PERIOD OF ADVENT, JOURNEY OF TRUE SANCTIFICATION

VATICAN CITY, NOV 26, 2005 (VIS) - This evening in the Vatican Basilica, Benedict XVI presided at the celebration of the first Vespers of the first Sunday of Advent, which mark the opening of the new liturgical year.

  In his homily, the Holy Father commented on a passage from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians (5, 23-24).

  The Apostle, said the Pope, hopes that "each individual will be sanctified by God and remain 'sound and blameless' in 'spirit and soul and body' until the final coming of the Lord Jesus."

  The Holy Father pointed out that the hope expressed by the Apostle "contains a fundamental truth, one he seeks to inculcate into the faithful of the community he founded, and that we can sum up like this: God calls us to communion with Him, communion which will be fully realized with the return of Christ, and He Himself undertakes to ensure that we are ready when we reach this final and decisive encounter."

  Pope Benedict went on: "The future is, so to say, contained in the present or, better still, in the presence of God Himself, in His indefectible love which does not leave us alone, does not abandon us even for an instant, just as fathers and mothers never cease to follow their children's development.

  "Faced with Christ who approaches, man feels called in all his being. ... Sanctification is a gift of God, it is His initiative, but human beings are called to correspond with all their being, leaving nothing of themselves excluded."

  "Just as at the center of human history is the first advent of Christ, and at the end His glorious return, so each individual existence is called to measure itself against Him in a mysterious and multifaceted way during the earthly journey, so as to be found 'in Him' at the moment of His return."

  "May Mary Most Holy, the faithful Virgin, guide us to make this period of Advent, and the whole of the new liturgical year, a journey of true sanctification, to the praise and glory of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit."
HML/VESPERS:ADVENT/...                            VIS 20051128 (370)