VATICAN CITY, MAY 24, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here are the addresses Benedict XVI delivered Saturday upon receiving in separate audiences delegations from Bulgaria and Macedonia, present in Rome for the feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius.
The Bulgarian delegation was led by Prime Minister Boiko Borissov, and the Macedonian delegation by the president of the Parliament, Trjako Veljanoski.
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[To the delegation from Bulgaria]
Mr. Prime Minister,
Honorable Members of the Government and Distinguished Authorities,
Venerated Brothers of the Orthodox Church and of the Catholic Church,
I am happy to be able to give each one of you a cordial welcome, honorable members of the official delegation, who have come to Rome in happy celebration of the liturgical memorial of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. Your presence, which attests to the Christian roots of the Bulgarian people, offers the propitious occasion to confirm my esteem for this dear nation and enables us to reinforce our friendship, enhanced by the devotion to the two brother saints of Thessalonica.
Through an untiring endeavor of evangelization, carried out with true apostolic ardor, Sts. Cyril and Methodius providentially rooted Christianity in the spirit of the Bulgarian people, so that it is anchored in those evangelical values that always reinforce the identity and enrich the culture of a nation. The Gospel, in fact, does not weaken what is authentic in the various cultural traditions; on the contrary, precisely because faith in Jesus shows us the splendor of truth, the latter gives man the ability to recognize the true good and helps him to realize it in his own life and in the social context. Because of this, with reason one can hold that Sts. Cyril and Methodius contributed significantly in molding the humanity and spiritual physiognomy of the Bulgarian people, inserting it in the common Christian cultural tradition.
In the path of full integration with the other European nations, Bulgaria is called, therefore, to promote and give witness to these Christian roots that derive from the teachings of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, today more timely and necessary than ever; she is called, therefore, to remain faithful and to protect the precious patrimony that unites between them, both Orthodox as well as Catholics, all those who profess the same faith of the Apostles and are united by the common baptism. As Christians, we have the duty to preserve and reinforce the intrinsic bond that exists between the Gospel and our respective cultural identities; as disciples of the Lord, in mutual respect of the different ecclesial traditions, we are called to give common testimony of our faith in Jesus, in whose name we obtain salvation.
It is my heartfelt hope that this meeting might be for all of you here present and for the ecclesial and civil realities that you represent, motive of ever more intense fraternal and solidaristic relations. With these sentiments, I encourage the Bulgarian people to persevere in the objective to build a society founded on justice and peace; to this end I assure you of my prayer and spiritual closeness. I renew to you, Mr. Prime Minister, and to each one of you, my blessed greeting, with which I wish to reach all the citizens of your beloved country.
[Translation by ZENIT]
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[To the delegation from Macedonia]
Mr. President of the Parliament,
Honorable Members of the Government and Distinguished Authorities,
Venerated Brothers of the Orthodox Church and of the Catholic Church,
I am happy to welcome you and to express to the Lord, giver of all graces, the joy and gratitude for this moment that sees you united on invoking him through the intercession of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, celestial patrons of your people and of the whole of Europe, in the annual pilgrimage you make to Rome to venerate the relics of Saint Cyril.
My beloved predecessor, the Venerable John Paul II, in the encyclical «Slavorum Apostoli,» wished to remind everyone that, thanks to the teaching and the fruits of Vatican Council II, we can look today in a new way at the work of the two holy Brothers of Thessalonica, «now separated from us by eleven centuries. And we can read in their lives and apostolic activity the elements that the wisdom of divine Providence placed in them, so that they might be revealed with fresh fullness in our own age and might bear new fruits» (No. 3).
Truly abundant were, in their time, the fruits of the evangelization of Cyril and Methodius. They knew sufferings, privations and hostilities, but endured everything with unbreakable faith and invincible hope in God. With this strength they consumed themselves for the peoples entrusted to them, protecting the texts of Scripture, indispensable in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, translated by them into the paleo-Slavic language, written in a new alphabet and successively approved by the authority of the Church. In trials and in joys, they always felt accompanied by God and daily experienced his love and that of the brothers. We also understand increasingly that when we feel loved by the Lord and are able to correspond to this love, we are enveloped and guided by his grace in every activity and action of ours. According to the effusion of the many gifts of the Holy Spirit, the more we are able to love and give ourselves to others, the more the Spirit can come to the aid of our weakness, pointing out to us new ways for our action.
According to tradition, Methodius remained faithful to the end to the words that his brother Cyril said to him before dying: «Behold, my brother, we have shared the same destiny, ploughing the same furrow; I now fall in the field at the end of my day. […] Do not […] give up your work of teaching» (Iibid., No. 6). Dear brothers and sisters, let us put our hand to the plough and continue to work on the same furrow that God in his providence indicated to Sts. Cyril and Methodius. May the Lord bless your work at the service of the common good and of your whole nation, and infuse abundantly in her the gifts of the Spirit of unity and peace.
[Translation by ZENIT]
