Benedict XVI has a restless heart like the Magi — Papal Nuncio
By Patricia Lumenario
Pope Benedict XVI was just like the three Magi who visited the Holy Family during Jesus’ birth, Most Rev. Charles John Brown said during the Requiem Mass for the late former head of the Catholic Church at the Manila Cathedral on Friday, Jan. 6.
Brown, the Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines, described the men as being “watchful and courageous” yet humble, as they sacrificed themselves for an uncertain journey that led them to find the promise and God.
“The humble courage was what enabled them to bend down before the child of poor people and to recognize in him the promised king, the one they have set out to their inward and outward journey to seek and to know,” he said.
This took Pope Benedict XVI from being a university professor of Theology, an archbishop, and a prefect of the congregation to being the first pope emeritus in centuries.
Brown quoted the words of John as he introduced Jesus and said that in every step of Pope Benedict’s long journey, he was able to recognize Him.
“[Jesus] is the one who had already found him and spoken to him in the silence of his heart and said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he said.
According to the Papal Nuncio, his first impression of the late Pope was continuously confirmed through the years, embodying his chosen motto, being a co-worker of the truth or “cooperatores veritatis,” and sharing that Theology is a way to reveal the truth about God as an actual living being.
“Theology is not an intellectual acrobatics but a way to communicate in words what is true about God — truth that is always greater than us,…but [it] draws near to us and becomes accessible to us,” he said.
He also shared how Pope Francis described Pope Benedict, speaking about God and leading people toward Jesus with his spiritual thoughts.
“Pope Benedict’s acute and gentle thought was not self-referential but ecclesial because he always wanted to accompany us in the encounter with Jesus. Even after his death, Pope Benedict continues to lead us to that encounter with Jesus,” he said.
With the Pope’s recently published spiritual testament, after around 60 years of following theology, Brown said that the truth of the faith remained despite its various challenges.
He emphasized that along with the sorrow of the Pope’s death is the gratitude to God for the gift that the Pope Emeritus is and was to the church and the world.
At 95 years old, the Pope Emeritus, also known as Joseph Ratzinger, died last Dec. 31 at a monastery in Vatican City. His mortal remains were buried on Thursday, Jan. 5.
He resigned last Feb. 28, 2013, the first resignation for around 600 years after being the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City since April 19, 2005.
