+ PAPIST + FILIOQUIST + AZYMITE +: POPE PHOTOS FROM HOLY LAND

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

POPE PHOTOS FROM HOLY LAND

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A stage where the Papal mass will be held is seen in the Kidron Valley, outside Jerusalem's Old City.

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A poster in Jerusalem offered the Pope a greeting in several languages.

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A Palestinian set up Vatican flags in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday.

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The pope leads the prayer service during his visit to the Lady of Peace Church in Amman.

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On the fourth day of his first trip to the Middle East as pope, Benedict XVI arrived Monday in Israel and immediately called for a solution to the conflict that would yield a "homeland of their own" for both Palestinians and Israelis.

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The pope was met by Israel's president, Shimon Peres, second from right, and the country's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, second from left, during a welcoming ceremony Monday.

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Pope Benedict XVI is greeted by hundreds of people outside the Lady of Peace Church in Amman, Jordan, where he held a mass on his first trip as pontiff to an Arab state. In his address, the Pope underlined his "deep respect" for Islam, in an attempt to redress controversial remarks he made about the religion three years ago.
Pope Benedict XVI is greeted by hundreds of people outside the Lady of Peace Church in Amman, Jordan, where he held a mass on his first trip as pontiff to an Arab state. In his address, the Pope underlined his

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Pope Benedict, accompanied by the Jordanian royal family (King Abdullah and Queen Rania are to his left), visits Bethany Beyond the Jordan, the spot on the Jordan River believed to be where Jesus was baptised.

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Pope Benedict and Jose Rodriguez Carballo, minister general of the Franciscan Order, stand beside The Staff of Moses in Jordan, the spot where God is believed to have shown Moses the Promised Land. The pontiff called for reconciliation between Christians and Jews during his visit to the Arab state.

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Pope Benedict walks past Israel's national flag during a welcoming ceremony on his arrival at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International airport. The pontiff on Monday began the most delicate part of his first trip to the Middle East, landing in Israel for a five-day tour that will take him to Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories.
Pope Benedict walks past Israel's national flag during a welcoming ceremony on his arrival at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International airport. The pontiff on Monday began the most delicate part of his first trip to the Middle East, landing in Israel for a five-day tour that will take him to Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories.

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Pope Benedict is greeted by Israel's President Shimon Peres at Ben Gurion International airport. The pontiff faces a challenge to win over Israelis, following his efforts to rehabilitate a bishop who questioned the scale of the Holocaust.

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Pope Benedict delivers his address next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and President Shimon Peres, in front of various religious leaders during a welcome ceremony at Ben Gurion International airport.

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A Palestinian man spray-paints a welcome message on a wall next to a section of Israel's separation barrier in Aida refugee camp, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

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An Israeli right-wing activist is carried away by border police officers during a protest against Pope Benedict's visit. Pope Benedict called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian homeland on his arrival in Israel on Monday, a stance that puts him at odds with some Israelis.

Pope Urges Pastors
to Learn and Teach Liturgy

Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging pastors to catechize parishioners about the depth of the liturgy and the meaning of the sacraments as encounters with God.
The Pope affirmed this in a meeting Feb. 26 with parish priests of the Diocese of Rome, a Lenten tradition, in which he answered their questions and concerns.
He noted, "What is really important for me is that the sacraments [...] not be something foreign along with more contemporary endeavors." He added, "It can easily happen that the sacrament remains somewhat isolated in a more pragmatic context and becomes a reality that is not altogether inserted in the totality of our being."
The Pontiff stressed the need for catechesis in the parishes. He affirmed that it is important that God "not be distant but reconcilable, concrete, that he enter our lives and really be a friend with whom we can talk and who talks with us."
He continued, "We must learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, up close, really enter into contact with him, learn to listen to him and to allow him to enter into us."
Sacramental communion, explained the Holy Father, is not just taking a piece of bread, but rather is opening "my heart so that the Risen One will enter the context of my being, so that he is within me and not just outside of me, and thus speaks with me and transforms my being."
"He gives me the sense of justice, the dynamism of justice, in zeal for the Gospel," noted Benedict XVI.
He affirmed, "This celebration, in which God not only comes close to us, but enters into the fabric of our existence, is essential to really be able to live with God and for God and to take the light of God to this world."
Body of Christ
The Pope stated that this understanding also "leads me to the other because the other receives the same Christ, as I do."
He continued: "Hence, if the same Christ is in him and me, we also are no longer separate individual beings. Herein lies the birth of the doctrine of the Body of Christ, because we have all been incorporated if we receive the Eucharist correctly in the same Christ.
"Hence, my neighbor is truly close: we are no longer two separate 'I's, but we are united in the same 'I' of Christ."
The Pontiff told the pastors that "Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really go to the depth of our existence, to be, in fact, education to open myself to the voice of God, to let myself be opened to break this original sin of egoism and to open my existence profoundly, so that I will really be just."
He noted, "We must all learn the liturgy better, not as something exotic but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open easily to a distant man, but which is, on the other hand, precisely openness to the other, to the world."
The Holy Father emphasized: "We must all collaborate in celebrating the Eucharist ever more profoundly: not only as a rite but as an existential process that touches me profoundly, more than anything else, and changes me, transforms me and, by transforming me, sparks the transformation of the world that the Lord desires and of which He wishes to make me an instrument."

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

POPE PHOTOS FROM HOLY LAND

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