24 November 2012

In honor of the day

What is truth?  Pilate was not alone in dismissing this question as unanswerable and irrelevant for his purposes.  Today too, in political argument and in discussion of the foundations of law, it is generally experienced as disturbing.  Yet if man lives without truth, life passes him by; ultimately he surrenders the field to whoever is the stronger.  "Redemption" in the fullest sense can only consist in the truth becoming recognizable.  And it becomes recognizable when God becomes recognizable.  He becomes recognizable in Jesus Christ.  In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history.  Truth is outwardly powerless in the world, just as Christ is powerless by the world’s standards: he has no legions; he is crucified.  Yet in his very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power.

- Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI

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