Pope: Human Body Can Speak Language of Love

Says Sin Has Not Succeeded in Erasing It

VATICAN CITY, MAY 15, 2011 (Zenit.org).- People today have a hard time understanding the splendor of Michelangelo's depiction of the human body because we tend to see the body as "heavy matter," opposed to the spirit, according to Benedict XVI.
The Pope made this reflection in an address Friday to participants in a conference marking the 30th anniversary of the foundation of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. 
Friday was the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on John Paul II; at that day's general audience, he would have announced the creation of the Pontifical Council for the Family and the institute for study.
Benedict XVI took up his predecessor's theology in his reflection on the language of the body. He recounted an incident shortly after Michelangelo's death, when the painter Paolo Veronese was accused before the Inquisition of having painted inappropriate figures in a depiction of the Last Supper.
The painter referred in his defense to the nude figures in Michelangelo's artwork in the Sistine Chapel, to which the inquisitor responded: "Do you not know that in these figures there is nothing save what is of spirit?"
The Pope proposed that this lesson is hard to understand today because "the body appears to us as inert, heavy matter, opposed to the consciousness and the freedom of the spirit."
But Michelangelo's bodies are "inhabited by light, life, splendor," the Holy Father said. "He wanted to show in this way that our bodies hide a mystery. In them the spirit manifests itself and operates. [...] Our bodies are not inert, heavy, but they speak -- if we know how to hear them -- the language of true love."
Benedict XVI went on to reflect about the "first word of this language," found in creation. "The bodies of Adam and Eve, before the Fall, appear in perfect harmony," he explained. "There is a language in them that they did not create, an eros rooted in their nature, that invites them mutually to receive themselves from the Creator, to be able thus to give themselves."
In love, he continued, man is "re-created." And the true appeal of sexuality is in this context.
But sin, the Holy Father observed, has also given the body a negative language: "It speaks to us of the oppression of the other, of the desire to possess and exploit."
Nevertheless, the Fall is "not the last word on the body in salvation history," the Pope assured. "God also offers to man a journey of redemption of the body, whose language is preserved in the family. If after the Fall, Eve received the name Mother of the Living this testifies that the power of sin does not succeed in erasing the original language of the body, the blessing of life that God continues to offer when man and woman unite in one flesh. The family is the place where the theology of the body and the theology of love intersect."
It is in the family, the Holy Father said, that man discovers himself not as an autonomous individual, but as someone in relation to others, "whose identity is founded on being called to love, to receive himself from others and give himself to others."

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Founder of Vocationists Is Beatified

Established Order to Foster Priestly Vocations

By Carmen Elena Villa POZZUOLI, Italy, MAY 9, 2011 (Zenit.org).- "Make yourselves true saints, as all the rest is zero," Don Justino Maria Russolillo would say.

And in trying to help people become saints, he founded an order to foster priestly and religious vocations.

Don Russolillo was beatified Saturday in a ceremony presided over by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes.

Justino was born in Pianura on Jan. 18, 1891. His family of 10 siblings was well-off, but above all, rich in Christian values. He was educated primarily by his aunt Michelena.

Already as a child, he showed an inclination to the priestly life. "Together with his little friends he improvised small processions and liturgies in the patio of his family home," the postulator of his cause, Vocationist Father Giacomo Capraro, told ZENIT.

The family went through hard financial times, but he continued to follow his call to the priesthood. "Don't worry. I would give my eyes so long as you could become a priest," his mother told him one day.
He was so outstanding in the seminary that Father Antonio Stravino, then rector of the Pontifical Regional Seminary of Naples-Posillipo, said one day: "If we had 30 students like Russolillo, we would be the most envied seminary in Italy."
"He always allowed himself to be guided by his spiritual father, showing great openness to divine inspirations and attributing great obedience to his spiritual directors," noted Father Capraro.

Calling the Lord of the harvest

In July of 1912, when Justino was a young seminarian, a consistory statement was released, inviting all the bishops of Italy to evaluate the situation of the seminaries.

"Don Justino meditated on it," Father Capraro noted. "The [future] Blessed was only 21 years old!"

But that was the inspiration that led to "a religious family dedicated wholly to the formation and education of vocations to the ecclesiastical-religious state," the postulator explained.

Thus Don Justino began the Society of the Divine Vocation, establishing a center to educate those who presented signs of a priestly or religious vocation so that they would have an adequate orientation.

Wherever he went, his main objective was the search and cultivation of vocations, especially among the poor and underprivileged. The Most Holy Trinity, the Holy Family and the Church were the three great pillars of his work.
Contagious
His brother Ciro would also became a Vocationist priest and his sister Giovanna was a nun and the first superior-general of the women's branch of this community.

