Let God's Light Shine Forth The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI

Part One THE MAN AND HIS LIFE Robert Moynihan "We are supposed to be the light of the world, and that means that we should allow the Lord to be seen through us. We do not wish to be seen ourselves, but wish for the Lord to be seen through us. It seems to me that this is the real meaning of the Gospel when it says 'act in such a way that people who see you may see the work of God and praise God.' Not that people may see the Christians but 'by means of you, God.'Therefore, the person must not appear, but allow God to be seen through his person." Pope Benedict XVI, conversation with Robert Moynihan, February 23, 1993 "The Presence of God" On April 19, 2005, in Rome, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, at age 78, was chosen by the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church to be the 265th successor of the apostle Peter, bishop of Rome and head of the universal Church. The world was genuinely astonished. Why? In large measure, because they were surprised that a group of cardinals representing places like Argentina, Nigeria, and India had not chosen a younger, more "progressive" cardinal from the Third World to "reform" and "modernize" traditional Christian doctrines and emphasize issues of social justice. Instead, they had chosen an elderly German cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, who, over the previous quarter century as head of the Vatican's chief doctrinal ofFice (the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), had earned a reputation for defending the traditional teachings of the Church and for emphasizing the priority of the "right worship" of God in any effort to build a just human society. How did this happen? Why did it happen? What does it mean? Over the past 30 years, not only the cardinals who elected Ratzinger as Pope, but many Catholics, and other men and women of good will around the world, have come to agree with Benedict that the greatest "crisis" facing the Church and the world is "the absence of God"a culture and way of life without any transcendent dimension, without any orientation toward eternity, toward the sacred, toward the divine. And that the "solution" to this "crisis" is quite simple to express in a phrase: the world needs "the presence of God." Benedict had long argued that the "absence of God" in the modern world, the "secularization" of modern "globalized" society, has created a society in which the human person no longer has any sure protection against the depredations of power or, more importantly, any clear understanding of the meaning and ultimate destination of his life. Yet his call to reorient human culture toward God has never meant an abandonment of the search for social justice. Rather, it has always been a challenge to place that search within the Christian context of repentance and belief in the Gospel. Benedict's focus on the "priority" of knowing and loving God before doing anything else whatsoever was seen by the vast majority of the college of cardinals as the right focus. Benedict was elected by his fellow cardinals, including many from very poor countries, because they agreed with him about the need for a Pope who could preach the priority of God, and in so doing, lay the only secure foundation for a just society. In understanding the vision of Benedict XVI, we begin not by examining his many theological works formulated over the past 50 years, but by listening as he himself describes his own beginning. His words, based on several interviews from 1993 to 1995 and also on his autobBenedict is the author of 'Let God's Light Shine Forth The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI', published 2006 under ISBN 9780385507936 and ISBN 0385507933.