Spiritual Testament: “Stand firm in the Faith!”

“Pray for me that the Lord will admit me in spite of my sins”

Dated August 29, 2006, only a year and four months after he assumed the Throne of Peter, Benedict felt moved to write a “Spiritual Testament” to be released only after his death.

At this late hour of my life, as I look back over the decades I have traversed, the first thing I see is how much I have to be thankful for. Above all, I thank God himself, the giver of all good gifts, who gave me life and led me through many tribulations; picked me up every time I began to slip, and always gave me the light of his face again. In retrospect, I see and understand that even the dark and arduous stretches of this path were my salvation and that it was precisely in them that He guided me well.

I would like to thank my parents, who gave me life in difficult times and, with great sacrifices, gave me a wonderful home with their love, which shines through all my days as a bright light to this day. My father’s lucid faith taught us siblings to believe and stood firmly as a signpost in the midst of all my scientific study; the mother’s heartfelt piety and great kindness remain a legacy for which I cannot thank her enough. My sister has served me selflessly and with loving care for decades; my brother paved the way again and again with the clarity of his judgment, with his vigorous resolution and with the cheerfulness of his heart; I could not have found the right path without this continuous preceding and accompanying me.

I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the many friends, men and women, whom he has always placed by my side; for the employees at all stages of my journey; for the teachers and students he gave me. I gratefully entrust you all to his goodness. And I would like to thank the Lord for the beautiful homeland in the Bavarian foothills of the Alps, where I was allowed to see the glory of the Creator himself always shine through. I thank the people of my homeland because in them I have always been able to experience the beauty of faith again. I pray that our country remains a country of faith and I ask you, dear countrymen: do not let yourself be diverted from the faith. Finally, I thank God for all the beautiful things I experienced at the various stages of my journey, but especially in Rome and Italy, which has become my second home.

I sincerely apologize to anyone I have wronged in any way.

What I said a moment ago of my countrymen, I now say to all who have been entrusted to my service in the Church: Stand firm in the faith. Don’t get confused! It often seems as if science — on the one hand the natural sciences, on the other hand historical research (especially the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures) — has irrefutable insights that are contrary to the Catholic faith. I have witnessed the changes in natural science from afar and was able to see how apparent certainties against faith melted away, proving to be not science but philosophical interpretations that only apparently belonged to science. For 60 years now I have been accompanying the path of theology, especially of biblical studies, and with the changing generations I have seen theses collapse that seemed to be unshakeable, but that turned out to be mere hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher, etc.), the existentialist generation ( Bultmann, etc.), the Marxist generation. I have seen and continue to see how the reasonableness of faith has emerged and is emerging again from the tangle of hypotheses. Jesus Christ is really the way, the truth, and the life — and the Church, with all her shortcomings, is really His body.

Finally I humbly ask: Pray for me that the Lord will admit me into the eternal mansions in spite of all my sins and shortcomings. My heartfelt prayer goes out to all those entrusted to me, day after day.

Benedict PP XVI, August 29, 2006