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Welcome Benedict XVI !
By Kristina Cooper
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OBEDIENCE TO GOD - My real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the Word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him so that He himself will lead our Church at this hour of our history. (inaugural Mass in St Peter's Square April 2005) HEART FOR THE WORLD - The pastor must be inspired by Christ's Holy zeal; for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love, there is the desert of God's darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts of the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth's treasures no longer serve to build God's garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction. The Church as a whole and all her pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance. (inaugural Mass in St Peter's Square April 2005) CHRISTIAN UNITY - "Fully conscious, therefore, at the beginning of his ministry in the Church of Rome, which Peter bathed in his blood, his present successor aims, as a primary commitment, to work without sparing energies for the reconstitution of the full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ. This is his ambition, this is his imperative duty. He is aware that for this, manifestations of good sentiments are not enough. There must be concrete gestures that penetrate the spirit and move consciences, leading each one to that interior conversion that is the presupposition of all progress on the path of ecumenism….In the footsteps of his predecessors he is fully determined to cultivate every initiative that might seem appropriate to promote contacts and understanding with representatives of the diverse churches and ecclesial communities." (April 20th, 2005 first homily in Sistine Chapel to Cardinals) VATICAN II - I wish to affirm strongly my determination to continue the commitment to implement the Second Vatican Council, in the footsteps of my predecessors and in faithful continuity with the 2000 year tradition of the Church. With the passing of the years, the conciliar documents have not lost their current importance, on the contrary, their teachings reveal themselves particularly pertinent in relation to the new needs of the Church and of the present globalised society. (20th April 2005 - first homily) EUCHARIST - How very significant it is that my pontificate begins while the Church is living the special Year dedicated to the Eucharist. How can one not perceive in this providential coincidence an element that must characterise the ministry to which I have been called? The Eucharist, heart of Christian life and source of the evangelising mission of the Church, cannot but constitute the permanent centre and the source of the Petrine service that has been entrusted to me. The Eucharist will be at the centre of the World Youth Day in Cologne in August, and in October of the Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will focus on the theme "The Eucharist: source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church". I ask all to intensify over the next months their love and devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist and to express in a courageous and clear way their faith in the Lord's real presence, above all through the solemnity and correctness of the celebrations. (20th April 2005 -first homily) THE HOLY SPIRIT - "The Holy Spirit… is the power through which Christ causes us to experience his closeness.. The Risen Christ needs witnesses who have met him, people who know him intimately through the power of the Holy Spirit; those who have, so to speak, actually touched him, can witness to him." (talk given May 7th, 2005 quoted in Osservatore Romano 11th May 2005) POWER - All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way, they justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We suffer on account of God's patience. And yet, we need his patience. God who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man. (inaugural Mass at St Peter's) PASTOR - "Feed my sheep," says Christ to Peter, and now, at this moment, he says it to me as well. Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God's truth, of God's word, the nourishment of his presence, which he give us in the Blessed Sacrament. (inaugural Mass at St Peter's) THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD - "Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the Church's history, where Christianity will again be characterised more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world." "The Church of the first three centuries was a small church and nevertheless was not a sectarian community. On the contrary, she was not partitioned off; rather she saw herself as responsible for the poor, for the sick, for everyone. All those who sought a faith in one God, who sough a promise, found their place in her." THE ECCLESIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCH - It should be said quite clearly that the apostolic movements appear in ever new forms in history - necessarily so, because they are the Holy Spirit's answer to the ever changing situations in which the Church lives. And just as vocations to the priesthood cannot be artificially produced, cannot be established by administrative dictate still less can movements be established and systematically promoted by ecclesial authority. They need to be given as a gift, and they are given as a gift. We must only be attentive to them. Using the gift of discernment, we must only learn to accept what is good in them, and discard what is bad. A retrospective glance at the history of the Church will help us to acknowledge with gratitude that, through all her trials and tribulations, the Church has always succeeded in finding room for all the great new awakenings of the Spirit that emerge in her midst. (World Congress of the ecclesial movements, Rome 1998) HOW GOD SPEAKS - God speaks quietly. But he gives us all kinds of signs. In retrospect, especially, we can see that he has given us a little nudge through a friend, through a book, or through what we see as failure - even through accidents. Life is actually full of these silent indications. If I remain alert, then slowly they piece together a consistent whole, and I begin to feel how God is guiding me." (interview with Peter Seewald in "Salt of the Earth" 1996) ST BENEDICT FOR TODAY - "Time and time again our world so easily finds its corrective in the Benedictine rule, since it offers the fundamental human attitudes and virtues needed for a life of inner balance, those that are requisite for social life - and for the maturity of the individual." "That which we need above all in this moment of history are men who, by means of an illumined and lived faith, render God credible in this world. The negative testimony of Christians who spoke of god and lived against him has obscured the image of God and has opened the gates to unbelief. Only when men and women allow themselves to be touched by God will the world be changed." (talk at the monastery of St Scholastica at Subiaco on the eve of Pope John Paul II's death 2nd April 2005)
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So we have a new pope at the helm
of the Roman Catholic Church.
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