58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspired and Insightful, June 8, 2005
This review is from: God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life (Paperback)
I was unprepared for the breadth and beauty of Cardinal Ratzinger's sermons (homilies?) and essays concerning the Eucharist. This book wonderfully summarizes Catholic teaching and tradition, particularly by tackling modernist and traditionalist approaches to the sacrament.
The first article, "God with Us and God among Us" serves as a nice introduction to the other "chapters" in this collection, meditating upon one line in the profession of faith, and speaking directly to the Incarnation.
"God's Yes and His Love..." approaches the issue of the sacrifice Jesus made, and how it relates to the sacrificial character of the Mass. Cardinal Ratzinger addresses Christ's self-abasement for our salvation, and contrasts this against our false humility, self-limitation in freely offered grace, and suffering as a characteristic of the Church.
"The Wellspring of Life..." explores the exegetic similarities between the opening of Christ's side at His crucifixion and the removal of flesh from Adam's side in Genesis. Along the way, Cardinal Ratzinger explores the unity of the Church, and the atemporal communion encapsulated in the Eucharist, and again touches upon the issues of sacrifice.
In "Banquet of the Reconciled", the polar extremes in the discourse on liturgical evolution are examined, quite calmly and reasonably. Cardinal Ratzinger utilizes I Corinthians as the basis for a reasoned response to those who want to reduce the Mass to a simple meal of friendship and community, as well as to those who see any alteration of the form of the Mass as heretical and invalid. Along the way, he makes excellent points concerning the proper reception of communion (in the hand or on the tongue, kneeling or standing), the use of the vernacular and the origins of the Eucharistic prayers, and preparation of one's heart for receiving the sacrament.
"The Presence of the Lord..." deals with transubstantiation, the Real Presence, the resurrection of the body, and the importance of Eucharistic Adoration. Similar themes are explored in "The Immediacy of the Presence of the Lord", and later in "Standing before the Lord"
"The Lod is Near Us" is remarkable for insights into our relationship with the Law, in such writing as "The law became a burden the moment it was no longer being lived out from within but was broken down into a series of obligations external in their origin and their nature."
A series of shorter articles follows, but the book is concluded by two profound chapters: "The Church Subsists as Liturgy..." treats the importance of the Eucharist and the liturgy to the very lives of man, arguing that life's meaning can only be found by seeking to live in God's community. The Cardinal emphasizes the modern mentality that subconsciously rejects the efficacy of faith and prayer, really believing only in our own power to affect our lives.
The final chapter "My Joy is to Be in Thy Presence" is a worhty capstone to this remarkable book, addressing our modern disdain for the very concepts of immortal life with God. The themes sounded in this article can be heard clearly in Pope Benedict's inaugural homily and the broad vision he is expounding for his papacy. I can only related the beauty of Cardinal Ratzinger's vision in quotes from this work: "Eternal life steadily withdraws from a person whose attention is fixed on himself," "the idea of eternity appears to us like being condemned to boredom," "The struggle to keep evil under control, within limits, has to be taken up a new by each generation and can never be removed by the institutional arrangements of an earlier generation," "We should finally bid farewell to the notion of working to build the ideal society of the future as being a myth and should instead work with total commitment to strengthen those factors that hold evil at bay in the present..." "man is that creature in which spirit and material meet together and are united as a single whole"...
Through the course of these articles, Cardinal Ratzinger touches upon dualism, utilitarianism, the Reformation, unitarianism, the meaning of life, transubstantiation, heaven, hell, purgatory, utopian rational secularism, the communion of saints, grace, salvation, the person of Christ, Christ as God's Word, as Logos, etc., etc., etc. For a brief, small book, its scope and impact are immeasurable.
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57 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Paschal mystery, April 20, 2005
This review is from: God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life (Paperback)
Cardinal Ratzinger, the new Pope Benedict XVI, is a man whose devotion and spirituality is definitively focused upon the Eucharist. In this text, 'Gott ist uns nah: Euchariste: Mitte des Lebens', Ratzinger provides a series of essays reflecting on the importance, the mystery, and the spiritual aspects of the Eucharistic feast.
'God is with us and God is among us' is the title of the first essay, and sets the tone for Ratzinger's devotion in this regard. God in Jesus Christ took on human form to become for us a way and a light, and this same presence is available to us, not just on Sunday mornings and other times when we are in church, but throughout all our lives, according to Ratzinger. Church must mean more than simply that which happens in lofty and grand buildings a short while on a weekly basis - just as the Eucharist provides an Incarnational way for us to be in relationship with God, so too must we strive for ways to connecting our church life (ethically, spiritually, and practically) in our daily life and work.
Ratzinger shows his education and breadth of knowledge on these theological matters by drawing on sermons and essays he's written in the past, as well as reflections on biblical texts, from the Torah to the Epistles to the Acts of the Apostles as lead inspirations, and further into the heart of the gospel itself, reflected through the Paschal mystery.
Like his predecessor Pope John Paul II, Ratzinger also has a significant strand of Marian devotion - again, his first essay draws upon the incarnation as Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. 'She has an indisputable place in our belief in the living and acting God.'
The Incarnation required acceptance, first from Mary, and continues to require acceptance by those who attend mass regularly, and those who strive to live their lives in conformity with the creeds. Creedal history is a principle guideline in Ratzinger's development in much of his theology here - a very traditional theologian in method, he nonetheless can be surprising in the breadth of his interpretations.
This is a good book from which to glean insight into the heart of theology of the Eucharist, the central rite of the church, of the new pope, Benedict XVI.
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64 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sparkling and Moving, June 4, 2004
This review is from: God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life (Paperback)
Cardinal Ratzinger never fails to satisfy the reader hungry for insight and depth. In this small book, which is a collection of past homilies and addresses on the Eucharist, Ratzinger discusses the Eucharist from many perspectives. For Catholics, the Eucharist is the "heart of life," as the book's subtitle states. So to deepen knowledge of the Eucharist is life-changing. For Protestants, there is no better way to see the Catholic difference, a Catholic difference shared with the Eastern Orthodox.
You can see the Catholic difference in this excerpt: "The church is not just a space in which something sometimes happens early in the morning, while for the rest of the day it stands empty, 'unused'. There is always the 'Church' in the church building, because the Lord is always giving himself, because the eucharistic mystery remains present . . . ." (p. 89). This excerpt is from the address entitled "The Presence of the Lord in the Sacrament," which, in my view, is the most compelling of all the addresses in the book.
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