The Visit to the United Kingdom has been the highlight of the Pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI: The depth and clarity of the Pope’s vision in his public discourses are the highlight. In the 19,825 official words that Pope Benedict delivered he set out a plan. I detected three main areas:
1) We need “clear voices of faith” among the laity. It is only through individual witness that we can be a force for good. We do not blindly follow the teachings of the Church, but need to be creative, adopting an attitude of leadership, as the saints have done. At Bellahouston Park, the Pope told us that, “the evangelisation of culture is all the more important” today, with the “dictatorship of relativism” that besets modern man. “Clear voices” among the laity are what is needed. This is surely what Newman meant by being “links in a chain”.
2) Secondly, we need to be true teachers to one another, so that the Gospel can continue to be spread in a largely secular society. The Pope was very clear on this, particularly in his address to religious educators.
3) Thirdly, we must recognise that our work is united with Christ’s eternal sacrifice. We are not simply ‘do-gooders’, or followers of a moral code. Rather, all our work, all our prayer, all our sacrifice and suffering, play a part (even if only obliquely and in a mysterious way) in Christ’s work of redemption. The Pope’s words in Westminster Cathedral are extremely important in that regard: “Christ, our eternal high priest, daily unites our own sacrifices, our own sufferings, our own needs, hopes and aspirations, to the infinite merits of His sacrifice. Through him, with him, and in him, we lift up our own bodies as a sacrifice holy and acceptable to God. In this sense we are caught up in His eternal oblation, completing, as Saint Paul says, in our flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, the Church. In the life of the Church, in her trials and tribulations, Christ continues, in the stark phrase of Pascal, to be in agony until the end of the world”.
Overall the Pope brought with him a call for renewal in our lives. The starting-point is our own appreciation of the urgent task of personal holiness. The tremendous enthusiasm of the crowds and the Bishops was encouraging. It just needs to be followed up.
As well as the visit to the United Kingdom, there are other highlights: the Pope’s encyclical on hope, Spe salvi, the inroads he has made in promoting greater reverence in the liturgy, and his Wednesday catecheses on the saints all come to mind.
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