Beware of false prophets

This was the last Wednesday audience before Christmas at St. Peter’s, and Pope Benedict used the opportunity to remind the 8,000 people present — and everyone who pays attention – to keep the celebration true to the event.

“In these final days of Advent,” said the Holy Father, “the liturgy invites us to approach … the stable in Bethlehem where the extraordinary event that changed the course of history took place: the birth of the Redeemer. On Christmas Eve, we will stand once again before the manger, and contemplate in wonder the ‘Word made Flesh.’ The chosen people awaited the Messiah but imagined him to be a powerful and victorious leader who would free his people from foreign oppression. Yet the Savior was born in silence and in absolute poverty.”

Always the teacher, Benedict asked (and answered) thought provoking questions.

“Does mankind in our own time still await the Savior?” the Pope asked. “It appears that many people consider God as foreign to their interests. They have no apparent need of Him, and live as if He did not exist or, worse still, as if He were an ‘obstacle’ to be removed in order to achieve self-fulfillment. Even among believers … are those who let themselves be attracted by alluring mirages and distracted by misleading doctrines that propose illusory shortcuts to happiness.”
 
“And yet,” he added, “with all their contradictions, their anguish and their dramas – or perhaps precisely because of them – men and women today seek a road of renewal, of salvation, they seek a Savior and await, sometimes without knowing it, the coming of Christ, man’s only true Redeemer.”
 
“Of course, false prophets continue to propose ‘low cost’ salvation, which always ends up delivering resounding disillusionment. Indeed, the history of the last 50 years provides an example of this search for a ‘low cost’ Savior and highlights all the consequent disillusionment.”

He is a startling and candid shepherd, acutely aware of the times. He has used the term “cheap grace” in speaking of the mercy of God. And now the image of a “low cost Savior” who presumably doesn’t ask much of us.

For this reason, the Pope concluded, Christians must, “with the testimony of their lives, propagate the truth of Christmas, which Christ brings to all men and women of good will. Born into poverty in the manger, Jesus came to offer everyone the joy and peace which alone can satisfy the needs of the human soul.”