(15 Aug 08 - RV) Pope Benedict XVI today marked one of the most ancient
Marian Feasts in the history of the Church, the Feast of the Assumption
of Our Lady.

As the Magnificat rung throughout the small
village of Castel Gandolfo, high in the Roman Hills, Pope Benedict made
his way from the Apostolic Palace to the nearby parish Church of St
Thomas of Villanova.

There together with parishioners he
celebrated mass, in a climate of joy. During his homily Pope Benedict
spoke of the feast of the Assumption as an opportunity for us to "turn
our gaze towards heaven and realise that it is not an abstract ideal
but a concrete reality".

He told the congregation that Our
Lady's rising to the Father, "flesh and blood", "leaves the door of
heaven open for all those who want to enter God's kingdom".

Returning to one of his favourite themes, faith and reason, Pope Benedict
repeated that "reason alone cannot help us understand this concept". He
continued that "only a solid and simple faith can save man from a life
lived in the past and help him grow towards the future".

"With our gaze fixed on Heaven, we see our life laid out before us leading
towards the fullness of joy and peace, which is not the end but a new
world".

Concluding the Holy Father invited those gathered in the
tiny Roman Church to "live and die with the beatitudes as our guiding
compass, and faced with the sad spectacle of so many false pleasures,
pain and anguish that we see in the world today, learn from Mary to be
witnesses of hope and consolation".