In today’s General Audience, Pope Benedict continues his catechesis on Church:

“This permanent actualization of the active presence of the Lord Jesus in his people, by the work of the Holy Spirit and expressed in the Church through the apostolic ministry and brotherly communion, is what is meant, in a theological sense, by the term Tradition: it is not the simple material transmission of things and words, of what was given to the Apostles at the beginning, but the effective presence of the Lord Jesus, crucified and risen, that accompanies and leads the community gathered around him in the spirit”.