The Weekly Benedict

Introduction

The Weekly Benedict is a compilation of documents, speeches, and other texts brought into an ebook format.

The Weekly Benedict was inspired by Catholic Apologist Jimmy Akin who came up with the idea to create a weekly link page to the words of the Holy Father.

All texts are © Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Considering the increasing prevalence of electronic book readers and their ease in reading textual documents this provides an ideal format in making available the wonderful and insightful words of Pope Benedict XVI. This ebook compilation is provided as a public service with no associated fees.

Jeff Miller The Curt Jester blog

Catholic Apologist Jimmy Akin's blog can be found at JimmyAkin.org

While this ebook publication take it's cue from Jimmy Akin's weekly post with links, it is done without association and any copyright problems or formatting mistakes are entirely my own.

Index of Source Links

List of direct document links on Vatican.va used.

Angelus

- 2 December 2012

General Audiences

- 28 November 2012

Homilies

- 1 December 2012 - Vespers with the University students of Rome

Messages

- 23 November 2012 - Message to His Holiness Bartholomaios I, Ecumenical Patriarch, for the Feast of Saint Andrew

Speeches

- 30 November 2012 - To a group of Bishops from the French Episcopal Conference on their ad Limina visit

- 1 December 2012 - To participants in the pilgrimage sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People

- 3 December 2012 - To Students and Staff of the Venerable English College in Rome

Angelus

Angelus, 2 December 2012, Benedict XVI

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

Saint Peter's Square

First Sunday of Advent, 2 December 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today the Church begins a new Liturgical Year, a journey which, 50 years after the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, is further enriched by the Year of Faith. The first Season on this itinerary is Advent, formed — in the Roman Rite — of the four weeks preceding the Nativity of Our Lord, that is, the mystery of the Incarnation.

The word “advent” means “coming” or “presence”. In the ancient world it meant the visit of the king or emperor to a province; in the Christian language it refers to the Coming of God, to his presence in the world; a mystery that embraces the entire cosmos and history, but that has two culminating events: the First and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The first is, precisely, the Incarnation. The second is his glorious return at the end of time. These two events that are chronologically distant — and we are not given to know by how long — are deeply connected, because with his death and Resurrection Jesus fulfilled that transformation of man and of the cosmos which is the final goal of Creation. However, before the end, the Gospel must be proclaimed to all the nations, as Jesus says in the Gospel according to St Mark (cf. Mk 13:10). The Lord’s Coming continues, the world must be penetrated by his presence and this ongoing Coming of the Lord in the proclamation of the Gospel requires our continuous collaboration. Moreover the Church, who is, as it were, the Betrothed, the promised Bride of the Lamb of the Crucified and Risen God (cf. Rev 21:9), in communion with her Lord, collaborates in this Coming of the Lord, in which his glorious return has already begun.

Today the word of God calls us to this, outlining the lines of conduct we should follow to be ready for the Lord’s Coming. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says to the disciples: “take heed... lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life... at at all times, praying” (Lk 21:34, 36). Therefore, moderation and prayer. And the Apostle Paul adds the invitation to “increase and abound in love” among ourselves and for everyone, to make our hearts blameless in holiness (cf. 1 Thess 3:12-13).

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. “In those days”, the Prophet Jeremiah announced, “Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: The Lord is our righteousness” (33:16). 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.

The Virgin Mary perfectly embodies the spirit of Advent that consists in listening to God, with a profound desire to do his will and to serve our neighbour joyfully. Let us allow ourselves to be guided by her, so that God who comes may not find us closed or distracted but rather may extend a little of his kingdom of love, justice and peace in each of us.

After the Angelus:

Dear brothers and sisters,

Today, in Kottar, India, Devasahayam Pillai, has been beatified. He was a faithful layman who lived in the 18th century and died a martyr. Let us join in the joy of the Church in India and pray that the new Blessed may sustain the faith of the Christians of that large and noble country.

Tomorrow the International Day of Persons with Disabilities will be celebrated. Every person, also with his physical and psychological limitations, is always of inestimable value and should be considered as such. I encourage the ecclesial communities to be attentive and welcoming to these brothers and sisters. I exhort legislators and governing authorities to protect people with disabilities and to encourage their full participation in the life of society.

I welcome all gathered here today to pray with me. I especially greet the people of Kottar who today are celebrating the beatification of Devasahayam Pillai. His witness to Christ is an example of that attentiveness to the Coming of Christ recalled by this First Sunday of Advent. May this holy season help us to centre our lives once more on Christ, our hope. God bless all of you!

Lastly, I renew my greeting to the various representatives of the world of travelling performers whom I had the joy of meeting yesterday. I wish everyone a peaceful Sunday and a good Advent journey. A good Advent and a good Sunday to you all! Many thanks.

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

General Audiences

General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI, 28 November 2012

BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Paul VI Audience Hall

Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Year of Faith. How to speak about God?

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The important question we ask ourselves today is: how can we talk about God in our time? How can we communicate the Gospel so as to open roads to his saving truth in our contemporaries’ hearts — that are all too often closed — and minds — that are at times distracted by the many dazzling lights of society? Jesus, the Evangelists tell us, asked himself about this as he proclaimed the kingdom of God: “With what can we compare the Kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it?” (Mk 4:30).

