Cardinal Müller: Christianity is a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus, not an ‘ideology’

Editor’s note: Below follows the full text of the homily of Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller to attendees of the 13^th annual Populus Summorum Pontifical pilgrimage, given at St. Peter’s Basilica on October 26, 2024. 

(LifeSiteNews) — The great Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly drawn attention to the very important difference between faith and ideology. Christianity is not an abstract theory about the origin of the cosmos and life, or an ideology for a better society, but a relationship with a Person. Just as the earthly Jesus spoke directly to his disciples 2,000 years ago, so too the risen Christ today speaks directly to each individual through the preaching of the Church.

In the seven holy sacraments He gives us His grace, through which we receive a participation in the divine life. And that is why we can place all our hope in Him, in life as in death. The Son of God is the only Savior of the world because only God in His omnipotence can save us from suffering, sin, and death. No man, however brilliant, can pull us out of the abyss of finitude, be it alone or even with the combined forces of the talents of all people.

And the existential temptation to place our trust in men instead of in God is something which emerges repeatedly. But we remain faithful in Christ, meditating on the word of God:

And the devil led him into a high mountain and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And he said to him: ‘To thee will I give all this power and the glory of them. For to me they are delivered: and to whom I will, I give them. If thou therefore wilt adore before me, all shall be thine.’ And Jesus answering said to him. It is written: ‘Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.’ (Lk 4:5-8).

PHOTOS: Latin Mass devotees process to Vatican for annual international pilgrimage

Summorum Pontificum, Latin Mass pilgrimage, 2024

So at the end of our pilgrimage ad Petri Cathedram we adore Christ, the Son of the living God.

Because of secularization, many believed that one could live as if God did not exist. Instead of God, they worshipped the false gods of money, power, and lust. But they were bitterly disappointed. All the atheistic ideologies of our time, together with their self-proclaimed leaders, have done nothing but plunge the world into a deeper misery. German and Italian fascism, Soviet and Chinese communism, capitalist consumerism, and gender and transhumanist ideology have transformed the world into a desert of nihilism.

The 20th century was a time of dictators and monsters who wanted to impose their will upon the world, regardless of the happiness of millions of people. They believed that their ideas were the salvation of the world, and that the new human being had to be “created” in their image and likeness and “blessed” according to their logic. Even today we experience how terrorists, exploiters, and unscrupulous bullies declare hatred and violence as the means for “a better future world.”

Today the superpowers engage in ruthless geopolitics at the expense of the life and dignity of children and adults. All is about accumulating power in the hands of unscrupulous “new rulers” who risk the happiness of millions of people.

But, on the contrary, God, our Creator and Redeemer, manifests His power precisely in not sacrificing others for His own interests, as the rulers of this world do, but by giving Himself in His Son, who out of love took on our mortal flesh.

Let us instead meditate on the words of Jesus: “For God so loved the world, as to give his only Son: that whosever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” (Jn 3:16).

Summorum 2024.

Summorum 2024

In contrast to all the deadly ideologies that have seduced people with their propaganda, Christianity is the religion of truth and freedom, of love and life. The love that God gives to all of us in abundance and our response in devotion to God and charity toward others is the fulfilment of human beings.

Love of God and love of neighbor are at the heart of the Christian faith in the creative and perfecting power of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Christian faith is a personal relationship with the Triune God in the communion of His Church. Through baptism we have become children of God in Christ and friends of God in the Holy Spirit. Let us not allow our relationship with God our Father to atrophy in a mechanical tradition, in an external custom or in a thoughtless routine.

As believers bound to Jesus by a personal friendship, we do not behave like guards in a museum of a bygone world. We move in the presence of God, before whom we must answer for our lives in thoughts, words and good works.

But if we look around us, in Italy and the West, we see the magnificent testimonies of the Christianized Greco-Roman culture from whose sources we draw. This is the synthesis of faith and reason, open to all cultures, manifested in the Logos, i.e., Jesus Christ, the unity of our orientation toward God and our responsibility for the world. Its permanent foundation is the Incarnation of the Word of God in Jesus Christ, true God and true man.

From Christianity comes a universal humanization of the world. In word and deed, Christians are called to contribute to peace among peoples. They have campaigned for social justice. They insist against all ideologies on the fundamental dignity of all human beings and their equality before God.

Do we sense something of the “Genius loci” of Rome as caput mundi? Do we confess to the Roman Church, that St. Paul boasted “because your faith is spoken of in the whole world” (Rom 1:8)?

If ancient Rome was the idea of peace among peoples under the rule of law, Christian Rome embodies the hope of the universal unity of all peoples in the love of Christ.

Summorum 2024

While the naturally Christian soul of the great Virgil could only suppose the birth of a child, a divine savior in the future golden age, (Bucolic IV), the coming of the Messiah is promised in the Biblical song of the servant of God: “I have given thee to be the light of the Gentiles, that thou mayst be my salvation even to the farthest part of the earth” (Is 49:6).

Do not, therefore, build the house of your life upon ideologies devised by men, but upon the rock of personal friendship with Christ in the divine virtues – faith, hope, and love – so that you may then be able to say with St. Paul: “I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered imself for me” (Gal 2:20).

We entrust ourselves to the protection and intercession “of – as St. Irenaeus of Lyons said – the two celebrated apostles Peter and Paul,” who with their apostolic preaching and their martyrdom, laid the foundations of the Roman Church. Et hanc enim ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam (Adv. haer, III 3, 2).