“Admittedly — it had not been Easter Sunday, but only Holy Saturday. But the longer I think about it, the more it seems to me to be in keeping with the essence of our human life.”
Catholics around the world are being invited to congratulate Pope emeritus Benedict XVI on his 95th birthday.
The Tagespost Foundation for Catholic Journalism has created a website to collect the messages, which will then be shown to Benedict XVI.
“I know he is very happy about it,” said Archbishop Georg Gänswein, the private secretary of the pope emeritus, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
Benedict XVI will celebrate his 95th birthday on April 16, Holy Saturday. He was born Joseph Alois Ratzinger in 1927 in Marktl am Inn, a small Bavarian town not far from Austria, also on a Holy Saturday.https://ae41ad2d120abe28382e2af9d86a23e2.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html?n=0
Looking back to his birth in his memoir, published before his election as pope, he wrote: “The fact that the birthday was the last day of Holy Week and the eve of Easter was always noted in the family history, because it was connected with the fact that I was baptized right on the morning of my birthday with the water that had just been consecrated in the ‘Easter Vigil’ celebrated at that time in the morning. To be the first baptized with the new water was considered a significant providential event.”
He continued: “The fact that my life was thus immersed in the Paschal Mystery from the beginning in this way has always filled me with gratitude, for this could only be a sign of blessing.”
“Admittedly — it had not been Easter Sunday, but only Holy Saturday. But the longer I think about it, the more it seems to me to be in keeping with the essence of our human life, which is still waiting for Easter, not yet in full light, but nevertheless confidently moving toward it.”
Credit: National Catholic Register