How can we talk about God today? The first answer is that we can talk about God because he has talked to us; so the first condition for speaking of God is listening to all that God himself has said. God has spoken to us! God is therefore not a distant hypothesis concerning the world’s origin; he is not a mathematical intelligence far from us. God takes an interest in us, he loves us, he has entered personally into the reality of our history, he has communicated himself, even to the point of taking flesh. Thus God is a reality of our life, he is so great that he has time for us too, he takes an interest in us. In Jesus of Nazareth we encounter the face of God, who came down from his heaven to immerse himself in the human world, in our world, and to teach “the art of living”, the road to happiness; to set us free from sin and make us children of God (cf. Eph 1:5; Rom 8:14). Jesus came to save us and to show us the good life of the Gospel.

Talking about God means first of all expressing clearly what God we must bring to the men and women of our time: not an abstract God, a hypothesis, but a real God, a God who exists, who has entered history and is present in history; the God of Jesus Christ as an answer to the fundamental question of the meaning of life and of how we should live. Consequently speaking of God demands familiarity with Jesus and his Gospel, it implies that we have a real, personal knowledge of God and a strong passion for his plan of salvation without succumbing to the temptation of success, but following God’s own method. God’s method is that of humility — God makes himself one of us — his method is brought about through the Incarnation in the simple house of Nazareth; through the Grotto of Bethlehem; through the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

We must not fear the humility of taking little steps, but trust in the leaven that penetrates the dough and slowly causes it to rise (cf. Mt 13:33). In talking about God, in the work of evangelization, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we must recover simplicity, we must return to the essence of the proclamation: the Good News of a God who is real and effective, a God who is concerned about us, a God-Love who makes himself close to us in Jesus Christ, until the Cross, and who in the Resurrection gives us hope and opens us to a life that has no end, eternal life, true life. St Paul, that exceptional communicator, gives us a lesson that goes straight to the heart of the problem of faith: “how to speak of God” with great simplicity.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians he writes: “When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (2:1-2).

The first real fact, therefore, is that Paul does not speak of a philosophy that he developed, he does not speak of ideas that he found elsewhere or invented, but of a reality of his life, he speaks of the God who entered his life, he speaks of a real God who is alive, who spoke with him and will speak with us, he speaks of the Crucified and Risen Christ.

The second real fact is that Paul does not seek himself, he does not want to make a fan club for himself, he does not wish to go down in history as the head of a school of great knowledge, he is not self-seeking; rather, St Paul proclaims Christ and wants to gain people for the true and real God. Paul’s wish is to speak of and preach the One who entered his life and who is true life, who won him over on the road to Damascus. Therefore, talking about God means making room for the One who enables us to know him, who reveals his face of love to us; it means emptying ourselves of our own ego, offering it to Christ, in the awareness that it is not we who can win over others for God, but that we must expect God to send them, we must entreat God for them. Talking about God therefore stems from listening, from our knowledge of God which is brought about through familiarity with him, through the life of prayer and in accordance with the Commandments.

Communicating faith, for St Paul, did not mean putting himself forward, but rather saying openly and publicly what he had seen and heard in his encounter with Christ, what he had experienced in his life that was transformed by that encounter: it meant putting forward Jesus whom he felt present within him and who became the true orientation of his existence, to make it clear to all that Jesus is necessary to the world and crucial to every person’s freedom. The Apostle is not satisfied with proclaiming words but expends his whole life in the great work of faith. To speak of God, we must leave him room, trusting that he will act in our weakness: we must make room for him without fear but with simplicity and joy, in the deep conviction that the more we put him at the centre rather than ourselves, the more fruitful our communication will be. And this is also true for Christian communities: they are called to show the transforming action of God’s grace, by overcoming individualism, closure, selfishness, indifference, by living out God’s love in their daily relations. Let us ask ourselves whether our communities really are like this. To be so, we must, always and truly proclaim Christ and not ourselves.

At this point we should ask ourselves: how did Jesus communicate? Jesus, in his oneness, speaks of his Father — Abba — and of the Kingdom of God, his gaze full of compassion for the hardships and difficulties of human life. He speaks with great realism and, I would say, that the essential feature of Jesus’ proclamation is that it makes clear that our life and the world are worthy of God. Jesus shows that in the world and in Creation God’s face shines out and he shows us that God is present in the daily events of our life. Both in the parables on nature, the mustard seed and the field with various seeds, and in our own life — let us think of the parable of the Prodigal Son, of Lazarus and of other parables of Jesus. From the Gospels we see that Jesus takes an interest in every human situation that he encounters, he immerses himself in the reality of the men and women of his time, with complete trust in the Father’s help. And that in this history, although hidden, God is really present and if we are attentive we can encounter him. And the disciples, who live with Jesus, the crowds who meet him, see his reaction to the most disparate problems, they see how he speaks, how he behaves; in him they see the action of the Holy Spirit, the action of God. In him proclamation and life are interwoven: Jesus acts and teaches, always starting from a close relationship with God the Father. This style becomes an essential indication for us as Christians: our way of living in faith and charity becomes a way of speaking of God today, because it shows, through a life lived in Christ, the credibility and realism of what we say with words, which are not solely words but reveal the reality, the true reality. And in this we must take care to perceive the signs of the times in our epoch, namely, to identify the potentials, aspirations and obstacles we encounter in today’s culture and in particular the wish for authenticity, the yearning for transcendence, and concern to safeguard Creation and to communicate fearlessly the response that faith in God offers.

