Pope Benedict XVI launches the October 5, 2008 Bible Reading Marathon on Italy's Rai Uno Television Network

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Book I, Genesis
Chapter 1

1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
2 the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4 God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day.
6 Then God said, "Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other." And so it happened:
7 God made the dome, and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it.
8 God called the dome "the sky." Evening came, and morning followed--the second day.
9 Then God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear." And so it happened: the water under the sky was gathered into its basin, and the dry land appeared.
10 God called the dry land "the earth," and the basin of the water he called "the sea." God saw how good it was.
11 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth vegetation: every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it." And so it happened:
12 the earth brought forth every kind of plant that bears seed and every kind of fruit tree on earth that bears fruit with its seed in it. God saw how good it was.
13 Evening came, and morning followed--the third day.
14 Then God said: "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years,
15 and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth." And so it happened:
16 God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night; and he made the stars.
17 God set them in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth,
18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw how good it was.
19 Evening came, and morning followed--the fourth day.
20 Then God said, "Let the water teem with an abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky." And so it happened:
21 God created the great sea monsters and all kinds of swimming creatures with which the water teems, and all kinds of winged birds. God saw how good it was,
22 and God blessed them, saying, "Be fertile, multiply, and fill the water of the seas; and let the birds multiply on the earth."
23 Evening came, and morning followed--the fifth day.
24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth all kinds of living creatures: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals of all kinds." And so it happened:
25 God made all kinds of wild animals, all kinds of cattle, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. God saw how good it was.
26 Then God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground."
27 God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth."
29 God also said: "See, I give you every seed-bearing plant all over the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food;
30 and to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground, I give all the green plants for food." And so it happened.
31 God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed--the sixth day.

Genesis

Chapter 2, 1-4

1 Thus the heavens and the earth and all their array were completed.
2 Since on the seventh day God was finished with the work he had been doing, he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken.
3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work he had done in creation.
4 Such is the story of the heavens and the earth at their creation.

The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary

The Embrace of Joachim and Anna

The Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger at Loreto, September 8, 1991

The day of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary is not a birthday like any other. Celebrating the birthday of any great personage in history, we think of a past life, we think of things past, of deeds that have been achieved by such a person and of the legacy he or she has left. In short, we think about things of this world.

With the Mother of God, that is not so. Mary does not speak of and for herself. From the first moment of her life she was totally transparent for God, like a radiant icon of divine goodness. Mary, with the totality of her person, is a living message of God to us. That is why Mary does not belong to the past, she is contemporary to us all, to all generations.

With her openness to the will of God, she virtually turned over the human time of her own life into the hands of God, and thus united human time with divine time. With her permanent presence, therefore, Mary transcends history and is always present in history, present among us.

Mary represents in person the living message of God. But what does the life of Mary tell us exactly today, on the day of her nativity? It seems to me that this Sanctuary of Loreto, built around Mary’s terrestrial home, built around the house of Nazareth, can help us understand better the Madonna’s message of life.

These walls preserve for us the moment in which the angel came to Mary with the great news of the Incarnation, the memory of her answer: “Here I am, the handmaid of the Lord.” This humble home is a concrete and palpable witness of the greatest event in our history - the Incarnation of the Son of God.

The Word was made flesh. Mary, the servant of God, became the door through which God could enter our world. But not only the door. She became the “dwelling” of the Lord, a ”living home,” where the Creator of the world resided. Mary offered her body so that the Son of God could become one of us. And here we are reminded of the words with which, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ began his human life, saying to the Father: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me… Then I said, 'As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.'" (Heb 10, 5-7). The handmaiden of the Lord says the same thing: you have prepared a body for me, here I am.

In this coincidence of the words of the Son with those of the Mother, heaven and earth not only touch each other but they unite, God the creator with his creature: God became man, Mary became the living house of the Lord, a temple where the Highest dwells.

