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We are in the Middle Ages. Although this name can be misleading.
Age of the medium; as it were before and then there are other ages that are certainly
more important. We have phrases like "think like
you were still in the Middle Ages", as it were someone with
a mentality that still live in the dark. Not so.
Perhaps we should begin to realize that at this time glows in an exemplary manner
the great agreement between the thinking man and the man who acts.
But above all, I got it as a Franciscan before me every day. When I start every morning
tunic that Francis wanted off a certain way, cross-shaped, and is
about this what the people of this Age build their spirit, but also
their actions, their doing. The Middle Ages is certainly a time of
great intellectual developments. Dominic and Francis are the engines that put
launch this new release also in the know, because in the Middle Ages large open
universities, from Bologna to Paris Toledo through.
Universities in which they taught and studied ancient thought of philosophers like
Plato and Aristotle, or personalities as Augustine.
But all new thought arises, which creates and gives us Thomas.
A medieval university must birth of scholasticism, which explores the relationship
between scientific knowledge and knowledge theological or divine revelation.
Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Thomas Aquinas They are examples of a whole
army of monks, scholars and thinkers laying on the middle man.
Find and understand their relationship with God, in this dialectic is where lies the strength
of scholasticism. And in the medieval Catholic universities
find these great characters we have already mentioned, and they are able to engage
dialogue with the Islamic Arab culture, men able to come to the fore with
strong convictions rooted in truth, in the person of Jesus Christ, his Gospel.
In Campaign, in 1223, St. Thomas was born Aquino, not far from the abbey of Montecassino.
There spend their early years before to attend the University of Naples,
which was founded by Frederick II, and thanks to him, it has become a meeting place
between the Arab and Christian cultures. As the University of Toledo, where
thank Archbishop Raimundo has been great momentum translations of Arabic texts
Greeks. Naples, Palermo and Toledo were borderlands
with Muslim culture. All of southern Italy was living with
Federico great cultural moment in all aspects, so they could not be
out of this awakening across cultures Arab and classical Greek.
But back to Thomas and his studies in Naples. There he meets the friars preachers of Santo
Domingo, and in 1244 joins them. The very top of the Dominicans sent
Thomas to continue his studies in Paris. There you will find another preacher, Alberto
Cologne, which will be known as Alberto Great for his great gifts and abilities.
When he was young, I was struck by a statement Aquinas on which Saint Thomas
taught what he lived. And so I thought it was a holy
True Son of Santo Domingo, which it was said that what he had preached
lived. St. Thomas Aquinas, in Question
of the Summa Theologica, remember that theology is a science, but how to deepen principles
we are given by God himself? St. Thomas says that there are two paths.
The route of the study, which he pursued, but also the way of experience.
And Thomas has penetrated into reality divine, through the two paths.
With regard to charity, St. Thomas offers a truly original thought.
Everyone recognizes that characterizes Thomas supernatural charity as friendship with
God. Moreover, Jesus himself left word:
"I no longer call you servants but friends." Also many other statements about charity
for example: "He who has charity has God. "
And possess God means to use it and enjoy it as one wants.
I think when Thomas claimed these things he did was to write down
his own personal experience. Whoever possesses God through charity.
And possess God means uti et frui, use and I enjoy it as one wishes.
Before he died, Thomas said everything what God had asked the
prayer had always gotten. Pope Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick
II charging that he had broken the sixth crusade.
It is 29 September 1227. Federico II successfully negotiates surrender
Jerusalem despite excumunión but therefore not improve relationships between
Emperor and the Pope, to the point that the two armies clash on border
between their kingdoms. A conflict that will last Pope to remove the excommunication.
They are truly difficult times. Wars pacifications, Crusades, excommunications, heresies,
a challenging time to be faced Pope, the Church.
But Gregorio Nono is a strong, decisive potato a pope by the mendicant orders,
wants the Church remains capable of propose in its entirety, the Gospel message.
In the year 1231 instituted the Inquisition, putting forward the same to the Dominicans.
And although many opposed to the study of Aristotle's philosophy, especially
outside of the mendicant orders, Gregorio Nono reopens in 1231 the University of Paris,
to Aristotle's thought out increasingly studied.
In this climate comes to Paris Saint Thomas, sent by his superiors to study
your college and become a teacher of her.
Later, get sick and die in Italy in 1274, the abbey cirsterciense
Fossanova, between Naples and Rome, where was staying.
Thus, Thomas states that the principle of all our spiritual life, the spring
that constantly nourishes and enlivens, It is opening our minds to reality.
After him, there have been others who say the beginning of the spiritual life is a
hard, others will deny even the existence of a reality and claim that there are only interpretations
subjective reality. A first glance may seem very issues
abstract, but I assure you it is not. Truly touch the heart of the existence
human. I may one example:
If Thomas is right, then what does say educate a person. Means enter
in reality. But if there are only interpretations of
reality, and not reality, buildings Subjective person, man, what
means educating a person? Not understood the meaning that can be
education and we are faced with something I do not hesitate to call the collapse of education
contemporary. Therefore, these great masters of thought
Christian, have something important to teach. Because, lest we forget, history
Church, the tradition of the Church is a living thing.
