(Please read the passage cited above first.)
My sisters and brothers,
Today we celebrate the Second Sunday of Advent. St Paul wrote to the people of Philippi, “Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.” St Paul loved the Philippians because they were co-workers with him in spreading the Gospel.
I can give thanks to my God for you. You are co-workers with me in the Gospel. For example, you bring your children for baptism. You bring them to church every Sunday. You teach them the ways of Christ, how they ought to live with Christ.
You mothers and fathers are the first teachers of your children. This responsibility is the work God has given you because you are the parents of your children. When you pray with them, when you speak to them about God, when you correct them, you are teaching them the ways of God. Therefore, you are coworkers with the Church in the work of evangelizing the world for Christ.
The message of St Paul for us this Advent is that the Church loves us with the same intimate love with which Christ loves us. May our love increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of spiritual understanding.
St Paul and the Church want to build us on the foundation God has given us when God created us, and which Jesus has redeemed in his work of redemption. We have the ability to be pure and blameless until the day of Christ to the glory and praise of God.
As Jesus, in the womb of his mother, grew to the maturity of coming to birth, and as Jesus grew through infancy and adolescence to become an adult, so we have to grow more and more in our love for God because God has called us to be clean and holy, without blame, until the day of the coming of Christ.
My sisters and brothers, we are clean and children of God through our baptism. Just as you cannot forget your children and just as you can forgive all the faults of your children, and just as you can always love your children, so likewise, God cannot forget us, but rather always forgives us, always loves us, always feeds us so that our love and life keep growing to the perfection of all the children of God.
My sisters and brothers, you are filled with the fruits of justice. May God grant you increase in the love for God and in the joy of all the children of God for the glory and praise of God.