Theology professor Dr. Conor Sweeney recently reflected on Pope Benedict XVI for The Catholic World Report, revealing how the late pontiff’s theological vision was centered on interpreting the Gospel through the lens of God’s love. Pope Benedict’s articulation of the primacy of love in the relation between God and man provides an answer, according to Sweeney, of whether it is possible to still believe in God today, resulting in a roadmap on how to encounter the love of Jesus Christ in the modern world.
Sweeney, an associate professor at Christendom, has written on Pope Benedict’s thoughts in the past, including in two chapters for the forthcoming Ratzinger Theological Dictionary from Ignatius Press. In his new article for The Catholic World Report, Sweeney begins by unpacking Benedict’s answer to the question of whether belief in God is still possible today.
“To speak of the truth and the reason of God, for him, meant above all speaking of his love,” writes Sweeney. “As he would explain in Introduction to Christianity, what makes Christianity unique is that ‘the God of faith is basically defined by the category of relationship.’ This ‘corrects philosophy and lets us know that love is higher than pure thought.’ It lets us know that God in himself is not thought thinking itself or the ground of sufficient reason but rather the eternal exchange of love.”
What does this mean, ultimately? That the truth is not limited to man’s finite reason, according to Sweeney, but is instead found in Jesus Christ as an “infinite and eternal love.” As a result, the Christian faith is not simply an ethical choice or a lofty idea, nor is it just a moral code — rather, to quote Benedict, it is an “encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and decisive direction.”
Sweeney continues, showing how one must undergo a conversion — a “metanoia” — to truly unite themselves to the Cross of Christ.
“The blueprint and precedent for this movement of conversion that makes Christians and saints Ratzinger finds in the person of Christ himself, specifically, in the ‘mutual indwelling’ of the human and divine natures in Christ (an emphasis he takes from Maximus the Confessor) that reaches its apogee in the Son’s prayer of obedience to the Father on the Cross: ‘Not what I will, but what though wilt’ (Mk14:36),” writes Sweeney. “To be true, to be perfectly proportioned to God, the love encountered in Christ must move towards participation in Christ’s perfect kenosis in obedience to the Father. For Christ ‘is the one who has moved right out beyond himself and, thus, the man who has truly come to himself.’”
From there, Sweeney reveals Benedict’s key to how a relationship with Christ can transform one’s life: through the Eucharist. In receiving the Eucharist, man is made a participant in the mystery of Christ’s saving event of love, according to Sweeney, making possible the conversion of one’s nature into Christ’s.
“Ratzinger’s gift to us is a vision of an encounter with love that makes it possible to still believe that Christ can truly conquer the depths of evil and suffering in my life and in the Church’s, and so transform man and the Church into a new creation,” concludes Sweeney. “Whether we know it or not, the embers of this love lie deep within the stillness and silence of the hidden Church’s faithfulness to Christ, the Church that Ratzinger once prophesied would become small and would lose much.”
Read Sweeney’s full article here.
Learn more about Christendom’s close relationship with Pope Benedict XVI here.