accepted and embraced. His loving mercy heals our wounds, feeds our hunger, and quenches our thirst. His closeness and tenderness bring us consolation: “Like a son comforted by his mother will I comfort you. And by Jerusalem you will be comforted”.
Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, I want to put Paschal Joy at the core of my ministry. To quote the great Apostle: “We do not intend to be masters over your faith; instead, we are the collaborators of your joy”!
How should this specific mission be understood? In today’s Gospel, Jesus sends his disciples, in pairs, to announce “The kingdom of God is very near to you”. It is a great announcement of joy.
It is not the disciples who choose to go by themselves – no one can dispatch oneself – it is Jesus who sends his disciples. Similarly, the Father, in the Holy Spirit, sent Jesus into this world.
To borrow from the Holy Father’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: “My mission of being in the heart of the people is not just a part of my life or a badge I can take off; it is not an ‘extra’ or just another moment in life. Instead, it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self. I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world. We have to regard ourselves as sealed, even branded, by this mission of bringing light, blessing, enlivening, raising up, healing and freeing”.
To summarize, we are always sent by someone, with someone, and to someone. Mission (to be sent) is not something to do rather it is a way of life, a way of understanding oneself, and a way of cultivating relationships in time and space.
In order to live my mission, I must be in total communion with the whole Church, Pope Francis, the other bishops, priests, deacons, and all consecrated persons. I also aim to live in daily communion with all the people of God in this region.
A bishop's first duty is to attend to the pastoral care of his flock, by promoting Christian life in all its dimensions, a life of prayer, listening to, and contemplating the Word of God, and the celebration of the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. It is precisely in the Eucharist that we find beauty, joy and the fullness of being Christians.
The Church in the Apostolic Vicariate
Let us grow together in our Christian life, promoting the beauty of belonging to the one body of Christ, albeit made up of different cultures, spiritual traditions and liturgical rites. The different gifts must never divide but unite us to be more fruitful: pluriformity in unity! The Holy Spirit brings forth many different gifts, and charisms but the same Spirit creates an overall unity. The Holy Spirit is “Harmony” itself, wrote an ancient father of the Church (St Gregory of Nissa). Let us be docile to the Holy Spirit and to the Church, whose task is discernment.
We are, as people of God in Arabia, a very important sign for the future of the Church spreading throughout the world. Because only a diverse Church, composed of Christians from different countries and cultures can withstand such an epoch change.
The joy to be new creatures.
I should now like to delve deeper into the mystery of Paschal joy. In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul highlights the challenges the Church was facing: “It does not matter if a person is circumcised or not; what matters is for him to become an altogether new creature”.
What does it mean to be a new creature? In his other letters, St. Paul writes that to be completely new creatures, we must pass from the old person to a new one. Being new creatures means being born again, receiving and accepting the gift to become anew.
We encounter the Lord every time we receive the grace of being loved by him. Baptism makes us new creatures; reconciliation makes us new persons; and God’s love completely transforms us anew.
In temporal life, we grow from younger to gradually becoming older. But in the spiritual life, the opposite is true. From old persons, weighed down by this world, we become young, we become new persons, we are transformed into new creatures! There is no greater joy than to be born again in Christ.
The new creature receives the vocation to be joyful, a joy that is made possible despite suffering, tribulation, and pain, because, as the Church teaches us, God's love never fails even in trying times. Thereby, we can describe the Church as the home of Paschal Joy.
The living man is the Glory of God.
Connected with the theme to becoming new creatures, called to holy joy, I would like to explain my episcopal motto: “the glory of God is the living man/human being” [The life in man is the glory of God], which is taken from St. Irenaeus of Lyons, a father of the Christian East.
What does this phrase mean and why did I choose it as my motto? St. Irenaeus was a very practical man, he lived a personified spirituality, rooted in the mystery of the Incarnation. This means that the glory of God shines when Man lives his existence according to the Will of God.
The life in man is the glory of God – the life of man is the vision God. Every time we discover the encounter with Jesus – we meet Jesus through the sacraments, through the life of the Church, through meetings with true witnesses of the joy of the gospel and in those who are in need - we receive life in us. Jesus came “to bring life and life in abundance”. We do not have to look at the faith as a heavy burden placed on our shoulders, in order to make our lives more difficult. On the contrary, faith is the gift that makes our lives more human as they glorify God in the Highest!
Hence, the transformation from being an old person to a new creature expresses precisely this gift; when we live in communion with one another we are living human persons and thus God makes his glory shine. When we love each other with a sincere love we are living people and we give glory to God. When we help one another, we are truly alive and we give glory to God. God does not want death, violence, or enmity, rather He wants us to be truly living people: He wants us all to live in a more fraternal world.
Human beings are truly “living people” when they welcome one another, when they overcome boundaries and divisions, as it was highlighted in the document of Abu Dhabi, signed by Pope Francis and Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb. A more fraternal world is a more human world. A more human world gives glory to God, who has created humanity to live in peace and justice.
Even in the time of the pandemic, we have learned that "we are all in the same boat" and that we need each other to heal and to make this world more fraternal and more human.
Vocation and Joy
I wish to end this homily by returning to today’s Gospel message: Pascal Joy. The disciples that Jesus sent to announce the kingdom of God were rejoicing at the success they achieved. But Jesus invites them to a different type of joy by telling them: “Yet do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you; rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven”.
What does it mean to have our names written in heaven? Jesus invites us not to find our joy in worldly, human or pastoral successes, rather act with gratuitousness and purity of intention, and always be free from the outcome! To have all our names, one by one, written in heaven is a beautiful image. God himself has written these names on the palms of his hands. The name has enormous importance in the spiritual tradition of our peoples: the name indicates the most personal reality of each of us. We are called by name: our parents gave us a name; we were called by name on the day of our baptism. Our name expresses the mystery of our person: “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary” (Benedict XVI).
Dear Brothers and Sisters, true joy comes from love. We are all called to be holy in love. Let us all work together to be a holy people who humbly testify the joy of the Gospel to the world.
Prayer
I ask God for the grace to be a shepherd according to the Heart of Jesus and I ask for the blessing of the Lord Most High for all Catholics, all Christians and for all the inhabitants of this land. May Mary, the Mother of God, keep us in her sight, and under her maternal protection. To her I entrust my ministry in this vicariate of Southern Arabia; I entrust all of you to her maternal love. May the Most High keep and protect you all.
And, I humbly ask that you would pray for me and for my ministry.
Blessed be God forever - His “glory is the living human being”.