BENEDICT XVI

FAITH,
SOUL OF LIFE
Excerpts from the Pope's speeches dedicated to the Year of Faith.

HE IS SO CLOSE THAT HE IS ONE OF US. HE KNOWS THE HUMAN BEING FROM WITHIN
No one can say: I have the truth–this is the objection raised–and, rightly so, no one can have the truth. It is the truth that possesses us, it is a living thing! We do not possess it but are held by it. Only if we allow ourselves to be guided and moved by the truth, do we remain in it. Only if we are, with it and in it, pilgrims of truth, then it is in us and for us. I think that we need to learn anew about "not-having-the-truth." Just as no one can say: I have children–they are not our possession, they are a gift, and as a gift from God, they are given to us as a responsibility–so we cannot say: I have the truth, but the truth came to us and impels us. We must learn to be moved and led by it. And then it will shine again–if the truth itself leads us and penetrates us.
God came so close to us that He Himself became a man; this should disconcert and surprise us again and again! He is so close that He is one of us. He knows the human being, He knows the "feeling" of the human being, He knows it from within; He has experienced all its joys and all its suffering. As a man, He is close to me, close "within earshot"–so close that He hears me and I am aware: He hears me and answers me, even though perhaps not quite as I imagined.
Yes, He enters into our misery; He does it knowingly and in order to penetrate us, to clean us and to renew us, so that, through us, in us, the truth may be in the world and bring salvation. Let us ask the Lord forgiveness for our indifference, for our misery that makes us think only of ourselves, for our selfishness that does not seek the truth but follows habit, and that perhaps often makes Christianity resemble a mere system of habits.
Holy Mass concluding the meeting
with the "Ratzinger Schülerkreis"
Mariapoli Centre, Castel Gandolfo , September 2, 2012

ONLY GOD'S PRECEDENCE MAKES
OUR JOURNEY POSSIBLE
Many people wonder: Is God just a hypothesis or not? Is He a reality or not? Why do we not hear Him? "Gospel" means: God has broken His silence, God has spoken, God exists. This fact in itself is salvation: God knows us, God loves us, He has entered into history. Jesus is His Word, God with us, God showing us that He loves us, that He suffers with us until death and rises again. This is the Gospel. God has spoken; He is no longer the great unknown, but has shown Himself and this is salvation.
The question for us is this: God has spoken, He has truly broken the great silence, He has shown Himself, but how can we communicate this reality to the people of today, so that it becomes salvation? In itself, the fact that He has spoken is salvation; it is redemption. But how can man know this? Only God's precedence makes our journey possible, our cooperation, which is always cooperation, and not entirely our own decision. Therefore, it is important always to know that the first word, the true initiative, the true activity comes from God and only by inserting ourselves into the divine initiative, only by begging for this divine initiative, shall we too be able to become–with Him and in Him–evangelizers. God is always the beginning, and it is always only He who can make Pentecost, who can create the Church, who can show the reality of His being with us. On the other hand, however, this God, who is always the beginning, also wants to involve our activity, so that the activities are theandric, so to speak, made by God, but with our involvement and implying our being, all our activity.
"Confessio" and "caritas," like the two ways in which God involves us, make us act with Him, in Him and for humanity, for His creation: "confessio" and "caritas."
From St. Paul's Letter to the Romans (10), we know that the location of the "confession" is in the heart and mouth: it must be in the depth of the heart, but must also be public; faith carried in the heart has to be announced; it is never only a reality of the heart, but tends to be communicated, to be really confessed before the eyes of the world. So we have to learn, on the one hand, to be truly, let us say, penetrated in the heart by the "confession," so our heart is formed, and from the heart we also find, along with the great history of the Church, the word and the courage of the word, and the word which indicates our present, this "confession" which is always, however, one. "Mens": the "confession" is not only something of the heart and of the mouth, but also of the mind; it has to be thought about and, thus, thought of and intelligently conceived; it touches the other person and always assumes that my thought is truly located in the "confession." "Sensus": it is not something purely abstract and intellectual, the "confessio" must also penetrate the meanings of our lives.
"Confessio" is the first column, so to speak, of evangelization, and the second is "caritas." "Confessio" is not an abstract thing, it is "caritas," it is love.
Meditation during the first General Congregation, XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops
Synod Hall, October 8, 2012

WITNESSING TO THE NEW LIFE, TRANSFORMED BY GOD, AND THUS SHOWING THE PATH
Christ is not only the object of the faith but, as it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, He is "the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith" (12:2).
Today's Gospel tells us that Jesus Christ, consecrated by the Father in the Holy Spirit, is the true and perennial subject of evangelization. This mission of Christ, this movement of His, continues in space and time, over centuries and continents. Recent decades have seen the advance of a spiritual "desertification." In the Council's time it was already possible from a few tragic pages of history to know what a life or a world without God looked like, but now we see it every day around us. This void has spread. But it is in starting from the experience of this desert, from this void, that we can again discover the joy of believing, its vital importance for us, men and women. In the desert, we rediscover the value of what is essential for living; thus in today's world there are innumerable signs, often expressed implicitly or negatively, of the thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life. And in the desert people of faith are needed who, with their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep hope alive. Living faith opens the heart to the grace of God which frees us from pessimism. Today, more than ever, evangelizing means witnessing to the new life, transformed by God, and thus showing the path.
Holy Mass for the Opening
of the Year of Faith
Saint Peter's Square, October 11, 2012

