Sai Teachings in last sermon of Cardinal Ratzinger, before election

[Guest guest]

Sai Ram,

 

The new pope has taken the name Benedict. Benedict means blessing, the blessing

of God.

 

Abhayahasta would be the sanskrit equivalent of this name.

 

Cardinal Ratzinger, in his last sermon as a Cardinal, said the following:

 

"Meanwhile relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by

every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to modern

standards."

 

What the Pope is saying, is that man is slave to the senses, failing to look

within, and failing to find the divinity within.

 

The new pope went on to say,

 

"We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize

anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and

one's own desires,"

 

Relativism is the tyranny of the ego, ahamkara.

 

To intellectuals who argue that human beings cannot know the truth of things,

and especially to some philosophers and teachers convinced that there is your

truth and my truth but nothing properly describable as the truth, Cardinal

Ratzinger proposes that truth is real, truth is apprehensible, and (though

apprehended through a marvellous array of particulars) truth is universal.

 

It is important to note that the man who has become Pope identifies

uncontrolled, unmanaged desires as the cause of the ills of the modern world.

The new pope is a man of great depth as a thinker, and has repeatedly attempted

through the Church's offices and instruments to steer Christian teaching back

to the person of Jesus, and devotion to Jesus. He has attracted much criticism

in the recent past for his doctrinal fidelity to the risen Lord Jesus as the

souce and fountain of Christian life.

 

Cardinal Ratzinger illustrated this in his last sermon:

 

“Christ is the real measure of humanism. ‘Adult’ isn’t a faith that follows

waves of fashion. Adulthood and maturity are a faith profoundly rooted in

friendship with Christ"

 

Where the new pope says "Christ is the measure of Humanism" he is saying that

true humanness consists in discovering the divinity within; this is what brings

man to true humanness. Where the Pope uses the phrase 'humanism', understand

that he means the same thing Sathya Sai teaches us in discourses about true

humanness. When he says ‘Adult’ isn’t a faith that follows waves of fashion' he

is simply reiterating that all paths to the divine require self discipline, self

sacrifice, self satisfaction and self realisation. It could not be put in a

plainer way.

 

Adulthood and maturity are a faith profoundly rooted in friendship with Christ"

It is good that we have a Pope who encourages devotion and nearness to the Lord.

For friendship with God is Sneham, one of the nine forms of devotion.

 

Sat- Chit and ananda (being, awareness, and bliss) are not words you will find

in the Christian text and communication. Yet, in his last sermon as a Cardinal,

Ratzinger did pray:

 

“In this hour we pray with great instance that the Lord, after the great gift of

pope John Paul II, grant us again a shepherd of the heart, a pastor that guides

us according to the conscience, love and true joy of Christ,” The Joy of the

Ressurection, the Joy of the Risen Lord are the language of sat-chit and ananda.

 

The new Pope is emphatic that man does not listen to the voice of conscience,

and that for many, conscience has been dulled by desires. Expect, from this

Pope, strong teachings on the role of conscience in life, and that conscience is

the spirit of the Lord within, guiding man to the goal of human life

(participation in the Life of Christ, the grace of Christ, the Kingdom of God.)

 

It seems to me that Cardinal Ratzinger's last sermon before becoming Pope

Benedict XVI echoes the sarva dharma prayer:

 

There is only one race, the human race

There is only one language, the language of the heart,

There is only one religion, the religion of Love,

There is only one God, and he is omnipresent.

 

Pope Benedict XVI will lead the Christian world through into the Golden Age. Our

Sai has repeatedly told in recent discourses of 2004/2005 that man will see

world peace "within a short span of time".

 

Sai Ram,

Chris Parnell