‘Stand Firm In The Faith!’ Pope Benedict XVI’s Final Message To The Faithful

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Submitted Catholics To “stand firm in the faith” In his last message to the faithful.

The Vatican published the late pope’s spiritual testament He died on Saturday, shortly thereafter. Benedict thanked his friends, family and God for their blessings and asked for forgiveness from those he had wronged. He encouraged believers to remain strong in their faith, despite philosophical and scientific opposition.

“If in this late hour of my life I look back at the decades I have been through, first I see how many reasons I have to give thanks,” Benedict wrote. “First and foremost I thank God himself, the giver of every good gift, who gave me life and guided me through various confusing times; always picking me up whenever I began to slip and always giving me again the light of his face. In retrospect I see and understand that even the dark and tiring stretches of this journey were for my salvation and that it was in them that He guided me well.”

He then thanked his parents, for providing him with a safe and loving home, and role models for his faith. He also thanked the brother and sister who cared for him and guided him through his journey. He also thanked former students, coworkers, and friends. He thanked God and all of the beauty he had seen on his trips to Rome and Italy, and for his beautiful home in Bavaria. He asked forgiveness for anyone he had wronged in his life.

Benedict instructed Catholics to keep their faith despite opposition from science or philosophy. “Stand firm in the faith!” He wrote. “Do not let yourselves be confused! It often seems that science — the natural sciences on the one hand and historical research (especially exegesis of Sacred Scripture) on the other — are able to offer irrefutable results at odds with the Catholic faith. I have experienced the transformations of the natural sciences since long ago and have been able to see how, on the contrary, apparent certainties against the faith have vanished, proving to be not science, but philosophical interpretations only apparently pertaining to science.” He also observed that science can help define the parameters of faith.

“It is now sixty years that I have been accompanying the journey of Theology, particularly of the Biblical Sciences, and with the succession of different generations I have seen theses that seemed unshakable collapse, proving to be mere hypotheses,” The pope continued, citing liberalism, Existentialism, Marxism, and other examples of philosophical ideas that have gone and come.

“I saw and see how out of the tangle of assumptions the reasonableness of faith emerged and emerges again. Jesus Christ is truly the way, the truth and the life — and the Church, with all its insufficiencies, is truly His body,” He stated.

A spiritual testament is a document that is written for the faithful by the pope — and is only to be published after his death. The late Pope Emeritus’s spiritual testament was written in 2006, just over a year after he was elected to the papacy.

Also on Saturday, Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, revealed that the Pope’s final words were “Lord, I love you,” a phrase reminiscent of St. Peter’s confession to Jesus in the Bible.

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