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Homily excerpts These are portions of Pope Benedict XVI's homily during his installation Mass, April 24: "Weak servant of God that I am, I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How can I do this? How will I be able to do it?...I am not alone....All the saints of God are there to protect me, to sustain me and to carry me." *** "The communion of saints consists not only of the great men and women who went before us and whose names we know. All of us belong to the communion of saints, we who have been baptized,...we who draw life from the gift of Christ's body and blood." *** "The Church is alive...because Christ is alive, because He is truly risen." *** "My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He Himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history." *** "God's will does not alienate us, it purifies us -- even if this can be painful." *** "The Church as a whole and all her pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, toward the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the one who gives us life, and life in abundance." *** "Pray for me, that I may learn to love the Lord more and more. Pray for me, that I may learn to love His flock more and more -- in other words, you, the holy Church, each one of you and all of you together." *** "Only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." *** "Let us do all we can to pursue the path toward the unity [the Lord has] promised. Let us remember it in our prayer to the Lord, as we plead with Him:...Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd!" *** "If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great....When we give ourselves to Him, we receive a hundredfold in return." (4/28/05) |