Pope Benedict XVI address at the Mid-day Hour in the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria del Rosario

Pope Benedict XVI address at the Mid-day Hour in the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria del Rosario
SEDOC
Pope Benedict XVI visited the Don Orione Centre located in Rome's Monte Mario district on the 24^th of June, Thursday, to bless a statue of the Virgin "Salus Populi Romani". After the blessing the Holy Father visited the Dominican convent of Santa Maria del Rosario in Monte Mario, where he met the cloistered nuns. The convent contains the seventh-century icon of the Virgin "Hagiosoritissa", known as Our Lady of St. Luke, as well as precious relics of St. Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena and other Dominican saints. Praying with them during the mid day office, the Pope said, this prayer, which finds its culmination in the daily participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice, shows their dedication to the Lord in silence and obscurity, is made fertile and fruitful, not only as regards the path of sanctification and cleansing, but also as their intercession for the whole Church, a holy and pure offering to the Lord. He invited them to be grateful to the Divine Providence for the free gift of sublime and the monastic vocation, to which the Lord has called them gratuitously. The form of contemplative life, they have received from the hands of Saint Dominic is an endless source of grace with prayer, submitting to Almighty God the spiritual and material needs of so many brothers in distress and those who have strayed from the Lord. Pope Benedict called on them to move beyond the individual moments of prayer, with their hearts driven by the desire to love God and the Church and to desire above everything good that has no equal, that pearl of great worth giving up for any property they owned.