VATICAN - Pope speaks of his journey to France at the General Audience: “In reality, we are all pilgrims, we need Mary to guide us; and in Lourdes, her smile invites us to go forward with great confidence in the awareness that God is good, God is love.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – On September 17, the General Audience was held in the Paul VI Audience Hall, where the Holy Father Benedict XVI, after arriving via helicopter from his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, met with pilgrims and faithful. He told them: “Today's meeting gives me the opportunity to review again the moments of the pastoral visit that I made in recent days to France,” as he thanked all those who had contributed to the success of his pilgrimage. “The visit began in Paris, where, ideally, I met with all the French people, thus honoring a beloved nation in which the Church, since the 2nd century, has played a fundamental civilizing role.” In this context, “the need matured of a healthy distinction between the political and religious spheres,” the Pontiff explained, mentioning that “genuine secularism, therefore, is not to do without the spiritual dimension, but to acknowledge that precisely the latter is, radically, the guarantor of our liberty and of the autonomy of earthly realities, thanks to the dictates of creative Wisdom that the human conscience is able to receive and fulfill.” This is what the Pope had reflected on in his meeting with the world of culture at the Collège des Bernardins.
“The starting point of my address was a reflection on monasticism, whose objective was to seek God, ‘quaerere Deum’... The search for God led the monks, by its nature, to a culture of the word. "Quaerere Deum," to seek God, they searched in the furrow of the word and they were to know, in ever greater depth, this Word... As a consequence, that ‘eruditio’ was developed in monasteries that made possible the formation of culture. Precisely because of this, ‘quaerere Deum’ -- to seek God, to be on the way to God -- continues to be today as yesterday the "via maestra" and foundation of all true culture.”
In Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, during the celebration of Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope recalled how he had exhorted the priests, deacons, men and women religious and seminarians who had come from all parts of France, “to give priority to the religious listening of the divine word, looking at the Virgin Mary as sublime model.” Later, in the explanade in front of the Cathedral, the Holy Father entrusted the youth with two treasures of the Christian faith: the Holy Spirit and the Cross. “The Spirit opens human intelligence to horizons that surpass it and makes it understand the beauty and truth of God's love revealed, in fact, on the Cross.” After a brief stopover at the Institut de France, headquarters of the five national academies, one of which the Holy Father is a member, he celebrated Mass at the Esplanade des Invalides. “Echoing the words of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, I invited the faithful of Paris and the whole of France to seek the living God, who has shown us his true face in Jesus present in the Eucharist, encouraging us to love our brothers as He has loved us.”
The Pope later traveled to Lourdes, “truly a place of light, prayer, hope and conversion, founded on the rock of the love of God, which had its culminating revelation in the glorious cross of Christ,” the Pope said. “Appearing to Bernadette, in the Grotto of Massabielle, Mary's first gesture was, in fact, the Sign of the Cross, though her hand was trembling. And so the Virgin gave a first initiation on the essence of Christianity: The Sign of the Cross is the height of our faith, and doing it with an attentive heart we enter into the full mystery of our salvation. The whole message of Lourdes is contained in this gesture of the Virgin! God has so loved us that he gave himself up for us: This is the message of the Cross, ‘mystery of death and of glory.’ The cross reminds us that there is no true love without suffering, there is no gift of life without pain.”
The Pope referred to the important meeting with the French episcopate as, “a moment of intense spiritual communion, in which together we entrusted to the Virgin our common hopes and pastoral concerns. The next stage was the Eucharistic procession with thousands of faithful, among whom, as usual, were many sick people. Before the most Blessed Sacrament, our spiritual communion with Mary was made even more intense and profound because she gives us eyes and hearts capable of contemplating her Divine Son in the Holy Eucharist... Monday, Sept. 15, liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, was dedicated especially to the sick... With the sick and with those taking care of them, I meditated on the tears Mary shed under the cross, and on her smile that illuminates Easter morning.”
The Holy Father then concluded his address by inviting the faithful to praise the Lord, “because Mary, by appearing to St. Bernadette, has opened to the world a privileged place to find divine love that heals and saves. In Lourdes, the Holy Virgin invites all to regard earth as a place of pilgrimage toward our final homeland, which is heaven. In reality, we are all pilgrims, we need Mary to guide us; and in Lourdes, her smile invites us to go forward with great confidence in the awareness that God is good, God is love.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 18/9/2008)