"Look At the Stars": The Pope on "A Weight"

Bearing an unusually poignant quote on this Ascension Sunday, B16 from today's Regina Caeli:

"Dear brothers and sisters, the Lord, teaching us the way of Heaven, allows us to already foretaste the divine life on earth. A Russian author of the 1900s, in his spiritual testament, wrote: 'Look more often at the stars. When you have a weight on your soul, look at the stars or the blue of the sky. When you feel sad, when they offend you -- stop yourselves... with the heavens. Then your soul will find peace.'"

For the record, the quote was drawn from the diaries of Pavel Florensky -- a Russian Orthodox priest, philosopher and mathemetician executed in 1937 after several years of imprisonment in the Soviet gulags.

A crowd estimated at some 150,000 overflowed St Peter's Square for today's noontime gathering in a show of support for the pontiff.

Meanwhile, the English-speaking pilgrims present got the following reminder:

In the course of this week we will pray with the whole Church for the coming of the Holy Spirit, asking him to pour out his gifts upon our families, our parishes, and all whom we love.

Read that again -- not "let us pray"... but "we will pray."

And to that end, again, here's your Novena.

SVILUPPO: With the Holy See's US attorney slated to argue before a Kentucky court in the morning against claims of a systemic Vatican effort to shield cases of abuse from the authorities, details of the defense have emerged.

PHOTO: AP

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