Hence Isidore’s "specific moral lesson": "The servant of God, by imitating Christ, should devote himself to contemplation without shying away from active life. To behave otherwise would not be right. Actually, as one must love God through contemplation, one must love one’s neighbours through action. Therefore, it is impossible to live without the concurrence of both forms of life, neither is it possible to love unless one experiences both". The "synthesis of the man who looks for the contemplation of God through prayer and for action by serving the Christian community said Benedict XVI, off the cuff is the lesson that the great Bishop of Seville leaves us, Christians of today, called to testify Christ at the start of a new millennium". Isidore, according to the Pope, "was certainly a man of deep dialectic contrasts" and even in his personal life "he experienced a permanent inner conflict between a longing for solitude, to devote himself solely to the meditation of God’s Word, and the need to take care of his brothers". According to Isidore, "a person in charge of a Church must let himself, on one side, be crucified in the world through the mortification of the flesh, and on the other side accept the decision of the ecclesiastic order, when it comes from God’s will, to devote himself to the rule with humbleness, even if he would not like to".” ” ” “
