{"id":2081,"date":"2007-04-18T08:30:43","date_gmt":"2007-04-18T08:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/back-on-schedule.html"},"modified":"2007-04-18T08:30:43","modified_gmt":"2007-04-18T08:30:43","slug":"back-on-schedule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/back-on-schedule.html","title":{"rendered":"Back on schedule"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today in the General Audience, Pope Benedict returned to the catechesis on the great figures of the early Church – recall that he began with the Apostles, moved on to other notable Christians of the apostolic era, and has of late, with the Easter interruption, been taking us through the Fathers of the Church. Today Clement of Alexandria<\/a>. According to AsiaNews, he spoke to around 45,000 in St. Peter’s Square:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Illustrating Clement Alexandria\u2019s works which \u201caccompany the baptised catechumen\u2019s journey step by step\u201d, Benedict XVI attributed him with having \u201crebuilt\u201d the second great occasion for dialogue between Christianity and Greek philosophy, after the first occasion, conducted by Paul \u201cfailed in may ways\u201d. <\/p>\n

In his thoughts, reason leads to knowledge, in Greek gnosi<\/em>, but only Knowledge of the truth which is Christ Jesus, is real knowledge: \u201cauthentic gnosi<\/em> is a development of the faith within the soul that he has converted\u201d. But \u201cknowledge of Christ is not just a thought, it is also love which opens the eyes and transforms man and creates union with  Logos\u201d, which is God. This is how contemplation is reached.  But in order to arrive at the contemplation of God \u201cthe practice of virtues\u201d are also needed; intellectual knowledge is not enough: in the journey towards perfection clement  \u201cgives as muck importance to moral requirements as to intellectual ones\u201d and as a result \u201cgood deeds must accompany one on one\u2019s life journey, just as a shadow follows the body: they are never separate, true gnosi<\/em> cannot coexist with evil deeds\u201d. <\/p>\n

According to Clement the heart of a \u201ctrue gnostic\u201d contains two virtues: \u201cfreedom from passions\u201d and love which \u201cassure an intimate union with God and with contemplation\u201d. \u201cLove \u2013 continued the Pope \u2013 gifts perfect peace, and enables the true gnostic to face even the greatest of sacrifices, even the supreme sacrifice, and thus helps him on step by step towards the heights of virtues. Thus the ideal of ancient philosophy, that is the freedom from ones passions, is redefined by Clement and joined together with love, in the man\u2019s constant journey to liken himself to God, which represents the journey of knowledge of true gnosi\u201d.<\/p>\n

Thus, in the Pope\u2019s words, we come to what Clement defines as man\u2019s primary aim: \u201cto liken himself to God\u201d and this \u201cis possible thanks, because we are made in the likeness of God\u201d in the moment of creation.<\/p>\n

At the end of the audience Pope Benedict XVI blessed the \u201cJohn Paul II\u201d torch of peace which will be carried from Bethlehem to Jerusalem in a marathon-pilgrimage on April 23to 28th. Palestinian and Israeli students will join the IV edition of the run along with 200 Italian students from across Italy. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today in the General Audience, Pope Benedict returned to the catechesis on the great figures of the early Church – recall that he began with the Apostles, moved on to other notable Christians of the apostolic era, and has of late, with the Easter interruption, been taking us through the Fathers of the Church. Today…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBack on schedule - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/04\/back-on-schedule.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Back on schedule - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today in the General Audience, Pope Benedict returned to the catechesis on the great figures of the early Church – recall that he began with the Apostles, moved on to other notable Christians of the apostolic era, and has of late, with the Easter interruption, been taking us through the Fathers of the Church. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}