FAITH IN CHRIST IS TRUE AS IT
RESPONDS TO THE NEEDS OF THE HEART AND MIND
The desire for God, the search for God, is profoundly inscribed into each human soul and cannot disappear. Certainly we can forget God for a time, lay Him aside and concern ourselves with other things, but God never disappears. St. Augustine's words are true: we men are restless until we have found God. This restlessness also exists today, and is an expression of the hope that man may, ever and anew, even today, start to journey towards this God.
The Gospel is true and can therefore never wear out. In each period of history, it reveals new dimensions, it emerges in all its novelty as it responds to the needs of the heart and mind of human beings, who can walk in this truth and so discover themselves.
Young people have seen much–the proposals of the various ideologies and of consumerism–and they have become aware of the emptiness and insufficiency of those things. Man was created for the infinite; the finite is too little. Thus, among the new generations we are seeing the reawakening of this restlessness, and they too begin their journey making new discoveries of the beauty of Christianity, not a cut-price or watered-down version, but Christianity in all its radicalism and profundity.
Interview with Benedict XVI,
from the film, Bells of Europe
October 15, 2012

THE ENCOUNTER WITH A LIVING PERSON WHO TRANSFORMS OUR INNERMOST SELVES
[It] is not an encounter with an idea or with a project of life, but with a living Person who transforms our innermost selves, revealing to us our true identity as children of God. The encounter with Christ renews our human relationships, directing them, from day to day, to greater solidarity and brotherhood in the logic of love. Having faith in the Lord is not something that solely involves our intelligence, the area of intellectual knowledge; rather, it is a change that involves our life, our whole self: feelings, heart, intelligence, will, corporeity, emotions, and human relationships. With faith everything truly changes, in us and for us, and our future destiny is clearly revealed, the truth of our vocation in history, the meaning of life, the pleasure of being pilgrims bound for the heavenly Homeland.
However–let us ask ourselves–is faith truly the transforming force in our life, in my life? Or is it merely one of the elements that are part of existence, without being the crucial one that involves it totally? With the catecheses of this Year of Faith let us make a journey to reinforce or rediscover the joy of faith, in the knowledge that it is not something extraneous, detached from daily life, but is its soul.
Faith means taking this transforming message to heart in our life, receiving the revelation of God who makes us know that He exists, how He acts, and what His plans for us are. Of course, the mystery of God always remains beyond our conception and reason, our rites and our prayers. Yet, through His revelation, God actually communicates Himself to us, recounts Himself and makes Himself accessible. And we are enabled to listen to His Word and to receive His truth.
God has revealed Himself with words and works throughout a long history of friendship with mankind which culminated in the Incarnation of the Son of God and in the Mystery of His Death and Resurrection. God not only revealed Himself in the history of a people, He not only spoke through the Prophets, but He also crossed the threshold of His Heaven to enter our planet as a man, so that we might meet Him and listen to Him. And the proclamation of the Gospel of salvation spread from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.
If individualism and relativism seem to dominate the minds of many of our contemporaries, it cannot be said that believers are completely immune to these dangers, with which we are confronted in the transmission of the faith. The investigation promoted on all the continents, through the celebration of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization, has highlighted some of them: a faith lived passively and privately, the rejection of education in the faith, the gap between life and faith.
In the catecheses of this Year of Faith, I would like to offer some help for achieving this journey for taking up and deepening knowledge of the central truths of our faith, concerning God, man, the Church, and the whole social and cosmic reality, by meditating and reflecting on the affirmations of the Creed. And I would like it to be clear that this content or truth of faith (fides quae) bears directly on our life; it asks for a conversion of life that gives life to a new way of believing in God (fides qua). Knowing God, meeting Him, deepening our knowledge of the features of His face is vital for our life so that He may enter into the profound dynamics of the human being.
May the journey we shall be making this year enable us all to grow in faith, in love of Christ, so that in our daily decisions and actions we may learn to live the good and beautiful life of the Gospel.
General Audience
Saint Peter's Square, October 17, 2012

