Today’s Angelus in St. Peter’s Square:

I would like, above all, to remember with affection the Catholic community who live on Turkish soil. I think of them as we enter Advent time this Sunday.

I was able to meet and celebrate Mass with these brothers and sisters of ours who find themselves in conditions that are often not easy. It is truly a small flock, varied, rich in enthusiasm and faith, who, we might say, constantly live – and in a powerful way – the experience of Advent sustained by hope.

During Advent, the liturgy often reiterates and assures us, almost as if to conquer our natural diffidence against the God-who-is-coming. He comes to be with us, in every situation; he comes to live among us, to live with us and in us; he comes to bridge the distances that divide and separate us; he comes to reconcile us with Him and among ourselves.

He comes into the history of mankind to knock at the door of every man and woman of goodwill, to bring to individuals, families and peoples the gift of brotherhood, concord and peace.

That is why Advent is par excellence a time of hope when believers in Christ are invited to stay in vigilant and diligent waiting, nourished by prayer and the factual works of love. May the coming Nativity of Christ fill the hearts of all Crhistians with joy, serenity and peace.

To live this period of Advent in the most authentic and fruitful way, the liturgy exhorts us to look at the Most Blessed Mary, and to walk with her ideally towards the cave of Bethlehem.

When God knocked on the door of her young life, she welcomed Him with faith and love. In a few days, we shall contemplate her in the luminous mystery of her Immaculate Conception.

The homily at the Vespers service yesterday in St. Peter’s:

The first antiphion of this Vespers celebration is proposed as an opening for the Advent period and resounds like an antiphon for the entire liturgical year.

Let us listen to it again: "Give the news to the peoples: God is coming, our Savior."

At the beginning of a new annual cycle, the liturgy invites the Church to renew its announcement to all peoples and summarizes it in these words: "God is coming." This synthetic expression contains a force of suggestion that is always new.

Let us pause a moment to reflect: the past tense is not used – God has come; nor the future – God will come; but the present – God is coming. It speaks of a continuous present, an action that is always current – it happened, it is happening now, it wil happen again. At whatever moment, God is coming.

The verb ‘come’ is used here as a theological verb, indeed theo-logal, because it says something about the nature of God Himself. To announce that ‘God is coming’ is the same as simply announcing God Himself through one of his essential and qualifying characteristics – that of being the God-who-comes.

Advent requires believers to take conscience of this truth and to act consequently. It echoes as a salutary appeal to be repeated over the days, weeks and months: Wake up! Remember that God is coming! Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but today, now. The only true God, ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob".

He is not a God who is up in heaven, disinterested in us and in history, but the God-who-comes. He is a Father who never stops to think about us, and with extreme respect for our liberty, wishes to meet us and visit with us; He wants to come, live among us, stay with us.

His ‘coming’ is impelled by his desire to free us from evil and death, of everything that hinders our true happiness. God comes to save us.

The Fathers of the Church observed that the ‘coming of God’ – continuous and connatural, so to speak, with His being – is focused on the two principal ‘comings’ of Jesus Christ, His Incarnation and his glorious return at the end of history (cfr Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 15,1: PG 33,870).

Advent time is lived entirely through this polarity. In the first days, the accent falls on waiting for the last coming of the Lord, as even the texts of our Vesper celebration today show.

And as Christmas draws nearer, then the memory of the coming at Bethlehem prevails, recognizing in it ‘the fullness of time’.

Between these two manifest comings, we can identify a third one, which St. Bernard called ‘intermediate’ and ‘occult’ – it takes place in the soul of the believer and is a bridge between the first and the second.

"In the first," St. Bernard wrote, "Christ was our redemption, in the last He will manifest Himself as our life. In that we find our repose and our consolation" (Disc. 5 on Advent, 1). For that coming of Christ, whoch we can call a ‘spiritual incarnation’, the archetype is always Mary.

As the Virgin Mother guards in her heart the Word made Flesh, so also every single soul and the entire Church are called, during their earthly pilgrimage, to wait for Christ who is coming, and welcome him with ever-renewed faith and love.