Some birthday/anniverary items from the Italian media...
The eloquent silence
of Benedict XVI
by Fabio Ciardi
Translated from
April 16, 2013
Today is the birthday of Joseph Ratzinger. For a day, the spotlights may turn back on for the emeritus Pope, but tomorrow they will be turned off again.
The spotlights are all fully turned on for Pope Francis, who is 76 years old, which is not too old for a Pope, and who appears youthful, dynamic and creative. He continues to be a daily topic for conversation. His books and books about him are selling very well, and his videoclips available on Youtube are very much watched.
Meanwhile, the ‘old Pope’ has entered into a media eclipse. Today, there may be a brief flicker of acknowledgment to mark his 86th birthday. But tomorrow, it will be silence again, even if not oblivion.
[It might as well be oblivion. Lack of precedent has apparently led even the Vatican communications machinery itself – but thankfully, not Pope Francis, whose generous attention and near-deference to his predecessor his minions have totally failed to emulate – to ignore common sense about how to treat a living former Pope decently.]
And it is precisely silence which characterizes this phase of Benedict XVI’s life. Not so much the silence about him, but his own silence. We know that he is at the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, but he no longer shows himself on the balcony and he is no longer heard on Wednesdays and on Sundays.
We know where he is but we do not know what he is doing.
[We do have a general idea – he prays, he meditates, he reads, he watches the news at night; perhaps he continues to write, to play the piano, to listen to music. It is a contemplative life in which, like all the contemplatives around the world, his only responsibility is to pray and meditate, for the good of the Church, the men and women who work in her service, and all the faithful.]
Since February 28, all we have seen is a photograph stolen by some ingenious cameraman and the brief video of his meeting with Pope Francis. Otherwise, nothing. He seems to have disappeared.
[Of course, we have also been notified of the telephone calls made to him by Pope Francis, for which we are all grateful, not just for the Pope’s thoughtfulness, but for the fact that, since they are legitimate events to report about the new Pope,the Vatican has necessarily informed us about these calls.]
The ‘old Pope’ no longer speaks. That is, he no longer speaks to us directly. He continues to speak, but his voice is addressed elsewhere, up high. He said about his renunciation, “The Lord calls me to ‘climb the mountain’, to dedicate myself even more to prayer and meditation”.
It is his new way of serving the Church, with the same dedication and love that he did as Pope, but “in a way more appropriate to my age and remaining strength”.
We do not see what he is doing, But we know what it is. He is following Jesus, who at night, would go up the mountain to pray. And what did Jesus tell the Father in those long and solitary conversations? We do not know.
But on the last night of his earthly life, he spoke to his Father aloud, allowing us to share that ‘conversation’. He prayed for his disciples, he prayed for all those whom the Father had entrusted to him, fore the future Christian community, for all mankind, that all may be one. Perhaps only in that moment, thanks to that prayer, his disciples first realized how much Jesus loved them.
If we could enter the chapel where Benedict XVI prays, we too would find someone like Jesus who continues to pray to the Father for us, and as disciples, we too would realize how much he loves us. Just as there is the Jesus who goes among the people, announces the Gospel and performs miracles, there is also the Jesus who raises his eyes to the Father and sustains the life and work of the Church.
In his silence, Benedict speaks to God, but he also speaks to us. In a new way compared to how he spoke to us in the past eight years. But how eloquent is his silence!
He tells us that without the presence of the Lord, our work could be all in vain; that without roots, a tree cannot grow; and that without the right foundation, a house can collapse.
He proclaims the fruitfulness of humility which, in tis Latin etymology, goes back to
humus, the word for the good earth, which is capable of bearing good fruit, that which it is supposed to give according to the seasons.
He reminds us that true power is in caring for others, in serving them.
And so Benedict XVI continues to do what he said he would when he first presented himself to the world as Pope on April 19, 2005, and called himself ‘a simple humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord’.
A cascade of wishes
for Benedict XVI on his birthday
The faithful embrace a hidden but ever-close presence
by Antonella Mariani
Translated from
April 18, 2013
Best wishes poured in for a beloved person who is unreachable yet somehow close. Someone we now do not see at all, but whose choice to retire in monastic seclusion we all respect.
“I wish you all the best in the world”.
“I miss you so much”.
“A huge embrace”.
“I wish to say something beautiful which will make you smile, but the best I can do is to say I love you”.
These are spontaneous greetings, as one makes to a beloved family member. Almost as though they were just waiting for the opportunity to express themselves – more than a thousand persons who in just a few hours posted their birthday greetings for Benedict XVI on the Avvenire site.
