On the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception Pope Benedict XVI crosses town to the Spanish Steps where a statue of Mary dating back to the 1800’s stands atop a 40 foot pillar above Moses, David, Isaiah and Ezekiel. As the tradition goes, the Pope gives a crown to the youngest fireman of the Roman fire department, who goes up one of their extension ladders to place the crown on Mary’s head.
At yesterday’s event Benedict considered Mary’s message, integral for us today, in contrast to the sensationalism often found in today’s news. Zenit provides a translation:
[Often] evil is recounted, repeated, amplified, accustoming us to the most horrible things, making us become insensitive and, in some way, intoxicating us, because the negative is not fully disposed of and accumulates day after day . . .
[Though the] media tends to make us feel always as 'spectators,' as if evil refers only to others, and certain things could never happen to us, . . . we are all 'actors' and, in evil as in good, our behavior has an influence on others . . .
We often lament the pollution of the air, which in certain places of the city is unbreathable. It is true: We need everyone's commitment to make the city cleaner. And yet, there is another pollution, less perceptible to the senses, but just as dangerous. It is the pollution of the spirit; it is that which renders our faces less smiling, more gloomy, which leads us not to greet one another, to not look at one another in the face . . . Persons become bodies, and these bodies lose the soul, become things, objects without a face, to be exchanged and consumed.
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1 comment:
Amazing...
I had to turn in a portfolio of my cumulative writings for the final in my English class today. As part of our final we were asked to read one of our papers. I chose to read a reaction paper I had written on a documentary we viewed as a class. The film was on children raised in a brothel in Calcutta India. The gist of my paper was that the US tourist that stayed to help the children she met there was an extraordinary woman. Simply because she cared and took the initiative to do so. That I admired her for caring, not just for those that it was convenient to care for, but for these children as well. For recognizing that all of mankind was her brother and living that way. Needless to say I was a bit of a wimp and got choked up reading my paper. Everyone clapped and as I shuffled quickly back to my seat a classmate said "Don't worry it made me cry too." I thought for a moment and told her "When I don't cry... Then I'll worry." Holy Father is right. It's all too easy to become jaded; to become unwittingly part of the problem. I hope I never lose that part of my humanity.
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