MEETING WITH DIOCESAN CLERGY OF AOSTA
ADDRESS OF HIS
HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Your Excellency,
Dear Brothers,
I would like, as far as I
can, to respond briefly to your words, Your Excellency; but I would also like
to say that the Pope is not an oracle, he is
infallible on the rarest of occasions, as we know. I therefore share with you
these questions, these queries. I also suffer. However, let us, on the one
hand, suffer all together for these problems, and let us also suffer in
transforming the problems; for suffering itself is the way to transformation,
and without suffering nothing is transformed.
This is also what the
Parable of the Grain of Wheat that fell into the earth means: only in a process
of suffering transformation does the fruit mature and
the solution become clear. And if we did not suffer, the apparent
ineffectiveness of our preaching would be a sign of the lack of faith, of true
commitment. We must take these difficulties of our time to heart and transform
them, suffering with Christ, and thereby transform
ourselves. And to the extent to which we ourselves are transformed, we will
also be able to respond to the question asked above, we will also be able to
see the presence of the