He knelt down in the House of Nazareth and invoked
protection for Italy on the feast day of the country’s patron saint,
St. Francis. “It is faith which gives us a home in this world, which brings us together in one family and which makes all of us brothers and sisters,” the Pope solemnly emphasised.
So “we must ask if we too wish to be open to the Lord, if we wish to offer him our life as his dwelling place; or if we are afraid that the presence of God may somehow place limits on our freedom, if we wish to set aside a part of our life in such a way that it belongs only to us.”
But “it is precisely God who liberates our liberty, he frees it from being closed in on itself, from the thirst for power, possessions, and domination; he opens it up to the dimension which completely fulfils it: the gift of self, of love, which in turn becomes service and sharing. “Faith lets us reside, or dwell, but it also lets us walk on the path of life.”
Benedict XVI took a break from the poison pen letter writers and poison of the Vatileaks affair and flew to the Italian town of Loreto last Thursday morning, to pray to Mary and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. Ratzinger was one of the theological minds of the Council, who had to ensure the Church adapted to modernity.
It was a “healthy earthquake” as Joseph Ratzinger famously called it a few years after the conclusion of Vatican II whose “aim was to spread ever wider the beneficent impact of the Incarnation and Redemption on all spheres of life.”
The Pope went on to say: “On 4 October 1962, Blessed John XXIII came as a pilgrim to this Shrine to entrust to the Virgin Mary the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, due to begin a week later.
Fifty years on, having been called by divine Providence to succeed that unforgettable Pope to the See of Peter, I too have come on pilgrimage to entrust to the Mother of God two important ecclesial initiatives: the Year of Faith, which will begin in a week, on 11 October, on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, and the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which I have convened this October with the theme “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”.
“Here at Loreto that we have the opportunity to attend the school of Mary who was called “blessed” because she “believed”. This Shrine, built around her earthly home, preserves the memory of the moment when the angel of Lord came to Mary with the great announcement of the Incarnation, and she gave her reply.”
“This humble home is a physical, tangible witness to the greatest event in our history, the Incarnation; the Word became flesh and Mary, the handmaid of the Lord, is the privileged channel through which God came to dwell among us.”
“On this pilgrimage in the footsteps of Blessed John XXIII – and which comes, providentially, on the day in which the Church remembers Saint Francis of Assisi, a veritable “living Gospel” – I wish to entrust to the Most Holy Mother of God all the difficulties affecting our world as it seeks serenity and peace, the problems of the many families who look anxiously to the future, the aspirations of young people at the start of their lives, the suffering of those awaiting signs or decisions of solidarity and love.”