Rays of Light

Pope Benedict XVI Awards “Ratzinger Prize”

The Pope gave a talk today that was a profound critique of the modern scientific method.

I was in the Vatican press office at noon today when Pope Benedict in the Clementine Hall inside the Apostolic Palace conferred “Ratzinger Prizes” on three European theologians for the excellence of their theological work.

I was able to follow the ceremony live on closed-circuit television, and once again was struck by the clarity and profundity of this Pope’s thought.

“He’s a genius,” Italian journalist Salvatore Izzo said, when I asked him what he thought of the talk.

“His thought soars above that of everyone else,” said the Spanish journalist, Antonio Pelayo.

Once again today, the Pope, in just a few phrases, cut to the heart of the matter — the heart of the modern crisis of faith and culture, of faith and science.

Essentially what Benedict said was that modern man, despite the brilliance of his scientific discoveries, risks falling short of true “science,” true “knowledge,” because science claims that “faith” is outside of its purview, that science is one thing and faith another.

This is an error, the Pope said. A tragic, fundamental error — because it leaves out the most important object of the human search for knowledge, the one object which is eternal and immutable and so totally real, unlike all the vanishing productions of time: the divine.

But this error is not recognized as an error by most of modern science.

And this lack of recognition is a flaw in the scientific world view which has had, is having, and likely will have devastating consequences. (Yes, I am thinking of the forces scientists have harnessed, whether in the atom, or in the genetic code, which they do not fully understand, or control.)

At stake in this debate is the very existence of “theology,” the “study” or the “science” of “God.”

The word means literally “speaking of God.”

But can one speak of God?

Is theology a science with a content?

The modern consensus seems to be that theology is, in fact, impossible.

That theology is a self-contradictory term, that there cannot be a study of God, or a science of God, because science (most moderns say) can only deal with real things, and real things (it is widely postulated) are all material things.

Only matter exists, nothing else (it is said).

God, not being material, is therefore not a possible object of scientific study (in this modern view).

And this is why, throughout our modern society, in every sphere of our modern discourse, on the evening news, in the university classroom, in the media, there are reports of floods, murders, economic crises, sports scores, but not reflections on the nature of the divine — because the discussable and knowable “news” is limited to “real (material) things and events,” not transcendent (invisible, immaterial) things. Transcendent things are excluded.

This is the first and primary exclusion of the intellectual life of our age.

And this is the greatest poverty of the intellectual life of our age.

And this was the question Benedcit addressed today.

“Theology is the science of the faith, tradition tells us,” Pope Benedict said. “But here arises immediately the question: is it really possible? Or is not this in itself a contradiction?

“Is not science perhaps the contrary of faith?

“Does not the faith cease to be faith, when it becomes science?

“And does not science cease to be science when it is ordered or even subordinated to faith?”

Then Benedict makes clear that this is a central issue of our time: “Such questions, which already for medieval theology represented a serious problem, with the modern concept of science have become still more urgent, and at first glance, even without a solution.”

Benedict then said that this is the reason that theology has retreated in many places to departments of history, as a subject to be studied in its historical development and impact, but not as a present, serious subject matter.

“But if theology retreats completely into the past, it leaves the faith today in darkness,” Benedict said.

What is at stake in all this, Benedict continued, is the matter of truth itself.

“Is what we believe in true? Or is it not?” he said. “In theology, what is at stake is the question of truth; this question is theology’s ultimate and essential foundation.”

At this point in his talk, Benedict quoted the Latin Church Father, Tertullian, who said: “Christ did not say, ‘I am the custom or habit,’ but ‘I am the Truth’ — non consuetudo sed veritas.”

And Benedict then noted that the pagan religions of the ancient world were religions of custom, of traditional practices, of doing things as they had always been done, and that “the revolutionary aspect of Christianity in the ancient world was precisely the break with the ‘customary’ out of love for the truth.”

Then, as so often, Benedict brought in… the Logos — the meaning, the reason — of things, incarnate in Christ.

The Gospel of John that speaks of Christ as “the truth,” and Tertullian draws on this Gospel, Benedict says.

But in John’s Gospel we also find “the other fundamental interpretation of the Christian faith, which is expressed in the designation of Christ as the Logos,” Benedict writes. “If Christ is the Logos, the truth, man must correspond to him with his own logos, with his reason. To arrive finally at Christ, man must set out on the way of truth. He must open himself to the Logos, to creative Reason, from which he derives his own reason.”

