“Eli, Eli lama sabachtani?” ¹ When Benedict XVI signifies, in a few simple words, that he renounces the office of pope, it is an earthquake that shakes the world and strikes Catholics. The wildest rumors are circulating and everyone wonders about the causes of this decision which, even if it is not unique, causes amazement. Personally two feelings inhabit me: abandonment and sadness, its pilot fish, not to say desolation. The abandonment resembles an echo that keeps reproducing and growing, like a haunting complaint.

Let's recap. On April 19, 2005, I experienced infinite joy, that “heart flooded with joy” recounted by the mystics, at the announcement of the new pope. I cry of joy in front of my television. Of course, over the past few days, since the mass in honor of Don Giussani, since the mass for the funeral of John Paul II above all, Cardinal Ratzinger has become a kind of evidence. With the finesse and intelligence that characterize him, he stands out as a papabile of excellence. Those who kept it in the wadding in a small box are at their expense. Cardinal Ratzinger doesn't quite fit his labels like "panzerkardinal." He is more than just a censor. A simple and branching kindness and faith emanate from him. I cry in front of my TV when Ratzinger's name is mentioned. He who liked to live in the shadow of the giant embodied by John Paul II, is the perfect successor of this giant. In proportion to this joy of April 19, 2005 now follows the pain of February 11, 2013, which is equal if not greater. Eight years passed and the same man had turned everything upside down in my life. In shock on February 11, faced with abandonment, faced with absence, and in the echo of this renunciation, I couldn't find a way out of angry feelings. Why abandon us? The storm is always at our doorstep. Not to mention the loss of sacred function, the loss of meaning. But the loss of meaning is constitutive of 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 are paying dearly, very dearly, for the superhuman dignity of our vocation. The ridiculous is always so close to the sublime! And the world, usually so indulgent to ridicule, hates ours, distinct”. Isn't the pope's only choice when taking his cassock and at the end of the conclave? What is this new freedom? What are these new rules enacted by Benedict XVI based on? Should obedience be lukewarm water drunk without thinking? Rank or function or both? Of course, we have been told that canon law allows this, but this freedom, cherished freedom, does not seem to me to offer a guarantee of not making mistakes. Doesn't Benedict XVI open a Pandora's box by opening up this new field of reflection? Doesn't it presume, once again one would be tempted to say, the ability to understand people: faithful and non-believers? Isn't he realizing something too clever? Finally, does it not lower “the superhuman dignity of the vocation”? What are you doing, Benoit? Why are you leaving 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 Benedict XVI's warning shot, I understand that there are many ways to die. As there are several charisms; charisma influencing agony. “I am the way, the truth and the life…if there could be any contradictions between truth and life, because the truth can kill us and life can keep us alive” ² . From this intimacy, Benedict XVI took this crazy decision, or rather, more exactly, from this crazy intimacy with Christ, Benedict XVI took this decision to leave his function as pope. From his permanent dialogue with Christ, Benedict XVI deduced that his role had to change, but not his way. It is always by example that he guides us. It is by understanding this that the grief of his departure began to dissipate. Find or deepen intimacy in a world of exhibitionism. Who better than Christianity can put intimacy back at the heart of the world? Christian intimacy is madness for this world, because through the Cross, Jesus made us intimate with his agony. This is unbearable for the modern sensibility which does not hesitate to commit holocausts on the altar of Progress and Consumerism son of Reason, but without intimacy, in permanent mondovision. 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 path to an intimate relationship with Christ, so let's start by saying as the priest at every Mass: “Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus, quae retribuit mihi?” ³ . Thus we will begin to understand, intimately, that there is no way to God except that taught by Benedict XVI, in a final masterful catechesis, by abandoning oneself to Christ.