The top of Page 1 of some 160 pages of online pages in Avvenire containing greetings from the faithful to Benedict XVI on his double anniversary.
A response that was impetuous, as though they had just been waiting to break their silence, to bridge the distance, to renew their contact. “Wish you all the best”, someone wrote in English from Indonesia. Dozens of ‘Felicidades’ from Spain. Messages from Germany, the Philippines, Poland…
Benedict is in the heart of the Christian people. The sudden separation may have stunned many but it has not interrupted a relationship. It was the first opportunity to express themselves. As if their new affection for Pope Francis, the expectations that have been raised daily by his words, rest on their tender friendship and profound communion with his predecessor. As if, indeed, they were two beloved members of the family. As they really are.
Those who wrote Benedict XVI include persons who have experienced a close encounter with him, like a paraplegic Spanish woman who remembers meeting him when he consecrated the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Bercoleona in 2010.
There are those who carry him in their heart because of his teachings and writings. Like Sergio paronetti of Pax Christi, who is thankful to him for “educating us to love and joy, and in the idea of omnipotence that is unarmed and disarming”.
There are the simple folk who were moved by the courage of his unprecedented decision to renounce the Pontificate. “Thank you for teaching us that even great men like you can humble themselves”, wrote the family Innocenti from Buccinasco.
These birthday greetings seemed to embody what Benedict XVI had told the faithful at his last Angelus on February 24: “The Lord has called me to ‘climb the mountain; to dedicate myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean I am abandoning the Church. I will continue to serve the Church but in another way”. And he asked them to continue to feel his spiritual closeness.
Many posts grasped the evangelical dimension of the emeritus Pope’s new hermit-like life.
“We have the strong certainty that your life is a gift to the very end for our Church”, wrote Suor Teodora from Pietrarubia. A sentiment echoed by Giovanna who expresses the wish that “your prayers will bear even more fruit from all the good that you have previously instilled in us”.
It is as if Benedict XVI’s prayers complement the gestures of Pope Francis, in an unprecedented and extraordinary communion that involves the entire Church down to her littlest and humblest members.
“We miss you as father and teacher, as theologian and exegete,” writes Francesco from Acireale, “but we know that you are always close to us in the great communion of the Church”.
Short and simple messages that evoke the image of a People of God who wish the best for their pastors. And who in looking at them, rediscover the one authentic treasure of the faith: Christ.
Thanks to Benedict XVI,
nothing remains extraneous to me
by Roberto Fontolan
Translated from
April 19, 2013
It was genuine humility that Benedict XVI expressed at the start of his Pontificate with a phrase that seemed to me at the time to be too modest. ‘A worker in the vineyard of the Lord’? Of course, but…
Over time, I verified and understood. Papa Ratzinger has never once used words simply ‘in a manner of speaking’, he has never used words in place of others more precise, he never indulged in approximations nor confusion nor involution. A quality of speech that is almost supernatural. No one could express ideas as clear and precise and refined as he does.
With the light but sure hand of a great surgeon, he is able to penetrate every depth and difficulty, bringing light where there was darkness, and simplifying things where there seems to be a labyrinth.
The prodigious talents of the cardinal became his unmistakable trademark as Pastor of the universal Church. No thought was too elevated that he could not make accessible and intelligible. No topic was too embarrassing for him to restore to a disarmingly acceptable truth. No question posed to him failed to gain his consideration.
The grand design of God-Logos in his Regensburg lecture. The brilliant metaphor of the bunker during his first German trip. His cutting criticism of the evils within the Church (the ‘filth’ he evoked in the Good Friday meditations less than a month before he was elected Pope, to the zero tolerance he decreed towards priests who abused minors, and the lack of internal unity which he lamented to the very end of his Pontificate). His praise of ‘disquiet’ for God in his last Epiphany homily. His catecheses on Augustine and a marvelous catechesis on Creation. His identification with the mystery of suffering. His continual admonitions for man to ask himself about God and his own humanity. The extraordinary musical ‘reviews’ he gave at the end of concerts given in his honor...
Following him, I have progressed along a luminous straight path, setting my feet down on stones that have been dramatically smoothened, to find myself facing the goal – the spring of truth, the spectacle of the ocean – almost without effort.
Benedict XVI constructed his syntaxis with the millimetric detail of Caneletto and the gentle discretion of Vermeer – nothing is extraneous, and because of this, nothing has remained extraneous to me. Not even the humility of a Pope who after having worked so much and so hard, confesses that he can no longer do the task he was asked to do.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/04/2013 16:01]