The Year of Faith is an opportunity for us to discover, our imaginations fired by the Holy Spirit, new paths to take on a personal and community level so that the power of the Gospel may become wisdom of life and an orientation for existence everywhere.

In our time too, the family, the first school for communicating the faith to the new generations, is a privileged place in which to talk about God. The Second Vatican Council speaks of parents as the first messengers of God (cf. Dogmatic Constitution, Decree Lumen Gentium, n. 11; Apostolicam Actuositatem, n. 11). Parents are called to rediscover their mission, assuming responsibility in educating, in opening the consciences of their little ones to love of God as a fundamental service to their life and in being the first catechists and teachers of the faith for their children. And in this task watchfulness is of the utmost importance. It means being able to take favourable opportunities to introduce the topic of faith in the family and to develop a critical reflection with regard to the many forms of conditioning to which children are subjected.

The parents’ attention includes their sensitivity in perceiving the possible religious questions latent in their children’s minds, at times obvious but at other times hidden. Then, joy: the communication of faith must always have joyful tones. It is the Easter joy that does not stay silent or conceal the realities of pain, of suffering, of effort, of difficulty, of incomprehension and of death itself, but that can offer criteria for interpreting all things in the perspective of Christian hope. The good life of the Gospel is precisely this new perception, this capacity to see God with one’s own eyes in every situation. It is important to help all the members of the family understand that faith is not a burden but a source of profound joy, that it is perceiving God’s action, recognizing the presence of goodness that does not make a sound; and it offers precious guidance for living life well. Lastly, the capacity for listening and for dialogue: the family must be a milieu in which we learn to be together, to settle disagreements in conversation with each other, which consists in listening and speaking, in mutual understanding and love, so as to be a sign for each other of God’s merciful love.

So it is that talking about God means making people realize through our speech and example, that God is no rival in our existence but rather is its true guarantor, who guarantees the greatness of the human person. Thus we return to the beginning: speaking of God is communicating what is essential, forcefully and simply, through our words and through our life: the God of Jesus Christ, that God who showed us a love so great that he took flesh, died and rose again for us: that God who asks us to follow him and to let ourselves be transformed by his immense love in order to renew our life and our relationships; that God who has given us the Church, so that we may walk together and, through the word and the sacraments, renew the entire city of men and women, so that it may become a City of God.

To special groups:

I offer a cordial welcome to the members and associates of the Catholic Medical Missionary Board, with gratitude for their charitable concern for the health care needs of our brothers and sisters in developing countries. Upon all the English-speaking pilgrims present at today’s Audience, including the groups from Nigeria, Korea and the United States of America, I invoke God’s blessings of joy and peace.

APPEAL

World AIDS Day will be celebrated on 1 December to draw attention to a disease that has taken a toll of millions of lives and caused tragic human suffering, particularly acute in the world’s poorest regions that only with great difficulty have access to effective medicines. My thoughts turn in particular to the large number of children who contract the virus from their mothers every year, despite the preventive treatment that exists. I encourage the many projects in the context of the ecclesial mission that are being promoted to eliminate this scourge.

* * *

Lastly, I address an affectionate thought to the young people, the sick and the newlyweds. May the Season of Advent that is about to begin be an incentive to you, dear young people, to rediscover the importance of faith in Christ; may it help you, dear sick people, to face your suffering with you gaze turned to the Infant Jesus; may it increase in you, dear newlyweds, the meaning of God’s presence in your new family.

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Homilies

First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent, Homily of Benedict XVI, 1 December 2012

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

FIRST VESPERS

PRESIDED BY HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

MEETING WITH STUDENTS OF ROME'S UNIVERSITIES AND ATHENEUMS

HOMILY

Vatican Basilica

Saturday, 1 December 2012

“He who calls you is faithful” (1 Thess 5:24).

Dear University Students,

The Apostle Paul’s words guide us to understanding the true meaning of the Liturgical Year which we are beginning this evening with the recitation of First Vespers of Advent. The whole journey of the Church Year is orientated to discovering and living fidelity to the God of Jesus Christ who will be presented to us once again, in the Grotto of Bethlehem, in the face of a Child. The entire history of salvation is a journey of love, mercy and benevolence: from Creation to the liberation of the People of Israel from slavery in Egypt, to the gift of the Law on Sinai, to the return to the homeland from the Babylonian captivity. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was always the close God who never abandoned his People. On several occasions he suffered their infidelity with sadness and patiently awaited their return, ever with the freedom of a love that precedes and sustains the beloved, attentive to his or her dignity and deepest expectations.

God did not withdraw into his heaven but lowered himself to man’s experience: a great mystery that succeeds in surpassing every possible expectation. God entered human time in the most unthinkable way: by making himself a child and going through the stages of human life, so that our whole existence, spirit, soul and body — as St Paul has reminded us — might be kept blameless and be raised to God’s heights. And he did all this out of his faithful love for humanity. When love is true, by its nature it strives for the good of others, for their greatest possible good. It is not limited merely to respecting the commitments of friendship that have been taken on, but goes further, without calculation or measure. This is precisely what the living, true God did, whose profound mystery is revealed to us in St John’s words: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8, 16). In Jesus of Nazareth this God takes upon himself the whole of humanity, the whole history of man, and he gives it a decisive reorientation toward a new manner of human existence, characterized by having been generated by God and by aspiring to him (cf. Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 3, The Infancy Narratives).

