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Friday, May 3, Fifth Week of Easter
Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles
Second from right: St. Philip, in El Greco's series on The Apostles; the other paintings are by unidentified painters.
ST. PHILIP THE APOSTLE (d. 80 AD)
Benedict XVI dedicated a catechesis to him on Sept. 6, 2006, citing him as the model for all Christians who desire to know Christ - 'Come and see, as he told his friend, who later became the apostle Bartholomew. He is always mentioned fifth among the Twelve. Widely accepted tradition says that he was martyred by crucifixion in Phrygia (what is now central Turkey) where he had gone to preach with his sister Marian and Bartholomew, after preaching in Syria and Greece.
Second from right: James the Minor in El Greco's series on The Apostles; extreme right, by Georges de la Tour.
ST. JAMES THE MINOR (or JAMES THE LESS)
His title distinguishes him from St. James the Major, brother of the Apostle John. Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on June 24, 2006, to him, pointing out that he was the author of the first catholic epistle in the New Testament (i.e., 'catholic' because it was not addressed to a specific Church, as Paul's letters were). He was important in the early Church for his relations with the Jews. His Epistle is famous for saying that good works are the normal work of faith (a statement that Benedict XVI says complements Paul's words about justification by grace), and for advocating that Christians should abandon themselves to God's will. Legend also says that he died a martyr, being cast off a tower by the Jews and then stoned to death.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/050313.cfm
AT THE VATICAN TODAY
Pope Francis met with
- H.E. Michel Sleiman, President of the Republic of Lebanon, his spouse and his delegation
- Six bishops from the Marche region of Italy on ad=limina visit
And in the afternoon with
- Mons. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
- Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples
(One presumes Pope Francis is having the weekly meetings Benedict XVI held with the heads of these two dicasteries whose work directly affects the universal Church and local Churches. The other dicastery that requires a weekly meeting with the Pope is, of course, the Congregation for Bishops.)
One year ago...
Benedict XVI visited the Rome campus of the Catholic University of Sacro Cuore to mark the 50th anniversary of its Faculty of Medicine and Surgery named after the university founder Fr. Agostino Gemelli (for whom the faculty's famous teaching hospital is also named). Benedict XVI's address on science and faith was another wonderful gem from his rich treasurebox of reflections.
The Pope to Catholic University:
Science and faith applied
to the task of the university
May 3, 2012
...Welcoming the Holy Father upon his arrival cardinal at the Gemelli Hospital (Policlinico Gemelli) were Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar-General for the Diocese of Rome, and Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan and president of the Toniolo Institute for Higher Studies, which is the governing body of Sacro Cuore and its various affiliates...
The Pope met the university community in the square fronting the Auditorium of the Faculty of Medicine, with the presence of professors, doctors, personnel and students of the University and the teaching hospital.
Here is a translation of the Holy Father's address:
I take a special joy in meeting you today to celebrate 50 years since the establishment of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery serving the Agostino Gemelli Hospital. I thank the President of the Toniolo Institute, Cardinal Angelo Scola, and the pro-Rector, Prof. Franco Anelli, for their kind words...
On this occasion I would like to offer some reflections. Ours is a time when the experimental sciences have transformed the world view and understanding of man. The many discoveries and innovative technologies that are developing at a rapid pace, are reason for pride, but often are not without troubling implications.
In fact, behind the widespread optimism of scientific knowledge, the shadow of a crisis of thought is spreading. Rich in means, but not in aims, mankind in our time is often influenced by reductionism and relativism which lead to a loss of the meaning of things. As if dazzled by technical efficacy, man forgets the essential horizon to the question of meaning, thus relegating the transcendent dimension to insignificance.
In this context, thought becomes weak and an ethical impoverishment gains ground, which clouds legal references of value. The once fruitful root of European culture and progress seems forgotten. That culture included the search for the absolute - the quaerere Deum - the need to deepen the secular sciences, the entire world of knowledge (cf. Address to the Collège des Bernardins in Paris, September 12, 2008).
Scientific research and the search for meaning, in fact, even in their specific epistemological and methodological physiognomy, spring from a single source, that Logos that presides over the work of creation and guides the mind of history. A fundamentally techno-practical mentality generates a risky imbalance between what is technically possible and what is morally good, with unpredictable consequences.
It Is important then that the culture rediscover the vigour and dynamism of the meaning of transcendence - in a word, it must open up to the horizon of quaerere Deum. One is reminded of Augustine's famous phrase "You created us for you [Lord], and our heart is restless until it rests in you" (Confessions, I, 1).
One can say that the same impulse to scientific research stems from the nostalgia for God which lives in the human heart: after all, men of science tend, unconsciously, to reach for truth which can give meaning to life.
But however passionate and tenacious human seeking is, it is not capable of finding a safe harbour by its own means, because "man is not able to fully elucidate the strange shadow that hangs over the question of eternal realities ... God must take the initiative to encounter man and speak to him" (J. Ratzinger, (Saint) Benedict's Europe in the Crisis of Cultures, Ignatius Press).
