"Spe Salvi to invigorate the Church"

“A constant theme of Pope Benedict’s preaching and teaching is the priority of God,” Bishop Blair said. “Human thinking and acting in the modern world is increasingly man-centered rather than God-centered. But when God is lost sight of, the human person is lost sight of too. In Spe Salvi, the Pope says that we all need the ‘greater and lesser’ hopes of this life in order to keep going, but that God alone is the ‘great hope’ who makes life worth living, and who makes sense of it all in the light of eternity.”

“ there are some wonderful sections on suffering written from a pastoral point of view,” he said. “Those sections are what would be of most interest to people and of most pastoral use. And it’s done biographically; these concrete examples reinforce his analysis of suffering.”