Dear young people, distinguished rectors and professors, it is a cause of great joy to me to share these reflections with you who represent Rome’s university world. In this world, while retaining their own specific identities, converge Rome’s state and private universities and the pontifical institutions that have developed together for so many years, bearing a lively witness to a fertile dialogue and cooperation among the different branches of knowledge and theology. I greet and thank the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Rector of the Foro Italico University of Rome and your representative, for his words to me on behalf of all. I greet with deep cordiality the Cardinal Vicar and the Minister of Education, Universities and Research, as well as the various academic authorities present.

I greet you with special affection, dear young university students of the Roman Athenaeums, who have renewed your profession of faith at the Apostle Peter’s Tomb. In this period you are preparing for the great decisions of your life and for service in the Church and in society. This evening you can feel that you are not alone. With you are the university teachers and chaplains, as well as the animators of the colleges. The Pope is with you! And, above all you are integrated into the great academic community of Rome, in which it is possible to proceed in prayer, research, exchanges, and in bearing witness to the Gospel. It is a precious gift for your life; may you be able to see it as a sign of fidelity to God, who offers you opportunities to conform your existence to that of Christ, to let yourselves be sanctified by him to the point of perfection (cf. 1 Thess 5:23).

The liturgical year that we are beginning with these Vespers also represents for you the journey to live once again the mystery of this faithfulness of God, on which you are called to found your lives, as on a firm rock. In celebrating and living this itinerary of faith with the whole Church, you will experience that Jesus Christ is the one Lord of the cosmos and of history, without whom every human project risks coming to nothing. The liturgy, lived in its true spirit, is always the fundamental school for living the Christian faith, a “theological” faith which involves you in your whole being — spirit, soul and body — to make you living stones in the edifice of the Church and collaborators of the New Evangelization. Especially in the Eucharist the living God makes himself so close that he becomes food that supports us on the journey, a presence that transforms us with the fire of his love.

Dear friends, we are living in a context in which we often come across indifference to God. However, I think that in the inner depths of all those who live far from God — also among your peers — there is an inner longing for the infinite, for transcendence. It is your task to witness in the university halls to the close God who also shows himself in the search for the truth, the soul of all intellectual commitment.

In this regard, I express my pleasure and encouragement at seeing the university pastoral programme entitled: “The Father saw him from afar. The today of man, the today of God”, proposed by the Vicariate of Rome’s Office for Campus Ministry. Faith is the door that God opens in our lives to lead us to the encounter with Christ, in which the presence of the human meets the today of God. The Christian faith is not adherence to a generic or indefinite God but to the living God who in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, entered our history and revealed himself as the Redeemer of man. Believing means entrusting one’s life to the One who alone can give it fullness in time and open it to a hope beyond time.

In this Year of Faith the invitation, that I wish to address to the entire academic community of Rome, is to reflect on faith. The continuous dialogue between the State or private universities and the Pontifical universities promises hope for an ever more meaningful presence of the Church in the context of a culture that is not only Roman but also Italian and international. The Cultural Weeks and the International Symposium of Teachers which will be held next June will be an example of this experience, which I hope it will be possible to repeat in all the university towns with State, private and Pontifical athenaeums.

Dear friends, “He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (1 Thess 5:24); he will make you heralds of his presence. In this evening’s prayer let us set out in spirit toward the Bethlehem Grotto in order to taste the true joy of Christmas: the joy of welcoming at the centre of our life, after the example of the Virgin Mary and of St Joseph, that Child who reminds us that God’s eyes are open on the world and on every man and woman (cf. Zech 12:4). God’s gaze is focused on us because he is faithful to his love! Only this certainty can lead humanity towards goals of peace and prosperity, in this delicate and complex period of history.

Moreover the next World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro will be a great opportunity for you young university students to demonstrate the historical fruitfulness of God’s fidelity, offering your witness and commitment for the moral and social renewal of the world.

The handing over of the Icon of Mary Sedes Sapientiae to the Brazilian University Delegation by the university chaplaincy of Roma Tre that is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year is a sign of this common commitment of yours as young university students of Rome.

I entrust to Mary, Seat of Wisdom, all of you and your loved ones; the studies, teaching and life of the athenaeums; and, especially, the itinerary of formation and of witness in this Year of Faith. May the lamps you will carry in your chaplaincies always be fed by your faith that is humble but full of reverence so that each one of you may be a light of hope and peace in the university environment. Amen.

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Messages

Message to His Holiness Bartolomaios I, Ecumenical Patriarch, for the Feast of Saint Andrew, Benedict XVI, 23 November 2012

MESSAGE OF POPE BENEDICT XVI

TO HIS HOLINESS BARTHOLOMAIOS I, ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH,

FOR THE FEAST OF SAINT ANDREW

To His Holiness Bartholomaios

Archbishop of Constantinople

Ecumenical Patriarch

“That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph 3:17)

Enlivened by sentiments of deep joy and brotherly closeness, I would like today to make my own this desire which St Paul expressed to the Christian community of Ephesus, in order to present to you, Your Holiness, to the Members of the Holy Synod, to the clergy and to all the faithful gathered together on this Feast Day to celebrate the great Solemnity of St Andrew. Following the Apostle’s example, as your brother in the faith, I too “bow my knees before the Father” (Eph 3:14) to ask him to grant that you “be strengthened with might through his Spirit” (v. 16), and, “to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (v. 19).

