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Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “Celebrating the liturgical seasons, we actualize the mystery -- in this case the coming of the Lord -- in such a way as to be able, so to speak, to 'walk in it' toward its full realization, at the end of time, but already drawing sanctifying virtue from it from the moment that the last times have already begun with the death and resurrection of Christ. The word that sums up this particular state in which we await something that is supposed to manifest itself but which we also already have a glimpse and foretaste of, is 'hope.' Advent is the spiritual season of hope par excellence, and in this season the whole Church is called to be hope, for itself and for the world.” Opening the new liturgical year, the Holy Father Benedict XVI presided the celebration of First Vespers for the 1st Sunday of Advent, in Saint Peter's Basilica on November 29.
In this liturgical season, “the whole people of God begins the journey, drawn by this mystery: that our God is 'the God who comes' and who calls us to come to meet him. In what way? Above all in that universal form of hope and expectation that is prayer, which finds its eminent expression in the Psalms, human words by which God himself has placed and continually places the invocation of his coming on the lips and hearts of believers.” The Pope then paused to reflect on two Psalms from the Vespers, Psalms 141 and 142.
In the first Psalm, the Lord's help is invoked: “O Lord, I cry to you, hasten to help me.” The Holy Father explained: “It is the cry of a person who feels himself to be in grave danger, but it is also the cry of the Church in the midst of the many snares that surround her, that threaten her holiness, that irreprehensible integrity of which the Apostle Paul speaks, that must be maintained for the coming of the Lord. And in this invocation there also resounds the cry of all the just, of all those who want to resist evil, the seductions of an iniquitous well-being, of pleasures that are offensive to human dignity and the condition of the poor. At the beginning of Advent the Church's liturgy again cries out with these words and addresses them to God 'as incense.' The evening offering of incense is in fact a symbol of prayer, the lifting up of hearts to God, to the Most High.”
In Psalm 142, “Here every word, every invocation makes us think of Jesus in the passion; in particular we think of his prayer to the Father in Gethsemane. In his first coming, in the incarnation, the Son of God wanted fully to share our human condition. Naturally, he did not share in sin, but for our salvation he suffered its consequences. Every time she prays Psalm 142 the Church experiences again the grace of this com-passion, this "coming" of the Son of God into human anguish, his descent into its deepest depths. Advent's cry of hope expresses, then, from the beginning and in the most forceful way, the whole gravity of our condition, our extreme need of salvation. It says: We await the Lord's coming not like a beautiful decoration added to an already saved world but as the only way to freedom from mortal danger. And we know that he himself, the Liberator, had to suffer and die to bring us out of this prison.”
The Holy Father concluded his homily by highlighting the fact that these two Psalms, “protect us against any temptation of evasion and flight from reality; they preserve us from a false hope, one that would like to enter into Advent and set off for Christmas forgetting the dramatic nature of our personal and collective existence.” Thus, he exhorted all to place our hand in that of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Advent and enter with joy into this new season of grace that God grants his Church for the good of the whole of humanity, making us docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, “so that the God of Peace might completely sanctify us, and the Church might become a sign and an instrument of hope for all men.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 1/12/2008)
