Marian Solidarity

On Christmas: Where Everything Began

In the night of the world, we must let ourselves be amazed and illumined by this act of God, which is totally unexpected: God becomes a Child. We must let ourselves be amazed, illumined by the Star that inundated the universe with joy.

VATICAN CITY, (Catholic Online) – We offer the translation of the complete address from the last general audience that Pope Benedict XVI offered before Christmas, 2010:

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

With this last audience before the Christmas celebrations, tremulous and full of astonishment, we approach the “place” where everything began for us and for our salvation, where everything found its fulfillment, where the hopes of the world and of the human heart met and interlaced with the presence of God.

We can already have a foretaste of the joy awakened by the little light that is perceived, which from the grotto of Bethlehem begins to radiate in the world. In the Advent journey, which the liturgy has invited us to live, we have been prepared to receive readily and gratefully the great event of the coming of the Savior, to contemplate in wonder his entrance in the world.

Joyful hope, characteristic of the days that precede Holy Christmas, is certainly the essential attitude of the Christian who desires to live fruitfully the renewed encounter with him who comes to dwell in our midst: Christ Jesus, the Son of God made man. We find this disposition of the heart again, and make it our own, in those who first welcomed the coming of the Messiah: Zachariah and Elizabeth, the shepherds, the simple folk, and especially Mary and Joseph, who themselves felt the tremor, but above all the joy over the mystery of this birth.

The whole of the Old Testament is one great promise, which would be realized with the coming of a powerful Savior. The book of the Prophet Isaiah is a particular witness of this, as it speaks to us of the sufferings of history and of the whole of creation for a redemption destined to give back new energies and a new orientation to the whole world. Thus, next to the expectation of the personalities of sacred Scripture, our hope also finds space and meaning through the centuries, a hope which we are experiencing these days and which keeps us going during the whole of our life’s journey. In fact, the whole of human existence is animated by this profound sentiment, by the desire that what is most true, most beautiful and greatest, which we have perceived and intuited with our mind and heart, can come to meet us and become concrete before our eyes and raise us again.

“Behold, the omnipotent Lord is coming: He will be called Emmanuel, ‘God-with-us’” (Entrance Antiphon, Holy Mass of Dec. 21). During these days, we repeat these words often. In the time of the liturgy, which again actualizes the Mystery, he who is coming to save us from sin and death is already at the door, he who, after Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience, embraces us again and opens to us access to true life.

St. Irenaeus explains it in his treatise “Against the Heresies,” when he states: “The Son of God himself descended ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Romans 8:3) to condemn sin and, after having condemned it, exclude it completely from the human race. He called man to likeness with himself, he made him imitator of God, he set him on the path indicated by the Father so that he could see God, and give him as gift to the Father himself” (III, 20, 2-3).

We see some of St. Irenaeus’ favorite ideas, that God with the Child Jesus calls us to likeness with himself. We see how God is, and are thus reminded that we should be like God. That we must imitate him. God has given himself, God has given himself into our hands. We must imitate God. And finally, the idea that in this way we can see God. A central idea of St. Irenaeus: Man does not see God, he cannot see him, and so he is in darkness about the truth of himself. However man, who cannot see God, can see Jesus, and so he sees God, and begins to see the truth and thus begins to live.

Hence the Savior comes to reduce to impotence the work of evil and all that which can still keep us away from God, to restore to us the ancient splendor and primitive paternity. With his coming among us, he indicates to us and also assigns to us a task: precisely that we be like him and that we tend toward true life, to come to the vision of God in the face of Christ. St. Irenaeus affirms again: “The Word of God made his dwelling among men and made himself Son of man, to accustom man to understand God and to accustom God to dwell in man according to the will of the Father. That is why God gave us as ‘sign’ of our salvation him who, born of the Virgin, is the Emmanuel” (ibid.).

