Czeching In
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:00 PM
Benedict XVI spent the weekend in the Czech Republic.
Here you see him praying before the image of the Infant of Prague, and there are more wonderful pictures from the masses and meetings here.
I’m going to highlight the speech that has drawn the most attention, but at the end of the post I’ll link to some other addresses and homilies from the trip you might enjoy. Some of them are very sweet!
This address to Czech authorities was certainly the diplomatic highlight of the trip. The flag that flies above Prague castle reads, “Truth conquers,” and so the Holy Father urged the gathered politicians not only to ground their quest for freedom in truth, but something more: to understand their leadership as a responsibility to awaken in their citizens a desire for truth.
Every generation has the task of engaging anew in the arduous search for the right way to order human affairs, seeking to understand the proper use of human freedom (cf.Spe Salvi, 25). And while the duty to strengthen “structures of freedom” is vital, it is never enough: human aspirations soar beyond the self, beyond what any political or economic authority can provide, towards a radiant hope (cf. ibid., 35) that has its origin beyond ourselves yet is encountered within, as truth and beauty and goodness. Freedom seeks purpose: it requires conviction. True freedom presupposes the search for truth - for the true good - and hence finds its fulfilment precisely in knowing and doing what is right and just. Truth, in other words, is the guiding norm for freedom, and goodness is freedom’s perfection. Aristotle defined the good as “that at which all things aim”, and went on to suggest that “though it is worthwhile to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-states” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1; cf. Caritas in Veritate, 2). Indeed, the lofty responsibility to awaken receptivity to truth and goodness falls to all leaders - religious, political and cultural, each in his or her own way. Jointly we must engage in the struggle for freedom and the search for truth, which either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery (cf. Fides et Ratio, 90).
Then he enters into a beautiful discussion of culture. Europe isn’t just a place, it’s a homeland, he says, and it has to be a spiritual homeland if its citizens are going to experience anything more than rootless nihilism.
Dear friends, our presence in this magnificent capital, which is often spoken of as the heart of Europe, prompts us to ask in what that “heart” consists. While there is no simple answer to that question, surely a clue is found in the architectural jewels that adorn this city. The arresting beauty of its churches, castle, squares and bridges cannot but draw our minds to God. Their beauty expresses faith; they are epiphanies of God that rightly leave us pondering the glorious marvels to which we creatures can aspire when we give expression to the aesthetic and the noetic aspects of our innermost being. How tragic it would be if someone were to behold such examples of beauty, yet ignore the transcendent mystery to which they point. The creative encounter of the classical tradition and the Gospel gave birth to a vision of man and society attentive to God’s presence among us. In shaping the cultural patrimony of this continent it insisted that reason does not end with what the eye sees but rather is drawn to what lies beyond, that for which we deeply yearn: the Spirit, we might say, of Creation.
What’s needed, he says, is the decisive rejection of cynicism. Yes, the Communist years showed that truth can be manipulated, but we can’t allow that to let us lose our trust—can’t let sin and betrayal have the last word.
The thirst for truth, beauty and goodness, implanted in all men and women by the Creator, is meant to draw people together in the quest for justice, freedom and peace. History has amply shown that truth can be betrayed and manipulated in the service of false ideologies, oppression and injustice. But do not the challenges facing the human family call us to look beyond those dangers? For in the end, what is more inhuman, and destructive, than the cynicism which would deny the grandeur of our quest for truth, and the relativism that corrodes the very values which inspire the building of a united and fraternal world? Instead, we must reappropriate a confidence in the nobility and breadth of the human spirit in its capacity to grasp the truth, and let that confidence guide us in the patient work of politics and diplomacy.
Although he had some formal negotiations with the government about recovery of Churches appropriated by the Communists, a highly publicized address to secular authorities,and his typical ecumenical meetings, the Pope’s chief purpose was to strengthen and encourage Catholics concentrated in the regions of Bohemia and Moravia.
Here are some other highlights:
A tender-hearted address to children while he made his visit to the Infant of Prague.
In his remarks to young people, he again stressed freedom:
the Lord comes to meet each one of you. He knocks at the door of your freedom and asks to be welcomed as a friend. He wants to make you happy, to fill you with humanity and dignity. The Christian faith is this: encounter with Christ, the living Person who gives life a new horizon and thereby a definitive direction.
Interestingly, in addition to talking to them about priestly and religious vocations, he asked them to take seriously the call to raise a Christian family—“the world needs holy families!” he told them.
For the memorial of St. Wenceslaus, a Czech saint, the pope gave a homily about whether holiness is still relevant.
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