4. CHRISTIAN HUMANISM

In Scalabrini St. Pius X saw the "learned, mild, and strong bishop, who even in difficult times has always defended and loved the truth and made it loved, and never abandoned it because of threat or flattery."

In fact, the Bishop of Piacenza had the "holy courage to tell the truth" to one and all, to friend and foe, and believed it his episcopal duty never to keep it from the Pope.

Love for the truth leads one to realism, which can give rise to suffering but not to skepticism, because the light of truth is faith.  "The practical knowledge of human beings and of things" brings one to prudent discernment of when to keep silent and when to speak out.  It is not right to anticipate the judgments of the Church: "honest freedom of thought" dovetails with obedience, which imposes the sacrifice ‑- heroic at times ‑- of one's convictions, in an act of faith.

A person with such an open mind opens his heart to all human values.  Friendship is a need of the heart; it is enduring unity; it is self-sacrifice for the friend's sake.  "Deep and reverent" friendship is founded on love, which in turn is founded on the truth.

Whoever is full of the Holy Spirit, who is Love, loves not only human beings but also everything that is good, beautiful, artistic, poetical, and harmonious, in "fullness of love."  The symphony of creation has its deepest echo in the symphony of the spirit.