Pianist Pope reflects on power of music

19-10-2009

• Category:

• Tags:

• Pope

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 18, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI says music is a language suited to fostering understanding and union between persons and peoples, and can even become the language for talking with God.

The Pope reflected on the role and power of music Saturday when he attended in the Vatican a piano concert held in his honor.

During the event, Chinese pianist Jin Ju performed music by a variety of composers on pianos from seven different epochs.

"This concert has [...] permitted us to taste the beauty of music, a spiritual and therefore universal language, a vehicle so importantly suited to understanding and union between persons and peoples," the Holy Father said in giving words of thanks at the end.

"Music is a part of all cultures and, we might say, accompanies every human experience, from pain to pleasure, from hatred to love, from sadness to joy, from death to life," he continued. "We see how, over the course of the centuries and millennia, music has always been used to give a form to that which we are not able to speak in words, because it awakens emotions that are difficult to communicate otherwise.

"So it is not by chance that every civilization has placed such importance and value on music in its various forms and expressions."

The Pontiff also reflected on the "vertical" dimension of music -- its power to bring the spirit toward God.

"Music," he said, "great music, gives the spirit repose, awakens profound sentiments and almost naturally invites us to lift up our mind and heart to God in every situation, whether joyous or sad, of human existence. Music can become prayer."

http://www.zenit.org/article-27255?l=english

Pontiff notes saint's light in trying times

Tag: Pope
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 18, 2009 (Zenit.org).- St. Giovanni Leonardi made the light of Christ shine in difficult times, Benedict XVI said in a message read today at a Mass to mark the 400th anniversary of the founder's death.
The Mass today in St. Peter's Basilica was celebrated by Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
St. Giovanni Leonardi founded the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God. He is also the patron of pharmacists. The Pope reflected on his teaching and role during the general audience two weeks ago.
The papal message was addressed to Father Francesco Petrillo, rector general of the order.
"St. Giovanni Leonardi shines in the firmament of the saints like a beacon of generous fidelity to Christ," the Pontiff wrote, according to a Vatican Radio report.
The message noted that in a society that was "convulsed" like that at the turn of the 17th century, the saint "struggled so that the light of Christ would shine again among his contemporaries and they would feel the warmth of God's merciful love."
Cardinal Dias repeated this point in his homily, saying that Leonardi, "with his luminous life, brought God back to men."
"His whole life," the prelate said, "has the seal of the uncontainable and untiring love for the glory of Christ. His missionary zeal was not merely geographic [...] but had to be capable of transforming every gesture, every effort, every bit of time and energy into something missionary, and for one single and supreme interest: Christ and Christ crucified."
St. Giovanni Leonardi, the cardinal said as the Church marks today's World Mission Sunday, wanted an entirely missionary Church, "without the interference of political or administrative patronage," but intimately directed toward man.
At the close of his customary Sunday recitation of the Angelus, the Pope greeted the Clerks Regular of the Mother of God, who had come for the celebrations of the 400th anniversary of St. Giovanni Leonardi's death, along with the students of the Colleges of the Propaganda Fidei and representatives of pharmacists, who have the saint as their patron, calling on them "to follow him on the path of holiness and to imitate his missionary zeal."

http://www.zenit.org/article-27256?l=english