Lord Jesus Christ, appearing to your disciples after your resurrection, you said to them: “Go and teach all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to follow all that I have commanded you to do. I will be with you to the end of your days, to the end of the world.” (Mt 29, 19).
Because you want all men to reach salvation, you also want all men to know the truth which alone can lead us to salvation (cfr 1 Tim 2,6). You are the Truth. Through you, the truth has become for us the way to follow and which will lead us to life. Without you, we find ourselves in the dark regarding the essential demands of our life. Without you, we are like sheep without a shepherd (Mk 6, 34).
But you, in ascending up to Heaven, have not left us orphans (cfr Jn 14, 18). To your disciples, you did not only give the task of teaching to all men the right way to live. You promised them, for all time, the Holy Spirit who, from generation to generation, will guide them to the truth (cfr Jn, 16, 13).
Sustained by the Holy Spirit, the community of your disciples -– the Church -– will carry your words across time. In the Church, your word lives; in the Church, your word is always present and reveals the future, because truth is always young and never grows old.
Help us so that, through the word announced by the Church, we may learn to follow all that you have commanded.
Help us to take up with joy the “sweet yoke” of truth (Mt 11, 30), which does not oppress, but which makes us become, through you, the children of God, and which therefore makes us free.
Help us to find you in the word of faith, to learn to know you and to love you.
Help us to become friends of the truth, friends of yours, friends of God.
Help your Church to carry out your mission peaceably without being discouraged amid the disturbances of our time.
Help us to announce your message with frankness, without betraying its genuineness.
Guide us through the Holy Spirit and introduce him into the broad spaces of the truth.
Lord, make us grateful for your word, grateful for the message of the Catechism, in which your word comes forth to us, so that we can learn to say with the psalmist: “How I love your law, my Lord!” (Sl 119, 97). Yes, “A lamp unto my steps is your word, a light along my way.” (Sl 119, 105). Amen
-- Pope Benedict XVI (2005)
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