BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

I thought it would be good to put together our beloved Pope's two most recent spiritual discourses - the lectio divina to the Rome seminarians on Friday and the Angelus mini-homily last Sunday - as the appropriate commencement of his Pontifical valedictory.

The 264th Successor reflects
on the faith of Simon Peter

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Eminence,
Dear brothers in the episcopate and in the priesthood,
Dear friends:

Every year, it is a great joy for me to be with you and to see so many young men who are preparing for the priesthood, who listen to the voice of the Lord, and wish to follow his voice and find the way to serve the Lord in our time.

We heard three verses from the First Letter of St. Peter (cfr 1,3-5). Before entering into this text, I think it is important to be attentive to the fact that it is Peter who speaks here.

The first two words of the letter are 'Petrus apostolus' (cfr v 1): he is speaking, and he is speaking to the Churches of Asia and is calling the faithful "chosen sojourners of the dispersion" (ibidem).

Let us reflect a bit on this. Peter is speaking, and he does so - as we hear at the end of the Letter - from Rome, which he calls 'Babylon' (cfr 5,13). Peter speaks: It is almost like a first encyclical, through which the first Apostle, Vicar of Christ, speaks to the Church in all ages.

Peter the apostle: He who speaks is someone who has found in Christ Jesus the Messiah of God, who spoke first among all in the name of the future Church: "You are Christ, Son of the living God" (cfr Mt 16,16) He who introduced us to this faith is speaking, the man to whom the Lord said: "I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven" (cfr Mt 16,19), to whom he entrusted his flock after the Resurrection,telling him three times, "Feed my sheep" (cfr Jn 21,15-17).

But this is also the man who fell, who denied Jesus, but had the grace to see the look of Jesus, and to be touched in his heart, and to find forgiveness and a renewal of his mission.

It is above all most important that this man, full of passion, of the desire for God, the desire for the kingdom of God, the desire for the Messiah - that this man found Jesus, the Lord and the Messiah, is also the man who sinned, who stumbled, but still remained under the Lord's eyes, and so, he is now responsible for the Church of God, he has been given the responsibility by Christ, he remains the bearer of his love.

It is Peter the Apostle who speaks, but exegetes would tell us: It is not possible that this letter could have been Peter's, because the Greek is so good that it cannot be the Greek of a fisherman from Galilee.

Not only is the language, the structure of the language, excellent, but even the thought is already quite mature, it already expressed concrete formulations in which the faith and the reflection of the Church are condensed.

And so they say, "It is a stage of development that cannot be that of Peter". How to answer this? There are two important positions to take: First, Peter himself - that is, the Letter - gives us a key, because at the end, it says, "I write you dia Silvano, through Silvanus".

This 'dia' can mean different things: It can mean that he, Silvanus, transports, transmits. It can mean that he helped in writing the letter. It can mean that he himself was the actual writer.

In any case, we can conclude that the letter itself tells us that Peter was not alone in writing this Letter, but that he was expressing the faith of a Church that had already set off on its journey of faith, a faith that was increasingly maturing.

He does not write it by himself, as an isolated individual - he writes with the help of the Church, of persons who were helping each other to deepen their knowledge of the faith and therefore entered the depth of his thought, of his rationality, of his profundity.

This is very important. Peter does not speak as an individual, he speaks ex persona Ecclesiae, he speaks as a man of the Church - certainly as an individual too, with his personal responsibility, but also as a person who speaks in the name of the Church. These are not just private thoughts, not like a 20th century genius who wished only to express his personal and original ideas, that no one could have said before him.

No. He does not speak as an individualistic genius, but he speaks within the communion of the Church. In the Apocalypse, in the initial vision of Christ, it says that the voice of Christ is the voice of all the waters in the world )cfr Ap 1.15).

This means to say that the voice of Christ reunites all the waters of the world. it carries all the living waters that give life to the world. This is the very grandeur of the Lord who carries in him all the rivers of the Old Testament, of the wisdom of peoples.

And what is said here about the Lord also goes, in another way, for the apostle, who does not intend to say a single word that is his alone, but truly carries in himself the waters of the faith, the waters of the whole Church, and therefore, of fertility, of fruitfulness - a personal testimony that opens to the Lord, that becomes open and wide. That is why this is important.

