Message from Monsignor Corrado Lorefice to the Church of Palermo in the Rosalian Jubilee Year for the IV Centenary of the discovery of the body of Saint Rosalia

“The scent of a woman who crosses time to give hope to our time too”

Dearest Sisters and dearest Brothers,
last July 10th the jubilee year began to celebrate the fourth centenary of the discovery of the relics of our Patron Saint, Rosalia Sinibaldi. For over four centuries, looking at Monte Pellegrino, our city has lived under the vigilant custody of this wise and wonderful woman of faith.

According to the narrative of those who were present at the excavation – ordinary citizens, sailors, friars – led by Geronima la Gattuta, on 15 July 1624 an intense scent of flowers released from that mound which aroused the wonder of those present. The testimony of Rosalia’s evangelical life, even after her death, continued to spread the scent of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, born of the Virgin Mary, died, resurrected and ascended to the right hand of the Father, our brother and redeemer . Her encounter with Christ transformed her and filled her with the overflowing and compassionate love of God the Father.

Love that regenerates and pushes us to love others as we have been loved (see 2 Cor 5.14; Jn 13.34; 15.13), to the point of total self-giving, to the point of transforming one’s life into an existential space of love .

In the Quisquina cave, Rosalia engraved the reason for her choice: for love Domini mei, for love of my Lord.

It is love that shakes and regenerates human consciences, it is the love of God poured into hearts by the Holy Spirit (see Rom 5:5) that inspires new human relationships in the name of conviviality, justice and peace. Pope Francis, in the Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exsultate on the call to holiness in the contemporary world, reiterated that the saints “maintain bonds of love and communion with us” (n. 4).

This IV Centenary of the discovery of the relics of Santa Rosalia asks us first of all to renew the “bond of love and communion” with Santuzza and, through her, between us; feel her as a companion on our journey of faith and ardent and creative charity so that love and, therefore, hope does not go out in the world.

The Rosalian Jubilee, as I have already had the opportunity to say, far from being a mere commemoration or just a complex of civil and religious events, is a precious opportunity for spiritual and human renewal for the entire city and for all the parish communities, the Religious Communities and lay Aggregations of our Archdiocese.

Rosalia still has much to tell us as a woman, citizen and Christian. A woman imbued with the Gospel, she allowed herself to be humanized by Christ’s Easter, relativizing and abandoning the royal court, with its human comforts and intrigues, to present herself to Christ as a chaste virgin (see 2 Cor 11.2) in the joy of the nuptial hermitage of speco of Quisquina and Monte Pellegrino.

Hers was not an alienating escape, nor an intimate withdrawal. We all still feel her present and active among us today, a watchful lookout and a caring sister. With the beautiful image used by Pope Francis, we perceive her as the Santuzza “next door” (Gaudete et exsultate, 7), always close to strengthen in us the passion for Christ and his Kingdom, “where the poor are blessed, where peace is the principle of coexistence, where the pure of heart and those who mourn are exalted and consoled, where those who aspire to justice are vindicated, where sinners can be forgiven, where all are brothers” (Paul VI, Homily, Manila, 29 November 1970).

Rosalia is a credible witness who assures, even today, that we are a people loved and visited by the mercy of the Father.

In 1624, as we read from the stories of the time, our saint was a tireless ‘beautiful Samaritan’, appearing in dreams to those hospitalized in the lazarets, consoling the plague victims, becoming the ‘apostle’ of good news: “Heaven does not it is forgotten about us.” And thanks to her the city of Palermo listened to that voice from heaven that remembered: “no one saves themselves”.

The honors that are paid to St. Rosalia every year with the Festino revive the beauty of living together, as an inclusive community open to all, because we are all images of the one God, children of the one Father, all brothers and sisters. By walking together and listening to each other we grow to regenerate our cities together.

Rosalia leads us to Christ. A strength that heals everyone continues to emerge from him (see Luke 6:19). Through the presence of her relics, our Santuzza wants to ‘infect’ us with the love of God and neighbor to free us from the devastating pandemic of sclerocardia, the hardening of hearts (see Mk 10.5; Eph 4.18) and from spread of iniquity, which has cooled love in many (see Mt 24:12). It wants to awaken in us a more authentic religiosity, like that transmitted to us over the centuries by our fathers and mothers, which fuels a great moral passion, for good, for what is right, making the suffering of men and women our own, especially the little ones, the fragile and the poor.

As I stated in the Speech to the city in Piazza Marina during this year’s procession, «to experience the celebrations of Santa Rosalia with awareness and fullness, and not with the attitude of an anonymous mass driven by habit or convention, we must confront once again with the underlying question: […] How come a body that has been dead for more than eight centuries emanates life? […] Rosalia Sinibaldi’s body is alive because she, being authentically and joyfully Christian, nourished it with the body of a Risen Dead, with the Body of Jesus of Nazareth. She was nourished by the sacrament of the Eucharist […]. He rose again to remain – throughout the centuries – close to us, to nourish us, to give us the secret of endless joy and a full life. […] He is alive, he is next to us, he is our traveling companion, he is the master, the true expert on humanity and happiness, who invites us to go to him. It is he who makes saints, that is, he realizes and makes the lives of those who entrust themselves to him happy. He loved us and also loves us through Rosalia.”

In this Jubilee journey of our Church with Rosalia towards Christ, together with the brothers and sisters with whom we share life in our homes and in our cities, we wish to place some Jubilee signs.

First of all the pilgrimages to the Jubilee places established by the Apostolic Penitentiary (Cathedral and Sanctuary of Monte Pellegrino), both personal ones and with our families, and those in which we will experience the sign of the ‘coming together’ of the parish communities of the six Vicariates in the Mother Church of our Archdiocese. We will meet in assembly to «implement the work of salvation through sacrifice and the sacraments around which all liturgical life revolves» (Sacrosanctum concilium, 6) and to enjoy the communion of the Saints, particularly with St. Rosalia.

In addition to the pilgrimage of the Vicariates to the Cathedral, another sign will be the peregrinatio of the reliquary bust of Santa Rosalia in the parishes of the Archdiocese. Precious opportunity to strengthen the life of faith, rediscover the call to holiness and the responsibility to build the city of men, inherent in baptismal rebirth. Propitious occasion to prepare ourselves to experience, with the other Italian dioceses, the 50th Social Week of Catholics and, with the whole Church, the Jubilee of 2025 which will see us, in turn, pilgrims of hope.

Obviously, the sign par excellence will be the practice of the commandment of mutual love: love one another ‘as’ I have loved you (see John 13:34), and the works of charity that place the poor at the center of our personal, family and community life , beloved of the Lord.

I deliver these precious opportunities of grace to the diocesan community which will be articulated through the appropriate program.

I can only hope for the intense interior predisposition so that this Rosalian Jubilee may strengthen faith, renew hope, give vigor to charity and reinvigorate fraternal life. Only a Church capable of putting the theological virtues to good use will be capable – as the Synod of Bishops and the Diocesan Synodal Path are exhorting us – of communion, participation and mission, to share the beautiful testimony of the Gospel of Christ also in our complex epochal change.

Rosalia, pilgrim of hope, courageous woman, strongly in love with Christ, continue to walk among us, to instill (in us) and spread (through us) that love which is capable of transforming the world into a common fraternal home.

I hold you all in a blessing embrace.

Palermo, 26 November 2023, Solemnity of Christ King of the Universe

 

† Corrado Lorefice
Archbishop