Last night, but probably it was the morning, when dreams come, one then came to me. What happened in it I no longer know, but something was said, either to me or by me, which also I no longer know.
So, it was said that when a man is born, a word is given with him, and it was important, what the meaning was: not just a predisposition, but a word. It is spoken unto him in his essence, and it is like the password of everything, what then will happen. It is at once the strength and the weakness. It is the commission and the promise. It is the guard and the dangers. Everything that will then happen through the course of the years is the effect of this word, it is the explanation and the fulfillment. And everything comes to pass for him to whom it was pronounced -- each man, to each to which one was spoken -- he understands it and it comes into agreement with him. And perhaps this word is to be the basis on which the Judge will at last speak with him.
1 August 1964 [written when he was 79, four years before his death]
Berichte über mein Leben, 20.
Plinthos translation
The above text is confusing with an ambiguity more typical of Pope Francis than of Pope Benedict. While it cannot be doubted that Ratzinger read Guardini, it is also clear that he had recommended him only with great discretion. What this dream revelation suggests is that man is made and determined by an anonymous force. Sounds very much like the ideas of the atheist agents of social engineering of the last century.
Guardini was an expert in Hölderin, that pioneer of German Idealism (historical atheistic dialectic), the same Hölderin Pope Francis says is (in the infamous Civiltá interview) one of his favorite thinkers!
Here are the relevant words of Pope Francis recommending philosopher Hölderin, the classmate and lifelong friend of Hegel and Schelling!
“I have really loved a diverse array of authors. I love very much Dostoevsky and Hölderlin. I remember Hölderlin for that poem written for the birthday of his grandmother that is very beautiful and was spiritually very enriching for me. The poem ends with the verse, ‘May the man hold fast to what the child has promised.’ I was also impressed because I loved my grandmother Rosa, and in that poem Hölderlin compares his grandmother to the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, the friend of the earth who did not consider anybody a foreigner."