Six Questions For The Pope
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 7:30 AM
Each summer the Holy Father meets with priests wherever he’s vacationing and takes their questions. I love these sessions because the Holy Father gives his answers off-the-cuff and we get a sense of his personality and what’s really on his heart. Here’s this year’s edition, given at Bressanone on the feast of the Transfiguration. (If you want more of the flavor of the event, you can watch a little Italian tv footage here.) Each question is a blockbuster in a certain way, but I’ll highlight my favorite passages.
The first question comes from a seminarian recently returned from World Youth Day, who asks how to keep the flame of the Holy Spirit burning within now that he’s back to his routine. Benedict always has the most beautiful way of talking about prayer, and I love the way he discusses it here—not as something we fit into our day, but as the peg on which the rest of the day hangs. Pray first, and the rest unfolds:
learning to be at home in this environment, in the environment of the Word of God, is very important. In a certain sense, it introduces us to the breath of God. Then, naturally, this listening, this walking in the environment of the Word, must transform itself into a response, a response in prayer, in contact with Christ, above all, naturally, in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, in which he comes to meet us and to enters into us, almost melting with us. Also the Sacrament of Penance is important, which always purifies us, washes us of the darkness that daily life places in us.
In brief, it’s a question of life with Christ in the Holy Spirit, in the Word of God and in the communion of the church, in its common life. St. Augustine said: ‘If you want the Spirit of God, you must be in the Body of Christ.’ One finds the ambit of his Spirit in Christ’s mystical body. All this has to determine the unfolding of our day, the way in which it becomes a structured day, a day in which God always has access to us, in which contact with Christ is continually there, and in which precisely for this reason we continually receive the breath of the Holy Spirit. If we do this, we won’t be too lazy, undisciplined or indolent. Something will happen, our day will take on a certain form, our life will take a certain form in it, and a light will radiate out from us without our having to think about it too much, without adopting a way of acting that’s – to put it this way – ‘propagandistic.’ It will happen on its own, because it reflects our soul.
The next line should serve as a balm for all us anxious parents afraid of messing our kids up:
if we live with Christ, we’ll also do human things well. In fact, the faith does not carry only a supernatural aspect, it reconstructs the human person carrying us to our humanity, as the parallel between Genesis and John 20 demonstrates: it’s based precisely on the natural virtues – honesty, joy, openness to listen to one’s neighbor, the capacity to forgive, generosity, goodness, cordiality among persons.
Skipping over a wonderful reflection on beauty, we come to a question from a priest stricken with MS who asks for advice for elderly and ailing priests. This leads the Holy Father to reflect on the legacy of John Paul the Great, whose pontificate he divides into two periods:
In the first part, we saw him as a giant of the faith: with incredible courage, extraordinary strength, true joy of the faith and great lucidity, he carried the message of the Gosepl to the ends of the earth. He spoke with everyone, he opened new paths with the movements, with interreligious dialogue, with ecumenical meetings, with a deepened sense of listening to the Divine Word, with everything … with his love for the Sacred liturgy. In real sense, we can say, he brought down not the walls of Jericho, but the walls between two worlds, with the strength of his faith, and this witness remains unforgettable, a light also for this new millennium.
And then the second:
for me, the later years of his pontificate were not of lesser importance, because of this humble witness of his passion. The way he carried the Cross of the Lord before us and realized the word of the Lord: ‘Follow me, carrying with me, and following me, the Cross!’ I’m talking about his humility, the patience with which he accepted almost the destruction of his body, his growing incapacity to use words – he who was always the master of the word. In this way he visibly demonstrated to us, it seems to me, the deep truth that the Lord has redeemed us with his Cross, with the Passion as an extreme act of his love. He showed that suffering is not just a ‘not,’ something negative, the absence of something, but it’s a positive reality. Suffering accepted in the love of Christ, in the love of God and others, is a redemptive force, a force of love which is no less powerful than the great acts he committed in the first part of his pontificate. He taught us a new love for the suffering, and helped us understand what it means to say ‘we are saved in the Cross and by the Cross.’
We find these two aspects also in the life of the Lord. In the first part he teaches the joy of the Reign of God and carries his gifts to humanity. Then, in the second part, comes the immersion in the Passion up to his last cry upon the Cross. In precisely this way he taught us who God is, that God is love and that in identifying with our suffering as human beings he takes us in his hands and immerses us in his love. Only love offers this bath of redemption, purification and rebirth.
For this reason, it seems to me that all of us – and especially in a world that thrives on activism, youthfulness, being young, strong, and beautiful, always able to do great things – we have to learn the truth of a love that expresses itself in suffering, and thereby redeems the human person and unites us with God who is love.
Those words are beautiful, but I think I’m even more touched by the gratitude for people’s suffering that the pope next expresses, combined with a personal recollection.
I would like to thank all those who accept suffering, who suffer with the Lord, and I want to encourage all of us to have an open heart for the suffering, for the elderly, and to understand that their passion is a wellspring of renewal for humanity, creating love in us and uniting us with the Lord.
In the end, however, it is always difficult to suffer. I remember when Cardinal Mayer’s sister was very ill, and he said to her once when she was impatient: ‘But, look, you’re now with the Lord.’ She replied, ‘That’s easy for you to say, because you’re healthy, but I’m in the passion.’ It’s true, amid real passion it’s difficult to really unite oneself to the Lord and to remain in this disposition of union with the suffering Lord. Let us pray, therefore, for all the suffering and do whatever we can to help them. Let’s show our gratitude for their suffering and assist them as much as possible, with great respect for the value of human life, especially suffering life up to the end.
I always reflect when the Pope speaks how beautifully he himself embodies the things he teaches. Here’s possibly the most powerful intellect on the planet, yet he’s also full of humor, gentleness, gratitude and a sense of the way life is actually lived. He proves his own teaching: if we live in Christ, we will also do the human things well.
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