Recently in Saints Category

The Pope explores it today, via the saints:

Recalling some saints whose memory is celebrated in the weeks to come, Benedict XVI affirmed that they are witness to a "Christian humanism" that differs deeply from an "atheistic humanism".

The Saints - the pope cited in particular the martyrs Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein - are indeed witnesses of "an antithesis which spans history, but at the end of the second millennium, with the contemporary nihilism, we have come to a crucial point, as major writers and thinkers have perceived, and as events have amply demonstrated. "

Edith Stein - explained the pope - was "born in the Jewish faith and was won over by Christ in adulthood, she became a Carmelite nun and sealed her life with martyrdom", St. Maximilian Kolbe, is a "son of Poland and St. Francis of Assisi, a great apostle of Mary Immaculate". Both are martyrs killed in Auschwitz.  

"The Nazi concentration camp - he added - as every death camp, can be considered an extreme symbol of evil, of the hell that comes to earth when man forgets God, and when He is replaced, usurping from Him the right to decide what is good and what is evil, to give life and or to take life. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not confined to the death camp. It is rather the culmination of an extensive and widespread reality of often nebulous boundaries. "

This reality is precisely the antithesis that became clear at the end of the second millennium, "the opposition between atheistic humanism and Christian humanism, between holiness and nihilism".  

"On the one hand - continued the pope - there are philosophies and ideologies, but also on an increasing scale ways of thinking and acting, which extol the freedom of man as the only principle, as an alternative to God, and thus transform man into a god, whose system behaviour is of an arbitrary nature. On the other hand, we note the saints, who, practicing the gospel of love, make reason of their hope, they show the true face of God who is Love, and at the same time, the true face of man, created in image and likeness of God. "

There are many good comments on the Padre Pio post below - Fr. John just wrote one that I think sums everything up very nicely:

In addition to all the things noted above, I think that Padre Pio had three characteristics that made him attractive while he was alive, and even more so after his death. First, he was on the side of the poor and suffering. The establishment of the hospital, and his compassion and concern for the social welfare of people was legendary. Second, he was accessible (even despite the will of his order and Vatican officials). Pio listened. He put himself in the position of encountering people. His time spent in correspondence, in the confessional, in talking to people, made an impression. Third, Pio connected people to the mystery of the holy. There was no watering down of beliefs and practices, and no attempt to over-rationalize them. To encounter Pio in the flesh or by reputation was to touch a man who was absolutely convinced that God is mystery, and who was caught up in that mystery. In an age where the poor are downtrodden and unsightly, in an age where ordinary people wonder if anyone cares or truly hears them, and in an age where God and worship have been rationalized to the point of near extinction, Pio appeals to hope, to faith, and to the sense of the ineffible.

From today's Office of Readings, St. Ambrose:

Why do you turn your face away? We think that God has turned his face away from us when we find ourselves suffering, so that shadows overwhelm our feelings and stop our eyes from seeing the brilliance of the truth. All the same, if God touches our intellect and chooses to become present to our minds then we will be certain that nothing can lead us into darkness.

  A man's face shines out more than the rest of his body and it is by the face that we perceive strangers and recognise our friends. How much more, then, is the face of God able to bring illumination to whoever he looks at!

  The apostle Paul has something important to say about this, as about so many other things. He is a true interpreter of Christ for us, bringing him to our understanding through well-chosen words and images. He says: It is the same God that said, 'Let there be light shining out of darkness', who has shone in our minds to radiate the light of the knowledge of God's glory, the glory on the face of Christ. We have heard where Christ shines in us: he is the eternal brilliant illumination of souls, whom the Father sent into the world so that his face should shine on us and permit us to contemplate eternal and heavenly truths - we who had been plunged in earthly darkness.

  What shall I say about Christ, when even the apostle Peter said to the man who had been lame from birth Look upon us? The cripple looked at Peter and found light by the grace of faith: unless he had faithfully believed he could not have received healing.

  When there was so much glory to be seen among the Apostles, Zachaeus, hearing that the Lord Jesus was passing by, climbed a tree because he was small and weak and could not see the Lord through the crowd. He saw Christ and he found light. He saw Christ and instead of robbing others of their goods he began to give away his own.

  Why do you turn your face away? Let us read it thus: even if you do turn your face away from us, Lord, its light is still imprinted upon us. We hold it in our hearts and our innermost feelings are transformed by its light.

  For if you truly turn your face away, Lord, no-one can survive.

I broke down and bought one, not at Mount Etna, but at one of the souvenir stalls outside the Archaelogical Park in Siracusa:




I have to admit, seen alone, when not lined up in the midst of dozens of other similarly-glittered-up figures (except for the elephant, glimpsed in the back), the tackiness factor seems to recede. I can't imagine the same thing would happen in regard to the crucified Jesus with the glittery loincloth, but you never know. Stranger things have happened.

Well, maybe not.

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