At Christmas last year, Pope Benedict XVI asked several questions. They were:

• “Does humanity today still await the Savior?”
• Does a savior still have meaning “for a humanity that has reached the moon and Mars and is prepared to conquer the universe; for a humanity which knows no limits in the pursuit of nature’s secrets and which has succeeded even in deciphering the marvelous codes of the human genome?”
• “Is a savior needed by a humanity which has invented interactive communication, which navigates the virtual ocean of the Internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the earth, our great common home, a global village?”

These might seem unusual questions for a pope to be asking about the celebration of the birth of Jesus. But Pope Benedict’s manner of speaking and teaching often involves posing questions. And the questions he raises prompt us and challenge us to get to the heart of the matter and to put things in their proper perspective.

Pope Benedict did answer the questions he asked about humanity’s need for a savior.

The world does need Christ today, perhaps more than at any time in history, despite the technological advances that make humanity consider itself the “self-sufficient master of its own destiny,” he said. Humanity needs Christ “to remind the world where its true happiness lies.”

The world needs the Savior, he said, because “false prophets continue to propose ‘cheap’ salvation,” which ends us disappointing or destroying lives. He explained: “Many consider God to be extraneous to their own interests. Apparently, they do not need him; they live as if he did not exist, or, worse, as if he were an obstacle to be removed for their own self-realization.”

And, he added, “even among believers” there are those who seek “shortcuts to happiness.”

The point Pope Benedict was addressing at Christmas last year was underscored in his recent encyclical on Christian hope, “Spe Salvi.” There is a tendency for people to find their hope in the wrong places, such as in the products of science and technology. While these things can be beneficial to human development, this basis of hope, this basis of fulfillment, is not enough.

The pope writes: “Let us put it very simply: man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope. ... It is true that anyone who does not know God, even though he may entertain all kinds of hope, is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that sustains the whole life, Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God — God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end,’ until all ‘is accomplished.’ ”

Day in and day out, people experience different levels of hope, and sometimes these hopes appear to be satisfying, the pope says. Yet even when these hopes are fulfilled, there is still a void in one’s life that seeks to be filled.

Pope Benedict writes: “We need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain.

“God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end. ... His kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his kingdom is present whenever he is loved and whenever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its nature is imperfect.”

Christmas is about hope. It’s not the hope found in the material side of the season that is so emphasized by our society. Rather, it’s the hope found in the Christ-child in the manger at Bethlehem — the Savior who comes for all humanity. He is foundation of our hope, the hope for the ages.

As Pope Benedict says in his encyclical: Christ “shows us the way, and this way is the truth. He himself is both the way and the truth, and therefore he is also the life which all of us are seeking.”