“If eternal life consists in communion with God, it is fitting to prepare ourselves already for it in our earthly life, as Joseph Ratzinger did throughout his entire existence, with intensity.”
On December 31, marking the third anniversary of the death of Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, celebrated Mass in the Vatican Grottoes.
In his homily, he recalled the ultimate aim of Christian life—something Pope Benedict, he said, showed in an exemplary way through his own life: cultivating our relationship with God and preparing ourselves for union with Him.
Seeking the face of God
Pope Benedict XVI returned to the Father’s house on December 31, 2022.
Cardinal Koch said that he “always sought and found the face of the Lord in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Because in Him, God revealed Himself and showed His true face.”
He added that Benedict XVI viewed his trilogy “Jesus of Nazareth”—three volumes published between 2007 and 2012—as “an expression of his personal search for the ‘face of the Lord’.”
Christ transforms the end into a new beginning
Cardinal Koch noted that on the final day of the calendar year the Church’s liturgy proposes the reading of the Prologue of John, which begins: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Reflecting on that liturgical reading, he said: “It seems to me very beautiful and touching that, on the last day of the calendar year, the Christian faith gives rise to a completely new beginning, with the promise that the earthly end of human life is not at all the end, but a new beginning, and that the last day of a person’s earthly life is the beginning of a new life, of eternal life with God.”
Quoting Benedict XVI’s Unpublished Homilies 2005–2017, Cardinal Koch recalled that the German-born Pope described death as the “tearing apart of all human relationships”—the “destruction of a love, of a friendship, and this is really the most tragic fact in the experience of death.”
Yet, he continued, it is precisely there that hope is opened. “In this place of total abandonment,” said Cardinal Koch, “it is precisely the love of God and only His love that can offer a new beginning. Only if God himself becomes present with His love in this place of absolute solitude and total deprivation of human relationships, a new beginning is possible.”
Cardinal Koch then recalled a line from Benedict XVI’s meditation before the Shroud of Turin on 2 May 2010: “Love has penetrated into hell.”
This, he explained, is the promise linked to the liturgy of Holy Saturday. “Christ, bringing divine love into the place of death, gives life in the midst of death, and a new beginning at the end of earthly life.”
Cardinal Koch invited those present “to ask God for the fulfillment of one’s life in His eternal presence.”
Redemption is fulfilled in every person
The Cardinal Prefect emphasized that this work is not only Christ’s, but also touches every human life at its end.
“It is also accomplished in the death of each individual,” he said. “As Christ entered the realm of death and, with the fire of His love, put movement into the rigid stillness of death, so even today He brings His love into the death of man and breaks the isolation of death by introducing a new communion, communion with God Himself.”
This is the eternity God has given as a gift, Cardinal Koch said, because “We owe eternal life to the indestructible relationship of love that God has with us.”
Finally, the Cardinal concluded his homily by linking this hope to Christ’s farewell prayer in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus asks the Father to glorify Him.
In the same way, he said, “surely, in eternal life, Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI joins in this supplication, applying it to himself and asking for the fulfillment of his life in the eternal presence of God.”