Pope’s Sunday ‘Angelus’ of August 8

(August 9, 2010) Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday stressed on the importance of leading our lives with trust and hope in the coming of the Lord. This hope, he said, should encourage us to "an intense life, rich with good works." He was addressing a crowd of pilgrims and tourists at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, just outside Rome, before reciting the midday ‘Angelus’ prayer with them. The Pope quoted Sunday Gospel: "Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy "and then added: “It 's an invitation to use things without egoism, the thirst for possession or domination, but according to God's logic, the logic of attention to the other, the logic of God…” Citing from his 2007 encyclical, ‘Spe Salvi’, on the theme of hope, the Pope said, “Our hearts are open to the hope that illuminates and enlivens concrete existence: we have the certainty that "the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known – it is one that makes things happen and changes life. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life," the Pope said. In this regard he recalled Abraham of the Old Testament, St. Dominic de Guzman, St. Clare of Assisi and St. Lawrence. He particularly recalled two martyrs of the twentieth century who suffered the same fate in the concentration camp of Auschwitza and are commemorated this week. On Monday the Church recalled Carmelite Saint, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, or Edith Stein, and on Saturday occurs the feast of Franciscan priest, St. Maximilian Kolbe. The Pope said, “Both crossed the dark time of World War II without ever losing sight of hope, the God of life and love."