Pope Benedict addresses ecumenical gathering (in Germany)

On Friday Pope Benedict addressed representatives of the Protestant EKD (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland), a federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant regional church bodies in Germany, headed by Council Chair Nikolaus Schneider. The encounter took place in the former Augustinian Convent in Erfurt, which was once the home of Martin Luther.

The full text of the Pope’s remarks is published below:
Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I begin to speak, I would like first of all to thank you for this opportunity to come together with you. I am particularly grateful to Pastor Schneider for greeting me and welcoming me into your midst with his kind words. At the same time I want to express my thanks for the particularly gracious gesture that our meeting can be held in this historic location.

As the Bishop of Rome, it is deeply moving for me to be meeting representatives of Council of the EKD here in the ancient Augustinian convent in Erfurt. This is where Luther studied theology. This is where he was ordained a priest in 1507. Against his father’s wishes, he did not continue the study of Law, but instead he studied theology and set off on the path towards priesthood in the Order of Saint Augustine. On this path, he was not simply concerned with this or that. What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey. “How do I receive the grace of God?”: this question struck him in the heart and lay at the foundation of all his theological searching and inner struggle. For him theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which in turn was a struggle for and with God.

“How do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make an impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians? What does the question of God mean in our lives? In our preaching? Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues. He knows that we are all mere flesh. Insofar as people today believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. But are they really so small, our failings? Is not the world laid waste through the corruption of the great, but also of the small, who think only of their own advantage? Is it not laid waste through the power of drugs, which thrives on the one hand on greed and avarice, and on the other hand on the craving for pleasure of those who become addicted? Is the world not threatened by the growing readiness to use violence, frequently masking itself with claims to religious motivation? Could hunger and poverty so devastate parts of the world if love for God and godly love of neighbour – of his creatures, of men and women – were more alive in us? I could go on. No, evil is no small matter. Were we truly to place God at the centre of our lives, it could not be so powerful. The question: what is God’s position towards me, where do I stand before God? – this burning question of Martin Luther must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too. In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther.

Another important point: God, the one God, creator of heaven and earth, is no mere philosophical hypothesis regarding the origins of the universe. This God has a face, and he has spoken to us. He became one of us in the man Jesus Christ – who is both true God and true man. Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric: “What promotes Christ’s cause” was for Luther the decisive hermeneutical criterion for the exegesis of sacred Scripture. This presupposes, however, that Christ is at the heart of our spirituality and that love for him, living in communion with him, is what guides our life.

Now perhaps you will say: all well and good, but what has this to do with our ecumenical situation? Could this just be an attempt to talk our way past the urgent problems that are still waiting for practical progress, for concrete results? I would respond by saying that the first and most important thing for ecumenism is that we keep in view just how much we have in common, not losing sight of it amid the pressure towards secularization – everything that makes us Christian in the first place and continues to be our gift and our task. It was the error of the Reformation period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds. The great ecumenical step forward of recent decades is that we have become aware of all this common ground and that we acknowledge it as we pray and sing together, as we make our joint commitment to the Christian ethos in our dealings with the world, as we bear common witness to the God of Jesus Christ in this world as our undying foundation.

The risk of losing this, sadly, is not unreal. I would like to make two points here. The geography of Christianity has changed dramatically in recent times, and is in the process of changing further. Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss. This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability. This worldwide phenomenon poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying to us, for better and for worse? In any event, it raises afresh the question about what has enduring validity and what can or must be changed – the question of our fundamental faith choice.

The second challenge to worldwide Christianity of which I wish to speak is more profound and in our country more controversial: the secularized context of the world in which we Christians today have to live and bear witness to our faith. God is increasingly being driven out of our society, and the history of revelation that Scripture recounts to us seems locked into an ever more remote past. Are we to yield to the pressure of secularization, and become modern by watering down the faith? Naturally faith today has to be thought out afresh, and above all lived afresh, so that it is suited to the present day. Yet it is not by watering the faith down, but by living it today in its fullness that we achieve this. This is a key ecumenical task. Moreover, we should help one another to develop a deeper and more lively faith. It is not strategy that saves us and saves Christianity, but faith – thought out and lived afresh; through such faith, Christ enters this world of ours, and with him, the living God. As the martyrs of the Nazi era brought us together and prompted the first great ecumenical opening, so today, faith that is lived from deep within amid a secularized world is the most powerful ecumenical force that brings us together, guiding us towards unity in the one Lord.

Additionally, from Vatican Radio.

Making history in the land of Luther

Pope Benedict XVI spent much of the second day of his visit to Germany in Erfut, where the former Augustinian monk and reformer, Martin Luther lived. On Friday, the Pope met with leaders of Germany's Protestant churches and shared in an ecumenical prayer service as our correspondent in Germany, Veronica Scarisbrick reports:

The Thuringian capital , Erfurt where Pope Benedict arrived on Friday takes its name from water, and water does flow right through this city in the River Gera. But this is no backwater. Not just because it's been accepted into the "Historic Highlights of Germany" , as offering special charm, architectural brilliance and historic character .

