” “”Only God’s love can renew man’s heart, and only if it is healed in its heart of hearts can a crippled mankind raise and walk. God’s love is the real strength that renews the world”. This was said yesterday morning by Benedict XVI, as he focussed his Sunday reflections before the Angelus, on the passage of the Gospel about the crippled man healed by Jesus. “Again, today said the Pope man bars the signs of sin, which prevents him making quick progress in those values of fraternity, justice and peace that it has set itself in solemn statements. Why that? What blocks its way? What cripples this integral development?”. While “on a historical plane, there are many causes, and the problem is a complex one”, on the plane of “God’s Word” explained the Holy Father what prevents man “walking along the way of goodness, doing the best he can, is evil: “by lurking in his soul, evil binds man with the ties of lie, anger, envy and the other sins, and it slowly cripples it”. This is why “man, crippled by sin, needs God’s mercy”, so that “once healed in his heart of hearts, all his life can bloom again”. At the end of the Angelus prayer, in greeting the English-speaking pilgrims, Benedict XVI sent a special thought to “all those who suffered the devastating consequences of the landslides in the Philippines” and a prayer to the victims and their families.
