{"id":5981,"date":"2006-09-10T10:30:49","date_gmt":"2006-09-10T10:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/and-nowfor-what-he-said.html"},"modified":"2006-09-10T10:30:49","modified_gmt":"2006-09-10T10:30:49","slug":"and-nowfor-what-he-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/09\/and-nowfor-what-he-said.html","title":{"rendered":"And now…for what he said…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, not a single translation of anything has been posted at the Vatican website. <\/a><\/p>\n

Update: <\/strong> <\/u>Gerald at Closed Cafeteria has a complete translation.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Mass, from a Catholic News Agency report:<\/a><\/p>\n

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In his Homily the Holy Father challenged his fellow Germans to allow their ears to be opened to God\u2019s word and to do away with the cynicism that is shutting God out of society.<\/p>\n

The Pope first noted how the readings of the Mass speak of the presence of God and lead to Him.  \u201cBut,\u201d the Pontiff noted, \u201cto speak of "God" is also to speak of society: of our shared responsibility for the triumph of justice and love in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turning to the Gospel, which tells the story of Jesus healing the man born deaf and mute, the Holy Father noted two themes.  Jesus displays his concern for the suffering, \u201cfor those pushed to the margins of society. He heals them and, by enabling them to live and work together, he brings them to equality and fraternity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, Benedict said, \u201cthe whole story has a deeper dimension,\u201d a message which the Church Fathers preached and which, \u201calso has new meaning for us modern men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deafness of which the Gospel speaks and which, the Pope said, cuts people off from social life, is not simply a physical deafness.  \u201cThere is also,\u201d he said, \u201ca \u2018hardness of hearing\u2019 where God is concerned, and this is something from which we particularly suffer in our own time. Put simply, we are no longer able to hear God – there are too many different frequencies filling our ears.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is said about God strikes us as pre-scientific, no longer suited to our age. Along with this hardness of hearing or outright deafness where God is concerned, we naturally lose our ability to speak with him and to him. And so we end up losing a decisive capacity for perception. We risk losing our inner senses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis weakening of our capacity for perception drastically and dangerously curtails the range of our relationship with reality. The horizon of our life is disturbingly foreshortened,\u201d the Pope worried.<\/p>\n

However, the "Ephphatha" – "Be opened" which Jesus spoke to the deaf and mute man in the Gospel, Jesus speaks to men and women today, Benedict said.  \u201cWhat happened then was unique, but it does not belong to a distant past: Jesus continues to do the same thing anew, even today.\u201d  By means of our Baptism, he said, we all have been given the ability to hear God\u2019s voice and speak to Him.<\/p>\n

And this openness to God is something Germans should renew and export to the world.  Benedict said that Bishops from around the world have praised the social activities of German Catholics, but find a lack of concern for faith itself.  The Pope recounted the words of an African Bishop, who recently told him, \u201cIf I come to Germany and present social projects, suddenly every door opens. But if I come with a plan for evangelization, I meet with reservations". <\/p>\n

\u201cClearly,\u201d the Pontiff lamented, \u201csome people have the idea that social projects should be urgently undertaken, while anything dealing with God or even the Catholic faith is of limited and lesser importance.\u201d <\/p>\n

However, he said, for progress to be made in social issues, evangelization and conversion of hearts must be first.  Work done in an area such as the AIDS epidemic can only be fruitful once the conversion of hearts is achieved, he said.  <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in Africa and Asia admire our scientific and technical prowess,\u201d the Pope continued, \u201cbut at the same time they are frightened by a form of rationality which totally excludes God from man\u2019s vision, as if this were the highest form of reason, and one to be imposed on their cultures too. They do not see the real threat to their identity in the Christian faith, but in the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom and that holds up utility as the supreme moral criterion for the future of scientific research.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDear friends, this cynicism is not the kind of tolerance and cultural openness that the world\u2019s peoples are looking for and that all of us want! The tolerance which we urgently need includes the fear of God – respect for what others hold sacred. This respect for what others hold sacred demands that we ourselves learn once more the fear of God. This sense of respect can be reborn in the Western world only if faith in God is reborn, if God becomes once more present to us and in us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we gather here,\u201d the Pope concluded, \u201clet us here ask the Lord with all our hearts to speak anew his "Ephphatha", to heal our hardness of hearing for God\u2019s presence, activity and word, and to give us sight and hearing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From AsiaNews:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The first Mass celebrated by Benedict XVI during his trip to Germany was an urgent invitation to rediscover the primacy of evangelization, which refuses proselytism, but it was also a strong warning to the West, which has \u201cforgotten\u201d God.<\/p>\n

The pope is attracting enthusiasm and participation: at least 200,000 people turned up today for the Eucharistic celebration in the \u201cNeue Messe<\/em>\u201d (New Fair) of Monaco. Benedict XVI himself seems to be very happy: in a spontaneous greeting, he described himself as a \u201cBavarian pope\u201d, drawing a roar from the crowd that started to gather from the early hours of morning until it filled the large esplanade, flooded by the sun. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am happy to be able to revisit places familiar to me, which had a determining influence on my life, forming my thought and my feelings: places where I learned to believe and to live. It is a time to thank all those \u2013 alive and dead \u2013 who led and accompanied me. I thank God for this beautiful Homeland and for the people who made it and who still now make it my Homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Angelus:<\/p>\n

Catholic News Agency:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Throughout her earthly life, (Mary) was the Woman who listened, the Virgin whose heart was open towards God and towards others. The faithful have understood this since the earliest centuries of Christianity, and therefore in all their needs and trials they have confidently turned to her, imploring her help and her intercession with God,\u201d the Pope recalled.<\/p>\n

The Pope mentioned the hundreds of churches and shrines dedicated to Mary, throughout Bavaria, noting in particular, Munich\u2019s Column of Mary, which he visited the previous day, and the shrine of Alt\u00f6tting, where he will go tomorrow to dedicate a new Adoration Chapel.<\/p>\n

The chapel is perfectly fitting at a Marian shrine, the Pope said, because it, \u201cis an eloquent sign of Mary\u2019s role: she is and remains the handmaid of the Lord who never puts herself at the centre, but wishes to guide us towards God, to teach us a way of life in which God is acknowledge as the centre of all there is and the centre of our personal lives.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, not a single translation of anything has been posted at the Vatican website. Update: Gerald at Closed Cafeteria has a complete translation. The Mass, from a Catholic News Agency report: In his Homily the Holy Father challenged his fellow Germans to allow their ears to be opened to God\u2019s word and to do away…<\/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-5981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAnd now...for what he said... - 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\/2006\/09\/and-nowfor-what-he-said.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"And now...for what he said... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Well, not a single translation of anything has been posted at the Vatican website. 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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\/5981","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=5981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}