In 1947 and 1948, the two Vocationist religious congregations would become congregations of pontifical right.
The communities today work in Italy, as well as France, Brazil, Argentina, the United States, Nigeria, India, the Philippines, Madagascar, Colombia and Ecuador.
"The Vocationist Fathers and Sisters must be, for those who are initiated in the vocation to consecrated life, like fathers and mothers," the postulator explained of his community. "Ready to educate those whom Divine Providence has called to give themselves to the Church."

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Benedict XVI Warns Against "Liquid" Society

Proposes Culture of Life and Beauty

VENICE, Italy, MAY 9, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is warning against the danger of the present "liquid" society, which embraces relativism and rejects stability in human relations.This was one of the points stressed by the Pope on Sunday afternoon in a meeting with the world of culture and the economy at the end of his visit to Venice.
Over the weekend, he also visited the city of Aquilea, the see of the old patriarchate that constituted the largest ecclesiastical and metropolitan diocese of the whole of Medieval Europe, which included present-day Slovenia, Croatia, Austria and Germany
In this address, the Pontiff spoke about the "liquid" culture, a concept coined by Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, who between 1971 and 1990 was a professor of sociology at the University of Leeds, England.
European society, said the Holy Father, is submerged in a liquid culture; in this regard, he pointed out "its 'fluidity,' its low level of stability or perhaps absence of stability, its mutability, the inconsistency that at times seems to characterize it."
He noted that Bauman attributes the birth of the "liquid" society to the consumerist model. The philosopher stated that its most profound impact has been felt in social relations, and, more in particular, in relations between man and woman, which have become increasingly flexible and impalpable, as manifested by the present concept of love reduced to a mere passing sentiment.
Speaking to an audience in the Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute, Benedict XVI opposed this model of a liquid society with a model of the society "of life and of beauty."
"It is certainly an option, but in history it's necessary to choose: man is free to interpret, to give meaning to reality, and it is precisely in this liberty that his great dignity lies," said the Pope.
He continued, "In the ambit of a city, regardless of which one it is, also choices of an administrative, cultural and economic character depend, at the basis, on this fundamental orientation, which we can call 'politics,' in the most noble and lofty sense of the term."
The Pontiff explained, "It is about choosing between a 'liquid' city, homeland of a culture that seems to be increasingly the culture of the relative and the ephemeral, and a city that constantly renews its beauty, taking recourse to the beneficent resources of art, learning, of relations between men and nations."

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Benedict XVI Warns of an Emptied Christianity

Says Emmaus Discouragement Is Present Also Today

VENICE, Italy, MAY 8, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is bringing a message of the new evangelization to northeastern Italy, urging the region to remember that the faith is more than a cultural and social tradition.
The Pope visited Venice and Aquilea Saturday and today, giving four addresses and a homily in just a few hours.
This afternoon, some 300,000 people attended the Mass he celebrated, coming not only from dioceses of the region, but also from Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany.
"You live in a context in which Christianity shows itself as the faith that has accompanied the path of so many peoples for centuries, even through persecutions and the most difficult trials," the Holy Father said in his homily. "Nevertheless, today this belonging to Christ runs the risk of being emptied of its truth and its deepest elements: It runs the risk of becoming a perspective that only touches life superficially, in the aspects that are just social and cultural."
He warned of being content with a Christianity "in which the experience of faith in Jesus, crucified and risen, does not enlighten the path of existence."
The Bishop of Rome proposed that the situation of the peoples of the region is similar to that of the disciples on the way to Emmaus.
The depression and discouragement of those two disciples is seen "when the disciples of today distance themselves from the Jerusalem of the Crucified and Risen One, when they cease to believe in the power and the living presence of the Lord," he proposed. "The problem of evil, of pain and suffering, the problem of injustice and abuse, of fear of others, of outsiders, and those who arrive to our lands from far away and seem to threaten who we are, [this] brings Christians of today to say with sadness: 'We had hoped that the Lord would free us from evil, from pain, from suffering, from fear, from injustice."
The Pope invited these Christians to rediscover Christ, through the Word of God, and the sacrament of his Body and Blood, which "restores to us the eyes of faith, so as to see everything and everyone with the eyes of God and the light of his love."
"Be holy!" the Pontiff urged them. "Put Christ at the center of your lives. Build the edifice of your existence upon him.
"In Jesus you will find the strength to open yourselves to others and to make of yourselves, with his example, a gift for all of humanity."

