Benedict XVI Calls for a "Christian Revolution"Invites Faithful to Respond to Evil With Good
Vatican City, Feb. 18, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today before reciting the midday Angelus with several thousand people gathered in St. Peter's Square.
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Dear Brothers and Sisters!
This Sunday's Gospel has one of the most typical, yet most difficult,
teachings of Jesus: Love your enemies (Luke 6:27).
It is taken from the Gospel of Luke, but it is also found in Matthew's
Gospel (5:44), in the context of the programmatic discourse that begins with
the famous Beatitudes. Jesus delivered this address in Galilee, at the
beginning of his public ministry: It was something of a "manifesto"
presented to everyone, which Christ asked his disciples to accept, thus
proposing to them in radical terms a model for their lives.
But what is the meaning of his teaching? Why does Jesus ask us to love our
very enemies, that is, ask a love that exceeds human capacities? What is
certain is that Christ's proposal is realistic, because it takes into
account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice,
and that this situation cannot be overcome without positing more love, more
kindness. This "more" comes from God: It is his mercy that has become flesh
in Jesus and that alone can redress the balance of the world from evil to
good, beginning from that small and decisive "world" which is man's heart.
This page of the Gospel is rightly considered the "magna carta" of Christian
nonviolence; it does not consist in surrendering to evil -- as claims a
false interpretation of "turn the other cheek" (Luke 6:29) -- but in
responding to evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21), and thus breaking the chain
of injustice. It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not
mere tactical behavior but a person's way of being, the attitude of one who
is convinced of God's love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil
with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of
the "Christian revolution," a revolution not based on strategies of
economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does
not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God,
that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies
the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise.
Herein lies the heroism of the "little ones," who believe in the love of God
and spread it even at the cost of life.
Dear brothers and sisters: Lent, which begins this Wednesday, with the rite
of the distribution of ashes, is the favorable time in which all Christians
are invited to convert ever more deeply to the love of Christ.
Let us ask the Virgin Mary, the docile disciple of the Redeemer, to help us
to allow ourselves to be conquered without reservations by that love, to
learn to love as he loved us, to be merciful as our heavenly Father is
merciful (Luke 6:36).