When Pope Benedict XVI emerged onto the balcony of St. Peter’s to speak to the world for the first time as Pope, he memorably described himself as a “simple, humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord.” It is certain that those words, spoken by almost anyone else, including most of the Cardinal-electors, would deserve, at the very least, a sardonic response; sadly one cannot often say that simplicity and humility are characteristic virtues of many of the successors of the apostles. However, anyone who knew Cardinal Ratzinger before he was elected, or who watched, or more importantly, listened to him during his pontificate, will know that those words contained the very essence of the man.

His life and ministry, as priest, teacher, bishop and finally as Successor of St. Peter, have been marked by a profound simplicity, humility and, as demonstrated so perfectly by his astonishing decision to abdicate, by a total realization that he is, before anything else, a servant of Christ. One of the charming innovations of Benedict’s ministry was the frequent “Q & A” sessions he had, with children, teenagers and, most often, with priests. During a particular encounter with priests in 2006, a parish priest asked the Pope about the many difficulties priests faced today, especially the problem of increased workloads and discouragement. With the heart of a shepherd, the Holy Father responded with words which make his recent choice seem so characteristic: “I would say, then, that firstly, what is necessary for all of us is to recognize our own limitations, to humbly recognize that we have to leave most things to the Lord.” He continued that ultimately, it is the Lord who must take the helm of his Church: “we fit into her with our small gift and do the best we can, especially those things which are always necessary: celebrating the sacraments, preaching the Word, giving signs of our charity and love.” Those words should be meditated upon regularly by every pastor; the graveyards are filled with those who imagined that they were indispensable. A wise priest once told me that, at the particular judgment of a parish priest, the Lord would not inquire how many meetings he had attended, but how many souls he had brought to Christ, particularly by the confessional and faithful preaching.

We have seen many appreciations of the Pope’s legacy; the wise and the very foolish. Some in the Church who should know better, and those outside, who have an astonishing interest in telling the Church they refuse to join how to run its own affairs, have spilled much ink about how Pope Benedict either failed or succeeded. In a far from complete manner, as one who has spent most of his eighteen years of priesthood as a far from simple, not so humble, parish priest in the Lord’s vineyard, I thought that I would not so much write of Pope Benedict’s legacy, but how he helped me as a pastor.

The first point has already been made: the difficult lesson to learn, yet one that Benedict XVI so consistently demonstrated, that it really is the Lord’s work. Closely linked with that was the insistence of Pope Benedict, found in numerous homilies and in his writings, that excessive activism was a great danger to the priesthood. A quotation of his which I have read on more than one occasion is that

“prayer and spiritual reading is not a distraction from pastoral work – it is pastoral work.” This, in a sense, echo’s the words of St. Paul about being a “gong booming,” or a “cymbal clashing” – without serious time spent in prayer, reading and study, the preaching of a pastor will be ineffective and the people will know it is empty, despite rhetorical skills or the cult of the priest’s personality.

Pope Benedict attended all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. He is the last Pope who will have participated in that Council: that should give those who talk of the “spirit of Vatican II,” if they have a modicum of humility, pause for thought. His commitment to the Council, the “true Council,” as he recently described it, not the Council of the media, and his teaching on the hermeneutic of continuity between the Council and what went on before, has been a great gift to the Church. Again, at a “Q & A” session with priests, he responded to a priest’s question about the great confusion of the last fifty years since the Council, with a typically brilliant and historical assessment. He spoke, with his vast knowledge of the Fathers of the Church (one of his other truly great gifts that he shared with us), about the period after the Council of Nicea, and, indeed, after all Councils, as a time of “chaos,” but now, as he said only a few weeks before his abdication, “fifty years later, the strength of the real Council has been revealed. Our task for the Year of Faith is to bring the real Second Vatican Council to light.” The authentic interpretation of the “real Council” has been another of Benedict’s great gifts of service. He has shown that the “real Council” is very different from the imaginary Council touted by the ill-informed.

No faithful pastor can possible fail to appreciate Pope Benedict’s insistence on the place of beauty in the life of the Church, most especially in the liturgy. Beauty is, as we know, one of the three ways that we can come to know God, and the ‘restoration of the sacred,’ inspired by Pope Benedict, is already marking the difference between the time of “chaos” and the true implementation of the Council in parish life. It is not, as some have curiously described it, “getting things out of Grandma’s attic” – it is about the elevation and enchantment that the human spirit so desperately needs. In my own parish, I regularly celebrate a weekday evening Mass “ad orientem,” with priest and people together praying in the same direction, the way the Church has prayed for most of its history. We pause in silence for a considerable time after the Gospel, for a period of “lectio divina” – the whole Mass is marked by silence and reverence. A little boy, no older than ten or eleven, attending several times with his grandparents, told them he particularly enjoyed the Mass because it was, he said, “mysterious.” He was caught up in the mystery of God – of divine worship, not the banality of the “rock Mass” which, we are told by seventy year olds, is “what the kids want.”

Speaking to the clergy of Rome, just days after he announced he would leave the throne of Peter, Pope Benedict spoke extemporaneously for forty-six minutes, about his experience of the Second Vatican Council. Vatican radio called it his “last great Master Class.” He apologized for not preparing a great discourse for the priests – he told them he would “have a chat!” We had one of the greatest teaching Popes in centuries – and we will feel the loss.

His words at his instillation Mass sum up the reason for all he attempted to do for the Church, in his gentle, simple and joyful way: “There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.”