To restore to reason its native integral dimension, it is therefore necessary to rediscover the wellspring that scientific research shares with the search for faith - fides quarens intellectum , in St. Anselm's intuition.
Science and faith have a fruitful reciprocity, almost a complementary exigency for intelligence about the real. But paradoxically, it is positivist culture itself, which excludes the question of God from scientific debate, that has brought about the decline of thought and the weakened capacity for knowledge of the real.
But man's quarere Deum would be lost in a maze of paths if it does not find a way of illumination and sure orientation, which is that of God himself who makes himself close to man with immense love: "in Jesus Christ, God not only speaks to man but seeks him out...It is a search that comes from God's intimate self and has its culminating point in the Incarnation of the Word" ](Giovanni Paolo II, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 7).
A religion of Logos, Christianity does not relegate faith to the sphere of the irrational, but attributes the origin and sense of reality to Creative Reason, which is manifested as love in the God who is crucified, and which invites us to follow the road of quaerere Deum: "I am the way, the truth and the life".
St. Thomas Aquinas comments: "The point of arrival of this way is in fact the goal itself of human desire. Man desires two things principally: in the first place, that knowledge of truth which is part of his nature. In the second place, the (desire for) permanence of being, a property that is common to all things. In Christ, one and the other are found...So if you are seeking where you should pass through, welcome Christ because he is the way" (Expositions on John, Chap. 14, Lesson 2),.
The Gospel of life thus illuminates the arduous journey of man, and in the face of the temptation to absolute autonomy, it reminds us that "the life of man comes from God, it is his gift, his image and impression, participation in his vital breath (Giovanni Paolo II, Evangelium vitae, 39).
It is precisely through following the path of faith that man is made able to glimpse into the very realities of suffering and death, which traverse his existence, sd erll sd an authentic possibility of goodness and life. One recognizes the Tree of life in the Cross of Christ, revelation of God's passionate love for man.
Caring for those who suffer is thus a daily encounter with the face of Christ, and the dedication of mind and heart to such caring becomes a sign of God's mercy and his victory over death.
When lived in all its integrity, seeking is illuminated by science and faith, and derives its impulse and thrust from these two 'wings', without ever losing humility, a sense of one's own limitations.
In this way, searching for God becomes fruitful for the intelligence, a ferment for culture, a promoter of true humanism, a search that does not stop at the merely superficial.
Dear friends, let yourselves be guided always by the wisdom that comes fromm on high, by a knowledge illuminated by faith, remembering that wisdom demands the passion and effort of research.
This is the context in which we see the irreplaceable task of the Catholic University - a place where the educational relationship is placed at the service of the person in the construction of qualified scientific competence, rooted in a patrimony of knowledge that generations have distilled into wisdom of life; a place in which the relationship of care is not an occupation but a mission - where the Good Samaritan occupies the first cathedra and the face of suffering man is the Face of Christ himself: "You have done it to me" (Mt 25,40).
The Catholic University of Sacro Cuore, in its daily work of research, teaching and study, lives in this traditio which expresses its own potential for innovation: No progress, much less on the cultural level, can be nourished by mere repetition, but always demands a new beginning.
It also requires a readiness for confrontation and dialog which opens the intelligence and bears witness to the rich fecundity of the patrimony of the faith. In this way, it gives form to a solid personality structure, where Christian identity penetrates daily living and is expressed in excellent professionalism.
The Catholic University, which has a special relationship with the See of Peter, is called today to be an exemplary institution which does not restrict learning to the functionality of economic ends, but extends the breadth of its projections so that the gift of intelligence investigates and develops the gifts of the created world, transcending a merely productivist and utilitarian view of existence - because the human being is made for giving, which expresses and realizes the dimension of transcendence (Caritas in veritate, 34).
It is precisely this conjugation of scientific research and unconditional service to life that delineates the Catholic physiognomy of the Agostino Gemelli Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, because the perspective of faith is interior - not superimposed nor juxtaposed - to the acute and tenacious search for knowledge.
A Catholic faculty of medicine is a place where transcendent humanism is not a rhetorical slogan, but a rule lived in daily dedication. When he dreamt of an authentically Catholic faculty of medicine and surgery, Fr. Gemelli - and with him so many others, like Prof. Brasca - brought the human being, in his frailty and greatness, to the center of attention, with the ever new resources of passionate research and in the awareness of the limits and the mystery of life.
That is why you have instituted a new center, a University for Life, which supports other already existing entities like, for instance, the Paul VI International Scientific Institute, and thus, encourages attention to life in all its phases.
I wish to address, in a special way, all the patients who are now at the Gemelli, to assure them of my prayers and my affection, and to tell them that here, they are always followed with love, because the suffering Christ is reflected in their faces.
It is precisely the love of God, which shines forth in Christ, that makes research acute and penetrating, and enables us to grasp that which no study is able to grasp. Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo was well aware of this, in affirming that it is in the nature of man to read the image of God-Love in others, and his imprint in Creation.
Without love, even science loses its nobility. Only love guarantees the humanity of research. Thank you for your attention.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/05/2013 23:07] |