Wednesday, January 10, 2007
THE MYSTERY OF BENEDICT
Just when I think he is going to abandon the faith in favor of a generic and universal religion that prays in whatever temple happens to be at hand, he's quoted making a statement like the one in Alive, linked by NOR, and I want to go hug him:
Speaking without notes to the bishops of Switzerland, he recalled a remark by the German atheist philosopher Nietzsche, that human beings can celebrate only if God does not exist.
“That is absurd,” said Benedict. “It’s only if God exists and touches us that there can be true festive celebration. And we know that these feasts of faith open people’s hearts wide.”
He urged Catholics to keep their eyes on the greatness of their faith, and to highlight it to the world.
“The truly great thing in Christianity is our ability to come into contact with God,” he said. “What matters above all is to take care of our personal relationship with God, with that God who revealed himself to us in Christ.”
When he says things like that, I know that he really does get it. He gets what our Church here in America has worked overtime at trying to deny since Vatican II. It is possible to have a relationship with God, and once you know that, nothing else is quite as important. Once you have a relationship with God, you fight for the Church even when She is torn and soiled and disgraced as She is today. You hang on even when all the evidence around you is pushing you to leave, because apart from Orthodoxy there just isn't anywhere else to go.
Jesus Christ is the best friend any human ever knew, and the truest. The threat represented by those who would wipe Christ from the face of the earth seems greater with each passing season not because they grow in power and popularity, which they do, but because the longer I think about what they will take away, the more important it becomes, and thus I have a growing sense of the profound loss it will represent if they are successful.
