Opinion

Higher calling

Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to abdicate his office, effective Thursday, is a gesture of great humility from a man who truly cares for his flock. But while the Church will hopefully gain a pope with more energy to tackle the problems of her governance, she is losing one of the great teachers ever to sit on the chair of St. Peter.

For most seminarians now training for the Catholic priesthood, Pope John Paul II had been the only pope we ever knew — and, indeed, a major inspiration for many of us in hearing our own calling. But Benedict was the first pope we actively listened to — whose thought shaped our intellectual and spiritual growth even as he delivered it.

Here at the North American College in Rome, it’s hard to overstate the role the pope’s words have had in our formation. Walking to St. Peter’s Square to listen to his Sunday “Angelus” Gospel reflections is a longstanding tradition. As a giant of 20th-century theology even before he became pope (he was a key advisor at the Second Vatican Council), he’s a constant point of reference in our classes. Yet his writing is so clear and rooted in human experience that it’s also become an essential resource in presenting the faith to others.

As news of his abdication spread, everyone could identify some work of Benedict that shaped his thought or prayer. Here are my top three:

* Benedict’s “Jesus of Nazareth” trilogy, completed just a few months ago, is both a series of moving reflections on the life of Christ and a serious intellectual project. The pope makes use of the best modern scholarship about the historical/cultural context of Jesus’ ministry and the writing of the Gospels, all while issuing a decisive takedown of the academic pretension to search behind those accounts, “Da Vinci Code”-style, for some hidden “real Jesus.”

The problem with such attempts is that the Gospels are the oldest and fullest accounts of Jesus’ life that exist. Trying to get beyond them means rejecting certain Gospel passages — Jesus’ miracles, for example — based entirely on what the scholar deems “improbable.” The resulting image of Jesus aligns suspiciously well with his own prejudices. But, Benedict points out, if Jesus really is the Son of God, sent to establish a previously impossible intimacy between man and his creator, then it’s only natural that his words and actions would surprise everyone.

“Jesus of Nazareth” sums up the focus of Benedict’s entire papacy: It’s an invitation for Christians to get back to basics, to gaze upon “the face of the Lord” and find in the words and actions of Jesus meaning and direction in their own lives. But for this to be possible, this Jesus must be knowable, as he really was, from the Gospel accounts. Sure enough, the picture of Jesus that emerges from Benedict’s pen possesses an integrity and believability that’s absent in more skeptical studies.

* Jesus’ identity as the Son of God should determine what Christian worship looks like, Benedict argues in “The Spirit of the Liturgy.” Written several years before his election, the book gives the theological basis for his efforts, as pope, to promote more traditional postures in the Mass. It’s also a profound meditation on the nature of prayer.

Prayer is futile if it means attempting to establish a connection with God by human power alone. The gulf is far too great. Fortunately, God himself establishes the connection, ultimately by sending his Son, who assumes our humanity and offers it back to the Father.

Worship — especially the Mass, which represents Christ’s sacrifice — incorporates the believer into this return to his creator. In a sense, it’s the perfection of created reality, with far-reaching consequences for all of human experience. It’s also the thing that makes the people of God truly a people, as Benedict shows in a beautiful chapter on Moses and the Exodus.

But it’s a constant temptation, he notes, to make “worship” more about the community that’s gathered than the God who does the work — which misses the point entirely.

* Benedict’s passages on suffering in the encyclical letter “Saved in Hope” apply these truths in an especially beautiful way. The question of suffering is typically treated as a challenge to religious faith: How can God be all-good and all-powerful if he lets people suffer? Benedict turns the question on its head: The problem of suffering is in fact a challenge to everyone, because neither individuals nor societies can truly have compassion for those who suffer unless they can themselves find meaning in suffering. Otherwise, they will try to ignore and avoid it at all costs. Hope in the face of suffering, then, is what allows us to be human.

For Benedict, that hope is ultimately found only in the person of Jesus, whose suffering was meaningful beyond measure — both as an act of total self-giving love and the act that secured man’s salvation. The relevance of the Christian message, then, is not that it explains away suffering, but that it increases our capacity for it.

For those of us aspiring to the priesthood, Benedict also taught us how to teach. His much-noticed humility has a serious purpose: never to let his own personality get in the way of the God he’s trying to make known. At last Sunday’s Angelus address, for example, more than 100,000 people flooded St. Peter’s Square to express their affection for him — yet he barely even mentioned his impending departure. The message was more important.

I pray that Pope Benedict’s words and example stay with me in my future ministry. For now, I will miss him greatly.

John Wilson, a former Post editorial writer, is now studying to be a priest for the Archdiocese of New York.