VATICAN - THE WORDS OF DOCTRINE by Abbé Nicolas Bux and Rev. Salvatore Vitiello - The necessary and sufficient reason of the trip of Pope in the Holy

Many experts and commentators have questioned in recent months, how to spend the Apostolic Journey of the Holy Father in the Holy Land. There are also those who suggested simply not go there: the situation is too complicated with the Palestinians after the conflict in Gaza, and with the Jews after the Williamson case, and the persistent diatribe on Pius XII. Even so, Pope Benedict XVI, who has a high mystery of God that the church must announce to the world, moved, guided by the Holy Spirit, and not by other logical "political" for it to be real. Saint Paul, in effect, said that "the reality is Christ" (Colossians 2: 17)
This approach has turned the trip into a triumph beyond all expectations, even those of some journalists who still read the things of the Church with patterns "progressive", ie good, as opposed to the schemes' Conservatives ", ie bad. We must ask ourselves what is the logic that should guide all the pastors of the Church, beginning with the Pope? Only that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ who became incarnate to bear witness to the truth, who died for our sins and was resurrected to save and make the right men.
This sounds simple, but it is not only in parentheses in the world - and this is obvious - but sometimes even in the Church. And this is not new, because there are indeed people who would like to remove the life of Christ any truth value, death, any value of atonement, and resurrection any historical significance. And yet, Christ died "propter", ie for men and for them, since He alone could repair or comply with the offense given to God by sin, as stated the doctrine of the Church. No human being, finite and sinful, could not do so. He could, because he was at the same time true God and true man.
In the encyclical "Spe Salvi", Pope Benedict XVI shows "the figure of Christ as the true philosopher who, in one hand, takes the Gospel and in the other, the stick's travel philosopher. With his stick, he is the victor over death, the Gospel brings the truth that itinerant philosophers had searched in vain. In this image, which remained in the art of coffins during a long period, it is clear that the cultured people like simple people recognize Christ: he tells us that in fact is the man and what he must do to be truly human. It shows us the way and this way is the truth. He is at once both, and therefore it is the life we are all looking. It also indicates the way beyond death; only one who is able to do so is a true master of life. The same is visible in the image of the pastor. As in the representation of the philosopher, the church could also, in the figure of the pastor, to relate to existing models of Roman art. In the latter, the shepherd was generally an expression of the dream of a serene and simple life, which people had the nostalgia in the confusion of the big city. The image was then viewed under a new scenario which gave it a more profound: "The Lord is my shepherd: I do not lack anything ... If I pass through the ravines of death I fear no evil, for thou art with me "(Ps 22 [23], 1. 4). The true shepherd is the One who also knows the way through the ravines of death, He who walks with me on the path of ultimate solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me to the cross: He walked himself this way, he descended into the realm of death, he conquered and he is now back to accompany us and give us the certainty that he found a passage. The awareness that there is One who also accompanied me in death and who, with his stick, guide me and reassures me, "so that" I fear no evil "(Ps 22 [23], 4) as was the new "hope" that appeared in the lives of believers. "
Christ did not found his death in expiation a small ground of hope, because he himself is Hope: "Spes mea Christus Surrexit" sings there in the Sequence of Easter. That, and not another, because the necessary and sufficiency of the trip of the Pope in Holy Land, where the Son of God became flesh in Nazareth, Jesus Christ, was born in Bethlehem, preached in Galilee and Judea, died and was raised in Jerusalem.