Pope Benedict XVI - Books and Quotes

From Totus Tuus page:

"Exciting news for Catholics worldwide! A beautiful new English edition of “The Lord Holds Us by the Hand” has just been released by Ignatius Press. This collection brings together previously unpublished homilies of Pope Benedict XVI, delivered during private Masses — both during his pontificate and as Pope Emeritus.

Spanning the liturgical seasons of Advent, Lent, and Easter (2005–2017), these homilies offer a profound window into the heart of Joseph Ratzinger as preacher, theologian, and pastor. With Christ always at the center, Benedict reflects on how the Lord accompanies us, sustains us, and holds us by the hand on our journey of faith.

The book includes a preface by Archbishop Georg Gänswein and an introduction by Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ. It is the first volume in a series — with more unpublished homilies expected soon!

In these pages, we hear once again Benedict XVI’s clear, deep, and Christ-centered voice reminding us that the Christian life is never a solitary path, but one guided by God’s presence and mercy.

This is a wonderful gift for anyone who loves Pope Benedict’s writings and wants to grow closer to Christ through Scripture and prayer."

 

Book description:

"What did Pope Benedict XVI teach and preach when he was out of the limelight, behind closed doors, among friends? In his late years, after the noise of the papacy had quieted down, how did he understand Scripture, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Christian life? When he had the room to be vulnerable, what did he say about the heart of his own spirituality?

In The Lord Holds Us by the Hand, we experience a different side of Joseph Ratzinger. This collection of private homilies―all delivered off the public record in small chapels, during his years as pope and pope emeritus―reveals not a “detached exegete”, as his longtime secretary Archbishop Gänswein notes, but a Christian in “lively participation” with God. In these meditations, never before published in English, “exegesis, theology, catechesis, and spirituality intertwine and join together, leading the listener to enter in depth into the heart of the mystery of Christ.”

The work touches on many of the complex truths of the Catholic faith, from the Immaculate Conception to the mystery of our salvation on the Cross, yet it distills them into simple, personal, human terms, refined by a lifetime of prayer and experience."

 

From a Pope Benedict XVI Fb page:

"On this day in 1951 Joseph Alois Ratzinger was ordained to the priesthood, together with his brother, Georg.

This is what he had to say about this momentous occasion in 2016:

"Sixty-five years ago, a fellow priest who was ordained on the same day wrote on the memorial card for his first Mass his name, the date and a single word in Greek: Eucharistomen. This word, in all its dimensions, expresses all that can be said at this moment. Eucharistomen is also about human thanksgiving...

Eucharistomen... At that time, my friend Berger was not referring only to the dimension of human gratitude but naturally hints at the more profound word that is hidden, which appears in the liturgy, in the Scriptures, in the words "gratias agens benedixit fregit deditque”... Eucharistomen brings us back to that reality of thanksgiving, to that new dimension that Christ has given. He has transformed into thanksgiving, and so into blessing, the Cross, the suffering, all the evil of the world. And thus He has fundamentally transubstantiated life and the world, and has given us, and gives us today the Bread of true life, which overcomes the world thanks to the strength of his love.

In the end, we also want to be put inside the Lord's thanksgiving and thus actually receive the newness of life and help transubstantiation of the world: that it be a world not of death, but of life; a world in which love has overcome death."

- Pope Benedict XVI, 28 June 2016.

 

Also from Fb page:

"Joseph Ratzinger was ordained to the priesthood on this day in 1951.

Pope Benedict XVI, Letter to Seminarians
18 October 2010

When in December 1944 I was drafted for military service, the company commander asked each of us what we planned to do in the future. I answered that I wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant replied: “Then you ought to look for something else. In the new Germany priests are no longer needed”. I knew that this “new Germany” was already coming to an end, and that, after the enormous devastation which that madness had brought upon the country, priests would be needed more than ever. Today the situation is completely changed. In different ways, though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood is not a “job” for the future, but one that belongs more to the past. You, dear friends, have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for priestly ministry in the Catholic Church in spite of such opinions and objections. You have done a good thing. Because people will always have need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of the world and globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in order to learn with him and through him life’s true meaning and in order to uphold and apply the standards of true humanity. Where people no longer perceive God, life grows empty; nothing is ever enough. People then seek escape in euphoria and violence; these are the very things that increasingly threaten young people. God is alive. He has created every one of us and he knows us all. He is so great that he has time for the little things in our lives: “Every hair of your head is numbered”. God is alive, and he needs people to serve him and bring him to others. It does makes sense to become a priest: the world needs priests, pastors, today, tomorrow and always, until the end of time."

