{"id":639,"date":"2008-05-19T10:25:07","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T10:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/be-generous.html"},"modified":"2008-05-19T10:25:07","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T10:25:07","slug":"be-generous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/be-generous.html","title":{"rendered":"Be generous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teresa Benedetta has now translated all of the Pope’s talks from this past weekend in Savona and Genoa – God bless her. Go to this page and scroll around to read them. <\/a>
\nAt the children’s hospital:<\/p>\n

And here, we must turn our thought to the silent presence of God, who almost imperceptibly accompanies man on his long journey through history. The only true reliable hope is God, who in Jesus Christ and his Gospel, opened wide the dark doors of time to the future.
\n“I have risen and now, I am always with you,” Jesus tells us always, especially in the most difficult moments. “My hand will sustain you. Wherever you may fall, you will fall into my arms. I am there, even at the door of death.”
\nHere at the Gaslini, children are cured. How can we not think how Jesus loved the little children? He wanted them hear him; he held them up to the Apostles as models to follow in their generous and spontaneous faith, in their innocence. He severely admonished them against despising them or scandalizing the little ones.
\nHe was greatly moved by the widow of Nain, a mother who had lost her son, her only son. The evangelist St. Luke writes that the Lord reassured her and said, “Do not cry!” (cfr Lk 7,14). Jesus repeats to whoever is in pain these comforting words: “Do not cry!” He feels one with each of us, and he asks us, if we want to be his disciples, to testify to his love to whoever is in difficulty.
\nFinally, I address you, dearest children, to repeat to you that the Pope loves you very much. Beside you, I see your families who share with you your moments of anxiety and hope.
\nLet all of you be sure of this: God never abandons us. Stay with him and you will never lose serenity, not even in the darkest and most complicated times.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To the youth – and I’m going just insist that you go and read the whole thing here. It is really wonderful and rather moving, when you consider the 81-year old man who is speaking these words:<\/p>\n

\nTo be young means to have discovered the things that do not pass away with the passing of the years. If a young person discovers the great and true values, then he will never grow old, even if the body follows its own laws.
\nStay young in your heart and you will radiate youth, which is to say, goodness. Yes, because goodness escapes the grip of time. That is why we can say that only he who is good and generous is truly young.
\nI wish you all to remain young, but not as fashion goes. Fashions fizzle out in a heartbeat, they burn out in frenetic pointless succession. But youth – the youth born of goodness – will remain. Indeed, it will be perfect and resplendent in Heaven, with God.
\nIt is beautiful to be young. Today, everyone wants to be young, to remain young, and many masquerade as young people, even if their youth has gone – visibly gone. But why is it beautiful to be young? Why this dream of perennial youth?
\nI think there are two decisive elements. One is that youth still has all of the future ahead. Everything is the future – the time of hope. And the future is full of promise, although today, it is also full of threats, especially the threat of great emptiness.
\nThat is why many want to stop time, out of fear for a future of emptiness. They would want to consume all at once everything that is ‘beautiful’ in life – and so they burn out the candle at both ends even if their life has just begun.
\nIt is important to choose the true promises, those that will open up the future, even if it means renouncing certain things. Whoever chooses God will have, even in old age, a future without an end, and will fear no threats ahead.
\nSo choose well – do not destroy your future. And the first choice should be God, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ. In the light of this choice which offers us a reliable companion on our journey, one can find the criteria for the other choices that one must make.
\nTo be young, as I said, means being good and generous. But once again: the true goodness is Jesus, the Jesus you know or that your heart is searching for. He alone is the friend who will never betray. He was faithful up to giving his life on the Cross. Surrender to his love!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0
\nTo the Cathedral Chapter:<\/p>\n

In particular, I wish to indicate as an example the apostle Paul, in honor of whom we are about to celebrate a special jubilee, the bimillenary of his birth. Converted to Christ on the road to Damascus, he dedicated himself entirely to the Gospel. For Christ, he faced trials of every kind, and remained faithful to him up to sacrificing his life.
\nNearing the end of his earthly pilgrimage, he wrote his faithful disciple Timothy: “I am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4,6-7).
\nWould that each of us, dear brothers and sisters, may be able to say the same thing on the last day of our life! So that this may happen – and it is what the Lord expects of us, his friends – we must cultivate the same missionary spirit that inspired St. Paul through constant spiritual, ascetic and pastoral formation.
\nIt is necessary, above all, that we become ‘specialists’ in listening to God, and credible examples of saintliness that translates into faithfulness to the Gospel without yielding to the spirit of the world.
\n\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At Mass yesterday:<\/p>\n

