During my usual browse at the Chiesa.com, I came across the a piece of the recent stay of Pope Benedict XVI at the foothill of the Alps near the Austrian border, where he met the presbyters in the area and answered some of their questions raised. It is said that it was closed doors. What caught my attention is the way the pope revisits ideas he often elaborated in the past, in this case in the aspect of beauty and truth. The title is The Pope Theologian says: The Proof of God is Beauty, which nicely situates the pope in the surrounding beauty of the Alpine scenery speaking about the power of beauty teaching the truth about God. He made mention of the different musical geniuses, the rise of Gothic and Baroque art, and the saints, whom he calls " ... the saints, this great luminous arc that God has set across history... ". In one word, the explication of a transcendent God could be represented on the material world through instruments evoking this truth. Here in the Philippines, we have different old churches that teach what any professor can say in million terms. It now becomes a "proof of faith". In a certain sense, a material content on what St. Peter in his epistle has exhorted to render our personal proof of what we believe. If we listen to the music expressing our praise to the Holy Eucharist and our adoration to the Blessed Sacrament, we feel the emotion arising from the depth of our hearts. It is as if the words connect to the chord is close to our being. In itself, it becomes one with our being as a personal prayer. It does not become a string of notes rising to the God but the language of our hearts invoking Him as our Lord.
No wonder that Summorum Pontificum has stressed the all-time validity of Mass of Pope John XXIII. No one can, indeed, question that the Tridentine Mass, as it has been known, evokes a divine feeling, a yearning reaching to the unknown and beyond - a dimension that is not in our reach for now but an eschatological hope we know that awaits us in the end. Here, I am always reminded of my abhorrence of the way priests and bishops have yielded to the dictates of practical measure in the way we construct our churches and act do the sacraments. Some priests are obviously lost in what to say in their homilies; some of these sermons have been rehashed and worn out by constant use. When we listen, the congregation oftentimes dwindled to looking around and disturbed, not by the ideas expressed but by superficial things happening near. Though everything is not lost. A few of our priests here have taken the length of sacrifice to dig deeper; their sermons have at least the quality that pulls the minds up, pointing to things not commonly shared by everyday life. There are also priests who have attempted to navigate on difficult matters of theology, but it seldom struck any chord in me. One time when I had an opportunity to visit a born-again community, whose homilist was a pathologist, I found her convincing because she shows the depth of what she believes. However, she still suffers that lack of actual depth in terms of theology. She takes her stand from the point of view of a common believer, not from the rational academician in theological institutes. This kind of talk does not usually get me because I have read some beautiful sermons of the Fathers of the Church and other churchmen, like Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. So, it is in beauty in words and aesthetics that an encounter with the person behind the "veiled Epiphany"happens.
The appreciation of beauty among Filipinos is always present - it is our second nature. But just as Pope John Paul II in his essay about the universal destination of universal goods has pointed out about the phenomenon of consumerism, our quest for beauty can imperil us to seek what entraps us eventually. This means that there is this danger when we enclose our definition of what is beautiful, noble, and true by the measurement of subjectivity: we put ourselves as the tape measure, as the social thermometer, and the ethical barometer. This dangerously leads to destruction in both spiritual and material composition of self. In the end, this radiates outside to your family and community.
The rest of the write-up concentrates on the environmental concerns. How Christians are exhorted that any concern of the surroundings are not merely appended teachings to the truth of Christ, it is material to it. This is constitutive because Yahweh was explicit in the way man and earth are coupled: the earth is there for man as the gift and man is to subjugate the created material order for his satisfaction. The pope stresses the guardianship of man to the things God has given for him, not to squander it with abandon and devoid of sense of responsibility. It is here that any wedge between man and earth can the environmental problem we are slowly experiencing come about.
The whole account of Sandro Magister points out how the pope can easily engage in a conversation with anyone by opening opportunities of doing so just he is more than willing to converse with his priests. In the upshot, then, the pope has this nature of working into a dialogue to express that beauty not consigned to a few but should be always opened to the world at large, whose yearning for beauty, nobility, and truth is always felt.
No wonder that Summorum Pontificum has stressed the all-time validity of Mass of Pope John XXIII. No one can, indeed, question that the Tridentine Mass, as it has been known, evokes a divine feeling, a yearning reaching to the unknown and beyond - a dimension that is not in our reach for now but an eschatological hope we know that awaits us in the end. Here, I am always reminded of my abhorrence of the way priests and bishops have yielded to the dictates of practical measure in the way we construct our churches and act do the sacraments. Some priests are obviously lost in what to say in their homilies; some of these sermons have been rehashed and worn out by constant use. When we listen, the congregation oftentimes dwindled to looking around and disturbed, not by the ideas expressed but by superficial things happening near. Though everything is not lost. A few of our priests here have taken the length of sacrifice to dig deeper; their sermons have at least the quality that pulls the minds up, pointing to things not commonly shared by everyday life. There are also priests who have attempted to navigate on difficult matters of theology, but it seldom struck any chord in me. One time when I had an opportunity to visit a born-again community, whose homilist was a pathologist, I found her convincing because she shows the depth of what she believes. However, she still suffers that lack of actual depth in terms of theology. She takes her stand from the point of view of a common believer, not from the rational academician in theological institutes. This kind of talk does not usually get me because I have read some beautiful sermons of the Fathers of the Church and other churchmen, like Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. So, it is in beauty in words and aesthetics that an encounter with the person behind the "veiled Epiphany"happens.
The appreciation of beauty among Filipinos is always present - it is our second nature. But just as Pope John Paul II in his essay about the universal destination of universal goods has pointed out about the phenomenon of consumerism, our quest for beauty can imperil us to seek what entraps us eventually. This means that there is this danger when we enclose our definition of what is beautiful, noble, and true by the measurement of subjectivity: we put ourselves as the tape measure, as the social thermometer, and the ethical barometer. This dangerously leads to destruction in both spiritual and material composition of self. In the end, this radiates outside to your family and community.
The rest of the write-up concentrates on the environmental concerns. How Christians are exhorted that any concern of the surroundings are not merely appended teachings to the truth of Christ, it is material to it. This is constitutive because Yahweh was explicit in the way man and earth are coupled: the earth is there for man as the gift and man is to subjugate the created material order for his satisfaction. The pope stresses the guardianship of man to the things God has given for him, not to squander it with abandon and devoid of sense of responsibility. It is here that any wedge between man and earth can the environmental problem we are slowly experiencing come about.
The whole account of Sandro Magister points out how the pope can easily engage in a conversation with anyone by opening opportunities of doing so just he is more than willing to converse with his priests. In the upshot, then, the pope has this nature of working into a dialogue to express that beauty not consigned to a few but should be always opened to the world at large, whose yearning for beauty, nobility, and truth is always felt.
