Vatican City, Jan 4, 2012 / 12:21 pm
The joy of the Christmas season is the unparalleled union of God and man, said Pope Benedict XVI at the first general audience for 2012.
“Humanity’s dream which began in the Garden of Eden - we want to be like God - is realized in an unexpected way, not through the greatness of man, who cannot make himself God, but through the humility of God who came down among us in his humility, raising us to the true greatness of his being,” the Pope said to the 7,000 people in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Jan. 4.
This is the reason why “our first reaction to the birth of Jesus should be one of joy,” he said, because we now know “that God has assumed our humanity in order to make us sharers in his own divine life.”
This, he explained, is what theologians refer to as the “admirabile commercium,” or “wondrous exchange,” that took place in Bethlehem.
Today we experience this exchange “most powerfully in the Eucharist,” which invites us “to recognize our lofty dignity as God’s adopted sons and daughters,” he said.