2012-01-03 15:56:42

Pope’s message for World Day of the Sick 2012


(January 03, 2012) Pope Benedict XVI is focussing on the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick in his message for the Catholic Church’s 20th World Day of the Sick which will be celebrated on Feb. 11, the feast of the Our Day of Lourdes. The Vatican on Tuesday released the Pope’s message for this year’s observance on the theme: “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you” taken from the Gospel episode of the healing of the ten lepers. The Pope said he wanted to emphasize on the two “sacraments of healing”, “which have their natural completion in Eucharistic Communion.” Going beyond mere physical healing, reacquired health, he said, is a sign of the salvation that God gives us through Christ. The tandem of physical health and renewal after lacerations of the soul thus helps us to understand better the “sacraments of healing”. “In the sacrament of Penance, in the “medicine of confession”,” the Holy Father wrote, “the experience of sin does not degenerate into despair but encounters the Love that forgives and transforms….” A time of suffering, in which one could be tempted to abandon oneself to discouragement and hopelessness, can thus be transformed into a time of grace, the Pope pointed out. The Anointing of the Sick, on the one hand is a sign of God’s tenderness towards those who are suffering, and on the other it brings spiritual advantage to priests and the whole Christian community as well, in the awareness that what is done to the least, is done to Jesus himself. The Pope urged that together with sacraments of Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick, special attention be given to guarantee the possibility of frequent Holy Communion to those who for reasons of health or age, cannot go to a place of worship. Pope Benedict also recalled that “in the generous and loving welcoming of every human life, above all of weak and sick life, a Christian expresses an important aspect of his or her Gospel witness, following the example of Christ, who bent down before the material and spiritual sufferings of man in order to heal them.”








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