To this we add another consideration: where God lives, we are all “at home”. Where Christ is, his brothers and sisters cannot be strangers. So it is also with the house of Mary and her life itself – it is open to all of us. The mother of Christ is also our Mother, of all those who have become the Body of Christ, the Church, who constitute the family of Christ Jesus. Those who are with Christ and his Mother - they are the family of God.

Mary has opened her life and her house to us because, opening herself to God, she opened herself for all of us, and offers us her house as the common house of the one family of God. We can say- home is where Mary is; where God is, we are all “at home.” Our faith gives us a home in this world and unites us all in one family.

But this raises a serious question: our faith tells us that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, one family – but we must ask ourselves, is this true? If it is not true, why not? Why do we have among us so much conflct, wars, cutting egoism?

The House of Nazareth is not a relic of the past; it speaks in the present and provokes an examination of conscience - to ask ourselves if we too are truly open to the Lord, if we wish to offer our lvies to him so he may dwell in us. Or do we fear the presence of the Lord? Do we fear that his presence could limit our human dignity? Do we perhaps want to reserve a part of our life to belong to us alone, not to be known to God, to be kept away from Him?

It seems to me that this House of Nazareth has, even from this point of view, a very precious symbolism. As you know, this House only has three walls – it is therefore an invitation, like an open embrace. It tells us: open up your homes, your your families, your lives, to the presence of the Lord.

This house is open to the family of God, to all the children of God, to the brothers and sisters of Christ. Let us be challenged, let us accept the word of the Mother of God who tells us: Come in, come into my house, so that even you may become, every day of your life, a dwelling for the Lord.

This House of Nazareth hides yet another message. We have said that God is not an abstract God, someone who is purely spiritual, far from us. Because God chose to be bound to the earth, to have a common history with us, a palpable, visible story, which we can see in the signs of his earthly existence like this house, but most of all, in the Church and its sacraments.

Our faith makes us “dwell” but also makes us “walk.” Here, too, the house of Nazareth keeps an important teaching. When the Crusaders transferred the stones of the house of Nazareth from the Holy Land to here, on Italian soil, they chose to place the Holy House on a road. I think it is very strange, because “house” and “road” seem to be mutually exclusive. Is it a house or is it a road? But that is the true message of this House, which is not the private house of any one person, or one family, or one clan, but is along the way for all of us, an open house for all. A house that both makes us dwell and walk.

Life itself is home for the family of God, which is on a pilgrimage with God, towards God, towards our final home, towards the “new city.” Here, we can be even more concrete. All the sanctuaries, the great sanctuaries of the world, have always offered to diverse nations, races, religions, this precious experience of being in the house of the family of all the children of God. But the experience of coming home presupposes the experience of a trip, of a pilgrimage. And pilgrimage is a fundamental dimension of Christian life.

Only through being on the way, on a pilgrimage, are we able to overcome the frontiers of nations, of religions, of races. We can become united only by walking together towards God. The significance of this “twinning” netween Loreto and Altoetting lies in this fact: It tells us that we must walk together, we must become pilgrims of the eternal, we should raise ourselves anew towards God, towards unity with him in the one family of God.

* * * * *

Delivered by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in the Marian Sanctuary of Loreto, on September 8, 1991, Feast of the Nativity of Mary, at a Mass that also marked the "twinning" of Loreto and the Marian pilgrimage site of Altoëtting in the Cardinal's native Bavaria as "twin cities."

Tradition has it that angels carried the House of Nazareth from the Holy Land to Illyria and then finally, in the early 13th century to Loreto in Italy. For more about the Holy House of Loreto, go to www.newadvent.org/cathen/13454b.htm

Icon: This contemporary icon, painted in the Novgorodian style, shows the gift of love between the parents of the Virgin Mary. It is the traditional marriage icon for Orthodox Christian. Painted by the Canadian iconographer Heiko C. Schlieper.

Collection: Private

Photograph: Harry Korol, 1995

"All great works of art are an epiphany of God"

Bressanone, August 6, 2008

The Pope Theologian Says: "The Proof of God Is Beauty"

The beauty of art and of music. The wonders of sanctity. The splendor of creation. This is how Benedict XVI defends the truth of Christianity, in a question-and-answer session with the priests of Brixen.

