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Pope
Benedict XVI - Addresses |
"We Were Created to Know the Truth"
Vigil at Hyde Park
H.H. Benedict XVI
September 18, 2010
www.zenit.org
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
This is an evening of joy, of immense
spiritual joy, for all of us. We are
gathered here in prayerful vigil to prepare
for tomorrow’s Mass, during which a great
son of this nation, Cardinal John Henry
Newman, will be declared Blessed. How many
people, in England and throughout the world,
have longed for this moment! It is also a
great joy for me, personally, to share this
experience with you. As you know, Newman has
long been an important influence in my own
life and thought, as he has been for so many
people beyond these isles. The drama of
Newman’s life invites us to examine our
lives, to see them against the vast horizon
of God’s plan, and to grow in communion with
the Church of every time and place: the
Church of the apostles, the Church of the
martyrs, the Church of the saints, the
Church which Newman loved and to whose
mission he devoted his entire life.
I thank Archbishop Peter Smith for his kind
words of welcome in your name, and I am
especially pleased to see the many young
people who are present for this vigil. This
evening, in the context of our common
prayer, I would like to reflect with you
about a few aspects of Newman’s life which I
consider very relevant to our lives as
believers and to the life of the Church
today.
Let me begin by recalling that Newman, by
his own account, traced the course of his
whole life back to a powerful experience of
conversion which he had as a young man. It
was an immediate experience of the truth of
God’s word, of the objective reality of
Christian revelation as handed down in the
Church. This experience, at once religious
and intellectual, would inspire his vocation
to be a minister of the Gospel, his
discernment of the source of authoritative
teaching in the Church of God, and his zeal
for the renewal of ecclesial life in
fidelity to the apostolic tradition. At the
end of his life, Newman would describe his
life’s work as a struggle against the
growing tendency to view religion as a
purely private and subjective matter, as a
question of personal opinion. Here is the
first lesson we can learn from his life: in
our day, when an intellectual and moral
relativism threatens to sap the very
foundations of our society, Newman reminds
us that, as men and women made in the image
and likeness of God, we were created to know
the truth, to find in that truth our
ultimate freedom and the fulfilment of our
deepest human aspirations. In a word, we are
meant to know Christ, who is himself "the
way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6).
Newman’s life also teaches us that passion
for the truth, intellectual honesty and
genuine conversion are costly. The truth
that sets us free cannot be kept to
ourselves; it calls for testimony, it begs
to be heard, and in the end its convincing
power comes from itself and not from the
human eloquence or arguments in which it may
be couched. Not far from here, at Tyburn,
great numbers of our brothers and sisters
died for the faith; the witness of their
fidelity to the end was ever more powerful
than the inspired words that so many of them
spoke before surrendering everything to the
Lord. In our own time, the price to be paid
for fidelity to the Gospel is no longer
being hanged, drawn and quartered but it
often involves being dismissed out of hand,
ridiculed or parodied. And yet, the Church
cannot withdraw from the task of proclaiming
Christ and his Gospel as saving truth, the
source of our ultimate happiness as
individuals and as the foundation of a just
and humane society.
Finally, Newman teaches us that if we have
accepted the truth of Christ and committed
our lives to him, there can be no separation
between what we believe and the way we live
our lives. Our every thought, word and
action must be directed to the glory of God
and the spread of his Kingdom. Newman
understood this, and was the great champion
of the prophetic office of the Christian
laity. He saw clearly that we do not so much
accept the truth in a purely intellectual
act as embrace it in a spiritual dynamic
that penetrates to the core of our being.
Truth is passed on not merely by formal
teaching, important as that is, but also by
the witness of lives lived in integrity,
fidelity and holiness; those who live in and
by the truth instinctively recognize what is
false and, precisely as false, inimical to
the beauty and goodness which accompany the
splendour of truth, veritatis splendor.
Tonight’s first reading is the magnificent
prayer in which Saint Paul asks that we be
granted to know "the love of Christ which
surpasses all understanding" (Eph 3:14-21).
