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

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Advent
 


The Church has "good news" to bring: God gives us his time. We always have little time; especially for the Lord, we do not know how or, sometimes, we do not want to find it. Well, God has time for us! Yes, God gives us his time, because he entered history with his Word and his works of salvation to open it to eternity, to make it become a covenantal history. In this prospective, already in itself time is a fundamental sign of God's love: a gift that man, as with everything else, is able to make the most of or, on the contrary, to waste; to take in its significance or to neglect with obtuse superficiality.

 
Angelus Address

St Peter's Square
30 November 2008

 
 
 
Advent
 


In the midst of the upheavals of the world or in the deserts of indifference and materialism, may Christians accept salvation from God and bear witness to it with a different way of life, like a city set upon a hill....The community of believers is a sign of God’s love, of his justice which is already present and active in history but is not yet completely fulfilled and must therefore always be awaited, invoked and sought with patience and courage.

 
Angelus Address
St Peter's Square
2 December 2012

 
 
 
Advent
 


St Augustine comments: John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word who was in the beginning (cf. Jn 1:1). John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives for ever. Take away the word, the meaning, and what is the voice? Where there is no understanding, there is only a meaningless sound. The voice without the word strikes the ear but does not build up the heart. 
Today it is up to us to listen to that voice so as to make room for Jesus, the Word who saves us, and to welcome him into our hearts.

 
Angelus Address
St Peter's Square

9 December 2012

 
 
 
Advent
 


In these days of Advent, in company with the holy and immaculate Mother of God, let us prepare to welcome her Son into our lives and into our hearts.

 
Commet, Angelus Address
St Peter's Square
8 December 2011

 
 
 
Advent
 


John the Baptist was a voice in the wilderness and a witness to the light; and this moves our hearts, for in this world where there are so many shadows, so much darkness, we are all called to be witnesses of light. This is the mission of the Season of Advent itself: to be witnesses of light, and we can only be this if we carry the light within us, if we are not only certain that the light exists, but also that we have seen a ray of light.

 
Homily
Third Sunday of Advent
Parish of Santa Maria Delle Grazie
Rome
December 2011

 
 
 
Advent
 


The word of God reminds us that the coming of the Lord is at hand, indeed, that the Lord is with us and that we can build with him. In the Bethlehem Grotto human loneliness is overcome, our existence is no longer left to the impersonal forces of natural and historical processes, our house can be built on the rock: we can plan our history, the history of humanity, not in Utopia but in the certainty that the God of Jesus Christ is present and goes with us.

 
Homily at Vespers
Vatican Basilica
15 December 2011

 
 
 
Advent
 


God’s "coming" is motivated by the desire to free us from evil and death, from all that prevents our true happiness. God comes to save us.

 
Homily at Verspers

Vatican Basilica
2 December 2006

 
 
 
Advent
 


Proclaiming that "God comes" is equivalent, therefore, to simply announcing God himself, through one of his essential and qualifying features: his being the God-who-comes.

 
Vespers
First Sunday of Advent
Vatican Basilica
2 December 2006

 

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