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January 5, 2023Abu Dhabi.
“Only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.” These words were pronounced by Benedict XVI during the Holy Mass at the beginning of his pontificate in 2005. Today, as we celebrate this Holy Mass in his suffrage, these words resound strongly in our hearts and minds and communicate to us the heart of his priestly existence, the ultimate meaning of his life.
Why had the question of God captured his heart so much? Among the many themes he studied and deepened in the last years of his life, it emerged that the fundamental human question is the question of God. There is no ultimate understanding of the human person except in the light of God and his love for humanity.
God not only exists but is the source of being. God is love, Deus Caritas est, as the title of his first encyclical says. We exist as the fruit of God's will and thought. The eclipse of God in secularized societies shows its negativity precisely in the loss of the human sense of being wanted. The feeling of bewilderment and being an orphan is strong today, especially in young people. If humanity wants to find itself, it must find the living God who is love. In life, nothing can replace love. To exist, we need unconditional love without blackmail and limits: true love. Only the love of God saves and purifies every other love.
But what does it mean that God loves us? It's not just a feeling but a good destiny. God not only manifests as our foundation but also as our destiny. Here we find the meaning of the words of the book of the apocalypse that promises us: a new heaven and earth, the new Jerusalem. “Now I am making the whole of creation new. Here God lives among people”. In the new Jerusalem, He will wipe away all tears from our eyes.
This thought engaged Benedict XVI's entire life: his search for God and the last things. This warns us never to be ashamed to speak of God and eternal life. Let us take courage, and following the example of this great shepherd, we proclaim God, his love, and eternal life as the world's ultimate destiny.
It's not thinking about the afterlife to distract us from the heaviness of the present life. Life has meaning only if it has a destiny: God is our ultimate destiny that fills every instant of life with sense. Only when we have the reliable hope of attaining everlasting life does daily life also become full of value. The foundation of culture and every authentic civilization - as stated by Benedict XVI - is the search for God.
There is another value that this evening's liturgy allows us to underline and which has always been at the heart of Pope Benedict's life, his thought, and his pastoral action: God is not only the foundation and destiny of the journey of every human person. God is present and active today in the history of humanity. The mystery of the Incarnation continues in the Church, above all in the gift of the Eucharist. As we have heard in the Gospel, commented on many times by Pope Benedict, God has given us his Son for the world's salvation. Jesus Christ gave his body and blood as the powerful manifestation of his greatest love for us.
The great attention that Pope Benedict's magisterium paid to the correct interpretation of sacred scripture and the liturgy was intended to underline the presence of Christ in our lives today, here and now. He didn't just speak in the past. The word of God is a living word that speaks to our hearts today. When the word of God is proclaimed in the liturgy, Christ is speaking to us today.
When we celebrate the Eucharist, we not only remember a gift that happened in the past, but the gift that Christ makes of his body and blood is renewed. The Eucharist makes us the Church, his body. Christians are thus called not to proselytize but to bear witness to the world of Christ's love. We, too, are called to be broken bread for the world. We are all called to a Eucharistic existence of thanksgiving to God and evangelical witness.
Benedict XVI was undoubtedly a credible witness of faith. In what he did, said, and lived, as a theologian, as a pastor, as supreme pontiff, up to his last years as pope emeritus, dedicated to prayer and study, they show the stature of a man of the Church to the world and to history totally dedicated to his mission, for which we will always be grateful: a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard.
He loved God, he loved Christ, and he brought people to Jesus. As we know, his last words before he died were: Lord, I love you.
May the Lord welcome him among the saints, and his prayers now support even more the journey of the pilgrim Church towards the heavenly Jerusalem.