activities

PAULINE FAMILY GATHERING
November 26, 2006

Pauline Family Juniors' Big Day
November 3-4, 2006

PAULINE FAMILY

TO THE PAULINE FAMILY

Dear brothers and sisters!

Today, representing the entire Pauline Family, you have come to meet the Successor of Peter. I am very happy to welcome you and thank you for your kind visit. I wish to greet the Superior General of the Society of St. Paul and express my deep appreciation for the gracious words with which he has presented the spirit of the evangelizing activity which you together seek to undertake. I greet the General Councillors, the Superiors, the numerous Confreres and collaborators , and extend my cordial greetings to your entire Institution with its diverse branches, both male and female. To all of you in general and to each one personally I express my appreciation for the service which you render for the spread of the Gospel through the modern means of social communication, following the example and teachings of your Founder, Blessed James Alberione. In the first place I think of the magazine Famiglia Cristiana and the other periodicals, the Edizione San Paolo and your well known Book Centers.

Dear friends, to proclaim the Gospel, serving it through the modern means of communication, requires above all a firm personal adherence to the Divine Master. Your Founder was deeply aware of this ascetic and spiritual exigency and fittingly for this he has placed at the very heart of every apostolic undertaking and house of your Institute the Eucharist, the listening to the Word of God and a profound spirit of prayer. As he was deeply in love with the Lord, Fr. Alberione had asked his followers, priests and laity, to cultivate a strong interior life, well-balanced and rich in discernment. He presented the Apostle Paul as a model for all, who in the areopagus in Athens, guided by the Holy Spirit, knew how to adapt his message to the cultural context in which he found himself and at the same time, did not fail to present with courage and frankness the absolute uniqueness of Christ(cf Acts 17, 22-32).

The recent General Chapter of the Society of St. Paul, has proposed anew to all the Paulines that programmatic exhortation of Fr. Alberione "to be St. Paul alive today." May all of you make his the distinguishing spirit and style of the Apostle of the gentiles, in actualizing the missionary work in this our post-modern era. Carry it out, in collaboration with the Successor of Peter and the Pastors of the particular Churches, with the unceasing yearning to reach to the heart of many of our contemporaries the saving message of the Redeemer.

My Venerable Predecessors in the past did use many occasions to express their well-deserved esteem and affection towards the Pauline Family, encouraging her and stimulating her to walk in fidelity to the charism that it has been given and which constitutes a wealth for the entire ecclesial community. To their words, I most willingly add mine, wishing that your religious Family may know more to fulfill her mission always, that is to live and to give to the world of today Jesus Master,Way, Truth and Life with the forms and languages of today's communication media. I exhort you, therefore, to renew the commitment, that is proper to you, to be an educative presence at the service of the Christian community, until in its diverse forms, it develops a better communicative capacity, in the image of Jesus, in whom the communication between God and humanity has reached its perfection (cf. Apostolic Letter The Rapid Development,5).

Thank you once again for your visit. I assure each of you my affection and pray to the Lord that you may follow with fidelity the work begun by Blessed James Alberione with his protection and that of other holy men and women of the Pauline Family. May you be guided and accompanied, above all by Mary Most Holy, model of the one who welcomes the divine Word and gives it integrally to the world.

POPE BENEDICT XVI

(Excerpts from the Address of the Holy Father to the Pauline Family, October 1, 2005).