On December 9, 1978 Pope John Paul II addressed over 2,000 workers, members of Groups of Commitment and Christian Presence, who worked for Alfa-Romero, Pirelli, Corriere della Sera, and other industrial firms.(1) After recalling his own experience of toil and monotony as a factory worker, John Paul expressed an awareness of the needs, demands, and aspirations of workers. "I know the necessity of work never being alienating and frustrating but corresponding to the superior dignity of human persons."
With a mention of the gospel message of Jesus and the papal social encyclicals, John Paul summarized, ". . . the Church always has defended workers, upholding the urgency of real social justice, together with Christian charity, in an atmosphere of freedom, mutual respect, and brotherhood." Despite the difficult and complicated circumstances on the national and international scene, John Paul was quite insistent on the right of every human person to a job.
. . . since we know that work is life, serenity, commitment, interest, meaning, we must wish everyone to have it. One who has a job feels useful, soundly engaged in something which gives one's own life value. To be without a job is psychologically negative and dangerous, particularly for the young and for those who have a family to support. Therefore, while we must thank God if we have work, we also must feel the grief and distress of the unemployed and, as far as is in our power, endeavour to meet these painful situations. Words are not enough! It is necessary to help concretely in a Christian way! While I appeal to those responsible for society, I also address each of you directly: commit yourselves, you too, in order that everyone may find work!
John Paul II was equally insistent about the implementation of social justice in the work scene, by an appeal to everyone's conscience, workers as well as employers.
Rights and duties are on both sides. For society to be able to keep itself in the balance of peace and common prosperity, everyone must make a point of being just in everything and with everyone, both in remunerating and protecting work and in spending one's strength.
Finally, John Paul II was insistent that work be sanctified by everyone. Admitting that work sometimes is not well-paid, esteemed, and easy but sometimes is unpleasant, unsatisfying, and dangerous, the Pope challenged his audience of 2,000 workers.
It is then necessary to remember that all work is collaboration with God to perfect the nature he created and is service to others. It is necessary, therefore, to work with love and out of love! Then one will always be content and serene, and even if work tires, one takes up the cross together with Jesus Christ and bears the fatigue courageously.
On November 8, 1978 John Paul II continued to fulfill the commitment of his predecessor, John Paul I, to speak about the Christian virtues.(2) The topic at that audience was the cardinal or moral virtue of justice. John Paul II thought the topic quite appropriate for the month of November, when Christians are encouraged to reflect on "the ultimate things." Given the transitoriness of this world, John Paul II remarked,
. . . it is not possible to attain justice in its fullness during the present life. The words we hear so often, "There is no justice in this world," may express facile oversimplification. Yet, they also express a profound truth. In a sense, justice is beyond the reach of humans. It cannot be made fully real within the dimensions of his human life nor is it possible to establish fully just relationships among individuals, groups, societies and segments of societies, nations and so on. . . . [The] world is not in a position to satisfy completely a being who is created in the image of God. . . . In consequence, this hunger for justice causes humans to open themselves to God who "is the very essence of justice."
Nevertheless, John Paul II would not allow his audience to neglect justice as "a basic . . . ethical dimension of life." Justice is "a basic principle for the existence and coexistence," not only for the life of individuals, societies, and the human race but also for the church and the social structures of the state and international organizations. Indeed, commented John Paul II, "It can be said that the very meaning of man's life on earth is bound up with justice." Testimony to that fact is the development over the centuries of some specific definitions or concepts of "justice," such as commutative, distributive, legal and social.
Yet, more important, for John Paul II, than any definition or type of justice is the practice of justice. He saw justice as that by which humans live and have their meaning. While revering the variety of programs trends and systems produce, John Paul II cautioned.
[We] should be aware that the primary concern here must not be systems but justice. . . . The systems must be for the sake of man. . . . Therefore, we must defend ourselves against the rigidification of systems. . . . [Social], economic, political and cultural systems . . . must all be sensitive to man and his integral good and be able to reform themselves and their own structures in accordance with a fully authentic vision of what humans require. It is from this point of view that we must evaluate the great effort being made in our time to define and support "the right of man" in the life of contemporary . . . peoples and states.
