I became informed of the death of Pope Benedict XVI early yesterday from our chaplain, Fr. David Skillman. Although expected due to the report of his declining health, my heart stirred with both sadness and joy, knowing that a beloved spiritual father to me has departed this earth into eternal union with the Trinity. He wrote extensively on joy, as Msgr. Joseph Murphy demonstrated in his book Christ Our Joy. I will always remember December 31st, 2022, as a day of great rejoicing; because on this day, Pope Emeritus Benedict, our beloved Holy Father, entered into the joy of his Master, the One whom he loved and desired to help others love more deeply. I owe so much to this man of prayer, charity, and scholarship; and I can easily say he is one of the greatest individuals in the history of the Church. His contributions are vast and extensive, including writings that we will be unpacking for many years, perhaps even centuries.
I first read a book by Joseph Ratzinger in my college days in 1999 entitled Many Religions, One Covenant. I was struck by the ease with which he wrote, but also the clarity and depth. His writing was intensely scriptural, and accessible, with a sensitivity to post- modern themes and issues. It is a rare achievement for a theologian to combine these qualities, but Ratzinger did just that. I knew that I had to read more from him. The document “Dominus Jesus”, authored by Ratzinger as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, followed for me in the year 2000, detailing the absolute uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the Church in salvation. At this time in college, I was searching for answers to the deepest questions about life, and was delving into theology and philosophy. Joseph Ratzinger, along with St. John Paul II, shed clear light for me on the Person of Jesus Christ, the primary importance of our intimacy with Him, and encountering Him in Holy Scripture and the Liturgy of the Church. He stated that, “we too can encounter Christ in reading Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ’s Heart and feel him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians.” (Benedict XVI, General Audience, 3 September 2008).
In 2000, his book The Spirit of the Liturgy was released. I distinctly remember seeing it at the Daughters of St. Paul bookstore, buying it, and devouring it. Along with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, The Spirit of the Liturgy, with Ratzinger’s characteristic emphasis on Scripture and the impact of divine worship on human life and all creation has been, and continues to be, intensely formative for me. Please read this book and interiorize it; it will change your life. Ratzinger/Benedict teaches us to orient ourselves to the Trinity, which has dramatic implications for our human relationships.
Memories of St. John Paul’s funeral are imbedded in my mind, with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger leading our prayer as a Church and then, in subsequent days, preaching what will be considered one of the greatest homilies in the history of the Church to the Cardinals before they entered the conclave to elect the new Bishop of Rome. To see him on the balcony after his election was an immense joy for me and a time to celebrate!
His first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), on the theological virtue of charity, inaugurated his pontificate with one of the themes central to his life — one that describes well my conversion in college:
“Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1).
The Jesus of Nazareth trilogy —published during his papacy, but not as an act of the official teaching of the Church —was his “personal search for the face of the Lord” and provided a profound correction to biblical scholars who attempt to divorce the “real Jesus” from the “Jesus of faith.” Any real scholarship will be done by first praying and studying the Face of Jesus; as Benedict said, “Knowing God, meeting him, deepening our knowledge of the features of his face is vital for our life so that he may enter into the profound dynamics of the human being.” (Benedict XVI, General Audience, 17 October 2012).
Later for me came his Introduction to Christianity, his explanation of the Creed, and his essay “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” which among many other things, made a deep contribution to our understanding of the Trinity and the identity of the human person.
Additionally, reading Ratzinger’s “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty” gave me a meditation on the importance of beauty in our spiritual lives and the life of the Church. His love for St. Augustine awoke in me the limitations of the Scholastic approach to theology, but also the critical importance of personalism in post-modern evangelization, which he shares with John Paul II. As he said, “Scholasticism has its greatness, but everything is very impersonal. You need some time to enter in and recognize the inner tension. With Augustine, however, the passionate, suffering, questioning man is always right there and you can identify with him.” (Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 61).
In recent years, my appreciation and love for Benedict has deepened primarily due to the work of my friend, Professor Tracey Rowland, who has written two books devoted to his thought entitled Ratzinger’s Faith and Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed. Tracey has helped me to go deeper into aspects of Benedict/Ratzinger’s works that I never considered but are vital for the post- modern times in which we are living. Like St. John Paul the Great, Benedict has much to say to us about God and the human person; and the Institute of Catholic Humanism was founded to unpack and make more well known the treasure trove that they have both given to us. Thank you, Tracey, for your friendship and inspiring us to continue to learn about our spiritual fathers.
This is one of the many things that Benedict taught us and the scholars with whom he is so familiar: there is no real separation between the Jesus of faith and the Jesus of historical scholarship, between the faith of the Church and the theology of the academy. He defended and deepened the defined teachings of the Church over and against dissenting theologians who sought to deconstruct the Catholic faith. They despised him, and yet he corrected them with the utmost charity. Where would we be today without Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI? There have been thousands of young Catholics in our generation who have loved him and looked to him to guide us through these turbulent times. What some in the Church have failed to understand, is that Joseph Ratzinger is not only a scholar of the first rank but, first and foremost a holy pastor who spoke clearly to us in the post-modern age, calling us to deeper conversion and putting us in communion with Jesus Christ. Whenever I read this man, I somehow touch, somehow encounter, Jesus Himself. To echo the sentiments after the death of John Paul II, I pray that Benedict XVI may soon be recognized as a saint and that we experience the graces of his intercession.
Thank you, Holy Father Benedict, for all that you have done for me, my family, and for all of us who lived from the 1980s to the present whom you have inspired to live the high calling of being a Christian. Know of our deep love and gratitude for you. May you rest in peace in the Holy Trinity, experiencing the fullness of joy and communio forever.