A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?’
Interpretation
This quote reflects a warning about a future where faith may weaken and humanity may elevate itself above divine authority.
Pope Pius XII's quote expresses a profound concern regarding the spiritual decline he perceives in society. He suggests that there will come a time when the civilized world turns away from God, mirroring the doubt exhibited by Peter. As Christians face an absence of divine presence, akin to Mary Magdalene’s mourning at the empty tomb, they will search for the meaning of their faith in a world that is increasingly questioning their beliefs.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the importance of faith in a modernizing world.
If a worker is deprived of hope to acquire some personal property, what other natural stimulus can be offered him that will inspire him to hard work, labor, saving and sobriety today, when so many nations and men have lost everything and all they have left is their capacity for work?
To live without risk is to risk not living.
It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy its future.
The faith of the Church is this: That one and identical is the Word of God and the Son of Mary Who suffered on the Cross, Who is present in the Eucharist, and Who rules in Heaven
True science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree — as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science.
You lose nothing through peace. You can lose everything through war.
Listen; this world is the lunatic's sphere , _x000D_ Don't always agree it's real, _x000D_ Even with my feet upon it And the postman knowing my door _x000D_ My address is somewhere else.
The Pythagoreans degrade impious men into brutes and, if one is to believe Empedocles, even into plants.
It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees and hears that the rod is for the slave's back, he will not be apt to change his opinions in maturer years.
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.
I discharge every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition Law, because I considered, and now consider, that law to be a nullity as absolute and palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image.
In any dispute, each side thinks it's in the right and the other side is demons.
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