Pope Benedict XVI has encouraged the new class of seminarians at the
Pontifical North American College in Rome to be unafraid to carry the
cross of Christ.
“Dear Seminarians, do not be afraid to take up
the challenge in today’s Gospel to give your lives completely to
Christ,” he told the new students during his Sunday Angelus address on
Aug. 28 at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence 15 miles to the south
of Rome.
“Indeed, may all of us be generous in our commitment to him, carrying our cross with faith and courage.”
Moments
earlier the American students, along with several thousand other
pilgrims, listened as the Pope explained in more detail the need for all
Christians to embrace the cross.
The Pope invited all present to
surrender their will to Jesus who, in return, will transform their ways
of thinking for the better.
“The Christian follows the Lord with
love when he accepts his cross which in the eyes of the world appears as
a defeat and a ‘loss of life’, while that man knows that he does not
bear his alone but with Jesus, sharing the same path of self-giving,”
the Pope said.
In doing so, he added, “we allow ourselves to be
transformed through divine grace, renewing our way of thinking in order
to discern the will of God, which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
The
Pope based his comments upon Sunday’s Gospel in which Jesus rebukes St.
Peter for reacting negatively to the revelation that the Christ must
“go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief
priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
This
prediction by Jesus presented “a clear discrepancy between the loving
plan of the Father” observed the Pope “and the expectations, desires,
projects of the disciples.” He said it’s a discrepancy that often
continues to this modern day.
“When the fulfillment of one’s life
is only aimed towards social success, and physical and economic
well-being, man is not thinking according to God but according to man.”
Such an attempt to refuse God’s “project of love,” said the Pope,
“almost prevents man from carrying out His masterly will.”
Hence,
said the Pope, the challenge of Jesus to the first apostles, “if any man
would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and
follow me,” is equally applicable to anybody who seeks true happiness
in the modern world.
The Pontifical North American College was
founded in 1859 in response to an appeal by Pope Pius IX for an American
seminary in Rome.
Its present building sits on Rome’s Janiculum Hill
only minutes from St. Peters Basilica.
Regarded as one of the most
flourishing seminaries in the city, the college is currently home to
over 300 students and priests.