After mentioning his meeting with the priests, the religious men and women in Notre-Dame, the Pope lingered on his address to the young on the parvis of the cathedral, to whom, he said, "I gave two treasures of the Christian faith: the Holy Spirit and the Cross. The Spirit opens up one’s intelligence to horizons that surpass it and makes it understand the beauty and truth of God’s love, as revealed in the Cross. A love from which nothing can ever separate us". An invitation to the "devotees of Paris and of all over France to search for the living God" was made by the Pontiff during Mass on the Esplanade des Invalides, before he went to Lourdes to join "thousand of devotees in the ‘Jubilee trail’ that covers the places of Saint Bernadette’s life". According to the Pope, "Lourdes is truly a place of light, of prayer, of hope and conversion, built on the rock of God’s love, which had the highlight of its revelation in Christ’s glorious Cross", and "in Lourdes, at the school of Mary, the first and perfect disciple of the Crucifix, the pilgrims learn to regard the crosses of their own lives in the light of Christ’s glorious Cross" and "the Cross remiinds us that there is no true love without suffering, there’s no gift of life without pain". (continued)
