Overnight the skies wept copious tears, but after daybreak of this Second Sunday of Lent, the rain stopped, and the day proved variable, undecided: cloud cover alternated with sunny patches, moments of welcome warming us between unfriendly blasts of biting wind. The Roman weather; utterly unable to make up its mind, seemed accurately to reflect the mixed feelings in the crowd of more than 100,000 who witnessed the 15 minutes of Pope Benedict XVI’s last public Sunday Angelus.
“Dear brothers and sisters,” the Pope began, recalling this Sunday’s Gospel of the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28-36) when Jesus took Peter, James and John up a high mountain to pray. It was “a sort of spiritual retreat” and a “deep experience of his relationship with the Father” during which Jesus’ appearance was completely transfigured, says St. Luke: “The appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white.” Many years later, Peter remembers with emotion “when we were with him in the holy mount” (2 Peter 1:18).
The mountain is not named in the Gospel, but tradition identifies it as Mt. Tabor, which I was privileged to climb (in a car) in the 1990s and spend some hours in prayer there, too, a sort of spiritual retreat of my own. Quite uncharacteristically and very movingly, Pope Benedict drew out the personal connection: “I feel that this Gospel, this word of God, is directed in a special way to me at this moment of my life. The Lord is calling me to “climb the mountain, to dedicate myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church”, and at this point the crowd interrupted him with applause. “On the contrary, if God asks this of me, it is precisely so that I can continue to serve” the Church “with the same dedication and the same love which I have tried to offer until now, but in a way more suited to my age and to my strength.” 
As for those who are younger and stronger, two things are required: not only prayer but also operosa carità, operative or working charity or, in other words, love in action. That is the human mission: prayer in love of God, charity in love of neighbour. On this Pope Benedict elaborated in a message sent last week to a meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development: “I invoke the Almighty’s gifts of wisdom to pursue the path of solidarity that you have begun, and courage to continue along it to the point where you leave poverty and hunger behind, advancing towards ever new horizons of justice and peace.” And of course, in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace where I work, we treasure this explicit encouragement most highly: to work in solidarity with everyone of good will in order to reach new horizons of justice and peace.
After the reflection and the Angelus, came the traditional sung blessing in Latin. Just at the moment when the Holy Father intoned “Benedicat vos Omnipotens Deus,” the cold wind picked up and those of us downwind from a fountain received a kind of baptismal shower along with the blessing.
Addressing the crowd in six languages (English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish), the Holy Father must have said “Thank you” a dozen times in a quarter of an hour. “Thank you for your affection, for your many expressions of gratitude, for your closeness and sharing in prayer, for all the messages which I have received in these days … in this very special moment for me personally and for the Church.”
As if in reply, two of the many banners proclaimed, “Non sei solo – You are not alone!” and “Prega per noi – Pray for us!” 
Mixed up as we all are, like the weather, grateful to the Holy Father and sad to see him stepping down, proud of his brave and free gesture and anxious about the future of our Church, sharing his evident regret mixed with even more evident relief (his presence today was surer, his voice remarkably stronger, his emotions much closer to the surface), one of his dozen expressions of gratitude was this very relevant little prayer: “We thank the Lord for a bit of sunshine which He gives us!”
And then he said, “Thank you! In prayer we are always close. Thank you to you all!” And he turned, and he was gone. As the afternoon wore on, it turned simply windy, cold and grey again, “As we continue our Lenten journey towards Easter,” he had said to the English-speaking pilgrims, “may we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus the Redeemer, whose glory was revealed on the Mount of the Transfiguration.”