It also seems important that in the conclusion of this letter, Silvanus and Mark are named, two persons who also were among the friends of St. Paul. So through this conclusion, the worlds of St. Peter and St. Paul come together:

It is not a theology that is exclusively Petrine against a Pauline theology, but it is a theology of the Church, of the faith of the Church, in which there is diversity - certainly - of temperament, of thinking, of the style of speaking, between Peter and Paul. And it is good that there is such diversity, even today, of various charisms, of various temperaments, but nonetheless, not contradictory and which are united in the common faith.

I wish to say one more thing: St. Peter writes from Rome. It is important, Here we have the Bishop of Rome, we have the start of the succession, we have the start of the primacy concretely situated in Rome, not just sent from the Lord, but also situated here in this city, in what was the capital of the world.

How did Peter come to Rome? This is a serious question. The Acts of the Apostles tell us that after his escape from the prison of Herod, he went to 'another place' (cfr 12,17) - eis eteron topon - and we are not told which place. Some have said Antioch, some say Rome.

In any case, in this chapter, it is also said that before escaping, he entrusted the Judeo-Christian Church, the Church of Jerusalem, to James, but entrusting it to James, he nonetheless remained Primate of the universal Church, of the Church of the pagans, but also of the Judeo-Christian Church.

Thus we see that in Rome, we find both parts of the Church - the Judeo-Christian, and the pagan-Christian, united, an expression of the universal Church. And here in Rome, he found a large Judeo-Christian community.

Liturgists tell us that in the Roman canon, there is a trace of typically Judeo-Christian language. We see that here in Rome, where both parts of the Church were found, united, an expression of the universal Church.

For Peter, certainly, the passage from Jerusalem to Rome was the passage to the universality of the Church, to the Church of the pagans and of all times, and to the Church of the Jews, as well. I think that, going to Rome, St. Peter was not thinking only of this passage - Jerusalem/Rome, Judeo-Christian Church/universal Church.

That of course, he also recalled the last words that Jesus addressed to him, reported by St. John: "When you grow old... you will go where you do not want to go... someone else will dress you... will extend your hands" (cfr Jn 21,18).

It is a prophecy of the crucifixion. Philologists show us that this is a precise expression, a technical term, 'to extend the hands' for the crucifixion.

St. Peter knew that his end would be martyrdom, it would be the Cross. And thus, he would be completely following Christ. So going to Rome certainly meant going to martyrdom - in Babylon, martyrdom awaited him.

Thus, the primacy has this content of universality but also of martyrology. Going to Rome, Peter accepts anew the word of the Lord - go towards the Cross - and invites us, too, to accept the martyrological aspect of Christianity which ca have diverse forms.

The Cross too can have very diverse forms, but no one can be Christian without following the Cross, without accepting that martyrological moment.

After these words about the communicator, some words also about the persons to whom the letter was written. I have already said that Peter defines those whom he is writing to, as 'chosen sojourners of the dispersion' - eklektois parepidemois (cfr 1 Pt 1,1).

Once again we have this paradox of glory and Cross. chosen, but dispersed as strangers. 'Chosen' is Israel's title of glory: we are the chosen ones, God elected this small group of people not because we are great, it says in Deuteronomy, but because he loves us (cfr 7,7-8).

We are chosen: this is what St Peter transmits to all who are baptized, and the contents of the first chapters in his First Letter is that those who are baptized enter into the privileges of Israel - they are the new Israel.

'Chosen' - it is worth reflecting on this word. We are chosen. God has always known us, before we were even born, before we were conceived. God has wanted me to be Christian, to be Catholic, he was wanted me to be a priest.

God thought about me, he sought me out from among millions, from so many - he saw me and he chose me, not for my merits which I do not have, but out of his goodness. He wanted me to be the bearer of his choosing, which is also always mission, above all, mission - and responsibility for others.

'Chosen': We must be grateful and joyful for this fact. God thought of me, he chose me to be Catholic, as a bearer of his Gospel, as priest. I think it is worthwhile reflecting on this several times, and to enter once more into the fact of having been chosen - he chose me, he wanted me, and I am responding.

Perhaps today, we might be tempted to say - we do not want to be joyful for having been chosen, it would be triumphalism. But triumphalism would be thinking that God chose me because I am great - that would be mistaken triumphalism.

To be joyful because God has chosen me is not triumphalism, but gratitude, and I think we should re-learn this joy: God wished that I be born so, in a Catholic family, that has known Jesus from the start.

