The Blessings of Christmas

By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

This lovely little book, profusely illustrated, is ideal for the Christmas and Advent season with its inspiring, profound, yet popular meditations on the blessings of the season by the current Pope. Taken from his sermons as well as his writings, these beautiful meditations by the acclaimed spiritual teacher, writer and now Pontiff, give his usual fresh insights into the deeper meaning of this most wondrous event, and show the Pope to be a man who knows how to address both the mind and the heart. Includes many Illustrations. Christmas is the most profoundly human feast of faith, because it allows us to feel most deeply the humanity of God. The crib has a unique power to show us what it means to say that God wished to be Immanuel - a God with us, a God we may address in intimate language, because he encounters us as a child. This makes Christmas a feast that invites us in a special way to meditation, to an internal act of looking at the Word. It awakens in us a deeper perception of the truth of the words from Scripture, The goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior has appeared.' - Pope Benedict XVI - from the Foreword