Dear brothers and sisters,

I am pleased to greet all of you taking part in this year’s “Thy Kingdom Come” ecumenical prayer event, and to assure you of my spiritual closeness.

Each year, during the Advent season, Christians address God with the words, “Come, Emmanuel.” With great urgency we cry out for the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy: the birth of Emmanuel, whose name means God is with us. Throughout that season, in our songs and our carols, we repeat this call with ever greater urgency, “Come, God-with-us,” as we long for his presence.  We long for him to save us from our sins, our foolishness and all that might harm us.  We long for him to heal what is broken in us and what is broken in our world.  Even though we know that God is almighty and transcendent, we are still bold enough to ask him to be truly with us – not distant, but close. We are bold enough to cry out with the prophet, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Is 64:l).

While it is true that sometimes we stumble and forget about God and our need for him, at the core of our being we know that only he can satisfy our deepest longings and our inner restlessness. Perhaps the most beautiful expression of this can be found in the writings of Saint Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions, I, i, 1).  In Jesus, God has indeed come close.  He revealed himself in flesh to us, and through his Holy Spirit he is with us now.

Now, in these weeks of Eastertide, “Alleluia” is our song in a particular way, as we offer praise and thanksgiving for the resurrection of the Lord from the dead.  He is still God-with-us!  At the same time, we learn from the Gospels that even those closest to Jesus did not always recognize him in the days following his resurrection.  Even Mary Magdalene at first thought that the risen Lord was a gardener.  Yet, even though he was not immediately recognized, he was truly present.  And Jesus is still present, for when he returned to the Father’s side, he did not leave us orphans (cf. Jn 14:18).  He remains with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we encounter him in a variety of ways, for he is always truly present in the Church.

Dear friends, Christ is everything for us!  In him, we find the fullness of life and its meaning.  This is not something about which we can keep silent.  It is something to proclaim boldly (cf. Mt 10:27), for it is indeed Good News and needs to be shared.  God is with us, and we who have encountered him are called to tell others about him. These days of the “Thy Kingdom Come Novena” are an especially fitting time to do so, and to pray that others will also come to encounter the saving and liberating love of God revealed in Jesus.

Dear brothers and sisters, I would like to conclude by sharing with you some words from my homily in Saint Peter’s Basilica on Easter night: “The encounter to which we want to bear witness – through the words of faith and the works of charity – we do so by “singing” with our lives the “Alleluia” that we proclaim with our lips (cf. Saint Augustine, Sermon 256, 1). Just as the women rushed to tell the disciples, we too should be desiring to set out… to bring to all the good news that Jesus has risen and that having risen with him, through his power, we too can give life to a new world of peace and unity as ‘a multitude of people and yet […] a single person, for although there are many Christians, Christ is one’” (Saint Augustine, Commentaries on the Psalms, 127:3).

With these thoughts, I willingly invoke upon you all God’s abundant blessings.And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit come upon you and be with you always. Amen.