Noting the attention given to justice in papal encyclicals and the Second Vatican Council, John Paul II said that, while he would have to return to the topic in greater detail, his immediate purpose was to point out "how vast and diversified the terrain" was. While a framework of justice for life is necessary, even more necessary is living and acting justly. Among the many objects and forms of justice, paramount is justice towards God. For John Paul II it was a vast theme and of primordial importance, to which he had to return later.
John Paul II concluded his talk on the virtue of justice by remarking on the relationship of Christ's commandment of love to justice at the human level.
This commandment includes all that has to do with justice. There can be no love without justice. Love is "superior" to justice. At the same time, love proves itself in the form of justice. . . . If justice is weakened, love itself is jeopardized.
Concretely, to be just means to give each person what is due to her or him. What is "due" include material goods. For example, "wages owed for work or the so-called right to fruits of one's own labor or one's own land." Also "due" are "the right to the good name, respect, esteem and reputation . . . earned." While our understanding of justice as a theoretical aspect of human life is a constant challenge, more important is realization of justice as "a virtue, a capacity of the human spirit, the human will and the human heart."
On January 29, 1979 John Paul II spoke at a concelebrated Mass, after instituting 25 lay ministers, with more than 500,000 Indios of Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Culiacan regions of Brazil.(3) After praising the original cultures of Mixtecs and Zapotecs and the work of the early Christian missionaries, John Paul II highlighted the church's concern for all cultures and nations, especially the poor.
Reiterating the determination of his predecessors, John the XXIII and Paul VI, to be "the voice of those who cannot speak or are silenced" and "the conscience of consciences and a challenge to action," John Paul II wished to make up for lost time to assist depressed rural areas and workers who can no longer wait.
The farm worker has a right to be respected and not deprived of the little he has, in ways that are at times nothing but outright despoliation. He has a right not to be prevented from fulfilling his desire to participate in his own advancement . . . to be rid of the barriers of exploitation which are often erected by intolerable selfishness and against which is greatest efforts at advancement come to naught . . . to effective help . . . so that he may have access to the development which his dignity as a human being and a child of God demands.
Recalling the church's defense of private property and its social mortgage, John Paul II added, "And, if the common good requires it, there must be no hesitation about resorting even to expropriation, though this must be done in a proper way." Attention to the rural world had a special urgency for John Paul II. For, in addition to providing society with needed food products and mirroring so continuously the work of the creator in Nature, agriculture is rendered very problematic because of the labor it requires, contempt with which it regarded, obstacles which it encounters, and consequences which follow from proletarianization in depressing and inhuman crowding of urban areas by the disposed.
John Paul II then offered abundant praise and thanks to the Indios for the rich store of enviable and human values, deeply rooted love of the family, appreciation of friendship, profound human feeling, love of peace and civic fellowship, experience of the religious reality, openness to God, and love of God's Mother. Then, John Paul II concluded with challenges. First, John Paul II challenged the ruling classes.
It is unjust, it is inhuman, it is unchristian to allow certain unjust situations to continue Real and effective means must be taken at the local, national and international levels, along the broad lines laid down in the third part of the encyclical Mater et Magister. It is clear that he who can do more should contribute more to the effort.
Second, John Paul II challenged everyone, "[Work] for your advancement as human beings...Become constantly more worthy in the moral and religious spheres as well. Do not cherish feelings of hatred and violence."
On January 31, 1979 John Paul II addressed a gathering of approximately a million and a half people in Monterrey, Mexico, many of whom were Mexican-Americans and Polish-Americans and who had travelled many miles by bus, car, or airplane.(4) John Paul II began by greeting farm workers, clerical workers, especially those of Monterrey, by sharing the needs and aspirations of workers with whom he had conversed, and by recalling his own working days in Poland. Fully aware that work should not be alienating and frustrating but enhancing human dignity, the pope reminded his listeners that response to the spirit of Jesus will enable all to feel deep concern for those lacking adequate food, clothing, housing, and other benefits of culture. Indeed, once
. . . we grant work as the source of a person's sustenance, a form of collaboration with God in the task of developing the natural world, and an enabling service to the brothers and sisters, Christians cannot be unconcerned about the fact that so many men and women are unemployed, especially young people and heads of families, whose unemployment leads them to discouragement and despair.
