What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

No, this is not a reunion of former ICEL translators or a gathering of the FLDC. This is not a plenary of a curial dicastery or a meeting of the Synod of Bishops.

His Holiness was kind enough to watch and greet some Italian circus performers at his audience of 18 January 2006 in the Paul VI Audience Hall.

There is already a slapdash translation out there in the blogosphere of the extemporaneous remarks by the Pope about his first encylclical. Here is a better translation. The Pope has been talking about working toward Christian unity, even though it is very difficult.

In this sense and with such sentiments, I will follow in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II next Wednesday, 25 January, the Feast of the Conversion of the Apostle of the Gentiles, and go to the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to pray with Orthodox and Protestant brethren: to pray in order to give thanks for all the Lord has granted us; to pray that the Lord will guide us along the path to unity.

On the same day, January 25, moreover, there will be published at last my first encyclical whose title is already known, “Deus caritas est,” “God is love”. The theme is not strictly ecumenical, but its framework and background are ecumenical, because God’s love and our love are the preconditions of the unity of Christians. They are the conditions of peace in the world.

Benedicens benedicit Benedictus benedictos

In this encyclical, I would like to show this concept of love in its different dimensions. Today, in the terminology we know, “love” often seems quite far from what a Christian thinks if he speaks about “charity”. For my part, I would like to show that it concerns one unique impulse with different dimensions. “Eros”, this gift of love between man and woman, comes from the very source of the Creator’s goodness, as indeed the possibility of a love which renounces itself in favor of the other. “Eros” is transformed into “agape” to the extent in which the two truly love each other and one of them is not seeking rather himself more, seeking his own joy, his own pleasure, but seeks the good of the other above all. And so, this love, which is “eros”, is changed into charity, in the path of purification, of deepening. From one’s own family it opens outward toward the larger family of society, toward the family of the Church, toward the family of the world.

I am seeking also to show how the most personal of act which comes from God is an unequalled act of love. It must also be expressed as an ecclesial, an organizational, act. If it is really true that the Church is the expression of the love of God, of that love which God has for the human creature, it must also be true that the foundational act of faith that creates and unites the Church and which gives us the hope of life eternal life and of the presence of God in the world, generates an ecclesial act. In practical terms, the Church, as a Church, as a community, must love in an institutional way.

And this so-called “Caritas” is not mere organization, as other philanthropical organizations, but the necessary expression of a deeper act of personal love with which God made us, arousing in our hearts the tendency toward love, the reflection of the God/Love which makes us His image.

Some time passed before the text was ready and translated. It seems to me now a gift of Providence that the text will be published the very day on which we will pray for the unity of Christians. I hope that it can shed some light and help our Christian life.

The Weekly Standard has a very good piece by Joseph Bottom entitled “Alito and the Catholics: The decline of an institution and the rise of its ideas“.

EXCERPT:

IN THE SUMMER of 2003, the conservative Committee for Justice, upset over the stalled nomination of William Pryor to the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ran advertisements accusing the Democrats of imposing a “No Catholics Need Apply” rule on potential federal judges. When the antireligious advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued its predictable attacks on John Roberts and Samuel Alito as raging Catholic theocrats determined to tear down the wall between church and state, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue responded with the same rhetoric of a litmus test designed to keep Catholics off the courts.

In one sense, such claims are palpable nonsense: Among the Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy, and Richard Durbin are just as officially Catholic as Samuel Alito, the nominee they spent four days grilling last week. Of course, those same senators are manifestly not believers in the coherent system of Catholic thought in the American context that a set of (mostly) conservative theorists have developed in the 33 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down. The Committee for Justice simply got the phrasing wrong. In truth, for the Democrats, Catholics are more than welcome. It’s Catholicism that’s right out the window.

Papa, il 25 esce prima enciclica
‘Provvidenziale pubblicazione nel giorno unita’ cristiani’

The Pope announced at his Wednesday General Audience that his first encyclical would come forth on 25 January. There has been a lot of speculation about the date of publication, many saying that it would be this coming Friday. The official text of the audience address does not contain this news, but Benedict very often goes off the page and speaks extemporaneously.

(ANSA) – ROMA, 18 GEN - La prima enciclica del Papa sara’ pubblicata il 25 gennaio. Lo ha annunciato personalmente il Pontefice ai fedeli durante l’udienza generale. Benedetto XVI ritiene un ‘gesto della Provvidenza il fatto che il testo dopo i ‘ritardi’ per problemi di traduzione, possa essere pubblicato ‘proprio nel giorno in cui preghiamo per l’unita’ dei cristiani. Spero che potra’ illuminare la nostra vita cristiana’. Ha poi definito un dramma la ‘divisione’ dei cristiani ricordando pero’ i passi in avanti fatti.

ENGLISH:
The Pope’s first encyclical will be published on 25 January. The Pontiff personally announced this to the faithful during the general audience. Benedict XVI holds that it is a matter of divine Providence that the text, after “delays” on account of translation difficulties, could be published “on the very day in which we pray for the unity of Christians. I hope that will will be able to shed light upon our Christian life.” Then he called the “divison” of Christians a “drama”, at the same time, however, calling to mind the advances that have been made.

In the readings this week we are hearing about the Lord’s selection of David and David’s subsequent rise. Today’s first reading at Mass was the about David killing Goliath the Philistine.

St. Augustine of Hippo applied an allegorical interpretation to the stones David collected for the fight (En. Ps. 143, 2). In his commentary, which was a sermon preached in Carthage around 412 or after, Augustine first alerts his listeners to some parallels: the battle of David (who foreshadows Christ) and Goliath is like the battle of good and evil, of Christ and the Devil. Just as Christ used no arms and instead referred to the law, so too David used no arms and faced Goliath with five stones, symbolizing Moses’s five books of the law. David took useless stones from the river, a symbol of mortality and the transitory, that is, the People of Israel in the old Covenant. The stones (the law) were lying there in the river (the People of Israel) and David (Christ) made them useful with grace. How? Augustine explains (my trans.):

And what is the font of charity? Doesn’t it come from grace? He (the psalmist) says that grace is infused in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who was given to us. So, grace caused the law to be fulfilled, but grace is symbolized by the milk. For milk is in the body in a gratuitous way: a mother does not seek to receive it, but makes an effort to give it. A mother gives it freely, and she is sad if it is lacking to the one who takes it. So how does David show that the law, without grace, cannot function, except when he put into his shepherd’s bag, into which he usually milked his flock, those five stones, by which the law in five books is symbolized? Armed with these, armed with grace, and thus depending not upon himself but upon his Lord, he went out against the proud Goliath, who was boasting and presuming upon his own powers. (David) took one rock, threw it, and struck the enemy in the forehead; he felled him from that place of his body, where (Goliath) did not have the mark of Christ. But pay attention to this too: (David) put in five stones; he threw one. Five books (of the law) are read, but charity is victor. For the fullness of the law, as Paul reminds us, is charity.