"The Christian joy springs out" of the certainty that "God is near, He is with me, He is with us, in the good and bad times, in health and sickness, as a friend and as a faithful spouse. And this joy remains even in trial, in suffering, and it does not remain on the surface, it runs deep in the person who places his trust in God and confides in Him". It was said yesterday morning by Benedict XVI, before he introduced the Angelus prayer from Saint Peter’s Square, on the III Sunday of Advent, also known as "the Sunday of Our Lady". Saint Paul, recalled the Pope, "exhorts the Christians to rejoice, because the coming of the Lord, i.e. His glorious return, is certain and will not be late. The Church makes this invitation its own, whilst it gets ready to celebrating Christmas and its eyes increasingly look ahead to Bethlehem". Indeed, "we wait with certain hope for the second coming of Christ, because we have experienced the first one. The mystery of Bethlehem reveals to us the God-with-us, the God who is near us, not simply spatially and temporally". He, added the Holy Father, "is close to us, because He ‘espoused’, as it were, our humanity; He has taken our condition on Himself, choosing to be like us in every respect, except in sin, to make us become like Him". (continued)