And yet we live these men, and still live with the choice they made
Francis and Dominic. The thought of Thomas and Alberto Buenaventura
Magno. We nurture them yet, although not
we are aware. We are like children that we raise the shoulders
of a giant. And sitting on the shoulders of the giant, the child
sees beyond the same giant, because is above. If down, even
just a moment, not just look like anything because is small.
So we the faithful of the Catholic Church we are sitting on the shoulders of these giants
and, in a way, beyond what we see who viewed them, because the tradition of
the Church is the way of the Church to the fullness of truth that God in Christ,
has revealed. We are now in Rome. Pope Benedict XVI,
as is tradition, leads the procession of Corpus Cristi.
The climax is when all kneel before the consecrated host. Jesus is present
between us. Pope Benedict XVI, while still a cardinal,
wrote and said that no worship can not be change the world.
Consider that Thomas, in a homily for Corpus Christi, said, paraphrasing
a passage from Deuteronomy, "who is luckier than us, people of God,
we have so close to God? ". Reject worship would not want
have God close, as Ratzinger wrote in a famous book entitled precisely
"The near God." Worship God. There is a special place in the
history of the Catholic Church, Orvieto. There in the chapel decorated with frescoes
Dominican Beato Angelico, the relic is preserved body, miracle of the consecrated host,
blood soaking the fabric body. The history of the Catholic Church is enriched
with this miracle, for God's people do not forget to worship and glorify Him.
Around Jesus present in the Eucharist, cathedrals are built become
pillars of a civilization that has its center in Christ.
So, Orvieto and cathedral are also written in stone, colors and signs history.
Here, and throughout Europe of the great epoch of civilization, it was the Age
Media, in which the mendicant orders, Franciscans and Dominicans were the
protagonists, along with all the people in building our civilization.
The construction of the same temples It is not simply a work of
someone. It is a task that encompasses so community, the whole mass of the faithful, who
offer their house to God. The novelty of these beautiful works driven
by the genius of the Franciscans and Dominicans are in the fact that
that is built not abandoned once made; maintenance needs, and around
it will create an entire economic network; appear new crafts and a new stability is created
labor. Thus, modernity, new idea
entered, the new development is that all the people involved with their assets and capabilities to
keep alive the work that has been built. It is the heart of the village, which has understood
the message. And the faith of a people continues offering this great work the Lord.
Friars enhancing the universities, which become saints, monks who are elected
pope as Innocent V. This is also the time when the monks
missionaries, Franciscans or Dominicans, cross continents.
In 1246, Giovanni di Pian del Cardine, accompanied by Brother Benedict of Poland,
traversed all Russia, to the center the Mongol Empire in the culture medium
Buddhist, where he attended the coronation of Gran Can.
And these territories also came from Flanders, William di Rubruik.
In 1294 Giovanni di Montecorbino arrived Beijing, and in 1307, Pope Clement V
Archbishop appointing a Catholic mission that still remained active for many
years. It is in the middle when it begins to form
a new political consciousness. No longer the king or emperor, but the cities
brought by nobles and artisans, by people the people who build together your own
destination, those who question the economy, political and social power.
It's a great novelty, is here in the cities where modern society is created.
As said earlier, we must banish prejudice out there about this time,
we have to revalue, recognize the role innovator of the Church, the popes,
that protected and promoted to orders mendicants, ushering in a society
modern, able to confront distant cultures, cultures of empires.
Confronting the culture of empires means both yesterday and today, approaching the
weak and needy, the sick. And along with the mendicant orders, fully
immersed in a life of charity, born and place throughout the Middle Ages to
our days, a number of organizations concrete assistance to
poor, children, the elderly and the sick.
Both religious organizations as laity.
It is in these centuries when born confraternities, many of which are still active in the
today. We have reached the end of this chapter
the history of the Catholic Church. We have tried to narrate and convey how
Middle age is not a distant era you have to forget, but a period
of living history, because many of the institutions born then still
still alive today, are transmitting that message, the message of the Gospel, leading
charity, which is Christ. But we can not close this chapter without
quote the great poet of the Middle Ages, Dante Aligieri, which Paul VI said in 1966,
"Dante Aligieri is ours by right particular, our, of the Catholic religion,
because everything in it exudes love for Christ, our, because he loved much to the Church, which
sang his glories, our, because it recognized and worshiped the Pope of Rome as the vicar
of Christ on earth.
Oh great light hikes you will mortal concepts, to my mind,
give me some of what you contain
and my words have such a weapon that only a sliver of your glory
You can leave future people.