Pope Benedict XVI: What It Means To Be Christian

[seakelp]

I picked up a copy of this little book by Pope Emeritus Benedict. They are translations of some sermons he gave in the 1960s to a Catholic school. I’d never read the Pope Emeritus’s work before, and I was frankly a bit surprised at the power and beauty of his writing. Most of the time, you hear that his writing is academic and stuffy, too abstract and theological to be of much interest to the common man.

But these sermons profoundly touched me. I wanted to share this particular passage, which I thought was an extremely courageous thing to say:

It has been asserted that our century is characterized by an entirely new phenomenon: the appearance of people incapable of relating to God. As a result of spiritual and social developments, it is said, we have reached the stage where a kind of person has developed in whom there is no longer any starting point for the knowledge of God. Whether that be true or not, we would have to admit that our distance from God—the obscurity and the dubiousness surrounding him today—is greater than ever before; indeed, that even we who are trying to be believers often feel as if the reality of God is being withdrawn from between our hands. Do we not ourselves often begin to ask where he is amid all the silence of this world? Do we not ourselves often have the feeling that, at the end of all our thinking, we have only words in our grasp, while the reality of God is farther away than ever before?

And that takes us to a further step. I believe the real temptation for someone who is a Christian, as we experience it today, does not just consist in the theoretical question of whether God exists; or even the question of whether he is three or one; or even the question of whether Christ is God and man in one person. What really torments us today, what bothers us much more is the inefficacy of Christianity: after two thousand years of Christian history, we can see nothing that might be a new reality in the world; rather, we find it sunk in the same old horrors, the same despair, and the same hopes as ever. And in our own lives, too, we inevitably experience time and again how Christian reality is powerless against all the other forces that influence us and make demands on us. And if, after all our labor and efforts to live on the basis of what is Christian, we draw up the final balance sheet, then often enough the feeling comes over us that the reality has been taken away from us, dissolved, and all that remains in the end is just an appeal to the feeble light of our goodwill. And then in moments of discouragement like that, when we look back on the path we have traveled, the question forces its way into our minds: What is all this array of dogma and worship and Church, if at the end of it all we are still thrown back onto our own poor resources? That in turn brings us back again, in the end, to the question about the gospel of the Lord: What did he actually proclaim and bring among men?

 

[Auntie_A]

I picked up a copy of this little book by Pope Emeritus Benedict. They are translations of some sermons he gave in the 1960s to a Catholic school. I’d never read the Pope Emeritus’s work before, and I was frankly a bit surprised at the power and beauty of his writing. Most of the time, you hear that his writing is academic and stuffy, too abstract and theological to be of much interest to the common man.

But these sermons profoundly touched me. I wanted to share this particular passage, which I thought was an extremely courageous thing to say:

Very provocative. It’s always good to read a pope’s other writings. Some are written in an academic form for academia while some are spoken homilies for all to understand.

 

[seakelp]

Very provocative. It’s always good to read a pope’s other writings. Some are written in an academic form for academia while some are spoken homilies for all to understand.

Agreed! I think the Pope Emeritus here is really trying to show us what the core of faith is, but just what we think it might or ought to be. There are other passages (I won’t quote them at length, here, unless someone requests for me to do so) where he talks about the idea of salvation and Christianity.

What is so interesting is that, contrary to what I had previous through of him, the Pope Emeritus is very modern. That is to say, he is very concerned about the Church’s role in the modern world, and the issues he talks about are very unique to the circumstances and times we find ourselves in.

I’d never been so moved before. It was just a really powerful thing for me to know that this man, who was chosen by God to lead the Church, at one point felt and observed and addressed some of the very issues I thought were sort of personal to me. It’s very compelling!

 

[Auntie_A]

Now that is one of the great joys of reading!

 

[fred_conty]

I picked up a copy of this little book by Pope Emeritus Benedict. They are translations of some sermons he gave in the 1960s to a Catholic school. I’d never read the Pope Emeritus’s work before, and I was frankly a bit surprised at the power and beauty of his writing. Most of the time, you hear that his writing is academic and stuffy, too abstract and theological to be of much interest to the common man.

But these sermons profoundly touched me. I wanted to share this particular passage, which I thought was an extremely courageous thing to say:

Yes, he expresses what the apostles felt when they were with Jesus, uncertainty of our walk with him and sometimes just where Jesus is in all of this. The confusion we live in and how to sort it out.

May God bless and keep you. May God’s face shine on you. May God be kind to you and give you peace.

 

[Noli_novitius]

Thank you. Just bought it used. EXACTLY the kind of thing I was looking for.

 

[Eruvande]

I’m appreciating him more and more. I have a book on the Sacred Heart of Jesus that quotes him extensively, and it’s very compelling.

 

[seakelp]

Thank you. Just bought it used. EXACTLY the kind of thing I was looking for.

Awesome! Glad to hear it!

 

[Contra_Mundum_1]

What is so interesting is that, contrary to what I had previous through of him, the Pope Emeritus is very modern. That is to say, he is very concerned about the Church’s role in the modern world, and the issues he talks about are very unique to the circumstances and times we find ourselves in.

His writing is wonderful, I’m a huge fan. I have never read anything that has touched me both spiritually and intellectually like his work has. I used to be extremely prejudiced against him, reading all the rubbish in the secular media, but then it took me very little to realise what an amazing man he is when I actually listened to him and read some of his work.

I would love to read the passages about salvation and Christianity. Please post them if you don’t mind. (What is the book called by the way?)