INTERVENTION

HIS EXCELLENCY MR REV.MA MGR. ANTONIO CILIBERTI
Archbishop of Catanzaro-Squillace
(Rome, Auditorium of Reconciliation, 02 December 2009, 6 p.m.)

I greet all of you with great affection in the Lord and in the name of the Apostolic Movement. I reaffirm our friendly and community greeting for all authorities: civil, religious and military that are present in this crowded room.
Of course this greeting wants to have hints of attention and affection of all those who have come here from other parts of Italy, not only, but of Europe and the world. This is a visible sign of how the omnipotence of God’s Spirit flying over certain boundaries, gets there, where there is an open heart to receive the message of salvation that through the mediation of the Apostolic Movement that operates in the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ, arrives on the wings of enthusiasm in the vastness of the world.
Of course, to these feelings of fraternal greetings I intend to combine the feelings of our community gratitude, first of all, to the Holy Father who this morning really had reason to rejoice when enthusiastically with one voice you sang to him your affection and unconditional willingness to serve the Lord.
I have seen all this in a direct personal way in the talk I had with him; he loved this presence which he looks with a particular fatherly sympathy at.
But our infinite gratitude tonight still goes to His Excellency Monsignor Marciante who really with this bright complete speech made us understand some basic elements of the new evangelization in the particularity of a context into which we are sent to proclaim the word of God.

So I would like to summarize taking into account the elements that characterize the peculiarity of this very singular meeting, first of all the situation of our society in which the Church is called to proclaim the Gospel of always.
Second element: what does this evangelization to which we are today more than ever consist in. And what must be the identity style and operative action of the evangelizer today in the church and in the world.
The first element: we are the children of so-called modernity. The children of the modern civilization and it is right in this reality, in modern civilization, that we are sent to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. But what are the elements characterizing to be distinguished in our modern civilization?

The answer to this question is offered us by history. The first datum is the exaltation of reason, a constitutive and formal element of human identity. Man is such because he is an intelligent being, a free being endowed with reason. Since the French Revolution, this constitutive element of our identity has been exalted, even the pedestal of the almost absoluteness of human reason has been raised. Modernity took its start by that very cultural revolution. But there is another element characterizing the present modernity that took also start from another revolution which is the industrial revolution. The English Revolution, which purported to apply
the powers of reason in the service of an advanced technology in the perspective of being able to get what is indispensable through the consumer goods to tame them to the destitution of man in order to provide him the utmost bliss and his happiness.
Therefore, two elements the exaltation of reason and its application in the service of an advanced technology seeking consumer goods.

The first element actualizing in a constant way in the course of the history of this new unity the potentiality of reason through the organization of the thought which belongs especially to the philosophers certainly has produced a variety of systems which then gave rise also to a different mode of life.
Truth is one. The systems have been many and often in opposition to each other even in antithesis and then these ideological systems cannot presume to have within themselves the richness of the entirety of truth, which transcends the limits of ideologies in order to be equal to its absoluteness.
In this early period determined by the exaltation of reason in the time of modernity, this diversity of ideological visions necessarily produced a contrast and an antithesis that we have verified in many fields, but especially in the political field or even in the field of parties, when the parties made up the resolution to be against each other starting often fratricidal wars in the name of this diversity of thought in which the antithesis was rediscovered. How was in that context the tension relationship between them, the diversity being regarded as? How was the denial of the own identity and right for this how was the attitude towards the different? The attitude of hostility.

It is clear that culture does not mark time and the potentialities of reason find an opportunity for a historic deployment through a constant and relentless maturity. What is the situation today? In synthesis. The process led to the overcoming of those limitations to reiterate a fact that by now it has acquired. To the universal culture the different is no longer the one who denies my identity and therefore he is my enemy; but it is one who has something that I do not have and I am different from him because I have something that he does not have.
As you can see, the difference is in the being and it is a wealth. If the wealth of the individual is put at the service of the community it becomes a treasure for everyone. This datum is today acquired and universally one speaks of the richness of diversity.