Benedict concludes: “From this we understand that the Christian faith, from its very nature, must spark theology, must question itself on the reasonableness of its faith.”

It was at this point that Benedict made a rather provocative point, and one I am not sure I have fully understood, about the possibility of a false or negative use of reason — by implication, the possibility of a false Logos.

How reason and faith interconnect has always sparked debate throughout history, Benedict said. Then, citing St. Bonaventure, he said that there can be two ways of using reason, one which cannot be reconciled with the nature of the faith, and one which belongs precisely to the nature of the faith.

The oen which cannot be reconciled with the faith is the reason used violently, the “violent rationis” (‘the violence of reason’), the despotism of reason which makes itself the supreme judge of everything,” Benedict said.

This is Benedict’s profound critique of “pure reason” — reason which becomes despotic, that is, reason which becomes, in essence, unreasonable.

And something that is essentially “unreasonable” is on the way toward becoming “irrational.”

The Pope said an example of this wrong use of reason, which is “incompatible with the nature of faith,” can be seen in Psalm 95, which recalls Meribah as the place where the early Israelites tested God and “tried me though they had seen my works.”

They had seen God, but then, they wished God to prove Himself again to them, meaning they did not “believe” (that is, “know for sure”) what they had in fact seen.

Not believing, they demanded to “see” over again — much as one attempts in a scientific experiment to “see” whether a reaction or a result is duplicatable, and so, truly “real.”

The Pope writes: “In this passage, there is a reference to a double encounter with God: they had ‘seen.’ But this was not enough for them. They put God to ‘the test.’ They want to subject him to experiment. He is, as it were, subjected to a questioning and must submit Himself to a procedure of experimental testing.

“This modality of the use of the reason, in the modern age, has reached the height of its development in the area of the natural sciences. The experimental reason appears today generally as the sole form of rationality that can be called scientific. What cannot be scientifically verified or falsified falls outseide the scientific realm.”

The natural sciences have achieved much with this method, the Pope said.

“But there is a limit to such use of reason,” Benedict said. “God is not an object of human experimentation. He is a Subject and he manifests himself only in a person-to-person relationship: this is part of the essence of the person.”

What the Pope is saying, once again, is that the pure use of reason is reductionist to the point of becoming despotic, and that, though this type of pure reason can, through experimentation, uncover some secrets of the natural world, it is unable to reach the true end of reason, which is to come face to face with ultimate truth, and find in that encounter that ultimate truth is marked by personhood, just as the seeker of that truth, the individual, reasoning, man or woman, is also marked by personhood.

“In this perspective,” Benedict continued, “Bonaventure mentions a second use of the reason, that is valid in the area of the ‘personal,’ to answer the great questions of human beings themselves.”

What Benedict is saying is that the human reason can be used for scientific research, but also to answer ultimate questions posed by persons, like the questions “Who am I really?” and “Why am I here? For what purpose? What is the meaning of my life” — questions that our modern world no longer considers to be “scientific,” but which are, in fact, a valid part of true science.

So this is, in fact, a profound critique on the Pope’s part of the claim of modern science to be a true and complete science. It is not complete, and so it is not true, the Pope is saying.

And at this point, the Pope brings in the word “love,” using it almost as a faculty of the mind to gain knowledge; that is, the Pope speaks of loving as a way of knowing which completes the reason, and perfects the reason, and would, if fully embraced, complete our flawed, defective “science” as well.

“Love,” the Pope said, “wants to know better the person loved. [Note: The word "to know" is related to the word for "science," so the Pope is saying that love wishes to have a certain better knowledge, a certain "science," of what is loved.]

“Love,” he continued, “true love, doesn’t make us blind, it makes us see.”

He continued: “The thirst to really know (the other) is part of love. Therefore, the Fathers of the Church found the precursors and heralds of Christianity — beyond the world of the revelation to Israel — in the ‘philosophers’: in persons who were thristy for truth and who were therefore on the road toward God.”

Again, what he is saying is that the early Christians saw in the Greek philosophers — Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the tohers — the “precursors” of the faith, bceause those philosophers sought truth — even if they could not at times quite find it. They were “on the way”… toward Christ.

“When there is not this use of the reason, then the great questions of humanity fall outside the area of reason and are left to irrationality,” Benedict continued.

What he is saying is that, if science leaves out the type of knowing which we call “love,” it leaves the “great questions” outside of its purview.

