Selected quotes of Pope Benedict XVI offered daily for prayer and reflection….

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Feast, Christmas
 


God’s sign is his humility. God’s sign is that he makes himself small; he becomes a child; he lets us touch him and he asks for our love.

 
Solemnity of the Nativity
of the Lord
St Peter's Basilica

24 December 2009

 
 
 
Feast, Christmas
 


A hymn of peace rang out in Heaven when God became man and was born of a woman in the fullness of time.

 
Vespers
First Sunday of Advent
Vatican Basilica

2 December 2006

 
 
 
Feast, Christmas
 


Just as the sun's light and heat are a blessing for the earth, so is the light of God for humanity when He makes His face to shine upon us. This is what has happened with the birth of Jesus Christ! God has made His face to shine upon us: at the beginning in a very humble, hidden manner -- in Bethlehem only Mary and Joseph and a few shepherds were witness to this revelation -- but little by little, like the sun passing from dawn to noon, the light of Christ has grown and extended everywhere.

 
Angelus Address
St Peters Square
1 January 2013

 
 
 
Feast, Christmas
 


It astonishes us that God makes himself a child so that we may love him, so that we may dare to love him, and as a child trustingly lets himself be taken into our arms. It is as if God were saying: I know that my glory frightens you, and that you are trying to assert yourself in the face of my grandeur. So now I am coming to you as a child, so that you can accept me and love me.

 
Homily
Mass of Christmas Night
St Peter's Basilica
24 December 2012

 
 
 
Feast, Christmas
 


Come to save us! This is the cry raised by men and women in every age, who sense that by themselves they cannot prevail over difficulties and dangers. They need to put their hands in a greater and stronger hand, a hand which reaches out to them from on high. Dear brothers and sisters, this hand is Christ, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary. He is the hand that God extends to humanity, to draw us out of the mire of sin and to set us firmly on rock, the secure rock of his Truth and his Love (cf. Ps 40:2).

 
URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
Christmas 2011

 
 
 
Feast, Christmas
 


Herod is an unsympathetic figure to us, one we instinctively judge negatively because of his brutality. Yet we should ask ourselves whether there is not perhaps something of Herod in us too...We must remove all idea of rivalry from our minds and hearts, the idea that giving space to God is a limit to the self. We must open ourselves to the certainty that God is omnipotent love which takes away nothing, which threatens nothing. Quite the contrary, He is the only One capable of offering us the chance to live a full life and to experience true joy.

 
Homily
Solemnity, Epiphany of the Lord
Vatican Basilica
6 January 2011

 
 
 
Feast, Christmas
 


Christ's Birth was the victory of the true Light over the darkness of evil and sin.

 
Gemeral Audience
23 December 2009

 
 
 
Feast, Christmas
 


The Creator assumed the dimensions of a child in Jesus, of a human being like us, to make himself visible and tangible. At the same time, by making himself small, God caused the light of his greatness to shine. For precisely by lowering himself to the point of defenseless vulnerability of love, he shows what his true greatness is indeed, what it means to be God.

 
Homily
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
Sistine Chapel
11 January 2009

 

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