Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Read this...

.... among one of the finest and most thoughtful homilies that the Holy Father has ever given us. The quiet wisdom of this man of God...in this, his final Ash Wednesday sermon...
" The tests which modern society subjects Christians to, in fact, are many, and affect the personal and social life. It is not easy to be faithful to Christian marriage, practice mercy in everyday life, leave space for prayer and inner silence, it is not easy to publicly oppose choices that many take for granted, such as abortion in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, euthanasia in case of serious illness, or the selection of embryos to prevent hereditary diseases. The temptation to set aside one’s faith is always present and conversion becomes a response to God which must be confirmed several times throughout one’s life.

The major conversions like that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or St. Augustine, are an example and stimulus, but also in our time when the sense of the sacred is eclipsed, God’s grace is at work and works wonders in life of many people. The Lord never gets tired of knocking at the door of man in social and cultural contexts that seem engulfed by secularization, as was the case for the Russian Orthodox Pavel Florensky. After acompletely agnostic education, to the point he felt an outright hostility towards religious teachings taught in school, the scientist Florensky came to exclaim: “No, you can not live without God”, and to change his life completely, so much so he became a monk.

I also think the figure of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch woman of Jewish origin who died in Auschwitz. Initially far from God, she found Him looking deep inside herself and wrote: “There is a well very deep inside of me. And God is in that well. Sometimes I can reach Him, more often He is covered by stone and sand: then God is buried. We must dig Him up again “(Diary, 97). In her scattered and restless life, she finds God in the middle of the great tragedy of the twentieth century, the Shoah. This young fragile and dissatisfied woman, transfigured by faith, becomes a woman full of love and inner peace, able to say: “I live in constant intimacy with God.”

The ability to oppose the ideological blandishments of her time to choose the search for truth and open herself up to the discovery of faith is evidenced by another woman of our time, the American Dorothy Day. In her autobiography, she confesses openly to having given in to the temptation that everything could be solved with politics, adhering to the Marxist proposal: “I wanted to be with the protesters, go to jail, write, influence others and leave my dreams to the world. How much ambition and how much searching for myself in all this!”. The journey towards faith in such a secularized environment was particularly difficult, but Grace acts nonetheless, as she points out: “It is certain that I felt the need to go to church more often, to kneel, to bow my head in prayer. A blind instinct, one might say, because I was not conscious of praying. But I went, I slipped into the atmosphere of prayer … “. God guided her to a conscious adherence to the Church, in a lifetime spent dedicated to the underprivileged..."

5 comments:

Marsha W. said...

Yes we will all miss Benedict XVI, his gentle smile and slow and humble presence. But think how blessed the world will be with a new pope's strong hand leading the church through these troublesome days while a gentle soul is praying for us in the vatican garden.

Malcolm said...

Yes, he was a surprising Pope, very light-hearted. Calling the Tridentine mass the "extraordinary form" was a nice tease (Tridentinists always insist on saying "extraordinary special minister of the eucharist")

Crownofstars12 said...

Pope Benedict has been a great teacher of Theology and a great example of Humility.
I do so love Cardinal Arinze. Praying for Our Church.

Dawn said...

Marsha, I love that. A strong leader while a gentle soul prays.

CrownofStars, Cardinal Arinze is now 80, he cant vote in the conclave nor be elected Pope

Crownofstars12 said...

Dawn
I know he can't vote but I thought he could still be Pope.