The exchange of Delegations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople, which takes place every year on the occasion of the respective patronal feasts of St Andrew in the Phanar and Sts Peter and Paul in Rome, is a tangible testimony of the bond of brotherly closeness that unites us. Even though it is still imperfect, it is a profound and real communion that is not based on human reasons of courtesy or suitability, but on our common faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Gospel of salvation came to us through the preaching and witness of the Apostles which was sealed by the blood of martyrdom.

Relying on these sound foundations, we are able to advance confidently together on the path that leads towards the reestablishment of full communion. We have made great progress on this route Your Holiness, thanks too to your assiduous and active support for which I am deeply grateful. Although it seems that we still have a long and difficult way to go, our intention to continue in this direction remains firm, since we are comforted by the prayer our Lord Jesus Christ addressed to the Father: “that they may all be one.... in us, so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21).

Your Holiness, I wish at this moment to renew to you the expression of my deep gratitude for the words you spoke at the end of the celebration for the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the opening of the Year of Faith, which was held in Rome in October. Through these words you were able to interpret the sentiments of everyone present. I cherish vivid memories of your visit to Rome for this occasion, during which we had the opportunity to renew our ties of sincere and genuine friendship.

This sincere friendship which has been born between us — with a great common vision of the responsibilities to which we are called as Christians and as Pastors of the flock that God has entrusted to us — is the reason for the great hope that an ever closer collaboration will develop in the urgent task of giving fresh vigour to our witness to the Gospel Message in today’s world. In addition, I warmly thank you, Your Holiness, and the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate for sending a Fraternal Delegate to take part in the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the theme: “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”.

We have long been in full agreement with Your Holiness on the most urgent challenge today: how to bring the proclamation of God’s merciful love to the people of our time, so often distracted and more or less incapable of profound reflection on the actual meaning of their existence, seen in the light of projects and utopias that cannot but leave them disappointed. The Church has no other message than “the gospel of God” (Rom 1:1) and no other method than apostolic proclamation, sustained and guaranteed by the witness to holiness of life of both the Pastors and People of God. The Lord Jesus told us that “the harvest is plentiful” (Lk 10:2) and we cannot allow it to be lost because of our weaknesses and division.

Your Holiness, in the divine Liturgy which you have celebrated today in honour of St Andrew, Patron of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, you prayed “for peace throughout the world, for the prosperity of the Holy Churches of God and for the union of all”. I join in your prayer with all the Catholic brothers and sisters. The full communion to which we all aspire is a gift that comes from God. Let us confidently address our plea to him “who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20), through the intercession of St Andrew and of St Peter, his brother.

With these sentiments of sincere affection in Christ the Lord, I renew my warm good wishes and exchange with Your Holiness a brotherly embrace.

From the Vatican, 23 November 2012

BENEDETTO XVI

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Speeches

To a group of Bishops from the Episcopal Conference of France on their ad Limina visit, Benedict XVI, 30 November 2012

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO A GROUP OF BISHOPS

FROM THE EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE OF FRANCE

ON THEIR "AD LIMINA" VISITA

Consistory Hall

Friday, 30 November 2012

Dear Cardinal,

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate,

I retain a vivid memory of my Apostolic Visit to France on the occasion of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Apparitions of the Immaculate Conception in Lourdes. You are the last of the three groups of the Bishops of France to come on an ad limina visit. I thank you, your Eminence, for your kind words. On addressing your predecessors, I opened a sort of triptych of which the essential panel might be the Discourse which I addressed to you in 2008 at Lourdes. The study of this inseparable text will certainly be useful to you and will guide your reflections.

You are responsible for regions where the Christian faith took root very early and bore praiseworthy fruit. Regions linked to distinguished names who worked very hard to implant and spread the Kingdom of God in this world: martyrs such as Photinus and Blandina, great theologians such as Irenaeus and Vincent of Lérins, teachers of Christian spirituality such as Bruno, Bernard and Francis de Sales and many others. The Church in France has a long line of saints, doctors, martyrs and confessors of the faith. You are the heirs of a great human experience and of an immense spiritual wealth, that without a doubt are a source of inspiration for you in your mission as Pastors.

These origins and this glorious past, ever present in your thoughts and very dear to our spirit, allow us to nourish a great hope, both firm and bold, in the hour of taking up the challenge of the third millennium and listening to the expectations of the people of our time, to whom only God can give a satisfying answer. The Good News, that we have the duty to proclaim to the men and women of all times, of all languages and of all cultures, can be summed up in a few words: God, creator of man, in his Son Jesus, allows us to know his love for humanity: “God is love” (cf. 1 Jn 4:8). He wishes for the happiness of his creatures, for his sons and daughters. The Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (cf. n. 10) takes up the key issues of human existence; the meaning of life and death, of evil, of illness and suffering, so present in our world. It recalls that in his fatherly goodness, God wanted to answer all of these questions and that Christ founded his Church so that all might understand them. Therefore one of the most serious problems of our time is ignorance of religious practice in which many men and women live, including some Catholic faithful (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles laici, Chapter V).

