At 12:30pm today, in the Sala Clementina at the Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in Audience a group of participants taking part in a conference organized by the Romano Guardini Foundation from Berlin, on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the birth of the philospher.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
I am very happy to have the opportunity to greet you, members of the Romano Guardini Foundation, who have come to Rome to participate in this conference organized by the Gregorian University on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the birth of Romano Guardini. I thank Professor von Pufendorf for the kind words he has offered in greeting, and for having announced the imminent publication of a new text. I am convinced that Guardini was a thinker who still has much to say to he men and women of our time, and not only to Christians. With your Foundation, you are bringing this work to life, introducing Guardini's thought in a polyphonic dialogue with the fields of politics, culture and science. I sincerely hope that this commitment will enjoy great success.
In his book The religious world of Dostoevskij, Guardini recounts, among other things, an episode from the novel The Brothers Karamazov (The religious world of Kostoevskij, Morcelliana, Brescia, pp 24ff). It recounts the passage where the people travel to starec Zosima to present their preoccupations and difficulties, asking for his prayer and his blessing. A gaunt farmer also approaches in order to confess. In a whisper, he softly tells how he killed her sick husband who had abused her in the past.
The staretz sees that the woman, in desperate awareness of her guilt, is completely shut in on herself, and that any reflection, consolation or advice would run up against a wall. The woman is convinced she is condemned, but the priest shows her a way out: her existence has meaning, because God receives her at the moment of her repentance. Fear nothing, never fear, and do not be anguished - says the staretz - so that your repentance is not weakened, and then God will forgive everything. Moreover, there is not, and there cannot be in the whole earth a sin that God does not forgive if one repents sincerely. Nor can man commit such a great sin that it exhausts God’s infinite love (Ibid., p. 25). The woman was transformed in her Confession and received hope again.
In fact, the simplest persons understand what this is about. They are taken by the grandeur that shines in the wisdom and strength of the staretz’s love. They understand what holiness means, namely a life lived in faith, capable of seeing that God is close to men, that He has their life in His hands. In this connection, Guardini says: Accepting with simplicity the existence of God’s hand, the personal will is transformed into the divine will and thus, without the creature ceasing to be only a creature and God truly God, their living unity is realized (Ibid., p. 32). This is Guardini’s profound vision. It might have its foundation in his first metaphysical book Der Gegensatz.
For Guardini this living unity with God consists of persons’ concrete relations with the world and with those around them. The individual feels interwoven in a people, namely, in an original union of men that by species, country and historical evolution in life and in their destinies are a unique whole (The Meaning of the Church, Morcelliana, Brescia, 2007, p. 21-22). Guardini understands the concept of people by distinguishing it clearly from an Enlightenment rationalism that considers real only that which can be received by reason (cf The Religious World of Dostoyevsky, p. 321) and that tends to isolate man, tearing him away from vital natural relations. Instead, the people means the compendium of what is genuine, profound, essential in man (Ibid., p. 12). We can recognize in the people, as in a mirror, the field of strength of the divine action. The people - Guardini continues - feel this operating everywhere and intuits the mystery, the restless presence (Ibid., p. 15). Therefore, I like to say - I am convinced of it - that people is not a logical category, but a mystical category, for the reason that Guardini says.
Perhaps we can apply Guardini’s reflections to our time, seeking to discover God’s hand in present-day events. Then, perhaps, we will be able to recognize that God in His wisdom, has sent to us, in rich Europe, the hungry so that we will give him something to eat, the thirsty so that we will give him something to drink, the stranger so that we will receive him and the naked, so that we clothe him. History will then demonstrate: if we are a people, we will certainly receive him as our brother; if we are only a group of more or less organized individuals, we will be tempted to save our skin first of all, but we will not have continuity.
I thank you all once again for your presence. May your work with Guardini’s writings bring you to understand increasingly the meaning and value of the Christian foundations of culture and society. I bless you with all my heart and I ask you, please, to pray for me.