By Sandro Magister

ROMA, August 11, 2008 – Just like every summer, this year Benedict XVI met with priests of the area where he is spending his vacation. For an open question-and-answer discussion.

The meeting took place on the morning of Wednesday, August 6, in the cathedral of Brixen, at the foot of the Alps, a few miles from the Austrian border. The pope replied to six questions, speaking partly in German and partly in Italian, the two official languages of the region. The meeting was held behind closed doors, without any journalists present.The complete transcript of the conversation was released two days later by the Vatican press office.

The pope was asked about a wide variety of topics. Some of them were highly charged. One priest asked whether it is right to continue administering the sacraments to those who are clearly far from the faith. In his response, the pope confessed that as a young man he was "rather strict," but he then understood that "we must instead follow the example of the Lord, who was a Lord of mercy, very open with sinners."

Another asked whether the shortage of priests does not require facing the questions of celibacy, the ordination of "viri probati," the admission of women to the ministries. And the pope forcefully defended celibacy as a sign of "making oneself available to the Lord in the completeness of one's being, and therefore totally available to men."

Here below, two of the six questions and answers are reproduced. The first is about the connection between reason and beauty, with evocative references to art, music, the liturgy. The second is on the safeguarding of creation.

1. "All great works of art are an epiphany of God"

Q: Holy Father, my name is Willibald Hopfgartner, and I am a Franciscan. In your address in Regensburg, you emphasized the substantial connection between the divine Spirit and human reason. On the other hand, you have also always emphasized the importance of art and beauty. So then, together with conceptual dialogue about God in theology, should there not always be a new presentation of the aesthetic experience of the faith within the Church, through proclamation and the liturgy?

A: Yes, I think that the two things go together: reason, precision, honesty in the reflection on truth, and beauty. A form of reason that in any way wanted to strip itself of beauty would be depleted, it would be blind. Only when the two are united do they form the whole, and this union is important precisely for the faith. Faith must constantly confront the challenges of the mindset of this age, so that it may not seem a sort of irrational mythology that we keep alive, but may truly be an answer to the great questions; so that it may not be merely a habit, but the truth, as Tertullian once said.

In his first letter, St. Peter wrote the phrase that the medieval theologians took as the legitimization, almost as the mandate for their theological work: "Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope" – an apologia for the "logos" of hope, meaning a transformation of the "logos," the reason for hope, into an apologia, an answer addressed to men. He was clearly convinced of the fact that faith is "logos," that it is a form of reason, a light issuing from the creating Light, and not a hodgepodge resulting from our own thought. This is why it is universal, and for this reason it can be communicated to all.

But this creating "Logos" is not a merely technical "logos." It is broader than this, it is a "logos" that is love, and therefore to be expressed in beauty and goodness. And in reality, for me art and the saints are the greatest apologia for our faith.

The arguments presented by reason are absolutely important and indispensable, but there always remains some disagreement somewhere. If, instead, we look at the saints, this great luminous arc that God has set across history, we see that here there is truly a power of goodness that lasts over the millennia, here there is truly light from light.

And in the same way, if we contemplate the created beauties of the faith, these simply are, I would say, the living proof of faith. Take this beautiful cathedral: it is a living proclamation! It speaks to us on its own, and beginning with the beauty of the cathedral we are able to proclaim in a visible way God, Christ and all of his mysteries: here these have taken shape, and are gazing back at us. All of the great works of art, the cathedrals – the Gothic cathedrals, and the splendid Baroque churches – all of them are a luminous sign of God, and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.

Christianity involves precisely this epiphany: that God has become a veiled Epiphany, he appears and shines. We have just listened to the sound of the organ in all its splendor, and I think that the great music born within the Church is an audible and perceptible rendering of the truth of our faith: from Gregorian chant to the music of the cathedrals to Palestrina and his era, to Bach and then to Mozart and Bruckner, and so on... Listening to all of these great works – the Passions by Bach, his Mass in B minor, and the great spiritual compositions of 16th century polyphony, of the Viennese school, of all of this music, even by minor composers – suddenly we feel: it is true! Wherever things like these are created, there is Truth.

