"You will show me the path of life, complete joy in Your presence" (Psalms 15,11). The words of the psalmist pronounced by Peter to the redeemed world on Pentecost Day (see At 2,28) significantly continue to indicate to human intelligence the path to the truth represented by Christ Himself. I believe they can still represent an incentive for the union between science and wisdom to become part of philosophy, replacing many false alternatives, transcending all cultural spheres and leading humankind to the knowledge of the truth, understood in its broadest meaning of knowledge of the essence of human beings.

Today we have been allowed to understand in greater depth how humankind aspires to the fullness of knowledge, since by its very nature humankind searches for the truth and cannot live without it. It is necessary for contemporary science, and especially current philosophy, to rediscover, each in its own environment, that sapiential dimension consisting in a search for the definitive and global meaning of human existence and that of the cosmos.

The loss of the metaphysical dimension in philosophy has meant the obscuring of reason in a cognitive fragmentation contained within so-called individualist personalism in which everything appears to be only subjective rational assessment that cannot claim any common or universal binding characteristics.

In the scientific field, we are in the presence of the disillusionment of scientism that searches for certainties and instead leads to a state of insecurity and doubts regards to all that is not "scientifically" explainable or verifiable: everything appears to be subjective assessment that cannot claim to offer any everlasting principles. All is reduced to opinions, to undifferentiated pluralism, based on the assumption that all positions are equal. Then falling into scepticism rooted in mistrust for the truth that is then believed to be unreachable. In this context, those who state they serve the truth with their lives and their words, must be prepared to hear themselves described as fundamentalists or utopians.

While I listened to the numerous enlightened speeches made by the theologians, I remembered a number of dramatic expressions by Nietzsche summarising the unspeakable sadness and loneliness of reason deprived of the truth: "What have we done, tearing the chain that binds the earth to the sun? Where does the earth go now? And where are we going? Far from all suns? Are we not falling without being able to stop? Is there still an above and a below? Are we not wandering lost within an infinite nothing? (see The gay science, no. 125).

Christians cannot remain indifferent. In particular the Church’s ordained ministers, who are exhorted, also by the recent Magisterium of Peter (see Encyclical Letter Veritatis splendor, Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae), to bear witness with their words and lives to the real Christian personalism that acknowledges the constitutive bond between truth and freedom, and is based on the objective truth of the "nature of the human being and his actions" (Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, no. 51): man’s truth is reflected in Christ’s face and it is through knowing Christ that the Church discovers the real good for humankind.

André Frossard’s "personal testimony" is astonishingly relevant when in addressing believers he exclaimed: "One often acts, writes and even preaches as if God did not exist..."Have the prudence of a snake and the simplicity of a dove" says the Gospel; in the Church we are so prudent that, at times, I have the impression that the snake has eaten the dove". And he finished his incisive observation, saying: "It is due to prudence that we have practically given up the Gospel’s first meaning, even capable of conquering the Roman Empire. It is also because of prudence that we have led a campaign against what was scornfully described as "the Christian wonder", as if being created was not wonderful, as if God’s Incarnation was not a wonder, as if it was not wonderful to be able to establish personal relationships with Him, as if no wonders could be expected from the faith… as if God were not wonderful!" (Aa.Vv., by Monsignor Paul Poupard, La Chiesa davanti alla sfida dell’ateismo contemporaneo, Ed. Piemme, Casale Monferrato, 1984, p. 100).

To those who wish to relegate Christians to a community of debatable interpretation of reality, and to those who wish to restrict the Magisterium of the Church to playing a mere role as guarantor of the rules for the discussion to achieve democratic consensus on what is good and what is evil, the believer answers that the Church, in her human and divine reality, by Christ’s will, offers the world the presence of the Word made Flesh and the continuity of His redeeming work in time and space of humankind. The believer proclaims that the Church has a mandate that precedes her and answers, with the obedience of faith, to the Divine Word that precedes her, indicating not herself but He who is the Truth (see John 14,6).

In this context, it is easy for me to introduce the subject of our next videoconference: "Priests and the Year of the Eucharist". The Church lives on the Eucharist because in it is hidden God the Father’s Gift to humankind: His One and Only Son. One can in fact catch a glimpse of a profound consonance between the search for knowledge, the ultimate and authentic objective of all real knowledge, and the Eucharist that contains it, the source of redeeming science, the Word of the Living God that becomes a sacrament, bread for the world’s redemption.

John Paul II concludes the Encyclical Fides et Ratio presenting Mary as the "the table at which faith sits in thought", the Seat of Wisdom, that "in giving birth to the Truth and treasuring it in her heart, has shared it forever with all the world" (no. 108). This is what has been happening in recent times, in the times of the Church’s testimony. Through her ministers, the church becomes Marian offering the faithful the bread of eternal life, Christ himself, uncreated Wisdom, the one and only Saviour and Redeemer of the world.

This is what we shall discuss on Friday February 23^rd at 12 A.M. Rome time.

I would like to thank all the eminent prelates, theologians and professors who have joined us today.

From the Holy See, January 28^th 2005