Here also there is a very beautiful central idea of St. Irenaeus: We must accustom ourselves to perceive God. God is generally distant from our lives, from our ideas, from our action. He has come to us and we must accustom ourselves to be with God. And, audaciously, Irenaeus dares to say that God must also accustom himself to be with us and in us. And that God perhaps should accompany us at Christmas, accustom ourselves to God, as God must accustom himself to us, to our poverty and frailty. Hence, the coming of the Lord can have no objective other than to teach us to see and love events, the world, and everything that surrounds us with the very eyes of God. The Word-become-a-child helps us to understand God’s way of acting, so that we will be capable of allowing ourselves to be transformed increasingly by his goodness and his infinite mercy.

In the night of the world, we must let ourselves be amazed and illumined by this act of God, which is totally unexpected: God becomes a Child. We must let ourselves be amazed, illumined by the Star that inundated the universe with joy. May the Child Jesus, in coming to us, not find us unprepared, busy only in making the exterior reality more beautiful and attractive. May the care we give to making our streets and homes more resplendent impel us even more to predispose our soul to encounter him who will come to visit us. Let us purify our conscience and our life of what is contrary to this coming: thoughts, words, attitudes and deeds — impelling us to do good and to contribute to bring about in our world peace and justice for every man and thus walk toward our encounter with the Lord.

A characteristic sign of Christmastide is the nativity scene. Also in St. Peter’s Square, in keeping with custom, it is almost ready and appears ideally over Rome and over the whole world, representing the beauty of the Mystery of God who became man and dwelt among us (cf. John 1:14). The crib is an expression of our expectation that God will come close to us, that Jesus will come close to us, but also thanksgiving for him who decided to share our human condition, in poverty and simplicity. I am happy because the tradition of preparing the crib in homes, in workplaces, in meeting places, remains alive and is even being rediscovered. May this genuine witness of Christian faith be able to offer also today for all men of good will an eloquent icon of the infinite love of the Father for us all. May the hearts of children and adults still be able to be amazed before him.

Dear brothers and sisters, may the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph help us to live the Mystery of Christmas with renewed gratitude to the Lord. In the midst of the frenetic activity of our days, may this time give us some calm and joy and enable us to touch with our hand the goodness of our God, who became a Child to save us and to give new encouragement and light on our journey. This is my wish for a holy and happy Christmas: I address it affectionately to all of you here present, to your families, in particular to the sick and the suffering, as well as to your communities and your loved ones.

from catholic.org

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today before praying the midday Angelus together with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

On this Third Sunday of Advent the liturgy proposes a passage from the Letter of St. James that opens with this exhortation: “Be constant, my brothers, until the coming of the Lord” (James 5:7). It seems to me more important than ever in our days to underscore the importance of constancy and patience, virtues that belonged to the generation of our fathers but which are less popular today in a world that instead exalts change and the capacity always to adapt to new situations. Without taking anything away from these latter, which are also qualities of the human being, Advent calls us to strengthen that interior tenacity, that resistance of the soul that permits us not to despair in waiting for some good thing that is late in coming, but to expect it, indeed, to prepare for its arrival with an active confidence.

“Learn from the farmer,” St. James writes, “he awaits with constancy the precious fruit of the earth until it has received the first and the last rains. You too must be constant, strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near” (James 5:7-8). The comparison with the farmer is quite expressive: He who has sown seeds in the field has before him some months of patient and constant expectation, but he knows that in the meantime the seed goes through its cycle thanks to the autumn and spring rains. The farmer is not a fatalist, but is the model of a mentality that unites faith and reason in a balanced way because, on one hand, he knows the laws of nature and does his work well, and, on the other hand, he trusts in Providence, because certain basic things are not in his hands but in God’s hands. Patience and constancy are precisely the synthesis between human effort and trust in God.

“Strengthen your hearts,” Scripture says. How can we do that? How can we strengthen our hearts, which are already rather fragile, and made more unstable by the culture in which we are immersed? We do not lack help: The Word of God is there. Indeed, while everything passes and changes, the Word of the Lord does not pass. If the vicissitudes of life make us feel lost and every certainty seems to crumble, we have a compass for finding direction, we need not fear being adrift. And here the model that is offered to us by the prophets, that is, the model of those persons whom God called to speak in his name. The prophet finds his joy and his strength in the power of the Lord’s Word and, while men often seek happiness along paths that turn out to be mistaken, he announces the true hope, the one that doesn’t delude because it is founded on the fidelity of God. Every Christian, in virtue of his baptism, has received the prophetic dignity. May every Christian rediscover it and develop it with an assiduous listening to the Divine Word. May the Virgin Mary, whom the Gospel calls blessed because she believed that the Lord’s words would be accomplished (cf. Luke 1:45), obtain this for us.

