Images of Hope
JOSEPH CARDINAL RATZINGER
(POPE BENEDICT XVI)
Images of Hope
Ventures into the Church’s Year
Translated by Father John Rock, S.J.
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
Title of the German original:Bilder der Hoffnung
© 1997, 2006 by Verlag Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau
With special acknowledgment to Sister Mary Pius, O.P.,
for her contribution to Father Rock’s translation.
Cover art: Ascension
Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum
Photograph of the Chair Altar of Saint Peter’s in Rome
by Mary Gibson
© 2006 Libreria Editrice Vaticana
© 2006 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-964-3 (HB)
Library of Congress Control Number 2006922685
Contents
Foreword
Christmas
Ox and Ass at the Crib
Christmas
The Message of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome
Conversion of the Apostle Paul
The Warrior and the Sufferer
Chair of Peter
“Primacy in Love”
The Chair Altar of Saint Peter’s in Rome
Easter
“I Do Indeed Hear the Message. . .”
Easter
Sarah’s Laughter, translated by Graham Harrison
The Ascension
The Beginning of a New Year
Pentecost
The Holy Spirit and the Church
Corpus Christi
The Mosaics in the Apse of Saint Clement’s Basilica in Rome
Portiuncula
What Indulgence Means
Wolfgang of Regensburg
A European Saint
All Saints’ Day
At the Feet of Saint Peter’s Basilica
All Souls’ Day
Sites of Hope—The Roman Catacombs
Sources of Texts
Foreword
In the course of my years in Rome, I was invited again and again by Bavarian Radio to give meditations on the high points of the liturgical year. Frequently, too, I was encouraged to interpret one of the great images that are so abundant in the churches of Rome. At the approach of my seventieth birthday, my brother suggested I collect these texts and see whether they might not produce a small volume that could preserve the interwoven images and thoughts beyond their airing on radio or television and thereby be of help in understanding the Christian feasts. The plan was discussed with Bavarian Radio’s advisor on Church matters, Prelate Willibald Leierseder, who had initiated most of the meditations and had selected the corresponding images, as well as with Herder publishers. So that is how this small volume originated. It is, certainly, not free of coincidental elements, but it can perhaps help us nevertheless to hear that message of hope again more clearly and to renew that inner gaze which is so often overwhelmed by the flood of images and offers that assails us.
I thank my brother, especially, Cathedral Choir Director Georg Ratzinger, without whose insistent encouragement I would not have taken up this project. I thank also Prelate Leierseder and the people at Bavarian Radio, who assigned the themes and images. I thank Verlag Herder, which exercised great care to ensure that readers might take up this little book with joy.
ANNUNCIATION
Mosaic from the Triumphal Arch
of Saint Mary Major Basilica, Rome
Ox and Ass at the Crib.
Detail of the Hadamar Manger, by Helmut Piccolruaz
Christmas
______
Ox and Ass at the Crib
Despite all the hustle and bustle at Christmas, we fervently desire that this festive time will grant us opportunity for reflection, joy, and contact with the goodness of our God and will accordingly renew our resolve to persevere. Before we reflect on what this feast can say to us today, a brief look at the origin of the celebration of Christmas might prove helpful.
The Church’s year of feasts first developed, not with a view to the birth of Christ, but from faith in his Resurrection. Thus the original feast of Christianity is Easter, not Christmas. For indeed it was the Resurrection that established Christian faith and let the Church come to be. For this reason, Ignatius of Antioch (who died at the latest in A.D. 117) already called Christians those “who no longer keep the Sabbath but rather live according to the Lord’s Day”. Being a Christian means living from Easter, that is, from the Resurrection that is celebrated every week on Sunday. It was Hippolytus who first established with certainty, in his commentary on Daniel, written about A.D. 204, that Jesus was born on December 25. Bo Reicke, the early exegete from Basel, pointed moreover to the calendar of feasts, according to which, in Luke’s Gospel, the accounts of the birth of the Baptist and the birth of Jesus are related to each other. It would follow from this that Luke in his Gospel presupposes December 25 as Jesus’ day of birth. On that day, the feast of the Dedication of the Temple, introduced by Judas Maccabeus in 164 B.C., was celebrated. At the same time, the date of Jesus’ birth was symbolized, so that with him, who arose as God’s light in the winter night, the true dedication of the Temple—the arrival of God in the midst of the world—might take place.
Be that as it may, the feast of Christmas did not assume clear contours in Christendom until the fourth century, when it displaced the Roman feast of the unconquered sun-god. Christ’s birth became understood as the victory of the true light. Bo Reicke has clearly shown in his notes that an already old Judeo-Christian tradition was contained in this recasting of a pagan celebration into a Christian solemnity.
The special human warmth we feel at Christmas, which has significantly overtaken that of Easter in the hearts of Christians, did not develop until the Middle Ages. It was Francis of Assisi who helped bring this novelty about through his deep love for the man Jesus, for the God with us. As his first biographer, Thomas of Celano, explains in his second description of Francis’ life: “He celebrated Christmas more than any other feast with an indescribable joy. He said that this was the feast of feasts, for on this day God became a small child and sucked milk like all children of men. Francis embraced with great affection and devotion the images that represented the child Jesus and stammered words of sympathy as children do words of affection. The name of Jesus was sweet as honey on his lips.”
