Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - Two are the characteristics of the celebration of Vespers and the Te Deum: the conclusion of the civil year and the liturgical memory of the Mother of God.
The first offers the Holy Father an opportunity to reflect on the significance of time, not without criticising certain worldly rites typical of new year’s eve celebrations. “In the last hours of every solar year we see a repetition of certain worldly "rites" which in the present day contest are mainly centred on amusement, often lived as evasion from reality, almost as if to exorcise its negative aspects and propitiate improbable fortunes”.
A “flight from reality” is the attitude typical of present day culture which cannot answer the request for significance which reality imposes and must necessarily reduce it, escaping .
“How different must be the attitude of the Christian community!”, the Pope said. In fact the proper attitude for every Christian is fidelity to reality: to his own reality as created person and to reality as the place of the full manifestation of God in the Incarnate Word. Never has flight from reality represented true Christianity, instead following the method of God who chose to ‘enter’ reality, is the characteristic and the criteria for discernment and recognition of the Christian. Even when reality seems to deny Christ, denying at the same time the human person and inalienable human rights, the Christian knows “it is the event of the Incarnation which a ‘fills’ history with value and significance”.
The extraordinary dignity of the human person is powerfully seen also from “God’s respect for humanity and human history. He filled time not by pouring himself into it from above, but from ‘within’ becoming a minute seed in order to lead humanity to its full maturation”.
The maternity of Most Holy Mary Maria is a real symbol, a sacrament of this method of God, it is “an event both human and divine”.
Recalling the importance of the title Mother of God Theotòkos, the Pope returned in thought to his stop in Ephesus during his November visit to Turkey and he thanked Our Lady for her special protection in those days of grace.
The Holy Father also recalled that the second part of the Hail Mary is most important because it includes the title Mother of God: “every time we recite the Hail Mary we address the Blessed Virgin Mary with this title asking her to "pray for us sinners". At the end of another year we feel the need to invoke in a special way the maternal intercession of Most Holy Mary”.
The apparently hopeless situations in the world today are finally entrusted to the intercession of Mary in the certainty that nothing is impossible for God: “To Mary, the Mother of incarnate Mercy, we entrust above all the situations in which only the Lord’s grace can bring peace, comfort and justice”.
The gaze of Mary as absolute model of Christian faith, concludes the Holy Father’s meditation: “a pure, sincere and humble and yet courageous faith, intrinsic with hope and enthusiasm for the Kingdom of God […] with absolute certainty that God wishes only and always love and life for all ”. (S.V.) (Agenzia Fides 3/1/2007 Righe: 39 Parole: 511)
