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.
I don't believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.
Total oblivion is the fate of almost everything in this world. I'm very likely to suffer that same fate; my work will probably not be remembered, and if any of it is, if any of those novels is fated to be one of those novels that is still being read 50 or 100 years after it was written, I've probably already written it.
There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.
My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.
Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things which exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the contexture of the web.
Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself, in the end.
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