It was such a disposition that gave rise to the famous celebration of Christmas in Greccio. His visits to the Holy Land and to the manger in Saint Mary Major may have inspired him here. What moved him was the longing for nearness, for reality. He wanted to experience Bethlehem directly. He wanted to experience up close the birth of the child Jesus and to tell all his friends.
Celano recounts the night at the crib in the first biography in a way that is moving and that at the same time has decidedly contributed to the development of the most beautiful custom of the crèche. We can therefore justifiably say that the night at Greccio gave Christendom the festival of Christmas again in a brand new way. Accordingly, its own expression, its special warmth and humanity, the humanity of our God, communicated themselves to souls, giving faith a new dimension. The feast of the Resurrection had directed one’s gaze to God’s power, which overcomes death and teaches us to hope for the world to come. Now, however, the defenseless love of God, his humility and goodness, became visible; it sets us apart in this world and wants to instruct us in a new way of living and loving.
Perhaps it might be useful to pause a moment and ask where Greccio is, Greccio, which attained its own special meaning for the history of faith. It is a small place in t
he Rieti Valley in Umbria, not very far to the northeast of Rome. Lakes and mountains give this stretch of land its special charm and a quiet beauty that still move us today. Fortunately, the commotion of tourism has hardly affected it. The monastery of Greccio, more than two thousand feet high, has preserved something of the simplicity of its origins. It has remained modest, as has the little village at its feet. The forest surrounds it as it did at the time of the Poverello, inviting us to stop and look. Celano says, moreover, that Francis especially loved the inhabitants of this spot of land because of their poverty and simplicity. He often came here to rest, drawn by a cell of extreme poverty and seclusion in which he could give himself undisturbed to the observation of heavenly things. Poverty, simplicity—the silence of men and the speech of creation: these were apparently the impressions that bound the Saint of Assisi to this place. So he could be in his Bethlehem and register anew the mystery of Bethlehem in the geography of souls.
But let us return to Christmas of 1223. The land in Greccio was placed at the disposal of the poor man of Assisi by a nobleman named John. According to Celano, John, despite his high lineage and important position, “accorded no particular significance to his noble blood; rather he desired to attain nobility of soul.” For this reason Francis loved him.
Celano writes that on that night John received the grace of a wonderful vision. He saw in the manger a small child lying motionless, who was awakened from his sleep through the nearness of Saint Francis. The author adds: “This vision really corresponded to what happened, for the child Jesus really had sunk into the sleep of forgetfulness in many hearts. Through his servant Francis, the remembrance was revived and indelibly engraved in their minds.”
This image describes quite accurately the new dimension Francis, with his heart and spirit-filled faith, gave the Christian celebration of Christmas, namely, the discovery of God’s revelation in the child Jesus. Precisely in this way, God truly became “Emmanuel”, God with us. No barrier of majesty or distance divides us from him. He has drawn so near to us as a child that we unabashedly address him familiarly and can have direct, personal access to the child’s heart.
In the child Jesus, the defenselessness of God is apparent. God comes without weapons, because he does not wish to conquer from outside but desires to win and transform us from within. If anything can conquer man’s vainglory, his violence, his greed, it is the vulnerability of the child. God assumed this vulnerability in order to conquer us and lead us to himself.
Meanwhile, let us not forget that the highest title of Jesus Christ is “the Son”, Son of God. The divine dignity is designated by one word that shows Jesus as the eternal child. His being a child stands in a unique correspondence to his divinity, which is the dignity of the “Son”. Thus his being a child gives direction, tells us how we can come to God, how we can come to divinization. It is in this respect that we are to understand his words: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).
Whoever has not understood the mystery of Christmas has not understood what is decisive in being Christian. Whoever has not accepted this cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. That is what Francis wanted to remind the Christian world of his own time and every time thereafter.
According to the instructions of Saint Francis, ox and ass were present in the cave of Greccio. He said to the nobleman John: “I wish to evoke remembrance of the child quite realistically, how he was born in Bethlehem, and of all the hardship he must have endured in his childhood. I would like to see with my bodily eyes how it was, to lie in a manger and to sleep on hay between an ox and an ass.”
Ever since, ox and ass belong to every crib display. But where do they come from? The Christmas accounts of the New Testament tell nothing of them, as is commonly known. In pursuing this question, we come upon a state of affairs that is important not only for the whole Christmas tradition but also even for the Christmas and Easter piety of the Church in liturgy and popular custom.
Ox and ass are not simply products of a rich fantasy. They have become companions of the Christmas event through the faith of the Church in the unity of Old and New Testaments. Isaiah 1:3 states: “The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people does not understand.”
The Church Fathers saw in these words a prophetic saying that points to the new people of God, the Church of Jews and Gentiles. Before God all men, Jews and Gentiles, like oxen and asses, lacked understanding and reason. But the child in the crib opened their eyes, so that they now recognize the voice of the master, the voice of the Lord.
