As the Church celebrates the season of Advent, Pope Benedict said that Catholics should remember “God is present” and recall his “plan of loving goodness. Advent invites us, in the midst of many difficulties, to renew the assurance that God is present," he told thousands in his general audience at the Vatican recently. Pope Benedict XVI called Advent the time which prepares us for the coming of Christ, which he said is "the great plan of loving goodness," which God wants to use to draw us to him. "He came into the world, becoming a man like us, to fulfill his plan of love and God demands we become a sign of action in the world," he told the pilgrims at Paul VI Hall. "This ‘plan of loving goodness’ hasn't remained in God's silence, in the height of his heaven, but he has revealed it by engaging in a relationship with man, whom he has revealed himself to," he said. Pope Benedict noted that God has not delivered simply a set of truths, but has communicated himself to us by becoming one of us. "God reveals his great plan of love entering into a relationship with man, coming close to him, to the point of being himself man," he added. "Saint John Chrysostom, in a famous comment on the beginning of the Letter to the Ephesians, invites people to enjoy all the beauty of this ‘plan of loving goodness’ of God revealed in Christ with these words. "What do you miss? You have become immortal, you have become free, you have become a child, you have become righteous, you're a brother, you have become a joint heir with Christ to reign and with Christ to glorify," the Pope said, quoting the saint. The Pope also reflected on how communion in Christ through the Holy Spirit is not something that overlaps with our humanity but is the fulfillment of the deepest human longings. It is the desire for the infinite that dwells in the depths of the human being and opens it to an eternal happiness, he said. The pontiff also remembered Blessed Pope John Paul II's point that "revelation sets within history a point of reference which man can't ignore, if he wants to come to understand the mystery of his existence." According to Pope Benedict, who has been delivering a series of reflections on faith at the weekly general audiences, faith is man's response to God's revelation, and we must do as St. Paul says and be obedient to faith. Faith is an attitude and a change of mentality in which man freely commits himself to God, leading to a "fundamental change in how we relate to the whole of reality, as everything appears in a new light," he noted. Seeing with God's eyes, Pope Benedict asserted, is what makes life solid and allows us to stand and not fall. "Through our faith, our hope, our love, he wants to enter the world again and again, he wants to shine his light in our night," he concluded.
The twelve apostles chosen by Jesus formed the bedrock of the early Church , and their Catholic identity is deeply rooted in their direct relationship with Christ and the mission He entrusted to them. The Catechism of the Catholic Church highlights this foundational role, stating that Jesus "instituted the Twelve as 'the seeds of the new Israel and the beginning of the sacred hierarchy'" ( CCC 860 ). These men were not simply followers; they were handpicked by Jesus, lived intimately with Him, witnessed His miracles and teachings firsthand, and were specifically commissioned to preach the Gospel to all nations ( Matthew 28:19-20 ). Their unique position as eyewitnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and their reception of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, established them as the authoritative leaders of the nascent Church, a reality echoed in the writings of early Church Fathers like Ignatius of Antioch, who emphasized the apostles' authority as repre...