“Lord, I love you.” These were the last words of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. I have been reflecting on them — and on the most important lesson I learned from the former pope — since his passing on December 31.
I was raised Catholic, so I never had a conversion experience. But in my early twenties I discovered that I was Catholic in a sense much deeper than merely having been brought up as one. One of the many attractive aspects of Catholicism to me was (and is) its rich intellectual tradition, which I first began to study seriously as an undergraduate. Reading philosophy and theology expanded and deepened both my religious faith and my sense of belonging in the Church.
So when one of the greatest living theologians was elected pope — when Joseph Ratzinger became Benedict XVI — I was excited for what I thought would be an intellectually sophisticated, scholarly papacy.
I was not disappointed, of course. But I was somewhat surprised by the extent to which Benedict’s papacy emphasized the irreducible Christocentricity of Christian faith over more scholarly theological issues and arguments. One of the greatest minds to sit the throne of Saint Peter put friendship with the person of Jesus Christ front and center. And because it was such a great scholar making this choice of emphasis, the lesson resonated all the more strongly.
Take, for example, his first Mass as pope. At this Mass, Benedict was given the pallium and fisherman’s ring to mark the beginning of his ministry as supreme pontiff. During the homily, he said: “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.”
Or consider this passage from his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, promulgated on Christmas Day, 2005: “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.”
Many will remember Ratzinger’s intellectual achievements, which will echo through the decades, if not the centuries. Much of the press coverage of his passing has focused on this, the scholarly aspects of his life and papacy.
But the biggest impact his ministry has had on me is not scholarly. Instead, it is deeply personal. It is greater confidence that, no matter how crucial sound and serious theology and philosophy may be, the ultimate answer to the most important questions of life and existence is not found in a treatise or an intellectual system. It isn’t found in scholarly arguments or in the pages of journals. It isn’t, to use Benedict’s phrase, found in a “lofty idea.”
Rather, the ultimate answer is a person — a person who, at Christmastide, we meet as a tiny baby, sleeping in a manger, with a star overhead, guiding us to friendship with Him.