John Paul II listed the aspirations of those fortunate to have jobs: safe and humane conditions, just wages, social security, opportunities for cultural and spiritual development, and treatment as free and responsible human persons. The last aspiration implied participation in decisions that would affect their present and future lives. Hence, John Paul II said very pointedly, "It is a basic right of theirs to organize freely with a view to defending and promoting their interests and to making a responsible contribution to the common good."
For the realization of such aspirations, the pope called for several things.
Bold and renovative innovations are needed in order to eliminate the serious injustices inherited from the past and meet the challenge of the prodigious changes occurring in mankind.
He suggested that at all levels, national and international, and in all social systems unilateral denunciations and facile ideologies "are becoming increasingly ridiculous." He also called for radical revisions in conceptualization of progress, away from an atrophying of spiritual values. He asserted that, while the church "is not afraid to denounce forcefully attacks on human dignity," it devotes its energy to helping management and labor to become conscious of the vast store of good which they carry within themselves from the past and into the future.
John Paul II asserted that the church already had made original and varied contributions to the labor movement on the continent, but dwelt more on the accomplishments of the movement.
The labor movement ...claims its rightful share in the responsibility for building a new world order. It has gathered up the common longings for freedom and dignity. It has developed the virtues of solidarity, brotherhood and friendship. By pooling experience, it has given rise to original organizational forms, thereby improving the lot of many workers and, no matter how reluctantly this may be admitted, leaving its mark on the industrial world.
Yet, John Paul II called on the labor movement to use such experience "in the search for new ways," to renew itself, and to contribute "in an even more decisive way" to building the future of Latin America.
Reference was made to Paul VI's visit to Colombia in 1968, as well as to his words in Octogesima Adveniens in 1971 about the limitations and purposes of "social doctrine." There is no support for any ideology or model. Yet, the church does offer general principles, gospel inspiration, sensitivity to all that is human, reflections on changing conditions, and centuries of practical experience. John Paul II concluded with some suggestions on aspects of labor-management problems.
On the problem of migrant workers, John Paul II decried their plight: forced exile from homeland, unpleasant and unwelcome new environment, strange language, and isolation from families. The language became even stronger.
At times they are even forced into a marginal kind of experience because others profit by their plight to give them lower wages, cut off social security and other forms of assistance, and impose living conditions that are unworthy of human beings. There are times when the principle followed is to get the maximum output from the migrant worker while paying no need to him as a person.
John Paul II proclaimed the norm for the situation of the migrant worker, as well as others, ". . . priority must not be given to economic, social and political considerations over human beings. . . . [The] dignity of the human person is more important than anything else and must be a condition for all else." The workers were admonished about fulfilling their obligations. Minus such "there can be no just social order."
The pope concluded by urging labor, management, and public authorities "to reflect on these principles and to elaborate a consistent plan of action." Not without a papal compliment on instances in which "these principles of the Church's social teaching are being put into practice in an exemplary manner."
On March 3, 1979 John Paul II issued his first encyclical, "The Redeemer of the Human Race" (Redemptor Hominis).(5) After econoniums to John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul I, their successor gave an overview of the church since Paul VI and the importance the redemption. In terms of Catholic Social Thought, very significant are John Paul II's words,
The first duty of the Church . . . is to help all human beings perceive in their daily lives the depths of the redemption that takes place in Christ Jesus. At the same time, she touches all that is most profound in the human person: I mean the realm of human hearts and consciences and events.
A few paragraphs above the pope wrote some most striking words about the relationship of the person to faith,
. . . this profound wonder at the value and dignity of the human person is called "Gospel. . . ." It is also called Christianity. That very wonder is at the origin of the Church's mission in the world, including--perhaps even especially--"the world of today." This wonder, which is . . . the certainty of faith but also, in hidden and mysterious ways, is the lifeblood of all genuine humanism--is closely connected with Christ.
John Paul II proclaimed Christ the redeemer of the human race immediately after quoting words of Vatican Council II's Pastoral Constitution.
To children of Adam He restores the divine likeness. . . . [By] His incarnation the Son of God united Himself in some fashion with every person. He worked with human hands. He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart.
John Paul II, commenting briefly on other Vatican II documents, continued to delineate the relationship between Christ, redemption, human dignity and the church's mission.
