Pope Benedict

Faith is exactly what the word implies - faith that life will unfold in the way it is meant to, even at those times when it does not seem as though that is what is happening.

I cannot say that Pope Benedict is exactly what I was hoping for, or that my heart fluttered with joy when I saw the CBC news in the airport with the white smoke, and the smiling Bavarian.

But I sincerely believe that what God wants cannot be easily thwarted, nor are we always privileged to know what it is that God wants, or how God's will may be served. Perhaps my next challenge in faith is to live under the oversight of a chief pastor with whom I have a certain unease. I had hoped that John Paul II's successor would be, like him, a man of pastoral inclinations, a warm and generous hearted man.

But perhaps the office's own charisms work their way on the men who hold the office. Perhaps Benedict XVI has other qualities than simply being "God's Rottweiler", and that these will now come to the fore. Perhaps it is no small coincidence that it is a German Pope who will be presiding over World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany this summer, just as John Paul II's first international excursion just so happened to be Poland. Perhaps Germany needs a Pope.

As for me, humility is a treasure to be nurtered and cared for like a garden. Perhaps this Pope's papacy will be like minerals for that garden for me - how to accept what God wants, even when His will differs so greatly from my own. And who knows? After all, his Holiness took the name Benedict XVI, and not Pius XIII.