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
to members of the Romano Guardini Foundation
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
I am very happy to have the opportunity to greet you, members of the Romano Guardini Foundation, who have come to Rome to participate in this conference organized by the Gregorian University on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the birth of Romano Guardini. I thank Professor von Pufendorf for the kind words he has offered in greeting, and for having announced the imminent publication of a new text. I am convinced that Guardini was a thinker who still has much to say to he men and women of our time, and not only to Christians. With your Foundation, you are bringing this work to life, introducing Guardini's thought in a polyphonic dialogue with the fields of politics, culture and science. I sincerely hope that this commitment will enjoy great success.
In his book The religious world of Dostoevskij, Guardini recounts, among other things, an episode from the novel The Brothers Karamazov (The religious world of Kostoevskij, Morcelliana, Brescia, pp 24ff). It recounts the passage where the people travel to starec Zosima to present their preoccupations and difficulties, asking for his prayer and his blessing. A gaunt farmer also approaches in order to confess. In a whisper, he softly tells how he killed her sick husband who had abused her in the past.
The staretz sees that the woman, in desperate awareness of her guilt, is completely shut in on herself, and that any reflection, consolation or advice would run up against a wall. The woman is convinced she is condemned, but the priest shows her a way out: her existence has meaning, because God receives her at the moment of her repentance. Fear nothing, never fear, and do not be anguished - says the staretz - so that your repentance is not weakened, and then God will forgive everything. Moreover, there is not, and there cannot be in the whole earth a sin that God does not forgive if one repents sincerely. Nor can man commit such a great sin that it exhausts God’s infinite love (Ibid., p. 25). The woman was transformed in her Confession and received hope again.
In fact, the simplest persons understand what this is about. They are taken by the grandeur that shines in the wisdom and strength of the staretz’s love. They understand what holiness means, namely a life lived in faith, capable of seeing that God is close to men, that He has their life in His hands. In this connection, Guardini says: Accepting with simplicity the existence of God’s hand, the personal will is transformed into the divine will and thus, without the creature ceasing to be only a creature and God truly God, their living unity is realized (Ibid., p. 32). This is Guardini’s profound vision. It might have its foundation in his first metaphysical book Der Gegensatz.
For Guardini this living unity with God consists of persons’ concrete relations with the world and with those around them. The individual feels interwoven in a people, namely, in an original union of men that by species, country and historical evolution in life and in their destinies are a unique whole (The Meaning of the Church, Morcelliana, Brescia, 2007, p. 21-22). Guardini understands the concept of people by distinguishing it clearly from an Enlightenment rationalism that considers real only that which can be received by reason (cf The Religious World of Dostoyevsky, p. 321) and that tends to isolate man, tearing him away from vital natural relations. Instead, the people means the compendium of what is genuine, profound, essential in man (Ibid., p. 12). We can recognize in the people, as in a mirror, the field of strength of the divine action. The people - Guardini continues - feel this operating everywhere and intuits the mystery, the restless presence (Ibid., p. 15). Therefore, I like to say - I am convinced of it - that people is not a logical category, but a mystical category, for the reason that Guardini says.
Perhaps we can apply Guardini’s reflections to our time, seeking to discover God’s hand in present-day events. Then, perhaps, we will be able to recognize that God in His wisdom, has sent to us, in rich Europe, the hungry so that we will give him something to eat, the thirsty so that we will give him something to drink, the stranger so that we will receive him and the naked, so that we clothe him. History will then demonstrate: if we are a people, we will certainly receive him as our brother; if we are only a group of more or less organized individuals, we will be tempted to save our skin first of all, but we will not have continuity.
I thank you all once again for your presence. May your work with Guardini’s writings bring you to understand increasingly the meaning and value of the Christian foundations of culture and society. I bless you with all my heart and I ask you, please, to pray for me.
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