 

A great man and theologian. Sadly missed.

 

From Fb page on Pope Benedict XVI:

Tuesday, 30 June
The FIRST MARTYRS of the CHURCH of ROME

"Love for Christ, for his words and for the Truth, we cannot stoop to compromises. The Truth is Truth; there are no compromises. Christian life demands, so to speak, the “martyrdom” of daily fidelity to the Gospel, the courage, that is, to let Christ grow within us and let him be the One who guides our thought and our actions. However, this can happen in our life only if we have a solid relationship with God. Prayer is not time wasted, it does not take away time from our activities, even apostolic activities, but exactly the opposite is true: only if we are able to have a faithful, constant and trusting life of prayer will God himself give us the ability and strength to live happily and serenely, to surmount difficulties and to witness courageously to him."

Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience,
29 August 2012.

 

".....In this context, Saint Augustine spoke about love of self, about self-love as the true mountain that prevents us from finding the love of God. The false love of self, the self-centeredness that thinks only of oneself and does not allow us to go out from ourselves, is for Saint Augustine, throughout history, the force that is opposed to our communion with God. He says: history is a battle between two loves: the love of self to the point of denying God, and the love of God to the point of freedom, martyrdom.
In this sense, therefore, the mountain to overcome would be that infatuation with self that closes me off in myself. Saint Augustine points out three elements that express this false love, which becomes a mountain and obstructs access to God.
The first is “vainglory”, which means seeking to be loved in an egotistical way, seeking to be admired, trying to be accepted by everyone. This is not true love; it is only love of oneself: I wish to use other people for my purposes. And so this love of myself, this search for vainglory, to be accepted, creates a mountain that does not allow me to go out of myself. The second is “power”: man in search of power, man who tries to be God himself. The third is gain [guadagno], that is, material things that dominate us."

Advent: December 7, 2014
Private Chapel, Mater Ecclesiae Monastery.
(From The Lord Holds Us By The Hand).

 

Wonderful reflection, lots to ponder.

 

From Fb page on Pope Benedict XIV:

Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of Saint Benedict of Nursia, Abbot and Co-Patron of Europe.

"An authentic European "common home" cannot be built without considering the identity of the people of this Continent of ours. It is a question of a historical, cultural, and moral identity before being a geographic, economic, or political one; an identity comprised of a set of universal values that Christianity helped forge, thus giving Christianity not only a historical but a foundational role vis-à-vis Europe. These values, which make up the soul of the Continent, must remain in the Europe of the third millennium as a "ferment" of civilization. If these values were to disappear, how could the "old" Continent continue to function as a "leaven" for the entire world? If, for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the Governments of the Union wish to "get nearer" to their citizens, how can they exclude an element essential to European identity such as Christianity, with which a vast majority of citizens continue to identify? Is it not surprising that today's Europe, while aspiring to be regarded as a community of values, seems ever more often to deny the very existence of universal and absolute values? Does not this unique form of "apostasy" from itself, even more than its apostasy from God, lead Europe to doubt its own identity? And so the opinion prevails that an "evaluation of the benefits" is the only way to moral discernment and that the common good is synonymous with compromise. In reality, if compromise can constitute a legitimate balance between different particular interests, it becomes a common evil whenever it involves agreements that dishonour human nature."

- Pope Benedict XVI, 24 March 2007

 

"My whole life has always been bound by a common thread, which is this: Christianity brings joy, it widens horizons. Without a doubt, an existence lived always and only "against" would be unbearable." -

- Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World.

 

“The Church’s “amen” is grafted onto God’s faithful “yes” which resonates in every action of the Liturgy. “Amen” is the answer of faith that always concludes our personal and community prayers and expresses our “yes” to God’s project. We often respond to prayers with our “amen” out of habit, without grasping its deep meaning.

The word derives from ’aman, which in Hebrew and in Aramaic means “to make permanent”, “to consolidate” and, consequently, “to be certain”, “to tell the truth”. If we look at Sacred Scripture we see that this “amen” is said at the end of the Psalms of blessing and praise, such as, for example, Psalm 41[40] “But you have upheld me because of my integrity, and set me in your presence for ever. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting! Amen and Amen” (vv. 12-13).

Or else it expresses adherence to God at the moment when the People of Israel return full of joy from the Babylonian Exile and say their “yes”, their “amen” to God and to his Law. In the Book of Nehemiah it is told that after this return, “Ezra opened the book [of the Law] in the sight of all the people; for he was above all the people; and when he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God; and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen’, lifting up their hands” (Neh 8:5-6).

