Dear brothers and sisters! Today it is a day of great joy for the Church and for each of you, ordinands presbyters, together with family members, friends and companions of walking in the years of training. As the ordination rite highlights in several passages, the relationship between what we celebrate and the people of God is fundamental. The depth, the amplitude and even the duration of divine joy that we now share is directly proportional to the bonds that exist and will grow between you ordinands and the people from whom you come, of which you remain part and you are sent. I will focus on this aspect, always keeping in mind that the identity of the priest depends on the union with Christ the high and eternal priest. We are people of God. Vatican Council II made this awareness more alive, almost anticipating a time when the members would have become weaker and the rarer sense of God. You are testimony to the fact that God has not tired of gathering his children, although different, and to constitute them in a dynamic unity. This is not an impetuous action, but of that light breeze that redizes hope to the prophet Elia in the hour of discouragement (cf. 1re 19:12). The joy of God is not noisy, but the story really changes And it brings us closer to each other. The mystery of the visit is icon, which the Church contemplates on the last day of May. From the encounter between the Virgin Mary and the cousin Elisabetta we see the Magnificat, the song of a people visited by grace. The readings just proclaimed help us to interpret what is also taking place among us. Jesus, first of all, in the Gospel does not appear to us crushed by imminent death, nor by the disappointment for the broken or unfinished ties. On the contrary, the Holy Spirit intensifies those threatened bonds. In prayer they become stronger than death. Instead of thinking about his personal destiny, Jesus puts in the hands of the Father the bonds he built down here. We are part of it! The Gospel, in fact, has come to us through bonds that the world can wear out, but not to destroy. Dear ordinandi, then conceived yourself in the way of Jesus! Being of God – Servants of God, people of God – binds us to earth: not to an ideal world, but to the real one. Like Jesus, those that the Father put on your path are in flesh and blood. You consecrate yourself, without separating it, without isolating yourself, without making the gift received a sort of privilege. Pope Francis has put us many times on it from this, because self -referentiality turns off the fire of the mission. The Church is constitutively extroverted, as extroverted are the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. You will make your words in every Eucharist: it is “for you and for everyone”. God no one has ever seen it. He turned to us, he came out of himself. The son became the exegesis, the story alive. And he gave us the power to become children of God. Do not seek, we are not looking for any other power! The gesture of the imposition of the hands, with which Jesus welcomed the children and healed the sick, renew in you the liberating power of his messianic ministry. In the acts of the apostles, that gesture that we will soon repeat is the transmission of the creator spirit. Thus, the kingdom of God now puts your personal freedoms in communion, willing to get out of themselves, grafting your intelligence and your young forces in the jubilee mission that Jesus has transmitted to his Church. In his greeting to the elderly of the Community of Ephesus, of which we listened to some fragment in the first reading, Paul transmits to them the secret of each mission: “The Holy Spirit formed it as custodians” (Acts 20,28). Not masters, but custodians. The mission is of Jesus. He is risen, therefore he is alive and precedes us. None of us is called to replace it. On the day of ascension it educates us in its invisible presence. He trusts us, makes us space; He even came to say: “It is good for you that I leave” (Jn 16:7). We bishops too, dear ordinandi, involving you in the mission today we make room for you. And you make room for the faithful and every creature, to which the Risen One is close and in which he loves to visit and amaze us. The people of God is more numerous than we see. Let’s not define the boundaries. Of San Paolo, of his moving farewell speech, I would like to underline a second word. In reality, it precedes all the others. He can say: “You know how I behaved with you all this time” (Acts 20:18). We keep in the heart and in the mind, well sculpted, this expression! “You know how I behaved”: the transparency of life. Known lives, legible lives, credible lives! We are inside the people of God, to be able to stay in front of him, with a credible testimony. Together, then, we will reconstruct the credibility of a wounded church, sent to a wounded humanity, inside a wounded creation. It doesn’t matter to be perfect, but it is necessary to be credible. Risen Jesus shows us his wounds and, despite being a sign of humanity refusal, forgives us and sends us. Let’s not forget! He also blows today on us (cf. Jn 20:22) and makes us ministers of hope. “So we no longer look at anyone in the human way” (2Cor 5:16): Everything that in our eyes presents is broken and lost appears to us now in the sign of reconciliation. “The love of Christ in fact possesses us”, dear brothers and sisters! It is a possession that frees and enable us to do not have anyone. Free, don’t own. We are of God: there is no greater wealth to appreciate and participate. It is the only wealth that, shared, multiplies. We want to bring it to the world that God has loved so much to give his only son (cf. Jn 3:16). Thus, the life donated by these brothers is full of meaning, which shortly presbyters will soon be ordered. We thank them and thank God who called them to the service of an all -priestly people. Together, in fact, we unite heaven and earth. In Mary, mother of the Church, this common priesthood shines that raises the humble, binds the generations, makes us call Blessed (cf. Lk 1,48.52). She, Our Lady of trust and mother of hope, interceda for us.
