Dearest brothers and sons!

It is dear to me to address you again today, who have gathered here for the Angelus prayer in the atmosphere so typical and intimate of holy Christmas. Today, in fact, Christmas continues its salutary and invigorating atmosphere, and our souls still breathe in it because of the sense of enduring wonder and amazement before the great event which has taken place and which, inexhaustible in its efficacy, is projected into the whole course of time. I mean the event or, more precisely, the mystery of the Son of God being born in Bethlehem as the Son of Man, to make himself our brother and saviour for us.

So august and unfathomable is this mystery that we cannot meditate on it enough. For this reason, the Church in her liturgical and catechetical wisdom proposes it to us every year, for a commemoration that extends over not a few days and is articulated in a special cycle that we call the 'Christmas liturgical cycle'.

2. And I wish to venerate with you St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as the Church does on the day after the feast of Christmas.

"Yesterday we celebrated the temporal birth of our eternal king; today we celebrate the glorious passion of one of his soldiers. For yesterday our King, clothed in the noble robe of his flesh, coming forth from the palace of the virginal bosom, deigned to visit the world; today one of his soldiers, leaving the tent of the body, has ascended as a triumphant man into heaven'. These are the evocative expressions of a saint of the early Church, St Fulgentius (St Fulgentius, Sermo 3, 1), and they retain their meaning intact because they enucleate a relationship not only of liturgical continuity between the feast of Christmas and that of the protomartyr, but also, above all, of intrinsic connection in the order of holiness and grace. Christ, king of history and redeemer of man, stands at the centre of that journey towards perfection, to which he calls man, every man.

As we venerate St Stephen and his invincible example as a witness to Christ, as he showed himself by his spirited speech, by his concern for the service of the poor, by his constancy during his trial and, above all, by his heroic death, we see that his figure is illuminated and magnified in the light of his Lord and master, whom he wanted to follow in the supreme sacrifice. It is the Lord Jesus who alone provides the succour and comfort necessary for souls to be faithful unto death.

From this derives a valuable lesson for us: looking at Stephen in the perspective of Christmas, we must take up his example and his teaching, which univocally lead us back to Christ who, born in the cave of Bethlehem, is already on his way - in the final intention of the redemptive work - to the hill of Calvary. Made sons of God by him, called to live as sons of God, we too will be crowned like Stephen up there, in the homeland, if we are faithful.

[Pope John Paul II, Angelus 26 December 1980]

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Stephen, the first martyr. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles tells us about him (cf. 6-7), and today’s liturgy presents him to us in the final moments of his life, when he is captured and stoned (cf. 6: 12; 7: 54-60). In the joyful climate of Christmas, this memory of the first Christian killed for the faith could appear out of place. However, precisely from the perspective of faith, today’s celebration is in tune with the true meaning of Christmas. In Stephen’s martyrdom, in fact, violence is defeated by love, death by life: at the hour of supreme witness, he contemplates the open heavens and grants forgiveness to his persecutors (cf. v. 60).

This young servant of the Gospel, full of the Holy Spirit, knew how to narrate Jesus in words, and above all with his life. Looking to him, we see the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise to His disciples: “When they deliver you over … what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (cf. Mt 10: 19-20). In the school of Saint Stephen, who became similar to his Master both in life and in death, we too set our gaze on Jesus, a faithful witness of the Father. We learn that the glory of Heaven, the glory that lasts for eternal life, is not made up of wealth and power, but of love and self-giving.

We need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb 12: 2), to be able to give reason to the hope that was given to us (cf. 1 Pt 3: 15), through the challenges and trials that we must face daily. For us Christians, heaven is no longer distant, separate from earth: in Jesus, Heaven descended to earth. And thanks to Him, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, we can assume all that which is human and guide it towards Heaven. So may the first witness be precisely our way of being human, a way of life formed according to Jesus: gentle and courageous, humble and noble, non-violent.