This is the profound critique of modern science I mentioned at the outset.

Benedict is saying that modern science is attempting to know and grasp the truth of reality by a false, or at least crippled and partial, method.

“This is why,” Benedict then says, “an authentic theology is so important. Right faith orients the reason to open itself to the divine, in order that that reason, guided by the love of truth, can know God more intimately.”

Then he writes: “The initiative for this journey is with God…”

This seems at first a strange phrase. How can God be the initiator of reason’s search to find truth, which leads finally to God? Isn’t it my own choice? Isn’t it me, not God, who initiates the search?

No, Benedict says, it is God who initiates the search — from within.

“God,” he writes, “has placed in the heart of man the longing for His face.”

So theology, for Benedict, is the true light of the human reason, which guides human reason in its search for truth, and eventually directs that search to the ultimate truth, which has a face.

“Therefore, theology is made up, on the one hand, of that humility that allows us to be ‘touched’ by God, and, on the other hand, by the discipline connected to the order of reason which preserves love from blindness and helps to develop its ability to see.”

In essence, Benedict is offering a powerful defense of theology as the way to a science which is truly, thoroughly “reasonable,” and which is therefore complete, not leaving ultimate questions aside, but grappling with them, and answering them.

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The Pope gave three European theologians the Ratzinger Prize for their excellence in theological studies: Manlio Simonetti, an 85-year-old Italian professor and expert in ancient Christian studies and patristic biblical interpretation; Father Olegario Gonzalez de Cardedal, a 76-year-old Spanish priest and professor of dogmatic and fundamental theology; and Cistercian Father Maximilian Heim, a 50-year-old German theologian and abbot of the Heiligenkreuz monastery in Austria.

During the ceremony, the Pope greeted each of the prize recipients, handing them each a large award certificate and a small envelope.

The prizes included a check for $87,000.

The Ratzinger Prize will be awarded each year in sacred Scripture, patristics and fundamental theology.

This was the first time the prizes were awarded since the establishment last year of the Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) Vatican Foundation, which promotes theological studies on the pope’s writings and to reward promising scholars.

In remarks at the award ceremony, Fr. Heim spoke of the peculiar freedom of the theologian, saying, “As theologians we are free to seek truth in a fearless manner.”

“[I]t is not the theologian who forms truth,” he said, “truth forms the theologian.”

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Remarks of Abbot Heim, OCist, On Ratzinger Prize

Below is an English translation (with transcription of his Latin remarks) of Prof. Maximilian Heim’s speech on receiving the Ratzinger Prize.

Abbot Maximilian Heim’s Acceptance Speech for the Ratzinger-Prize

Held in Rome on June 30, 2011

The Theologian as cooperator veritatis

Sanctissime Pater!

Vobis – non meo tantum nomine, sed his quoque duobus theologis, qui una mecum praemii palmam tulerunt, annuentibus – tota mente ac animo sincero gratias ago maximas ac plurimas pro illo honore, quo commodule brabeo hoc theologico Ratzingeriano exornati sumus.Liceat mihi inter laureatos natu minimo et Vobis, Sanctissime Pater, pro benevolentia Vestra et Vobis, eminentissime domine, pro verbis honorificis prolatis necnon toti coetui festivo gratias referre.

Aperte mihi confitendum est me in conspectu illius stupendi operis theologici, quod ambo alii praemii consortes effecerunt, humilitate sincera esse locuturum.Illud, quod Vobis, Sanctissime Pater, carum est et grave, praeceptum Sancti patris Benedicti, qui in regulae libello admonuit, ut omnes ad consilium vocarentur, „quia saepe iuniori dominus revelat, quod melius est“, mihi solacio est et animum confirmat.

Sanctissime Pater, muneribus sive professoris theologiae sive episcopi sive supremi ecclesiae universalis pastoris – quod munus nunc exercetis – fungentes nos triumvirales brabeo Ratzingeriano, quod dicitur, quasi laureatos modo tam diverso quam singulari et commovistis et formastis et quodammodo cudistis.Mihi nunc propositum est iis, quae sequuntur, verbis animum in ea intendere, quae magistri theologiam profitentis sunt.

Christianity has a specifically “intellectual” accent. When Jesus sends the apostles as missionaries, he uses the phrase “euntes ergo docete omnes gentes.” The risen Lord sends us into the world in order to teach others: He seeks to be discovered – He seeks to be known and loved.

