Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Advent is a time of prayer, of turning to God “who knows me,” of asking him “with all my heart and in all my faith to free us from our enemies.” May God “not look at our merits, He who in the past freed the children of Israel not because of their merits but because of His mercy.”
In today’s general audience before a crowd of some 8,000 people in the Paul VI Hall Benedict XVI urged people to pray during the current liturgical time of Advent. His starting point was a sentence by Saint Chromatius, Father of the Church, about whom he spoke.
In presenting another major figures from early Christianity, the Pope talked about a saint who was bishop of what was then the ninth largest city of the Empire, the see of a diocese that stretched from Venetia (the Veneto) to what is now modern Switzerland, Bavaria and Slovenia and as far as the borderland with Hungary.
Born around 345 AD, made bishop in 388 AD, “at a time saddened by Barbarian raids, Chromatius urged the faithful to open up their souls and place their trust in a God who never abandons His children, an exhortation that is still valid today.”
“He was a knowledgeable teacher and a zealous pastor.” His first commitment was to “hear the Word and make himself its announcer.”
We find among the topics that were close to his heart the Trinity, the Holy Spirit and a “particular insistence” on the “mystery of Christ, word incarnate, true God and true man.”
His Mariological doctrine was also important. “We owe him some evocative descriptions of the Virgin, capable of welcoming God,” the Pope said.
