This text initially appeared on JoeHoft.com and was republished with permission.
Pope Benedict XVI handed one 12 months in the past in the present day. As we put together for 2024, we’re reminded of his teachings and religion that GOD IS PRESENT NOW.
Some sixty years in the past, Joseph Ratzinger foresaw the necessity for the Church to make an exodus to be able to meet the Lord. The theme of exodus was ever-present in his preaching. On December 31, because the Church marks the one-year anniversary of Benedict XVI setting out on pilgrimage from this life to the subsequent, his prophetic phrases provide inspiration and steering for our personal journey of religion at a second when it might really feel bewildering – to say the least – to be a Roman Catholic.
Preaching a sequence of Creation reflections to school college students within the Cathedral of Műnster in December 1964, the younger Father Ratzinger didn’t hesitate to problem them – and us – to grasp that the previous manner of doing issues now not works for the Church. The person Christian in addition to the Church as an entire, stated Ratzinger, can now not maintain themselves out to the world as having all of the solutions. There’s far an excessive amount of contradiction and heartache within the trendy world for anybody to faux that Christian religion can reply man’s deepest questions in a manner that simplistically “explains the whole lot.”
Relatively, Ratzinger stated, preaching amidst the literal rubble of the Third Reich, in the present day’s Christian, if she or he is sincere, realizes that the state of being unredeemed will not be merely one thing that existed in ages previous. Relatively, being unredeemed “is a truth in our personal lives and within the midst of the Church.” We stand like Job with quite a few questions and seemingly only a few solutions.
“It’s exactly to God that we will and should carry, in full honesty, the entire burden of our life . . . even when, like Job, we have now no reply to present about all of it, and the one factor left is to go away it to God himself to reply and to inform him how we’re standing right here in our darkness with no solutions.”
Confronted with this sense of getting no solutions, Ratzinger famous that the Christian in the present day faces a specific danger:
“We’re afraid that our religion won’t be able to face the complete, evident mild of the details.”
However a religion that wishes to place its head within the sand and ignore the issues that encompass us – each on the earth and within the Church – is definitely no religion in any respect, stated Ratzinger.
“A religion that won’t account for half of the details or much more is definitely, in essence, a type of refusal of religion.”
“In distinction,” Ratzinger proposed, “true believing means wanting the entire of actuality within the face, unafraid and with an open coronary heart, even when it goes in opposition to the image of religion that, for no matter purpose, we make for ourselves.”
Almost sixty years later, Joseph Ratzinger’s phrases communicate no much less powerfully and poignantly to the current state of affairs of the Church.
So many “progressive” Catholics want to assemble a church that’s divorced from God’s Phrase, from obedience to the Commandments. Progressives might by no means tolerate Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI’s insistence on the unchanging ethical legislation and the great thing about the perennial liturgy.
And but many “conventional” Catholics additionally discovered and nonetheless discover Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI exhausting to swallow, as a result of his management and imaginative and prescient didn’t sq. with the image of the Church that they’ve made for themselves: he refused to just accept the thought of a Church whose essence was the preservation of the established order. As a substitute, Ratzinger relentlessly known as the devoted to undertake a pilgrimage – an exodus – whose important prerequisite is a readiness to make ourselves uncomfortable to be able to go forth and meet the Lord.
Ratzinger continued his reflections with the scholars by pondering what the Creation of the Lord that we’re celebrating throughout these holy days of Christmas truly means:
“God can’t be discovered besides by going to fulfill him because the One who’s coming, who’s ready for us to make a begin and demanding that we accomplish that. We can’t discover God besides on this exodus, in going out from the coziness of our current state of affairs into what’s hidden: the brightness of God that’s coming.”
What difficult phrases these are for the Church at this second! There could be no complacent acceptance of coziness in how we reside our religion or in how we worship. Relatively, we should go forth – Ite, missa est – into the unknown. Understanding this thriller is an crucial activity for up to date believers as they wrestle with the chaos that, not less than outwardly, appears to have engulfed the Church.
Ratzinger proposed a mannequin for up to date religion: these impossible first believers, the shepherds of Bethlehem, who made an exodus of their very own, hastening to the manger to adore the New child Baby:
“God can’t be discovered – even within the Church – besides by our climbing the mountain and getting into the cloud of the incognito of God, who on this world is the Hidden One. The identical thriller was intimated to the shepherds at Bethlehem, who had been informed, “This will probably be an indication for you, one can find a child wrapped in swaddling garments and mendacity in a manger.” The shepherds should imagine within the presence of God on this hiddenness. Their “signal” calls for that they acknowledge that God is to not be discovered within the understandable techniques of this world however can solely be discovered at instances after we develop past them.”
What does this “rising past the techniques of this world” imply? Ratzinger gives us a lot to ponder. Maybe these phrases provide a key to understanding his mysterious and bewildering Declaratio of February 11, 2013, by which he appeared to resign the workplace of the papacy. This too was a second of exodus for Joseph Ratzinger, one that is still little understood by observers on each the fitting and the left, each inside and out of doors the Church.
On one other event, some 40 years later, Joseph Ratzinger, now the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI, once more gathered with younger college students to ponder the that means of the Christian religion in a world that is filled with contradictions. This time it was at Marienfeld outdoors Cologne, for the celebration of World Youth Day in August 2005. As soon as once more, he selected to discuss the theme of exodus and pilgrimage current within the Christmas thriller, this time specializing in the religion of the Magi as they fell down in worship earlier than the Christ Baby:
“Outwardly, their journey was now over. They’d reached their purpose. However at this level a brand new journey started for them, an inside pilgrimage which modified their complete lives. Their psychological image of the toddler King they had been anticipating to seek out will need to have been very totally different. The brand new King, to whom they now paid homage, was fairly not like what they had been anticipating. On this manner they needed to be taught that God will not be as we normally think about him to be. This was the place their inside journey started.”
Once more, how these phrases problem the Church at this second! So many people, if we’re sincere, have a really totally different psychological image of how the Church must be, each on the native and common ranges, and we frequently discover ourselves fairly annoyed with the Church as she truly is correct now. The Church will not be as we think about Her to be… and reward God for this truth! For Her current hiddenness calls us to an inside journey, to vary our serious about the Church, and this modification is exactly the place religion begins.
“They needed to change their concepts about energy, about God and about man, and in so doing, additionally they needed to change themselves. Now they had been capable of see that God’s energy will not be like that of the highly effective of this world. God’s methods will not be as we think about them or as we’d want them to be. God is totally different – that is what they now come to appreciate. And it implies that they themselves should now develop into totally different, they have to be taught God’s methods.”
All of us, regardless of the place we discover ourselves alongside the trail of religion on the final day of 2023, are known as to develop into totally different. Being conscious of this name is the start of an exodus, one which we’re every known as to make each individually and collectively.
Pope Benedict concluded his remarks at World Youth Day in Cologne by inviting believers to affix him on pilgrimage:
“Christ is current now as he was then in Bethlehem. He invitations us to that inside pilgrimage which known as adoration. Allow us to set off on this pilgrimage of the spirit and allow us to ask him to be our information. Amen.”
That is the exodus religion that’s important to being a Catholic Christian on the brink of 2024. That is the difficult name and legacy that has been left us by our Holy Father Benedict XVI. Could his phrases and his prayer proceed to information the Church as she makes her pilgrimage to the Father’s home. And will every of us be given by the Holy Spirit a share in Joseph Ratzinger’s exodus religion.
Have Religion, pricey pals, in 2024.