CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 16, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI in his Assumption day homily invited the faithful to make room for God in private and public life.
The Pope’s appeal came Monday during the Mass he celebrated in the Parish of St. Thomas of Villanueva in the town of Castel Gandolfo, where he is spending the rest of the summer.
In his spontaneous homily on the solemnity of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, the Holy Father referred to the Magnificat as the «wonderful canticle» in which the Blessed Virgin wishes to magnify God in the world and in her life.
In modern times, it is thought that we will be really free by «forgetting God and following our own ideas and will,» Benedict XVI lamented.
«When God disappears, man is not greater: He loses divine dignity, the splendor of God in his face,» he said.
«In the end, he is left with the product of a blind evolution, loses divine dignity, and can therefore be used and abused, as we see,» the Pope said. «Man is great only if God is great.»
«Let us apply this in our life,» he urged the faithful of Castel Gandolfo, a town some 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Rome. «It is important that God be great among us, in public and private life.»
Common dignity
The Holy Father said that it is important that the Almighty be present in public life «with the sign of the Cross in official sites, that God be present in our daily life, because if God is present we are directed on a common path.»
«Otherwise, the contrasts become irreconcilable because the common essence does not exist, the common dignity of our being,» the Pope explained.
«To make God great in public and private life means to make room for God each day in life, beginning with morning prayer, giving time to God, offering Sunday to God,» he said. «If God enters our time, all time becomes greater, longer, richer.»
