Why I Just Love Pope Benedict

by Michael Sean Winters

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The Holy Father met with a group of pilgrims from Traunstein, Bavaria last week and he offered these words:

Joy, kindness and goodness grow only if the heavens above us are opened. The days aren’t always sunny... sometimes, we must cross through dark valleys.
Even then, though, we can remain joyous and human -- but only if heaven is open for us, only if we can be strengthened in the certainty that God loves us in full, that God is good and, through this, in the certainty that it’s good to be human....

So that people might be able to continue to say yes to life, to the future, it’s important that we don’t lose the splendor of the faith -- that we remain believers, Christians, Catholics, in the sense that Catholic always means “open to the world” -- the world of life and faith together -- something that means being tolerant and open, one to the other, in heartfelt brotherhood to everyone who belongs to our one Father and who are all loved by the one Lord.”

You see what is missing? Defensiveness. This is how you evangelize, by presenting the Gospel as beautiful, by telling a culture that tends to value only the independence of its members, that if we cling to God and surrender our independence to Him, we are saying "yes to life," and by insisting that we be tolerant and open with each other because all are borthers and sisters in the common Fatherhood of God.

I just love Pope Benedict.
(h/t Rocco)

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