Becoming Like the Angels

Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI

Faith gives joy. When God is not there, the world becomes desolate, and everything is completely unsatisfactory. It's easy to see today how a world empty of God is also increasingly consuming itself, how it has become a wholly joyless world. The great joy comes from the fact that there is this great love, and that is the essential message of faith. You are unswervingly loved. This also explains why Christianity spread first predominantly among the weak and suffering. To that extent it can be said that the basic element of Christianity is joy... It is joy in the proper sense. A joy that exists together with a difficult life and also makes this life liveable . . . Faith also makes man light. To believe means that we become like angels. We can fly, because we no longer weigh so heavy in our own estimation. To become a believer means to become light, to escape our own gravity, which drags us down, and thus to enter the weightlessness of faith . . . Catholics are not promised an "exterior" happiness but rather a deep interior security through communion with the Lord. That he is an ultimate light of happiness in one's life is in fact a part of all this . . . We are as alienated from God's voice that we simply do not recognize it immediately as his. But I would still say that everyone who is in some sense attentive can experience and sense for himself that now he is speaking to me. And it is a chance for me to get to know him. Precisely in catastrophic situations he can suddenly break in, if I am awake and if someone helps me decipher the message.

St. Michael! Pray for us!
St. Gabriel! Pray for us!
St. Raphael! Pray for us!