“Christ on the cross! Inconceivable what he went through as he hung there... Such the depths from which omnipotent love calls new creation into being. Taking man and his world together, what impenetrable deception, what labyrinthian confusion, all-permeating estrangement from God, granitic hardness of heart! This the terrible load Christ on the cross was to dissolve in God, and divinely assimilate into his own thought, heart, life and agony. Ardent with suffering, he was to plunge to that ultimate depth, distance, center where the sacred power which formed the world from nothing could break into new creation.
Since the Lord's death, this has become reality, in which all things have changed. It is from here that we live - as far as we are really alive in the sight of God.
If anyone should ask: What is certain in life and death–so certain that everything else may be anchored in it? That answer is: The love of Christ. Life teaches us that this is the only true reply. Not people–not even the best and dearest; not science, or philosophy, or art or any other product of human genius. Also not nature, which is so full of profound deception; neither time nor fate….Not even simply “God”; for his wrath has been roused by sin, and how without Christ would we know what to expect from him? Only Christ’s love is certain. We cannot even say God’s love; for that God loves us we also know, ultimately, only through Christ. And even if we did know without Christ that God loved us–love can also be inexorable, and the more noble it is, the more demanding. Only through Christ do we know that God’s love is forgiving. Certain is only that which manifested itself on the cross. What has been said so often and so inadequately is true: The heart of Jesus Christ is the beginning and end of all things.” (Romano Guardini, The Lord, p 399-400).The very next day I read Pope Benedict XVI's farewell address to the College of Cardinal where he quotes Romano:
Pope Benedict leaves quoting Romano Guardini:
Guardini says: "The Church is not an institution devised and built at table, but a living reality. She lives along the course of time by transforming Herself, like any living being, yet Her nature remains the same. At Her heart is Christ. "So I thought I would go exploring to learn more of the connection between Pope Benedict XVI and Romano Guardini. I ran across two great articles - sharing here a couple excerpts below:
The Making of a New Benedict
(Excerpt from book)
During his Regensburg years, Joseph Ratzinger attracted impressive students who came to do their doctorates under his direction. Two of the most prominent were Christoph Schönborn, a young Dominican who would later become editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and cardinal archbishop of Vienna, and Joseph Fessio, an American Jesuit who would found Ignatius Press, a distinguished publishing house, and lead several important educational initiatives. Ratzinger did not confine his love for teaching to the classroom, however. From 1970 until 1977 he and the Catholic biblical scholar Heinrich Schlier led a week-long course at a country estate near Lake Constance for young people interested in deepening their understanding of the essentials of Catholic faith — a kind of theological and biblical summer camp, in which Ratzinger and Schlier shared the household duties with their students. In launching this initiative, Ratzinger was deliberately patterning himself after Romano Guardini, the great Munich theologian and one of the seminal figures of the Catholic revival in mid-20th-century Mitteleuropa, who had built a similar intellectual and spiritual center for young people in the 1920s and 1930s. Guardini had written extensively about the Church “after modernity,” which he believed had run its course and was out of gas, culturally and spiritually; it is not difficult to imagine Ratzinger and Schlier talking with their summer-school students along similar lines.
Benedict XVI Has a Father, Romano Guardini
He was the guide of the young Ratzinger, who has not ceased to draw inspiration from his thought. Forty years after the death of the great Italian-German intellectual, an analysis of his influence on the current pope
by Sandro Magister. (2008)
by Sandro Magister. (2008)
One crucial point of encounter between the current pope and Guardini is undoubtedly the liturgy. Both are united by a shared passion for this. In order to make his debt to Guardini clear, Ratzinger entitled his book on the topic of the liturgy, published on the feast of St. Augustine in 1999 and extraordinarily successful (four editions in one year), "Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy," referring to the famous "The Spirit of the Liturgy" by Guardini, published in 1918.
Ratzinger himself writes in the foreword to his book: "One of the first works that I read after beginning my theological studies, at the beginning of 1946, was Romano Guardini's first book, 'The Spirit of the Liturgy', a small book published at Easter of 1918..., reprinted a number of times up until 1957... It contributed in a decisive manner to the rediscovery of the liturgy, with its beauty, hidden richness, and greatness that transcends time, as the vital center of the Church and of Christian life. It made its contribution to having the liturgy celebrated in an 'essential' manner (a term rather precious to Guardini); the desire was to understand it on the basis of its interior nature and form, as a prayer inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit himself, in which Christ continues to become present for us, to enter into our lives."
Ratzinger himself writes in the foreword to his book: "One of the first works that I read after beginning my theological studies, at the beginning of 1946, was Romano Guardini's first book, 'The Spirit of the Liturgy', a small book published at Easter of 1918..., reprinted a number of times up until 1957... It contributed in a decisive manner to the rediscovery of the liturgy, with its beauty, hidden richness, and greatness that transcends time, as the vital center of the Church and of Christian life. It made its contribution to having the liturgy celebrated in an 'essential' manner (a term rather precious to Guardini); the desire was to understand it on the basis of its interior nature and form, as a prayer inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit himself, in which Christ continues to become present for us, to enter into our lives."
The celebration of the liturgy is the true self-fulfillment of the Christian, and therefore in the struggle over symbolism and the liturgy, what is at stake – Ratzinger notes, following Guardini's teaching – is the development of the essential dimension of man.
Guardini, Ratzinger recalls, found himself in the thick of the drama over the modernist crisis. How did he emerge from it? ... (H)e went in search of a new foundation, and found it beginning with his own conversion... (N)o longer an encounter with God in the universal sense, but with "God in the concrete." At that moment, Guardini, Ratzinger stresses, understood that he held everything in his hand, his entire life, and had to decide how to spend it. His decision was to give his life to the Church, and from this arose his fundamental theological option: "Guardini was convinced that only thinking in harmony with the Church leads to freedom, and, above all, makes theology possible."
...
Ratzinger reminds us in the words of Guardini "with a heartfelt appeal that ordinarily seemed entirely foreign to him, opposing the politicization of the university and its infiltration by party leadership, political chatter, the noise of the streets, and he cried out to his listeners: Ladies and gentlemen, do not permit this! This concerns that which is common to all of us, our future."
...
Ratzinger reminds us in the words of Guardini "with a heartfelt appeal that ordinarily seemed entirely foreign to him, opposing the politicization of the university and its infiltration by party leadership, political chatter, the noise of the streets, and he cried out to his listeners: Ladies and gentlemen, do not permit this! This concerns that which is common to all of us, our future."
Link to see Bidding farewell Pope Benedict XVI quotes Romano Guardini - a voice still relevant and should be made audible again (Part 1)
I leave you with one of my favorite quotes of Guardini: "With the advent of Christ man confronted a decision which placed him on a new level of existence. Soren Kierkegaard made this fact clear, once and for all. With the coming of Christ man's existence took on an earnestness which classical antiquity never knew simply because it had no way of knowing it. The earnestness did not spring from human maturity; it sprang from the call which each person received from God through Christ. With this call the person opened his eyes, he was awakened for the first time in his life."
I leave you with one of my favorite quotes of Guardini: "With the advent of Christ man confronted a decision which placed him on a new level of existence. Soren Kierkegaard made this fact clear, once and for all. With the coming of Christ man's existence took on an earnestness which classical antiquity never knew simply because it had no way of knowing it. The earnestness did not spring from human maturity; it sprang from the call which each person received from God through Christ. With this call the person opened his eyes, he was awakened for the first time in his life."
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