A glimpse into the interior life of Pope Benedict

from his 2000 interview with Peter Seewald, God and the World.

Your Eminence, do you ever feel afraid of God?
I wouldn't exactly say "afraid". We know from Christ who God is and that he loves us. And he knows what we are like. He knows we are flesh. We are dust. Because of that he accepts us in our weakness.


In any case, again and again I am keenly aware of how I fail to live up to my calling. To live up to the idea that God has of me, of what I could and should give.

Do you have the feeling, in such times, that God sometimes criticizes you or disapproves of some of your decisions?
God is not like a policeman or a prosecuting counsel, who tells you off and hands out a punishment. But in the mirror of faith and of the charge I have received, I have to consider every day what is right and when something is wrong. Naturally I then likewise feel that, with regard to myself, something is not as it should be. And that is what the sacrament of confession is for.


People always say that Catholics are full of guilt feelings towards God.
I believe Catholics are animated above all by a great sense of God's forgiveness. Take baroque or rococo art. There you can see a great joyfulness. Thus, typically Catholic nations like Italy and Spain have a reputation, and with good reason, for being light-hearted.


Perhaps there have been, in particular areas of Christianity, certain forms of education, distortions, in which frightening, burdensome, rigorously strict elements have predominated, but this is not Catholicism properly speaking. My own feeling is that, in those very people whose lives draw upon the faith of the Church, a sense of redemption prevails: God will not abandon us!

Is there some particular language that God uses sometimes to say to us, in quite a concrete way, "Yes, do that." Or, again: "Hold on there -- last warning! Just leave it alone!"
God speaks quietly. But he gives us all kinds of signs. In retrospect, especially, we can see that he has given us a little nudge through a friend, through a book, or through what we see as a failure -- even through "accidents. Life is actually full of these silent indications. If I remain alert, then slowly they piece together a consistent whole, and I begin to feel how God is guiding me.

When you yourself talk with God, is that something that has become as easy and obvious as making a phone call?
In some respects one can make the comparison. I know that he is always there. And he knows in any case who I am and what I am. Which is all the more reason for me to feel the need to call on him, to share my feelings with him, to talk with him. With him I can exchange views on the simplest and most intimate things, as well as on those that are weightiest and of great moment. It seems, somehow, normal for me to have occasion to talk to him all the time in everyday life.

On these occasions, does God always behave respectfully, or does he let you see he has a sense of humour?
I believe he has a great sense of humour. Sometimes he gives you a nudge and says, Don't take yourself so seriously! Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly; to see the funny side of it; to get down off our pedestal and not to forget our sense of fun.

Do you also get cross with God?
Naturally I, too, think from time to time: Why doesn't he give me more help? And sometimes he remains puzzling to me. In those cases that annoy me I can also feel the presence somewhere of his mystery, his strangeness. But getting really angry with God would mean that he had dragged God too far down to our level. Very often, quite superficial things give rise to anger. And in those cases where anger is really justified I have to ask myself whether there isn't something important being communicated in the things that annoy me and the people who annoy me. I never get cross with God himself.

How do you begin your day?
Before I get up, I first say a short prayer. The day looks different is you don't just stumble into it. Then comes all the things you do first thing in the morning, washing, breakfast. After that is the Holy Mass and the breviary. Both of these, for me, lay the foundations of the day: Mass is the entirely real meeting with the presence of the risen Christ, and the breviary is a way into the great prayer of the whole history of salvation. The Psalms stand at the heart of it. Here we pray together with the millennia, and we hear the voice of the Fathers. All of this opens a door onto the day for us. Then comes ordinary work.


How often do you pray?
Fixed prayer times are at noon, when in accordance with Catholic tradition we pray the Angelus. In the afternoon there is Vespers, and in the evening Compline, the Church's evening prayer. And in between times, whenever I feel I need help, I can fit in a quick prayer.

Does the prayer before you get up always vary?
No, that is a fixed prayer -- in fact, it's a collection of various little prayers, but as a whole a fixed form of prayer.

Have you anything to recommend?
Each of us can surely find something for ourselves out of the Church's treasury.


At night, when one cannot settle down...
...I would recommend the Rosary. That is a form of prayer that, besides its spiritual meaning, has the power to calm the inner self. If we hold fast here to the actual words, then we are gradually freed from the thoughts that so torment us.

How do you personally deal with problems -- that is, supposing you have any problems at all?
How could I not have problems? In the first place, I always try to bring my problems into my prayer and to find for myself there a firm interior foothold. And then, I try to do something challenging, really to give myself entirely to some task that is demanding and at the same time give me satisfaction. Finally, through meeting with friends I can to some extent distance myself from everything else. These three elements are important.

...
Perhaps we should, simply, deal more strictly with our problems, not allow them to arise in the first place.
Problems just do arise. Certain decisions, failure, human inadequacies, disappointments, all these get to us -- and indeed should get to us. Problems are meant in fact to teach us to how to work through things like that. If we became steel-hard, impenetrable, that would mean a loss of humanity and sensibility in dealing with other people. Seneca the stoic said: Sympathy is abhorrent. If, on the other hand, we look at Christ, he is all sympathy, and that makes is precious to us. Being sympathetic, being vulnerable, is part of being Christian. One must learn to accept injuries, to live with wounds, and in the end to find therein a deeper healing

Many people were able to pray as children, but at some time of other they lost this ability. Do you have to learn to talk with God?
The organ of sensitivity to God can atrophy to such an extent that words of faith become quite meaningless. And whoever no longer possesses a faculty of hearing can no longer speak, because being deaf goes together with being mute. It's as if one had deliberately to learn one's own mother tongue. Slowly one learns to spell out God's letters, to tspeak this language and -- if still inadequately -- to understand God. Gradually, then, one will become able to pray for oneself and to talk with God, at first in a very childlike way -- in a certain sense we always remain like that -- but then more and more in one's own words.

You once said: If a person believes only what he can see with his own eyes, then really he is blind...
...because in that case he is limiting his horizon in such a fashion that the essential things escape him. He cannot after all see his own understanding. Precisely those things that are of real moment are what he does not see with the mere physical eye, and to that extent he cannot properly see if he cannot see beyond his immediate sensory perceptions.


Someone once said to me that having faith is like leaving out of an aquarium into the ocean. Can you recall your first great experience of faith?
I would ay that in my case it was more like a silent growth. Naturally there have been high points, when something opened up for me in the liturgy, in theology, in first formulating a theological insight -- points at which faith became broad and momentous and no longer merely passed on from someone else. The great leap you were talking about, a particular event, is something I would be unable to point to in my own life. It was rather as if one were to venture out, slowly and cautiously, a little farther each time, out of the very shallow water, and slowly begin to feel a little of the ocean that is coming in towards us.


I also think that one has never achieved complete faith. Faith has to be lived again and again in life and in suffering, as well as in the great joys that God sends us. It is never something that I can put in my pocket like a coin.

...
Do you have a particular way of praying the Rosary?
I do it quite simply, just as my parents used to pray. Both of them loved the Rosary. And the older they got, the more they loved it. The older you get, the less you are able to make great spiritual efforts, the more you need, rather, an inner refuge, to be enfolded in the rhythm of the prayer of the whole Church. And so I pray in the way I always have.


But how? Do you pray one Rosary, one set of mysteries, or all three?
No, three are too much for me; I am too much of a restless spirit; I would wander too much. I take just one, and then often only two or three mysteries out of the five, because I can then fit in a certain interval when I want to get away from work and free myself a bit, when I want to be quiet and to clear my head. A whole one would actually be too much for me then.

Such a frank and charming conversation! Can't wait to read the Light of the World!