Black smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel for the first ballot, and the only ballot on the first day of Conclave, Tuesday, 12 March 2013.
The next voting rounds will be on Wednesday, 13 March 2013, composed of morning session (2nd and 3rd ballots), and the afternoon session (4th and 5th ballots).
God our Father, had given the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel through Moses. These laws were meant to be the guidelines of how the people of God should live. The prophets too came over the centuries, during and after the times of the kingdom of Israel, to preach and explain about the Law, and at the same time proclaiming the coming of the Messiah, who will set all things right and save the world.
That Messiah is Christ, who came into the world, the divine Word of God, becoming a humble man, born through the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem. He came indeed not to destroy or displace the Law of God. Rather, He came to fulfill it, to purify it, to make sure that indeed the Law is for man so that they can orientate themselves and love God and their fellow brethren, in what Christ has taught the disciples, that is the two main Commandments of Love, that is to love God with all our being, and to love our fellow men as much as we love ourselves.
Such is the perfection of the Law that God had first given to the people of Israel, and then Christ had spread throughout the world as the Universal Law of love. In obeying and living out this Law, it is how we please the Lord, who will see us as worthy of Him. No more excessive laws and rites that we must follow, such as the 613 laws of the Jewish Law, which evolved from the laws that God has told Moses while he was on the Mount Horeb, the mountain of God.
It may seem that the commandments of love are easy to be done. After all there are only two of them is it not? No! In fact, these two are the hardest ones to be one. Because, it is never easy to love God and our fellow mankind. To truly love God is to spend our time for Him, to listen to Him, through our constant prayers, and to do His will, which is of course, linked to loving mankind, as when we do good deeds to our brethren, we show our sincere love for God. Love for God cannot be just with words and all prayers. These devotions and prayers are indeed important, but without a concrete action to live our faith, and our love, we are nothing but empty husks without love.
God wants to embrace all of us, no matter how broken we are, and how sinful we are. Better for us to be ugly and broken outside, but with the love of God inside us, waiting to break free, rather than being beautiful outside, and empty and dark inside. Lucifer the lightbringer too were once very beautiful and amazing, but inside, he has a dark pride, the pride that brought down many, angels and man alike, into the rebellion against God.
Because we are so rebellious, especially you all should know about the long story of the Israelites since their delivery from Egypt all the way to the time of Jesus, especially in the Book of Kings, how they even slaughter the prophets of the Lord, disobeyed His commandments, and spurned His love. This is why God set those rules as the Law to ensure that the people, tempted as they are, and weak as they are, and vulnerable as they are to sin and evil, through the Law, they can be safeguarded.
Nevertheless, by the time of Jesus, people had lost so much of the ideas and the original intentions of the Law that they ended up being ‘enslaved’ by the very Law that God has given them to safeguard them, through the Pharisees and their strict observation of the rules and the laws. It is through Christ that mankind was once again awakened to the true meaning of the Law, that is a Law of love that is to bring mankind closer to God, and to lead in the reconciliation with God, from the rebellion of our forefathers.
None but Christ Himself, the Messiah, and the Son of God, implemented what He preached, that is to give Himself in greatest form of love to all of us, that is His Sacrifice on the Cross. Through that love He had given us, we now have hope of life in Him, and to be reunited with God, as Christ became our bridge to return back towards the Lord.
We don’t have to give our life as the proof and sign of our love to God, but what matters is, in whatever things we do, even little ones, let us always remember to thank God, either in happiness or sorrow, in good times or bad, and to share the love God has planted in us to our neighbours, that the love will not just stay there, but blossom to let the love of God manifest in others, and therefore the world.
Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today, let us begin by doing small acts of love in our daily lives, acts of love that can brighten both our days and those around us, especially those who sorrow, and those who have lost hope. Bring to them the warmth of love and hope that is from God, and kindle in them a new fire of God’s love. Let us imitate the example of Christ who had loved us so much so as to give Himself up for our sake, that just as He was glorified on His Resurrection, we too can share in that glory, in the fullness of God’s love and compassion. Amen.
Matthew 5 : 17-19
Do not think that I have come to annul the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to annul them but to fulfill them. I tell you this : as long as heaven and earth last, not the smallest letter or dot in the Law will change until all is fulfilled.
So then, whoever breaks the least important of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be the least in the kingdom of heaven. On the other hand, whoever obeys them, and teaches others to do the same, will be great in the kingdom of heaven.
Psalm 147 : 12-13, 15-16, 19-20
Exalt the Lord, o Jerusalem; praise your God, o Zion! For He strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your children within you.
