Sydney, Australia, Jul 18, 2008 / 18:04 pm
Pope Benedict XVI met with disadvantaged youth at Sacred Heart Church on the Darlinghurst campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia on Friday. Exhorting them to become “ambassadors of hope” to others, despite their regrets and disadvantages, he asked the youths to commit themselves to a lifelong friendship with Jesus Christ, who the Pope said welcomes them “with open arms.”
The Pope based his remarks on the word “Alive,” the name of the Archdiocese of Sydney’s Social Services Agency program which is assisting the at-risk youth. He considered the nature of life and being alive, noting that Christ wished mankind to have life “abundantly.”
“The most basic instinct of all living things is to stay alive, to grow, to flourish, and to pass on the gift of life to others,” he noted. “So it is only natural that we should ask how best to do this.”
The Israelites, he said, had to “choose life” by turning away from their false gods and then by obeying God’s commandments in order to rightly worship the true God. While idolatry seems unlikely in the present age, Pope Benedict said, “sometimes people worship ‘other gods’ without realizing it.” These ‘false gods,’ he explained, almost always center upon material possessions, possessive love, or power.