ANGELUS TODAY
Pope calls Nazi camps
extreme symbols of evil
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, Aug. 9 (AP) -Pope Benedict XVI says that Nazi concentration camps were "extreme symbols of evil" and hell on earth.
The Pontiff says concentration camps are a symbol of the "hell that comes to earth when man forgets God and replaces him, usurping his right to decide what is right and what is wrong, to give life and death."
The German-born Benedict was forced to join the Hitler Youth, and on Sunday was remembering two saints who had died in concentration camps.
He was speaking to pilgrims gathered at the Castel Gandolfo papal retreat for Sunday's traditional Angelus prayer.
Here is a translation of the Holy Father's words today:
Dear brothers and sisters!
Like last Sunday, today as well - in the context of the Year for Priests that we are celebrating - let us stop to meditate on the saints whom the liturgy commemorates this week.
With the exception of St. Clare of Assisi, Virgin, ardent with divine love in her daily oblation of prayer and ordinary life, the others are martyrs, two of them killed in the Auschwitz lager: St. Teresa Benedetta della Croce - Edith Stein, who was born in the Jewish faith and conquered by Christ as an adult, became a Carmelite nun and sealed her life with martyrdom; and St. Maximilian Kolbe, a son of Poland and of St. Francis, great apostle of Mary Immaculate.
Then there are splendid martyrs from the Church of Rome, like St. Poncianus, Pope; St. Hippolytus, priest; and St. Lawrence, deacon. What marvelous models of sainthood the Church offers us!
These saints are witnesses to that love 'unto the end' which does not mind the evil it receives but fights it with good (cfr 1 Cor 13,4-9). From them, we can learn - especially we priests - the evangelical heroism that impels us, without fearing anything, to give our life for the salvation of souls. Love conquers death!
All saints, but especially the martyrs, are witnesses for God who is Love: Deus caritas est. The Nazi concentration camps, like every extermination camp, can be considered extreme symbols of evil, of the hell that opens on earth when man forgets God and substitutes himself, usurping God's right to decide what is good and what is bad, to give life and death.
Unfortunately, however, this sad phenomenon is not limited to concentration camps. But the camps are the culminating point of an ample and widespread reality, often without fixed boundaries.
The saints whom we have mentioned briefly allow us to reflect on the profound differences that exist between atheistic humanism and Christian humanism - an antithesis that traverses all history, but which, at the end of the second millennium, has reached a crucial point in contemporary nihilism, as the great writers and thinkers have perceived, and as events have amply demonstrated.
On the one hand, there are philosophies and ideologies, but also modes of thinking and behavior, which are seen as alternatives to God, in such a way as to transform man himself into a god, who makes arbitrariness his system of behavior.
On the other hand, we have the saints, who, by practising the Gospel of love, give reason to their hope. They show the true face of God, who is love, and at the same time, the true face of man, who is created in the divine image and likeness.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray to the Virgin Mary, so that she may help us all - we priests, first of all - to be holy like these heroic witnesses to faith and to total dedication to the point of martyrdom.
This is the only way to offer a credible and exhaustive response to the human and spiritual circumstances arising from the profound crisis of the contemporary world: the way of love in truth.
In his plurilingual greetings, he referred to the Gospel today. He said this in English:
I am pleased to greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors gathered for this Angelus prayer.
The readings from today’s Mass invite us to put our faith in Jesus, the "bread of life" who offers himself to us in the Eucharist and promises us eternal joy in the house of the Father.
During these summer holidays, may you and your families respond to the Lord’s invitation by actively participating in the Eucharistic sacrifice and through generous acts of charity. Upon all of you I invoke his blessings of joy and peace!
To Polish-speaking pilgrims, he expressed his spiritual closeness to them as they undertake pilgrimages in the month of August to Marian shrines including that of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/08/2009 14:59]