Again and again in medieval depictions of Christmas, both animals are given almost human faces as they stand and bow down knowingly before the mystery of the child. That was only logical, for both animals were looked upon as the prophetic cipher concealing the mystery of the Church, our mystery, who are oxen and asses over against the eternal God; oxen and asses whose eyes open that Holy Night so that they can recognize their Lord in the crib.
But do we really recognize him? When we place ox and ass in the crib, we must let the entire passage from Isaiah come to mind. It is not only good news—the promise of knowledge to come—but is also judgment on present blindness. Ox and ass know, but “Israel does not know; my people does not understand.”
Who are the ox and the ass today, who are “my people”, who do not understand? Why is it the case that non—reason knows and reason is blind?
In order to find out, we must return once again with the Church Fathers to the first Christmas. Who did not recognize Jesus? And who did? And why was that so?
Now, the one who did not recognize was Herod, who comprehended nothing as he was told about the child. Rather, he was only more deeply blinded by his lust for power and by the paranoia from which he suffered (Mt 2:3). It was “all Jerusalem with him” that did not recognize (ibid.). It was the men in soft raiment, the finer society, who did not recognize him (Mt 11:8). It was the learned who did not recognize, the scripture scholars and exegetes, who to be sure knew the right passage but nevertheless comprehended nothing (Mt 2:6).
The ones who understood, in contrast to those just named, were “ox and ass”: the shepherds, the Magi, Mary and Joseph. In the stable, where the child Jesus is, you do not find the finer society, for ox and ass are at home there.
What about us? Are we far distant from the stable because we are too fine and sophisticated for it? Do we, too, not get so caught up in scholarly interpretation of the Bible, in establishing the inauthenticity or the genuine historical places, that we become blind to the child himself and perceive nothing of him? Are we not all too often in “Jerusalem”, in the palace, inside ourselves, our own vainglory, our fear of persecution, rather than able to hear the angel voices in the night, go there, and worship?
So let us look in this night at the faces of the ox and ass asking: My people does not understand; do you comprehend the voice of the Lord? When we place the familiar figures in the crib, we should ask God to give our hearts that simplicity which discovers the Lord in the child—as Francis discovered in Greccio. Then what Celano—quite close to the words of Saint Luke concerning the shepherds of the first Holy Night (Lk 2:20)—relates of the participants at Midnight Mass in Greccio could happen to us: each returned home full of joy.
Christmas
______
The Message of the Basilica
of Saint Mary Major in Rome
As often as I enter the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, coming from the noisy streets of Rome, I feel reminded of the invitation of the psalmist: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10). When, not only in summer, droves of tourists hurry through the church and transform it into a kind of street, an invitation to be silent, to recollect, and to look emanates from the mysterious glow of the church that of itself lets the noise of the everyday seem insignificant. It is as if the centuries of prayer had remained present in order to accompany us on our way. The still regions of the
soul that otherwise would be pushed aside by the pressure of cares and routine become free when we entrust ourselves to the rhythm of this house of God and its message.
But what is this message? Whoever asks this is well in danger of drawing away from the special call that seeks to address him here. One cannot convert what it says into an easily retrievable dictionary entry. The message requires stepping outside the crossfire of questions and answers. It beckons us instead to stay awhile in order to awaken the powers of the heart to listen and see. Lingering here leads us beyond being quick to grasp and then to discard again. So instead of giving you an answer in formulas and concepts, I invite you to view with me two of this church’s pictures and to allow them to tell you what I can only inadequately translate into words.
There is first of all something very remarkable. This church is a Christmas church. As edifice it wants to extend to us the angels’ invitation to the shepherds: “For behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:10-11). At the same time, however, this house of God seeks to draw us into the shepherds’ answer: “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us” (Lk 2:15). Thus one would expect the image of the Holy Night to be the center of this room and its aisles. In fact, this is indeed the case, and it is also not the case.
The mosaics on both the long sides of the nave present, so to speak, all of history as the procession of mankind to the Redeemer. In the middle, above the arch of triumph, to which the aisles lead, where we would expect the birth of Christ to be represented, we find instead only an empty throne and on it a crown, a ruler’s mantle, and the cross. On the footstool lies the bundle of history like a pillow bound together with seven red threads. The empty throne, the cross, and history at its feet—that is the Christmas image of this church, which claimed and claims to be the Bethlehem of Rome. Why? If we wish to understand the image we have first to recall that the arch of triumph stands above the crypt that originally was built as the replica of the cave of Bethlehem in which Christ came into the world. Here the relic was and is still venerated that according to tradition is the manger of Bethlehem. So here the procession of history, all the splendor of the mosaics, is abruptly pulled down into the cave, into the stable. The images fall down into reality. The throne is empty, for the Lord has come down into the stable. The central mosaic, to which everything leads, is likewise only the hand that is extended to us so that we might discover the leap from the images to reality. The rhythm of the space pulls us into a sudden change when it thrusts us out of the brilliant heights of ancient art in the mosaics directly into the depth of the cave, of the stable. It seeks to lead us into the transition from religious aestheticism to the act of faith.
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