The Apostle prays that Christ may dwell in
our hearts through faith (cf. Eph 3:17) and
that we may come to "grasp, with all the
saints, the breadth and the length, the
height and the depth" of that love. Through
faith we come to see God’s word as a lamp
for our steps and light for our path (cf. Ps
119:105). Newman, like the countless saints
who preceded him along the path of Christian
discipleship, taught that the "kindly light"
of faith leads us to realize the truth about
ourselves, our dignity as God’s children,
and the sublime destiny which awaits us in
heaven. By letting the light of faith shine
in our hearts, and by abiding in that light
through our daily union with the Lord in
prayer and participation in the life-giving
sacraments of the Church, we ourselves
become light to those around us; we exercise
our "prophetic office"; often, without even
knowing it, we draw people one step closer
to the Lord and his truth. Without the life
of prayer, without the interior
transformation which takes place through the
grace of the sacraments, we cannot, in
Newman’s words, "radiate Christ"; we become
just another "clashing cymbal" (1 Cor 13:1)
in a world filled with growing noise and
confusion, filled with false paths leading
only to heartbreak and illusion.
One of the Cardinal’s best-loved meditations
includes the words, "God has created me to
do him some definite service. He has
committed some work to me which he has not
committed to another" (Meditations on
Christian Doctrine). Here we see Newman’s
fine Christian realism, the point at which
faith and life inevitably intersect. Faith
is meant to bear fruit in the transformation
of our world through the power of the Holy
Spirit at work in the lives and activity of
believers. No one who looks realistically at
our world today could think that Christians
can afford to go on with business as usual,
ignoring the profound crisis of faith which
has overtaken our society, or simply
trusting that the patrimony of values handed
down by the Christian centuries will
continue to inspire and shape the future of
our society. We know that in times of crisis
and upheaval God has raised up great saints
and prophets for the renewal of the Church
and Christian society; we trust in his
providence and we pray for his continued
guidance. But each of us, in accordance with
his or her state of life, is called to work
for the advancement of God’s Kingdom by
imbuing temporal life with the values of the
Gospel. Each of us has a mission, each of us
is called to change the world, to work for a
culture of life, a culture forged by love
and respect for the dignity of each human
person. As our Lord tells us in the Gospel
we have just heard, our light must shine in
the sight of all, so that, seeing our good
works, they may give praise to our heavenly
Father (cf. Mt 5:16).
Here I wish to say a special word to the
many young people present. Dear young
friends: only Jesus knows what "definite
service" he has in mind for you. Be open to
his voice resounding in the depths of your
heart: even now his heart is speaking to
your heart. Christ has need of families to
remind the world of the dignity of human
love and the beauty of family life. He needs
men and women who devote their lives to the
noble task of education, tending the young
and forming them in the ways of the Gospel.
He needs those who will consecrate their
lives to the pursuit of perfect charity,
following him in chastity, poverty and
obedience, and serving him in the least of
our brothers and sisters. He needs the
powerful love of contemplative religious,
who sustain the Church’s witness and
activity through their constant prayer. And
he needs priests, good and holy priests, men
who are willing to lay down their lives for
their sheep. Ask our Lord what he has in
mind for you! Ask him for the generosity to
say "yes!" Do not be afraid to give yourself
totally to Jesus. He will give you the grace
you need to fulfil your vocation. Let me
finish these few words by warmly inviting
you to join me next year in Madrid for World
Youth Day. It is always a wonderful occasion
to grow in love for Christ and to be
encouraged in a joyful life of faith along
with thousands of other young people. I hope
to see many of you there in Madrid!
And now, dear friends, let us continue our
vigil of prayer by preparing to encounter
Christ, present among us in the Blessed
Sacrament of the Altar. Together, in the
silence of our common adoration, let us open
our minds and hearts to his presence, his
love, and the convincing power of his truth.
In a special way, let us thank him for the
enduring witness to that truth offered by
Cardinal John Henry Newman. Trusting in his
prayers, let us ask the Lord to illumine our
path, and the path of all British society,
with the kindly light of his truth, his love
and his peace. Amen.
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