Online Edition:
December 2008 – January 2009
Vol. XIV, No. 9
Table of Contents
Madonna and Child, by Giovanni Bellini. (oil on panel) 1480-90
Academia Carrara, Bergamo, Italy
News & Views — Archbishop Ranjith Addresses Gateway Liturgical Conference | What Can’t Catholics Understand? | SCL Conference on Roman Missal
USCCB Report — November 2008: During Intense Meeting, Bishops Act on Three Liturgy Items — by Helen Hull Hitchcock
The Clerical Challenge in "Sing to the Lord" by W. Patrick Cunningham
Message to the People of God: XII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops
Reverence, Music at Mass Top Readers’ Concerns – Report on the Adoremus Survey — compiled by Susan Benofy
Readers’ Forum — White or Wheat? | Kneeling for Communion | Extraordinary Ministers | Jubilate Deo Question | Canadian Lectionary News
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Hope is indelibly engraved in the human heart because God our Father is life, and for eternal life and beatitude we are made.
Every child born is a sign of trust in God and man and a confirmation, at least implicit, of the hope in a future open to God’s eternity that is nourished by men and women. God has responded to this human hope, concealing Himself in time as a tiny human being. Saint Augustine wrote: “We might have thought that your Word was far distant from union with man, if this Word had not become flesh and dwelt among us” (Conf. X, 43, 69, cited in Spe Salvi, n. 29).
Thus, let us allow ourselves to be guided by the one who in her heart and in her womb bore the Incarnate Word.
O Mary, Virgin of expectation and Mother of hope, revive the spirit of Advent in your entire Church, so that all humanity may start out anew on the journey towards Bethlehem, from which it came, and that the Sun that dawns upon us from on high will come once again to visit us (cf. Lk 1: 78), Christ our God. Amen.
— Pope Benedict XVI
From homily for the first vespers of the first Sunday of Advent, Saturday,
December 1, 2007 – St. Peter’s Basilica
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