Stephen was a deacon, one of the first seven deacons of the Church (cf. Acts 6: 1-6). He teaches us to proclaim Christ through gestures of fraternity and evangelical charity. His witness, culminating in martyrdom, is a source of inspiration for the renewal of our Christian communities. They are called to become increasingly missionary, all of them tending towards evangelization, determined to reach out to men and women in the existential and geographical peripheries, where there is a greater thirst for hope and salvation. Communities that do not follow the worldly logic, that do not put themselves, their own image, at the centre, but only the glory of God and the good of the people, especially the little ones and the poor.

The feast of this first martyr Stephen calls us to remember all the martyrs of yesterday and today – nowadays they are many! – to feel in communion with them, and to ask them for the grace to live and die with the name of Jesus in our hearts and on our lips. May Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, help us to live this Christmas time by fixing our gaze on Jesus, so that we may become more like Him every day.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 26 December 2019]

IV Sunday in Advent (year A)  [21 December 2025]

May God bless us and the Virgin protect us! As we approach Christmas, the Word of God reminds us of the Lord's faithfulness even when the unfaithfulness of his people might weary him (first reading). The Gospel introduces us to Saint Joseph, the man who silently accepts and fulfils his mission as father of the Son of God. 

*First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (7:10-14)

It is around 735 BC. The kingdom of David has been divided into two states for two centuries: Samaria in the north and Jerusalem in the south, where Ahaz, a young king of twenty, reigns. The political situation is dramatic: the Assyrian empire, with its capital at Nineveh, dominates the region; the kings of Damascus and Samaria, already defeated by the Assyrians, now rebel and besiege Jerusalem to replace Ahaz with an allied ruler. The king panics: 'the heart of the king and the heart of the people were agitated like the trees of the forest by the wind' (Isaiah 7:2). The prophet Isaiah invites him to calm down and have faith: God has promised to keep David's dynasty alive; stability depends on trust in the Lord: if you do not believe, you will not remain steadfast. But Ahaz does not listen: he turns to idols and goes so far as to commit an atrocious act forbidden by the prophets, sacrificing his only son by passing him through the fire (cf. 2 Kings 16:3). He then decides to ask Assyria for help, a choice that entails the loss of political and religious independence. Isaiah strongly opposes this: it is a betrayal of the Covenant and of the liberation that began with Moses. In this context, Isaiah offers a sign: "Ask for a sign from the Lord your God." Ahaz responds hypocritically, pretending humility by not asking for it so as not to tempt the Lord, while he has already decided to entrust himself to Assyria. Isaiah replies rather harshly, saying not to weary 'my God', as if to indicate that Ahaz has now placed himself outside the Covenant. Despite the king's unfaithfulness, God remains faithful and, says Isaiah, 'the Lord himself will give you a sign': the young woman (the queen) is pregnant and the child will be called Immanuel, 'God with us'. This message from Isaiah is one of the classic texts of biblical messianism. Neither the enemies nor the king's sin can nullify the promise made by God to David. The child – probably the future king Hezekiah – will know how to choose good thanks to the Spirit of the Lord, and even before he grows up, the threat from Samaria and Damascus will disappear. In fact, shortly afterwards, the two kingdoms are destroyed by the Assyrians. Human freedom remains intact, and even Hezekiah will make mistakes; but Isaiah's prophecy affirms that nothing can prevent God's faithfulness to David's descendants. For this reason, throughout the centuries, Israel will wait for a king who will fully realise the name of Immanuel. The birth of the child is more than good news: it is an announcement of forgiveness. By sacrificing his son to the god Moloch, Ahaz compromised the promise made to David; but God does not withdraw his commitment. The birth of the new heir shows that God's faithfulness surpasses the unfaithfulness of men. The 'sign' thus takes on another encouraging messianic dimension, which we see more clearly in this Sunday's Gospel. 

