Pope Benedict XVI's words to World Youth Day 2005 participants:
"Let yourselves be surprised by Christ. Let him have the 'right of free speech during these days'..."
"To all of you I appeal: Open wide your hearts to God! Open the doors of your freedom to his merciful love! Share your joys and pains with Christ, and let him enlighten your minds with his light and touch your hearts with his grace."
"Dear young people, the happiness you are seeking, the happiness you have a right to enjoy, has a name and a face: It is Jesus of Nazareth, hidden in the Eucharist. Only he gives the fullness of life to humanity..."
"Through you, may other young people everywhere come to recognize in Christ the true answer to their deepest aspirations..."
"Today it is your task to live and breathe the church's universality. Let yourselves be inflamed by the fire of the Spirit, so that a new Pentecost will renew your hearts..."
Peter Slawek, a young German from Herne, said he thought the most important thing the pope said was "that he had come to kneel down with us" in front of the consecrated host.
"Whoever lets Christ enter will not lose anything, nothing that will render life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of the human condition opened up. Only in this friendship do we experience what is good and free." -The homily at the Mass that officially inaugurated his pontificate
"The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest." -The 1988 Address to the Bishops of Chile
"I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. ... I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined."
-His response to a question of whether the Holy Spirit is responsible for the pope who is elected
"Truth is not determined by a majority vote."
"Being incapable of acknowledging guilt is the most dangerous form of spiritually arrested development one can imagine, because this in particular makes people incapable of improvement."
"Truth and charity coincide in Christ...Charity without truth would be blind; truth without charity... a clanging cymbal."
"A man of conscience, is one who never acquires tolerance, well-being, success, public standing, and approval on the part of prevailing opinion, at the expense of truth."
In September 2005, Pope Benedict XVI stated:
"I would like in particular to recall and recommend the ancient tradition of Lectio divina: the diligent reading of Sacred Scripture accompanied by prayer brings about that intimate dialogue in which the person reading hears God who is speaking, and in praying, responds to him with trusting openness of heart (cf. Dei Verbum, n. 25). If it is effectively promoted, this practice will bring to the Church - I am convinced of it - a new spiritual springtime."
Sunday, April 09, 2006
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