SAINTS: PRIVILEGED WITNESSES OF THE PRIMACY OF CHARITY

VATICAN CITY, JAN 29, 2006 (VIS) - The primacy of charity and its most privileged witnesses, in other words the saints, provided the central theme of the Pope's reflections this morning, before praying the Angelus with the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square.

  Benedict XVI referred to his first Encyclical, "Deus caritas est," published last Wednesday, January 25, saying that saints "have all made of their lives, though with a thousand differing shades, a hymn to the God of Love." He particularly recalled those saints whose feast days are commemorated over this period and "who are very different from one another: the Apostle Paul with the disciples Timothy and Titus ... belong to the very roots of the Church, missionaries of the first evangelization. Thomas Aquinas, from the Middle Ages, is the model of a Catholic theologian who found Christ in the supreme synthesis of truth and love. Angela Merici, in the period of the Renaissance, proposed a way of sanctity for those who live in the lay state. In the modern age, we have John Bosco who, enflamed by the charity of Jesus the Good Shepherd, cared for disadvantaged children."

  "In truth," he continued, "the entire history of the Church is a history of sanctity, animated by the one Love which has its source in God. Indeed, only supernatural charity, such as that which flows ever new from the heart of Christ, can explain the prodigious flowering over the centuries of religious orders and institutes both male and female, as well as other forms of consecrated life. ... These men and women, whom the Spirit of Christ has formed as models of evangelical devotion, lead us to consider the importance of consecrated life as an expression, and a school, of charity."

  The Pope closed his comments by recalling how "on February 2, Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, the Church celebrates the Day of Consecrated Life. On that afternoon, as John Paul II used to like to do, I will preside at Mass in the Vatican Basilica. ... Together we will give thanks to God for the gift of consecrated life and pray that it may continue in the world as an eloquent sign of His merciful love."
ANG/SANCTITY/...                                VIS 20060130 (380)