What a gift it is to be wanted by God, so that I have been able to know his face, I have come to know Jesus Christ, the human face of God, God's human history in the world.

To be joyful because he chose me to be Catholic, to be in his Church, in which subsistit Ecclesia unica, in which the only Church subsists. I must be joyful because God has given me this grace, this beauty of knowing the fullness of the truth of God, the joy of his love.

'Chosen' - a word of privilege and humility at the same time. But 'chosen', as I said, is accompanied by parapidemois - dispersed, strangers. As Christians, we are dispersed and we are strangers. We see that in the world today: Christians are the most persecuted group, because he do not conform, because Christianity is a stimulus, against the tendencies to selfishness, to materialism, all these things.

Of course, Christians are not just strangers. We are also a Christian nation. We are proud to have contributed to the formation of culture. There is a healthy patriotism, a healthy joy in belonging to a nation that has a great history of culture, of faith.

Nonetheless, as Christians, we are also always strangers - which was the destiny of Abraham described in the Letter to the Hebrews. As Christians, today we are always strangers. In the workplace, Christians are a minority - they find themselves in a situation of extraneousness: others wonder that today anyone could still believe and live as Christians do.

This is part of our life. It is a way of being with the crucified Christ. Being a stranger, not living according to how everyone else lives, but living - or at least seeking to live = according to his Word, very much different with respect to what everyone else says.

We may all say, "Everyone does this, why not me?" But no, not I, because I wish to live according to God. St. Augustine once said, "Christians do not have their roots below like trees, but they have their roots above, and they live in this gravitation, not in the natural downward gravitation".

Let us pray to the Lord that he may help us accept this mission of living in dispersion, as a minority, in a certain sense; of living like strangers but nonetheless responsible for others, and thus reinforcing goodness in this world.

So now we come to the three verses for today's reflection. I would like to underscore, and interpret a bit, as far as I can, three words: 'given new birth', 'inheritance', and the phrase 'safeguarded through the faith'.

Given new birth - anaghennesas, in the Greek text - means that to be a Christian is not just a decision of my will, an idea of mine: I see that it is a group that I like, so I make myself a member, because I share their objectives, etc.

No, to be a Christian is not to join a group to do something, it is not an act of my will alone, not primarily of my will, of my reason. It is an act of God. Rebirth does not concern only the sphere of the will, of thought, but the sphere of being.

I am reborn: this means that to become Christian is first of all passive. I cannot say, 'I make myself Christian', but I am caused to be reborn, I am remade by the Lord to the very depth of my being. And I enter into this process of rebirth - I allow myself to be transformed, renewed, regenerated.

I think this is very important. As a Christian, I am not simply carrying out an idea of mine that I share with some others, and when it no longer pleases me, then I can leave. No, it has to do with our deepest being. To be a Christian begins with an act of God, it is above all an act of God, through which I let myself be formed and transformed.

This is a matter for reflection, precisely in a year during which we are reflecting on the sacraments of Christian initiation, to meditate on this passive and active aspects of being regenerated, of living a completely a Christian life, allowing myself to be transformed by his Word, by the communion of the Church, by the life of the Church, through the signs that the Lord works in me, that he works for me and with me.

To be reborn, to be regenerated, also means that I thereby enter into a new family: God my Father, the Church my Mother, other Christians my brothers and sisters.

To be regenerated, to allow oneself to be regenerated,thus implies that we allow ourselves to be willingly inserted into this family, to live for God the Father and from God the Father, to live from communion with Christ his Son who regenerates me through his Resurrection, as the Letter says (cfr 1Pt 1,3).

To live in the Church, allowing myself to be formed by the Church in many senses, in many ways, and to be open to my brothers, recognizing others as truly my brothers who, like me, are generated, transformed, renewed, in which one bears responsibility for the other. In short, a responsibility of Baptism which is a lifelong process.

The second word: inheritance. It is a very important word in the Old Testament, which says that Abraham and his seed would inherit the earth. This has always been God's promise to his people: You will possess the earth, you will inherit the earth.

In the New Testament, this word becomes a word for us: we are the heirs, not of a specific nation, but of God's land, the future of God. Inheritance is a thing of the future, and so this word says above all that as Christians, we have a future: the future is ours, the future is God's.

And so, being Christians, we know that the future is ours, that the tree of the Church is not a dying tree but the tree that always grows anew.

