"Ratzinger's theology is symphonic," says Pablo BlancoThe Irish religious Edward Leen (1885-1944) published, in 1938, his work "Why the Cross", where he makes a series of reflections on God, the intimacy of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his action in history.
A good understanding of Christianity will help the human being to recover the sense of happiness. God does not demand unhappiness in this life as the price of happiness in the afterlife, in eternal life. In reality, human life is an unbroken line that begins at birth and never ends.
If the human being will be fully happy when he reaches Heaven, it will not be possible for him to attain happiness on earth unless he can anticipate in time the conditions of the eternally happy life.
Later, the scientist Albert Einstein, in a 1953 work, translated in Spain in 1980 under the title "My Ideas and Opinions", wrote, wrote that "in the laws of nature such a superior intelligence manifests itself, that in the face of it the most significant of human thinking and ordering is a completely futile flash.".
The French anthropologist and philosopher René Girard (1923-2015) published his book "La violence et le sacré" in 1972.. In it he confronts those who say: "But isn't the Bible full of violence? Isn't it God, the Lord of hosts, who orders the extermination of entire cities?
If that objection had been addressed to Jesus, He would probably have answered what He answered about divorce: "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses has permitted you to put away your wives, but in the beginning it was not so" (Mt 19:8).
Indeed, the first chapter of Genesis presents us with a world in which violence is unthinkable either among humans or between humans and animals. But later, in the books of the Old Testament, the death penalty at least seeks to channel and contain violence so that it does not degenerate into individual caprice and men do not destroy each other (R. Girard, "Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde", 1978).
St. Paul spoke of a past time, characterized by the "forbearance of God." (Rom 3:25). Indeed, God tolerated violence, polygamy, divorce and so many other things, but he was educating the people toward a time when his original plan would be exalted once again. That time came with Jesus, who said: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, offer him the other also... Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." (Mt 5:38-39, 43-44). Jesus' sermon, which he delivered on a hill in Galilee, was consummated on Mount Calvary.
According to R. Girard ("La violence et le sacré", 1972, and "Il sacrificio", 2004), At the origin of all religion is the sacrifice that entails destruction and death. But Jesus broke the mechanism that sacralized violence, making himself an innocent victim. Christ did not make a sacrifice with the blood of another, but with his own. "On the tree he bore our sins in his body." (1 Pet 2:24).
Jesus has defeated unjust violence by laying bare all its injustice. It was seeing him the way he died, that the Roman centurion exclaimed, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" (Mk 15:39). The centurion, an expert in combat, recognized that the cry Jesus uttered at his death (Mk 15:37) was a cry of victory.
In the second century, Bishop Meliton of Sardis, in his work "On Easter", He recalled: "The old has been replaced by the new, the law by grace, the figure by reality, the lamb by the Son, man by God".
As early as 1968, the then Cardinal Ratzinger published his "Introduction to Christianity".. In this work, he starts from a truism, the fact that "God is essentially invisible.".
"In his seeing, hearing and understanding, man does not contemplate the totality of what concerns him.". To believe, to have faith from the human point of view, "is an option by which the One who is not seen (...) is not considered as unreal but as authentically real, as that which sustains and makes possible all the remaining reality (...).
Christian faith does not simply deal (...) with the Eternal (...) which remains outside the world and human time, but rather with God in history, with God as man. The peculiar note of the event of faith is the positive character of what comes to me and opens me to what I cannot give myself.
Christian faith is much more than a choice in favor of the spiritual foundation of the world. Its key statement does not say 'I believe in something', but 'I believe in You'.
God only wants to come to men through men (...); there are very few who can have an immediate religious experience. The intermediary, the founder, the witness or the prophet (...) capable of direct contact with the divine, are always an exception.
In God there is a we (...): 'Let us make man' (Gen. 1:26). But there is also an I and a you (...): 'The Lord said to my Lord' (Ps 110:1) and in the dialogue of Jesus with the Father (...): in the one and indivisible God there is the phenomenon of dialogue, of the relationship (...) between the three Persons in God.
In the same way, man is fully himself (...) when he is not closed in on himself (...) when he is pure openness to God (...) Man only comes to himself when he goes out of himself. He only reaches himself through others".
In the Encyclical Letter "Spe salvi", On November 30, 2007, Benedict XVI said: "In him, the Crucified One (...) God reveals his face precisely in the figure of (...) this innocent one who suffers (...).
God knows how to create justice in a way that we are not able to conceive. Yes, there is the resurrection of the flesh. There is justice. There is the 'reversal' of past suffering, the reparation that restores the right (...) the question of justice is the essential argument or, at any rate, the strongest argument in favor of faith in eternal life (...).
Protest against God in the name of justice is worthless. A world without God is a world without hope. Only God can create justice. And faith gives us this certainty (...). The image of the Last Judgment (...) is perhaps for us the decisive image of hope".
