Photo of the Day: Christ on the world's highways

Cheridan Sanders

August 23, 2012
As can be seen, before being a doctrine, Christianity is an "event," indeed, a Person: it is Jesus of Nazareth. He is the heart of the Christian faith. Hosts of saints, monks, and mystics have left everything to enjoy intimacy with him. But Christ can also be met in the world's highways. The great Dostoyevsky, in a letter recalling the incredulity and doubt that marked so many moments in his life, offers this moving witness: "Those are the moments when I composed a creed: to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, more profound, more loving, more reasonable, and more perfect than Christ, and that not only is there nothing but- I say it to myself with a jealous love - one cannot have anything (letter to Madame Von Visine, February 20, 1854). In turn, Semen Frank, a recent Russian thinker, reflecting on the enigma of suffering, writes: "The idea of a God who came down into the world, who voluntarily suffers and shares in human and cosmic suffering, the idea of a God-man who suffers, is the only possible theodicy, the only convincing justification of God" (Dieu est avec nous, p. 195).
Pope John Paul II, Angelus, September 15, 1996
CNS photo/Romeo Ranoco, Reuters