What The World Needs Above All Else

The meaning of life.  Excerpts:

...Pope Benedict's message at Subiaco identifies what the world needs above all else. "We need," he said, "men who hold their gaze directly towards God..."

...People are drawn to Saint Benedict because in him they see a man who "held his gaze directly towards God." People are drawn to Benedictine monasteries because in them they expect to find men and women who "with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor 3:18). People come to monasteries in search of a place where there is evidence of a divine inbreaking: traces of the Kingdom of Heaven, glimmers of the glory of God shining on the Face of Christ.



More often than not the search for God begins with a search for those who seek God. It has always been thus in the life of the Church in both East and West. The faithful come to monasteries looking for fathers and mothers for their souls. People seek out monks and nuns hoping to see on their faces a reflection of the brightness of God. By virtue of monastic profession, we are called to hold our faces directly toward God. "For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Cor 4:6).

In Saint Benedict we monks and nuns and oblates venerate a man who held his face directly toward God and who teaches us to do the same. We call him our father: Holy Father Benedict. There is, in this custom of reverent affection, a certain sweetness. We affirm, beyond any doubt, that, by a mysterious design of Providence, we are children of Benedict, the vir Dei, the man of God...

The whole piece is fantastic, a great basic guide to the spiritual life.