But here a question arises: how can there be a relationship of collaboration, how can there be collaboration among different people? Even to this interrogative the increasing degree of cultural maturity gives of an exhaustive answer and indicates an inescapable point of convergence. What is this point? Man in his towering dignity has the responsible commitment to build the common good with more hands.
Could there be today a citizen that claims the right of citizenship in the context of this our so educated society that is not at ease in this dimension to exalt the dignity of man and to work with others to build the good of all? He would be an extemporaneous out of history. He would not be entitled to citizenship.

But even here another interrogative arises. What is the path that leads to this inescapable point of convergence? Here too, the current maturity of our culture gives a comprehensive answer and indicates a track by now acquired in the wealth of the values, of the principles that support it and it is constituted by the subsidiarity and solidarity. Translated in terms of simple essentiality, these two very high principles mean: the former that none of us is sufficient for himself not only in a subjective dimension but also at an objective dimension. For what concerns the institutions who could ever auto-referentially, stand up to this dimension to make himself the creator of himself to be sufficient to himself? We need each other because no one of us, nor the institutions are sufficient to themselves.
If this is certainly true, as it is true, the solidarity of working one for all and all for one is essential, remembering we that right this dimension of solidarity today constitutes the noblest and highest expression of the cultural maturity of the people on the planet.
These elements, dear friends, are present in the current cultural maturity of our society, though being present to the consciousness of this cultural maturity do not yet find a concrete confirmation in the existential experiences of life, because all through experience that unifies us see how these elements should be for the people of our time points of reference, although vivid a light that illuminates their intelligence, has within himself the ability to move the heart that drive to serve humanity and the good of all.

At this point, you feel an irrepressible need, the need for ethics that cannot come from the logic of man, from his intelligence; for the intelligence of a man is a great value, his reason the constitutive element of his identity, but it is not the absolute. In fact he has not the power to solve the problems of men and to harmonize these unitary commitments of men in the world.
Plato already interpreting this irrepressible need of the human spirit said four centuries before Jesus: man needs a help that comes to him from above because alone he cannot solve his problems.
As for the other aspect of the application of potentialities of reason in the advanced technology leaned out towards procuring consumer goods, do we men of the present civilization, do we humans of modernity that have conquered, owned and enjoyed these means, feel really in the depth of our spirit that bliss that we are entitled to?
Aristotle already said it: the perishable contingent things of down here do not have the power to quench the longing for the infinite which is irrepressible and present in the human spirit. Man needs transcendent and absolute values in which to stand in order to be able to taste the joy of his utmost bliss. Then there is today more than ever, and it is the element, as Monsignor Marciante was rightly saying, which is characterizing the post-modernity: the attention to the transcendent; that is, the attention toward God.

God the father of man is never deaf to the destitution of his children; and therefore, in His infinite goodness he who is the personification of truth, the uncreated truth, feels an insuppressible need which is that of radiating himself like the sun that radiates the splendour of its light letting this luminous splendor come down so that it might illuminate men in the world with nothing depriving of its simple essentiality. The God truth radiates the splendor of his light, and it is the light of truth that comes from God that rains on the intelligence of man and on all this humanity.
You immediately realized that here we can commendably remember the great message that he left us almost as his legacy Pope John Paul II in the admirable letter fides et ratio faith and reason. The light that falls from above illuminates the mind of man and in the splendor of this revealed light that man finds the opportunity to fully actualize the all the potentialities of his reason that otherwise would remain enmeshed within the limits which are inherent to our marked humanity without reaching the summit of the knowledge of the truth that is the object of his intelligence.
Obfuscation of human intelligence or coercion of his freedom! The revelation is light to the intelligence and strength that enhances human freedom; for freedom is the right use of the will enlightened by the power of reason.
Faith and reason, revelation and intelligence are not therefore in contrast; rather they are in deep correlation. The truth revealed by God is contained in the holy book. The church not to her credit, but due to an unutterable design of God, is the depository of revelation for which she is called upon to bring it into the world.
Then, our task is just to evangelize the culture and permeate the Gospel with culture, to express it in an extremely concise way. This means helping all cultures and all civilizations with the light that falls from the revelation to realize the fullness of their identity, never to be mortified; and it gets right for this reason the civilization and culture of the peoples, a wealth for humanity, when we work together in this dimension of solidarity and subsidiarity.
The task of the Apostolic Movement solicited by the spirit of God is right in this: in announcing the word of the Lord, bringing the men of our time the revealed truth that is not an abstract theoretical conception but it is personified in Christ, the Word made flesh . Bringing Jesus Christ to the men of our time means bringing them the truth that liberates and saves.

