Selected quotes of Pope Benedict XVI offered daily for prayer and reflection….

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Darkness
 


As St. Augustine teaches, Jesus has taken temptation from us in order to give us victory over it. Therefore we too have no fear of facing the battle against the spirit of evil. What is important is that we face it with him, with Christ the Victor.

 
Angelus Address
St. Peter's Square
17 February 2013

 
 
 
Darkness
 


It is easy to be entranced by the almost unlimited possibilities that science and technology place before us; it is easy to make the mistake of thinking we can obtain by our own efforts the fulfillment of our deepest needs. This is an illusion. Without God, who alone bestows upon us what we by ourselves cannot attain (cf. Spe Salvi, 31), our lives are ultimately empty.

 
Address,Vespers
Washington, DC
16 April 2008

 
 
 
Darkness
 


In union with his (Christ's) love, borne aloft on the wings of love, as persons of love, let us descend with him into the world’s darkness, knowing that in this way we will also rise up with him. On this night, then, let us pray: Lord, show us that love is stronger than hatred, that love is stronger than death. Descend into the darkness and the abyss of our modern age, and take by the hand those who await you. Bring them to the light! In my own dark nights, be with me to bring me forth! Help me, help all of us, to descend with you into the darkness of all those people who are still waiting for you, who out of the depths cry unto you! Help us to bring them your light! Help us to say the “yes” of love, the love that makes us descend with you and, in so doing, also to rise with you.

 
Homily
Easter Vigil
Holy Saturday 2007

 
 
 
Darkness
 


'O Lord my God, when you send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth.”
These words summon us to ever deeper faith in God’s infinite power to transform every human situation, to create life from death, and to light up even the darkest night.

 
Homily
St. Patrick's Cathedral
New York
19 April 2008

 
 
 
Darkness
 


We know that evil does not have the last word, because it was the Crucified and Risen Christ who overcame it, and his triumph is expressed with the power of merciful love. His Resurrection gives us this certainty: despite all the darkness that exists in the world, evil does not have the last word. Sustained by this certainty, we will be able, with greater courage and enthusiasm, to commit ourselves to work for the birth of a more just world.

 
General Audience
12 April 2006

 
 
 
Darkness
 


Unfortunately we experience the (this) power of darkness every day...the drama of the rejection of Christ which, today as in the past, shows and expresses itself in many different ways...Perhaps the ways of refusing God in the modern age are even more insidious and dangerous: from outright rejection to indifference, from scientific atheism to the presentation of a modernized or post-modernized Jesus, a human Jesus, reduced in various ways to being a simple man of His time and deprived of His divinity; or perhaps a Jesus so idealized as to appear as a character of legend.

 
General Audience
3 JAN 2007