Zenit: Pope's Words to Former Students
"Let Us Ask the Lord to Show Himself"

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, AUG. 29, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the words Benedict XVI gave Sunday at the start of Mass with a group of his former students.

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we respond to the First Reading, from the Prophet Jeremiah, with Psalm 62: My soul thirsts for thee, for the living God; as in a dry and weary land where no water is, the living God awaits you.

In this time of the absence of God, when the land of souls is arid and people yet do not know from where the living water comes, let us ask the Lord to show himself. We want to pray for those who seek the living water elsewhere, that he show them that this water is he himself, and that he not permit the life of men, their thirst for what is great, for fullness, to drown and suffocate in the transient.

We want to ask him, above all for young people, that thirst for him become alive in them and that they recognize where the answer is.

And we, who have been able to know him since our youth, may ask for pardon, because we so meagerly take the light of his face to men; the certainty that "He is, He is present, and He is the great, full reality that we all await" comes from us so weakly. We want to ask him to forgive us, that he renew us with the living water of his Spirit and that he make us celebrate the Sacred Mysteries worthily.

[Translation by ZENIT]