Vatican City, Nov 29, 2011 / 01:14 am
Catholic priests should ask the Virgin Mary for a heart able to “relive Christ’s coming” during Advent this year, Cardinal Mauro Piacenza said.
The cardinal, who serves as prefect for the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, said in his Nov. 27 Advent message to priests that Mary lived “constantly in prayerful vigilance.”
“In vigilance, she received the announcement that changed the history of humanity. In vigilance, she kept and contemplated, more than any other, the Almighty who became her Son,” he said.
Cardinal Piacenza noted that Mary was also prayerfully vigilant as she became “filled with loving and grateful wonder” while giving birth “to the Light Himself and, together with St. Joseph, became a disciple of Him to whom she had given birth.”