APOSTOLIC JOURNEY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI TO GERMANY FRIDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2011 - DAY
2 * Address to the Muslim Communities, Berlin* * Address to the Council of
the Evangelical Church in Germany* * Address at the Ecumenical Celebration
* * Address at Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Etzelsbach *
Apostolic Journey of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Germany Address
to Muslim Communities - Berlin, Apostolic Nunciature
Dear Muslim Friends, I
am glad to be able to welcome you here, as the representatives of different Muslim
communities in Germany. I thank Professor Mouhanad Khorchide most sincerely for his
kind greetings and for the profound reflections that he shared with us. His words
illustrate what a climate of respect and trust has grown up between the Catholic Church
and the Muslim communities in Germany and how the convictions we share are becoming
visible. Berlin is a good place for a meeting like this, not only because the oldest
mosque in Germany is located here, but also because Berlin has the largest Muslim
population of all the cities in Germany. From the 1970s onwards, the presence of
numerous Muslim families has increasingly become a distinguishing mark of this country.
Constant effort is needed in order to foster better mutual acquaintance and understanding.
Not only is this important for peaceful coexistence, but also for the contribution
that each can make towards building up the common good in this society. Many Muslims
attribute great importance to the religious dimension of life. At times this is thought
provocative in a society that tends to marginalize religion or at most to assign it
a place among the individual’s private choices. The Catholic Church firmly advocates
that due recognition be given to the public dimension of religious adherence. In an
overwhelmingly pluralist society, this demand is not unimportant. In the process,
care must be taken to guarantee that the other is always treated with respect. This
mutual respect grows only on the basis of agreement on certain inalienable values
that are proper to human nature, in particular the inviolable dignity of every single
person as created by God. Such agreement does not limit the expression of individual
religions; on the contrary, it allows each person to bear witness explicitly to what
he believes, not avoiding comparison with others. In Germany – as in many other
countries, not only Western ones – this common frame of reference is articulated by
the Constitution, whose juridical content is binding on every citizen, whether he
belong to a faith community or not. Naturally, discussion over the best formulation
of principles like freedom of public worship is vast and open-ended, yet it is significant
that the German Basic Law expresses them in a way that is still valid today at a distance
of over sixty years (cf. Art. 4:2). In this law we find above all the common ethos
that lies at the heart of human coexistence and that also in a certain way pervades
the apparently formal rules of operation of the institutions of democratic life. We
could ask ourselves how such a text – drawn up in a radically different historical
epoch, that is to say in an almost uniformly Christian cultural situation – is also
suited to present-day Germany, situated as it is within a globalized world and marked
as it is by a remarkable degree of pluralism in the area of religious belief. The
reason for this seems to me to lie in the fact that the fathers of the Basic Law at
that important moment were fully conscious of the need to find truly solid ground
with which all citizens would be able to identify and which could serve as the supporting
foundation for everyone, irrespective of their differences. In seeking this, mindful
of human dignity and responsibility before God, they did not prescind from their own
religious beliefs; indeed for many of them, the real source of inspiration was the
Christian vision of man. But they knew that everyone has to engage with the followers
of other religions and none: common ground for all was found in the recognition of
some inalienable rights that are proper to human nature and precede every positive
formulation. In this way, a society which at that time was essentially homogenous
laid the foundations that we today may consider valid for a markedly pluralistic era,
foundations that actually point out the evident limits of pluralism: it is inconceivable,
in fact, that a society could survive in the long term without consensus on fundamental
ethical values. Dear friends, on the basis of what I have outlined here, it seems
to me that there can be fruitful collaboration between Christians and Muslims. In
the process, we help to build a society that differs in many respects from what we
brought with us from the past. As believers, setting out from our respective convictions,
we can offer an important witness in many key areas of life in society. I am thinking,
for example, of the protection of the family based on marriage, respect for life in
every phase of its natural course or the promotion of greater social justice. This
is another reason why I think it important to hold a day of reflection, dialogue and
prayer for peace and justice in the world, which as you know we plan to do on 27 October
next in Assisi, twenty-five years after the historic meeting there led by my predecessor,
Blessed Pope John Paul II. Through this gathering, we wish to express, with simplicity,
that we believers have a special contribution to make towards building a better world,
while acknowledging that if our actions are to be effective, we need to grow in dialogue
and mutual esteem. With these sentiments I renew my sincere greetings and I thank
you for this meeting, which for me has been a great enrichment of my visit to my homeland.
Thank you for your attention!XXX XXX XXX
Apostolic Journey
of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Germany Meeting with the Council of
the Evangelical Church in Germany Dear Brothers and Sisters, As I begin
to speak, I would like first of all to say how deeply grateful I am that we are able
to come together. I am particularly grateful to you, my dear brother, Pastor Schneider,
for receiving me and for the words with which you have welcomed me here among you.
