VATICAN CITY, FEB. 20, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Our perfection is to live as children of God and to do his will, says Benedict XVI.
The Pope affirmed this today before he prayed the midday Angelus with crowds gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
Reflecting on the readings from today’s Mass and their affirmation of “God’s will to make men participants in his life,” the Holy Father said that the Lord’s invitation is audacious.
“If we listen, then, to Jesus,” he said, “in whom God took on a mortal body to become every man’s neighbor and reveal his infinite love for us, we hear again that same call, that same objective audacity. The Lord, in fact, says: ‘Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.'”
“Who can become perfect,” the Pontiff asked. “Our perfection,” he proposed in answer, “is to live as children of God in humility concretely doing his will.”
Reflecting, then, on this call to imitate Jesus, Benedict XVI affirmed: “He who welcomes the Lord in his life and loves him with all of his heart can begin again. He is able to do God’s will: to realize a new form of existence animated by love and destined for eternity.”
The Pope concluded by pointing to Tuesday’s feast of the Chair of St. Peter.
Peter, he said, was entrusted “the task of Teacher and Shepherd for the spiritual guidance of the People of God, so that they might be raised up to heaven.”
“Thus, I exhort all pastors ‘to assimilate that “new style of life” which was inaugurated by the Lord Jesus and taken up by the Apostles,'” the Holy Father said. “We call on the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, that she teach us how to love each other and to welcome each other as brothers, children of the same heavenly Father.”
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On ZENIT’s Web page:
Full text: www.zenit.org/article-31798?l=english
