Five quotes from Pope Benedict XVI on faith

Pope Benedict XVI’s death marks the end of an era in which the prolific writer and speaker conveyed his reflections on the Catholic faith.

In both speaking and writing about the faith, the late pope consistently emphasized the importance of faith itself and its necessity in fostering one’s relationship with God. Below are five times that Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the virtue of faith.

In the Holy Father’s Wednesday audience in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 24, 2012, he told the crowd: “Faith is a gift of God, but it is also a profoundly free and human act.

Speaking about faith in the “Year of Faith” — which spanned from October 2012 to November 2013 — Benedict said: “Faith is not a mere intellectual assent of the human person to specific truths about God; it is an act with which I entrust myself freely to a God who is Father and who loves me; it is adherence to a ‘You’ who gives me hope and trust.”

Faith is meeting God
In that same Wednesday audience, Benedict added that “Having faith, then, is meeting this ‘You,’ God, who supports me and grants me the promise of an indestructible love that not only aspires to eternity but gives it; it means entrusting myself to God with the attitude of a child, who knows well that all his difficulties, all his problems are understood in the ‘you’ of his mother.”

Being saved through faith, Benedict said, is a gift that God offers to everyone.

In his reflection, he invited the crowd to ask themselves “where can man find that openness of heart and mind to believe in God who made himself visible in Jesus Christ who died and rose, to receive God’s salvation so that Christ and his Gospel might be the guide and the light of our existence?”

Benedict answered: “We can believe in God because he comes close to us and touches us, because the Holy Spirit, a gift of the Risen One, enables us to receive the living God. Thus faith is first of all a supernatural gift, a gift of God.”

The faith of the Blessed Virgin Mary
How did the Mother of God live her life full of faith, given all of the trials that she had to endure throughout her life? This is precisely the question that Benedict posed to the crowd in his Wednesday audience on Dec. 19, 2012, in the Vatican’s Paul VI Audience Hall.

He answered by giving the example of the Gospel of Luke’s first chapter, where Mary both “reflects” and “ponders” on the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel to her.