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 8, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today, solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, when reciting the midday Angelus with several thousand pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

Today our meeting on the occasion of the prayer of the Angelus acquires a special light, in the context of the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. In the liturgy of this feast, the Gospel of the Annunciation is proclaimed (Luke 1:26-38), which presents, precisely, the dialogue between the angel Gabriel and the Virgin.

“Rejoice! Full of grace, the Lord is with three,” says God’s messenger, and in this way reveals Mary’s most profound identity, the “name” so to speak with which God himself knows her: “full of grace.”

This expression, which is so familiar to us from our childhood, as we say it every time we pray the Hail Mary, explains to us the mystery that we celebrate today. In fact, from the moment she was conceived by her parents, Mary was the object of a singular predilection on the part of God, who in his eternal plan chose her to be the mother of his Son made man and, hence, preserved her from original sin. For this reason, the angel addresses her with this name, which implicitly signifies: “ever full of the love of God,” of his grace.

The mystery of the Immaculate Conception is source of interior light, of hope and of consolation. In the midst of life’s trials, and especially of the contradictions man experiences in his interior and around him, Mary, Mother of Christ, tells us that Grace is greater than sin, that God’s mercy is more powerful than evil, and it is able to transform it into goodness.

Unfortunately, we experience evil every day, which manifests itself in many ways in relations and events, but which has its root in man’s heart, a wounded, sick heart, incapable of curing itself. Sacred Scripture reveals to us that at the origin of all evil is disobedience to the will of God, and that death has prevailed because human liberty has yielded to the temptation of the Evil One. However, God does not fail in his plan of love and life: through a long and patient path of reconciliation, he has prepared the new and eternal Covenant, sealed with the blood of his Son, who to offer himself in expiation “was born of woman” (Galatians 4:4).

This woman, the Virgin Mary, benefited in advance from the redeeming death of her Son and from conception was preserved from the contagion of guilt. Because of this, with her immaculate heart, she says to us: Trust Jesus, he saves you.

© Copyright 2010 — Libreria Editrice Vaticana

The Solemnity of Christ the King was instituted by Pius IX in 1925 and, later, after the Second Vatican Council, it was linked to the end of the liturgical year.

The Gospel of St. Luke presents, as in a great painting, the royalty of Jesus in the moment of his crucifixion. The leaders of the people and the soldiers deride “the firstborn of all creation” and they test him to see if he has the power to save himself from death. And precisely “on the cross Jesus is exalted to the very ‘height’ of God, who is love. It is there that he can be ‘known.’

Jesus gives us ‘life’ because he gives us God. He can give him to us because he himself is one with God”. In fact, while the Lord finds himself between two criminals, one of them, aware of his own sins, opens himself to truth, arrives at faith and prays to “the king of the Jews”: “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom”. From him who “is before all things and in whom all things exist” the so-called “good thief” immediately receives forgiveness and the joy of entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. “In truth I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”. With these words, Jesus, from the throne of the cross receives every man with infinite mercy.

St. Ambrose comments that this “is a beautiful example of conversion to which one should aspire: forgiveness is quickly offered the thief and the grace is more abundant than the request; the Lord in fact,” St. Ambrose says, “always give more than what is asked for… Life is being with Christ because where Christ is there is the Kingdom”.

Dear Friends, in Christian art we can contemplate the way of love that the Lord reveals to us and that he invites us to follow. In fact, in the earliest times “in the arrangement of Christian sacred buildings… it became customary to depict the Lord returning as a king — the symbol of hope — at the east end; while the west wall normally portrayed the Last Judgment as a symbol of our responsibility for our lives”: hope in the infinite love of God and commitment to order our life according to God’s love.

