{"id":2396,"date":"2013-02-23T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T14:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/pope-spends-final-retreat-exploring-truth-beauty-connection\/"},"modified":"2013-02-23T14:21:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T14:21:00","slug":"pope-spends-final-retreat-exploring-truth-beauty-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicnews\/2013\/02\/pope-spends-final-retreat-exploring-truth-beauty-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope spends final retreat exploring truth, beauty connection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Vatican City, Feb 23, 2013 \/ 07:21 am (CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- Benedict XVI finished his final Lenten spiritual exercises as Pope by thanking his collaborators for support and help these last eight years and by reflecting on the relationship between truth and beauty.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI would like to thank you all, not only for this week, but for the past eight years, in which you have borne with me, with great skill, affection, love, faith, the weight of the Petrine ministry,\u201d Pope Benedict said Feb. 23 in his closing remarks for the week-long retreat.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cThis gratitude remains within me and even if this visible exterior communion is now ending \u2013 as Cardinal Ravasi has said \u2013 the spiritual closeness, a deep communion in prayer, remains.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIn this certainty let us go forward,\u201d the Pope stated, \u201cconfident in the victory of God, sure of the truth, of beauty, and of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe Holy Father offered his words of thanks and his thoughts on the week of meditation at 9:00 this morning in the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the Apostolic Palace. He spoked to Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, who led the retreat, and the rest of the Curia who took part in the exercises.<\/p>\n

\tHe began by recalling the theme of the retreat \u2013 \u201cThe art of believing, the art of praying\u201d \u2013 and said it reminded him that medieval theologians \u201ctranslated the word \u2018Logos\u2019 not only as \u2018Verbum\u2019 (Word), but also as \u2018ars\u2019 (art, skill): \u2018Verbum\u2019 and \u2018ars\u2019 are interchangeable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tMedieval theologians understood that the Word of God \u201cis also love. The truth is beautiful and the true and beautiful go together: beauty is the seal of truth,\u201d the Pope stated.<\/p>\n

\tCardinal Ravasi based his meditations on the Psalms, and in one section he pointed out how God\u2019s Creation was made good but evil constantly attacks it.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIt\u2019s almost as if wickedness wills permanently to spoil creation, to contradict God and make its truth and its beauty unrecognizable,\u201d the Pope observed.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIn a world so marked even by evil, the \u2018Logos,\u2019 the eternal beauty and the eternal \u2018art,\u2019 must appear as a \u2018caput cruentatum\u2019(bloodied head). The incarnate Son, the incarnate \u2018Logos\u2019 is crowned with a crown of thorns and nevertheless is just that: in this suffering figure of the Son of God we begin to see the deepest beauty of our Creator and Redeemer; in the silence of the \u2018dark night\u2019 we can, nevertheless, hear the Word.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cAnd believing is nothing other than, in the darkness of the world, touching the hand of God, and in this way, in silence, hearing the Word, seeing love,\u201d Pope Benedict said.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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