He sends His command to the earth and swiftly runs His word. He spreads snow like wool; He scatters frost like ashes.
It is He who tells Jacob His words, His laws and decrees to Israel. This He has not done for other nations, so His laws remain unknown to them.
Deuteronomy 4 : 1, 5-9
And now, Israel, listen to the norms and laws which I teach that you may put them into practice. And you will live and enter and take possession of the land which YHVH, the God of your fathers, gives you.
See, as YHVH, my God, ordered me, I am teaching you the norms and the laws that you may put them into practice in the land you are going to enter and have as your own. If you observe and practice them, other peoples will regard you as wise and intelligent. When they come to know of all these laws, they will say, “There is no people as wise and as intelligent as this great nation.”
For in truth, is there a nation as great as ours, whose gods are as near to it as YHVH, our God, is to us, whenever we call upon Him? And is there a nation as great as ours whose norms and laws are just as this Law which I give you today?
But be careful and be on your guard. Do not forget these things which your own eyes have seen nor let them depart from your heart as long as you live. But on the contrary, teach them to your children and to your children’s children.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, members of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church throughout the world. Let us all join together with the prayers for the Church that will be held today in Rome at 5 pm, and wherever we are in the world, let us spend the time for prayer for the Church, for the Cardinal-electors, and for the election of our new Pope.
The event will be live from Rome at Vatican Player, at either http://www.vatican.va/video/ or http://player.rv.va/?language=en&visual=VaticanTic. Do join in the prayers, and if you are unable to do so, and still in the workplace or busy with other commitments, just pray in your hearts, for the sake of our Holy Church.
Timing :
1. Rome : Wednesday, 6 March 2013 at 5 pm (UTC+1)
2. UTC : Wednesday, 6 March 2013 at 4 pm
3. EST : Wednesday, 6 March 2013 at 11 am (UTC-5)
4. PST : Wednesday, 6 March 2013 at 8 am (UTC-8)
5. WIB : Wednesday, 6 March 2013 at 11 pm (UTC+7) (West Indonesian Time, Bangkok, etc.)
6. Singapore : Thursday, 7 March 2013 at 0.00 am (UTC+8) (Singapore, Malaysia, HK, Macau, China, etc.)
The Cardinals, led by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, will pray together at St. Peter’s Basilica, and also participate in Eucharistic Adoration, led by the Cardinal Dean of the College. Let us pray for them, and pray that the Conclave will begin soon, and a new Pope, and a good Pope can be soon elected.
“Like the Apostle Paul in the Biblical text that we have heard, I feel in my heart that I have to especially thank God who guides and builds up the Church, who plants His Word and thus nourishes the faith in His People. At this moment my heart expands and embraces the whole Church throughout the world and I thank God for the news that, in these years of my Petrine ministry, I have received about the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and for the love that truly circulates in the Body of the Church, making it to live in the love and the hope that opens us to and guides us towards the fullness of life, towards our heavenly homeland.”
“I feel that I am carrying everyone with me in prayer in this God-given moment when I am collecting every meeting, every trip, every pastoral visit. I am gathering everyone and everything in prayer to entrust it to the Lord: so that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding in order to live in a manner worthy of the Lord and His love, bearing fruit in every good work.”
“At this moment I have great confidence because I know, we all know, that the Gospel’s Word of truth is the strength of the Church; it is her life. The Gospel purifies and renews, bearing fruit, wherever the community of believers hears it and welcomes God’s grace in truth and in love. This is my confidence, this is my joy.”
“When, on 19 April almost eight years ago I accepted to take on the Petrine ministry, I had the firm certainty that has always accompanied me: this certainty for the life of the Church from the Word of God. At that moment, as I have already expressed many times, the words that resounded in my heart were: Lord, what do You ask of me? It is a great weight that You are placing on my shoulders but, if You ask it of me, I will cast my nets at your command, confident that You will guide me, even with all my weaknesses. And eight years later I can say that the Lord has guided me. He has been close to me. I have felt His presence every day. It has been a stretch of the Church’s path that has had moments of joy and light, but also difficult moments. I felt like St. Peter and the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee.”
“The Lord has given us many days of sunshine and light breezes, days when the fishing was plentiful, but also times when the water was rough and the winds against us, just as throughout the whole history of the Church, when the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I always knew that the Lord is in that boat and I always knew that the boat of the Church is not mine, not ours, but is His. And the Lord will not let it sink. He is the one who steers her, of course also through those He has chosen because that is how He wanted it. This was and is a certainty that nothing can tarnish. And that is why my heart today is filled with gratitude to God, because He never left—the whole Church or me—without His consolation, His light, or His love.”
