VATICAN - The Pope at the Angelus says: “True religion consists in the love of God and neighbor. This is what gives liturgical worship and the observance of the precepts their value.”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – “At the center of the Liturgy of the Word this Sunday there is an expression of the prophet Hosea that Jesus takes up again in the Gospel: “I want love and not sacrifice, knowledge of God more than holocausts” (Hosea 6:6). We have a key word here, one that opens for us the door to the heart of sacred Scripture,” the Holy Father Benedict XVI said before reciting the Angelus on Sunday, June 8.
The context in which Jesus makes these words of Hosea his own, is in the call of Matthew, a “publican” by profession, a tax collector for the imperial Roman authorities. Thus, he was considered a public sinner by the Jews. Jesus calls him while he is sitting on the tax collector’s bench and then goes to Matthew’s house with his disciples and sits down to dinner with other publicans. Mentioning this Gospel passage, the Pope said that, “To the scandalized Pharisees Jesus replies: “The healthy do not need the doctor but the sick do … I have not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:12-13). The Evangelist Matthew, who is always attentive to the link between the Old and the New Testament, puts the words of Hosea’s prophecy on Jesus’ lips: ‘Go, therefore, and learn the meaning of the words: “It is mercy that I want and not sacrifice.’”
The Holy Father mentioned that the prophet’s words were so important “that the Lord repeats it again in another context, in regard to the observance of the Sabbath (cf. Matthew 12:1-8)” and he continued, saying, “So, in this pronouncement of Hosea Jesus, the Word made man, is fully rediscovered, so to speak. He made these words his own with all of his heart and he realized them in his conduct even at the cost of vexing the leaders of his people. This word of God has reached us, through the Gospels, as one of the syntheses of the entire Christian message: True religion consists in the love of God and neighbor. This is what gives liturgical worship and the observance of the precepts their value.”
Before reciting the Angelus, Benedict XVI encouraged the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square to invoke the Blessed Mother’s intercession, so as to “always to live in the joy of the Christian experience,” in abandonment to God, “who is infinite mercy.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 9/6/2008)