Even here, in this great city, and in its surrounding territory, with its variety of human and social problems, the ecclesial community, today like yesterday, is first of all a sign, poor but true, of God Love, whose name is imprinted in the profound being of every person and in every experience of authentic sociability and solidarity.
\nAfter these reflections, dear brothers, I leave you with some specific exhortations. Pay great attention to spiritual and catechistic formation, as a ‘substantial’ formation, more than ever necessary to live the Christian calling well in today’s world.
\nI say these to adults and the young: cultivate a well-thought faith, capable of dialog in depth with everyone, with our non-Catholic brothers, with non-Christians and with non-believers. Continue your generous sharing with the poor and the weak, according to the original practice of the Church, always drawing inspiration and strength from the Eucharist, perennial spring of charity.
\nI encourage with special affection the seminarians and the young people committed to the vocational path: do not be afraid, rather, feel the attraction of definite choices, of a serious and demanding formative itinerary. Only the high standard of discipleship can fascinate and bring joy.
\nI exhort everyone to grow in the missionary dimension, which is co-essential to communion. The Trinity is in fact both unity and mission at the same time: the more intense love is, the stronger is the impulse to pour oneself out, to expand, to communicate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(A look at Sunday’s Mass here.)<\/a>
\nThis was a busy weekend for the Pope. Somehow (I am not sure how), on Saturday before his departure, he squeezed in two more meetings, both with a mission and evangelization focus:
\nFirst, with representatives of the Pontifical Missionary Works:<\/a><\/p>\n

As the Church prepares to commemorate the 2000th anniversary of the birth of St. Paul, Benedict XVI affirmed that the Apostle “understood on the road to Damascus, then experienced in the course of his later ministry, that redemption and mission are acts of love. It was love of Christ that impelled him to follow the roads of the Roman empire as a herald … of the Gospel. … It is love that must impel us to announce to all mankind, frankly and courageously, the truth that saves. … Mankind awaits Christ”.
\nThe Holy Father concluded: “Jesus’ words: ‘go therefore and make disciples of all nations’ … still represent an obligation for the whole Church and for each individual member of Christ’s faithful. This apostolic commitment is a duty and an indispensable right, an expression of religious freedom which has its corresponding ethical-social and ethical-political dimensions. The Pontifical Missionary Works is called to make the ‘Missio ad Gentes’ the model for all pastoral activity”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And also with bishops who were part of a seminar gathered by the Pontifical Council for the Laity, reflecting on New Movements in the Church:<\/a><\/p>\n

Pope Benedict then turned to consider the theme of the seminar – “I ask you to reach out to the movements with great love” – an exhortation he himself had addressed to a group of German bishops on their “ad limina” visit in 2006. “Reaching our with great love to movements and new communities”, he said, “impels us to an adequate knowledge of their situation, avoiding superficial impressions and reductive judgements”. This helps us to understand that such movements “are not a problem, … they are a gift from the Lord, a precious resource to enrich the entire Christian community with their charisms”.
\n“Difficulties and misunderstandings on particular points do not justify [an attitude] of closure”, said the Pope. And he told the prelates that they must “closely accompany” the movements and new communities “with paternal solicitude” so as to put to good use “the many gifts they bear, gifts we have learned to know and appreciate: their missionary drive, their effective courses of Christian formation, their witness of faithfulness and obedience to the Church, their sensitivity to the needs of the poor, and their wealth of vocations.
\n“The authenticity of the new charisms is guaranteed by their willingness to submit to the discernment of ecclesiastical authority”, the Holy Father added. In this context he indicated that bishops “must examine and test the charims in order to recognise and evaluate that which is good, true and beautiful, that which contributes to increasing the sanctity of individuals and of the community. And when it is necessary to intervene in order to correct”, he concluded, “such interventions must also be expressions of ‘great love'”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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