Promising to be faithful to the teaching of the council, the new pope proceeded to read some of "the signs of the times." He spoke of fears and pressures human beings experience. For,
. . . the results of their own physical work and even more . . . of their intellectual labor and deliberate choices . . . are subject . . . to "alienation," inasmuch as these fruits are simply taken from those who produced them. . . . They are afraid that the work of their hands may turn into instruments and weapons capable to an incredible degree of destroying them. . . .
In addition, the exploitation of the earth not only for commercial purposes but also for increased armaments, and uncontrolled technological development which is not restricted to its proper place within nature. . . . People often seem to see the natural environment only in terms of immediate use and consumption. And yet the Creator decreed that human beings should be in communion with nature as intelligent and high-principled "masters" and "guardians" and not that they should think of its solely in terms of profit and heedlessly destroy it.
A fear highly emphasized by John Paul II was the anxiety over whether technology and civilization render persons "spiritually more mature . . . responsible to the call of duty . . . open to others, especially those most needy or weakest . . . ready to be of help to all." The church, whose essential mission is "concern for human beings . . . their humanity . . . the future earthly destiny as a race, and, therefore, for the entire course of developmental progress."
Also highlighted by John Paul II is the fear that people and societies will be more concerned about "having more" than "being more." The results are that, while economic mastery may increase, persons may allow themselves to be manipulated "by the whole organization of community life, by the system of production, and by the pressure of communication media." He made very clear persons may not "let themselves be enslaved to things . . . to economic systems . . . to the work of their hands."
With reference to predecessors--as far back as Pius XII--John Paul II alluded to human situations "out of harmony with the objective requirements of morality and justice and even more with the requirements of social love." There were sectors dominated by consumer practices and sectors plagued by hunger, sectors where the greatest profit was sought and the greatest suffering was endured, sectors where social classes enjoyed privilege and comfort, and sectors where social classes experienced rampaging inflation and embittering unemployment. For John Paul II, such situations called into question,
. . . the monetary, financial, production and commercial structures and mechanisms which, with support from political pressure groups, are now controlling the entire world economy. These structures and mechanisms are almost completely incapable of eliminating unjust social conditions inherited from the past or of meeting the pressing moral requirements and needs of the present time. . . . [Such call] for bold and effective plans which are consonant with the true dignity of the human person.
For John Paul II, remedying such arrangements is possible, if one invokes solidarity and conversion. He defined solidarity in the broad sense as an effective search for appropriate institutions, "whether in the area of commerce, where healthy competition must be allowed to flourish, or through broader and more direct distribution and control of wealth." Conversion was defined as directing and restraining "by the higher faculties of the human person and by the principles that determine an authentic human culture," instincts to advance "the interests of the individual or the collectivity or . . . to fight and dominate, whatever be the intellectual camouflage behind which these instincts hide."
In the Spring of 1979, John Paul II addressed the assembled bishops of Latin America in Puebla, Mexico, on the topic of liberation theology.(6) Rejecting the stance of Jesus as a political figure--revolutionary or subversive as totally at odds with the church's catechists, John Paul II was quite clear.
He [Jesus] unequivocally rejects recourse to violence. He opens His message to everyone without excluding the very publicans. The perspective of His mission is much deeper. It consists in complete salvation through a transforming, peacemaking, pardoning, and reconciling love.
With quotes from Vatican II's Lumen Gentium and Paul VI's Evangelii Nuntiandi, John Paul II admitted the demanding attitudes, Latin American history, and values in Latin American people for that faith which "reveals the vocation to harmony and unity that must drive away the danger of wars in this continent of hope, in which the church has been such a powerful integrating factor." After quoting Bishop Hilary of Poitiers and Paul VI at Medellin, Colombia, John Paul II repeated an admonition from his own inaugural homily in October 1978.
Open wide the doors for Christ. To His saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development.
John Paul II insisted that evangelization depended upon a well-founded ecclesiology. For, evangelization is the essential mission, distinctive vocation, and deepest identity of church. Also, evangelization is not an individual and isolated but very ecclesial activity. He detected uneasiness and mistrust about the church among the Puebla documents. Thus, he warned about a securalist view of the kingdom of God being reached by "the mere changing of structures and social and political involvement, and as being present wherever there is a certain type of involvement for justice." Also, he warned about an attitude which views the institutional or official church as alienating and opposed to the church "springing from the people" and taking concrete form in the poor.