You have opened your heart and openly expressed a truly shared faith, a longing for
unity. And we are also glad, for I believe that this session, our meetings here,
are also being celebrated as the feast of our shared faith. Moreover, I would like
to express my thanks to all of you for your gift in making it possible for us to speak
with one another as Christians here, in this historic place. As the Bishop of
Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting you here in the ancient Augustinian
convent in Erfurt. As we have just heard, this is where Luther studied theology.
This is where he was ordained a priest. Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue
the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards
priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine. And on this path, he was not simply concerned
with this or that. What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep
passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey. “How do I receive the grace
of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his
theological searching and inner struggle. For Luther theology was no mere academic
pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God. “How
do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force
of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me. For who is actually
concerned about this today – even among Christians? What does the question of God
mean in our lives? In our preaching? Most people today, even Christians, set out
from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues.
He knows that we are all mere flesh. And insofar as people believe in an afterlife
and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes
that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our
small failings. The question no longer troubles us. But are they really so small,
our failings? Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but
also of the small, who think only of their own advantage? Is it not laid waste through
the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the
other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted? Is the world
not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself
with claims to religious motivation? Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts
of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men
and women – were more alive in us? I could go on. No, evil is no small matter.
Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful.
The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – Luther’s
burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too,
not an academic question, but a real one. In my view, this is the first summons we
should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther. Another important point:
God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis
regarding the origins of the universe. This God has a face, and he has spoken to
us. He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man.
Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes
Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis
of sacred Scripture. This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our
spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our
life. Now perhaps one might say: all well and good, but what has this to do with
our ecumenical situation? Could this just be an attempt to talk our way past the
urgent problems that are still waiting for practical progress, for concrete results?
I would respond by saying that the first and most important thing for ecumenism is
that we keep in view just how much we have in common, not losing sight of it amid
the pressure towards secularization – everything that makes us Christian in the first
place and continues to be our gift and our task. It was the error of the Reformation
period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp
existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture
and the early Christian creeds. For me, the great ecumenical step forward of recent
decades is that we have become aware of all this common ground, that we acknowledge
it as we pray and sing together, as we make our joint commitment to the Christian
ethos in our dealings with the world, as we bear common witness to the God of Jesus
Christ in this world as our inalienable, shared foundation. To be sure, the risk
of losing it is not unreal. I would like to make two brief points here. The geography
of Christianity has changed dramatically in recent times, and is in the process of
changing further. Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with
overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian
denominations often seem at a loss. This is a form of Christianity with little institutional
depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability.
This worldwide phenomenon – that bishops from all over the world are constantly telling
me about – poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying
to us, for better and for worse? In any event, it raises afresh the question about
what has enduring validity and what can or must be changed – the question of our fundamental
faith choice. The second challenge to worldwide Christianity of which I wish to
speak is more profound and in our country more controversial: the secularized context
of the world in which we Christians today have to live and bear witness to our faith.
God is increasingly being driven out of our society, and the history of revelation
that Scripture recounts to us seems locked into an ever more remote past. Are we
to yield to the pressure of secularization, and become modern by watering down the
faith? Naturally faith today has to be thought out afresh, and above all lived afresh,
so that it is suited to the present day. Yet it is not by watering the faith down,
but by living it today in its fullness that we achieve this. This is a key ecumenical
task in which we have to help one another: developing a deeper and livelier faith.
It is not strategy that saves us and saves Christianity, but faith – thought out and
lived afresh; through such faith, Christ enters this world of ours, and with him,
the living God. As the martyrs of the Nazi era brought us together and prompted that
great initial ecumenical opening, so today, faith that is lived from deep within amid
a secularized world is the most powerful ecumenical force that brings us together,
guiding us towards unity in the one Lord. And we pray to him, asking that we may
learn to live the faith anew, and that in this way we may then become one.
XXX
XXX XXX
Apostolic Journey of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Germany Address
at the Ecumenical Celebration
Dear Sisters and Brothers, “I ask
not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through
them” (Jn 17:20). These words Jesus addressed to the Father in the Upper Room.
He intercedes for coming generations of believers. He looks beyond the Upper Room,
towards the future. He also prayed for us. And he prayed for our unity. This prayer
of Jesus is not simply something from the past. He stands before the Father, forever
making intercession for us. At this moment he also stands in our midst and he desires
to draw us into his own prayer. In the prayer of Jesus we find the very heart of
our unity. We will become one if we allow ourselves to be drawn into this prayer.
Whenever we gather in prayer as Christians, Jesus’ concern for us, and his prayer
to the Father for us, ought to touch our hearts. The more we allow ourselves to be
drawn into this event, the more we grow in unity. Did Jesus’ prayer go unheard?