From the outset, therefore, the “amen” of the Jewish liturgy became the “amen” of the first Christian communities. Indeed the Book of the Christian liturgy par excellence, the Revelation to John begins with the “amen” of the Church: “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen” (Rev 1:5b-6). This is what it says in the first chapter of the Book of Revelation. And the same Book ends with the invocation “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev 22:20).

Dear friends, prayer is the encounter with a living Person to listen to and with whom to converse; it is the meeting with God that renews his unshakeable fidelity, his “yes” to man, to each one of us, to give us his consolation in the storms of life and to enable us to live, united to him, a life full of joy and goodness, which will find fulfilment in eternal life”

- Pope Benedict XVI, 30 April 2012.

 

We must not forget that in our cultural context, very many people, while not claiming to have the gift of faith, are nevertheless sincerely searching for the ultimate meaning and definitive truth of their lives and of the world. This search is an authentic “preamble” to the faith, because it guides people onto the path that leads to the mystery of God. Human reason, in fact, bears within itself a demand for “what is perennially valid and lasting”.

Pope Benedict XVI, Motu Proprio Porta Fidei, n. 10.

 

From Pope Benedict XVI Fb page:

“Enmity with God is the source of all that poisons man; overcoming this enmity is the basic condition for peace in the world. Only the man who is reconciled with God can also be reconciled and in harmony with himself, and only the man who is reconciled with God and with himself can establish peace around him and throughout the world….That there be peace on earth (cf Lk 2:14) is the will of God and, for that reason, it is a task given to man as well”

- Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, (Chapter 4: The Sermon on the Mount), Doubleday, 2007, p. 85.

 

Truth!
We see enmity with God all around us. And thus true peace disappears. A direct correlation.

 

Enmity would seem to be something akin to the reprobate mind? A heart/mind so far gone it hates what is good. Enmity would seem to be extremely disordered and PBXVI appears to be telling us it is everywhere.

Which means the Gospels are needed now, possibly more than ever. But how do you get through to hardened hearts, which cannot see or hear?

 

Your question is the one that haunts me. How do we get through to the reprobate mind? It has to be the Holy Spirit and that means Our Lady's intercession. IMHO. The ladt few months I have swapped intentions with her. I pray for her intentions and trust her to pray for mine. Its very difficult because I keep wanting to be in control and take it all back. Additionally much spiritual static since then. As if i am being pushed to take it back. So I stick with it trusting her to handle everything. But the personal warfare has kicked up.

 

From the above quote of Cardinal Ratzinger; the essence of a disciple of Jesus!

Only the man who is reconciled with God can also be reconciled and in harmony with himself, and only the man who is reconciled with God and with himself can establish peace around him and throughout the world.

 

Yeah, that's about it. St. Seraphim of Sarov and St. Francis both said the same things. I can get the quotes if you like. Then there is Jesus who said by their fruits ye shall know them.

All of which essentially means, from what I gather, is that people won't get conversions without first being converted. Which means that conversions go beyond the intellect, but aren't necessarily excluded from the intellect. They come from the conversion of our own hearts, through which Holy God abides more fully and is attractive to others.

Which is where Paul talks about himself no longer living but Christ.

 

Today's first reading is appropriate.

Eph 3:14-19
Brothers and sisters:
I kneel before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory
to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that you, rooted and grounded in love,
may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

 

16 July
Our Lady of Mount Carmel

"Today is the 16 July, the day when the liturgy commemorates Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The slopes of Carmel, a high ridge that runs down the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea at the altitude of Galilee, are dotted with numerous natural caves, beloved by hermits.

The most famous of these men of God was the great Prophet Elijah, who in the ninth century before Christ strenuously defended the purity of faith in the one true God from contamination by idolatrous cults. Inspired by the figure of Elijah, the contemplative order of Carmelites arose. It is a religious family that counts among its members great saints such as Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thérèse of the Child Jesus and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (in the world: Edith Stein).

The Carmelites have spread among the Christian people devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, holding her up as a model of prayer, contemplation and dedication to God.
Indeed, Mary was the first, in a way which can never be equalled, to believe and experience that Jesus, the Incarnate Word, is the summit, the peak of man's encounter with God. By fully accepting the Word, she "was blessedly brought to the holy Mountain" (cf. Opening Prayer of the Memorial), and lives for ever with the Lord in body and soul.

Today, I would like to entrust to the Queen of Mount Carmel all contemplative life communities scattered throughout the world, especially those of the Carmelite Order, among which I recall the Monastery of Quart, not far from here, that I have had the opportunity to visit in these days. May Mary help every Christian to find God in the silence of prayer."

Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus, 16 July 2006.