Audience: Discerning God’s presence in a distracted world
(Vatican Radio) “Advent … reminds us again and again that God is not removed from
the world, He is not absent, we were not left to ourselves, but He comes to us in
different ways, which we need to learn to discern”, said Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday.
During his general audience, the Holy Father spoke of the season of preparation for
Christmas and what it teaches us about our faith.
Listen:
“With our faith,
our hope and our charity, are called every day to see and bear witness to this presence,
in an often superficial and distracted world, to reflect in our lives the light that
illuminated the cave of Bethlehem”
Below please find a Vatican Radio
translation of the Holy Father’s catechesis
God Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
in the last catechesis I spoke of God's revelation as His communicating
of Himself and His loving plan. This Revelation of God is inserted into human time
and history: a history that becomes "the arena where we see what God does for humanity.
God comes to us in the things we know best and can verify most easily, the things
of our everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves"(John Paul II,
Enc. Fides et Ratio, 12). The Evangelist Mark reports, clearly and synthetically,
the initial moments of Jesus' preaching: "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom
of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). What illuminates and gives full meaning to the history
of the world and man begins to shine in the cave of Bethlehem; it is the mystery that
we will soon contemplate at Christmas: Salvation which is realized in Jesus Christ.
In Jesus of Nazareth, God shows his face and asks man to decide to recognize and follow
Him. God’s revealing Himself in history in order to enter into a relationship of loving
dialogue with man, gives new meaning to the entire human journey. History is not just
a succession of centuries, years, days, but it is the time of a presence that gifts
it full meaning and opens it up to a solid hope. Where can we read the stages of
this revelation of God? Sacred Scripture is the best place to discover the events
of this journey, and I - once again - invite everyone, in this Year of Faith, to take
up the Bible more often and meditate on it and pay more attention to the readings
in Sunday Mass, all of which is valuable nourishment for our faith. Reading the
Old Testament we see how God's intervention in the history of the people he has chosen
and with whom he establishes a covenant are not actions that pass and are forgotten,
but become "memory", constituting the "history of salvation" kept alive in the consciousness
of the people of Israel through the celebration of the salvific events. Thus, in the
Book of Exodus, the Lord tells Moses to celebrate the great moment of liberation from
slavery in Egypt, the Passover, with these words: "This day will be a day of remembrance
for you, which your future generations will celebrate with pilgrimage to the LORD;
you will celebrate it as a statute forever"(12:14). For all the people of Israel remembering
what God has done becomes a sort of permanent imperative so much so that the passage
of time is marked by the living memory of past events so that day by day they form
the new history and remain present. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses spoke to the
people, saying, "be on your guard and be very careful not to forget the things your
own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart as long as you live, but make
them known to your children and to your children’s children"(4.9). And so he says
to us: "Be careful not to forget the things that God has done for us”. Faith is fuelled
by the discovery and the memory of the God who is always faithful, who guides history
and is the sure and stable foundation on which to build their lives. The Magnificat,
which the Virgin Mary raies to God, is one of the highest examples of the history
of salvation. Mary praises God’s merciful action within the concrete journey of His
people, fidelity to the covenant promises made to Abraham and his seed, and all of
this is living memory of the Divine presence that never fails (cf. Luke 1:46-55 ). For
Israel, the Exodus is the central historical event in which God reveals his powerful
action. God frees the Israelites from slavery in Egypt so that they can return to
the Promised Land and worship Him as the one true God. Israel does not start out to
be a people like other people, to have a national independence, but to serve God in
worship and in life, to create a place where God is present and adored in the world
and man is obedient to Him, and of course not only for them but in the midst of other
peoples. And the celebration of this event is a way of making Him present and actual,
because God's work is never lacking. He is faithful to his plan of liberation and
continues to pursue it, so that man can recognize and serve his Lord and respond with
faith and love to His actions. God thus reveals Himself not only in the primordial
act of creation, but entering in our history, in the history of a small nation that
was neither the largest nor the strongest. And this revelation of God culminates in
Jesus Christ: God, the Logos, the creative Word which is the origin of the world,
became incarnate in Jesus and showed the true face of God. Jesus fulfils every promise,
God's history with humanity culminates in him. When we read the story of the two disciples
on the road to Emmaus, as told by St. Luke, we clearly see how the person of Christ
illuminates the Old Testament, the whole history of salvation and shows the great
unified design of the two Testaments. In fact, Jesus explains to the two lost and
disappointed travellers that He is the fulfilment of every promise: "Then beginning
with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all
the scriptures" (24:27). The Evangelist describes the exclamation of the two disciples
after recognizing that their companion was the Lord: "Then they said to each other,
“Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened
the scriptures to us" ( 32). The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the
stages of Divine Revelation synthetically showing its development (cf. nn. 54-64):
God invited man from the beginning to intimate communion with Him and even when man
disobeyed Him and lost His friendship, God never abandoned him to the power of death,
but again and again offered a covenant to man ( Roman Missal, Euc. Prayer IV). The
Catechism retraces the path of God’s journey with man from His alliance with Noah
after the flood, to His call to Abraham to leave his land become father to a multitude
of nations. God formed Israel as His people, through the event of the Exodus, the
Covenant of Sinai and the gift, through Moses, of the Law to be recognized and served
as the one true and living God. With the prophets, God leads his people in the hope
of salvation, through the second Isaiah we know of the second exodus, the return from
exile in Babylon, the promised land, the re-establishment of the people and at the
same time many remain dispersed and so begins the universality of this faith. In the
end they are no longer waiting for just a king, David, a son of David, but the son
of man, the salvation of all peoples, intercultural encounters take place first with
Babylon and Syria, and then also with the Greek multitude. Thus we see how God’s journey
is growing, becoming more open to the mystery of Christ, King of the universe. Finally,
in Christ the Revelation in its fullness is realized, God’s loving plan in which He
becomes one of us. I have reflected on remembering the action of God in human history,
to show the stages of this great plan of love demonstrated in the Old and New Testament:
one plan of salvation addressed to all humanity, progressively revealed and realized
by the power of God This is crucial for our journey of faith. We are in the liturgical
season of Advent which prepares us for Christmas. As we all know, the word "Advent"
means "coming", "presence", and once upon a time indicated the arrival of the king
or emperor to a particular province. For us Christians it possesses a truly wonderful
and stirring meaning : God has left His Heaven and come down to earth for man; forged
an alliance with him coming into the history of a people, He is the king who came
down to this poor province that is the earth, and gifted us with His visit, taking
on human flesh and becoming man like us. Advent invites us to follow the path of this
presence and reminds us again and again that God is not removed from the world, He
is not absent, we were not left to ourselves, but He comes to us in different ways,
which we need to learn to discern. And we, with our faith, our hope and our charity,
are called every day to see and bear witness to this presence, in an often superficial
and distracted world, to reflect in our lives the light that illuminated the cave
of Bethlehem!
I offer a cordial welcome to the newly professed Sisters of the
Missionaries of Charity. My greeting also goes to the group of visitors from Oklahoma
Wesleyan University. Finally, a thought for the young, the sick and newlyweds. Today
we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas and Star
of the New Evangelization. Dear young people, learn to love and hope at the school
of Mary, dear sick people, the Blessed Virgin is comfort and companionship in your
suffering and you, dear newlyweds, entrust to the Mother of Jesus, your marital journey. Upon
all pilgrims present at today’s Audience I invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace.