Co-Workers of the Truth

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - April 29, 2005

"Dear Brothers and Sisters, after the great John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard."

These were the first words of our new Holy Father, as he introduced himself to Christ's huge flock from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica. He said so much in the 23 Italian parole he employed.

First, he presented us with a contrast. He called his predecessor "great" — maybe a sign of declarations to come — and implied that his feet are too small to fill John Paul II's huge shoes.

Then he gave us his refreshing and Biblical self-understanding. He does not see himself as many have long caricatured him, as the "Darth Vader of the Vatican" or "God's Rottweiler" or the "Panzerkardinal" ("Tank Cardinal"). If there's one person who would look sillier in a tank than Michael Dukakis, it is he!

Rather, he sees himself as a worker in the Lord's vineyard, laboring diligently because, as Jesus says, the "fields are ripe for harvesting" (Jn 4:35) and because "the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few" (Lk 10:2). He is simple and humble. He has never sought attention for himself in this work, considering himself merely a servant of the Harvest Master "who has done only what he ought to have done" (Lk 17:10). But now that Harvest Master has brought this hard-working German Shepherd to the attention of us all.

Our new pope very much sees his new mission as continuing the urgent task of bringing in the Lord's harvest, which he knows is not a one-man job, for the vineyard is the world and there are over six billion crops!

But one of the real strengths our new Holy Father brings to the fields is that he has always seen himself as a collaborator, as one hard-worker among others. His new task will be to strengthen and guide his fellow laborers — no matter what time they entered the fields (cf. Mt 20:1-16) — to the task that the Harvest Master has given not just to his new foreman, but to all of us.

His papal motto is Cooperatores Veritatis, "Co-workers of the Truth." This phrase, taken from the Third Letter of St. John, manifests his belief that the Church is a body of workers working together through, with and in Christ, the Truth incarnate.

In a 1990 book entitled Co-workers of the Truth, our new Holy Father described why he chose that Scriptural slogan upon his ordination to the episcopacy in 1977. For him it concisely describes what the Church is and what the role of the bishop is within the Church. I think what he wrote then is just as applicable now to his new episcopal work as Bishop of Rome.

"Co-Workers of the Truth." For John, these words signify the participation of all the faithful in the service of the Gospel and, by consequence, the 'catholic' dimension of the Faith.

For me it has become another way of expressing the task of the bishop: he too, and especially he, is a "co-worker," that is, he does not act in his own name but is always and totally linked to a "with." Only when he acts "with" Christ and "with" the whole believing Church of all times and all places does he do what he is meant to do.

It is not his task to fashion a community for himself, but, rather, to fashion the Church for Christ. That means that he must point to him who is the Way because he is the Truth (Jn 14:6). For the simple reason that it comes from the truth and leads to the truth, the love that is the goal of faith is, in a very real sense, the hope and redemption of the human race. A mere community of interests without truth would be just a drug, not a healing. Perhaps, in the last analysis, the crucial element in the unfathomable expression "co-workers of the truth" is this relationship between truth and love.

It is my hope that this book [and here, I think, we can substitute "papacy"] will indeed prove to be a co-worker of the truth. It seeks your hospitality and invites you to co-think and co-believe with it. It would like to open windows through which we can look upon the truth of the Gospel. It would like to awaken in us the courage to become co-workers, and it would like to be an aid to that love that the Lord has laid upon us as his commandment (Jn 13:34).

Our new Holy Father continues to seek to be a co-worker with Christ, with all the popes who have preceded him, with the Church "of all times and all places," and with each of us in the Church today.

May together we roll up our sleeves, as simple and humble co-workers, and cooperate with Christ and his vicar to bring in the Lord's ripe harvest. By this we will show the world the truly Catholic dimension of the faith!

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.