The history of Christianity is in some sense the visible element of this drama in
which Christ strives and suffers with us human beings. Ever anew he must endure the
rejection of unity, yet ever anew unity takes place with him and thus with the triune
God. We need to see both things: the sin of human beings, who reject God and withdraw
within themselves, but also the triumphs of God, who upholds the Church despite her
weakness, constantly drawing men and women closer to himself and thus to one another.
For this reason, in an ecumenical gathering, we ought not only to regret our divisions
and separations, but we should also give thanks to God for all the elements of unity
which he has preserved for us and bestows on us ever anew. And this gratitude must
be at the same time a resolve not to lose, at a time of temptations and perils, the
unity thus bestowed. Our fundamental unity comes from the fact that we believe
in God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. And that we confess that
he is the triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The highest unity is not the
solitude of a monad, but rather a unity born of love. We believe in God – the real
God. We believe that God spoke to us and became one of us. To bear witness to this
living God is our common task at the present time. Does man need God, or can we
do quite well without him? When, in the first phase of God’s absence, his light continues
to illumine and sustain the order of human existence, it appears that things can also
function quite well without God. But the more the world withdraws from God, the clearer
it becomes that man, in his hubris of power, in his emptiness of heart and in his
longing for satisfaction and happiness, increasingly loses his life. A thirst for
the infinite is indelibly present in human beings. Man was created to have a relationship
with God; we need him. Our primary ecumenical service at this hour must be to bear
common witness to the presence of the living God and in this way to give the world
the answer which it needs. Naturally, an absolutely central part of this fundamental
witness to God is a witness to Jesus Christ, true man and true God, who lived in our
midst, suffered and died for us and, in his resurrection, flung open the gates of
death. Dear friends, let us strengthen one another in this faith! This is a great
ecumenical task which leads us into the heart of Jesus’ prayer. The seriousness
of our faith in God is shown by the way we live his word. In our own day, it is shown
in a very practical way by our commitment to that creature which he wished in his
own image: to man. We live at a time of uncertainty about what it means to be human.
Ethics are being replaced by a calculation of consequences. In the face of this,
we as Christians must defend the inviolable dignity of human beings from conception
to death – from issues of pre-implantation diagnosis to the question of euthanasia.
As Romano Guardini once put it: “Only those who know God, know man.” Without knowledge
of God, man is easily manipulated. Faith in God must take concrete form in a common
defence of man. To this defence of man belong not only these fundamental criteria
of what it means to be human, but above all and very specifically, love, as Jesus
Christ taught us in the account of the final judgement (Mt 25): God will judge
us on how we respond to our neighbour, to the least of his brethren. Readiness to
help, amid the needs of the present time and beyond our immediate circle, is an essential
task of the Christian. As I mentioned, this is true first and foremost in our
personal lives as individuals. But it also holds true in our community, as a people
and a state in which we must all be responsible for one another. It holds true for
our continent, in which we are called to European solidarity. Finally, it is true
beyond all frontiers: today Christian love of neighbour also calls for commitment
to justice throughout the world. I know that Germans and Germany are doing much to
enable all men and women to live in dignity, and for this I would like to express
deep gratitude. In conclusion, I would like to mention an even deeper dimension
of our commitment to love. The seriousness of our faith is shown especially when
it inspires people to put themselves totally at the disposal of God and thus of other
persons. Great acts of charity become concrete only when, on the ground, we find
persons totally at the service of others; they make the love of God credible. People
of this sort are an important sign of the truth of our faith. Prior to my visit
there was some talk of an “ecumenical gift” which was expected from such a visit.
There is no need for me to specify the gifts mentioned in this context. Here I would
only say that, in most of its manifestions, this reflects a political misreading of
faith and of ecumenism. In general, when a Head of State visits a friendly country,
contacts between the various parties take place beforehand to arrange one or more
agreements between the two states: by weighing respective benefits and drawbacks a
compromise is reached which in the end appears beneficial for both parties, so that
a treaty can then be signed. But the faith of Christians does not rest on such a
weighing of benefits and drawbacks. A self-made faith is worthless. Faith is not
something we work out intellectually and negotiate between us. It is the foundation
for our lives. Unity grows not by the weighing of benefits and drawbacks but only
by entering ever more deeply into the faith in our thoughts and in our lives. In
the past fifty years, and especially after the visit of Pope John Paul II some thirty
years ago, we have drawn much closer together, and for this we can only be grateful.
I willingly think of the meeting with the Commission led by Bishop Lohse, in which
this kind of joint growth in reflecting upon and living the faith was practised.