Not just because of its landmark sandstone inhabited medieval bridge "Kramerbrucke" , or Merchant's Bridge which indicates an ancient bustling crossroads of commerce. But because it's a place linked to people, famous people. From Goethe to Schiller, from Bach to Liszt , from the Russian Czar to Napoleon who once held a princely meeting here .

But above all it's famous as the land of Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk who once lived and worked here. Most famous for his clamorous break from Rome, as he nailed his 95 theses in nearby Wittenberg sparking religious and political reform. It's a well known story one to which with the Pope's arrival here almost five centuries later, a new chapter has been added.

And the entry into this medieval City of a Roman Pontiff and son of this German nation, who would tread the very turf where Luther once trod, would kneel down on the wooden choir stalls where Luther once prayed was a moving one.

Beginning with his first gesture in this place which until 1990 was part of Eastern Germany: a visit to the very place where Martin Luther was ordained to the priesthood as a Catholic priest in 1507. Today an imposing gothic Cathedral going back to the 14th to 15th centuries although, the original Romanesque Church goes back to 1154 . It's the “Mariendom” with its striking stained glass windows, one of which depicts, Augustine, a saint especially dear to him and to Luther by the way .

The great nave was empty and who knows what thoughts crossed this German Pope's mind as he entered the Cathedral. Whether they wandered to the day Luther began his priestly life here, or perhaps to all those Christians Catholics and Lutherans alike who before reunification 21 years ago had kept the faith alive here .

Certainly when within the Cathedral he venerated the relics of Saint Boniface the Anglo-Saxon Missionary known as 'The Apostle of the Germans', his thoughts must have turned to Rome.This Saint who in 742 established himself as a Bishop here in accord with one of Benedict's predecessors, Pope Zacharias. So successful was Saint Boniface's evangelizing mission that Erfurt was once dubbed German Rome because of the numerous Churches here .

But it was time for the Pope from Rome to dedicate himself fully to the separated brethren, he as a German, knows best. To the representatives of the Protestant EKD, a Federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant Regional Churches in Germany headed by Council Chair, Pastor Nikolaus Schneider and enter into the Chapter Room of the Monastery of Saint Augustine with its stunning stained glass lancet windows . He covered the three kilometres to this monastery from Erfurt where Luther lived and worked from 1505 to 1511 by car.

And in the Chapter Room the Pope listened to his hosts , among them Pastor Schneider who highlighted how the stones in this room can testify how Martin Luther was a member of the Order of Saint Augustine right here . Does nothing ever lasting , he said, link him with the Roman Catholic Church, can we not also understand Martin Luther , the Augustinian Monk from Erfurt , to be a hinge between our churches, belongs to both?

And Benedict XVI replied: “It was the error of the Reformation period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds. The great ecumenical step forward of recent decades is that we have become aware of all this common ground and that we acknowledge it as we pray and sing together, as we make our joint commitment to the Christian ethos in our dealings with the world, as we bear common witness to the God of Jesus Christ in this world as our undying foundation.”

The Pope delivered this address before sharing , within the Augustinian Monastery where Luther lived between 1505 and 1511 , an ecumenical celebration in the Church of Saint Augustine, the oldest part of the monastery during which a Psalm would be read in the translation of Martin Luther.

In this Church with its noteworthy early 14th century Gothic stained-glass windows 300 people had already gathered and there was anticipation and song . And the congregation listened to Psalm 146 read by Protestant Bishop Friedriech Weber in the German translation of Martin Luther.

And then the Pope spoke spelling out with clarity his views: “Prior to the Pope’s visit , he said, there was some talk of an “ecumenical gift” which was expected from this visit. There is no need for me to specify the gifts mentioned in this context. Here I would only say that this reflects a political misreading of faith and of ecumenism. In general, when a Head of State visits a friendly country, contacts between the various parties take place beforehand to arrange one or more agreements between the two states: by weighing respective benefits and drawbacks a compromise is reached which in the end appears beneficial for both parties, so that a treaty can then be signed. But the faith of Christians does not rest on such a weighing of benefits and drawbacks. A self-made faith is worthless. Faith is not something we work out intellectually or negotiate between us. It is the foundation for our lives. Unity grows not by the weighing of benefits and drawbacks but only by entering ever more deeply into the faith in our thoughts and in our lives. In the past fifty years, and especially after the visit of Pope John Paul II some thirty years ago, we have drawn much closer together, and for this we can only be grateful.”

And when this ecumenical celebration in Erfurt came to an end , the German Pope making history in the Land of Luther imparted a Trinitarian blessing .

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.