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Pope: Don't Forget Bible Comes From God

Stresses "Inspiration" in Message to Commission

VATICAN CITY, MAY 6, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Interpreting the Bible as a collection of mere human words causes the treasure contained in Scripture to be lost, Benedict XVI says.
The Pope affirmed this in a message dated Monday and sent to the president of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, Cardinal William Levada. The message was for the commission's plenary assembly, which for a third time was focused on the theme "Inspiration and Truth of the Bible." The Holy Father noted that this theme was one of the main points in his postsynodal apostolic exhortation "Verbum Domini."
Citing that document, he added that "an interpretation of the sacred writings that neglects or forgets their inspiration does not take into account their most important and valuable characteristic, their provenance from God."
"Such an interpretation does not allow one to access the Word of God, and loses, therefore, the inestimable treasure that sacred Scripture contains for us," he said.
Though the words might have "extraordinary depth and beauty," the Holy Father noted, it is the discussion on inspiration that speaks to the "profound nature and decisive and distinctive meaning of sacred Scripture, namely, its quality as Word of God."
The theme of inspiration is related to that of truth, the Pontiff clarified, since a "deeper study of the process of inspiration will doubtless lead to a greater understanding of the truth contained in the sacred books."
He said that a commitment to "discover ever more the truth of the Sacred Books is equivalent therefore to seeking to know God more and more, and the mystery of his salvific will."
Finally, the Pope cautioned against taking words or phrases of Scripture out of context. 
"The context in which it is possible to perceive holy Scripture as the Word of God," he said, "is that of the unity of the history of God, in a totality in which individual elements are mutually illumined and opened to understanding."

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Pope: Christians Believe in Someone, Not Something

Concert Honors Benedict XVI for 6th Anniversary

VATICAN CITY, MAY 6, 2011 (Zenit.org).- The Christian faith is not based on believing in something, but in Someone, Benedict XVI says.
The Pope affirmed this Thursday in an address following a concert in honor of his 6th anniversary as the Successor of Peter. He was elected April 19 and installed April 24, 2005.
The concert was offered to the Pope by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. The orchestra and choir of the Opera Theatre of Rome, respectively conducted by Maestro Jesús López Cobos and Maestro Roberto Gabbiani, performed Antonio Vivaldi's "Credo RV 591" and Gioachino Rossini's "Stabat Mater."
The Holy Father reflected on the beginning and ending words of the creed: "Credo" and "Amen."
"What does 'I believe' mean?," he asked, indicating that it can mean to accept something among one's convictions, to trust someone and to be certain.
"When, however, we say it in the Creed," he said, "it assumes a more profound meaning. It is to affirm with confidence the real meaning of the reality that sustains us, that sustains the world; it means to accept this meaning as the solid ground on which we can be without fears; it is to know that the foundation of everything, of ourselves, cannot be created by us, but can only be received."
The Holy Father added that Christian faith is not "'I believe something,' but 'I believe in Someone,' in the God who revealed himself in Jesus."
"In him I perceive the real meaning of the world," the Pontiff said, "and this believing involves the whole person, who is on the way to him."
"The word 'Amen,' which in Hebrew has the same root as the word 'faith,' takes up this same concept: to lean with confidence on God, the solid base."
Vivaldi and Rossini
In regard to Vivaldi's piece, Benedict XVI pointed out three things, beginning with the unusual characteristic of the composer's vocal production: the absence of soloists.
"In this way, Vivaldi wishes to express the 'we' of the faith. The 'I believe' is the 'we' of the Church that sings, in space and time, as a community of believers, its faith; 'my' affirmation 'I believe' is within the 'we' of the community," he reflected.
Then he pointed out "the two splendid central pictures: Et incarnatus est and Crucifixus. Vivaldi pauses, as was customary, at the moment in which God who seems far away becomes close, is incarnated and gives himself to us on the cross."
He noted how it expresses "the profound sense of wonder in face of this Mystery and invite[s] us to meditation, to prayer."
"A last observation. In his first meeting with Vivaldi, Carlo Goldoni, great exponent of the Venetian theater, pointed out: 'I found him surrounded by music and with the breviary in hand.' Vivaldi was a priest and his music is born from his faith."
The Pope went on to describe Gioacchino Rossini's "Stabat Mater" as "a great meditation on the mystery of Jesus and on the sorrow of Mary."
"Rossini's religiosity expresses a rich gamut of feelings in face of the mysteries of Christ, with a strong emotive tension."
Rossini's work, he added, is characterized by "an emotive intensity that becomes a sincere prayer," "a simple and genuine faith."
"Dear friends, may this evening's pieces nourish our faith," said the Pope at the end of his address, as he reiterated to everyone his gratitude for the event and requested that they remember to "pray for my ministry in the Vineyard of the Lord."

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