VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) - We present the Wedneday catechesis given by Pope Benedict XVI on the first Wednesday of the first week of Advent:

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Pope Benedict XVI

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

At the beginning of his letter to the Christians of Ephesus (cf. 1, 3-14), the apostle Paul raises a prayer of blessing God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ - a prayer that we have just heard - that introduces us to live the season of Advent, in the context of the faith. The theme of this hymn of praise is God's plan for man, defined in terms full of joy, wonder and gratitude, as a "benevolent plan" (see 9), mercy and love.

Why does the Apostle raise this blessing God, from the depths of his heart? Because he looks at his work in the history of salvation, culminating in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus, and he contemplates how Heavenly Father has chosen us even before the creation of the world, to be his sons in his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 8:14 s.; Gal 4:4 f.).

Therefore we exist from eternity in God, in a major project that God has kept within himself and decided to implement and to reveal in "the fullness of time" (cf. Eph 1:10). St. Paul helps us to understand, then, how all creation and, in particular, man and woman are not the result of chance, but a loving plan to respond to the eternal reason of God with the creative and redemptive power of his Word which creates the world. This first statement reminds us that our vocation is not simply to exist in the world, being inserted in history, or even just being a creature of God, it is something greater: it is being chosen by God, even before the creation of the world, in the Son, Jesus Christ. In Him we exist, so to speak, already. God contemplates us in Christ, as adopted children.

The "benevolent plan" of God, which is qualified by the Apostle as a "loving plan" (Eph 1:5), is called "the mystery" of Divine will (v. 9), hidden and now revealed in the Person and work of Christ. The divine initiative precedes any human response: it is a free gift of His love that surrounds us and transforms us. But what is the ultimate goal of this mysterious plan? What is the centre of God's will? It is - Saint Paul tells us - to "bring all things back to Christ, the only head" (v. 10). In this expression we find one of the central formulations of the New Testament that make us understand the plan of God, his plan of love for humanity, a formulation in the second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons placed at the core of his Christology : "to restore " all reality in Christ.

Perhaps some of you remember the formula used by Pope St. Pius X for the consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus: "Instaurare omnia in Christo", a formula that refers to this Pauline expression, and that was also the motto of this holy Pontiff . The Apostle, however, speaks more specifically of restoring the universe in Christ, and this means that in the great design of creation and history, Christ stands as the center of the entire journey of the world, the central pillar, that attracts the whole of reality to itself, to overcome dispersion and limitation and lead everything to the fullness desired by God (cf. Eph 1:23).

This "benevolent plan" has not been kept, so to speak, in the silence of God in the height of his heaven, but He has made it known by engaging with the man, to whom He has not only revealed something, but His very self. He has not simply communicated a set of truths, but He communicated Himself to us, to the point of becoming one of us, to being incarnate. The Second Vatican Council in its Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum affirms: "

In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature "(n. 2). God not only says something, He communicates with us, draws us into the divine nature, so that we are involved in the divine nature, deified. God reveals His great plan of love engaging with man approaching him to the point of becoming himself is a man.

The Council continues: "The invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself "(ibid.). By his intelligence and abilities alone man could not have reached this illuminating revelation of God's love, it is God who has opened up His heaven and lowered himself to lead man into the abyss of his love.

As St. Paul writes to the Christians of Corinth: "What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him," this God has revealed to us through ...