His strategy is by no means self-evident. We are surprised at being permitted to enter into an individual, even personal, relationship with God, who is truth. Yet despite the fact of that friendship, we must nonetheless often remind ourselves that our faith’s claim to truth cannot be relegated to the realm of subjective perception.

Holy Father, you are a teacher who forms his students, in some cases over the course of six decades. With an alert eye and a profound sense of the thought of our time, you perceive the the issues confronting us and resist the all too smooth solutions offered by passing intellectual trends. You yourself have been formed by the Church Fathers and the great scholastic thinkers, especially St. Augustine and St. Bonaventure, and contemporary theologians such as Gottlieb Söhngen.

Teachers such as Augustine and Bonaventure guide their student’s eye, but the actual instruction comes from the truth itself. Put allegorically: the teacher opens the window through which the truth’s light comes streaming in. He animates his students and urges them to carry on courageously. The truth reveals itself through the teacher’s service. Yet the actual teacher is truth, that is Christ himself. The student succeeds in glimpsing the same Lord upon whom the teacher’s sights are set. It is therefore the teacher’s responsibility to love truth, to seek it ever more deeply, and permit himself to be formed by it. A teacher must always remain a recipient.

A theological teacher is therefore one who seeks to bring his students to an encounter with God. Naturally, he seeks God’s proximity in his own work and that allows him to teach with joy, a joy nourished by his love for the people entrusted to his care. This joy and love, writes St. Augustine, give the teacher the strength to persevere in his vocation despite occasional disappointments from others or inner fatigue.

Teaching and proclaiming the truth combine love of God and neighbour, friendship with Christ and the imitation of Christ, contemplation and apostolic works. Teaching is twofold, as St. Thomas Aquinas notes: doceo aliquem aliquid. One must love God, about whom one is speaking, as well as the people to whom one is speaking.

The second great teacher who influenced you, Holy Father, especially in your approach to theology, is St. Bonaventure. His work presents us with a remarkable combination of scholarly method, spiritual ardor, a struggle for comprehension, and pastoral zeal. According to St. Bonaventure, the theologian has the marvellous yet demanding obligation to place his writing in the service of expressing the Word of God – thus committing him to objectivity, clarity, and beauty. You are an excellent example for us as a theological writer, Holy Father. Your texts continually attain linguistic clarity and rhetorical beauty, giving your readers and listeners a new appreciation of God and his Church. At the same time, as a theologian of the Church you are committed to protecting the “simple” faith of the little ones (cf. Mt 11:25) by withstanding fashionable trends in contemporary discourse with prophetic resistance.

St. Bonaventure defended the Church’s apostolic faith in his time. He did not see a conflict between the Church as an institution and the quest for sanctity. He fulfilled his duty to lead in the Church by being a theologian who “thinks and prays.” In his scholarly method, theological inquiry is understood as scientia secundum pietatem, “as a science devoted to the perfection of the entire human being in perception, will, and emotion.”

Academic theology should serve to strengthen others’ faith and deepen the happiness they experience in their relationship to God. Consequently, theological studies are a path to sanctity. It is a matter of lifting our hearts to God, the “sursum corda” imperative, the movement toward God. Therein lies a specific and perpetual duty.

Each one of us knows from experience that the doctoral advisor is an influential person for every young scholar. That is why the theologian and philosopher Gottlieb Söhngen must be mentioned here. His greatness lay in his vast range of inquiry, as Joseph Ratzinger said during the Requiem for his teacher. Söhngen’s life shows us that faith has nothing to fear from scientific inquiry, as long as the person seeking theological truth has radical faith. It must be a faith that has experienced God personally and is convinced that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. It must be a faith that was preceded by a decisive commitment to God.

This is where, in my opinion, we must grasp a truly great opportunity available to us now. As theologians we are free to seek truth in a fearless manner, since it is not the theologian who forms truth – truth forms the theologian.

We would not be able to inquire into the nature of truth if we had not already experienced it to some degree. It is this experience that allows us to have hope and pass our faith on to others.

The great theologians of Church History are indispensable companions along the way. Premiere among them are the Church Fathers and Doctors. The Fathers are “the true stars, shining from afar.” They stand immersed in Holy Scripture, close to Christ; they are the teachers of the Church united. Theologians should find solid grounding ad fontes, in their studies as well as in their teaching. We seek to be instructed by the saints, people who knew that is only God who matters, people who have understood traditions, people who are rooted in the Word of God.

