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Vatican Anniversary Stamps Issued 2019
Source: Vatican News
Pope Francis celebrated the 51st anniversary of his ordination on Sunday.
On December 13, 1969, a few days before his 33rd birthday, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was ordained to the sacred priesthood.
Eleven years earlier, on March 11, 1958, he had entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus where, less than four years after his ordination, he made perpetual profession on April 22, 1973.
The future Pope said that he discovered his vocation in 1953, on September 21, the liturgical commemoration of Saint Matthew. That day, Jorge Bergoglio, 17, was passing through the parish he used to go to in Buenos Aires, when he felt the need to confess. He found a priest he did not know, and that confession changed his life.
“For me it was an encounter experience,” Pope Francis later recounted. Speaking at the Pentecost Vigil on May 18, 2013, the Pope said about that visit to the church long ago: “I discovered that someone was waiting for me. However, I don’t know what happened, I can’t remember, I don’t know why. what was there that particular priest that I didn’t know, or why I felt this desire to confess, but the truth is that someone was waiting for me. He had been waiting for me for some time. I had changed. I was not the same. heard something like a voice, or a call. I was convinced that I should become a priest. “
Jorge Bergoglio experienced the loving presence of God in his life, felt his heart moved and felt the outpouring of God’s mercy who, with a look of tender love, called him to religious life, following the example of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. It was this episode in his life that inspired the choice of his episcopal, and later papal motto, ‘Miserando atque elendo’, extracted from the Homilies of Saint Bede, who, commenting on the evangelical episode of Saint Matthew’s vocation, writes: ‘ Vidit ergo lesus publicanum et quia miserando atque choosing vidit, ait illi sequere me ‘(Jesus saw the tax collector and, seeing him with the eyes of mercy and chose him, said to him: Follow me).
Pope Francis often addresses priests in his homilies and speeches. This year he mentioned them several times in reference to the current pandemic and his commitment to the faithful tried for the health emergency.
When the Chrism Mass was postponed this year due to the Covid-19 restriction, Pope Francis wrote a Letter to the priests of Rome. See: www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2020/documents/papa-francesco_20200531_lettera-sacerdoti.html
The Pope affectionately addressed the pastors of God’s people who “touched the pain of the people with their own hands”, stayed close to them, shared with them and confirmed them on the way. “As a community of priests,” Pope Francis wrote, “we were not oblivious to these situations; we did not look at them from a window. Braving the storm, you found ways to be present and accompany your communities; when you saw The Wolf Arriving, you did not flee nor did you abandon the flock. “
The Holy Father urged priests to be prudent, forward-looking and committed; and looking to the future, he wrote about the challenge to priests “to develop an ability to listen attentively but full of hope, serene but tenacious, persevering but not fearful.” He concludes his letter by noting that “As priests, sons and members of a priestly people, it is up to us to assume responsibility for the future and plan it as brothers.”
Tags: Pope Francis, Anniversary of ordination
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