Benedict XVI is urging the faithful to spend more time in prayer, which he called an expression of man’s profound need for meaning and understanding.
“Dear brothers and sisters,” the Pope appealed at the end of today’s general audience, “let us learn to spend more time before God.”
“Let us learn to recognize in silence the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ,” he continued, “to recognize in the depth of ourselves his voice that calls us and leads us back to the profundity of our existence, to the fount of life, to the source of salvation, to make us go beyond the limits of our life and to open ourselves to the measure of God, to the relationship with Him who is Infinite Love.”
The Holy Father explained to those gathered in St. Peter’s Square that “man is religious by nature: he is as ‘homo religiosus’ as he is ‘homo sapiens’ and ‘homo faber.'”
He noted that man has an innate need to “find a light to give an answer to the questions that have to do with the profound meaning of reality; an answer that he cannot find in himself, in progress, in empirical science.”
Benedict XVI explained that “homo religiosus” is not confined to the earlier eras of history, but that man in every age — from cavemen to the Digital age — seeks “in religious experience the ways to overcome his finitude and to ensure his precarious earthly adventure.”
VATICAN CITY, MAY 11, 2011 (Zenit.org)