This form of existential Theology is what we find in your work, Holy Father. For you, “theology and ecclesiastical life have joined together in a particularly strong manner.” You have attained what St. Thomas Aquinas put so concisely in his commentary on Ephesians: “The Apostle speaks of shepherds: Persons who carry responsibility for the Lord’s sheep; and he continues: and of teachers, in order to show that an essential part of the shepherd’s duty is to teach (proprium officium pastorum ecclesiae est docere) faith and morals.”

We seek to understand theology as Speaking of God, which comes from a vibrant encounter with Him, about whom we are privileged to speak – an encounter given to us in the Church as a gift. And we seek to understand theology as preaching that in turn leads to a personal encounter – in prayer.

As theologians, we want to be Cooperatores veritatis in union with you, humble yet confident open for scholarly debate with the “Universitas scientiarum” because we do not see an opposition between fides and ratio. Using reason, we seek God, who is truth, the foundation and fulfilment of human existence. Doing so “in concert with the tradition of Christian faith has been undisputed in the history of the University.”

In gratitude for this award and for your service to the Church and to the whole world, we pray that God may bless you copiously on your Diamond Jubilee as a priest. May the splendour of truth shine on: ad multos annos felixissimos!

The Shadow Over Europe

Reflections on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

Walking in Rome in recent days, I noticed on a newstand the cover of the Italian magazine Focus. It has a picture of a human face in two parts, half-normal and half-transformed into a futuristic being. The title says “Uomo 2.0” (Man Version 2.0) and the subtitle reads: “Siamo un’altra specie” (“We are a new species“).

Is the claim far-fetched? Perhaps.

But it represents a general sense in the world today that we are on the verge of epochal, unprecedented changes in human life.

Perhaps even changes in human beings themselves.

Now, as the Roman sun of early summer begins to beat down on this ancient city, on this holy feast day of the two patron saints of the Church of Rome, June 29, a period of frenetic activity in the Church is drawing to a close.

The Vatican has just launched a new and rather comprehensive web site (www.news.va), prepared under the close supervision of Archbishop Claudio Celli, head of the Vatican’s office of Social Communications (who seems poised to be promoted to a still more important post). The Pope himself launched the new site with a click from an iPad yesterday evening, the vigil of today’s feast day. Here is a link to an interesting video of the Pope launching the new web site:

Final preparations are right now underway to receive some 1 million young people in Madrid in August for World Youth Day.

But the main news, the essential news, is that the questions facing the Pope, the Church, and mankind are becoming ever more basic, ever more essential, as the elites of our world attempt to pilot humanity into a new age, free from the “shackles” of traditional values and beliefs.

The essential question is the question of man.

I repeat: the essential question of our time is the anthropological question, the question of man.

What is man? What is his nature, his meaning, his duty, his destiny?

Scripture tells us that man is a being mysteriously, almost paradoxically, endowed with a double nature: one physical, and so transient, doomed to the vicissitudes of change and then to pass away; and one spiritual, immortal, destined for eternity.

But the modern world has, for the most part, denied this definition or understanding of man.

The modern world has, for the most part, embraced a reductionist view of man, viewing man as a physical being only, moved by chemical reactions and hormonal drives, condemned by the haphazardness of an essentially meaningless universe to create himself and his own meaning according to his own desires, without any transcendent reference of any type, not to mention the reality signified by the word “God,” which only arouses polite snickers in elite circles.

Pope Benedict has often made this point — that our age suffers from the absence of God.

By why should this be a cause of suffering?

Isn’t the absence of God rather a cause for rejoicing, as there is no limit, no bound, no restraint, to human aspiration? Cannot men simply become God, or their own gods? Isn’t this an outsome devoutly to be wished, and pursued?

Strangely, the answer is no.

Because, oddly, it is of the essence of being a man, of being human, that man transcend himself. Unless man transcends himself, he is not man. This is the paradox at the heart of our being, the strangeness of our humanity.

Without God, without the transcendent, without the holy, man is bereft of what is of its essence beyond man, of the divine, of the “above,” of the sacred, of that which surpasses the purely digital, the purely numerical, and arrives at the personal, and so at the threshold of meaning — of what the Greeks, and Christians, refer to as “logos.”

If man is bereft of the “logos” — of meaning — he is bereft of Christ, because Christ, as St. John told us, was essentially the logos.