We thus have a reason not to let ourselves be moved, as Pope John said, by the prophets of doom who say, "The Church may well be a tree that came from a mustard seed, that has grown in two millennia, but now, its time is past, now it is time for it to die". No, the Church always renews herself, she is always reborn. The future is ours.

Of course, there is false optimism and false pessimism. A false pessimism that says the time of Christianity is over. No! It starts anew. And false optimism is that which, after the Council, when convents closed, seminaries closed, said, "That's nothing, everything will be well". No! Not everything is going well.

There have been serious and dangerous stumbles, and we should acknowledge with a healthy realism that these things cannot be, that we must not be doing the wrong things. But also being sure at the same time, that if here and there, the Church dies somewhat because of the sins of men, because of their lack of faith, at the same time, she is reborn.

The future is truly God's - this is the great certainty of our life, the great and true optimism that we know. The Church is the tree of God which lives eternally and carrieseternity in her, and the true inheritance - eternal life.

Finally, 'safeguarded through the faith'. The text of the New Testament, of the Letter of St. Peter, uses a rare word, phrouroumenoi, which means 'watchmen', and the faith is like the 'watchman' who safeguards the integrity of my being, of my faith.

This word connotes above all the watchmen at the gates of a city, where they are stationed to safeguard the city so that it may not be invaded by the forces of destruction. In this way, the faith is the watchman of my being, of my life, of my inheritance.

We must be grateful for this vigilance of the faith that protects us, helps us, guides us, gives us security: God will not let me fall from his hands.

"Safeguarded by the faith" - that is how I will conclude. Speaking of the faith, I must always think of that sick Syro-Phoenician woman who, in the midst of a crowd, found her way to Jesus, touched him to be healed, and was healed.

The Lord asked, "Who touched me?" And they tell him: "But, Lord, everyone touches you, how can you ask, who touched me?" (cfr Mk 7,24-30). But the Lord knows.

There is a way of touching him that is superficial and external, which has really nothing to do with a true encounter with him. And there is a way of touching him profoundly. This woman touched him truly - not only with the hand but with her heart, and thus she received the healing power of Christ, by touching him truly from within, in faith.

And this is faith: to touch Christ with the hand of faith, with our heart, and thus enter into the power of his life, into the healing power of the Lord.

Let us pray to the Lord that we can always touch him in this way in order to be healed, made whole again. Let us pray that he will not allow us to fall down, that he holds us by the hand and thus safeguards us for true life. Thank you.

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Dear brothers and sisters:

In the liturgy today, the Gospel according to St. Luke presents the account of how the first disciples were called, with a version that is original compared to that of the other Synoptic evangelists, Matthew and Mark (cfr Mt 4,18-32; Mk 1,16-20).

In fact, it is preceded by Jesus preaching to the crowd and by a miraculous catch of fish achieved by the will of the Lord (Lk 5,1-6). As the crowd is gathering along the shore of Lake Gennesaret (Sea of Galilee) to listen to Jesus, he sees Simon who is disheartened because he had not caught any fish the whole night.

First, he asks if he can get into Simon's boat to preach to the people a little distance away from the shore. After his preaching, he tells Peter to go out into the deep with his companions and to cast their nets (cfr v 5). Simon obeys, and they catch an incredible number of fish.

In this way, the evangelist makes us see how the first disciples followed Jesus, trusting in him, in his Word, which is also accompanied by prodigious signs.

Let us note that before the sign [the miraculous catch], Simon addresses Jesus as 'Master' (v 5), whereas afterwards, he calls him 'Lord' (v 7). It is the pedagogy of God's call, who looks not so much at the quality of those he chooses but at their faith, such as that of Simon who says, "At your command, I will lower the nets" (v 6).

The imagery of fishing points to the mission of the Church. St. Augustine comments about this: "Twice the disciples set out to fish on the Lord's command: once before the Passion, and again, after the Resurrection. The whole Church is pictured in the two events: the Church as it is today, and as it will be after the resurrection of the dead. Today, it gathers together a multitude that is impossible to enumerate, including the good and the bad. After the resurrection of the dead, it will only have the good ones" (Discourse 248,1).

The experience of Peter, which is certainly unique, is also representative of the call to every apostle of the Gospel who must never be discouraged from announcing Christ to all men to the very ends of the world.

Nonetheless, today's text also makes us reflect on the call to priesthood and the consecrated life, It is the work of God. Man is not the author of his own vocation, but responds to the divine invitation.

