Freundschaft mit Christus als Schlüssel

Von Amy Welborn kommt der Hinweis auf einen Artikel im National Catholic Register. Es geht um das, was in der Mitte des Wirkens, Betens, Predigens, Schreibens von Benedikt XVI. steht.

Pope Benedict XVI summed up the meaning of his pontificate and the meaning of his new document on the Eucharist in Rome recently — when he remembered Pope Paul VI. (...)

Pope Benedict, also, is simply and deeply devoted to the person of Christ, in all of his clarity and depth.

When secular newspapers write about Pope Benedict’s new post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity), they say things like “Pope Refuses to Yield” or “Benedict Loves Latin” as if the Holy Father were merely imposing his personal preferences on the Church.

But, from the very beginning, Benedict has been telling us exactly what he would do, and why he would do it. He started before the conclave that elected him, when he spoke about friendship with Christ, a concept he has returned to several times.

Noting that Jesus defines friendship as “the communion of wills,” he cited the old Roman definition of friendship — Idem velle idem nolle (same desires, same dislikes) — as the model of our friendship with Christ.

In his first message after becoming pope, he applied that lesson to the Eucharist. “I ask everyone in the coming months to intensify love and devotion for Jesus in the Eucharist,” he said, “and to express courageously and clearly faith in the Real Presence of the Lord, especially by the solemnity and the correctness of the celebrations.”

He wanted us to show our friendship with Jesus in the Eucharist not just by good feelings, but by a communion of wills — “by the solemnity and correctness” of our Masses.

This love for Jesus, which is both practical and passionate — we should say practical because it is passionate — is the key to Pope Benedict’s thinking. It is front and center in is private works ..., in his official works before becoming Pope (Dominus Iesus — “The Lord Jesus” — foremost among them), and in his first encyclical and latest document on charity and the Eucharist.