An “a-Christic” society (not anti-Christic, but simply a-Christic, uninterested in Christ, uninterested in meaning) is a logos-less society — a meaning-less society.

But it is meaning that man most craves, not pleasure, not wealth, not power, not sex, not procreation… Meaning.

We were made essentially for meaning, for a personal meaning, to have a name, to be named, and to name, and, in the process, of being persons with names, persons able to love, and to sacrifice.

All the problems humans face, whether in law, or in science, or in economics — and I refer obliquely to the recent vote in favor of homosexual marriage in New York, and to the Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan, and to the riots today in debt-suffocated Greece — are only able to be truly analyzed and solved with logos, with reason, with meaning — true meaning, not superficial meaning.

This is the reason why Christians, why John Paul II in his time and Benedict now, are crying out to the world: “Return to meaning, return to reason, return to true science — return, yes, to Christ, the true man, who is logos incarnate,” in order to avoid tragedy, cruelty, bloodshed, and the hopelessness of life without logos, without meaning.

This is the “new evangelization” the Pope is calling for, in our troubled “modern” age.

This is the new witness he is calling on Christians to make in the face of a world anxious to create a “new species” out of the human genetic material… in the face of a world wishing to redefine men and women as ultimately interchangeable and indistiguishable… in the face of a world which claims to have science, but which is marred by a massive and devastating ignorance of the true processes of genetics and of life.

The end of man is to become eternally blessed, inwardly transformed into the image and likeness of God, filled with the Spirit of God, and this end is far more desirable than to live 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 years, even if the years are dense with sybaritic pleasures, on this revolving asteroid we call earth.

We must return to the logos, to reason, to meaning — to Christ. In this will be our happiness, and fulfillment. Every other path leads to frustration and death.

This is the message Benedict is preaching as he gracefully ages and approaches the end of his human journey. We should listen attentively to him as he preaches these things daily, with eloquence and power.

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Benedict’s Homily Today

The following is the text of Pope Benedict’s homily at the Mass for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul today. He spearks very familiarly and eloquently of what it meant to him to become a priest 60 years ago today — of the “meaning” of his priesthood — the “logos” of his priesthood. In his remarks, he touches on some of the points mentioned above: on the fact that human beings have names, that they are persons, that they are in relationships, that they are not just digital machines making very rapid calculations, but living souls.

The Priest, called to be a Friend of Christ

“Non iam dicam servos, sed amicos” — “I no longer call you servants, but friends” (cf. Jn 15:15).

By Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Rome, June 29, 2011

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Non iam dicam servos, sed amicos” — “I no longer call you servants, but friends” (cf. Jn 15:15).

Sixty years on from the day of my priestly ordination, I hear once again deep within me these words of Jesus that were addressed to us new priests at the end of the ordination ceremony by the Archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber, in his slightly frail yet firm voice. According to the liturgical practice of that time, these words conferred on the newly-ordained priests the authority to forgive sins. “No longer servants, but friends”: at that moment I knew deep down that these words were no mere formality, nor were they simply a quotation from Scripture.

I knew that, at that moment, the Lord himself was speaking to me in a very personal way.

In baptism and confirmation he had already drawn us close to him, he had already received us into God’s family.

But what was taking place now was something greater still. He calls me his friend.

He welcomes me into the circle of those he had spoken to in the Upper Room, into the circle of those whom he knows in a very special way, and who thereby come to know him in a very special way.

He grants me the almost frightening faculty to do what only he, the Son of God, can legitimately say and do: I forgive you your sins.

He wants me – with his authority – to be able to speak, in his name (“I” forgive), words that are not merely words, but an action, changing something at the deepest level of being. I know that behind these words lies his suffering for us and on account of us.

I know that forgiveness comes at a price: in his Passion he went deep down into the sordid darkness of our sins. He went down into the night of our guilt, for only thus can it be transformed. And by giving me authority to forgive sins, he lets me look down into the abyss of man, into the immensity of his suffering for us men, and this enables me to sense the immensity of his love.

He confides in me: “No longer servants, but friends”.

He entrusts to me the words of consecration in the Eucharist. He trusts me to proclaim his word, to explain it aright and to bring it to the people of today.

He entrusts himself to me. “You are no longer servants, but friends”: these words bring great inner joy, but at the same time, they are so awe-inspiring that one can feel daunted as the decades go by amid so many experiences of one’s own frailty and his inexhaustible goodness.

