"We have convened here to reflect on the turn of a fairly long time of my life", commented Benedict XVI yesterday morning, during Mass for his 80th birthday. "I have always taken it as a great gift of the Divine Mercy said the Pope that birth and rebirth have been granted to me, as it were, at the same time, under the sign of the beginning of Easter. So on the same day I have been born member of my own family and of God’s big family". On several occasions, the Holy Father, in going through his life, "repeated "I thank God" for I have experienced "what ‘family’ means", "what fatherhood means, so that the word on God as a Father has become understandable to me from the inside", "what motherly goodness means, which is always open to those who look for shelter and was thus able to give me freedom", and for giving me a brother and a sister, "for the companions I met in my journey, for my advisors and my friends". "I am especially thankful because, since the very first day he went on , I could enter and be raised in the big community of believers, in which the boundary between life and death, between heaven and earth, is open wide; I am thankful for having been able to learn so many things from the wisdom of this community", which "is not just human wisdom, but it is God’s wisdom reaching down to us". (continued)
