Pope urges laity to bring back sense of God in today’s world

(November 25, 2011) A mentality that denies any reference to the transcendent is unable to understand and protect the human race. “The spread of this mentality has led to the crisis that we live in today, which is one of meaning and values…,” said Pope Benedict XVI on Friday. He was addressing some 80 participants in a three-day plenary assembly of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Laity in Rome. The Nov. 24-26 meeting is discussing the theme, “The Question of God Today.” “We must never tire of proposing the question of ‘starting again from God”, in order to restore to man the totality of his dimension and full dignity,” the Pope said. He noted that in our time a mentality is spreading which by denying every reference to the transcendent is proving incapable of understanding and protecting man. This has lead to the crisis of meaning and values, before even it is an economic and social crisis. Man who tries to live only in the positivist sense, in the calculable and measurable way, ends up suffocated, the Pope explained. Instead, one who arouses in him the question about God, opens himself to hope - trustworthy hope, by virtue of which the difficulties of this life become worth facing. Pope Benedict went on to explain that a Christian awakens the sense of God in him or her through a vital relationship with the Lord that begins with an encounter with those who themselves have encountered God. It is in this that the role of the laity assumes a particular importance, the Pope said. The Holy Father had words of appreciation for laity of Asia, where last year Seoul, South Korea hosted the continent’s laity congress on the theme, "Proclaiming Jesus Christ in Asia Today." He said that in the vast continent that is home to people, different cultures and religions of ancient origin, the Christian message has reached only a small minority. But he admired the lay people who often live their faith amidst difficulties and sometimes even under persecution. These brothers, the Pope said, bear witness to their fidelity to Christ in an admirable way, thus opening vast scenarios of evangelization for the Church in the third millennium.