Dear Pope Francis, you are the Pope, our Pope, the Pope of all Catholics, and I love you for that. I wish you the best because the Church of Christ deserves only the best. But please understand why some of us continue to be devoted to Benedict XVI, especially now that he is no longer Pope.
Because we came to love him with a passionate personal connection that was not really our choice - it just materialized instantly and totally. One did not question it and joyfully accepted it, reveled in it, in fact, because it has brought nothing but good things to our lives.
For some, the initial phenomenon happened when he delivered the homily at John Paul's funeral, for others like me, when he first came to the loggia of St. Peter's on April 19, 2005. In the same way I am sure many of your own passionate devotees were initially struck by and drawn to you, and many others by John Paul II, John Paul I, and the other Popes of the media age in their time...
Our love and personal involvement with Benedict XVI simply expanded almost infinitely the more we got to know about him and know him through his Pontificate and his writings. How infinite I did not realize until he announced he was giving up the papacy in an unprecedented act that was nonetheless consistent with everything he is. To give way to someone with the physical strength he no longer has to lead the Church in these challenging times. And the someone turned out to be you, who have been blessed by God to be the new Vicar of Christ on earth and who now commands the allegiance and affection of all Catholics.
But precisely because love is infinite, speaking for myself, my love and devotion for Benedict XVI can co-exist with the filial love that I owe you as Pope, without, for now, the personal connection I felt with your two predecessors. The same filial love nonetheless that I had for the other Popes in my lifetime from Pius XII onwards.
I believe that is the spirit in which William Oddie wrote that courageous but all-too-real item entitled "I knew I was going to have trouble with two Popes..." for the UK Catholic Herald on April 11. And the spirit in which one of his followers, 'paulpriest' immediately posted the following comment, which further expresses oh-so-poignantly the personal connection we have with Benedict XVI...
Aqua actually called my attention right away to paulpriest's comment, and I simply failed to post it. But today, feeling so bereft because of the blatant lack of interest in the Anglophone media and blogosphere for Benedict XVI's double jubilee in April, I immediately thought about it as the right balm for my spirit at this time - like all the comments posted by the followers of Father Z to his reminder of the April 19 anniversary
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2013/04/8th-anniversary-of-the-election-of-benedict-xvi/
and the 160 pages of online greetings to Benedict XVI in Avvenire...
God's will be done!
But still...
Reply by paulpriest
to William Oddie's
'...When I pray for the Holy Father,
it's still Benedict XVI I think of'
April 11, 2013
He's like the king over the water...
Like Aslan...
There wasn't a word he said which didn't force us to think and compel us to act...never one utterance was superfluous - not once did he not instill, reassure or revitalize.
His insight and wisdom were otherworldly but fewer understood the world more...
He understood...GOD!! He Understood!!!
He didn't need to 'do' anything...he just was!
Love flowed...
There was pain, sorrow, regret and the overbearing almost unedurable weight of the cross was always there behind the eyes...
But he smiled...and everything became so much more real...
In 'Jesus of Nazareth' you felt you were there, hearing, touching, smelling...
In Spe Salvi it was like he was uttering words which were carved on our hearts
In Caritas in Veritate it was like we were listening to him both addressing the whole world from the highest mountain while simultaneously whispering confidentially just to you across the flames of an intimate campfire.
He gave...constantly.
His message was one of true joy...one that echoed the Beatitudes exemplifying true, eternal unfaltering happiness which the world doesn't understand.
It didn't matter one iota if this man had been a great saint or sinner...he was there as our shepherd and we knew he was always ours..and we his..because in him we could see that it was all true..this little silver-haired german fox was whispering in our ear with a twinkle in his eyes..all your hopes are true..but we have a long, hard journey to make first..let me show you...
He'd been a hero - a paladin for Orthodoxy.
Yet who could deny he was as gentle as a grandfather who'd seen everything, understood everything and could forgive anything.
Yet at times he had that look of such childlike innocence where complexities, technicalities and vainglorious wordly exigents just vanished into that simplicity beyond complexity...hence he could say more in a sentence than other wise men have written in libraries and lifetimes...
To him everyone and everything was important and worthwhile and cherishable.
And he never needed to show it...
You just knew it!
There's the old saying that Bonaventure showed the truth of Love while Aquinas manifested the love of Truth.
But with Benedict it's like one is sitting next to him on a hillside overlooking a valley where all the goodness, truth and love of it all is expressed..and he puts his arm round your shoulder and points and says:
'Look at it all...beautiful isn't it! Thanks be to God!"
As for the present situation?
Don't want to think about it: Don't want to talk about it.
I'm still enraptured with the first page of the first chapter of the papacy of Benedict XVI...and I don't yet want to begin to contemplate this story having an end...
He's my Pope! I choke holding back the tears every time I say it out loud.
I don't understand what's happened except it feeeeelllsss soooooooo wrong!
God's will be done...
But I sometimes get the feeling the angels and saints are watching this from behind a window in Heaven and they're banging on the glass screaming, 'This isn't suposed to be happening! This isn't in the script! Somebody do something'...
Anyway, paulpriest, thank you for the way you articulated so well what most of us Benaddicts feel, even as we know and accept that, by his free and well-considered choice, Benedict is no longer the Pope.
Apropos, the sea change - even perhaps, a parallel universe - that has overtaken the overwhelming majority of the media, Catholic and secular regarding the Church, here is a brief comment from an Italian journalist who writes for Italy's first online news journal...
The Church has suddenly
become all holy and spotless -
What has happened?
by Gianni Toffali
Translated from
April 19, 2013
A new mystery has engulfed planet earth. Those who only last month looked at anything spiritual with suspicion, smugness and derision and/or who accused the Church of pedophilia, careerism, 'affarismo'
[Italian term for inappropriate involvement in business and financial affairs], power struggles and all the ills that supposedly led Benedict XVI to resign, appear to have been 'miraculously' submerged in a wave of general gullibility..
All those problems [seem to] have been forgotten, even annulled.
Tout court [the French expression is used), the Church has become all holy and spotless. Has reason been discarded or is this simply the effect of rockstar-like adulation?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/04/2013 19:44]