Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The Cross of Christ quote by Pope Benedict XVI

"A Jesus who agrees with everyone and everything, a Jesus without his holy anger, without the hardness of truth and genuine love, is not the real Jesus as he is depicted in the Scriptures, but a pitiable caricature. A concept of "Gospel" that fails to convey the reality of God's anger has nothing to do with the Gospel of the Bible. True forgiveness is something quite different than weak indulgence. Forgiveness is demanding and requires both parties, the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven, to do so with all their minds and hearts. A Jesus who sanctions everything is a Jesus without the Cross, for such a Jesus would not need the torment of the Cross to save mankind. As a matter of fact, the Cross is being increasingly banished from theology and reinterpreted as just a vexatious mischance or a purely political event. The Cross as reconciliation, as a means of forgiving and saving, is incompatible with with a certain modern mode of thought. Only when the relationship between truth and love is rightly comprehended can the Cross be comprehensible in its true theological depth. Forgiveness has to do with the truth. That is why it requires the Son's Cross and our conversion. Forgiveness is, in fact, the restoration of truth, the renewal of being, and the vanquishment of the lies that lurk in every sin; sin is by nature a departure from the truth of one's own nature and, by consequence, from the truth of the Creator God." -Pope Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger

I really like that. Go Benny 16! 'zing' those theological modern 'rat's out of the church.

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