Important elements to remember: +Historical context: 735 BC, divided kingdom, threats from Syria, Samaria and Assyria. +Ahaz's panic and Isaiah's invitation to faith. +Serious unfaithfulness of the king: idolatry and sacrifice of his son. +Wrong political choice: alliance with Assyria. +Isaiah's sign: birth of the child called Immanuel. +Immediate fulfilment: destruction of Syria and Samaria by Assyria. +Central theme: the unfaithfulness of men does not nullify God's faithfulness. +Birth as an announcement of forgiveness and continuity of the Davidic promise.

Responsorial Psalm (23/24, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6)

The psalm takes us to the temple in Jerusalem: a great procession arrives at the gates and two choirs dialogue, asking: 'Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?' The image recalls Isaiah, who describes the thrice-holy God as a consuming fire before which no one could 'stand' without his help. The people of Israel have discovered that this totally 'Other' God also becomes the totally 'near' God, allowing man to remain in his presence. The psalm's answer is: 'Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, who do not turn to idols'. This is not primarily a matter of moralism, because the people know that they are admitted before God by grace, not by their own merit. Here, 'pure heart' means an undivided heart, turned solely to the one God; 'innocent hands' are hands that have not offered sacrifices to idols. The expression 'does not turn/literally does not lift up his soul' indicates not turning to empty deities: 'lifting up one's eyes' in the Bible means invoking, praying, recognising someone as God. This verse recalls the prophets' great struggle against idolatry. Isaiah had already opposed Ahaz in the eighth century; and even during the Exile in Babylon, the people - immersed in a polytheistic culture - were tempted to return to idols. The psalm, sung after the Exile, reminds us that the first condition of the Covenant is to remain faithful to the one God. Seeking the face of God is an image taken from the language of the court: only those who are faithful to the King can be admitted into his presence. Idols are defined as 'empty gods': Psalm 115 masterfully describes their nullity – they have eyes, mouths, hands, but they do not see, speak or act. Unlike these statues, God is alive and truly works. Fidelity to the one God is therefore the condition for receiving the blessing promised to the fathers and for entering into his plan of salvation. This is why Jesus will say: 'No one can serve two masters' (Matthew 6:24).

This fidelity, however, does not remain abstract: it concretely transforms life. The pure heart becomes a heart of flesh capable of eliminating hatred and violence; innocent hands become hands incapable of doing evil. The psalm says: "He will obtain blessing from the Lord, justice from God his salvation": this means both conforming to God's plan and living in right relationship with others. Here we already glimpse the light of the Beatitudes: Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God... blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. The expression 'lift up your eyes', expressed here as 'those who do not turn to idols' (v. 4), returns in Zechariah and in the Gospel of John: 'They will look on the one they have pierced' (Jn 19:37), a sign of a new encounter with God.

Important elements to remember: +Scene in the temple with the dialogue of the choirs. +God is thrice holy and at the same time close: he allows man to 'stand' before him. +'Pure heart' and 'innocent hands' as fidelity to the one God, not idolatry and the prophets' constant struggle against idolatry (Ahaz, Exile). +Idols as 'empty gods'; criticism of Psalm 115. +Fidelity to the one God as the first condition of the Covenant, which has as its ethical consequences a righteous life, a renewed heart, and non-violent hands. 

Second Reading from the Letter of St Paul to the Romans (1:1-7)

