VATICAN CITY, 22 APR 2009 (VIS) - Made public today was a Message from Benedict XVI to Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, archbishop emeritus of Bologna, Italy, and the Pope's special envoy to celebrations marking the ninth centenary of the death of St. Anselm. The celebrations are being marked with a week of cultural and religious events in the Italian city of Aosta, birthplace of this doctor of the Church.
The anniversary of the death of Anselm - who died in Canterbury, England, on 21 April 1109 - provides an opportunity "to call back to our minds one of the most outstanding figures in the tradition of the Church, and in the history of western European thought", writes the Pope.
"Anselm's exemplary monastic life", he goes on, "the originality with which he re-examined the Christian mystery, his subtle theological and philosophical doctrine, his teachings on the vital importance of conscience and on freedom as responsible adherence to truth and goodness, his ardent activities as pastor of souls dedicated to promoting the freedom of the Church, all this never ceased to excite great interest in the past, an interest which the anniversary of his death is happily reawakening and promoting in various ways and various places".
"His intense eagerness for knowledge and his inborn proclivity for clarity and logical rigour would push Anselm towards the 'scholae' of his time. Thus he arrived at the monastery of Le Bec in Normandy, where he was able to satisfy his interest in dialectics and where, above all, his vocation to the cloister was awoken". As a thinker, "the saint sought to achieve a vision of the logical links intrinsic to the mystery, to perceive the 'clarity of truth' and hence to understand the evidence of the 'necessary reasons' underlying the mystery".
"The truth is", the Pope explains, "that his search for the intellect ('intellectus') located between faith ('fides') and vision ('species') had its source in the faith itself and was supported by trust in reason, through which the faith is to a certain extent illuminated". In the monastery of Le Bec, Anselm revealed "his educational genius, which was expressed in that ... style which distinguished the whole of his life, a style which united mercy and firmness".
Pope Urban II appointed him archbishop of Canterbury, a mission in which he gave ample evidence of "his love for truth, his rectitude, his rigorous faithfulness of conscience, his 'episcopal honesty', and his tireless efforts to free the Church from worldly restraints and from enslavement to [political] calculations incompatible with her spiritual nature".
St. Anselm, Pope Benedict concludes, "still retains great relevance and exercises a powerful attraction". His "light continues to shine throughout the Church, especially where people cultivate the truths of faith and a desire to examine them through reason".
MESS/ST. ANSELM CENTENARY/BIFFI VIS 20090422 (480)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment