BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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Mr. Mayor,
Dear Cardinal and Dear Archbishop,
Dear Auxiliary Bishop
Dear citizens of Freising,
Dear friends:

It is a moving moment for me to now be rightfully a Freisinger, and thus to belong in a far-ranging and profound manner to this city, of which I have always deeply felt part.

I can only say a heartfelt 'Vergelt's Gott' [the Bavarian 'Thank you' - literally, 'May God reward you!' ]. This is a joy that will henceforth be with me and stay with me.

In the biography of my life - the biography of my heart, I should say - the city of Freising has played a very important role. It is where I began the formation that has determined my life. That is why Freising is always within me, and I in Freising, wherever I am.

As you, Mr. Mayor, pointed out, that I have taken the Freising Moor and Bear into my coat of arms, shows the whole world how much I belong to Freising. That I am now also a citizen of Freising by law crowns this fact and fills my heart with joy.

This occasion awakens a whole panorama of memories in me. You have referred to some of them, dear Mr. Mayor. But I would like to bring up a couple of things.

First, there was the third of January 1946. After a long wait, the time had finally come for the Freising Seminary to open its doors to whose who had come home (from the war). Even if it was still a hospital for former prisoners of war, we could now begin our studies. It was a moment that was a turning point in our life - to finally be on the way to become what we were called for.

Seen from today, we lived a very old-fashioned and comfortless life. We lived together in dormitories, studied together in study halls, and all that [implying a communal life in which there was no individual privacy], but we were happy, not only because we had finally put behind us the menaces of war and Nazi dominion, but because we were free and above all, because we were finally on the way to achieving our vocation.

We knew that Christ is stronger than tyranny, that the power of the Nazi ideology and their mechanisms of oppression. We knew that time and the future belong to Jesus. And we knew that he had called us, that he needed us, that there was a need for us.

We knew that the men of those changed times awaited us, awaited priests who would bring a new impulse of faith in order to build a living house of God.

I must take the occasion to offer a little hymn of praise for the old Superior School to which I belonged first as a student and then as lecturer. There we had excellent scholars, even some with international renown, but the important thing, I thought, was that they were not just scholars but teachers, men who not only offered us the best fruits of their specialization, but for whom it was important to give the students the essential, the essential bread that they needed in order to feel the faith from within.

And it was important that we, if I must say so now, did not feel ourselves to be individual experts, but part of a whole - that each of us was working with all of theology; that with our work, the logic of the faith as a unity would become visible and would make it easier to proclaim the reason for our faith, as St. Peter said (1 Pt 3,15), to transmit it in a new time with its new challenges.

The second image that I hold on to is the day of my ordination as a priest. The Cathedral was always the center of our life - and we felt so much a family in the seminary, Father Hoeck had really made us into a family.

The Cathedral was the center and became so for all our life on that unforgettable day of our ordination. [Has anyone noted that everytime the Holy Father refers to the day of his ordination he calls it 'unforgettable' - an adjective he has never used to describe his election as Pope!]

Three moments are particularly impressed on my mind. First, was lying prostrate on the pavement while the Litany of All Saint was chanted. Lying there, one was conscious of one's total poverty and I had to asmy myself: Am I truly capable of all that this will entail?

But at the same time, one hears the names of saints throughout history and the invocation of the whole community of faithful saying "Hear us, help us!"

And with that, a growing awareness that "Yes, I am weak and inadequate, but I am not alone, there are others with me, the entire communion of saints is with me, they will accompany me, and so I can take this path and become a companion and guide for others".

The second was the laying of hands by the aged and venerable Cardinal Faulhaber - who laid his hand deeply and firmly on me, on all of us - and the awareness that in that gesture, the Lord himself was laying his hand on me, saying, "You belong to me, you are no longer your own, I want you to be in my service".

But there was also the knowledge that the laying of hands is a grace, that it not only meant conferring obligation, but above all, that it was a gift - that God is with me and that his love protects and guides me.

Then, the old rite, through which the power to confer the forgiveness of sins is transmitted in a separate ritual that began when the Bishop said the words of the Lord: "I no longer call you sevrants but friends".

And I knew, we knew, that it was not just a citation from John 15, that they were actual words that the Lord was saying to me. He was accepting me as a friend; I stood in his friendship now; he had gifted me with his trust, and in this friendship, I could work to make others friends of Christ.

The third aspect - which you also referred to, Mr. Mayor - is that I would now be able to spend the next three and a half unforgettable years with my parents in Lerchenfeldhof and so be home once again.

These last three and a half years of living with my parents was a great gift for me and truly made me feel that Freising was home.

I think of the celebrations we spent together on Christmas, Easter, Pentecost; how we would take walks in the fields, and go to the woods together to pick out a fir tree, and gather branches and moss for the Christmas creche, and wandering along the banks of the Isar. Thus was Freising really home for us and will remain home for me in my heart.

Today, beyond the gates of Freising is Munich airport. Whoever lands in Munich, or simply makes a stopover, will see the cathedral spires of Freising, can see the mons doctus ['learned hill'] and can perhaps sense something of its history and its present.

Freising has always looked out on the entire Alpine range. Through the airport it has also become, in a way, international, with a world outlook.

And yet I must say that the Cathedral with its spires indicates an altitude that is much higher and different from the altitude from which we descend when we get off at the airport - they point to the true heights, the altitude of God, from whom comes the love that gifts us with our true humanity.

The Cathedral points not only to the heights of God who shapes us and shows us the way. It also shows us the breadth of the Church - and not only because the Cathedral encloses centuries of faith and prayers, and the entire communion of saints, everything that we have believed, prayed for, suffered and rejoiced about.

It shows, above all, the great breadth of all the believers in all times, a breadth that goes beyond mere globalization, since the diversity, even the opposition, of cultures and origins, gives us inner unity, it gives us what unites us - the unifying power of being beloved by God. That is why Freising has been, for me, a trailblazer as well.

I wish in conclusion to thank you once more for this great honor that you have given me, including the brass band that has truly made Bavarian culture present here.

My wish - my prayer - is that the Lord will further bless this city. May Our Lady, Patroness of Freising Cathedral, protect her, so that Freising may continue to be, even in the future, a place for a human life of faith and joy. Many thanks.

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