Pope Celebrates Our Lady, Witness of Hope

(15 Aug 08 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI today marked one of the most ancient Marian Feasts in the history of the Church, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady.

As the Magnificat rung throughout the small village of Castel Gandolfo, high in the Roman Hills, Pope Benedict made his way from the Apostolic Palace to the nearby parish Church of St Thomas of Villanova.

There together with parishioners he celebrated mass, in a climate of joy. During his homily Pope Benedict spoke of the feast of the Assumption as an opportunity for us to “turn our gaze towards heaven and realise that it is not an abstract ideal but a concrete reality”.

He told the congregation that Our Lady’s rising to the Father, “flesh and blood”, “leaves the door of heaven open for all those who want to enter God’s kingdom”.

Returning to one of his favourite themes, faith and reason, Pope Benedict repeated that “reason alone cannot help us understand this concept”. He continued that “only a solid and simple faith can save man from a life lived in the past and help him grow towards the future”.

“With our gaze fixed on Heaven, we see our life laid out before us leading towards the fullness of joy and peace, which is not the end but a new world”.

Concluding the Holy Father invited those gathered in the tiny Roman Church to “live and die with the beatitudes as our guiding compass, and faced with the sad spectacle of so many false pleasures, pain and anguish that we see in the world today, learn from Mary to be witnesses of hope and consolation”.