Today the Ecclesial Community is invited, while it prepares to celebrate the great mystery of the Incarnation, to rediscover and deepen its personal relationship with God. The Latin word "adventus" refers to the coming of Christ and highlights God’s movement towards humanity, to which each one is called to respond with the openness and adherence that we appreciate in the Centurion.

And just as God is sovereignly free when He reveals and gives Himself, as He is moved only by love, so the human person is free in giving Him his assent, although it is something that is due: God awaits a response of love. In these days the liturgy presents the Virgin Mary as the perfect model of this response.

—Holy Mary, you, better than anyone else can help us to know, love and adore the son of God incarnated. Join me so that I can prepare myself with sincerity of heart and open-mindedness to recognize in your child of Bethlehem the son of God who came into the world to save us.