OUR TIME NEEDS CHRISTIANS WHO HAVE BEEN GRASPED BY CHRIST
What is faith? Does faith still make sense in a world in which science and technology have unfolded horizons unthinkable until a short time ago? What does believing mean today? In fact, in our time we need a renewed education in the faith that includes, of course, knowledge of its truths and of the history of salvation, but that is born above all from a true encounter with God in Jesus Christ, from loving Him, from trusting Him, so that the whole of our life becomes involved.
Today, together with so many signs of goodness a certain spiritual desert is also developing around us. In this context, certain fundamental questions reemerge that are far weightier than they seem at first sight. What is life's meaning? Is there a future for humanity, for us and for the generations to come? In which direction should we orient our free decisions for a good and successful outcome in life? What awaits us beyond the threshold of death?
From these irrepressible questions it becomes clear how the world of planning, of precise calculation and of experimentation, in a word the knowledge of science, although important for human life, is not enough on its own. We do not only need bread, we need love, meaning, and hope, a sound foundation, a solid terrain that helps us to live with an authentic meaning even in times of crisis, in darkness, in difficulty, and with our daily problems. Faith gives us precisely this: it is a confident entrustment to a "You," who is God, who gives me a different certitude, but no less solid than that which comes from precise calculation or from science. Faith is not a mere intellectual assent of the human person to specific truths about God; it is an act with which I entrust myself freely to a God who is Father and who loves me; it is adherence to a "You" who gives me hope and trust.
Having faith, then, is meeting this "You," God, who supports me and grants me the promise of an indestructible love that not only aspires to eternity but gives it; it means entrusting myself to God with the attitude of a child, who knows well that all his difficulties, all his problems are understood in the "you" of his mother. And this possibility of salvation through faith is a gift that God offers all men and women. I think we should meditate more often–in our daily life, marked by problems and at times by dramatic situations–on the fact that believing in a Christian manner means my trusting abandonment to the profound meaning that sustains me and the world, that meaning that we are unable to give to each other but can only receive as a gift, and that is the foundation on which we can live without fear. And we must be able to proclaim this liberating and reassuring certainty of faith with words and show it by living our life as Christians.
Yet, let us ask ourselves: Where can man find that openness of heart and mind to believe in God who made Himself visible in Jesus Christ who died and rose, to receive God's salvation so that Christ and His Gospel might be the guide and the light of our existence? The answer: We can believe in God because He comes close to us and touches us.
Faith is a gift of God, but it is also a profoundly free and human act. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says so clearly: "Believing is possible only by grace and the interior help of the Holy Spirit. But it is no less true that believing is an authentically human act... contrary neither to human freedom nor to human reason" (n. 154). Indeed, it involves them and uplifts them in a gamble for life that is like an exodus, that is, a coming out of ourselves, from our own certainties, from our own mental framework, to entrust ourselves to the action of God who points out to us His way to achieve true freedom, our human identity, true joy of the heart, peace with everyone. Believing means entrusting oneself in full freedom and joyfully to God's providential plan for history, as did the Patriarch Abraham, as did Mary of Nazareth. Faith, then, is an assent with which our mind and our heart say their "yes" to God, confessing that Jesus is Lord. And this "yes" transforms life, unfolds the path toward fullness of meaning, thereby making it new, rich in joy, and trustworthy hope.
Dear friends, our time needs Christians who have been grasped by Christ, who grow in faith through their familiarity with Sacred Scripture and the sacraments. It needs people who are, as it were, an open book that tells of the experience of new life in the Spirit, of the presence of that God who supports us on our way and opens us to everlasting life.
General Audience
Saint Peter's Square, October 24, 2012

BEGGARS FOR THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE
That Bartimaeus was a man who had fallen from a condition of "great prosperity" causes us to think. It invites us to reflect on the fact that our lives contain precious riches that we can lose, and I am not speaking of material riches here. From this perspective, Bartimaeus could represent those who live in regions that were evangelized long ago, where the light of faith has grown dim and people have drifted away from God, no longer considering Him relevant for their lives. These people have therefore lost a precious treasure; they have "fallen" from a lofty dignity–not financially or in terms of earthly power, but in a Christian sense. Their lives have lost a secure and sound direction and they have become, often unconsciously, beggars for the meaning of existence. They are the many in need of a new evangelization, that is, a new encounter with Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God (cf. Mk 1:1), who can open their eyes afresh and teach them the path. It is significant that the Liturgy puts the Gospel of Bartimaeus before us today, as we conclude the Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization. This biblical passage has something particular to say to us as we grapple with the urgent need to proclaim Christ anew in places where the light of faith has been weakened, in places where the fire of God is more like smoldering cinders, crying out to be stirred up, so that they can become a living flame that gives light and heat to the whole house.
Dear brothers and sisters, Bartimaeus, on regaining his sight from Jesus, joined the crowd of disciples, which must certainly have included others like him, who had been healed by the Master. New evangelizers are like that: people who have had the experience of being healed by God, through Jesus Christ. And characteristic of them all is a joyful heart that cries out with the Psalmist: "What marvels the Lord worked for us: indeed we were glad" (Ps 125:3).
Homily, Holy Mass for the Closing
of the Synod of Bishops
Vatican Basilica, October 28, 2012