On this Second Sunday of Advent and again from the balcony of the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican to address the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to be credible voices that announce Jesus, living silence, sobriety and listens to her.
“On this second Sunday of Advent the Gospel tells us about John the Baptist, the percussor of Jesus, and describes him as ‘the voice of one crying in the desert.’ The desert, an empty place, where he does not communicate, and the voice, a means of speaking, seem like two contradictory images, but in the Baptist they are combined,” the Holy Father indicated in his reflection.
Unlike last Sunday, when for health reasons the meditation was read at Casa Santa Marta by Mons. Paolo Braida , from the Vatican Secretariat of State, this time it was the Pontiff himself who read the text prepared for this occasion. .
Regarding the desert, Pope Francis recalled: “John preaches there, on the banks of the Jordan River, near the point where his people, many centuries before, entered the promised land. Doing so is as if to say: to listen to God we must return to the place where for forty years He accompanied, protected and educated his people, in the desert.
“This is the place of silence and essentiality, where one cannot allow oneself to be entertained with useless things, but rather it is necessary to concentrate on what is essential to live.”
In this image of the desert, the Holy Father continued, there is “an always current claim: to proceed on the path of life it is necessary to get rid of the ‘extra’, because living well does not mean filling oneself with useless things, but rather freeing oneself from what is superfluous, to dig deep within oneself, to grasp what is truly important before God.”
Pope Francis then specified: “Only if, through silence and prayer, we make space for Jesus, who is the Word of the Father, will we know how to free ourselves from the contamination of vain words and verbiage. Silence and sobriety – in words, in the use of things, media and networks – are not just ‘adornments’ or virtues, but essential elements of the Christian life.”
Regarding the second image, the voice, the Pontiff highlighted that “this is the instrument with which we express what we think and carry in our hearts. We understand then that it is closely linked to silence, because it expresses what matures within, from listening to what the Spirit suggests.”
“Brothers and sisters, if you do not know how to remain silent, it is difficult to have something good to say; On the other hand, the more attentive the silence, the stronger the word. “John the Baptist…the prophetic power of his voice is linked to the authenticity of his experience and the clarity of his heart.”
Pope Francis also encouraged us to question ourselves: “What place does silence have in my days? Is it an empty silence, perhaps oppressive, or a space for listening, for prayer, where the heart can be guarded? Is my life sober or full of superfluous things? Even if it means going against the current, let us value silence, sobriety and listening.”
To conclude, the Pontiff made wishes that “Mary, Virgin of silence, helps us to love the desert, to become credible voices that announce her Son who is coming.”