The Church's mission is not political in nature. Her task is to open the world to the religious sense by proclaiming Christ.
Pope Benedict XVIPraying actualizes and deepens our communion with God. Our prayer can and should arise above all from our heart, from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, from our shame over sin, and from our gratitude from the good. It can and should be a wholly personal prayer.
Pope Benedict XVIJesus Christ does not teach us a spirituality โof closed eyesโ, but one of โalertnessโ, one which entails an absolute duty to take notice of the needs of others and of situations involving those whom the Gospel tells us are our neighbours. The gaze of Jesus, what โhis eyesโ teach us, leads to human closeness, solidarity, giving time, sharing our gifts and even our material goods.
Pope Benedict XVIA spiritual desert is spreading: an interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair.
Pope Benedict XVIThe Earth is indeed a precious gift of the Creator who, in designing its intrinsic order, has given us bearings that guide us as stewards of his creation. Precisely from within this framework, the Church considers matters concerning the environment and its protection intimately linked to the theme of integral human development.
Pope Benedict XVITo have Christian hope means to know about evil and yet to go to meet the future with confidence. The core of faith rests upon accepting being loved by God, and therefore to believe is to say Yes, not only to him, but to creation, to creatures, above all, to men, to try to see the image of God in each person and thereby to become a lover. That's not easy, but the basic Yes, the conviction that God has created men, that he stands behind them, that they aren't simply negative, gives love a reference point that enables it to ground hope on the basis of faith.
Pope Benedict XVI