A Seeking Rooted in Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI

In 1982, a professor of Biblical theology was rummaging through a bookstore, as professors like to do. He was drawn to two books both published by a company known for its Protestant authors. The professor had never heard of this German author and just assumed he was Lutheran or Reformed. But upon reading one book, which he devoured in an evening, and then the other, he was astounded by them. The author cut to the core of what it meant to be Christian. But he was also drawn to “the voice,” the voice of this German scholar was so clearly knowledgeable, Biblically astute, philosophically sound, but also pastoral as he connected truth to reality, here on earth, and not floating up there in the stratosphere of academic life.

After reading these books, the professor shared them with a friend who was likewise astonished by that voice and that vision. He said, “Don’t you think [the author] overturns the shallow individualism of modern theologians who confuse the God of faith with the God of philosophers? I mean, he shows how faith comes to us through the Church so believers share solidarity as members of God’s family through Christ’s divine sonship.” His friend agreed and also confessed that he had never heard of the German author. A few days later, that author was named the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and was featured in a Time Magazine article which one of the professors stumbled upon. The two professors were shocked, for they were both Protestant professors of theology. Not only was this author they had praised a Catholic, but he was in charge of the Inquisition!

But something had changed for that first professor, the one who first found and devoured those books. They caused him to have to rethink how he understood Catholic intellectual and pastoral life. That professor was Scott Hahn. And so began in part his journey to the Catholic faith into which he would lead so many behind him. 

What Scott Hahn saw in Ratzinger’s books, Introduction to Christianity and The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, was the voice of one who not only understood the truth but who did the truth with folded hands. Or to put it another way, Ratzinger did theology on his knees, in prayer, because theology is always a reflection on the Truth that is Jesus Christ; theology is a relationship with the Spirit; theology is a receiving from the Father. Theology is not a project for disruption, as too many make it to be, and theology is not an exercise in mental gymnastics either, meant to be accessible only to the initiated. Theology is a seeking – A SEEKING – rooted in faith, as the ancient definition from St. Anselm goes. And faith is a relation fostered in prayer.

After he was pope, in 2008, Benedict called the twelfth ordinary general assembly of the Synod of Bishops devoted to “The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church.”  The synod resulted in his Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini which is the most important Church document on the Scriptures since Vatican II. But at one synodal meeting Pope Benedict got up to address the gathered bishops, cardinals, scholars, and he brought to the podium a weathered, well-used journal. He began to read from it to the assembled in order to point out the importance of Sacred Scripture. The journal was his own prayer journal, the one he used to write down the fruits of his Lectio Divina, his prayer with the Scriptures. What he showed the Church in doing this was that his prayer life, his approach to theology, his trust in and dependence upon the God of Sacred  Scripture infused him with a wisdom that provided an intimate vision for the Church, one that shapes our lives here, today.

Pope Benedict’s written voice was clear and loving and careful and everything that we need most in the world today. Thanks to his writings, we have not lost that voice. We can keep it and return to it. Perhaps someday here we can discuss his writings. But along with his written voice we can find solace in that through his passing we have gained an advocate in him, one who will intercede, God willing, in our lives, and aid us in our prayer and in our being Church.

Allow me to close with a quotation from him, one used many times because it is true but also because it so wonderfully encapsulates all that he desired to say, and I think it would be what he would want to say to you, if he were here:

From Deus Caritas Est we read, We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. 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.”

In today’s Gospel [Mark 1:40-45] with that encounter between Our Lord and the leper, we heard of that decisive direction. The leper’s response was the only thing it could be: to proclaim to the world the person who made him whole, who gave his life a new horizon. With Pope Benedict XVI in mind, then, we pray that all of us may reflect on and live by that same encounter with that same person and say with the late Holy Father and our brother the leper “Praise be Jesus Christ”!

This post is an excerpt from Dcn. Omar’s January 12th homily during our mass in honor of the late Pope Benedict XVI.

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