- Homily, 20 November 2011
08 October 2013
It is the crucified and glorious face of Christ which ought to
guide us, so that we may witness to his love for the world.
- Address to the Bishops of Benin, 19 November 2011
What, then, is prayer? It is a cry of love directed to God our Father,
with the will to imitate Jesus our brother. Jesus often went off by himself to
pray. Like Jesus, I too can find a calm place to pray where I can quietly stand
before a Cross or a holy picture in order to speak to Jesus and to listen to
him. I can also use the Gospels. That way, I keep within my heart a passage
which has touched me and which will guide me throughout the day. To stay with
Jesus like this for a little while lets him fill me with his love, light and
life! This love, which I receive in prayer, calls me in turn to give it to my
parents, to my friends, to everyone with whom I live, even with those who do not
like me, and those whom I do not appreciate enough.
- Meeting with children, 19 November 2011
The journey to the Grotto of Bethlehem is a journey of inner liberation,
an experience of profound freedom, because it impels us to come out of
ourselves and to go towards God who has made himself close to us, who
heartens us with his presence and with his freely-given love, who
precedes and accompanies us in our daily decisions, who speaks to us in
the secrecy of our hearts and in the Sacred Scriptures.
- Homily, 16 December 2010
Precisely for this reason, the laws and institutions of a society cannot be
shaped in such a way as to ignore the religious dimension of its citizens or to
prescind completely from it. Through the democratic activity of citizens
conscious of their lofty calling, those laws and institutions must adequately
reflect the authentic nature of the person and support its religious dimension.
Since the latter is not a creation of the state, it cannot be manipulated by the
state, but must rather be acknowledged and respected by it.
States and the various human
communities must never forget that religious freedom is the condition for the
pursuit of truth, and truth does not impose itself by violence but “by the force
of its own truth”.[10]
In this sense, religion is a positive driving force for the building of
civil and political society.
The family founded on marriage, as the expression of the close union
and complementarity between a man and a woman, finds its place here as the first
school for the social, cultural, moral and spiritual formation and growth of
children, who should always be able to see in their father and mother the first
witnesses of a life directed to the pursuit of truth and the love of God.
Parents must be always free to transmit to their children, responsibly and
without constraints, their heritage of faith, values and culture. The family,
the first cell of human society, remains the primary training ground for
harmonious relations at every level of coexistence, human, national and
international. Wisdom suggests that this is the road to building a strong and
fraternal social fabric, in which young people can be prepared to assume their
proper responsibilities in life, in a free society, and in a spirit of
understanding and peace.
Without the acknowledgement of his spiritual being,
without openness to the transcendent, the human person withdraws within himself,
fails to find answers to the heart’s deepest questions about life’s meaning,
fails to appropriate lasting ethical values and principles, and fails even to
experience authentic freedom and to build a just society.
Religious freedom expresses what is unique about the human person, for it allows
us to direct our personal and social life to God, in whose light the identity,
meaning and purpose of the person are fully understood. To deny or arbitrarily
restrict this freedom is to foster a reductive vision of the human person; to
eclipse the public role of religion is to create a society which is unjust,
inasmuch as it fails to take account of the true nature of the human person;
it is to stifle the growth of the authentic and lasting peace of the whole human
family [emphasis in the original].
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)