Listening

From Zenit, B-16 on listening to God:

AURONZO DI CADORE, Italy, JULY 26, 2007 (Zenit.org).-

The task of the Church is to develop the human person's God-given ability to listen to the voice of truth, says Benedict XVI. The Pope said this Tuesday during a question-and-answer session with 400 priests of the dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso, in the Church of St. Justina Martyr in Auronzo di Cadore, near Lorenzago di Cadore, where he is nearing the end of his vacation.

A priest asked the Holy Father about dealing with widespread misconceptions about good and evil, saying that these moral concepts are confused with merely feeling good or feeling bad.The Pontiff responded that a "world without God becomes a world of arbitrariness and egoism. But where there is God, there is light and hope. Our life has a meaning that we cannot give it, but which precedes us, and guides us."

He recommended a path of "patient education," guiding people along the paths that "even a secularized conscience today can easily find." And from there, the Pope said, "let us try to guide people toward more profound voices, the true voice of the conscience, which can be heard in the great tradition of prayer, the moral life of the Church."

Benedict XVI acknowledged that today morality and religion "are almost replaced by reason," and "the only criterion of morality and religion is the subject, the subjective conscience.""In the end, only the subject, and his feelings, his experiences and the other criteria he has found, are deciding factors," the Pope said. "

In this way, however, the subject becomes an isolated reality, and the parameters change day after day."But, he explained: "In the Christian tradition 'conscience' means 'with-knowledge.' That is to say us, our being is open, it can listen to the voice of being itself, the voice of God."

The voice, therefore, of great values is written in our being. And the majesty of man is found in the fact that he is not closed within himself; he is not reduced to material things; he is not able to be measured.
Instead he has an interior openness to essential things, the possibility to listen."

In the depth of our being we can listen not only to the needs of the moment, not only to material things, but to the voice of the Creator himself, and in this way we recognize what is good and what is evil."

"Naturally," Benedict XVI affirmed, "this ability to listen must be learned and developed. This is our task in the Church -- to develop this high ability given by God to man to listen to the voice of the truth, the voice of values."

God with a Human Face: Reason, Humanism, and Our Vocation

Here's another reason why I just love this Pope: he's all over what ails our post-modern mentality.

Lord, give us grace to think rationally and pray fervently.

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 25, 2007 (Zenit.org).-

Benedict XVI says the crisis of modernity arises from an attempt to separate the human person from his "full truth," which includes his "transcendent vocation."

The Pope said this Saturday when he received in audience in Paul VI Hall the participants in the European Meeting of University Professors.Their four-day meeting, which ended Sunday, was dedicated to the theme "A New Humanism for Europe. The Role of the Universities."The Holy Father invited the participants to consider three concrete themes of reflection, which he called "foundational issues."

He first encouraged "a comprehensive study of the crisis of modernity."He said this crisis "has less to do with modernity's insistence on the centrality of man and his concerns, than with the problems raised by a 'humanism' that claims to build a ' regnum hominis' detached from its necessary ontological foundation."The Pontiff continued: "A false dichotomy between theism and authentic humanism, taken to the extreme of positing an irreconcilable conflict between divine law and human freedom, has led to a situation in which humanity, for all its economic and technical advances, feels deeply threatened."As my predecessor, Pope John Paul II, stated, we need to ask 'whether in the context of all this progress, man, as man, is becoming truly better, that is to say, more mature spiritually, more aware of the dignity of his humanity, more responsible and more open to others.'"

Benedict XVI encouraged consideration of the entirety of the human person: "The anthropocentrism which characterizes modernity can never be detached from an acknowledgment of the full truth about man, which includes his transcendent vocation."

The Pope also called for a "broadening of our understanding of rationality."He said that responding to the challenges of contemporary culture means taking a critical approach toward "narrow and ultimately irrational attempts to limit the scope of reason."The Holy Father affirmed: "The concept of reason needs instead to be 'broadened' in order to be able to explore and embrace those aspects of reality which go beyond the purely empirical. This will allow for a more fruitful, complementary approach to the relationship between faith and reason."

Benedict XVI further encouraged investigation on the "contribution which Christianity can make to the humanism of the future."He said: "The question of man, and thus of modernity, challenges the Church to devise effective ways of proclaiming to contemporary culture the 'realism' of her faith in the saving work of Christ. Christianity must not be relegated to the world of myth and emotion, but respected for its claim to shed light on the truth about man, to be able to transform men and women spiritually, and thus to enable them to carry out their vocation in history."

The Pope referred to a speech he made in his recent apostolic journey to Brazil. "I voiced my conviction that 'unless we do know God in and with Christ, all of reality becomes an indecipherable enigma.'"He added: "Knowledge can never be limited to the purely intellectual realm; it also includes a renewed ability to look at things in a way free of prejudices and preconceptions, and to allow ourselves to be 'amazed' by reality, whose truth can be discovered by uniting understanding with love.

"Only the God who has a human face, revealed in Jesus Christ, can prevent us from truncating reality at the very moment when it demands ever new and more complex levels of understanding. The Church is conscious of her responsibility to offer this contribution to contemporary culture."