Advent, the current liturgical time, in
the past indicated the wait for the arrival of the king in a particular
province, but for Christians "it is a wonderful and stirring reality:
God has left His Heaven and come down to earth for man; forged an
alliance with him coming into the history of a people, He is the king
who came down to this poor province that is the earth, and gifted us
with His visit, taking on human flesh and becoming man like us".There is a Mexican nativity scene in the Paul VI Hall a sign of the pending festivities, the memory of that moment when, in the words of Benedict XVI, "from the cave came a new beginning in the history of man."
The general audience today was also the occasion of the Pope's first "tweet" announced after the final greeting: On a small table, at about 11.30 Benedict XVI launched his first "tweet" from a tablet, which says "Dear friends I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart." With mobile phones, the phrase was retweeted by many of those present, a small percentage of the one million followers of the @ pontifex (pictured) account.
Earlier, in his speech to five thousand people present at the audience, the Pope continued his reflections of last week on the "God's revelation as His communicating of Himself and His loving plan," pointing out that in the Incarnation, "God shows his face in Jesus. "
"It 's it is the mystery that we will soon contemplate at Christmas: Salvation which is realized in Jesus Christ. In Jesus of Nazareth, God shows his face and asks man to decide to recognize and follow Him. God's revealing Himself in history in order to enter into a relationship of loving dialogue with man, gives new meaning to the entire human journey. History is not just a succession of centuries, years, days, but it is the time of a presence that gifts it full meaning and opens it up to a solid hope".
Advent, he said, "invites us to follow the path of this presence and reminds us again and again that God is not removed from the world, He is not absent, we were not left to ourselves, but He comes to us in different ways, which we need to learn to discern. And we, with our faith, our hope and our charity, are called every day to see and bear witness to this presence, in an often superficial and distracted world, to reflect in our lives the light that illuminated the cave of Bethlehem!".