Spiritual reading for Eastertide
I’ve just finished a beautiful book of talks and meditations by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, called Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts.
It’s one of those traditional compilations that brings together someone’s reflections on the liturgical year (here it moves from Christmas to All Soul’s Day). In this case it works, and doesn’t feel too fragmented, partly because there is such a unity in Ratzinger’s thinking and vision, and partly because there is a common tone to the pieces since many of them began as meditations for radio. It’s well worth buying.
Here are two passages, chosen from many, that struck me. The first from the Feast of the Ascension.
Faith hinders our forgetfulness. Indeed, it awakens in us the actual buried memory of our origin: that we come from God; and it adds the new remembrance that is expressed in the feast of Christ’s Ascension: namely, that the actual true place of our existing is God himself and that we must ever view man from this vantage point.
The second a meditation on indulgences and the often misunderstood Treasury of Merits.
Let us speak without imagery. In the spiritual realm everything belongs to everyone. There is no private property. The good of another becomes mine, and mine becomes his. Everything comes from Christ, but because we belong to him, what is ours becomes his and attains healing power. That is what is meant by talk of the treasury of the Church, the good deeds of the saints. To pray for an indulgence means to enter into this spiritual communion of gifts and to put oneself at its disposal.
Tags: hope, Images of Hope, indulgences, Joseph Ratzinger, liturgical year, Pope Emeritus Benedict, treasure of merits
