Last Testament Quotes

“I believe that it is dangerous for a young person simply to go from achieving goal after goal, generally being praised along the way. So it is good for a young person to experience his limit, occasionally to be dealt with critically, to suffer his way through a period of negativity, to recognise his own limits himself, not simply to win victory after victory. A human being needs to endure something in order to learn to assess himself correctly, and not least to learn to think with others. Then he will not simply judge others hastily and stay aloof, but rather accept them positively, in his labours and his weaknesses.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“Finally, it has become increasingly clear to me that God is not, let’s say, a ruling power, a distant force; rather he is love and he loves me – and as such, life should be guided by him, by this power called love.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“How and where do you most like to reflect on things?"

"At the writing desk, or if I have to think something through thoroughly, I lie on the sofa. There one can think things through steadily."

"You always had a sofa nearby?"

"I always need a sofa.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“«En los platónicos aprendí que “al principio era la Palabra”. Los cristianos me han enseñado que “la Palabra se ha hecho carne”. Y de ese modo la Palabra ha venido también a mí».”
― Benedict XVI, Últimas conversaciones. Con Peter Seewald

“You gave your inaugural lecture on 24 June 1959. The lecture hall was crowded. Stage fright? No, I had written a good lecture. You were remarkably self-confident. Perhaps that’s overstating it, but I knew the lecture was fine; in that sense I didn’t need to be nervous.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“I believe that it is dangerous for a young person simply to go from achieving goal after goal, generally being praised along the way. So it is good for a young person to experience his limit, occasionally to be dealt with critically, to suffer his way through a period of negativity, to recognize his own limits himself, not simply to win victory after victory.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“A human being needs to endure something in order to learn to assess himself correctly, and not least to learn to think with others. Then he will not simply judge others hastily and stay aloof, but rather accept them positively, in his labours and his weaknesses.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“The following motto is written on the invitation to your first mass: ‘We don’t rule over your faith, we serve your joy.’ How did that come about? As part of a contemporary understanding of the priesthood, not only were we conscious that clericalism is wrong and the priest is always a servant, but we also made great inward efforts not to put ourselves up on a high pedestal. I would”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“The vocation to the priesthood, according to your memoirs, ‘naturally matured within me without any grand conversion experiences’. If there was nothing grand, were there little spiritual experiences, at least? I would say it was my entering ever more deeply into the liturgy. Genuinely to recognize liturgy as the central point and seeking to understand it, together with the whole historical tapestry standing behind it. We had a teacher of religion who was writing a book about the Roman station churches.11 In a sense he used the religious instruction to prepare his book. Through him we learned the historical roots really well, very concretely. That was something that gave me real joy. With this I was then altogether preoccupied with religious questions. It is the world in which I feel most at home.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“In a letter to the Christkind you asked for a Missal, a set of green vestments for dressing up, and picture of the sacred heart.1 You were seven years old, isn’t this very unusual? [Laughs] Yes, but for us to participate in the liturgy really was from the very beginning a constitutive and noble experience; it was a world full of mystery, into which one wants to penetrate further. And playing at being a priest was a nice game anyway. That was still widespread then.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“If one says the loving God corrects every Pope in his successor – in what ways are you being corrected through Pope Francis? [Laughs] Yes, I would say, in his direct contact with people. That is, I think, very important.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“And we are seeing new elements, such as African, South American or Filipino elements, bringing new dynamism to the Church which can reinvigorate the tired West, wake it from its exhaustion, from its forgetfulness of the faith. Particularly when I think of Germany – of the power of bureaucracy there, of how theoretical and political faith has become and how it lacks a living dynamism – which often seems as though it is nearly crushed by overweight bureaucratic structures, it is encouraging that other actors are asserting themselves in the global Church”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“Another thing is that, despite all the confidence I have that the loving God cannot forsake me, the closer you come to his face, the more intensely you feel how much you have done wrong. In this respect the burden of guilt always weighs on someone, but the basic trust is of course always there.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“in old age you are more deeply practised, so to speak. Life has taken its shape. The fundamental decisions have been made. On the other hand, one feels the difficulty of life’s questions more deeply, one feels the weight of today’s godlessness, the weight of the absence of faith which goes deep into the Church, but then one also feels the greatness of Jesus Christ’s words, which evade interpretation more often than before.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“One has to make do with what time one has. I was conscious that my task was of another kind: that I must try above all else to show what faith means in the contemporary world, and further, to highlight the centrality of faith in God, and give people the courage to have faith, courage to live concretely in the world with faith. Faith,”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“The three-volume work on Jesus Christ, on its own, makes this pontificate unique. With it, Benedict XVI created a handbook for the future of theology, catechesis and priestly formation – in short, a foundation for the teaching of the faith for the third millennium. It was not on a professorial chair, but on the chair of Peter, that things could come full circle. And there was no one else with the educational formation, the background, the strength and the inspiration, to make the image of Jesus transparent again, with intellectual meticulousness and a level-headed spirituality, after it had been obscured beyond recognition.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“Joseph Ratzinger never developed his own theological system. As a theologian he took on what was there, discerned its essentials, situated it in relation to the context of the time, and then expressed it anew – to preserve the message of the gospel and the accrued knowledge of the Christian past for generations to come. Given the significance which he thereby assigned to the Church, his struggle for this Church is understandable – he wanted it to remain the barque of salvation in space and time, a Noah’s Ark for the transmission of a better world. He called this, ‘the eschatological radicalism of the Christian revolution’.6”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“He had only just gone up there at lunchtime when he called me, saying I should come up quickly. When I came up, he had just prayed with his breviary I said: 'Holy Father, you simply must rest now!' 'I can rest in eternity,' he said. I think that is very typical of him: I can reset in eternity. In the present he was always restless. (BXVI regarding JPII).”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“St. Augustine says something which is a great thought and a great comfort here. He interprets the passage from the Psalms ‘seek his face always’ as saying: this applies ‘for ever’; to all eternity. God is so great that we never finish our searching. He is always new. With God there is perpetual, unending encounter, with new discoveries and new joy. Such things are theological matters. At the same time, in an entirely human perspective, I look forward to being reunited with my parents, my siblings, my friends, and I imagine it will be as lovely as it was at our family home.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words

“that one had to put”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Last Testament: In His Own Words