As I begin to write these lines, Benedict XVI will be taking a nap. Will he be able to sleep on his last day of pontificate? A good question. Perhaps it would be good to recall an anecdote told by the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori. He was then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the toughest place in the Church. He was called the Guardian of the Faith, the Grand Inquisitor, the rottweiler of God. All the problems of the Church came to his table. Messori, a journalist seasoned in a thousand battles, asked the question: "And you, do you sleep well?

The Italian journalist tells how the Cardinal, as a good German, was a bit blocked and after thinking for a while said: "Well, the truth is that after making my examination of conscience and praying the night prayers, the truth is that I sleep very well because I know that the Church belongs to Jesus Christ and not to us". This anecdote sums up the Pope Emeritus' vision. Christ and the Church are intimately united. As the ancient fathers of the Church used to say, Christ is the sun and the Church is the moon that reflects the light of the sun. This is what he came to say on Wednesday at the last audience.

And he recalled it yesterday in his farewell before the cardinals. In his words of thanks, Benedict XVI assured his "total obedience and benevolence" for his successor. He assured that during his eight years of pontificate, "we have lived through beautiful moments of radiant light with the Church, as well as moments that have been dark". He made no secret of it. He was also being listened to by the future Pope; in fact, upon his arrival he said, to the shock and excitement of the cardinals there present: "Here is the future Pope." He recalled the words of Romano Guardini, who wrote to him that "the Church is not a past reality, it is a living reality". It is alive," John XIII had said, "because it is hers, not ours.

He added that the Church "is in the world, but not of the world. The Church belongs to Jesus Christ and not to us. That is why he got out of the way and calmly passed the baton to someone else. Perhaps this is the great lesson of Pope Benedict XVI. Sometimes we see the Church as a political structure, where power struggles take place. This is inevitable. But Ratzinger has taught us to look upward. What is most important in the Church we do not see. "What is essential is invisible to the eye," wrote Saint Exupéry. The most important thing about her is above: God and those who have entered contact definitively with God. Perhaps we could learn this lesson when looking at the Church without clericalism or political sociologies.

This Pope, with his air of a child on the day of his first communion, has also taught us to pray. He is retiring. Perhaps -said a journalist yesterday- we are becoming a little orphaned. He is retiring from government, but not from the most important thing. If he has been saying that prayer is what moves the Church, it is coherent that now he is retiring to a life of prayer and study. "I don't withdrawal the Church," he said Wednesday. And maybe now he's going to devote himself to what's most important. Supporting the Church from his retirement so that, once purified, he can launch himself into the task of the new evangelization. It can be an exciting program, to which everyone is called, believers and non-believers alike; in the end, all practitioners.