For this reason the new evangelization, to which the Church has been resolutely committed since the Second Vatican Council and of which the Motu Proprio Ubicumque et Semper outlined the central modalities, is particularly urgent as underlined by the Fathers of the Synod which ended recently. The new evangelization calls all Christians to account for the hope that is in them (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), aware that one of the worst obstacles for our pastoral mission is ignorance of the content of the faith. In fact it is a dual ignorance: a lack of knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ and ignorance of the sublimity of his teachings, of their universal and perpetual value in the search for the meaning of life and happiness. Moreover this lack of knowledge results in an inability in the new generations to understand history and to feel that they are heirs to this tradition which has shaped the life, society, art and culture of Europe.

In the current Year of Faith, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a Note dated 6 January 2012 gave useful pastoral instructions for mobilizing all of the Church’s energy, the action of her Pastors and her faithful in order to enliven society in depth. It is the Holy Spirit who, through “the power of the Gospel, permits the Church to keep the freshness of youth” (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 4). This Note recalls that “every initiative for the Year of Faith should be designed to promote the joyous rediscovery of the faith and its renewed transmission. The recommendations provided here have the goal of inviting all of the members of the Church to work to make this Year a special time to share what is dearest to Christians: Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of mankind, universal King, ‘leader and perfecter of faith’ (Heb 12:2)”. The Synod of Bishops recently proposed to each and everyone the way to complete this mission successfully. The example of our divine Master is always the basis of all our reflection and action. Prayer and action, these are the means which our Saviour still and always calls us to implement.

The new evangelization will be effective if it can thoroughly involve the communities and parishes. Signs of vitality and the commitment of the lay faithful in French society are already an encouraging reality. In the past many lay people played a part; I am thinking of Pauline Marie Jaricot, the 150th anniversary of whose death we celebrated and of her work of spreading the faith, ever crucial for Catholic missions in the 19th and 20th centuries. The laity with their bishops and priests are the leaders in the life of the Church and her mission of evangelization. In various documents (Lumen Gentium, Apostolicam Actuositatem, among others), the Second Vatican Council  underlined the specificity of their mission: permeating human realities with the Gospel spirit. The laity are the face of the world in the Church and at the same time the face of the Church in the world. I appreciate the quality and manifold apostolates of the laity, men and women. I join my voice to yours in expressing my appreciation to them.

The Church in Europe and in France must not remain indifferent to the decrease in vocations and priestly ordinations and in other types of vocations that God inspires in the Church. We must urgently mobilize all the energy available so that youth may hear the voice of the Lord. God calls whom he wants and when he wants. Nevertheless Christian families and fervent communities continue to be particularly favourable areas. These families, these communities and these young people are therefore at the centre of every initiative of evangelization, despite the cultural and social context marked by relativism and hedonism.

Since young people are the hope and the future of the Church and of the world I cannot fail to mention the importance of Catholic education. This plays an admirable and often difficult role, made possible by the tireless devotion of formators: priests, consecrated people and laity. Beyond the passed-on knowledge, the testimony of the lives of formation teachers must enable young people to imbibe human and Christian values in order to deepen their search for, and love of the truth and of beauty (cf. Gaudium et Spes, n. 15). Continue to encourage them and open them to new prospects so that they too may benefit from evangelization. Catholic institutes clearly hold the first place in the great discussion between faith and culture. The love of the truth which radiates from them is in itself evangelizing. They are places of learning and dialogue and even research centres which must be increasingly developed and ambitious. I understand well the contribution that the Church in France has made to Christian culture. I know of your attention — and I encourage you in this regard — to cultivate academic rigour and to weave stronger ties of communication and collaboration with universities in other countries, both so that they may benefit from your experience and that you may learn from them in order to better serve the Church, society and the whole person. I am grateful for the initiatives in some of your dioceses to promote the theological initiation of young students in secular disciplines. Theology is a source of knowledge, joy, wonder that cannot be reserved only for seminarians, priests and consecrated people. Proposed to numerous youth and adults, theology will comfort them in the faith and will make them without a doubt bold and convincing apostles. Thus it is a prospect which could be broadly proposed to higher institutions of theology, as an expression of the intrinsically missionary dimension of theology and as a service to culture in its deepest sense.

As regards Catholic schools which have shaped the Christian and cultural life of your country, today they have a historical responsibility. As places for the transmission of knowledge and the formation of the person, of unconditional acceptance and of learning, these schools often enjoy a well-deserved status. It is necessary to find ways to ensure that the transmission of the faith stays at the centre of the educational project. The new evangelization will pass through these schools and through the manifold work of Catholic education which underlies numerous initiatives and movements, for which the Church is grateful. Educating in Christian values is the key to the culture of your country. Education, in opening to hope and authentic freedom, continues to contribute its dynamism and creativity. The ardour given to the new evangelization will be our best contribution to the development of human society and the best answer to the challenges of every kind which confront everyone at the beginning of the third millennium. Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, I commend you, with your pastoral work and the communities that have been entrusted to you, to the motherly care of the Virgin Mary that she may accompany your mission in the years to come! And as I stated before leaving France in 2008: “From Rome I shall remain close to you, and when I pray before the replica of the Lourdes Grotto which has been in the Vatican Gardens for a little over a century, I shall think of you. May God bless you!”.

