Pope Benedict XVI used his second to last Angelus to tell thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square that Lent is a “spiritual battle.” Lent, he said, “always involves a battle, a spiritual battle, because the spirit of evil naturally opposes our sanctification and seeks to divert us from the way of God.” Pope Benedict has just 11 days left as head of the Catholic Church until his almost unprecedented resignation takes effect Feb. 28. Over 35,000 people have officially registered with the Pontifical Household to bid him farewell. The Pope, speaking from the window of the Apostolic Palace, explained that the Lenten “spiritual battle” is the reason why the Gospel of the first Sunday of Lent relates each year to Jesus’ temptations in the desert. He reflected on the Sunday gospel, which tells how Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil after having received the Holy Spirit in his baptism at the Jordan river. “Upon starting his public ministry, Jesus had to expose and reject the false images of the Messiah that the tempter proposed,” said the Pope. “But these temptations are false images of man and during all times undermine the conscience, disguised and proposed as affordable, effective and even good,” he added. Pope Benedict said the evangelists Matthew and Luke reveal three temptations of Jesus, but differ only in the order in which they present them. He said the core of these temptations is always to exploit God for some lowly ends, giving more importance to success or to material goods. “The tempter is sneaky: he does not go directly to evil, but to a false good, making one believe that the true reality is power and that this meets one’s basic needs,” said the pontiff. “God becomes secondary in this way, (he) ultimately becomes unreal because he no longer matters and thus vanishes,” he added. Pope Benedict said that faith is what is ultimately at stake in temptations because God is at stake. “But in hindsight we are at crossroads -- do we want to follow the ‘I’ or God? The individual interest or the real good and what is really good?” said the Pope. “As the Fathers of the Church teach us, temptations are part of the ‘descent’ of Jesus in our human condition and in the abyss of sin as well as of its consequences,” he said. He explained that Jesus is “the hand that God has tended to man, the lost sheep, to bring him back to safety.” But the pontiff said we do not have to fear facing the fight against the spirit of evil since “Jesus took our temptations to give us his victory. The important thing is that we do this with him, with the Victor,” he said. Pope Benedict said Lent is a time of “conversion and penance” and a “favorable time to rediscover faith in God as the criterion of our life and the life of the Church. The Church, which is mother and teacher, calls all her members to be renewed in the spirit, to re-orientate closely to God, denying pride and selfishness in order to live in love,” he said. He then greeted the pilgrims in different languages. He told the Italian pilgrims their attendance in such large numbers is “a sign of affection and spiritual closeness that I have been shown these days.”
The twelve apostles chosen by Jesus formed the bedrock of the early Church , and their Catholic identity is deeply rooted in their direct relationship with Christ and the mission He entrusted to them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church highlights this foundational role, stating that Jesus "instituted the Twelve as 'the seeds of the new Israel and the beginning of the sacred hierarchy'" ( CCC 860 ). These men were not simply followers; they were handpicked by Jesus, lived intimately with Him, witnessed His miracles and teachings firsthand, and were specifically commissioned to preach the Gospel to all nations ( Matthew 28:19-20 ). Their unique position as eyewitnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and their reception of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, established them as the authoritative leaders of the nascent Church, a reality echoed in the writings of early Church Fathers like Ignatius of Antioch, who emphasized the apostles' authority as repre...