“No longer servants, but friends”: this saying contains within itself the entire programme of a priestly life.

What is friendship? Idem velle, idem nolle – wanting the same things, rejecting the same things: this was how it was expressed in antiquity. Friendship is a communion of thinking and willing. The Lord says the same thing to us most insistently: “I know my own and my own know me” (Jn 10:14). The Shepherd calls his own by name (cf. Jn 10:3).

He knows me by name.

I am not just some nameless being in the infinity of the universe.

He knows me personally.

Do I know him?

The friendship that he bestows upon me can only mean that I too try to know him better; that in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in prayer, in the communion of saints, in the people who come to me, sent by him, I try to come to know the Lord himself more and more.

Friendship is not just about knowing someone, it is above all a communion of the will.

It means that my will grows into ever greater conformity with his will. For his will is not something external and foreign to me, something to which I more or less willingly submit or else refuse to submit.

No, in friendship, my will grows together with his will, and his will becomes mine: this is how I become truly myself.

Over and above communion of thinking and willing, the Lord mentions a third, new element: he gives his life for us (cf. Jn 15:13; 10:15).

Lord, help me to come to know you more and more. Help me to be ever more at one with your will. Help me to live my life not for myself, but in union with you to live it for others. Help me to become ever more your friend.

Jesus’ words on friendship should be seen in the context of the discourse on the vine. The Lord associates the image of the vine with a commission to the disciples: “I appointed you that you should go out and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide” (Jn 15:16).

The first commission to the disciples, to his friends, is that of setting out – appointed to go out -, stepping outside oneself and towards others. Here we hear an echo of the words of the risen Lord to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations …” (cf. Mt 28:19f.)

The Lord challenges us to move beyond the boundaries of our own world and to bring the Gospel to the world of others, so that it pervades everything and hence the world is opened up for God’s kingdom.

We are reminded that even God stepped outside himself, he set his glory aside in order to seek us, in order to bring us his light and his love. We want to follow the God who sets out in this way, we want to move beyond the inertia of self-centredness, so that he himself can enter our world.

After the reference to setting out, Jesus continues: bear fruit, fruit that abides.

What fruit does he expect from us?

What is this fruit that abides?

Now, the fruit of the vine is the grape, and it is from the grape that wine is made. Let us reflect for a moment on this image.

For good grapes to ripen, sun is needed, but so too is rain, by day and by night.

For noble wine to mature, the grapes need to be pressed, patience is needed while the juice ferments, watchful care is needed to assist the processes of maturation.

Noble wine is marked not only by sweetness, but by rich and subtle flavours, the manifold aroma that develops during the processes of maturation and fermentation.

Is this not already an image of human life, and especially of our lives as priests?

We need both sun and rain, festivity and adversity, times of purification and testing, as well as times of joyful journeying with the Gospel. In hindsight we can thank God for both: for the challenges and the joys, for the dark times and the glad times. In both, we can recognize the constant presence of his love, which unfailingly supports and sustains us.

Yet now we must ask: what sort of fruit does the Lord expect from us?

Wine is an image of love: this is the true fruit that abides, the fruit that God wants from us. But let us not forget that in the Old Testament the wine expected from noble grapes is above all an image of justice, which arises from a life lived in accordance with God’s law. And this is not to be dismissed as an Old Testament view that has been surpassed – no, it still remains true.

The true content of the Law, its summa, is love for God and for one’s neighbour.

But this twofold love is not simply saccharine. It bears within itself the precious cargo of patience, humility, and growth in the conforming of our will to God’s will, to the will of Jesus Christ, our friend.

Only in this way, as the whole of our being takes on the qualities of truth and righteousness, is love also true, only thus is it ripe fruit.

Its inner demand – faithfulness to Christ and to his Church – seeks a fulfilment that always includes suffering. This is the way that true joy grows. At a deep level, the essence of love, the essence of genuine fruit, coincides with the idea of setting out, going towards: it means self-abandonment, self-giving, it bears within itself the sign of the cross.

Gregory the Great once said in this regard: if you are striving for God, take care not to go to him by yourselves alone – a saying that we priests need to keep before us every day (H Ev 1:6:6 PL 76, 1097f.).

Dear friends, perhaps I have dwelt for too long on my inner recollections of sixty years of priestly ministry. Now it is time to turn our attention to the particular task that is to be performed today.