John Paul also warned against reducing truth to the principles of "a system of philosophy" or "pure political activity." Despite "forms of humanism" limited to political and economic, biological and psychological dimensions, John Paul II challenged the church to overcome all doubt and fear, distortion and discouragement about its original message.
This complete truth about the human being constitutes the foundation of the church's social teaching and the basis of true liberation. In light of this truth, human beings are not subjected to economic or political processes; these processes are instead directed to human beings and are subjected to human beings.
John Paul II was confident the bishops gathered at Puebla were committed to the unity of the church's magisterium and to human dignity. Nevertheless, he averted to individual and personal, social and political infringements on human dignity. Also, he mentioned the bishops' serious reflection on the relationships and implications "between evangelization and human advancement or liberation." He rceommended the Good Samaritan parable and the Last Judgment scene, as well as --the document of the 1971 Synod of Bishops, "Justice in the World", Evangelii Nuntiandi and Lumen Gentium ,as sources of inspiration for the church, rather than any opportunism, thirst for novelty or power plays.
The truth enunciated in those and other sources concerning the human person and the journey toward a better world, contributed to the church's preoccupation with delicate questions of property. Because "the growing wealth of a few runs parallel to the growing poverty of the masses," John Paul II recalled from church teaching and human conscience "all private property involves a social obligation." Quite specifically,
. . . [the church] will be working in favor of society, within which this Christian evangelical principle will finally bear the fruit of a more just and equitable distribution of goods, not only within each nation but also in the world in general. . . . [Internal] peace and international peace can only be ensured if a social and economic system based on justice flourishes. . . . [For] an economic system to be just, it is an indispensable condition that it should favor the development and diffusion of public education and culture. The more just the economy, the deeper will be the conscience of culture.
Recalling Paul VI's maxim that development is "the new name of peace," John Paul II stated that no economic rule could change the mechanisms that produced on the international level "rich people ever more rich at the expense of poor people ever more poor." Because such mechanisms are imbued not with authentic humanism but materialism, primacy must be given to demands of justice, ethical principles, the moral, and evangelization.
John Paul II proceeded to relate evangelization to human rights. He listed the basic human rights violated with impunity by individual persons and civil authorities. Included are right to birth, life, responsible procreation, work, freedom, social justice, participation in decisions which affect people and nations. In the face of violations of such basic rights, John Paul II cried out, "Respect man, he is the image of God. Evangelize, so that . . . the Lord may transform hearts and humanize the political and economic system."
John Paul II urged pastoral commitment to the proclamation and implementation of an integrally Christian liberation as outlined in Evangelii Nuntiandi (n. 9,30-33, and 35). For John Paul II, what that document called the social teaching or social doctrine of the church, Octogesima Aveniens identified as involving principles for reflection, norms for judgment, and guidelines for action. Special pastoral attention was urged for the formation of social conscience at all levels and in all sectors. While emphasizing the vocation of laity in contributing to the political and economic dimension of society and safeguarding effectively an advancement of human rights, John Paul II prayed for the Latin American bishops,
May she [Our Lady of Guadalupe], the star of evangelization . . . obtain for you. . . . The boldness of prophets and the evangelical prudence of pastors. The clearsightedness of teachers and the reliability of guides and directors. Courage as witnesses, and the calmness, patience and gentleness of fathers.
On June 7, 1979 John Paul II, during a pilgrimage to his homeland, preached at the monastery of Jasna Gora in Czestochowa.(7) After expressing the meaning of the monastery for Polish piety and the importance of the coal mining region for Polish industry, the pope addressed the relationship of work to piety. The earth's riches, above or below its surface, become human riches at the cost of human labor. Work, manual or intellectual, enables human persons to fulfill the mission entrusted by the creator to have dominion over the earth.
Indeed, work has more than technical implications. There are ethical and familial implications as well.
It can be said that man "subdues" the earth when by his behavior he becomes . . . the master and not the slave of work. Work must help man to become better, more mature spiritually, more responsible, in order that he may realize his vocation on earth both as an unrepeatable person and in community constituted by the family. . . . Work must make it possible for this human community to find the means necessary for its formation and maintenance.
