Finding Hope Through Gratitude and Generosity
October 12, 2009 by O'Meara Ferguson
Filed under Daniel Conway
From Dan Conway’s The Good Steward, October 2009
Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent pilgrimage took him to the cities of Prague and Brno in the Czech Republic. During this trip, the Holy Father returned to one of his most consistent themes: hope in Christ.
In one of his homilies the Holy Father affirmed that “history has demonstrated the absurdities to which man descends when he excludes God from the horizon of his choices and actions, and how hard it is to build a society inspired by the values of goodness, justice and fraternity, because the human being is free and his freedom remains fragile.”
In the modern age both faith and hope… have been relegated to the private and other-worldly sphere,” said the Pope, “while in day-to-day public life confidence in scientific and economic progress has been affirmed. We all know that this progress is ambiguous: it opens up possibilities for good as well as evil,” yet it is “not enough to guarantee the moral welfare of society.
“Man needs to be liberated from material oppressions,” he added, “but more profoundly, he must be saved from the evils that afflict the spirit. And who can save him if not God, Who is Love and has revealed His face as Almighty and Merciful Father in Jesus Christ? Our firm hope is therefore Christ.”…
