His last Lenten retreat as Pope:
'To believe is to touch God by the hand
in the darkness of the world'
Translated from
At 9:00 a.m. today, the Lenten spiritual exercises of the Roman Curia in the presence of the Holy Father came to an end at the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the Apostolic Residence, with the chanting of Lauds and the final meditation.
This year, the meditations were composed by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, on the theme, "Ars orandi. ars credendi: The face of God and the face of man in the prayers of the Psalms".
At the end of the final meditation, the Holy Father addressed the congregation:
Dear Brothers,
Dear friends:
At the end of this week which has been so spiritually rich, there is one word left to say: Thank you.
Thanks to you all for this praying community of listening, who have accompanied me this week.
Thanks above all to you, Eminence, for these beautiful 'walks' in the universe of faith, the universe of the Psalms.
We have been fascinated by the richness, the profundity, the Beauty of this universe of faith, and we are grateful that the Word of God has spoken to us once more in a new way and with new power.
'The art of believing as the art of praying' was the theme. It occurred to me that the medieval theologians translated the word 'logos' not only as 'verbum' but also as 'ars' - in which 'verbum' and 'ars' are interchangeable. [Art, in the general sense, means a way of doing things, to which the connotations of skill and beauty are added when the word is used in its usual sense.]
For the medieval theologians, it was only in both concepts that the entire significance of the word 'logos' could be shown.
Logos is not just mathematical reasoning - it has a heart, because Logos is also love. Truth is beautiful, truth and beauty go together - beauty is the seal of truth.
In addition, starting from the Psalms and our experience of everyday, you strongly underscored that the very beauty of the sixth day [when God created man] - expressed by the Creator has been perennially contradicted in this world by evil, by suffering, by corruption.
It is as if Evil were permanently intent on spoiling creation, to contradict God and to render his beauty and his truth unrecognizable.
In a world so marked by evil, Logos - which is eternal Beauty and eternal Ars - must seem to be like the caput cruentatum [from the first words of a medieval Latin hymn celebrating the wounds on the Body of Christ, "O Sacred Head, now wounded", later set to chorale music by Bach, 'O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden'] - the incarnate Son, the incarnate Logos, wounded with a crown of thorns.
But it is precisely in this suffering figure of the Son of God that we begin to see the most profound beauty of our Creator and Redeemer. And in the silence of the 'dark night' [a reference to St. John of the Cross's 'dark night of the soul'], that we are able still to listen to his Word.
To believe is nothing other than to touch the hand of God in the obscurity of the world, to listen to his Word in silence, and to see Love.
Eminence, thank you for everything. Let us take more 'walks' in this mysterious universe of faith so that we may be ever more capable of praying, of announcing, of being witnesses to the truth, which is beautiful, which is Love.
Finally, dear friends, I wish to thank you all, not only for this week, but for these eight years during which you have carried with me - with great competence, affection, love and faith - the weight of the Petrine ministry.
This gratitude will remain with me, and even as the 'exterior' and 'visible' communion, as Cardinal Ravasi described it, is coming to an end, the spiritual closeness will live on, a profound communion in prayer.
With this certainty, let us move forward, certain of God's victory, certain of the truth of beauty and of love.
Thank you to everyone.
And thank you, again and again and for always, beloved Benedict, for your ability to uplift the soul, and to cast such pearls of 'the true, the good and the beautiful' in a spontaneous way - truly ars in both senses of the word - that is in itself true, good and beautiful. After February 28, how can we not miss you and the 'exterior, visible communion' we have had with you these past eight years?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/02/2013 12:50]