The reason for the family is one of the fundamental factors determining the economy and policy of work. These keep their ethical character when they take into consideration the needs and the rights of the family. Through work the adult human being must earn the means needed to maintain his family. Motherhood must be treated in work policy and economy as a great end and a great task in itself. For with it is connected the mother's work in giving birth, feeding and upbringing, and no one can take her place. . . . True respect for work brings with it due esteem for motherhood. It cannot be otherwise. The moral health of the whole society depends on that . . . I wish your work not cease to be a source of your social strength. Thanks to your work, may your homes be strong. Thanks to your work, may the whole of our motherhood be strong.
John Paul II continued with specific reference to the industrial area of Silesia and Zaglebic, with its blast furnaces and, chimneys of factories, "a land of great work and great prayer" whose usual greeting is "May God give you his help." John Paul II was delighted that the development of human work had gone hand in hand with the building of churches, the erection of parishes and the deepening and strengthening of faith. He was justly proud there had been no de-Christianization or rupture between work and prayer, expressed so well in the Benedictine motto, "Ora et labora."
In every human work, prayer makes a reference to God the creator and redeemer and it also contributes to complete "humanization" of work "Work exists . . . for resurrection." (C.R. Norwid). . . . He [person] cannot confirm his "dominion" over the earth by work except by praying at the same time.
Dear brothers and sisters . . . do not let yourselves be seduced by the temptation to think that man can fully find himself by denying God, erasing prayer from his life and remaining only a worker, deluding himself that what he produces can on its own fill the needs of the human heart.
Two days later, June 8, 1979, during the pilgrimage to his homeland, John Paul II spoke in the city of Nowy Targ.(8) In a moving homily, the pope proclaimed "the great fundamental right . . . to work and . . . to land." Despite economic development, industrialization, and rural flight, "the right to land does not cease to constitute the basis of sound economy and sociology."
The very next day, June 9, John Paul II delivered a homily at Mogila, a 13th century Cistercian monastery on the edge of the Cracow industrial suburb of Nowa Huta.(9) After greeting pilgrims from Nowa Huta, Cracow, Silesia, and Kielce and after extolling the importance of the cross throughout history and in his own encounters with the communists while archbishop of Cracow, John Paul II said,
. . . man's work bears deeply engraved on it the mystery of the cross, the law of the cross. In it comes true what the creator said after the fall of man: "By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat" (Gen. 3:19). Both the old work in the fields, which makes wheat grow but also thorns and thistles, and the new work in blast furnaces and new foundries are always carried out "with sweat of one's brow. . . ." It is with the sweat of his brow--terrible sweat of death--that Christ agonizes on the cross. . . . The cross cannot be separated from man's work. Christ cannot be separated from man's work.
The pope then proclaimed that neither the church nor he had fear of the world of work--especially since it is tied up with the gospel and he had come from the midst of the world of work. Referring to his days in the quarries of Yakrzowek, the Solvay furnaces in Borek Falecki, and the church in Nowa Huta, John Paul II spoke of the problems of human work, impossible of being solved fully without the gospel.
The problems being raised today--and is it really only today?--about human labor do not, in fact, come down in the last analysis--I say this with respect for all specialists--either to technology or even to economics but to a fundamental category: the category of the dignity of work, that is to say, of the dignity of man. Economics, technology and the many other specializations and disciplines have their justification for existing in that single essential category. If they fail to draw from that category and are shaped without reference to the dignity of human labor, they are in error, they are harmful, they are against man.
Reminding the people that he had spoken in great detail on the same theme, John Paul II admitted that, as their guest, he had to speak more concisely. Nevertheless, he requested they remember,
I make bold to say that this fundamental category, the category of work as a measure of man, is Christian. We find it in its highest degree of intensity in Christ. . . . Christ will never approve that man be considered, or that man consider himself, merely as a means of production, or that he be appreciated, esteemed and valued in accordance with that principle. . . . For that reason he had himself put on the cross . . . to oppose any form of degradation of man, including degradation by work. . . . This must be remembered both by the worker and the employer, by the work system as well as by the system of remuneration; it must be remembered by the state, the nation, the church.
Finally, the pope spoke of the church in the area--the building and the people as the beginning the new evangelization of the second millennium. Such must be, he said, in accord with the Second Vatican Council,
. . . work shared by bishops, priests, religious and laity, by parents and young people. The parish is not only a place where catechists is given, it is also the living environment that must actualize it. . . . You have built the church; build your lives with the gospel.