A quick glance at the first page of my blog and you can tell that I don't really dive into the "deep issues" of life very much. That's just not what I wanted to do with this blog (God knows there are plenty out there if that's what you're looking for).
But still, I feel compelled to post this excerpt from the recent homily given by Pope Benedict, sent to me by my old friend Mark White over at Liberty Just In Case. I have read it and re-read it several times and I really believe that these words are inspired.
What is the picture placed before us in this page?
Man did not trust God. He harboured the suspect that God, at the end of the day, was taking something from his life, that God was a competitor who limits our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we have put him aside; all in all, that only in this way can we fully realize our freedom.
Man lives in the suspicion that the love of God creates a dependency and that it is necessary to get rid of this dependency to be fully oneself. Man does not want to receive his existence and fullness of life from God. He wants to be the one to draw from the tree of knowledge the power to mould the world, to make himself god, raising himself to His level, and to win over death and darkness. He does not want to count on love which does not seem trustworthy to him; he counts only on knowledge in that it confers power upon him.
Rather than love, he aims for power with which he wants to take his own life in his hands, to be autonomous. And in doing so, he places his trust in deceit rather than in truth and thus, he sinks with his life into a void, into death.
Love is not dependence but a gift which gives us life.
The freedom of mankind is the freedom to be a creature with limitations and that is therefore a limitation in itself. We can possess it only as a shared freedom, in the communion of freedom; only if we live in the right way with each other and for each other can freedom develop.
However, we live in the right way if we live according to the truth of our being and that is, according to the will of God. For God’s will for man is not a law imposed from outside which forces him, but an intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure which is inscribed in him, making him in the image of God, therefore a free creature.
If we live against love and against truth – against God – then we destroy each other and we destroy the world. Then we will no longer find life, but we will serve the interests of death.
All this is narrated with immortal images in the story of original sin and the banishment of man from the earthly Paradise.
The complete text of the Pope's homily can be found HERE.
(No, I am not Catholic)
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