Advent: Memory & Hope.

Another reminder of the Advent prayers and devotions found at the Lent & Beyond site, where this morning I found the following from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI:

Advent is concerned with that very connection between memory and hope which is so necessary to man. Advent’s intention is to awaken the most profound and basic emotional memory within us, namely, the memory of the God who became a child. This is a healing memory; it brings hope. The purpose of the Church’s year is continually to rehearse her great history of memories, to awaken the heart’s memory so that it can discern the star of hope.…

It is the beautiful task of Advent to awaken in all of us memories of goodness and thus to open doors of hope.

The Holy Father says in a few luminous words what I have been unable to say clearly in my first two of this year's Advent sermons.