Paul knew the first disciples of Christ, “who put not a religion but the person of Jesus at the centre, and to him was linked the remission of sins”. But his “enlightenment and true vocation came when he encountered the Risen Lord”.Mr. Wheat always tells me I quote too much, but can I help it if I like what the Holy Father has to say?
At last week's gathering in Verona, the Holy Father took up anew his insistence that the Church must worry more about proclaiming Christ and less about other matters:The second aspect of St Paul underlined by Benedict XVI “is the universal character of his apostolate: salvation is offered to all men without exception... The proclamation of grace destined to reconcile man with God and with others, does not concern only the Jew, it concerns all, because God is God of all.”
Highlighting the passion of Paul to spread the Gospel in every part of the world, Benedict XVI also drew attention to his sufferings and martyrdom in Rome under Nero. “He could not have faced such great trials were it not for a reason of absolute value: for him, this was Jesus Christ.”
we must return to proclaiming powerfully and joyfully the event of Christ's death and Resurrection, heart of Christianity, principal fulcrum of our faith, powerful lever of our certainty, impetuous wind that sweeps away every fear and indecision, every doubt and human calculation. This decisive change in the world can only come from God.Moreover, this witness is more caught than taught:
In a changing world, the Gospel does not alter. The Good News always remains the same: Christ has died and is risen for our salvation! In his Name take the message of conversion and forgiveness for sins to everyone, but be yourselves the first to witness to a converted and forgiven life.
Holiness was on his mind --obviously--in his homily for the canonizations a short while ago. And --I missed this when it happened-- he pulled no punches at a mass for meeting of the International Theological Commission.
we find ourselves invited to this process of forfeiting our own words, this process of purification so that our words may be nothing but the instrument through which God can speak, and hence, that he may truly be the subject and not the object of theology.Take that, dissident theologians! Discipleship is what counts. I'm going to do a separate post on other papal doings, but insofar as it fits with papal sayings, this is charming for those who read Italian –the Pope’s message to the Polish people on “Pope’s Day” (the day of JPII’s election).
In this context, a beautiful phrase from the First Letter of St Peter springs to my mind. It is from verse 22 of the first chapter. The Latin goes like this: "Castificantes animas nostras in oboedentia veritatis". Obedience to the truth must "purify" our souls and thus guide us to upright speech and upright action.
In other words, speaking in the hope of being applauded, governed by what people want to hear out of obedience to the dictatorship of current opinion, is considered to be a sort of prostitution: of words and of the soul.
The "purity" to which the Apostle Peter is referring means not submitting to these standards, not seeking applause, but rather, seeking obedience to the truth. And I think that this is the fundamental virtue for the theologian, this discipline of obedience to the truth, which makes us, although it may be hard, collaborators of the truth, mouthpieces of truth, for it is not we who speak in today's river of words, but it is the truth which speaks in us, who are really purified and made chaste by obedience to the truth. So it is that we can truly be harbingers of the truth.
