"To be frank, these are not easy words to speak nowadays."

From Benedict's homily, given yesterday at Yankee Stadium, and which focused on faith in Christ, authentic freedom, ecclesial unity, and gratitude:

"Authority" … "obedience". To be frank, these are not easy words to speak nowadays. Words like these represent a "stumbling stone" for many of our contemporaries, especially in a society which rightly places a high value on personal freedom. Yet, in the light of our faith in Jesus Christ - "the way and the truth and the life" - we come to see the fullest meaning, value, and indeed beauty, of those words. The Gospel teaches us that true freedom, the freedom of the children of God, is found only in the self-surrender which is part of the mystery of love. Only by losing ourselves, the Lord tells us, do we truly find ourselves (cf. Lk 17:33). True freedom blossoms when we turn away from the burden of sin, which clouds our perceptions and weakens our resolve, and find the source of our ultimate happiness in him who is infinite love, infinite freedom, infinite life. "In his will is our peace".

Real freedom, then, is God's gracious gift, the fruit of conversion to his truth, the truth which makes us free (cf. Jn 8:32). And this freedom in truth brings in its wake a new and liberating way of seeing reality. When we put on "the mind of Christ" (cf. Phil 2:5), new horizons open before us! In the light of faith, within the communion of the Church, we also find the inspiration and strength to become a leaven of the Gospel in the world. We become the light of the world, the salt of the earth (cf. Mt 5:13-14), entrusted with the "apostolate" of making our own lives, and the world in which we live, conform ever more fully to God's saving plan.

Read the entire homily.

• The Essential Nature and Task of the Church | From God and the World
• Faith in the Triune God, and Peace in the World | From Europe: Today and Tomorrow  
• Why Do We Need Faith? | From From What It Means to Be a Christian
• Vatican II and the Ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger | Maximilian Heinrich Heim | Introduction to Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology.
• The Courage To Be Imperfect | Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D. | The Introduction to Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age
• The Theological Genius of Joseph Ratzinger | An Interview with Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D.

Comments

[Diane K]

This was probably one of the most important things he could talk on. Humility is like a taproot on a tree. All virtue is rooted in it. Obedience is impossible without it. Jesus was obedient unto death, death on a cross!

People will tell us we must think for ourselves, yet only the free can choose to be obedient.

The obedient are not held captive by the Church. Rather, the disobedient are held captive by the world.

I posted more on Pope Benedict and Obedience here.

[Ed Peters]

The Yankee Stadium speech was the best, imho. It sounded as if he wrote it.