To all those engaged in that process – and especially, on the Catholic side, to Cardinal
Lehmann – I wish to express deep gratitude. I will refrain from mentioning other
names – the Lord knows them all. Together we can only thank the Lord for the paths
of unity on which he has led us, and unite ourselves in humble trust to his prayer:
Grant that we may all be one, as you are one with the Father, so that the world may
believe that he has sent you (cf. Jn 17:21). XXX XXX XXX
Apostolic
Journey of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to Germany Address of the Holy
Father at Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary Etzelsbach, Chapel of the ShrineDear
Brothers and Sisters, Now I am able to fulfil my wish to visit Eichsfeld, and
here in Etzelsbach to thank Mary in company with you. “Here in the beloved quiet
vale”, as the pilgrims’ hymn says, “under the old lime trees”, Mary gives us security
and new strength. During two godless dictatorships, which sought to deprive the people
of their ancestral faith, the inhabitants of Eichsfeld were in no doubt that here
in this shrine at Etzelsbach an open door and a place of inner peace was to be found.
The special friendship with Mary that grew from all this, is what we seek to cultivate
further, not least through this evening’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When
Christians of all times and places turn to Mary, they are acting on the spontaneous
conviction that Jesus cannot refuse his mother what she asks; and they are relying
on the unshakable trust that Mary is also our mother – a mother who has experienced
the greatest of all sorrows, who feels all our griefs with us and ponders in a maternal
way how to overcome them. How many people down the centuries have made pilgrimages
to Mary, in order to find comfort and strength before the image of the Mother of Sorrows,
as here at Etzelsbach! Let us look upon her likeness: a woman of middle age, her
eyelids heavy with much weeping, gazing pensively into the distance, as if meditating
in her heart upon everything that had happened. On her knees rests the lifeless body
of her son, she holds him gently and lovingly, like a precious gift. We see the marks
of the crucifixion on his bare flesh. The left arm of the corpse is pointing straight
down. Perhaps this sculpture of the Pietà, like so many others, was originally placed
above an altar. The crucified Jesus would then be pointing with his outstretched
arm to what was taking place on the altar, where the holy sacrifice that he had accomplished
is made present in the Eucharist. A particular feature of the holy image of Etzelsbach
is the position of Our Lord’s body. In most representations of the Pietà, the dead
Jesus is lying with his head facing left, so that the observer can see the wounded
side of the Crucified Lord. Here in Etzelsbach, however, the wounded side is concealed,
because the body is facing the other way. It seems to me that a deep meaning lies
hidden in this representation, that only becomes apparent through silent contemplation:
in the Etzelsbach image, the hearts of Jesus and his mother are turned to one another;
they come close to each other. They exchange their love. We know that the heart
is also the seat of the most tender affection as well as the most intimate compassion.
In Mary’s heart there is room for the love that her divine Son wants to bestow upon
the world. Marian devotion focuses on contemplation of the relationship between
the Mother and her divine Son. The faithful constantly discover new dimensions and
qualities which this mystery can help to disclose for us, for example when the image
of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is seen as a symbol of her deep and unreserved loving
unity with Christ. It is not self-fulfilment that truly enables people to flourish,
according to the model that modern life so often proposes to us, which can easily
turn into a sophisticated form of selfishness. Rather it is an attitude of self-giving
directed towards the heart of Mary and hence also towards the heart of the Redeemer. “We
know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called
according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28), as we have just heard in the Scripture reading.
With Mary, God has worked for good in everything, and he does not cease, through Mary,
to cause good to spread further in the world. Looking down from the Cross, from the
throne of grace and salvation, Jesus gave us his mother Mary to be our mother. At
the moment of his self-offering for mankind, he makes Mary as it were the channel
of the rivers of grace that flow from the Cross. At the foot of the Cross, Mary becomes
our fellow traveller and protector on life’s journey. “By her motherly love she cares
for her son’s sisters and brothers who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers
and difficulties, until they are led into their blessed home” (Lumen Gentium, 62).
Yes indeed, in life we pass through high-points and low-points, but Mary intercedes
for us with her Son and conveys to us the strength of divine love. Our trust in
the powerful intercession of the Mother of God and our gratitude for the help we have
repeatedly experienced impel us, as it were, to think beyond the needs of the moment.
What does Mary actually want to say to us, when she rescues us from our plight? She
wants to help us grasp the breadth and depth of our Christian vocation. With a mother’s
tenderness, she wants to make us understand that our whole life should be a response
to the love of our God, who is so rich in mercy. “Understand,” she seems to say to
us, “that God, who is the source of all that is good and who never desires anything
other than your true happiness, has the right to demand of you a life that yields
unreservedly and joyfully to his will, striving at the same time that others may do
likewise.” Where God is, there is a future. Indeed – when we allow God’s love to
influence the whole of our lives, then heaven stands open. Then it is possible so
to shape the present that it corresponds more and more to the Good News of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Then the little things of everyday life acquire meaning, and great
problems find solutions. Amen.