Persons in the Apocalypse

Many readers might remember that, on the last day of 2022, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died.

I had meant to write something on this but given the timing, the fact that I was away on holidays, the resultant lack of proper typing equipment, and the sheer gravity at the passing of a Pope that has only recently been an influence on my thought, writing and teaching, meant that some time needed to pass before I could find the headspace and the words. And even then I have found others to have expressed the legacy of Benedict much better than I.

For instance, Larry Chapp of the fabulous blog Gaudium et Spes 22, has given a very comprehensive and at times moving overview of Benedict’s funeral, as well as his intellectual impact and legacy.

We all knew that, at some point, Joseph Ratzinger was going to go to his reward. It was probably the timing of it that took a lot of us by surprise. At the same time, however, I could not help but feel that his passing the threshold of death on the last day of the civil calendar encapsulated a theme that had been part of his writing in his “younger” days, as well as an arc that characterised the final decade of his life: the Last Things, also known as Eschatology, also known as the Apocalypse.

Ratzinger had written on the subject back in 1977 in his Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, and we find that he would, on a number of occasions, make reference to his experience of the end of life against the backdrop of the end of all things. Even though he may not have intended this, I thought that this was probably his last significant work, one that, at least in my head, had two major elements.

The first element was drawing a personal connection to the field of Eschatology which, with all its references to Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell, can sound highly abstract. By personal experience, I refer to something more than merely being at the receiving end of those categories. By this I mean a deep enmeshing of one’s own investments, desires, actions, thoughts with the arc marked by those four last things. These are not mere incidentals, which give way to these weightier, more important things. Rather, they constitute the very things within which the Last Things play out. In other words, the Last Things do not simply occur after we cross the threshold of death. The Last Things are instead, deeply embedded in the warp and weft of life itself.

Against this backdrop, the death of Benedict on the last day of the civic calendar becomes more than just a coincidence. Rather, the end of that particular life, at that particular time, becomes a signpost for the gradual revelation of all these final things. Now, it must be said that this is something that goes beyond the particularity of Joseph Ratzinger’s life, for every particular life is similarly embedded in this apocalyptic arc.

In writing of the last things, another German theologian, Romano Guardini, made a similar connection in his work The Last Things. Writing on the subject of death, Guardini writes that death in all its forms (he mentions literal, psychological and biographical), take place against a bigger affirmation, that the question of death is answered by what he calls an “intuition of eternity” (11). In other words, the ending of all particular lives are not meaningless moments in the march of history towards the end of history. Rather, all death - and more importantly the experience of death - is an affirmation of an ultimate life that endures for eternity.

This affirmation dovetails into the second element that I want to draw out, namely the affirmation that the Apocalypse is not a mere dissolution of all that is good and particular into the eschatological solvent of abstractions. Rather, there is the affirmation that at the end of all particulars, there lies another particular. More than simply a particular thing, the very last thing, the eschotos, is the person of Jesus Christ. With this affirmation lies another, deeper affirmation, that if the terminus of all things is found in a person, then what takes place at the end of all things involves more than a mechanical process, but a personalist enfolding of all that ends into the beating heart of the living eschotos.

We see this in Benedict’s letter dated 6 February 2022, which was a response to the report on abuse occurring in the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising. In the concluding paragraphs, Benedict writes:

Quite soon, I shall find myself before the final judge of my life. Even though, as I look back on my long life, I can have great reason for fear and trembling, I am nonetheless of good cheer, for I trust firmly that the Lord is not only the just judge, but also the friend and brother who himself has already suffered for my shortcomings, and is thus also my advocate, my “Paraclete”. In light of the hour of judgement, the grace of being a Christian becomes all the more clear to me. It grants me knowledge, and indeed friendship, with the judge of my life, and thus allows me to pass confidently through the dark door of death. In this regard, I am constantly reminded of what John tells us at the beginning of the Apocalypse: he sees the Son of Man in all his grandeur and falls at his feet as though dead. Yet He, placing his right hand on him, says to him: “Do not be afraid! It is I…” (cf. Rev 1:12-17).

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