When we contemplate the depiction of Jesus inspired by the New Testament — as an ancient council teaches — we are led to “understand the sublimity and the humiliation of the Word of God and to recall his life in the flesh, his passion and salvific death, and the redemption that thus came to the world”.

“Yes, we need it, precisely to become capable of recognizing in the pierced heart of the Crucified the mystery of God”.

excerpt from zenit.org

“By contemplating Mary in heavenly glory, we understand that the earth is not the definitive homeland for us either, and that if we live with our gaze fixed on eternal goods we will one day share in this same glory and the earth will become more beautiful. Consequently, we must not lose our serenity and peace even amid the thousands of daily difficulties. The luminous sign of Our Lady taken up into Heaven shines out even more brightly when sad shadows of suffering and violence seem to loom on the horizon.

“We may be sure of it: from on high, Mary follows our footsteps with gentle concern, dispels the gloom in moments of darkness and distress, reassures us with her motherly hand. Supported by awareness of this, let us continue confidently on our path of Christian commitment wherever Providence may lead us. Let us forge ahead in our lives under Mary’s guidance”.

— Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience at Castel Gandolfo Aug. 16, 2006

Strangers have become friends; crossing every border, we recognize one another as brothers and sisters. This brings to fulfilment the mission of St Paul, who knew that he was the “minister of Christ Jesus among the Gentiles, with the priestly duty of preaching the Gospel of God so that the Gentiles [might] be offered up as a pleasing sacrifice, consecrated by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15: 16). The purpose of the mission is that humanity itself becomes a living glorification of God, the true worship that God expects: this is the deepest meaning of catholicity – a catholicity that has already been given to us, towards which we must constantly start out again. Catholicity does not only express a horizontal dimension, the gathering of many people in unity, but also a vertical dimension: it is only by raising our eyes to God, by opening ourselves to him, that we can truly become one.

Like Paul, Peter also came to Rome, to the city that was a centre where all the nations converged and, for this very reason, could become, before any other, the expression of the universal outreach of the Gospel. As he started out on his journey from Jerusalem to Rome, he must certainly have felt guided by the voices of the prophets, by faith and by the prayer of Israel.

The mission to the whole world is also part of the proclamation of the Old Covenant: the people of Israel were destined to be a light for the Gentiles. The great Psalm of the Passion, Psalm 22[21], whose first verse Jesus cried out on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, ends with the vision: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; all the families of the nations shall bow down before him” (Ps 22[21]: 28). When Peter and Paul came to Rome, the Lord on the Cross who had uttered the first line of that Psalm was risen; God’s victory now had to be proclaimed to all the nations, thereby fulfilling the promise with which the Psalm concludes.

Catholicity means universality – a multiplicity that becomes unity; a unity that nevertheless remains multiplicity. From Paul’s words on the Church’s universality we have already seen that the ability of nations to get the better of themselves in order to look towards the one God, is part of this unity. In the second century, the founder of Catholic theology, St Irenaeus of Lyons, described very beautifully this bond between catholicity and unity and I quote him. He says: “The Church spread across the world diligently safeguards this doctrine and this faith, forming as it were one family: the same faith, with one mind and one heart, the same preaching, teaching and tradition as if she had but one mouth. Languages abound according to the region but the power of our tradition is one and the same. The Churches in Germany do not differ in faith or tradition, neither do those in Spain, Gaul, Egypt, Libya, the Orient, the centre of the earth; just as the sun, God’s creature, is one alone and identical throughout the world, so the light of true preaching shines everywhere and illuminates all who desire to attain knowledge of the truth” (Adv. Haer. I 10, 2). The unity of men and women in their multiplicity has become possible because God, this one God of heaven and earth, has shown himself to us; because the essential truth about our lives, our “where from?” and “where to?” became visible when he revealed himself to us and enabled us to see his face, himself, in Jesus Christ. This truth about the essence of our being, living and dying, a truth that God made visible, unites us and makes us brothers and sisters. Catholicity and unity go hand in hand. And unity has a content: the faith that the Apostles passed on to us in Christ’s name.

an excerpt from a homily by Pope Benedict XVI