Ricardo Pinero
Master’s degree in Christianity and Contemporary Culture
We should be very grateful to those who remembered us with
He lives that every moment of our existence is worthwhile, especially if they do so because they are convinced that there is no goal more important than the search for the truth. Being truth seekers… this must be our daily commitment.
Benedict XVI will always be an example of clarity, intellectual honesty, and philosophical and theological rigor, but he will also always be irrefutable proof that truth is not only powerful, but above all something appetizing, desirable, gentle, and cordial.
One of the initiatives defining his style of being Pope saw the light of day on Christmas Eve in 2009. He invited us all to take part in the Hall of Nations. Beneath that metaphor was a real challenge. The purpose of this symbolic space was to sustain the search for the supreme truth that is God. We all interrogated. Everyone means everyone: believers and non-believers, agnostics and agnostics, thinkers and workers, manual laborers and professionals from all walks of life.
The reason was simple: to seek the truth as a qualified way to facilitate a personal encounter with Christ, with Christ who is himself the embodiment of truth. The lobby was a great project in which thinking was done from the mind and the heart, from dialogue and belief, and from honesty and prudence, in order to deepen, renew and strengthen the beautiful presence of God in human lives. He never doubted that knowing Christ better made us discover the beauty of his love.
Beauty is one of the conclusive proofs of the existence of God.
Benedict XVI taught us to share the gifts we receive, especially reason and faith, and carefully showed us the beauty of truth without disguise. His works have accompanied us in this search for an infinite horizon in which God Himself will appear. In his words and his actions, he insisted that we cannot live with our backs to what we believe in.
He was in every moment an integral and faithful testimony that those who live in and for the truth are capable of discovering goodness and beauty, as well as loving them. The splendor of beauty is the prelude to that loving vision that deeply knows the nature of truth. This is what a good life consists of, a life worth living: a life worthy of God’s children.
His intellectual sharpness paralleled his aesthetic sensibility. On August 31, 2011, we reported how Via Pulchritudinis, The Way of Beauty, was a distinct way to connect our perception of beautiful things to the Creator. The interior of the Romanesque temple conveyed to him a motive for remembrance and a desire for prayer.
In the Gothic edges I could see those verticals that carried us to heaven, and in the heights of cathedrals that paradoxical mixture of our smallness and the desire for abundance. In either case, beauty is manifested in them as a door open to infinity, and a means of opening the mind and heart towards that supreme beauty that is God. And what can we say about the music in which the eternal vibration of the heart strings of love is experienced.
The love of truth and beauty has always been for the Pope Emeritus the ideal means of overcoming the dichotomy between human and Christian conscience. Beauty is the great human need, and the truth is the root from which the best of our life flows. Hans Urs von Balthasar pointed out that beauty is the last word the contemplative mind can reach, as it is the halo of indelible grandeur that surrounds the star of truth and goodness.
Benedict XVI taught us that authentic beauty opens the human heart to nostalgia for the past, a deep desire for knowledge, love, and an orientation towards the other, towards the beyond. Beauty and truth reveal to us the meaning of life, they show us the evidence of the mystery of love, they place before our eyes not only the immensity of the boundless, but above all the closeness of God who never leaves us.
Beauty is one of the definitive proofs of the existence of God, and that is why beauty leads us to hope, because in the heart of God we lack nothing, everything is given to us. Benedict XVI has passed on to us a solid and true legacy: truth and beauty are the fruits of the love that he has for us. This should lift our spirits, sharpen our wits, and cheer our hearts. For all this, with all my heart … Thank you …
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