START FOR THE CELEBRATION OF Vespers of the Advent

HOMILY OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

Vatican Basilica
Saturday, November 28, 2009

Dear brothers and sisters,

we go with this evening’s celebration in the liturgical season of Advent. In the Bible reading we just heard, taken from the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul invites us to prepare the “coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (5.23) preserved blameless, with the grace of God Paul uses the very word “coming” in Latin Adventus, hence the term Advent.

Reflect briefly on the meaning of this word, which can be translated as “presence”, “arrival”, “come.” In the language of the ancient world was a technical term used to indicate the arrival of an official visit of the king or emperor in a province. But it could also indicate the coming of the gods, emerging from his concealment to manifest itself in power, or that this is celebrated in worship. The Christians adopted the word “advent” to express their relationship with Jesus Christ: Jesus is the King came into this poor “state” called the land for the purpose of visiting everyone, the festival is part of his coming those who believe in Him, how many believe in its presence in the liturgical assembly. With the word Adventus was intended essentially to say: God is here, has not withdrawn from the world, has not left us alone. Although we can not see and touch as with sensible things, he is here and comes to visit us in many ways.

The meaning of the word “advent” thus extends also to Visitatio, which means just and proper “visit” in which case it is a visit from God, He comes into my life and wants to contact me. We all experience in daily life, to have little time for the Lord and soon also for us. It ends up being absorbed by “doing”. Is it not true that often it is the business to own them, the company with his many interests to monopolize our attention? Is it not true that you devote much time to entertainment and amusements of various kinds? Sometimes the things we “overwhelming.” Advent, the liturgical season strong that we are starting, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It ‘an invitation to understand that the individual events of the day are signs that God makes to us, signs of the attention that has for each of us. How often God makes us feel something of his love! Hold, so to speak, a “diary interior” of this love would be a task for our beautiful and healthy life! Advent invites us and encourages us to contemplate the Lord. The certainty of his presence should help us see the world through different eyes? It should help us to consider our whole existence as a “visit” as a way he can come to us and become close, in every situation?

Another key element of Advent is the waiting, waiting for you at the same time hope. Advent leads us to understand the sense of time and history as “kairos” as a favorable opportunity for our salvation. Jesus illustrated this mysterious reality in many parables: the story of the servants to wait for the return of the master in the parable of the virgins awaiting the bridegroom, or those in the sowing and reaping. The man, in his life is in constant expectation: When a child wants to grow as an adult tends to the achievement and success, advancing age, aspires to much needed rest. But there comes a time when he discovers that he hoped too little if, beyond the profession or social position, not nothing else left to hope for. Hope marks the path of humanity, but for Christians it is animated by a conviction: the Lord is present in the flow of our life takes us and one day even wipe our tears. One day soon, everything will find its fulfillment in the Kingdom of God, Kingdom of justice and peace.

But there are many different ways to wait. If time is not filled with a sense with this, the wait is likely to become unbearable, and if you expect something, but right now there is nothing, if this is empty words, every moment that passes is excessively long , and waiting becomes too heavy, because the future remains quite uncertain. But when the time comes for meaning, and every moment we perceive something specific and valid, then the joy of this makes it more precious. Dear brothers and sisters, we live intensely the present where we are already reaching the gifts of the Lord, viviamolo projected towards the future, a future filled with hope. Advent Christian becomes like this opportunity to awaken in us the true meaning of waiting, returning to the heart of our faith which is the mystery of Christ, the Messiah awaited for centuries and was born in the poverty of Bethlehem. Coming among us, he has brought and continues to offer us the gift of his love and his salvation. Present among us, speaks to us in many ways: in Sacred Scripture in the liturgical year, in the saints, in the events of daily life in all creation, which changes appearance depending on whether it actually exists behind him or is obscured by fog of an uncertain origin and an uncertain future. In turn, we can speak to him, submit to the sufferings that afflict us, the impatience, the questions that flow from the heart. We are sure that we always listens! If Jesus is present, there is no more time meaningless and empty. If He is present, we continue to hope even when others can not secure some support, even when this becomes difficult.

Dear friends, Advent is a time of expectation and the presence of the eternal. Precisely for this reason, in particular, the time of joy, a joy internalized, that no suffering can erase. The joy over the fact that God became a child. This joy, invisibly present in us, encourages us to walk with confidence. Model and support of the intimate joy is the Virgin Mary, through whom we have been given to the infant Jesus We get you, the faithful disciple of her Son, the grace to live this liturgical vigilant and hardworking as. Amen

I wonder how many Catholics in this last year have actually read it?

I’m pasting some of the final section because to me it is inspiring and a call to action. Please join me this Advent in “re”reading the Encyclical (if you haven’t read it yet, I won’t tell) and pointing our lives toward the Hope we have in Christ.

You can read the entire Encyclical here

EXCERPTS FROM
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
SPE SALVI
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN HOPE

24…
a) The right state of human affairs, the moral well-being of the world can never be guaranteed simply through structures alone, however good they are. Such structures are not only important, but necessary; yet they cannot and must not marginalize human freedom. Even the best structures function only when the community is animated by convictions capable of motivating people to assent freely to the social order. Freedom requires conviction; conviction does not exist on its own, but must always be gained anew by the community.
b) Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last for ever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man’s freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

26. It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love. This applies even in terms of this present world. When someone has the experience of a great love in his life, this is a moment of “redemption” which gives a new meaning to his life. But soon he will also realize that the love bestowed upon him cannot by itself resolve the question of his life. It is a love that remains fragile. It can be destroyed by death. The human being needs unconditional love. He needs the certainty which makes him say: “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38- 39). If this absolute love exists, with its absolute certainty, then—only then—is man “redeemed”, whatever should happen to him in his particular circumstances. This is what it means to say: Jesus Christ has “redeemed” us. Through him we have become certain of God, a God who is not a remote “first cause” of the world, because his only-begotten Son has become man and of him everyone can say: “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).