Evil is at work to put in the shade, to
soil the beauty of God. But faith helps us to emerge from the darkness
and mud, it is the compass that helps us find, in the darkness, the hand
of God, to rediscover love and truth.
Benedict XVI's reflections, this
morning, at the end of the week of spiritual exercises was also an
opportunity for a farewell to those members of the Roman Curia, who also
took part in the spiritual exercises: "In the end - he tells them -
dear friends, I would like to thank you all and not only for this week,
but for the past eight years, in which you have brought with me, with
great skill, affection, love and faith, the weight of the Petrine
ministry. This gratitude will stay with me and even though our outward
visible communion now ends - as Cardinal Ravasi said - our spiritual
closeness remains a profound communion in prayer remains. With this
certainty we go forward, confident in the victory of God, sure of the
truth of beauty and love".
Apart from the words of thanks to those who worked with him eight
years at the helm of the Church, the Pope reflected on the theme of the
exercises, led by Card. Gianfranco Ravasi, on "The Art of believing, the
art of praying."
"It came to mind - he said - the fact that the medieval theologians translated the word "logos" not only with "verbum", but also with "ars": "verbum" and "ars" are
interchangeable. Only in using the two together does the whole meaning
of the word "logos" appear to medieval theologians. The "logos" is not
just mathematical reason: the "Logos" has a heart, "Logos" is also love.
Truth is beautiful, truth and beauty go together: beauty is the seal of
truth.
And yet you, starting from the Psalms and from our everyday
experience, have also strongly emphasized that the "it is good" on the
sixth day - expressed by the Creator - is permanently challenged, in
this world, by evil, suffering and corruption. It almost seems that the
devil wants to permanently contaminate Creation, to contradict God and
render truth and beauty unrecognisable. In a world marked by evil also,
the "logos," the eternal beauty and the eternal "ars", must appear as "caput cruentatum."
The incarnate Son, the "logos" made flesh, crowned with a crown of
thorns, and yet in that, in this figure the suffering of the Son of God,
we begin to see the most profound beauty of our Creator and Redeemer,
we can, in the silence of the "dark night", hear the Word. Believing is
touching the hand of God in the darkness of the world, and so, in
silence, listening to the Word, seeing Love. "