Advent Thoughts

The Holy Father's Comments on the Season
2011

Benedict XVI'S Prayer Intentions for December

General Prayer Intention: "That all peoples may grow in harmony and peace through mutual understanding and respect".

Mission Intention: "That children and young people may be messengers of the Gospel and that they may be respected and preserved from all violence and exploitation".

First Sunday of Advent, Nov 27, 2011, at the Angelus, St Peter's Square

Watch therefore -- for you do not know when the master of the house will come,
in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow,
or in the morning -- lest he come suddenly and find you asleep.
And what I say to you I say to all: Watch."
~Mark 13:35-37

‘Advent offers a chance to remember that all things belong to God. In reality, the true 'owner' of the world is not man but God.  [In]certain views of the postmodern world where life becomes anonymous and horizontal...where God seems absent and man is the only master, as if he was the creator and director of everything…everything seems to depend on man alone.  In such a world, God can even appear to have "withdrawn" when catastrophe strikes.  Jesus reminds believers to "be watchful" and "alert," …[Christ's words] are a salutary reminder to us that life has not only the earthly dimension, but is looking forward to 'a beyond' as a seedling that sprouts from the earth and opens up to the sky.

Each person must be alert toward eternity, because he is "endowed with freedom and responsibility, and will "be called to account for how he has lived, how he used his abilities: if he kept them to themselves or put them to use for the benefit of his brothers and sisters.

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.

NOV 30, 2011, General Audience
'Our world often remains closed to the divine, to the hope which leads to the encounter with God. Through profound friendship with Jesus, by living in Him and with Him as children of the Father, through faithful and constant prayer, we can open ourselves to heaven and God. Indeed, by following the paths of prayer, ... we can also help others to follow them".

"Pray, not intermittently but constantly and faithfully, so as to illuminate our lives as Jesus taught us. And let us ask Him to help us communicate with those around us, with those whom we meet on our journey, transmitting to them the joy of meeting the Lord, light of life".