“We are in the Year of Faith, which I desired precisely in order to strengthen our faith in God in a context that seems to relegate it more and more to the background. I would like to invite everyone to renew their firm trust in the Lord, to entrust ourselves like children to God’s arms, certain that those arms always hold us up and are what allow us to walk forward each day, even when it is a struggle. I would like everyone to feel beloved of that God who gave His Son for us and who has shown us His boundless love. I would like everyone to feel the joy of being Christian. In a beautiful prayer, which can be recited every morning, say: ‘I adore you, my God and I love you with all my heart. Thank you for having created me, for having made me Christian…’ Yes, we are happy for the gift of faith. It is the most precious thing, which no one can take from us! Let us thank the Lord for this every day, with prayer and with a coherent Christian life. God loves us, but awaits us to also love Him!”
“I wish to send my greetings and my thanks to all: a pope’s heart extends to the whole world. And I would like to express my gratitude to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, which makes the great family of Nations present here. Here I am also thinking of all those who work for good communication and I thank them for their important service.”
“At this point I would also like to wholeheartedly thank all of the many people around the world who, in recent weeks, have sent me touching tokens of concern, friendship, and prayer. Yes, the Pope is never alone. I feel this again now in such a great way that it touches my heart. The Pope belongs to everyone and many people feel very close to him. It’s true that I receive letters from the world’s notables—from heads of states, from religious leaders, from representatives of the world of culture, etc.”
“But I also receive many letters from ordinary people who write to me simply from their hearts and make me feel their affection, which is born of our being together with Christ Jesus, in the Church. These people do not write to me the way one would write, for example, to a prince or a dignitary that they don’t know. They write to me as brothers and sisters or as sons and daughters, with the sense of a very affectionate family tie. In this you can touch what the Church is—not an organization, not an association for religious or humanitarian ends, but a living body, a communion of brothers and sisters in the Body of Jesus Christ who unites us all. Experiencing the Church in this way and being able to almost touch with our hands the strength of His truth and His love is a reason for joy at a time when many are speaking of its decline. See how the Church is alive today!”
“In these last months I have felt that my strength had diminished and I asked God earnestly in prayer to enlighten me with His light to make me make the right decision, not for my own good, but for the good of the Church. I have taken this step in full awareness of its seriousness and also its newness, but with a profound peace of mind. Loving the Church also means having the courage to make difficult, agonized choices, always keeping in mind the good of the Church, not of oneself.”
“Allow me here to return once again to 19 April, 2005. The gravity of the decision lay precisely in the fact that, from that moment on, I was always and for always engaged by the Lord. Always—whoever assumes the Petrine ministry no longer has any privacy. He belongs always and entirely to everyone, to the whole Church. His life, so to speak, is totally deprived of its private dimension. I experienced, and I am experiencing it precisely now, that one receives life precisely when they give it. Before I said that many people who love the Lord also love St. Peter’s Successor and are fond of him; that the Pope truly has brothers and sisters, sons and daughters all over the world and that he feels safe in the embrace of their communion; because he no longer belongs to himself but he belongs to all and all belong to him.”
“’Always’ is also ‘forever’–there is no return to private life. My decision to renounce the active exercise of the ministry does not revoke this. I am not returning to private life, to a life of trips, meetings, receptions, conferences, etc. I am not abandoning the cross, but am remaining beside the Crucified Lord in a new way. I no longer bear the power of the office for the governance of the Church, but I remain in the service of prayer, within St. Peter’s paddock, so to speak. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, will be a great example to me in this. He has shown us the way for a life that, active or passive, belongs wholly to God’s work.”
“I also thank each and every one of you for the respect and understanding with which you have received this important decision. I will continue to accompany the Church’s journey through prayer and reflection, with the dedication to the Lord and His Bride that I have tried to live every day up to now and that I want to always live. I ask you to remember me to God, and above all to pray for the Cardinals who are called to such an important task, and for the new Successor of the Apostle Peter. Many the Lord accompany him with the light and strength of His Spirit.”
“We call upon the maternal intercession of Mary, the Mother of God and of the Church, that she might accompany each of us and the entire ecclesial community. We entrust ourselves to her with deep confidence.”
“Dear friends! God guides His Church, always sustaining her even and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the path of the Church and of the world. In our hearts, in the heart of each one of you, may there always be the joyous certainty that the Lord is beside us, that He does not abandon us, that He is near and embraces us with His love. Thank you.”
