An excerpt:
“Nearing the end of his pontificate in 2012, anticipating the occasion of the 46th World Communications Day, Pope Benedict asked us to consider the importance of silence. Words need silence, he said — the two phenomena not being opposites but different elements of the same mechanism, ‘two aspects of communication which need to be kept in balance, to alternate and to be integrated with one another if authentic dialogue and deep closeness between people are to be achieved.’ He called it ‘God’s silence’ — silence becoming contemplation, out of which a new Word, the redeeming Word, is born.
“And now, this greatest of popes has repaired to ‘God’s silence’. But, as with his stepping down from the throne of Peter, it does not amount to a retreat, simply another phase in the different ways Joseph Ratzinger has had of accompanying and speaking to us. Those of us who understand how blessed we have been by his presence shall continue to have, by his words of witness, access to the presence of our beloved Pope of all popes, on his knees somewhere in the vicinity, reminding us always of the newness that is promised — that He Who Makes Us reigns supreme over every earthly thing, and every earthly being, and that the Father in Heaven speaks to us through the words and silences of men who are of and like us, but have been charged with, and changed by, the heavy responsibility of leading us to what awaits, no matter how much the interlopers and predators may try to thwart that reality by seeking the claim for themselves the throne of God in the sight of other men.
“In a thousand years, when every single person writing today in the Irish, Italian, British, German and American media has long been forgotten, the name of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI will resound in the world as one of the great prophets of the Christian ages. When the world falls apart, aa it threatens to again, in the days of his waking, it is from the words of this unapologetic dissident that humanity will stand the best chance of piecing it back together. May God be good to him.”
(John Waters Unchained is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.)
Entire article: https://johnwaters.substack.com/p/farewell-pope-of-popes
Photo: Requiem Mass offered for BXVI today in New York City.
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