The Pope Gets It
Darkness and light complement each other. Even a grape, in order to ripen, does not only need the sun but also the rain, not only the day but also the night.
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Monday, June 30, 2008 8:35 AM
Each summer the Holy Father meets with diocesan priests in the region where he vacations, and the Vatican publishes the Q&A sessions that result. In anticipation of this summer’s edition, here’s an excerpt from 2006, in which the Holy Father speaks of how to revive marriage as an institution. His full answer is marvelous, but I thought you’d appreciate this especially. The Pope describes an encounter he had with couples at a meeting in Valencia, and what he learned from the testimonies of some spouses who had been on the brink of divorce, but learned through the lean times to love each other anew.
From these testimonies we understood precisely that in crises, in bearing the moment in which it seems that no more can be borne, new doors and a new beauty of love truly open.
A beauty consisting of harmony alone is not true beauty. Something is missing, it becomes insufficient. True beauty also needs contrast. Darkness and light complement each other. Even a grape, in order to ripen, does not only need the sun but also the rain, not only the day but also the night.
We priests ourselves, both young and old, must learn the need for suffering and for crises. We must put up with and transcend this suffering. Only in this way is life enriched. I believe that the fact the Lord bears the stigmata for eternity has a symbolic value. As an expression of the atrocity of suffering and death, today the stigmata are seals of Christ’s victory, of the full beauty of his victory and his love for us. We must accept, both as priests and as married persons, the need to put up with the crises of otherness, of the other, the crisis in which it seems that it is no longer possible to stay together.
Husbands and wives must learn to move ahead together, also for love of the children, and thus be newly acquainted with one another, love one another anew with a love far deeper and far truer. So it is that on a long journey, with its suffering, love truly matures.
Isn’t that beautiful? And don’t let anyone tell you the Holy Father is just a celibate old man out of touch with what life is really like. He goes on in his answer to take married love as a model for priests:
It seems to me that we priests can also learn from married people precisely because of their suffering and sacrifices. We often think that celibacy on its own is a sacrifice. However, knowing the sacrifices married people make - let us think of their children, of the problems that arise, of the fears, suffering, illnesses, rebellion, and also of the problems of the early years when nights are almost always spent sleeplessly because of the crying of small children - we must learn our sacrifice from them, from their sacrifices. And at the same time we must learn that it is beautiful to mature through sacrifices and thus to work for the salvation of others.
See that? The Pope gets what we lay people go through.
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