The Mind and Heart of Pope Benedict XVI # 2 of 5

The Mind and Heart of Pope Benedict XVI #2 of 5

The following are excerpts from the book, “Co-Workers for the Truth” – Meditations for Every Day of the Year, by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Ignat. Press, 1990.
Faith: “Teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Mat 28:20)
Faith requires instruction and an ethical approach, not a vague sense of transcendent and inexpressible reality…. Faith requires a constant training of the whole personality and a readiness to keep on learning for the rest of one’s life, to remain a pupil in the school of Christ. Teaching is a Christian calling, a work of mercy, for the lack of truth, the lack of knowledge is a more dire form of poverty than any purely material form.” 196, Jan. 23/85

Baptism and Holy Eucharist: “… we have identified the two fundamental
sacraments, as the essence of His gift to humanity. But we have also made clear what it means to receive Baptism and Holy Eucharist: being ready to suffer for the truth and for love…. In an address to American bishops, he (Pope John Paul II) alluded to the words of St. Paul: ‘ Brothers in Christ, when we preach the truth in love, we must expect to be criticized, for we cannot please everyone. For that reason, we are humbly convinced that God is with us in our service to the truth and that he “does not give us the spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline” (2 Tim 1:7).’ The spirit of cowardice – that is assuredly not a characteristic that one would attribute to John Paul II.” P. 205, Oct. 25th, 1979

Willed by God: “Each one has been willed by God and has his own proper place in life. There is, for each one, a meaning and a role in the universe, and our lives will be replete and happy, the more we realize this meaning, the more we incorporate this will into our lives and are one with it. …For each one there is a special call. And only if we live attentively in conversation and dialogue with God can we know why he needs us in such an apparently insignificant position and why we are, precisely in that position, so immeasurably important.” p. 222, July 5th, 1984

Faith: “To faith belong the readiness to suffer but also the courage to do battle. Granted, we have no lack of people who tell us: faith should be both protest and resistance against the power of this world. But if we look more closely, what such groups really want, for the most part, an activator, a loudspeaker, for their slogans, for the slogans of their party. But it is totally different matter when the Church opposes the real powers of this age; when the church condemns the disintegration of marriage, the destruction of the family, the killing of the unborn children, the distortion of the Faith…. ‘I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ (Mt 10:34) He (Jesus) opposed the convenient lie, the easy-going injustice. He exulted the superiority of truth over the comfortable getting-along- together that leads ultimately, to the power of injustice, to the dominion of the lie.” 230
Note that in the Cardinal’s meditations, the truth is pursued, celebrated and proclaimed.
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George H. Kubeck (in the year 2006) Appropriate for today.