Pope's Q-And-A Session With Roman Clergy, Part 6; On Finding Silence And Space

Following a Lenten tradition, Benedict XVI met Feb. 7 with parish priests and clergy of the Diocese of Rome. During the meeting, the participants asked the Pope questions. Here is a translation of one of the questions and the Holy Father's answer.

ZENIT began this series of questions-and-answers last Monday.

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[Father Massimo Tellan, Pastor of the Parish of Sant'Enrico:]

My name is Massimo Tellan. I have been a priest for 15 years; for 6 years I have been a pastor at Casal Monastero, in the north. I believe that all of us realize that we live more and more immersed in a world of cultural word inflation -- words that are, in the end, often without meaning -- which disorient the human heart to such an extent that it becomes deaf to truth. That eternal Word that became flesh and assumed a face in Jesus of Nazareth becomes -- because of this inflation of words in our world -- evanescent, and above all for the new generations, inconsistent and distant.

Certainly [this Word gets] confused in the forest of ambiguous and ephemeral images that bombard one every day. So, what space should be given in education in the faith to this binomial of the word to be welcomed and the image to be contemplated? What happened to the art of narrating the faith and introducing people to the mystery [of the faith] as was done in the past with the "biblia pauperum"? In today's culture of the image how can we recover the incredible power of seeing that accompanies the mystery of the incarnation and the encounter with Jesus as happened on the banks of the Jordan for John and Andrew, who were invited to go and see where the master lived?

In other words, how do we educate [people] in the seeking and the contemplation of that true beauty that -- as Dostoyevsky wrote -- will save the world? Thank you, Your Holiness, for your attention, and if you will allow me, and with the consent of my confreres, as a priest of this presbyterium and a dilettante artist, along with what I have said I would like to give you an icon of Christ at the pillar [...] If it is true, as it is, that whoever sees the Son has seen the Father, so whoever sees us, his Church, can see Christ.

[Benedict XVI:]

Thank you for this beautiful gift. I am grateful that we have not only words but images too. We see that even today from Christian meditation new images are born, Christian culture is reborn, Christian iconography. Yes we live with an inflation of words, of images. So, it is difficult to create space for the word and the image. It seems to me that precisely in our world's situation, which we all know, which is also our suffering, the suffering of each one, the time of Lent takes on a new significance. Certainly bodily fasting -- which for a time was not considered to be in style -- is thought by everyone to be necessary today. It is not hard to understand that we must fast. Sometimes we find ourselves faced with exaggerations caused by a mistaken ideal of beauty. But in any case bodily fasting is something important because we are body and soul and the discipline of the body, even material discipline, is important for the spiritual life, which is always an incarnate life in a person who is body and soul.

This is one dimension. Today other dimensions are growing and manifesting themselves. It seems to me that the time of Lent can indeed also be a time of fasting from words and images. We need a little silence; we need a space that is free from the permanent bombardment of images. In this sense making the meaning of 40 days of exterior and interior discipline accessible and comprehensible today is very important for helping us to see that one dimension of our Lent, of this bodily and spiritual life, is to create for us spaces of silence that are also without images, to re-open our heart to the true image and the true word. It seems promising to me that today, too, one sees a rebirth of Christian art, meditative music -- like that of Taizé, for example -- or the renewing of the art of the icon, a Christian art that remains, let us say, within the great norms of the iconological art of the past, but broadening to the experiences and visions of today. There where there is a true and profound meditation on the Word, where we really enter into this visibility of God in the world, of this tangibility of God in the world, new images, new possibilities of making the events of salvation visible are also born. This is precisely the consequence of the event of the incarnation. The Old Testament prohibited every image and had to prohibit images in a world full of divinities. It lived in the great emptiness that was also represented by the interior of the temple, where, in contrast with the other temples, there was no image, but only the empty throne of the Word, the mysterious presence of the invisible God, not surrounded by our images.

But the new step is that this mysterious God liberates us from the inflation of images, even of a time full of images of divinity, and he gives us the freedom of the vision of the essential. He appears with a face, with a body, with a human history that, at the same time, is a divine history. A history that continues in the history of the saints, of the martyrs, of the saints of charity, of the word; [these saints] are always an explication, a continuation in the Body of Christ of his divine and human life, and give us the fundamental images in which -- beyond the superficial images that hide reality -- we can open our eyes toward the Truth itself. In this sense the iconoclastic period after the Council seems excessive to me -- but it had its meaning, because perhaps it was necessary to liberate ourselves from a superficiality of too many images.

Let us turn now to the knowledge of God who became man. As the Letter to the Ephesians says, he is the true image. And in this true image we see -- beyond the appearances that hide the truth -- the Truth itself: "He who sees me sees the Father." In this sense I would say that, with much respect and with much reverence, we can rediscover a Christian art and also rediscover the essential and great representations of the mystery of God in the iconographic tradition of the Church. And in this way we can rediscover the true image, covered up by the appearances. It is truly an important task of Christian education: the liberation for the Word behind the word, which always demands new spaces of silence, of mediation, of a deepening of knowledge, of abstinence, of discipline. It is equally the education in the true image, which is in the rediscovery of the great icons created in the history of Christianity: with the humility that liberates from superficial images. This type of iconoclasm is always necessary to rediscover the Image, that is, the fundamental images that express the presence of God in the flesh.

This is one dimension of the fundamental education in the faith, in true humanism, that we are attempting at this time in Rome. We have returned to rediscover the icon with its very severe rules, without the Renaissance beauties. And in this way we too can enter again onto the road to the rediscovery of the great images, toward an always new liberation from too many words, from too many images, to rediscover the essential images that are necessary for us. God himself has shown us his image and we can rediscover this image with a profound meditation on the Word that makes the images be reborn.

So, let us pray to the Lord that he help us along this road of true education, of re-education in the faith, which is always not only a listening but a seeing.

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