But what must the style of the evangelizer be today? First of all he must commit himself through the power of his reason to penetrate as far as it is possible to him, perhaps under the auspices of and the guidance of good teachers, the word of God. You cannot help but deepen knowledge; and the knowledge of the truth, of the divine truth is possible for man, for man has as the object of his intelligence the truth of God.
The truth can be known by man even through the actualization of the potentiality of his reason, bearing in mind what the Lord has done, revealing himself to men of all times. Above all, our teachers in their medieval philosophy had a premium that has become famous, that resonates in the ears of many: invisibilia Dei, a creature mundi per ea quae facta sunt, delecta suscipiunt. Which means that the things that are scattered in the vastness of the universe allow man to be able to ascend gradually to the knowledge of the Lord; and St. Thomas has also made the famous five ways that help man, using his reason to achieve this so high an end which is the knowledge of God.
But the Lord is not known only through the implementation of the potentialities of reason. There is still another faculty: prayer. The prayer… How many of our mothers, even in advanced age, without sufficient culture, with the simplicity of the prayer have deepened, penetrating the mystery of God; and they have radiated it through the simplicity of their testimony. Today, the prayer a bit outdated in the style of our life, but also among many Christians. Jesus strongly reiterates it: pray. Dico vobis: orate sine intermissione. Always pray. Pray. Which does not mean mumbling formulas learned by heart. Prayer is the glorification of God’s name. It is the glory of God in man living the life of man.

The prayers must surely characterize the life of the evangelizer. Monsignor Marciante said it wonderfully. But man’s faculties are not exhausted. Here, there is another one, once beloved, now obsolete in the church and monasteries: contemplation. Contemplation which is that dimension, which unifying all the potentialities that man has within himself under the action of the Holy Spirit, enables a man to be able to penetrate, overcoming the limits of scholastic view of the same formula of prayer; the intimacy of God through a rapport of personal relationship that is renewed more and more every day, because the mystery of God’s simplicity which contemplation allows the contemplative to be able to enter in, is infinite.
This datum constitutes the perennial object of the novelty of evangelization which is not an exposition of abstract theories even when they were inviolate and sublime truths; but it is the testimony of the experience of God, and this experience is made wonderfully and fully through contemplation.
To all of you dearest I wish you to be intelligent men who penetrate the truths, that enter into the mystery of God through the power of prayer and know how to capture the intimacy of him through the relationship of contemplation with the Lord.

I know well that among us there are also many other friends not only members of the Apostolic Movement. To all, I want to conclude by making a wish, echoing what Monsignor Marciante said. And I do not express my wish with my unadorned words. I want to make it for you with the thought of a great thinker quoted by dear professor, Pascal, who said exactly this: men can be divided into three categories: men, ominicchi and quaquaraquà, (little and frivolous men). The first category is made by intelligent men, who set out in search of the truth and find it. These are reasonable and happy men. The second category consists of intelligent men who set out in search of the truth, but do not find it. They are reasonable men, but they are not happy. The third category consists of those intelligent men who do not make the search for truth and therefore do not find it. These are unreasonable and unhappy men. I wish you men, intelligent women to be reasonable and happy.