Opening Eucharistic celebration
Second National Congress of the Clergy
World Trade Center
Pasay City
Monday, 25 January 2010

Your Eminence, Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal,
Your Eminence, Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales,
Your Excellencies, my brother Archbishops and Bishops,
Reverend Monsignori, Reverend Fathers,
Reverend Brothers, and Reverend Sisters,
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 

Good morning: on behalf of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, I greet with affection the priests gathered here for the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist as we begin this Second National Congress for the Clergy, the most important event in the calendar of this Year of the Priest.

“Ananias, go and seek Saul; I have chosen him to announce my name to all peoples.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

"Praise the Lord, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his steadfast love toward us; and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever” (Ps 117 [116]: 1-2). With these words from the Psalmist, we already hear of God’s plan for all the nations.

The prophet gives us a glimpse of the mysterious work of God, who acts to draw all humanity to Himself in a saving embrace.

This picture of a God who wants to save us is echoed in today’s Gospel, which presents us with the mandate Jesus gave his Apostles before his Ascension into heaven: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole of creation” (Mk 16:15). With powerful words Christ confirms HisFather’s universal will to save and entrusts the sacred mission to His apostles, the first priests of the Church.

Yes, it is in this God that we put our hope, the God who loves all of us human beings and who, mysteriously, calls us to Himself and asks us to work with Him in His saving mission to humanity.

This morning we will reflect on all of this. We do so as, in this Year for Priests, we observe the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul and open this Second National Congress of the Clergy.

It was on the road to Damascus that Christ chose Paul and called him to Himself.
Until that moment, the Pharisee Saul had fought against the followers of Jesus with every possible means. From Jerusalem, he had traveled to Damascus to oppose and to imprison those who had been spreading the teaching of Jesus.  Saul wanted to prevent Jews from abandoning the ancient traditions of their fathers for this “new way,” of the Nazorean and His followers.  

 And then, near Damascus, it happened. Saul is bathed in a light from heaven. He falls to the ground, and Christ makes him aware of his error.

At the gates of Damascus, when he meets the Risen Christ, Saul learns the truth. The reality of Christ and his death and resurrection, upon which the work of the world’s Redemption was accomplished, become present before Saul, takes possession of him.

Saul, now Paul, learns that the God of his fathers is the God of all, even the gentiles, and that the love of that God is not only for the Jews but for everyone without exemption.

Jesus reveals himself fully to Paul, and Paul is changed, transformed. St. Paul was not transformed by a thought but by an event, by the irresistible presence of the Risen Lord whom subsequently he would never be able to doubt, so powerful had been the evidence of this encounter with the Christ, the light of truth, the light of God Himself.

This experience expanded Paul’s heart, opened it to all. He did not lose what was good and true in his life, in his Jewish heritage, but he understood everything: wisdom, truth, the law and the prophets in a new way.

He becomes an “apostle,” like the twelve, to the point of being able to cry out: “He who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through His grace, has revealed His Son to me, that I might tell the Gentiles about Him” (Gal 1:15ff).

And so we see in the conversion of Paul a change in one man that also inspires wonder in us.
Saul, the persecutor of the Christians, has become Paul, the Apostle. He who hated Jesus of Nazareth has now begun to proclaim the holy name and to “go out to all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” The Conversion of Paul, through this experience of Paul, Sacred Scripture enables us to understand that conversion comes about through God, and that conversion is preliminary to mission.

The conversion of Paul makes clear to us that a change of heart is essential not only to become disciples of Jesus Christ to believe in the Christ and His Gospel but also to carry out the mission to humanity that the Lord has entrusted to us.

It is only through such a conversion – to such change of mind and heart – that Christ’s disciples are able to do what they are called to do: to bring the news of God, and of a new life of love to our world.

This interior change, this conversion, is, first of all, a gift from God, a gift of being chosen, but it is also a change of life we must want, and that, for ourselves and for others, we must ask for, in prayer.

In the Acts of the Apostles we hear how Ananias sought out Saul and in what condition he found him; Ananias found Paul, still groping in the dark, but immersed in prayers.  “get up, get to the street called straight,…and seek someone by the name of Saul, Saul of Tarsus; he will be praying.”

It is a lesson that we must understand; conversion leads one, more and more, to seek God, in prayer.

Like St. Paul, someone who has been touched by God wants to come closer to Him and so he reaches out, in prayer, to God who has mysteriously entered into and has begun a change in his life.

In fact, a new life has begun for those who have been called, those who have been chosen, and through prayer, that life in which Christ has become the center, is nourished and becomes ever stronger.

Such as continuing change, such as continuing transformation of one’s life, is the answer not only to our prayers for ourselves, but also for others.

Our prayer not only helps us to know better the God who has intervened in our life but already, by praying, we have begun our mission to bring others to God: even those who, in a sinful world, our farthest away from living the Gospel of love.

The conversion of Paul from persecutor to apostle helps us to understand that to work for God and His plan is possible only thanks to a sincere interior change, a change in us that means the uprooting of the selfishness of the heart, and substituting it with love. This change comes about by a miracle of grace, a grace that we must pray for.

In a world still divided and torn apart by so many tensions, we priests of God, friends of the Lord, are called to witness to all the newness of a different kind of living: that is, a living with God, and a living with each other, in love.

As in the case of Paul, we must always pluck up courage and do what we have been called to do, to tell others. And we can do what we have been asked if we beg our Lord to continually change us, to continually work the miracle of conversion in us, so that the message we preach will ring true and others who will join us in wholehearted conversion and followed us in mission.

As together we are united here at the altar, we pray the Risen Lord for the grace to carry out what He has called us to do.

On the path that is before us there are so many obstacles: for this, our prayer must become ever more assiduous, more convinced, more fervent.

Never must we succumb to discouragement; never must we allow ourselves to be worried by our lack of human success. Also here the example of St. Paul helps us. Even though he was afflicted by every kind of trial and suffering, he never lost heart. He rejoiced in his infirmities – what he endured for Christ – because, he tells us, he was strongest when he was weak.
What might seem obstacles to our mission becomes, in the light of faith, the secret of its success. The presence of the cross and the crucified Christ in our lives gives us the certainty that, when we seem defeated, we are at the moment really victorious, conquerors; indeed, in the words of St. Paul, “More than conquerors.”

It is the logic of the cross. On the human plane the cross of Jesus is a failure, absolute devastation; but precisely here thus it derives that explosive newness that has changed the face of life and human history.

In entrusting his mission to us, Jesus has not only guaranteed for us His presence until the end of the world, He has promised us, and has given to us, the power of His Spirit.

The Apostle Paul teaches us to have an unshakeable faith, yes, to be intrepid messengers of hope and witnesses of the God of love, to live immersed constantly in the light of mystery and in the power of Christ, always convinced that God is with us.

This celebration of ours and all that we do in these days of intense priestly prayer can be seen as emblematic: they indicate the path on which we must travel: prayer, conversion, mission.
Prayer however is the first element, a prayer that is more intense than what thus Fr have we elevated to God, a common prayer that places us together before Christ, a prayer that begs for our conversion and our rededication to mission.

We know that when we pray united in the Lord, He is in our midst. We pray in Him, with Him, to Him, this morning. We will pray this way throughout this week.

With Him we can do the impossible, impossible for man but not impossible for God: to revive among us the faith of the ancient Church, to become ever more, like Paul of Tarsus, apostles of the God of love: for our parish, for our diocese, for our country, for our world.
So be it. Amen.    

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