 14/04/2013 20:42 |
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Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Master | |
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I have been re-reading Peter Seewald's September 2005 biography of Joseph Ratzinger entitled BENEDICT XVI: AN INTIMATE PORTRAIT, by a man who has known him since 1992, when he was first assigned to write a profile on someone he had to research thoroughly through what the media had wirtten about him and from the testimony of his colleagues, friends and enemies. Eventually, he would come to produce two book-lenth interviews with Cardinal Ratzinger and the unprecedented sit-down interview with a Pope published in 2010 as LIGHT OF THE WORLD... In INTIMATE PORTRAIT, I keep being surprised by new details I had forgotten, so I thought I would quote some excerpts from time to time, in an opportune way. And I find that his very Preface is most opportune at this time, indeed almost prophetic, in his choice of what he emphaisized in the Preface, which corresponds to the very themes evoked by the man who was elected to succeed Benedict XVI as Pope...
...I came to know Joseph Ratzinger as a great man for patience, as aspiritual master who can give answers. Here was someone who simply understood people, who had retained the liveliness of youth. Someone who did not burn out quickly but in some way remained whole - and most impressive in his attitude of humility, with which he makes small things in others seem great.
Joseph Ratzinger is a born teacher, but he did not want to become Pope. Even after the Conclave, on the loggia of St. Peter's, his face showed he traces of an inner struggle. And he probably felt like crying, so disturbingly moved was he by the condescension of the greta God who entrusted him, at the end of his lifepath, with the keys of the kingdom.
The man from bavaria - contary to all the projections dumped onto his shoulders - is a revolutionary of the Christian type. Seeking out what was lost and saving it is the constant element in his life.
An inconvenient man who cna seize on the spirit of the times, who warns people against the aberrations of modern life.
Anyone who really wants change, he cries out, needs a change in his consciousness and in his personal behavior - anything tlse is insufficient.
Now as Benedict XVI, the most powerful German at the beginning of the new millennium may offer a new opportunity for Europe, and especially, for his homeland.
Peter's Sucessor has given an exciting motto for this: That would mean something like a 'Benedictizing' [referring to St. Benedict] of the Catholic Church, a healthy revitalization of mercy, of the origin of the mystery.
This is an approach cased not on activism or consdierations of feasibility, but on faith. And the Pontifex in Rome could find himself helped not only by a reawakened longing for meaning and a new consciousness that truth is indispensable, but also by a new generation of young Christians whose desire is to live out their fiath in all its vitality and fullness once more, piously and without inhibitions. [We saw them in Cologne and Sydney and Madrid, and will see them in Rio... and very likely in our own parishes.]
"The Church is certainly not old and immobile", declared the new Pope enthusiastically [in his installation homily]. "No, she is young and alive".
It was also untrue, he said that young people are merely "materialistic and egotistic: young people want and end to be put to injustice. They want inequality to be overcome and for everyone to be given his share of the good things of the world. They want the oppressed to be given their freedom. They want great ness. They desire goodness. And that is why the young... are once again wide open for Christ".
And then he added, just like a rebel of earleir times, "Anyone who has come to Christ seeking what is comfortable has indeed come to the wrong address". And quite certainly, anyone who seeks that with Pope Benedict, too.
- Peter Seewald
Abbey of Benediktbeuern
September 2005
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