Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Church Tradition comes from the apostles, who "fully told" what they saw and heard. It is not "a mix of things" but a "living river of life that comes from Christ", overcoming the span of centuries to reach us. As he continued to dedicate his reflections of the General Audience to the Church, Benedict XVI today talked about apostolic Tradition and therefore episcopal ministry, that does not allow for personalising because it consists in "transmitting what I have received", as Paul wrote. The pope at times improvised parts of his written speech, as he addressed more than 50,000 people present in St Peter's Square on this hot Spring day.

According to Benedict XVI, Tradition is such "above all in its beginnings". He said: "Numbering 12 as the tribes of the chosen people did, the Apostles continued the 'harvest' started by the Lord, and they did so especially by transmitting faithfully the gift received, the good news of the Kingdom that came to men in Jesus Christ. Their number expresses not only the continuity of the sacred roots, Israel of the 12 tribes, but also the universal destination of the ministry, to take salvation to the ends of the earth. This can be gathered from the symbolic value of numbers in the Semitic world: 12 is the multiplication of three, perfect number, and four, the number that goes back to the four cardinal points, and therefore, the whole world."

With the passing of time, the community born of the gospel proclamation "knows it can count on the leadership of the Twelve, as it can count on those who by and by are associated with them as successors in the ministry of the Word and in the service of communion. Consequently, the community feels bound to transmit to others the 'good news' of the actual presence of the Lord and his paschal mystery, working through the Spirit."

Tradition is then "the living Gospel, announced by the Apostles in its integrity, on the basis of the fullness of their unique and irreplaceable experience: through their work, the faith was communicated to others, until it reached us and until the end of the world. Tradition, then, is the story of the Holy Spirit acting in the history of the Church through the mediation of the Apostles and their successors, in faithful continuity with the experience of the beginning."

"The mandate conferred by Jesus on the Apostles was transmitted by them to their successors. Beyond the experience of their personal contact with Jesus, a unique and irreplaceable experience, the Apostles passed on to their successors the solemn sending to the world by their Teacher. Apostle comes from the Greek word 'apostéllein', that means to send; they are those who were sent by the Lord. The apostolic sending, that is revealed in the text of Mt 28:19ff, implies three elements: a pastoral service ('make disciples of all the nations'), liturgical ('baptise them'…) and prophetic ('teach them to observe all I have taught you'). A triple service guaranteed by the nearness of the Lord until the end of time ('See, I am with you all the days until the end of the world'). Through the apostolic ministry, it is Christ himself who reaches he who is called to faith. The distance over centuries is overcome by the Risen Lord who offers himself alive and working for us, in the present of the Church and the world." The pope ended off the cuff: "He is truly always with us and he gives us life, the road towards the future."