UNDER THE SNOW, THE SIGN OF HOLY SATURDAY What would have happened if on that day the thoughtful gaze of a gentle pastry chef from a Munich hotel had not rested suddenly on an astonishing advertisement, published among thousands of others in the local Catholic newspaper? “State employee, single, Catholic, forty-three years old, seeks matrimony, as soon as possible, a capable Catholic girl.”2 Maria Rieger was not afraid, and that is how she met Joseph. Mary and Joseph—a good beginning to the story. In 1925, after the births of Maria and Georg, the Ratzinger family moved to Southern Bavaria to Marktl am Inn. The official residence assigned to Joseph, a policeman, took up the first floor of a large ochre building with cheerful green shutters on the market square. One April morning, all in white because snow had covered the village like a thick and silent carpet, young Georg woke up perceiving an unusual restlessness in the house. Footsteps resounded in the hall, doors slammed. “Father, I want to get up!” he said, still under the covers in his bed. And he heard the voice of his father answer: “No, you must wait awhile; today we [will] have a little baby boy!”3 It was first light on Holy Saturday, April 16, 1927. According to the custom of the time, the Paschal liturgy was being celebrated during those morning hours. It was bitterly cold. The father snugly wrapped the newborn and brought him immediately to the church. Thus, right after coming into the world, little Joseph was baptized with the newly blessed Easter water. “I have always been filled with thanksgiving for having had my life immersed in this way in the Easter mystery, since this could only be a sign of blessing. To be sure, it was not Easter Sunday but Holy Saturday, but, the more I reflect on it, the more this seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life: we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing in the full light but walking toward it full of trust.”4 “A very good day, which in some sense hints at my conception of history and my own situation: on the threshold of Easter, but not yet through the door.”5 2 E. Guerriero, Benedict XVI: His Life and Thought, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2018, p. 23. 3 G. Ratzinger and M. Hesemann, My Brother, the Pope, San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011, p. 38. 4 Milestones, pp. 8–9. 5 J. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium, an Interview with Peter Seewald, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997, p. 42. B E N E D I C T X V I the man Joseph, five years old, book bag on his back, prepares to leave for school. In 1932, the Ratzinger family lives in Aschau am Inn. The third child of Joseph and Maria Ratzinger, Joseph sees daylight on April 16, 1927 in Marktl, a small Bavarian village on the Austrian border. His father being a policeman, his family lives in accommodations provided by his father’s work, the first story of a big house overlooking the marketplace and Saint Oswald’s Church. That morning, Holy Saturday, the village wakes up under the snow. The newborn is immediately brought to the Church to be baptized. © Leemage © 2011 by Michael Hesemann, AKG, Wikicommons 8 • BENEDICT XVI BENEDICT XVI • 9
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