Pope Benedict XVI has died at 95. And I oddly feel this morning the way I felt when I woke up to the news that he had resigned in early 2013. Rattled. And thankful.
The one time I met him, he gave me this look, which was the closest I have ever seen of the gaze of God the Father — particularly since my own earthly father had died (23 years ago this January 9). A good shepherd, a good pastor — any man worthy of being called “Father” taps into that love that the Almighty God has for each one of us. We are His creations and adopted children, the Christian faith teaches.
It was just before a 2010 National Review cruise of all things when I saw Benedict being loved by the Father himself. We were going on a riverboat cruise in Portugal, and I had a few spare days in the Lisbon area. It turned out it was the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima, and getting on a press bus for the papal Mass was a Forrest Gump–like — or Providential — option for me. This was during a spring when people were calling for the pope’s resignation, before we thought about a pope’s resigning in the modern day, because of horrific priest scandals in Europe. There on that Marian apparition site, I watched as the pontiff surrendered all that he had to God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I watched as he prayed in adoration before our Eucharistic Lord after Mass as the mother of God was so clearly mystically picking the pontiff up, bringing him to her Son, and the pope was being revived spiritually and otherwise.
What am I even talking about? The life of faith. Pope Benedict XVI — Joseph Ratzinger — could explain it all intellectually better than anyone. He also in his words could make the faith so accessible. Some of my favorite teachings of his were Wednesday audiences at the Vatican where he talked about some of the beautiful women heralds of the faith. He talked about women who loved God and lived to praise Him with their lives with such awe.
He was a man who loved women with the purest reverence. We need more of him. We can learn a lot from him.
When I met him during a Mass at the Vatican in 2012, he handed me a letter meant for all the women of the world. I can’t help but think as he has left the earth today, God wants us to see this again. It’s a message that was already delivered at the end of the Second Vatican Council, but not many of us actually heard:
The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is under-going so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid mankind in not falling.
…
Women, you do know how to make truth sweet, tender and accessible… Women of the entire universe, whether Christian or non-believing, you to whom life is entrusted at this grave moment in history, it is for you to save the peace of the world.
This is how the Catholic Church actually thinks about women, in truth. What is woman? There is not Church as Mother, as Pope Francis often talks about, without women. God Himself chose to come through a woman. Pretty remarkable, woman is. And I honestly can’t tell you a man on earth who got that as well as Benedict XVI did, in his teachings, and, well, in his gaze, as I was blessed to catch it.
I know it’s not shocking when a 95-year-old dies. But fatherhood is a rare gift in the world today, it often seems — including spiritual fatherhood.
A beloved, wise priest friend of mine often says when a person dies: God be good to him! May God be good to my beloved B16, teacher and pastor to so many of us. And thank you, God, for being so good to let us have him for so long.
I remember watching Pope John Paul II’s funeral Mass and IM-ing with a dear friend whose name you would know. She was convinced that the homilist, Cardinal Ratzinger, was going to be elected the next pope. I cynically told her that was too good to be true. She couldn’t have predicted how it would all play out, but she was convinced of God’s love for us to give him to us for a time! She trusted, and the life of Pope Benedict XVI helps me trust God all the more.
What a powerful intercessor he will be for us to come.