Human weakness should not make us fear when God calls. We must trust in the power of his mercy which acts precisely on our poverty. We must confide ever more in the power of his mercy which transforms and renews.

Dear brothers and sisters, may this Word of God also revive in us and our Christian communities the courage, the confidence and the initiative to announce and bear witness to the Gospel.

Let not failures and difficulties lead to discouragement. It is for us to cast the nets with faith - the Lord will do the rest.

Let us trust also in the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Apostles. To the call of the Lord, she - well aware of her littleness - responded with total trust, "Here I am" (Behold your handmaid...)

With her maternal help, let us renew our readiness to follow Jesus, Master and Lord.

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Very apropos to the Petrine discourses above is the prompt commentary of Jose Luis Restan:

Benedict XVI's Pontificate:
Like lightning in a clear blue sky
Translated from

February 11, 2013

It turned out to be extremely simple to adhere to the words in the note signed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid, Antonio Rouco Varela, a few hours after Benedict XVI announced to the world his resignation from the Petrine ministry: "We are affected like orphans by a decision that fills us with sorrow, since we have felt ourselves made sure and illuminated by his very rich Magisterium and his paternal closeness".

It was more or less what I felt as I took the stairs at COPE [Spanish radio network for which Restan is an editor] to comment on the air about news that a priori was one I would never have wished to report. But nonetheless...

All it takes is a moment to listen and to look at him, to let the words of this Pope who is a musician as well as theologian, enter the mind and the heart, in order to realize the greatness of his service to the Church.

Last Friday, before 150 seminarians in Rome, his diocese, Benedict XVI bared his heart wide open. Perhaps he was leaving us a kind of testament, even if surely would not want it to be thought as such.

He spoke of Peter, the fisherman from Galilee, "that man full of passion, of desire for the Kingdom of God", that man who nevertheless had stumbled, had sinned, and despite all that, remained under the gaze of his Lord. Who made him the rock, the foundation for the edifice of the Church.

One is almost overcome by shivers to think that as he spoke, the man Joseph Ratzinger was fully aware that for the moment, he is Peter - Peter whom Jesus warned he that in his old age, would be led where he did not want to be.

And so the brilliant mind and thinking heart that the cardinals called to steer the Church less than eight years ago now heads towards the silence of a cloister to simply pray and meditate.

There is nothing more useful and practical that he can do for the Church - Mother and spouse - now that he feels his physical strength going and perhaps even the erosion of weariness on his spirit.

He knows only too well the crossroads at this historical moment, the keys to culture, the depth of the wounds to civilization in our time. A time that demands a vigor of body and spirit which he was not afraid to simply say that he feels losing day by day.

It is very possible that in this way Papa Ratzinger thought he would spare the Chuch the agony of an indefinite time during which he would find it difficult to keep up the impulse necessary for the renewal of the Church and the new evangelization, which have been his two great passions in these years.

He leaves us an immense legacy of acts and words, a teaching comparable to those of the great Fathers of the Church in the early centuries, a governance that has brought rigor and transparency to the structure of the Church, cleaning out inertias and bad practices that had been embedded for decades.

Above all, he leaves us his profound sympathy for the human heart, for its tortured search and for its inextinguishable potential for nobility.

He leaves us his smile of tenderness and understanding of evils that he has dissected with surgical precision, never forgetting that such shadows can never totally swallow the compass of the human heart that points towards the Infinite.

Last Friday night in Rome, he told us that we Christians are always, in a sense, like strangers in the world: because we do not conform to its ways, to the dominant culture today. And yet we know that the future belongs to God, and therefore to us. That the tree of the Church is not a dying tree, as the prophets of doom would have us believe - because the Church always renews herself, she is always reborn.

This, he said, was not the false optimism of those who say, "It's all right - things will turn out well". He knows too well the serious stumbles that afflict men and the things (too many, alas) that are not going well within the Church.

But looking into the eyes of future priests for the city of Peter and Paul, Benedict XVI reminded them that "if here and there the Church dies a little because of the sins of men, because of our lack of faith, she is always born again".

The future is really God's. How clear and conscious is this certainty in the heart of the Pope! That is why the Church will not die, because despite the failings of its members and the hostility of the world, she carries in her the seed of eternal life.

Cardinal Sodano said it best in his metaphor that the Pope's word had been like lightning from a clear blue sky.

The years of Benedict XVI's Pontificate have been that. And we have much to be thankful for.