Scottish Catholic Observer

In it Pope Benedict XVI asks leaders, lawmakers and all those in authority to increase investment in health care facilities that help and support the suffering, especially the poor and needy.

“[The World Day for the Sick] becomes a fitting occasion to reflect on the mystery of suffering and, above all, to make our community and civil society more responsive towards those brothers and sisters who are sick,” the Pope writes. “If every man is our brother, then those who are weak, who suffer and are in need of care must be the focus of our attention, so that none of them feel forgotten or marginalised, because the true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘compassion’ is a cruel and inhuman society.”

The Holy Father also addresses a special message to young people who are struggling with illness, inviting them to embrace the Cross of Christ as the supreme expression of His love and the source from which eternal life flows.

“Indeed it is from Jesus’ heart, pierced on the Cross, that the divine life streamed forth, ever accessible to those who raise their eyes towards the Crucified One,” Pope Benedict states.

Pope Benedict XVI also offered a brief reflection on the Shroud of Turin, which he said ‘invites us to meditate on him who took upon himself man’s suffering of every age and place, even our sufferings, our difficulties, our sins.’
“How many faithful over the course of history have passed before that sepulchral winding sheet which covered the body of a crucified man, which in everything corresponds to what the Gospels transmit about the passion and death of Jesus!” he said,
“The Son of God has suffered, he has died, but he is risen, it is precisely because of this that those wounds become the sign of our redemption, of our forgiveness and reconciliation with the Father; they become, however, a test for the faith of the disciples and our faith: every time that the Lord speaks of his passion and death, they do not understand, they reject it, they oppose it. For them as for us, suffering is always charged with mystery, difficult to accept and bear.”