Christmas celebrations are often full of sound. It would be good for us to make room for silence, to hear the voice of Love.

A way has to be found to enable everyone to benefit from the fruits of the earth, and not simply to close the gap between the affluent and those who must be satisfied with the crumbs falling from the table, but above all to satisfy the demands of justice, fairness and respect for every human being.

The Church is likewise conscious of the responsibility which all of us have for our world, for the whole of creation, which we must love and protect. There is much that we can do to benefit the poor, the needy and those who suffer, and to favour justice, promote reconciliation and build peace. But before all else we need to keep alive in our world the thirst for the absolute, and to counter the dominance of a one-dimensional vision of the human person, a vision which reduces human beings to what they produce and to what they consume: this is one of the most insidious temptations of our time.

May the power of Christ, which brings freedom and service, be felt in so many hearts afflicted by war, persecution and slavery.

The Lord speaks to us through the Scriptures and in our prayer. Let us learn to keep silence before him, as we meditate upon the Gospel.

10 days before the death of St. John Paul II, in that Via Crucis of Holy Friday, Joseph Ratzinger said to the whole Church that it needed to clean up the dirt of the Church.

When exhaling this air, we announced Jesus Christ risen by the same Spirit. No one can live without breathing. It is the same for the Christian: without praise and mission there is not Christian life. And with praise, worship. We rarely speak about worship. What do we do when we pray? We ask things of God, we give thanks. But worshipping and adoring God is part of breathing - praise and worship.