ANGELUS TODAY
The Holy Father reflected today on the Gospel and First Reading on the First Sunday of Advent. He said in English:
Today, the Church begins the celebration of Advent, which marks the beginning of a new liturgical year and our spiritual preparation for the celebration of Christmas. Let us heed the message in today’s Gospel by entering prayerfully into this holy season, so that we may be ready to greet Jesus Christ, who is God with us. I wish you all a good Sunday. May God bless all of you!
After the prayer, he said this (translated from the Italian) about a UN conference on climate change:
Tomorrow the work of a UN conference on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol begins in Durban, South Africa. I hope that all the members of the international community will agree on a responsible, credible and fraternally supportive response to a worrisome and complex phenomenon, bearing in mind the needs of the poorest populations and of future generations.
Dear brothers and sisters:
Today the whole Church begins the new liturgical year: a new journey of faith to be lived together in the Christian communities, but also, as always, to be done within the history of the world, to open it to the mystery of God, to the salvation that comes from his love.
The liturgical year begins with Advent - an amazing time in which the expectation of the coming of Christ is reawakened in every heart, and the memory of his first coming when he stripped himself of his divine glory to assume our mortal flesh.
"Be watchful!" This is Jesus's appeal in today's Gospel, and he addresses it not just to his disciples but to everyone: "Be awake!" (Mt 3,37). It is a healthy reminder to us that life does not have only an earthly dimension, but that it is projected towards a 'beyond', like a seedling that germinates in the earth and opens up to the sky.
A thinking plantlet, man is endowed with freedom and responsibility, under which each of us will be called on to give an accounting of how we lived, of how we have used our own abilities - if we held these for ourselves alone or made them bear fruit for the good of our brothers.
Even Isaiah, the prophet of Advent, makes us reflect today with a heartfelt prayer addressed to God in the name of the people. He recognizes the shortcomings of his people and says at one point: "There is none who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to cling to you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our guilt" (Is 64,6).
How can we not be struck by this description? It seems to mirror some panoramas of the post-modern world: cities where life has become anonymous and horizontal, where God seems absent and man the only master, as if he had been the creator and director of everything: constructions, work, economy, transport, science, technology - all seems to depend only on man.
But sometimes, in this world which seems almost perfect, things happen which are overwhelming, either in nature or in society, which makes us think that God has retired, that he has, so to speak, abandoned us to ourselves.
In truth, the true master of the world is not man but God. The Gospel says:" Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping" (Mk 13,35-36).
The season of Advent comes every year to remind us of this, so that our life may find its right orientation, towards the face of God. The face not of a 'master' but of a father and a friend.
With the Virgin Mary, who guides us in the Advent journey, let us make ours the words of the prophet: "O LORD, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands" (Is 64,7).
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/11/2011 21:49]