Thursday, May 2 : Saint Paul VI

In this Holy Year, we have invited you to make, either materially or in spirit and intention, a pilgrimage to Rome, that is, to the heart of the Catholic Church. But obviously Rome does not constitute the goal of our pilgrimage in time. No holy city here below constitutes this goal. This goal is hidden beyond this world, in the heart of God’s mystery which is still invisible to us…      And so it is with Rome where the holy Apostles Peter and Paul gave with their blood their final witness. The vocation of Rome is of apostolic origin, and the ministry which it is our lot to exercise here is a service for the benefit of the entire Church and of mankind. But it is an irreplaceable service, because it has pleased the Wisdom of God to place the Rome of Peter and Paul, so to speak, on the road that leads to the eternal City, by the fact that Wisdom chose to confide to Peter—who unifies in himself the College of Bishops—the keys of the kingdom of heaven. What remains here, not through the effect of man’s will but through the free and merciful benevolence of the Father and the son and the Holy Spirit, is the soliditas Petri, such as our predecessor Saint Leo the Great extolled in unforgettable terms: “Saint Peter does not cease to preside over his See, and preserves an endless sharing with the Sovereign Priest. The firmness that he received from the Rock which is Christ, he himself, having become the Rock, transmits it equally to his successors.
maronite readings – rosary,team