Jesus Christ
Philippines, Manila
Sunday, 29 November 1970
Sunday, 29 November 1970
"Nada hay en esta tierra capaz de oponerse al brotar impaciente de la Sangre redentora de Christo." St. Josemaria Escriva (Christ Is Passing By #80)
Paul VI
The Person of Christ: Reality
“Convinced of Christ: yes, I feel the need to proclaim him, I cannot keep silent. ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!’ (1 Cor. 9: 16). I am sent by him, by Christ himself, to do this. I am an apostle, I am a witness. The more distant the goal, the more difficult my mission the more pressing is the love that urges me to it (Cfr. 2 Cor. 5: 13). I must bear witness to his name: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matth. 16: 16). He reveals the invisible God, he is the firstborn of all creation, the foundation of everything created. He is the Teacher of mankind, and its Redeemer. He was born, he died and he rose again for us. He is the centre of history and of the world; he is the one who knows us and who loves us; he is the companion and the friend of our life. He is the man of sorrows and of hope. It is he who will come and who one day will be our judge and - we hope -the everlasting fullness of our existence, our happiness. I could never finish speaking about him: he is the light and the truth; indeed, he is «the way, the truth and the life» (Io. 14: 6). He is the bread and the spring of living water to satisfy our hunger and our thirst. He is our shepherd, our guide, our model, our comfort, our brother. Like us, and more than us, he has been little, poor, humiliated; he has been a worker; he has known misfortune and been patient. For our sake he spoke, worked miracles and founded a new kingdom where the poor are happy, where peace is the principle for living together, where the pure of heart and those who mourn are raised up and comforted, where those who hunger and thirst after justice have their fill, where sinners can be forgiven, where all are brothers.
Jesus Christ: you have heard him
spoken of; indeed the greater part of you are already his: you are Christians.
So, to you Christians I repeat his name, to everyone I proclaim him: Jesus
Christ is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega; he is the king of
the new world; he is the secret of history; he is the key to our destiny. He is
the mediator,
the bridge, between heaven and earth. He is more perfectly than anyone else the
Son of Man, because he is the Son of God, eternal and infinite. He is the son
of Mary, blessed among all women, his mother according to the flesh, and our
mother through the sharing in the Spirit of his Mystical Body.”
Benedict XVI
The Word: Reality
“[The Word of God]… is solid, it is the true reality on which one must base
one's life. Let us remember the words of Jesus who continues the words of this
Psalm: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass
away". Humanly speaking, the word, my human word, is almost nothing in
reality, a breath. As soon as it is pronounced it disappears. It seems to be
nothing. But already the human word has incredible power. Words create history,
words form thoughts, the thoughts that create the word. It is the word that
forms history, reality.
Furthermore, the Word of
God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be
realistic, we must rely upon this reality. We must change our idea that matter,
solid things, things we can touch, are the more solid, the more certain
reality. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount the Lord speaks to us about the
two possible foundations for building the house of one's life: sand and rock.
The one who builds on sand builds only on visible and tangible things, on
success, on career, on money. Apparently these are the true realities. But all
this one day will pass away. We can see this now with the fall of large banks:
this money disappears, it is nothing. And thus all things, which seem to be the
true realities we can count on, are only realities of a secondary order. The
one who builds his life on these realities, on matter, on success, on
appearances, builds upon sand. Only the Word of God is the foundation of all
reality, it is as stable as the heavens and more than the heavens, it is
reality. Therefore, we must change our concept of realism. The realist is the
one who recognizes the Word of God, in this apparently weak reality, as the
foundation of all things. Realist is the one who builds his life on this
foundation, which is permanent. Thus the first verses of the Psalm invite us to
discover what reality is and how to find the foundation of our life, how to
build life.”[1]
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