I’m still slowly making my way through Pope Benedict’s book. The interesting thing is, when I first started reading Benedict’s writing, I thought it almost too simplistic in comparison to the up-front depth of Pope John Paul II’s writing. As I read more, I discover that in the ready comprehension I was missing the depth of Benedict’s thought – the stream of thinking runs so easily one needs to pause occasionally to realize just how far one has come in his writing. Another, somewhat extended, quote from the book:
Now at last we have reached the inmost core of the concept “Church” and the deepest meaning of the designation “sacrament of unity”. The Church is communio; she is God’s communing with men in Christ and hence the communing of men with one another – and, in consequence, sacrament, sign, instrument of salvation. The Church is the celebration of the Eucharist; the Eucharist is the Church; they do not simply stand side by side; they are one and the same. The Eucharist is the sacramentum Christi and, because the Church is Eucharistia, she is therefore also sacramentum – the sacrament to which all the other sacraments are ordered.
His handling of “Church as sacrament”, something I think is still totally missing from the common understanding of the work of Vatican II, even though brief is not to miss. I’m not even a hundred pages in to the book yet, and I can already almost guarantee this goes on my “must get” list.
