Dear Sisters, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, today, even as I speak, Pope Leo will have just begun celebrating the inaugural Mass of his pontificate in Rome. I am sure that it will still be in full swing by the time you get home at the end of this Mass if you want to watch the rest of it. For my part I will only be able to see a recording of it later on because immediately after this Mass I must get off to celebrate another Mass at St Chad’s in Sedgley.
You may well want to ask, what exactly is his ‘inaugural Mass’? After all, it is not the first Mass he has celebrated as Pope. This he did on the morning after his election, when he sang Mass in the presence of all the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel where the election had taken place. So what is the significance of this Mass today? Well, it is really the first great public Mass of the pontificate, the first to be celebrated in the presence of the faithful gathered in front of St Peter’s basilica, near to the relics of the first Vicar of Christ, to whom we heard our Lord commend the care of his sheep, lambs and flock in the Gospel two weeks ago. Leo is now the successor of that same Peter, and has inherited Peter’s role as the first among all the successors of the Apostles, the bishops of the Catholic Church. What is his role, then, specifically as Peter’s successor? It is, as we heard our Lord say to Peter in St Luke’s Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday, to ‘strengthen’, or confirm, ‘the brethren’, that is, the other Apostles. Peter was given the task of being the chief shepherd of the flock of Christ, and the one who would keep the other Apostles united in one faith.
On the morning after his election, Pope Leo preached at Mass a sermon in which he mentioned what the great first century bishop of Antioch, St Ignatius, said when he wrote to the Christians in Rome that it was the role of their Church to ‘preside in charity’ over the universal, that is, Catholic, Church. It was St Ignatius who also described the principal work of any bishop to preside over the celebration of the Mass in his diocese, a word meaning the place where people live together under the bishop’s authority. Each bishop is the shepherd of the Church located in a particular city and in its surrounding hinterland. But the one who presides in unity over all these many different local churches and their bishops is the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St Peter. St Ignatius taught that truth over nineteen centuries ago and it is still true today. But what does it mean to say that Pope Leo, the Bishop of Rome, ‘presides in charity’ over the local churches of the whole world?
Well, it doesn’t mean ‘rule them’, much less ‘lord it over them’. As our Lord told the Apostles at the Last Supper, ‘among the nations their leaders lord it over them and their great men make their authority felt. But it must not be so among you. Rather, the greatest among you must behave as though he were the least’. That is why St Gregory the Great, the pope who sent missionaries to our land in 597, called himself ‘Servant of the servants of God’ and not ‘Lord of lords and king of men’.
In years and even centuries gone by, the Mass which is being celebrated right now by Pope Leo would have culminated in the pope’s coronation with a triple tiara, denoting his authority over all men in matters spiritual and temporal alike. The last pope to be crowned in this way was Paul VI in 1963. When Pope John Paul I succeeded him in 1978, he chose not to be crowned, but rather to celebrate a Mass outside St Peter’s soon after his election which would mark the beginning of his ‘presiding in charity’ over the universal Church. He would preside not like a reigning king or emperor, but as a servant of the Gospel and representative of Peter. The popes who followed Pope John Paul I have done the same, so that it is now normal for a newly elected pope not to be crowned like a king but rather to celebrate Mass and to receive a special token of his new apostolic authority as Successor of the Apostle Peter.
What token is this? It is called a ‘pallium’. This is a word for what was originally a kind of cloak, but which is now so reduced in form as to be a strip of woollen cloth embroidered with crosses and placed around the neck and shoulders of the pope as a sign of his jurisdiction. The pallium is important in two ways. First, because of what it is not: it is not a symbol of kingly authority, as a crown would be. Secondly, because of what it is instead: it is a symbol of a bishop’s authority, when he is vested as a high priest. Moreover, when the pope wore the tiara, he wore that which no other bishop could wear by right, thus emphasising his higher status over them, but the pallium is something which the pope wears himself and also gives similar pallia to certain other bishops as a sign of their unity with him and their equality as successors of the Apostles. Thus the pallium signifies the unity of the principal successors of the Apostles with the successor of Peter.
The inaugural Mass this morning is not literally the beginning of Pope Leo’s pontificate. That began the moment he accepted his election in the Sistine chapel. When two thirds of all the cardinals in the conclave had chosen him, it was still absolutely necessary that he should accept the election. He could have said ‘no’. But he recognized that the choice of the electors was, effectively, a sign to him of God’s will, and from the moment he answered he question ‘do you accept your election?’ with the single word ‘yes!’ (In Latin he said the single word ‘Accepto’, I accept), at that instant he was given the grace of his new state as successor of Peter and bishop presiding over the universal church. This is also why, traditionally, popes take a new name at this moment. They do so to emphasize their new identity, just as our Lord gave Simon Bar-Jonah the new name of ‘Peter’, that is, rock, to mark the moment at which He made Him the ‘rock on which I will build my Church’.
But the Church of Rome, presiding in charity over the whole Catholic world, is founded not only on the martyred remains of Peter under the great basilica that bears his name, but also on the remains of the other great Apostle of Rome, Paul. In today’s first reading we heard how Paul and his companion Barnabas were ‘strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.’ They also made provision for shepherds, ‘when they appointed elders (or we would say priests) for them in every church (or we would say diocese), with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.’ In this way Paul went about choosing and then as we would say, ordaining priests to celebrate the liturgy, to preach the true faith, and to rule the flock of Christ in that place. This is how the Church continues, in every age, to pass on to every successive generation all that she is and all that she believes. So it was that the cardinals prepared by prayer and fasting to enter the conclave in which they would elect the new successor of Peter and of Paul, the new bishop of Rome and pope of the universal, that is, Catholic Church.
Presiding in charity is what St Ignatius called the role of the bishop of Rome, i.e. to hold together in unity those who are called to live Christ’s commandment to ‘love one another as I have loved you.’ May God grant Pope Leo the grace of presiding in love and holding in unity the entire body of Christ on earth. We should pray for him as the one to whom Christ has now entrusted the care for the sheep and lambs of His flock, as of old He entrusted them to Peter, remembering the last words Christ spoke to Peter in that Gospel reading two Sundays ago: ‘”Truly I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” This [Jesus] said to show by what kind of death [Peter] was to glorify God. And after this Jesus said to him, “follow me”.’ Remember, then, to pray for Pope Leo, just as the early Christians prayed for Peter when he was imprisoned for the faith, so that whatever challenges may lie ahead for him and the Church, he may be constant in his own holding of the faith and firm in his teaching of it.
Make A Comment
Comments (0)