Without an intuition capable of discovering the true creative center of the world, this beauty cannot be created. For this reason, I think that we must always act in such a way that these two things go together, we must present them together. When, in our own time, we discuss the reasonableness of the faith, we are discussing precisely the fact that reason does not end where experimental discoveries end, it does not end in positivism; the theory of evolution sees the truth, but sees only half of it: it does not see that behind this is the Spirit of creation. We are fighting for the expansion of reason, and therefore for a form of reason that, exactly to the point, is open to beauty as well, and does not have to leave it aside as something completely different and irrational.

Christian art is a rational form of art – we think of Gothic art, great music, or the Baroque art right here – but this is the artistic expression of a much broader form of reason, in which the heart and reason come together. This is the point. This, I think, is in some way the proof of the truth of Christianity: the heart and reason come together, beauty and truth touch. And to the extent that we are able to live in the beauty of truth, so much more will faith again be able to be creative, in our own time as well, and to express itself in a convincing artistic form.

2. "The earth is waiting for men who will care for it as the work of the Creator"

Q: Holy Father, my name is Karl Golser, I am a professor of moral theology in Brixen, and also director of the institute for justice, peace, and the safeguarding of creation. I enjoy remembering the time when I was able to work with you at the congregation for the doctrine of the faith. [...] What can we do to bring a greater sense of responsibility toward creation into the life of the Christian communities? How can we arrive at seeing creation and redemption increasingly as a whole?

A: I also think that there must be new emphasis on the unbreakable bond between creation and redemption. In recent decades, the doctrine on creation had almost disappeared from theology, it was almost imperceptible. Now we are aware of the damage that this causes. The Redeemer is the Creator, and if we do not proclaim God in his total greatness – as Creator and as Redeemer – we also deprive redemption of value. In fact, if God has nothing to say in creation, if he is simply relegated to being part of history, how can he really understand our entire life? How can he truly bring salvation to man in his entirety, and to the world as a whole?

This is why, for me, the renewal of doctrine on creation and a new understanding of the inseparability of creation and redemption are extremely important. We must recognize again: He is the "Creator Spiritus," the Reason that is in the beginning and from which everything is born, and of which our own reason is nothing but a spark. And it is He, the Creator himself, who also entered into history and is able to enter into history and act within it precisely because He is the God of the whole, and not only of a part. If we recognize this, it obviously follows that redemption, being Christians, or simply the Christian faith always and in any case mean responsibility toward creation.

Twenty or thirty years ago, Christians were accused – I don't know whether this accusation is still maintained – of being the real ones responsible for the destruction of creation, because the words contained in Genesis – "Subdue the earth" – were thought to have led to this arrogance toward creation, the consequences of which we are experiencing today. I think that we must again learn to understand this accusation in all its falsehood: as long as the earth was considered the creation of God, the task of "subduing it" was never understood as an order to enslave it, but rather as the task of being guardians of creation and of developing its gifts; of actively cooperating in God's work, in the evolution that He set in motion in the world, so that the gifts of creation may be treasured instead of trampled upon and destroyed.

If we observe what was born around the monasteries, how little paradises, oases of creation, were born and continue to be born in those places, it becomes evident that all of this is not only a matter of words, but wherever the Word of the Creator has been understood correctly, where life has been lived together with the Creator and Redeemer, there one finds efforts to protect creation, and not to destroy it.

Chapter 8 of the letter to the Romans also fits into this context, where it says that creation suffers and groans because of the subjection in which it finds itself as it awaits the revelation of the children of God: it will feel free when creatures, when men come who are children of God and will treat it beginning from God.

