BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

The strange power that ultimately wins
Translated from

February 5, 2012

We would like a divine omnipotence according to our own mental schemes and desires - a God who resolves problems, who intervenes with his power to keep us free of difficulties, who will extirpate all evil forces, who changes the course of events and cancels out suffering, ours and of those we love.

This is what Benedict XVI said in his catechesis last Wednesday, acknowledging the difficulty (now and for always) of believing in a God who, while being infinitely good and powerful, also allows a world that often appears chaotic. Moreover, we are faced with the bitter reality of everyday in which evil appears to be always winning.

A famous Spanish actor recently said that he did not believe in God, but if God does exist, then he would tell him that "forgiveness does not come from God". A rather tart badinage, not very original, but it illustrates very well what the Pope was reflecting on in his catechesis.

The surprise grows when we continue with the catechesis and hear Benedict XVI say that in fact, God, when he created free human beings, "renounced some of his power". The Pope is not a man who likes to embellish his words, but someone who prefers precision when he uses imagery to explain the truth about things.

It reminded me of an answer he gave to Peter Seewald in the book-length interview Salt of the Earth, when he commented on the betrayals of the faith committed by some ecclesiastics. "God took a big risk with us (humans)". That risk was the freedom he gave us, which is the biggest mystery in the universe.

We have been told this a thousand and one times but we go on without understanding it: The way God has chosen to save the world and mankind must go through the Garden of Olives and the Cross, not through the unsheathed sword of Peter or the legion of angels one would prefer to invoke.

Benedict XVI explains again: "God's omnipotence is not expressed in violence, it is not expressed in destroying every adverse power, as we would want him to, but it is expressed in love, in mercy, in forgiveness, in the acceptance of our freedom and his incessant call for us to convert our hearts".

Clearly, such a way seems too slow (for our demands), too risky (since it also depends on the sovereign freedom of other persons), and above all, too painful (just consider Jesus before Pilate!) [Why? That's not exactly the most unbearable part of the Passion!]

The Pope concludes his reflection with Jesus and his apparent weakness that led him to 'allow himself to be killed'. But Benedict XVI, the Pope of reason who eschews extraneous mysticisms, does not leave any loopholes in saying, "This is the power of God, and this power will triumph".

He picks up an idea dear to him that he has not failed to sow in his recent teachings: that of the mysterious power of the Risen Lord, a power that is "not a devouring destructive fire - it is a silent fire, a small flame of goodness, of goodness and truth that can transform and which give light and warmth".

Obviously, these are not words simply tossed off at random. They are words specific to Christianity, to the Incarnation, as it seeks a reasonable verification in present reality of what it preaches.

After all, the Pope is not postulating a kind of minimalism of the good nor a triple leap of faith that would leave to the distant future the revelation of a victory which now seems to us incomprehensible.

He is talking about a 'royal way' of bearing witness with flesh and blood that can disarm evil from within, generating a reality of goodness that is already present, that can be seen and touched, expressing a truth and an appeal capable of consolidating a change of heart (conversion) that reaches into the fabric of social life.

Benedict XVI describes a victory which cannot often be expressed in our parameters but which must resist - and does resist- comparison with our human demands.

Twenty centuries later, we can see (or continue to see) that the apparent powerlessness of Jesus was not such, and that his silent fire has forged a history that has demonstrated a surprising resistance to being extirpated by the various earthly powers that have succeeded each other.

"Even today, the Lord, in his humble way, is present - he gives life, he creates charisms of goodness and charity which illuminate the world, and constitute for us a guarantee of God's goodness. Yes, Christ lives, he is with us today... his goodness abides, And he is strong even in our day".

A good question for Christians today: Do we stay with the realism of the Pope or with the whitewash of the skeptics? We are called to make a choice every day.