"…Advent is par excellence the spiritual season of hope. In it, the whole Church is called to become hope for herself and for the world….
…Our God is "the God who comes" and calls us to go to meet him. How?
In the first place in prayer, that universal form of hope and expectation.
The Advent cry of hope then expresses from the outset and very powerfully, the full gravity of our state, of our desperate need for salvation.
Let us turn our gaze and our heart to Christ, in spiritual union with the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Advent.
Let us place our hand in hers and enter joyfully into this new time of grace that God gives as a gift to his Church for the good of all humanity.
Like Mary and with her maternal help, let us make ourselves docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, so that the God of peace may sanctify us totally, and the Church become a sign and instrument of hope for all people. Amen.
Pope Benedict XVI