I believe that this is precisely the reality that we are witnessing today: creation is groaning – we can perceive this, we can almost hear it – and is waiting for human persons to look at it from God's standpoint. The brutal consumption of creation begins where God is not, where the material has become only material for us, where we ourselves are the ultimate standard, where everything is simply our property, and we consume it only for ourselves. And the waste of creation begins where we no longer recognize any standard above ourselves, but see only ourselves; it begins where there no longer exists any dimension of life beyond death, where we must hoard everything in this life and possess life in the maximum intensity possible, where we must possess everything it is possible to possess.

I believe, therefore, that real and efficient measures against the waste and destruction of creation can be realized and developed, understood and lived only where creation is considered from the standpoint of God; where life is considered beginning from God, and has greater dimensions – in responsibility before God – and one day will be given to us by God in its fullness, and never taken away: by giving life away, we receive it.

Thus, I believe, we must try by every means at our disposal to present the faith in public, especially where there is an existing sensitivity toward it. And I think that the sensation that the world may be slipping away from us – because we ourselves are driving it away – and the sense of being oppressed by the problems of creation, precisely this gives us the right opportunity in which our faith can speak publicly and be considered as a constructive contribution.

In fact, this is not a matter of simply finding technologies to prevent damage, although it is important to find alternative sources of energy and other such things. All of this will not be enough if we ourselves do not find a new lifestyle, a discipline that includes sacrifice, the discipline of acknowledging others, to whom creation belongs just as much as it does to us who are able to make use of it more easily; a discipline of responsibility toward the future of others and toward our own future, because it is responsibility before Him who is our Judge, and who as Judge is our Redeemer, but is also truly our Judge.

I therefore think that it is necessary, in any case, to put these two dimensions together – creation and redemption, earthly life and eternal life, responsibility toward creation and responsibility toward others and toward the future – and that it is our task to participate to this effect in a clear and decisive manner in public opinion.

In order to be listened to, we must at the same time demonstrate by our own example, with our own lifestyle, that we are speaking about a message in which we ourselves believe, and according to which it is possible to live. And we want to ask the Lord to help us all to live the faith, the responsibility for the faith, in such a way that our lifestyle becomes a witness, and then to speak in such a way that our words are credible messengers of faith as guidance for our time.

English translation by Matthew Sherry, Saint Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.

Sandro Magister © http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it

Godless Life Isn't a Freer One.

Godless Life Isn't a Freer One, Affirms Pope

Opposes Idea That Faith Is Limiting

VATICAN CITY, MAY 23, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Life without God isn't freer, Benedict XVI says, discrediting the idea that the Church's commandments are a constraint.

The Pope affirmed this in a message made public Thursday for the 97th "Deutscher Katholikentag" ecclesial meeting. The event, organized by German laity, gathered some 500,000 people in Osnabruck. It runs through Sunday.

Commenting on the theme chosen for the meeting -- "He brought me out into a broad place," a line from Psalm 18 -- the Holy Father wrote that "no small number of people today [...] are afraid that the faith may limit their lives, that they may be constrained in the web of the Church's commandments and teachings, and that they will no longer be free to move in the 'broad space' of modern life and thought."

However, he affirmed, "only when our lives have reached the heart of God will they have found that 'broad space' for which we were created. A life without God does not become freer and broader. Human beings are destined for the infinite."

Benedict XVI said, "The heart that has opened itself to God" has become "generous and broad in its turn."

Such a person does not need to seek happiness and success "or to give weight to the opinions of others," the Pontiff noted. He is "free and generous, open to the call of God" and "can give all of himself faithfully because he knows -- wherever he goes -- that he is safe in God's hands."

"We trust that the meeting with God, in his word and in the celebration of the Eucharist, may open our hearts and transform us into gushing fonts of faith for others," the Holy Father continued. He particularly asked the lay faithful to ensure "that the future not be moulded exclusively by others."

"Intervene with imagination and persuasive ability in the debates of the present time," he encouraged. "Using the Gospel as your parameter, participate actively in the political and social life of your country. As lay Catholics, dare to participate in creating the future, in unison with priests and bishops!"