* * *

A basic principle of the Christian faith is the fruitfulness of suffering and, hence, the call of all who suffer to unite themselves with Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. Suffering thus becomes an offering, an oblation; this has happened and still does in so many holy souls. With this support, those who suffer, united in faith with Jesus, experience in this life a joy that can seem humanly unexplainable.

Especially those who are oppressed by apparently senseless moral sufferings find in Jesus’ moral suffering the meaning of their own trials, and go with Him into the Garden at Gethsemane. In Him they find the strength to accept pain with holy abandon and trusting obedience to the Father’s will. And they feel rising from within their hearts the prayers of Gethsemane: “Yet, not my will but yours be done.”

– Go in Peace by John Paull II

* * *

The “always” is also a “forever” – there is no returning to private life. My decision to forgo the exercise of active ministry, does not revoke this. I do not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences and so on. I do not abandon the cross, but remain in a new way near to the Crucified Lord. I no longer wield the power of the office for the government of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter’s bounds. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, shall be a great example in this for me. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God.

– Pope Benedict XVI, Feb 27, 2013

* * *

You will be dearly missed but I know we will always be together in His Heart.