Today we again hear about the virtues of humility, and that humility is indeed not the symbol of humiliation, but rather, the symbol of internal strength and justification before God. We also listen today that as the ones who are faithful to the Lord and to His message, life will not be easy for many of us, as the world who hates Christ and His truth, the evil one who hates Him, will definitely also hate all of us, who believe in Him.
Then, through humility, we learn the value of service, to serve one another, following the example of Christ who led by example, the very example of His own life, that ended with His sacrifice on the cross, His ultimate service to all of us. He taught us that to be a leader, we have to render service to others, and ultimately to be responsible for the people entrusted to us. Such is Christ as the Good Shepherd showed His example to us, as a good shepherd lay down his life for his sheep. So too a leader must lay down his ego, and strive to work for the good of the people that he is the leader of.
It is always difficult to do good, to do charitable and loving acts in this world, as there will be many who will not be pleased at such acts, and there will be many who are against the Lord and His ways. But we have to persevere to do so, for the good of the people around us, and for the world itself, even if it hates us so.
Today, in his speech at his last General Audience with the public, our beloved Pope Benedict XVI has mentioned that although he will no longer be Pope, he will never abandon the Church, but rather he will continue in prayer and therefore, as we all should know, lead us in the spiritual battle against the evil one and his mischievous ways, through prayer. For indeed, a praying retired Pope is more powerful than even when he was still active as Pope and leader of our Church. Our Pope too, imitating Christ, in his great humility, has decided to step down, and therefore allow others who are more capable to continue the good works he had started for the good of everyone, especially that of the faithful in Christ.
Our Pope mentioned that although he stepped down from the cross that he has undertaken as our leader, he remains at the foot of the cross in prayer, to support the new Pope who will bear the cross of Christ, together with all the faithful. It is a symbol indeed of great humility, which we too can follow. Remember too, Christ who is divine, but yet lowered Himself such that He was willing to die on the shameful cross, only for the symbol of that shame to be transformed into the victorious cross. We, who are to bear our own crosses with the Lord, should therefore follow in our Lord’s footsteps, to carry our crosses in humility, in order for the burdens of our crosses to be transformed too, into the victorious cross.
But, we are not in this alone, for God walks with us, He who suffered through mockery, humiliation, and death for us. And remember too that all of us, brothers and sisters in Christ, walk together this path of faith, towards the Lord. The path will not be easy, and many challenges would await us, but if we stay faithful in Christ, and believe in one another, and most importantly help one another in our journey, and keep love at the centre of our being, we will prevail. The Lord too would not have prevailed, had He not, out of His infinite love for all of us, willing to continue, bearing the weight of all of our sins, through falling and rising, and through curses and lashes, towards Calvary, and from there towards salvation of all mankind.
Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, today, let us pray for ourselves, pray for one another, and also pray for our Pope, that together, despite all the sufferings and the obstacles laid in our path towards God, that we can stay together, help one another, and shoulder our crosses, that when the time comes, our burden and our shame will be transformed to that of the victorious cross of Christ, the symbol of salvation. Let us pray too that all of us will be able to embark on missions to reach out to others around us, to alleviate suffering from all, and to show love to all those whom we meet, even to those who hates us and wish for our destruction.
God bless us all, God bless His Holy Church, and God bless our Pope, Benedict XVI. Amen!
The full video coverage of the last General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI by EWTN, on Wednesday, 27 February 2013, 10.30 am Rome time at St. Peter’s Square.
Matthew 20 : 17-28
When Jesus was going to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside and said to them, “See, we are going to Jerusalem. There the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the Law, who will condemn Him to death. They will hand Him over to the foreigners, who will mock Him, scourge Him, and crucify Him. But He will be raised to life on the third day.”
Then the mother of James and John came to Jesus with her sons, and she knelt down, to ask a favour. Jesus said to her, “What do you want?” And she answered, “Here You have my two sons. Grant that they may sit, one at Your right hand and one at Your left, when You are in Your kingdom.”
Jesus said to the brothers, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They answered, “We can.” Jesus replied, “You will indeed drink My cup, but to sit at My right or at My left is not for Me to grant. That will be for those, for whom My Father has prepared it.”
The other ten heard all this, and were angry with the two brothers. Then Jesus called them to Him and said, “You know that the rulers of the nations act as tyrants over them, and the powerful oppress them. It shall not be so among you : whoever wants to be more important in your community shall make himself your servant. And if you want to be the first of all, make yourself the servant of all.”
“Be like the Son of Man who has come, not to be served but to serve, and to give His life to redeem many.”
