"The Best Presents Don't Come With Price Tags"

Pope Benedict's 'Urbi Et Orbi' Message for Christmas 2011

URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI

CHRISTMAS 2011

(Video)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and throughout the world!

Christ is born for us!  Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to the men and women whom he loves.  May all people hear an echo of the message of Bethlehem which the Catholic Church repeats in every continent, beyond the confines of every nation, language and culture.  The Son of the Virgin Mary is born for everyone; he is the Saviour of all.

This is how Christ is invoked in an ancient liturgical antiphon: “O Emmanuel, our king and lawgiver, hope and salvation of the peoples: come to save us, O Lord our God”.  Veni ad salvandum nos!  Come to save us!  This is the cry raised by men and women in every age, who sense that by themselves they cannot prevail over difficulties and dangers.  They need to put their hands in a greater and stronger hand, a hand which reaches out to them from on high.  Dear brothers and sisters, this hand is Christ, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary.  He is the hand that God extends to humanity, to draw us out of the mire of sin and to set us firmly on rock, the secure rock of his Truth and his Love (cf. Ps 40:2).

Homily of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for Christmas Midnight Mass

 

SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD

Saint Peter's Basilica

 24 December 2011

 

(Video)

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

The reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus that we have just heard begins solemnly with the word “apparuit”, which then comes back again in the reading at the Dawn Mass: apparuit – “there has appeared”.  This is a programmatic word, by which the Church seeks to express synthetically the essence of Christmas.  Formerly, people had spoken of God and formed human images of him in all sorts of different ways.  God himself had spoken in many and various ways to mankind (cf. Heb 1:1 – Mass during the Day).  But now something new has happened: he has appeared.  He has revealed himself.  He has emerged from the inaccessible light in which he dwells.  He himself has come into our midst.  This was the great joy of Christmas for the early Church: God has appeared.  No longer is he merely an idea, no longer do we have to form a picture of him on the basis of mere words.  He has “appeared”.  But now we ask: how has he appeared?  Who is he in reality?  The reading at the Dawn Mass goes on to say: “the kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed” (Tit 3:4).  For the people of pre-Christian times, whose response to the terrors and contradictions of the world was to fear that God himself might not be good either, that he too might well be cruel and arbitrary, this was a real “epiphany”, the great light that has appeared to us: God is pure goodness.  Today too, people who are no longer able to recognize God through faith are asking whether the ultimate power that underpins and sustains the world is truly good, or whether evil is just as powerful and primordial as the good and the beautiful which we encounter in radiant moments in our world.  “The kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed”: this is the new, consoling certainty that is granted to us at Christmas.

In all three Christmas Masses, the liturgy quotes a passage from the Prophet Isaiah, which describes the epiphany that took place at Christmas in greater detail: “A child is born for us, a son given to us and dominion is laid on his shoulders; and this is the name they give him: Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace.  Wide is his dominion in a peace that has no end” (Is 9:5f.).  Whether the prophet had a particular child in mind, born during his own period of history, we do not know.  But it seems impossible.  This is the only text in the Old Testament in which it is said of a child, of a human being: his name will be Mighty-God, Eternal-Father.  We are presented with a vision that extends far beyond the historical moment into the mysterious, into the future.  A child, in all its weakness, is Mighty God.  A child, in all its neediness and dependence, is Eternal Father.  And his peace “has no end”.  The prophet had previously described the child as “a great light” and had said of the peace he would usher in that the rod of the oppressor, the footgear of battle, every cloak rolled in blood would be burned (Is 9:1, 3-4).

A Christian Message that Rings Down the Ages

Christianity is alive and well and helping to shape our future for the better.

The birth of a new era: Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi, c. 1473 Photo: ALAMY

By Archbishop Vincent Nichols

Christianity is and remains a major source of inspiration in our society, the Prime Minister made clear in his speech last week marking this, the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. “Christianity is alive and well in our country,” he said as he called for more confidence in our Christian identity.

You would, of course, expect me as a church leader to echo this Christmas what David Cameron had to say, and I do. But I would like also to give you two practical examples of how I have seen Christianity alive and well in our country, shaping our future for the better. Both are events that I have been privileged to participate in over the past 12 months, and both provide grounds for hope this Christmas season.

"If You Don't See 'Merry Christmas' in the Window..."

Vocal by Carrie Rinderer and the American Christian Life United (ACLU) Choir