Pope notes Advent's call to patience, perseverance

(December 13, 2010) With the start of the third week of Advent, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday underlined the importance of perseverance and patience. The Pope’s reflection came before praying the weekly midday ‘Angelus’ together with those gathered in St. Peter's Square. The Pontiff observed, "It seems to me more important than ever in our days to underscore the importance of perseverance and patience, virtues that belonged to the generation of our fathers but which are less popular today in a world that instead exalts change and the capacity always to adapt to new situations." "Without taking anything away from these latter, which are also qualities of the human being," the Pope said, "Advent calls us to strengthen that interior tenacity, that resistance of the soul that permits us not to despair in waiting for some good thing that is late in coming, but to expect it, indeed, to prepare for its arrival with an active confidence." As a model of this patience and perseverance, the Pope pointed to the farmer mentioned in the letter of St. James in Sunday’s liturgy. The Pope explained that “the farmer is not a fatalist, but is the example of a mentality that unites faith and reason in a balanced way because, on one hand, he knows the laws of nature and does his work well, and, on the other hand, he trusts in Providence, because certain basic things are not in his hands but in God's hands." The Pope affirmed, "Patience and perseverance are precisely the synthesis between human effort and trust in God."
After praying the 'Angelus', the Holy Father greeted some 2,000 children who came with their families or schools, to have their statues of the Baby Jesus blessed by him, a tradition that is observed on the Third Sunday of Advent. The Baby Jesus statues will be placed later in the nativity scenes.