Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “Advent is, par excellence, the season of hope. Every year this fundamental attitude of the spirit is rekindled in the hearts of Christians as they prepare to celebrate the great feast of the Nativity of Christ the Saviour and renew their expectancy for His glorious return at the end of time”. During the celebration in St Peter's Basilica of the first Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent, the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI remarked on the call to hope offered by the Liturgy. “I decided to make Hope the theme of my second Encyclical made public yesterday - the Pope said in his homily -. I am happy to offer it ideally to the whole Church on this first Sunday of Advent, so that, as they prepare for Christmas, the individual faithful and communities may read it and meditate on it, in order to rediscover the beauty and profundity of Christian hope. This is inseparably linked with knowledge of the face of God, that face which Jesus, the only Son of God, revealed to us with His incarnation, with His life and preaching here on earth but above all with His death and resurrection … Advent, is therefore a favourable time for rediscovering hope, not vague or false, but certain and confident, since it is ‘anchored’ in Christ, God made man, and the rock of our salvation””.
Since the early Christian times “new hope distinguished Christians from people living according to pagan religions”, and this situation is reflected also in our day, the Pope said mentioning present day nihilism “which erodes hope from the heart of man, leading him to think that within him and around him there is nothing: nothing before birth, nothing after death. In actual fact, if God is missing, then hope is lost. Everything loses its ‘substance’… At stake is the relation between life here and how and what we call the ‘hereafter': this is not a place where we go after death, instead it is the reality of God, the fullness of life to which every human person, so to say tends... To this tending of man God has responded in Christ with the gift of hope.”
Benedict XVI then underlined “man is the only creature who is free to say yes or no to eternity, that is to God. The human being can extinguish the hope within himself by eliminating God from his life”, nevertheless “God knows the human heart. He knows that those who refuse Him have never known His real face, and this is why he knocks incessantly at our door, like a humble pilgrim who wishes to enter. This is why the Lord grants humanity more time: so that everyone may come to know Him! And this is also the meaning of the new Liturgical Year which starts today … To humanity who has no time for Him, God offers more time, a time to come to our senses and start out again to rediscover the meaning of hope.”
Therefore our hope is preceded by God's longing for us: “God loves us and this is why He longs for us to return to Him, to open our hearts to His love, to out our hand in His and remember that we are His children. God's longing always precedes our hope, just as His love always reaches us first. In this sense Christian hope is called ‘theological’: God is its source, its strength and its end… Every person is called to hope in response to God's longing for him … every new born baby is a sign that God has confidence in man and a confirmation, at least implicit, of the hope that man nurtures in a future open to the eternal of God. To this human hope God answered by being born in time as a tiny human person”. The Holy Father concluded his homily entrusting the journey of Advent to “Mary, who carried the incarnate Word in her heart and in her womb” with this invocation: “O Mary, watchful Virgin, Mother of hope, rekindle in the whole Church the spirit of Advent, so the whole of humanity may make its way to Bethlehem where Christ our God, the Son who rises from on high, came to visit us and will come again. Amen.” (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 3/12/2007; righe 45, parole 695)
