The Pope talked about Catholic identity. This is key to the survival of the Church in Europe and in America.
The Holy Father stressed the Incarnation, that Christ came into history and created community.
Just in the past week, I wrote about the need for memory-in the face of memoricide.
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2014/05/liturgical-memory-vs-memoricide.html
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2014/05/memory-and-memoricide-continued.html
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2014/05/memoricide-and-memory-continued.html
Read those posts. Now, today, the Pope calls us memorioso, people of living history.
" Jesus does not make sense without this history" because He "is the end of this story, towards which this story goes, towards which it walks... you cannot understand a Christian outside of the people of God. The Christian is not a monad", but "belongs to a people: the Church. A
Christian without a church is something purely idealistic, it is not real".
"But you cannot understand a Christian alone, just like you cannot understand Jesus Christ alone. Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to save us. No. Jesus Christ has a history. And we can say, and it is true, that God has a history because He wanted to walk with us. And you cannot understand Jesus Christ without His history. So a Christian without history, without a Christian nation, a Christian without the Church is incomprehensible. It is a thing of the laboratory, an artificial thing, a thing that cannot give life...walking with a promise. This dimension, it is important that we always remember this dimension of history"
..."A Christian is a living memory of the history of his people, he is a living memory of his people’s journey, he is the living memory of his Church. Memory ... memory of all of the past ... Then, where is this people going? Towards the ultimate promise. It is a people walking towards fullness; a chosen people which has a promise for the future and walks toward this promise, towards the fulfillment of this promise. And for this, a Christian in the Church is a man, a woman with hope: hope in the promise. It is not expectation: no, no! That’s something else: It is hope. Right, on we go!... (to) that which does not disappoint".