Pope Benedict XVI's Preliminary Message to America

Dear Brothers and Sisters in the United States of America,
The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with all of you! In just a few days from now, I shall begin my apostolic visit to your beloved country. Before setting off, I would like to offer you a heartfelt greeting and an invitation to prayer. As you know, I shall only be able to visit two cities: Washington and New York. The intention behind my visit, though, is to reach out spiritually to all Catholics in the United States. At the same time, I earnestly hope that my presence among you will be seen as a fraternal gesture towards every ecclesial community, and a sign of friendship for members of other religious traditions and all men and women of good will. The risen Lord entrusted the apostles and the Church with his Gospel of love and peace, and his intention in doing so was that the message should be passed on to all peoples.
At this point I should like to add some words of thanks, because I am conscious that many people have been working hard for a long time, both in Church circles and in the public services, to prepare for my journey. I am especially grateful to all who have been praying for the success of the visit, since prayer is the most important element of all. Dear friends, I say this because I am convinced that without the power of prayer, without that intimate union with the Lord, our human endeavors would achieve very little. Indeed this is what our faith teaches us. It is God who saves us, he saves the world, and all of history. He is the shepherd of his people. I am coming, sent by Jesus Christ, to bring you his word of life.
Together with your bishops, I have chosen as the theme of my journey three simple but essential words: "Christ our hope." Following in the footsteps of my venerable predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul II, I shall come to United States of America as Pope for the first time, to proclaim this great truth: Jesus Christ is hope for men and women of every language, race, culture, and social condition. Yes, Christ is the face of God present among us. Through him, our lives reach fullness, and together, both as individuals and peoples, we can become a family united by fraternal love, according to the eternal plan of God the Father.
I know how deeply rooted this Gospel message is in your country. I am coming to share it with you, in a series of celebrations and gatherings. I shall also bring the message of Christian hope to the great assembly of the United Nations, to the representatives of all the peoples of the world. Indeed, the world has greater need of hope than ever: hope for peace, for justice, and for freedom; but this hope can never be fulfilled without obedience to the law of God, which Christ brought to fulfillment in the commandment to love one another. Do to others as you would have them do to you, and avoid doing what you would not want them to do. This "golden rule" is given in the Bible, but it is valid for all people, including non-believers. It is the law written on the human heart; on this we can all agree, so that when we come to address other matters we can do so in a positive and constructive manner for the entire human community.
[I removed the paragraph in Spanish]
Dear brothers and sisters, dear friends in the United States, I am very much looking forward to being with you. I want you to know that, even if my itinerary is short, with just a few engagements, my heart is close to all of you, especially to the sick, the weak, and the lonely. I thank you once again for your prayerful support of my mission. I reach out to every one of you with affection, and I invoke upon you the maternal protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.


My thoughts:
First of all, the Holy Father asks us for our prayers for his upcoming visit; that I will surely do. He goes on to make a powerful statement: "without the power of prayer, without that intimate union with the Lord, our human endeavors would achieve very little [emphasis added]." The only way to achieve much of lasting value, to become holy, to be a saint, is a close, personal, intimate love relationship with Jesus our Lord. Apart from our union with Him, we are capable of very little. God made us for Himself, He made us to be holy, and the only way to be vessels of God and be holy is to have that union with Him that is only possible with a deep, daily prayer life.

The theme of his journey here to America is: "Christ our hope." Our deepest hope is to be completely and utterly happy forever and ever; this is not an impossible and unrealistic fantasy; it is the God-given hunger for Him. He is the fulfillment of our deepest hope, and, as such, Christ is our hope. He is the hope for every person individually and the hope for the entire human family; only in Him can we become a united family in fraternal love. The world has never had a greater need for hope, "but this hope can never be fulfilled without obedience to the law of God, which Christ brought to fulfillment in the commandment to love one another." There is no true hope apart from the truth and obedience to that truth given to us in the law of God. The Holy Father goes on to say that the golden rule is valid for everyone, regardless of their beliefs, for it is written on our hearts by God Himself. Hope is only possible if we obey that God-written law inscribed on our hearts. With this universal truth as our foundation, all peoples can work together for the benefit of the whole world.

As he stated the other day, the Holy Father again said, "I know how deeply rooted this Gospel message is in your country." We have much to be proud of in our founding and our history. He will remind us of the treasures we have been given. Lastly, he regrets that his stay is so short, but, he said, "my heart is close to all of you," and " I reach out to every one of you with affection." Let us reach out to him in return with our prayers and our loving affection.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

Pope Benedict XVI is Coming to America

What will the Pope say to us when he arrives for his visit? That is one question many are asking and one question that I have some ideas about. As with any good shepherd, he will encourage the good and redirect the wayward. A little more than a month ago, February 29, he welcomed Mary Ann Glendon as the new US ambassador to the Holy See. On that occasion, he praised America as "a nation which values the role of religious belief," and went on to say that a just government, "must be the fruit of a deeper consensus based on the acknowledgment of universal truths." Valuing religious belief and basing society on universal truths, which is how America was founded, is essential to building and maintaining a good and just society. In this way, the Pope will call Americans back to their roots and to the traditions that have made us a great country.

What is endangering America and the entire world, especially Europe, is the attempt to eradicate religion, especially Christianity, from all aspects of public discourse and life. Truth is reduced merely to what is empirically verifiable. Anything beyond the five senses is, at best, considered subjective, and it has nothing to do with universal truths, so it is seen. This is the message the Pope made in his famous Regensburg address, in which toward the end he said: "For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding." Faith is a source of knowledge which all too often is ignored or despised. Reasonableness is reduced to the sensory while religion is reduced to the garbage heap.

He continues: "The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur--this is the programme with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time." For a long time, the universal truths upon which our country is founded, have been cut off from the Christian heritage out of which they grew. The Pope lives within the European Union which has decided to build its unity without any connection to Christianity and so has no lasting anchor for its foundation. To do whatever he can to encourage us to avoid that deadly mistake, the Pope will reiterate one of the primary messages of Regensburg; he will tell us that the only way we will overcome the dangers and evils of the world are, "if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons." The rationality of faith is the anchor for the world to thrive and avoid self-destruction.



Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.