{"id":502,"date":"2008-03-25T10:54:49","date_gmt":"2008-03-25T10:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html"},"modified":"2008-03-25T10:54:49","modified_gmt":"2008-03-25T10:54:49","slug":"grazie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html","title":{"rendered":"Grazie"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have actually been working on a post pulling together the Pope’s homilies from Holy Week, but I should have known that Sandro Magister would beat me to it – thank heavens! <\/a>
\nAnd<\/em>\u00a0 – reminder to journalists. Do you want to make some headway in clearing up the Mysteries of Pope Benedict. Start here.
\n(And then just try to wrap your head around the realities that for Catholics, faith in a Savior whom we really believe rose from the dead, faith that He continues to live and teach the truth through the Church He left, living a life centered on and nourished by Him, which necessarily, organically and naturally involves self-sacrificial love for the poor, the oppressed, the sick, the dying, the weak and the small and a commitment to the full, flourishing humanity of every person…that this is what the Catholic faith is<\/em>. In this there is no “liberal” or “conservative” to parse out and if you would just stop trying to, you could move on and listen)<\/em><\/p>\n

Of the six homilies delivered by Benedict XVI during the Holy Week ceremonies this year, only two had wide reverberations and reached the ears of millions of people.
\nThe first was the one read at the end of the Via Crucis on Holy Friday, and the other is the “Urbi et Orbi” message of Easter Sunday. Both of these were broadcast live on radio and television, in many countries around the world.
\nBut not the other four. They reached few \u2013 only the few thousands of the faithful who were present at the ceremonies celebrated by the pope, and who understood the Italian language (many of them were foreigners). To these should be added the few people who read the pope’s words in the Catholic media during the following days.
\nIf one considers that Catholics in the world number well over one billion, the number of those who heard or read the pope’s homilies last Holy Week appears even more microscopic.
\nAnd yet these homilies are among the most revealing characteristics of Joseph Ratzinger’s pontificate. They are a culmination of the magisterium of this pope, theologian and pastor.
\nThey are unmistakably written by the pope himself. And they are inseparably connected to the liturgical celebration in which they were pronounced. In their genre, they are masterpieces.
\nThe comparison that comes most naturally is with the homilies of the Fathers of the Church, for example, those of Leo the Great \u2013 the first pope whose liturgical preaching was preserved \u2013, of Saint Ambrose, of Saint Augustine.
\nIt is an illuminating comparison under the aspect of communication as well. Because even the homilies of a Leo the Great, at the time, were heard by few and read by fewer. The same can be said of Saint Augustine. But the influence that the preaching of these Fathers had upon the Church was equally great, and was produced over the span of centuries.
\nIt is not impossible that something similar could happen with the homilies of Benedict XVI. All that is necessary is that there be, in the Church, persons who recognize the originality and depth of the liturgical preaching of this pope. And who work to expand its audience.
\nBenedict XVI’s book about Jesus, his encyclicals, his great addresses on faith and reason and have all made news. For some time, interest has also been kindled in his Wednesday audiences, dedicated first to the Apostles and now to the Fathers of the Church.
\nBut so far the same kind of attention has been lacking for his homilies. And yet it is enough to read those for Holy Week of this year \u2013 reproduced below \u2013 to understand how central these are in the magisterium of pope Benedict.
\nIt is astonishing that the communications machine of the Holy See has so far neglected them. “L’Osservatore Romano” publishes them quickly, but for a readership that is too restricted, since the newspaper still does not make adequate use of the internet. The Libreria Editrice Vaticana has not yet published any books compiling the homilies of Benedict XVI, either in their entirety or according to the various liturgical periods, for example the Christmas homilies, or those of Easter, which would ideally be accompanied by the scriptural passages of the liturgies of which they were part.
\nHere below is an illuminating selection of these: the complete texts of the six homilies of Benedict XVI for Holy Week of 2008.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(On second thought, I’ll still do that post, because in it, I’m trying to point out some major themes. Later.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have actually been working on a post pulling together the Pope’s homilies from Holy Week, but I should have known that Sandro Magister would beat me to it – thank heavens! And\u00a0 – reminder to journalists. Do you want to make some headway in clearing up the Mysteries of Pope Benedict. Start here. (And…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nGrazie - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grazie - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have actually been working on a post pulling together the Pope’s homilies from Holy Week, but I should have known that Sandro Magister would beat me to it – thank heavens! 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And\u00a0 – reminder to journalists. Do you want to make some headway in clearing up the Mysteries of Pope Benedict. Start here. (And…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-03-25T10:54:49+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html","name":"Grazie - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-25T10:54:49+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-25T10:54:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/grazie.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Grazie"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}