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Address to Students and Staff of the Venerable English College, Benedict XVI, 3 December 2012

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO STUDENTS AND STAFF

OF THE VENERABLE ENGLISH COLLEGE

Monday, 3 December 2012

Your Eminence, dear Brother Bishops,

Monsignor Hudson,

Students and Staff of the Venerable English College,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you today to the Apostolic Palace, the House of Peter. I greet my Venerable brother, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, a former Rector of the College, and I thank Archbishop Vincent Nichols for his kind words, spoken on behalf of all present. I too look back with great thanksgiving in my heart to the days that I spent in your country in September 2010. Indeed, I was pleased to see some of you at Oscott College on that occasion, and I pray that the Lord will continue to call forth many saintly vocations to the priesthood and the religious life from your homeland.

Through God’s grace, the Catholic community of England and Wales is blessed with a long tradition of zeal for the faith and loyalty to the Apostolic See. At much the same time as your Saxon forebears were building the Schola Saxonum, establishing a presence in Rome close to the tomb of Peter, Saint Boniface was at work evangelizing the peoples of Germany. So as a former priest and Archbishop of the See of Munich and Freising, which owes its foundation to that great English missionary, I am conscious that my spiritual ancestry is linked with yours. Earlier still, of course, my predecessor Pope Gregory the Great was moved to send Augustine of Canterbury to your shores, to plant the seeds of Christian faith on Anglo-Saxon soil. The fruits of that missionary endeavour are only too evident in the six-hundred-and-fifty-year history of faith and martyrdom that distinguishes the English Hospice of Saint Thomas à Becket and the Venerable English College that grew out of it.

Potius hodie quam cras, as Saint Ralph Sherwin said when asked to take the missionary oath, “rather today than tomorrow”. These words aptly convey his burning desire to keep the flame of faith alive in England, at whatever personal cost. Those who have truly encountered Christ are unable to keep silent about him. As Saint Peter himself said to the elders and scribes of Jerusalem, “we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). Saint Boniface, Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Saint Francis Xavier, whose feast we keep today, and so many other missionary saints show us how a deep love for the Lord calls forth a deep desire to bring others to know him. You too, as you follow in the footsteps of the College Martyrs, are the men God has chosen to spread the message of the Gospel today, in England and Wales, in Canada, in Scandinavia. Your forebears faced a real possibility of martyrdom, and it is right and just that you venerate the glorious memory of those forty-four alumni of your College who shed their blood for Christ. You are called to imitate their love for the Lord and their zeal to make him known, potius hodie quam cras. The consequences, the fruits, you may confidently entrust into God’s hands.

Your first task, then, is to come to know Christ yourselves, and the time you spend in seminary provides you with a privileged opportunity to do so. Learn to pray daily, especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, listening attentively to the word of God and allowing heart to speak to heart, as Blessed John Henry Newman would say. Remember the two disciples from the first chapter of Saint John’s Gospel, who followed Jesus and asked to know where he was staying, and, like them, respond eagerly to his invitation to “come and see” (1:37-39). Allow the fascination of his person to capture your imagination and warm your heart. He has chosen you to be his friends, not his servants, and he invites you to share in his priestly work of bringing about the salvation of the world. Place yourselves completely at his disposal and allow him to form you for whatever task it may be that he has in mind for you.

You have heard much talk about the new evangelization, the proclamation of Christ in those parts of the world where the Gospel has already been preached, but where to a greater or lesser degree the embers of faith have grown cold and now need to be fanned once more into a flame. Your College motto speaks of Christ’s desire to bring fire to the earth, and your mission is to serve as his instruments in the work of rekindling the faith in your respective homelands. Fire in sacred Scripture frequently serves to indicate the divine presence, whether it be the burning bush from which God revealed his name to Moses, the pillar of fire that guided the people of Israel on their journey from slavery to freedom, or the tongues of fire that descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost, enabling them to go forth in the power of the Spirit to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Just as a small fire can set a whole forest ablaze (cf. Jas 3:5), so the faithful testimony of a few can release the purifying and transforming power of God’s love so that it spreads like wildfire throughout a community or a nation. Like the martyrs of England and Wales, then, let your hearts burn with love for Christ, for the Church and for the Mass.

When I visited the United Kingdom, I saw for myself that there is a great spiritual hunger among the people. Bring them the true nourishment that comes from knowing, loving and serving Christ. Speak the truth of the Gospel to them with love. Offer them the living water of the Christian faith and point them towards the bread of life, so that their hunger and thirst may be satisfied. Above all, however, let the light of Christ shine through you by living lives of holiness, following in the footsteps of the many great saints of England and Wales, the holy men and women who bore witness to God’s love, even at the cost of their lives. The College to which you belong, the neighbourhood in which you live and study, the tradition of faith and Christian witness that has formed you: all these are hallowed by the presence of many saints. Make it your aspiration to be counted among their number.

Please be assured of an affectionate remembrance in my prayers for yourselves and for all the alumni of the Venerable English College. I make my own the greeting so often heard on the lips of a great friend and neighbour of the College, Saint Philip Neri, Salvete, flores martyrum! Commending you, and all to whom the Lord sends you, to the loving intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham, I gladly impart my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of peace and joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you.

