Is This Too Much To Ask?

Image by Annoysius via FlickrSo, here we are onwards to Christmas and in the midst of the 4th Week in Advent.

From the comments in the previous entry, there seemed to be some varied response to the question 'All I Want For Christmas...' There were also other silent and unmentioned responses, which I am sure are still out there within the hearts and minds of those silent observers who frequent this dubious blog.

For all, here is my own take to that query.

What I want for Christmas is to regain the sense of awe and wonder to the beauty, greatness and mystery of this world that can open up all our inner senses to that glory and mystery of the divine, whom we as Christ followers call God and Father. There. I finally got that off my chest.

This is no small matter. Let me explain.

In April 19, 2005, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected the 265th successor of Peter, bishop of Rome and head of the universal Church. He was elected by his fellow cardinals, many of whom representing countries like Argentina, India and Nigeria, who would prefered someone more progressive who can modernize traditional Christian doctrines and to emphasize social issues, but decided in the end, to put in someone who earned a reputation for defending the traditional teachings of the Church and for emphasizing the priority of "right worship" of God as a way towards building a just human society.

Why did this happen? Here is where it gets interesting. Over the past 30 years or so, not only the cardinals who elected Ratzinger as Pope, but many Catholics and other men and women of goodwill around the world, have come to agree with Benedict that the greatest 'crisis' facing the Church and the world is the "absence of God" - a culture and way of life without any transcendent dimension, without any orientation toward eternity, toward the sacred, toward the divine. Benedict' solution to this is simple: the world needs the presence of God!

Benedict was elected by his fellow cardinals, including those from very poor countries, because they agreed with him for a need of a Pope who could preach the priority of God, and in doing so, lay the only secure foundation for a just society.

When reading his memoirs or autobiography, you will come to encounter Benedict as a man who sees the world and everyday life with a sense of wonder, as if all things are crisscrossed with hints and "traces" of God. In this attitude, is Benedict's great message: the world is a sacrament - an "outward" sign of the "inward" reality of God's love and that man would only be happy when he recognizes the primacy of God in his life and in the entire world.

That is what I am asking - reclaim our spiritual senses that will put us right back on track towards all clear understanding of the meaning of life and our ultimate destiny.

(sources from Let God's Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI, editor Robert Moynihan)

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