VATICAN CITY. In the homily at the funeral of Pope Emeritus Jorge Mario Bergoglio expresses his gratitude for his wisdom and dedication live worldwide. Francis underlines that Joseph Ratzinger bore witness to the Gospel in his life. And he invokes: «Blessed, may your joy be perfect». The Pope begins by recalling “”Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”. They are the last words that the Lord spoke on the cross; his last sigh – we could say -, capable of confirming what characterized his whole life: a continuous surrender into the hands of his Father. Hands of forgiveness and compassion, of healing and mercy, hands of anointing and blessing, which prompted him to deliver himself also into the hands of his brothers”. God, open to the “stories he encountered along the way, let himself be chiseled by God’s will, shouldering all the consequences and difficulties of the Gospel to the point of seeing his hands wounded for love: “Look at my hands”, he said to Thomas, and he tells each of us. Wounded hands that go to meet and don’t stop offering themselves, so that we know the love that God has for us and believe in it”.
A long applause and the ‘Santo Subito’ banner, the square’s homage to Benedict XVI
Jorge Mario Bergoglio reiterates: «Father, into your hands I commend my spirit», the invitation and the program of life «that whispers and wants to model the shepherd’s heart like a potter, until the same sentiments of Christ beat in it Jesus”.
«Dedication», is the key word of the funeral sermon, an expression «grateful of service to the Lord and to his People that arises from having accepted a totally free gift: “You belong to me… you belong to them”, whispers the Lord ; “You are under the protection of my hands, under the protection of my heart. Stay in the hollow of my hands and give me yours”. It is God’s condescension and his closeness capable of placing himself in the fragile hands of his disciples to feed his people and to say with him: take and eat, take and drink, this is my body that offers itself for you. Prayerful dedication, which is shaped and silently refined between the crossroads and contradictions that the shepherd has to face and the confident invitation to tend the flock”. Like the “Master, he carries on his shoulders the weariness of intercession and the wear and tear of the anointing for his people, especially where goodness has to struggle and the brothers see their dignity threatened”.
Funeral Benedict XVI, the authorities Mattarella and Meloni among those present
In this meeting of “intercession, the Lord is generating the meekness capable of understanding, welcoming, hoping and betting beyond the misunderstandings that this can arouse. Invisible and elusive fruitfulness, which arises from knowing in which hands the trust has been placed. A prayerful and adoring trust, capable of interpreting the shepherd’s actions and adapting his heart and his decisions to God’s times: «”Shepherd means to love, and to love also means to be ready to suffer. To love means: to give the sheep the true good, the nourishment of God’s truth, of the word of God, the nourishment of his presence'”.
Dedication supported by the “consolation of the Spirit, who always precedes him in the mission: in the passionate search to communicate the beauty and joy of the Gospel, in the fruitful witness of those who, like Mary, remain in many ways at the foot of the cross, in that peace painful but robust that neither attacks nor subjects; and in the stubborn but patient hope that the Lord will fulfill his promise, as he promised to our fathers and to his seed forever.”
Even each of us, firmly bound to the last words of the Lord and to the testimony that marked his life, want, as an ecclesial community, to follow in his footsteps and entrust our brother to the hands of the Father: that these hands of mercy find their lamp lit with the oil of the Gospel, which he shed and witnessed during his life».
Pope Francis’ last farewell to Ratzinger’s coffin before he goes down to the crypt
St. Gregory the Great, at the end of the «Pastoral Rule, invited and exhorted a friend to offer him this spiritual company: “In the midst of the storms of my life, I am comforted by the trust that you will keep me afloat on the table of your prayers, and that, if the weight of my faults brings me down and humiliates me, you will lend me the help of your merits to lift me up”». It is the awareness of the “Shepherd who cannot carry alone what, in reality, he could never bear alone and, therefore, knows how to abandon himself to prayer and the care of the people who have been entrusted to him”. It is the “faithful people of God who, gathered together, accompany and entrust the life of those who have been his shepherd”. Like the women of the Gospel «at the tomb, we are here with the scent of gratitude and the ointment of hope to show him, once again, the love that cannot be lost; we want to do it with the same anointing, wisdom, delicacy and dedication that he has been able to bestow over the years. We want to say together: “Father, into your hands we deliver his spirit” ».
Finally, Francis quotes his predecessor in an invocation of Christian affection, hope and trust: “Blessed, faithful friend of the Bridegroom, may your joy be perfect in hearing his voice definitively and forever!”.
At the end of the Eucharistic celebration, the Ultima Commendatio and the Valedictio take place. Then Joseph Ratzinger’s coffin is taken to the Vatican Grottoes of St. Peter’s Basilica for burial.