The Church is Resplendent with the Light of Christ”
Jul 15, 2005
«You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church» (Mt 16.18). This saying of Jesus is the indestructible foundation and the deepest motivation that makes sense of what we have experienced in these last weeks. By Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan.
(30Days, May 2005) It is, in fact, this affirmation of Jesus that explains the love that the Christian people nurtures for the Pope, for every Pope.
The words of Jesus come at the end of a close and ever more absorbing conversation between Jesus and his disciples. They are the response and seal of the Lord Jesus Himself on the incisive profession of faith of the apostle Peter: «You are the Christ, the Son of the living God». This is the same extract from the Gospels that was read in the silence of the Sistine Chapel in the late afternoon of Tuesday, 19 April.
Immediately after the new Pope had accepted his canonical election as Supreme Pontiff and had chosen to call himself Benedict XVI. What took place on a far off day in the decisive dialogue between Peter and Jesus, was in that precise moment renewed and realized yet once more between the same Lord Jesus and the new Peter, who had the name and face of Cardinal Ratzinger.
I am certain that the remarkable and strong personality of the new Pope will reveal itself bit by bit, in the unfolding of his pontificate.
There is a trait in the historical sequence and personality of the new Pope that I like to emphasize. It is the trait of fidelity to the Council and to its implementation.
And today it is still the Council that gives direction to the ministry just begun by the new Pope. He, in fact, in the wake of the late-lamented John Paul II, intends to continue along the path of the third millennium «carrying the Gospel in his hands, applied to the actual world through the authoritative rereading of Vatican Council II», as he said in the words pronounced in the Sistine Chapel the day after his election. Now, «where Peter is there is the Church of Milan», as one of my predecessors, Luigi Nazzari of Calabiana, used to sustain, taking up the known expression of our father Saint Ambrose («Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia»). Yes, our Church also commits itself to moving in fidelity to Vatican Council II.
This Council, in fact, pointed with fresh vigor for the men of our time to Jesus Christ as «the light of mankind» and wished «ardently to illuminate all men with the light of Christ that is reflected in the face of the Church, announcing the Gospel to every creature» (Lumen Gentium, n. 1). As our Saint Ambrose said already: «The Church shines not with its own light, but with that of Christ and takes its own splendor from the Sun of Justice» (Esamerone IV.32).
Whoever fixes his look on Christ the Lord and in faith recognizes Him as the unique, universal and necessary Savior of man and of the world, is involved in the missionary dynamism of the Church: he becomes a witness to Him, the Risen One. As the Pope said on Sunday 24 April, «we exist to show God to men», to proclaim to all, with the word and our lives, that «there is nothing more beautiful than being reached, surprised by the Gospel, by Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than knowing Him and communicating to others our friendship with Him».
Whoever fixes his look on Christ the Lord, carries out his fervent wish, his precise will: ut unum sint (John 17.21), and walks on the path of ecumenism. And again: whoever fixes his look on Christ opens himself to inter-religious dialogue, opens himself – in truth and love – to man, to all men and to each one, in particular to the many people who live in the wasteland.
The request that the new Pope made and continues to make with singular insistence is striking: the request for the precious support of our prayers. «Pray for me»: this is the request, or rather the extremely personal and strong exhortation that Benedict XVI made to me also in the brief but very emotional moment of greeting and homage in the Sistine Chapel immediately after his election and again on the morning of Friday 22 April at the end of the meeting with all the cardinals. Kneeling in front of him, I told him of the closeness and affection of all of our Ambrosian church for him and referred to the prayers that accompanied him. And he addressed me, in a tone both firm and emotional at the same time, with these simple, but incisive, words: «And pray for me!».
May the Most Holy Mother of Jesus and of the Church, our Little Madonna, reach Benedict XVI, from the highest spire of the Cathedral, with her look and her smile and accompany him in his service as universal pastor.
The Church is Resplendent with the Light of Christ”