On the feast of Saints Peter and Paul my most cordial greeting goes first of all to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomaios I and to the Delegation he has sent, to whom I express sincere thanks for their most welcome visit on the happy occasion of this feast of the holy Apostles who are Rome’s patrons. I also greet the Cardinals, my brother bishops, the ambassadors and civil authorities as well as the priests, the confrères of my first Mass, religious and lay faithful. I thank all of you for your presence and your prayers.

The metropolitan archbishops appointed since the feast of Saints Peter and Paul last year are now going to receive the pallium. What does this mean?

It may remind us in the first instance of Christ’s easy yoke that is laid upon us (cf. Mt 11:29f.). Christ’s yoke is identical with his friendship. It is a yoke of friendship and therefore “a sweet yoke”, but as such it is also a demanding yoke, one that forms us. It is the yoke of his will, which is a will of truth and love. For us, then, it is first and foremost the yoke of leading others to friendship with Christ and being available to others, caring for them as shepherds.

This brings us to a further meaning of the pallium: it is woven from the wool of lambs blessed on the feast of Saint Agnes. Thus it reminds us of the Shepherd who himself became a lamb, out of love for us.

It reminds us of Christ, who set out through the mountains and the deserts, in which his lamb, humanity, had strayed. It reminds us of him who took the lamb – humanity – me – upon his shoulders, in order to carry me home. It thus reminds us that we too, as shepherds in his service, are to carry others with us, taking them as it were upon our shoulders and bringing them to Christ.

It reminds us that we are called to be shepherds of his flock, which always remains his and does not become ours.

Finally the pallium also means quite concretely the communion of the shepherds of the Church with Peter and with his successors – it means that we must be shepherds for unity and in unity, and that it is only in the unity represented by Peter that we truly lead people to Christ.

Sixty years of priestly ministry – dear friends, perhaps I have spoken for too long about this. But I felt prompted at this moment to look back upon the things that have left their mark on the last six decades.

I felt prompted to address to you, to all priests and bishops and to the faithful of the Church, a word of hope and encouragement; a word that has matured in long experience of how good the Lord is.

Above all, though, it is a time of thanksgiving: thanks to the Lord for the friendship that he has bestowed upon me and that he wishes to bestow upon us all. Thanks to the people who have formed and accompanied me.

And all this includes the prayer that the Lord will one day welcome us in his goodness and invite us to contemplate his joy. Amen.

Benedict XVI

Homily — Saints Peter and Paul

June 29, 2011

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What Pope Benedict Fears

In an article published on the internet in three parts beginning on May 21 and concluding on June 22, the writer Antonio Margheriti Mastino presents what he says are the words and thoughts of Spanish Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, currently the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship in the Vatican.

Among the many interesting statements made in this report, one stands out: the statement that Pope Benedict, who is known to regard Canizares with favor, told Canizares personally meeting that he (Benedict) has three great fears:

(1) The secularization within the Church;

(2) The peaceful invasion of Europe by Islam;

(3) The ever-greater control — and the next words are within quotation marks, meaning Margheriti Mastino is presenting these words as an exact quotation of what Cardinal Canizares said to him — “of freemasonry on the cultural level and of the centers of power of the European Union.”

Here is the passage in the original Italian:

Per la verità, qualcosa un pochetto inquietante sul papa, Canizares la diceva già un paio d’anni prima del suo “esilio” romano. Facendo intendere che ne avesse parlato direttamente con l’interessato. E il papa gli avrebbe confidato delle “tre cose” che temeva. La prima, la secolarizzazione interna della Chiesa. La seconda, l’invasione pacifica dell’Europa da parte dell’Islam. La terza, ed è la più inquietante, il controllo sempre più grande “della massoneria a livello culturare e dei centri di potere dell’Unione Europea”, a Bruxelles, dove crescono in modo esponenziale le lobby di provenienza massonica, organizzatissime, padrone ormai incontrastate della sua burocrazia legislativa, quasi tutta in mano ai loro uomini. Canizares, riferisce che il papa, proprio in questa attività lobbistica nel cuore d’Europa, vede la mano invisibile che ispira il movimento culturale che c’è nel Vecchio Continente, sempre più specializzato nella persecuzione “legalistica” del cattolicesimo. Tutte cose che il papa “teme”. E a giudicare dagli episodi dell’ultimo anno, non a torto.

Here is a link to the web page where this article may be found