As he expressed "his happiness for spending some time relaxing in Valle d’Aosta", where he has been since July 11th, yesterday morning Benedict XVI, before saying the Angelus from Les Combes (Introd), said he was "immediately engrossed in this magnificent Alpine landscape that helps reinvigorate the body and the soul". After greeting and thanking the bishop of Aosta, mgr. Giuseppe Anfossi, the Pope highlighted that the liturgy of July 16th recalls the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, which "has, on its slopes, a multitude of natural grottoes, which are favourites with the hermits", such as "the great prophet Elijah, who in the IX century BC valiantly defended the purity of faith in the one and true God from the contamination of idolatrous cults". The Holy Father recalled that "the contemplative Order of the Carmelites was born in the wake of Elijah" and that the Carmelites "have spread within the Christian people the devotion of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, pointing at her as at a model of prayer, contemplation and devotion to God". "Mary added Benedict XVI was the first and unprecedented one who believed in and experienced that Jesus, the Word incarnate, is the peak, the height of man’s encounter with God". Then, the Pope entrusted to the Queen of Mount Carmel "all the communities of contemplative life that are scattered all over the world" and asked Mary to "help every Christian to meet God in the silence of prayer".
