The pilgrim has come to embrace St. James and to confirm his brothers in the faith. "The Church is that embrace of God in which men also learn to embrace their brothers, discovering in them the divine image and likeness, which constitutes the deepest truth of their being, and which is the origin of genuine freedom".

Then - he asked himself at place of the Obradoiro - how is it possible that in Europe God has been seen as an antagonist of man and an enemy of his freedom? The answer must be sought in the meaning of the cross that appears before the pilgrims at the "crossroads" of their journey. The cross speaks to us of the necessary connection between faith in God and fraternity among people, who are children of God.

On arriving in Santiago he had explained that "the Church carries out her own interior journey, that which leads her through faith, hope and love, to become the transparency of Christ for the world". He concluded his homily by inviting Europe "to be at the same time a Europe open to transcendence and to fraternity with other continents".

In the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Benedict XVI considered how Gaudí knew how to express the connection between the "beauty of things and God as Beauty". And he proposed that the great task of Christians is - in their daily lives - "to show everyone that God is a God of peace and not of violence, of freedom and not of coercion, of harmony and not of discord".

Gaudí presents the Holy Family of Nazareth as the center of every family, "the hope of humanity, in which life finds welcome, from its conception to its natural decline". The Church is also understood as the family of God and the seed of universal fraternity. The Church - like every Christian in her and every Christian family - must be "an icon of divine beauty, a burning flame of charity, a channel for the world to believe in the One whom God has sent". And the temple of God leads to show that "every man is a true sanctuary of God, to be treated with the utmost respect and affection, especially when he is in need".

May we Christians learn to be authentically Christian - who let Christ be seen - so that Europe and the world may discover and contemplate Beauty!