As the first Lenten retreat of his pontificate drew to a close, Pope Leo XIV thanked Norwegian Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim for “a profound, spiritual experience” after which, the pope said, he felt “particularly invited to reflect at certain moments.”
“Your wisdom, this testimony of yours and of the monastic life of St. Bernard, the richness of your reflections, will for a long time to come be a source of blessing for us, of grace, of encounter with Jesus Christ,” the pope told Bishop Varden, with cardinals present.
In a weeklong retreat, Bishop Varden preached on the variety of topics, often reflecting on monastic life and the testimony of St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
Pope Leo said on Feb. 27, closing the retreat, that the words of St. Bernard to his fellow monk and protege Bernard Paganelli, who became Pope Eugene III, will stay with him after the Lenten retreat.
“Speaking of this morning, when he spoke of the election of Pope Eugene III, St. Bernard said: ‘What have you done? God have mercy on you,’” Pope Leo said, reflecting on the day of his own election – May 8, when cardinals “were gathered here for the Eucharistic celebration” – in the same Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace as the retreat took place.
The pope said, “Above is the inscription from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, which reads these words: ‘For to me life is Christ, and death is gain.’”
“So, in this context and with this spirit of communion,” the pope said, “we all gather together to work together, yet sometimes very separately, and coming together in prayer is also – I think – a very important moment in our lives, reflecting on many issues that are important for our lives and for the Church.”
In the last afternoon reflection of his retreat Feb. 27, Bishop Varden spoke about communicating hope.
“Christ calls us to communicate hope to the world,” he said. “To have Christian hope is not necessarily to be an optimist. A Christian forswears wishful thinking, making a determined option for the real.”
“Demagogues promise that things will get better,” the Norwegian bishop said. “They claim demiurgical power to change communities within an electoral term, distracting the masses from felt disappointments by hand-outs of bread, tickets to circuses, and defamations of adversaries. How different are Christ’s words. He tells us, ‘The poor you will always have with you.’”
Bishop Varden continued: “The Lord obliges us, his disciples, to labour without respite for a new, healthy humanity formed by charity, in justice. He tells us to ‘cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.’ We are to enact the beatitudes, making the glory hidden within them shine. But as we go about this we are reminded: ‘Without me you can do nothing.’”
In what became over the week a constant delivery of quotes ready for a Catholic bestseller, he told the pope and the cardinals gathered: “Lent shows us that God, suffering the wound of his philanthropy, is at his most active in his Passion. The hope he entrusts to us is not hope in a finally modernized, digitized, sanitized Vale of Tears. Our hope is in a new heaven, a new earth, in the resurrection of the dead,” Bishop Varden said, as reported by Vatican News.
Closing the Feb. 22-27 retreat, Pope Leo said that “with the reflection on hope and the true source of hope, which is Christ,” the pontiff returned to reread the Letter to the Philippians, quoting verse 27: “Conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ.”
“This is the invitation at the end of these days of prayer and reflection,” the pope said.
Starting the Lenten journey, Bishop Varden told cardinals and Pope Leo that the Lenten season is a reminder that Christians are called to bear witness to Jesus Christ through authentic witness, not self-righteous indignation.
“The extent of the peace we embody – that exemplary peace ‘which the world cannot give’ – bears witness to the constant presence of Jesus within us. It is important to insist on this point at a time when the Gospel is so often instrumentalized as a weapon in culture wars,” the bishop said.
In the following days, he reflected on the splendor of truth and the Christian idea of freedom, as well as sin, abuse and Church corruption.
Bishop Varden delivered daily memorable reflections that mesmerized Catholics around the globe.
“It is tempting to think we must keep up with the world’s fashions,” he said Feb. 24. While the Church, “a slow-moving body, will always run the risk of looking and sounding last-season,” she needs to speak “her own language well” – that “of the Scriptures and liturgy, of her past and present fathers, mothers, poets, and saints,” to be “original and fresh,” and “ready to express ancient truths in new ways.”
On Feb. 24, Bishop Varden said that “Christian freedom is not about seizing the world with force.” Instead, ‘It is about loving the world with a crucified love magnanimous enough to make us freely wish, one with Christ, to give our lives for it, that it may be set free.”
On Feb. 25, his meditations on the abuse crisis made headlines for saying, “Nothing has done the Church more tragic harm, and compromised our witness more, than corruption arisen within our own house.”
“The worst crisis of the Church,” Bishop Varden said, “has been brought on, not by secular opposition, but by ecclesiastical corruption. The wounds inflicted will take time to heal. They call out for justice and for tears.”
On Feb. 27, during the last morning reflection, Bishop Varden told the pope – who is yet to choose his main collaborators – and cardinals, that St. Bernard urged Pope Eugene to choose collaborators with qualities marked by proven integrity and sound faith rather than proposing institutional solutions to challenges involving administration, diplomacy and conflict.
Such qualities, Bishop Varden said, “are valid in every age.”
Closing his retreat he reminded that a Christian revival is making waves across the world as people are searching for meaning.
“The time in which we live is hungry to hear this hope proclaimed,” he said.
“We have considered some signs surrounding us: new religious awareness among the young; the return of the category of truth to public discourse; a search for roots.”
He noted that while “Global institutions and alliances are breaking down,” the world is “exposed to strategic, ecological, and ideological peril.”
“It is natural that people of sense and good will should ask what, in the midst of such uncertainty, stands a chance of lasting,” he said.
Bishop Varden reflected that “tired of building their lives on sand,” people “seek solid rock.”
Concluding, Bishop Varden told participants of the retreat, “We work. We serve. We teach. We do battle when we must. We endeavour to love and honor each other, our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer of our faith. He, the Lamb of God, is our lamp. His ‘kindly light,’ also when hidden, is full of gladness.”
