Saturday, July 30 : Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger [Pope Benedict XVI]

In all the miraculous births in the old covenant at the decisive turning points in the history of salvation…, the meaning of the event is the same every time: the salvation of the world does not come from man, from his own strength. The human person must allow it to be given him, he can only receive it as a free gift. The virginal birth of Christ is first of all a message about the way in which salvation comes to us – in the simplicity of welcome, as an absolutely free gift of the love which redeems the world. “Break forth in jubilant song, you who were not in labor, for more numerous are the children of the deserted wife than the children of her who has a husband.” (Isa 54:1) In Jesus, God began something new in the midst of sterile and desperate humankind, something which is not the product of our history, but a gift from on high. If it is true that every human being already constitutes an ineffable newness, that each one represents a unique creature of God’s in history, Jesus is the true newness. He does not proceed from humankind’s own resources, but from the Spirit of God. That is why he is the “new Adam” (1 Cor 15:47). A new humanity begins with him… Christian faith professes that God is not a prisoner of his eternity, limited to what is purely spiritual. On the contrary, God can act here and now, in the midst of my universe. He did act there effectively in Jesus, the new Adam, born of the Virgin Mary through God’s creative power, whose Spirit hovered over the waters in the beginning (Gen 1:2), creating being from nothing.
maronite readings – rosary,team