Pope: a Christmas creche is a 'school of life'
December 14, 2009
On Sunday, December 13, Pope Benedict XVI blessed hundreds of figures of the infant Jesus, to be placed in Christmas crèches in the homes and churches of Rome. In accordance with an old Vatican tradition, hundreds of children brought the Bambinelli from their family’s crèche set to St. Peter’s Square for the papal audience on the 3rd Sunday of Advent. In his remarks the Holy Father said that a crèche can be “a school of life, where we can learn the secret of true joy.” That secret, he said, is that Holy Family is “full of intimate joy because they love one another, they help one another and, above all, they are certain that God is at work in their story.” For the shepherds, he added, true joy comes from “feeling that our individual and community lives are touched by and filled with a great mystery, the mystery of the love of God..”
Near the conclusion of his Angelus audience, the Pope turned his attention to the Catholic missionaries who have been killed in Africa in recent days. Sending his condolences to their relatives and religious communities, he cited them as “faithful witnesses of the Gospel, which they announced with courage even at the risk of their own lives.”
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