Pope urges simple faith of true wisdom as he opens Synod for Middle East

The two week assembly of the synod of bishops for the Middle East opened Monday morning with an unscripted address from Pope Benedict XVI. “The Church's faith is the foundation that does not waver”, he told participants, “despite the threat of destruction”, and focusing on Mary's divine motherhood he warned against “false gods such as terrorism, drugs and capitalism which enslave mankind”.

Just as John XXIII at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, on 11 October 48 years ago, so today, Pope Benedict XVI entrusted the Synod for the Middle East to the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, "Theotokos". “An audacious title" said the Pope, which highlights the “adventure of God, the greatness of what he has done for us". In the Incarnation, said the Pope, God has "drawn us to Him" and enables us to "participate in His inner relationship."

He thus stressed the intrinsic link between the divine motherhood of Mary and the Church's motherhood: "Where Christ is born, the movement of recapitulation begins, the moment of the calling begins, of the building of his Body, of his Holy Church. The Mother of Theos, the Mother of God, is the Mother of the Church, because she is the Mother of He who came to gather us all together in his Risen Body”.

Taking into account this connection between Theotokos and Mother of the Church, the Pope recalled Apocalypse. And thus stated that Christ must always be born to the world, with the fall of the gods, of the "great powers of history today". Those false gods, summarised the Pope, include anonymous capitalism, forms of life that have trivialized immorality, terrorist ideologies carried out in the name of God, drugs.

Anonymous capitalism, he said is “one of the great powers of our history", a contemporary form of slavery. "The anonymous capital makes a slave of man", he said, adding that "they are no longer things of man but have become an anonymous power that man serves, and for which he suffers and dies." "This is a destructive power that threatens the world."

Likewise the "power of terrorist ideologies, promoted in the name of God” which must be "unmasked ". "It is apparently in the name of God that these acts of violence are carried out, but it has nothing to do with God and instead everything to do with false gods that must be exposed”. "Drugs, this power that like a voracious beast puts its hands on the earth and destroys it." Finally, "forms of life touted by the public opinion today for which values like marriage count for nothing anymore, chastity is no longer a virtue and so on."

The Pope continued, “these ideologies that dominate, so much so they forcibly impose themselves, and become gods. And in the sorrow of the saints, in the pain of believers, the Mother Church of which we are part, these gods must fall".

Like "in time of the early Church, even today there is need for the" blood of martyrs "to transform the world”. Pope Benedict then referred to Chapter 12 of Revelation, where the dragon unleashed a stream of water against the Mother. It seems, the Pope says, “that the woman has drowned in this river. But the good earth absorbs this river and it can not bring harm".

"I think the river can easily be interpreted: these are the currents that dominate everything and that want to wipe out the faith of the Church, which no longer seems to have a place before the strength of these currents which are imposed as the only rationality, as the only way of life. And the land which absorbs these currents is the faith of simple people, who can not be carried away by these rivers and so save the Mother and save the Son. "

This "simple faith of true wisdom," which refuses to be devoured by the waters, concluded the Pope, recalling the Psalmist, "is the strength of the Church." Although at times it seems that the foundations of the earth falter: "We see this today with climate change issues as they threaten the foundations of the earth, but are threatened by our behaviour. Outward foundations falter because the inner foundations falter, the foundations of moral and religious faith from which the right way to live follows. And we know that faith is the foundation and, ultimately, the foundations of the earth can not falter, if faith the true wisdom remains firm".