The Spiritual Testament of Benedict XVI

August 29, 2006

My spiritual will

If, at this late hour in my life, I look back at the decades I have been through, the first thing I see is the number of reasons to be grateful. First of all, I thank God Himself, Distributor of every good gift, who has given me life and guided me through various moments of confusion. You always pick me up whenever I start to slip up and give me the light of your face over and over again. In retrospect I see and realize that even the dark and tiring stretches of this path were my salvation and that it was precisely there that He guided me so well.

I thank my parents, who gave me life in a difficult time and who, at the cost of great sacrifices, have prepared for me with their love a wonderful house, with its clear light, illuminating all my days until today. My father’s evident faith taught us children to believe, and as a pointer was ever constant in the midst of all my scholarly acquisitions; My mother’s deep devotion and great kindness is a legacy I can never thank enough. My sister watched me for decades with loving and disinterested care; My brother, with the frankness of his judgment and strong determination, has always opened the way for me; Without this constant person who precedes and accompanies me, I would never have found the right path.

From my heart I thank God for the many friends, men and women, whom he has always placed by my side; to collaborators at all stages of my path; For teachers and students gave me. With thanksgiving, I entrust you all for his goodness. And I would like to thank the Lord for my beautiful homeland in the Bavarian Alps, where I have always seen the splendor of the Creator himself shining through. I thank my countrymen, because in them I am always able to experience anew the beauty of faith. I pray that our land will remain a land of faith and I ask you, dear compatriots: do not be distracted from faith. Finally, I thank God for all the beauty that I have been able to experience at every stage of my journey, especially in Rome and Italy, which has become my second home.

To all those who have done something wrong in some way, I sincerely apologize.

What I said to my compatriots before, I now say to all those in the Church who are entrusted to my service: remain firm in the faith! Do not confuse yourselves! It often seems that science – the natural sciences on the one hand and historical research (particularly the interpretation of the Bible) on the other – is capable of providing indisputable results in contrast to the Catholic faith. I have seen the transformations which have taken place in the natural sciences since antiquity and have been able to ascertain how, on the contrary, the clear certainties against faith have disappeared, proving that they are not science, but philosophical explanations which require only science; Just as, on the other hand, in dialogue with the natural sciences faith has also learned to understand better the limits of the extent of its assertions, and therefore of its specificity. I have been following the path of theology for at least 60 years, especially the sciences of the Bible, and with the different generations that followed, theses appeared that seemed steadfast, and proved to be simple hypotheses: the liberal generation (Harnack, Jülicher etc.), the existential generation (Bultmann etc. ), The Marxist Generation. I saw and saw through the tangle of hypotheses the rationality of faith and it reappeared. Jesus Christ is truly the way, the truth, and the life—and the Church, in all its shortcomings, is truly his body.

Finally, I humbly ask: pray for me once the Lord will welcome me, despite all my sins and shortcomings, into the eternal abodes. To all those entrusted to me, day by day my prayer goes from my heart,

Benedictus PP XVI