By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
No one is a better witness to a life than the man himself who lived it. In this fourth and final column on Georg Ganswein’s biography of Benedict XVI, entitled Nothing But the Truth, I share the words of the priest, theologian, archbishop, cardinal, Pope and Pope Emeritus himself as imparted therein.
The advance copy in unofficial English translation made available to me is rough in some spots, with the need to provide a word here or there to complete the meaning. These I have indicated with parentheses. We await the official English translation from the publisher to see where the consensus falls in rendering the Italian of the original into English.
In his last homily of April 2, 2017:
“Man seems made to live always, wants to live always, at the same time he lives in a world structure where dying is essential. What to say? The Lord, in his dialogue with Martha (John 11:21-27), responds to these things by taking a new step into human reality, and only in this way can the contradiction be (overcome). Jesus says to Martha, “Your brother will rise again”; and she replies, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
But the Lord replies, “I am the resurrection and the life; and whoever believes in me, even if he dies, he will live.” He tells us, that is, that this is not a life that will begin again in an indefinite future, for we do not know when this “last day” will come. No, it is a life that begins right now and is indestructible, since we are held by Him and therefore cannot fall into death.
In 2016 with Peter Seewald:
“Even with all the confidence I have that the good God cannot forsake me, the closer the time to see his face comes, the stronger is the perception of how many wrong things have been accomplished. Therefore one feels burdened by the weight of guilt, although of course the underlying trust never fails.”
Publicly in 2002:
“Soon I will face the ultimate judge of my life. Although in looking back on my long life I may have much cause for fright and fear, I am nevertheless with a joyful spirit because I firmly trust that the Lord is not only the righteous judge, but at the same time the friend and brother who has already suffered my inadequacies himself and therefore, as judge, is at the same time my advocate. In view of the hour of judgment, the grace of being a Christian thus becomes clear to me. Being a Christian gives me (knowledge), moreover, friendship with the judge of my life and enables me to cross the dark door of death with confidence.”
Ganswein shares details of his life with Benedict, the daily schedule together with the Memores, the sisters who assisted him, and others. He recounts the emeritus’ final day on Earth and his last moments as witnessed by one of the nurses whose presence was made necessary for round the clock care.
“At around 3 a.m. on Saturday, December 31, the liturgical (memorial) of Pope St. Sylvester, the nurse on watch saw Benedict XVI turn his gaze to the Crucifix placed on the wall in front of his bed and heard him pronounce in Italian, in a thin voice, but in a very distinguishable way, “Lord, I love you!” Those were his last comprehensible words, because then he was no longer able to express himself. When I tried to ask him some questions, he understood them and tried to respond in nods. I preached praises aloud near him until, around 9 o’clock, he went into agony.”
His Spiritual Testament [was completed] in 2006 after years of composition in the German mother tongue. The book renders the text in Italian translation.
“If at this late hour of my life I look back at the decades I have traveled, first I see how many reasons I have to give thanks. I thank first of all God himself, the giver of every good gift, who gave me life and guided me through various moments of confusion, always picking me up whenever I began to slip and always giving me the light of his face again. In retrospect I see and understand that even the dark and tiring stretches of this path were for my salvation and that it was in them that He guided me well.
“I thank my parents, who gave me life in a difficult time and who, at the cost of great sacrifice, with their love prepared for me a magnificent home that, like clear light, illuminates all my days to this day. My father’s lucid faith taught us children to believe, and as a signpost it has always stood firm in the midst of all my scientific acquisitions; my mother’s deep devotion and great goodness represent a legacy for which I cannot thank her enough. My sister has assisted me for decades unselfishly and with affectionate care; my brother, with the lucidity of his judgments, his vigorous resolve and serenity of heart, has always paved the way for me: without this continuous preceding and accompanying me, I could not have found the right path.
“From my heart I thank God for the many friends, men and women, whom He has always placed by my side; for the collaborators in all the stages of my journey; for the teachers and students He has given me. All of them I gratefully entrust to His goodness. And I want to thank the Lord for my beautiful homeland in the Bavarian foothills, in which I have always seen the splendor of the Creator Himself shining through. I thank the people of my homeland because in them I have been able again and again to (experience) the beauty of faith.
“I pray that our land will remain a land of faith, and I beg you, dear compatriots: do not be turned away from faith. And finally I thank God for all the beauty I have been able to experience in all the stages of my journey, especially, however, in Rome and in Italy, which has become my second homeland.
“To all those whom I have wronged in any way, I heartily ask for forgiveness. What I said before to my compatriots, I say now to all those in the Church entrusted to my service: stand firm in the faith! Do not let yourselves be confused! It often seems that science — the natural sciences on the one hand and historical research (especially exegesis of Sacred Scripture) on the other — is able to offer irrefutable results at odds with the Catholic faith. I have lived through the transformations of the natural sciences since long ago and have been able to see how, on the contrary, apparent certainties against the faith have evaporated, proving to be not science, but philosophical interpretations only apparently pertaining to science; just as, on the other hand, it is in the dialogue with the natural sciences that faith, too, has learned to better understand the limit of the scope of its claims, and thus its specificity.
“I have been accompanying the path of Theology, particularly of Biblical Sciences, for six hundred years now, and with the succession of different generations I have seen theses that seemed unshakable collapsing, proving to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Julicher, etc.), the existentialist (Bultmann etc.), the Marxist generation. I saw and see how from the tangle of assumptions the reasonableness of faith emerged and emerges again. Jesus Christ is truly the way, the truth, and the life — and the Church, with all its insufficiencies, is truly His body.
“Finally, I humbly ask: pray for me, so that the Lord may admit me to the eternal dwellings, despite all my sins and shortcomings. For all those entrusted to me, my heartfelt prayer goes out day after day.”
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