"Eli, Eli Lama Sabachtani?" 1 ^he renounces the function of Pope, it is an earthquake that shakes the world and which strikes Catholics. The most eccentric noises run and each to question the causes of this decision which, even if it is not unique, causes stupor. Personally two feelings live in: abandonment and sadness, his pilot fish, not to say desolation. Abandonment looks like an echo that continues to reproduce and increase, like a heady complaint.

Let's summarize. On April 19, 2005, I experienced infinite joy, this "heart flooded with joy" told by the mystics, at the announcement of the new pope. I cry with joy in front of my television. Of course for a few days, since mass in honor of Don Giussani, since the mass of the funeral of John Paul II especially, Cardinal Ratzinger has become a kind of evidence. With the finesse and intelligence that characterize him, he imposes himself as a papabile of excellence. Those who kept it in the cotton wool in a small box are for their expense. Cardinal Ratzinger does not quite correspond to his labels like that of "Panzerkardinal". It is a little more than a simple censor. A simple and branching goodness and faith emanate from him. I cry in front of my TV when the name of Ratzinger is pronounced. The one who liked to live in the shadow of the giant that Jean-Paul II embodied, is the perfect continuator of this giant. With a proportion of this joy of April 19, 2005 is now succeeding the sentence of February 11, 2013 which is equal to it if not superior. Eight years passed and the same man had turned everything up in my life. In shock this February 11, faced with abandonment, faced with the absence, and in the echo of this renunciation, I did not find the means to come out of angry feelings. Why abandon us? The storm is always at our door. Not to mention the loss of sacred function, the loss of meaning. But the loss of meaning constitutes abandonment.

The essence of this decision dawned on me, it did not calm the anger, but it did lessen the disappointment, it was about the separation between man and function, but I still only saw it through a mirror. This separation resembled a military formula which advocates separating rank and function. This separation is not easily achieved. This is to say that a master corporal has the function of guarding the armory. If an officer wants to enter this armory, he cannot do so of his own volition. He can only do so if he has permission. And if he does not have this authorization, the master corporal can refuse him entry even though his rank is lower. Rank is one thing, function another. So, the pope, rank or function? Isn't being pope a vocation? Being a priest is, would being pope rather be a function? Because if it is a vocation, it is impossible to renounce it. The vocation is not changeable, it is we who are. Thus, respect for the decision of Benedict XVI should not be mandatory. I saw and heard in the days that followed the declaration that this pope had a lot of courage and humility (which I had never doubted being, as I said, a long-time convinced Ratzinguerian) and that his decision was not to be judged or discussed. I immediately thought of thinking about this decision without giving a blank check. Obedience, of course, besides what could I change in this decision?, but also and above all reflection in order to understand. Even if understanding would not take away the sadness, it invited itself to lighten it. Placed in this space-time of abandonment, I did not know what to think.

Thus, pope: a rank or a function? How, from his election, not to confuse Jan-Paul II and his state or his work, as you will, as pope? How not to confuse Ratzinger and Benedict XVI? This game of Jekyll and Hide still appeared to me like in a mirror. I didn't know Wojtyla before John Paul II and from the election he was one, but I knew Ratzinger before Benedict XVI and yet he was one too. Benedict XVI created the event and separated rank from function, pope became a function; and of a function which one can resign oneself to.

“We pay dear, very expensive, the superhuman dignity of our vocation. Ridicule is always so close to the sublime! And the world, so usually indulgent to ridiculous, hates ours, distinct ”. Isn't the only choice of the Pope when he takes hold of the cassock and at the end of the conclave? What is this new freedom? What are these new rules set out by Benoit XVI on? Should obedience be lukewarm water without thinking? Grade or function or both? Of course, we were rejected that canon law allows this, but this freedom, darling freedom, does not seem to offer a guarantee not to be mistaken. Does Benoît XVI not open a Pandora's box by opening this new field of reflection? Does he not presume, once again would we be tempted to say, of the ability to understand people: faithful and non-believers? Doesn't it achieve something too smart? Finally, does he not abuse "the superhuman dignity of vocation"? What are you doing, Benoît? Why do you abandon me?

The wound remains open. I hear around me talking about him, I think of Benedict XVI, I see his face and I feel like crying. And little by little, I realize that I am missing something. Emotion is one thing, but it can mask the truth. It can make us lose sight of the essential. I feel like I'm missing the point. The methodology that the Pope emeritus has put in place, day after day, since February 11, 2013, sorry, since April 19, 2005, has never been faulted. Benedict XVI thought of his life, and therefore his vocation, as an example and a Christian should always think this way. There is only one way to be exemplary, and there again, in his immense leniency, Benedict XVI has told us this over and over again, and that is to be an intimate friend of Christ. When Benedict XVI tells us that he felt the presence of Christ every day of his pontificate, that means one thing and one thing only, every day he kept the flame alive, that little flame tossed about by the slightest draft of air, intimacy. The life of Benedict XVI is based on intimacy, and his intimacy is all resplendent and refined like the whole of his being. As soon as the word intimacy is pronounced, we hear softness, smoothness, discretion, intensity, joy, smoothness and truth. Benedict XVI is an example through the intimacy he maintains with Christ. This attitude is part of him, he asks us to adopt it. He doesn't tell us it's easy. He does not tell us that it will be given to us. Some have shown to what extent John Paul II and Benedict XVI formed an effective and homogeneous couple. The reason is that both respected this incredible human truth, also known in intuition of the Greeks, that man realizes himself and realizes the world in agony. Agony is the mainspring of man in the world. To go even further, I would say that the greatest legacy of Benedict XVI is there: he never ceased to show us the agony of intelligence. When John Paul II showed us the physical agony, more visible, more directly perceptible, more telling and oh so linked to the Christian condition from its origin, Benedict XVI as an aristocrat of intelligence, and therefore of dialogue, showed us the agony of intelligence, and therefore of truth. And so Christianity!

A month after Benoît XVI's warning, I understand that there are several ways of Agonir. As there are several charisms; Charisma influencing agony. "I am the way, the truth and the life ... if there could be some contradictions between truth and life, because the truth can kill us and life keep us alive" ² . From this intimacy, Benît XVI made this crazy decision, or rather, more exactly, of this crazy intimacy with Christ, Benedict XVI made this decision to leave his function of Pope. From his permanent dialogue with Christ, Benoît XVI deduced that his role was to change, but not his way. It is always by example that he guides us. It is by understanding this that the sorrow of his departure began to dissipate. Find or deepen intimacy in a world of exhibitionism. Who better than Christianity can put intimacy at the heart of the world? Christian intimacy is a madness for this world, because by the cross, Jesus made us intimate of his agony. This is unbearable for modern sensitivity which does not hesitate to commit holocausts on the altar of progress and consumerism son of reason, but without intimacy, in permanent world. We know, thanks to Pascal, that Christ is in agony until the end of the world. Benedict XVI took advantage of Lent and the Year of Faith to place our hope, but also our doubts, our thoughts, our whole being, on the way to an intimate relationship with Christ, so let's start by saying like the Priest at each mass: "Quid Retribuam Domino Pro Omnibus, Quae Retributes Mihi?" 3 .^​ Thus we will begin to understand, intimately, that there is no way to God, that that taught by Benedict XVI, in a last masterful catechesis, abandoning himself to Christ.