PASTORAL VISIT TO THE PARISH
OF SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS IN ROME

GREETING OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
TO THE PARISH PASTORAL COUNCIL

Third Sunday of Lent, 7 March 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I thank you with all my heart for this beautiful pre-Easter experience which you have given me this Sunday morning. I read a bit about the history of your parish which really began from nothing. In the meantime you have built a fine pastoral centre, you have erected the building, the structures, but above all you have built the living Church of living stones. It is now lovely to see how lively the Church is here, alive with the word of God, with participation in the Blessed Eucharist, with so many elements of spiritual life and the movements, all united in a single pastoral project in the common Church of Christ.

For this I am deeply grateful and I ask you to continue in this direction. Always build the Church with living stones and thus always be a centre of outreach of the word of God in our world which has so great a need for this word of God, for life that comes from God.

Today, in the First Reading, we heard precisely how God introduced himself, entering history, making himself one of us. And we heard that God is a God who listens to us, who is not remote, who is interested in us, who is for us and with us. And this demands our response. It also requires us to listen to God and to be open to his presence; thus Heaven and earth communicate and become more closely united and the world becomes more luminous and more beautiful.

Thank you for all your work! I wish you a Happy Easter and further spiritual progress in communion with Christ and in the community of priests, especially of your dear parish priest. I have heard how he started by going to the supermarket to see who was there and this is how your parish developed. Thank you, Monsignor Parish Priest, and my thanks to you all. Happy Easter!

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