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

To participants in a pilgrimage sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Benedict XVI, 1 December 2012

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO PARTICIPANTS IN A PILGRIMAGE SPONSORED BY

THE PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR THE PASTORAL CARE OF MIGRANTS AND ITINERANT PEOPLE FOR THE YEAR OF FAITH

Paul VI Hall

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am delighted to welcome all of you and I thank you for your welcome! You have gathered here today in such great numbers to meet the Successor of St Peter and to show, also on behalf of the many who work in itinerant shows, the joy of being Christian and of belonging to the Church. I greet and I thank Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, who, in collaboration with the Diocese of Rome and the Foundation Migrantes of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, has organized this event. Thank you, Your Eminence! I am also grateful to your representatives, who have offered us their testimonies and a beautiful short performance, as well as those who helped prepare this meeting, set during the Year of Faith, an important occasion to openly profess our faith in the Lord Jesus.

What especially distinguishes your big family is your capacity to use the language that is particular and specific to your art. The cheerfulness of the shows, the recreational joy of playing, the grace of the choreography, the rhythm of the music — all these create a direct line of communication and place you in dialogue with both the small and the great, stirring feelings of serenity, joy and harmony. With the diversity of your professions and the originality of your feats, you know how to amaze and to inspire wonder, to offer opportunities for celebration and healthy fun.

Dear friends, starting precisely with these characteristics and with your style, you are called to witness to those values that are part of your tradition: love for the family, kindness to children, attention to the disabled, care for the sick, respect for the elderly and for their wealth of experience. In your environment dialogue between generations, the sense of friendship, a readiness for teamwork thrive. You have warmth and hospitality, as well as attentiveness to giving a response to the most authentic longings of, above all, the young generations. Your skills require renunciation and sacrifice, responsibility and perseverance, courage and generosity: virtues that today’s society does not always appreciate, but that have contributed to the forming of entire generations in your great family. I know, too, of the many problems related to your itinerancy, such as educating your children, finding suitable locations for shows, receiving authorization to perform and residence permits for foreigners. While I hope that public administrations, in acknowledging the social and cultural role of travelling shows, commit themselves to safeguarding your status, I encourage both you and civil society to overcome prejudice and always seek a healthy integration into local situations.

Dear brothers and sisters, the Church rejoices at the commitment you demonstrate and appreciates your fidelity to the traditions of which you have reason to be proud. She who is herself a pilgrim, like you, in this world, invites you to participate in her divine mission through your daily work. The dignity of every person is also expressed in the honest exercise of professional skills and in their generous practice that leaves you free from being determined only by economic gain. In this you, as you are paying attention to the quality of your achievements and performances, do not fail to ensure that, with the values of the Gospel, you continue to offer young generations the hope and encouragement they need, especially with respect to life’s challenges, the temptation to distrust, to withdraw into oneself and embrace pessimism, that stop one from seeing the beauty of life.

Although the itinerant life prevents you from being permanent members of the parish community and does not facilitate regular participation in catechesis and divine worship, in your world, too, there is need for a new evangelization. I hope that you may find, in every community where you are, people who are welcoming and open, able to come and meet your spiritual needs. Do not forget, however, that the family is the primary means for transmitting the faith, that small domestic Church called to make Jesus and his Gospel known and to educate according to the law of God, so that each one of you may achieve full human and Christian maturity (cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, n. 2). May your families always be schools of faith and love, training grounds of communion and brotherhood.

Dear artists and travelling circus performers, I repeat to you what I said at the start of my Pontificate: “There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know him and to speak to others of our friendship with him... Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation” (Homily at the Mass for the inauguration of the Pontificate, Sunday, 24 April 2005). In assuring you of the closeness of the Church, which shares in your journey, I entrust you all to the Holy Virgin Mary, the “guiding star”, who with her motherly presence accompanies us in every moment of our lives.

[In French] Dear friends, your charism consists in giving to others joy, the sense of celebration and of beauty. May your joy find its source in God and may it be strongly united with trust in him and in his love, a joy full of humility and of faith. Become then imitators of God and walk in charity (cf. Eph 5:1-2), bearing the joy of the faith to all.

[In English] Dear friends, you spread around you a joyful atmosphere and you ease the burden of daily work. May you also be men and women with a strong inner self, open to contemplation and dialogue with God. I pray that your faith in Christ and your devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary may sustain you in your life and work.

[In German] Dear friends, your world can become a laboratory in the area of the great themes of ecumenism and encounter between people of different religions. May your faith guide you to be authentic witnesses of God and of his love, a community united in brotherhood, in peace and in solidarity.

[In Spanish] Dear friends, travelling showmen, in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, in the passage dedicated to migrants, I expressed my wish that they would “be able to be heralds of God’s word and witnesses to the Risen Jesus, the hope of the world” (n. 105). Today, with great confidence, I repeat this wish to you and to the pastoral agents who accompany you with admirable dedication.

To each one of you and to your families and communities I impart my heartfelt Apostolic Blessing. Thank you.

© Copyright 2012 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Table of Contents

Introduction

Index of Source Links

Angelus

Angelus, 2 December 2012, Benedict XVI

General Audiences

General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI, 28 November 2012

Homilies

First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent, Homily of Benedict XVI, 1 December 2012

Messages

Message to His Holiness Bartolomaios I, Ecumenical Patriarch, for the Feast of Saint Andrew, Benedict XVI, 23 November 2012

Speeches

To a group of Bishops from the Episcopal Conference of France on their ad Limina visit, Benedict XVI, 30 November 2012

Address to Students and Staff of the Venerable English College, Benedict XVI, 3 December 2012

To participants in a pilgrimage sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, Benedict XVI, 1 December 2012