St Paul opens his letter to the Romans by summarising the whole Christian faith: the promises contained in the Scriptures, the mystery of Christ, his birth and resurrection, the free election of the holy people and the mission of the Apostles to the pagan nations. Writing to a community he has not yet met, Paul introduces himself with two titles: 'servant of Jesus Christ and apostle by calling', that is, sent, one who acts by mandate. He immediately attributes to Jesus the title of Christ, which means Messiah: to say 'Jesus Christ' is to profess that Jesus of Nazareth is the expected Messiah. Paul claims to have been 'chosen to proclaim the Gospel of God', the Good News: proclaiming the Gospel means proclaiming that God's plan is totally benevolent and that this plan is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This Good News, says Paul, had already been promised in the prophets. Without the Old Testament, one cannot understand the New Testament because God's plan is unique, revealed progressively throughout history. The Resurrection of Christ is the centre of history, the heart of the divine plan from the beginning, as Paul also recalls in his letter to the Ephesians, where he speaks of God's will to recapitulate all things in Christ (Eph 1:9-10). 'According to the flesh': Jesus is a descendant of David, therefore a true man and Messiah. "According to the Spirit": Jesus is constituted Son of God "with power" through his Resurrection, and in the Resurrection God enthrones him as King of the new humanity. For Paul, this is the event that changes history because "if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile" (cf. 1 Cor 15:14). For this reason, he proclaims the Resurrection everywhere, so that "the name of Jesus Christ may be recognised", as he also writes in his letter to the Philippians (2:9-11), God has given him the Name above every other name, that of "Lord". Paul feels that his apostolic mission is "to bring about the obedience of faith in all peoples". "Obedience" is not servility, but trusting listening: it is the attitude of the child who trusts in the Father's love and welcomes his Word. Paul concludes with his typical greeting: 'Grace to you and peace from God', which is expressed in the priestly blessing in the Book of Numbers: grace and peace always come from God, but it is up to man to accept them freely.

Most important elements to remember: +Summary of the Christian faith: the promises are fulfilled in Christ, in the Resurrection, election and mission. +Paul's titles are servant and apostle, while the title 'Christ' is 'Messiah', which is a profession of faith. +The Gospel is God's merciful plan fulfilled in Christ. +Unity between the Old and New Testaments and Christ in his identity 'according to the flesh' and 'according to the Spirit': he is at the centre of God's plan from the beginning. +The Resurrection is the decisive event, and 'obedience of faith' is trusting listening. +Final blessing: grace and peace, in human freedom.

From the Gospel according to Matthew (1:18-24) 

Matthew opens his Gospel with the expression: "Genealogy of Jesus Christ", that is, the book of the genesis of Jesus Christ, and presents a long genealogy that demonstrates Joseph's Davidic descent. Following the formula "A begot B", Matthew arrives at Joseph, but breaks with the pattern: he cannot say "Joseph begot Jesus"; instead, the evangelist writes: "Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ" (Mt 1:16). This formula shows that the genealogy undergoes a change: for Jesus to be included in the line of David, his birth is not enough; Joseph must adopt him. The Son of God, in a certain sense, entrusts himself to the freedom of a man: the divine plan depends on Joseph's 'yes'. We are familiar with the Annunciation to Mary in Luke's Gospel, which is widely represented in art. Much less represented, however, is the Annunciation to Joseph, even though it is decisive: the human story of Jesus begins thanks to the free acceptance of a righteous man. The angel calls Joseph 'son of David' and reveals to him the mystery of Jesus' sonship: conceived by the Holy Spirit, yet recognised as his son. 'Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife' means that Jesus will enter Joseph's house, and it will be he who will give him his name. Matthew also explains the meaning of the name Jesus: it means 'The Lord saves'. His mission is not only to free Israel from human power, but to save his people from sin. In Jewish tradition, the expectation of the Messiah included a total renewal: new creation, justice and peace. Matthew sees all this encapsulated in the name of Jesus. The text specifies: 'the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit'. There are two accounts of the virgin birth: this one by Matthew (Annunciation to Joseph) and the one by Luke (Annunciation to Mary). The Church professes this truth as an article of faith: Jesus is both true man, born of a woman, included in the lineage of David thanks to Joseph's free choice; and true Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit. Matthew links all this to Isaiah's prophecy: "The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means 'God-with-us'". The Greek translation of Isaiah (Septuagint), which Matthew quotes, uses the term 'virgin' (parthenos), while the Hebrew text uses almah, which means 'young woman' who is not yet married: even the ancient translation reflected the belief that the Messiah would be born of a virgin. Matthew insists: the child will be called Jesus (the Lord saves), but the prophet calls him Emmanuel (God-with-us). This is not a contradiction: at the end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus will say, 'I am with you always, even unto the end of the world' (Mt 28:20). His name and his mission coincide: to save means to be with man, to accompany him, never to abandon him. Joseph believed and welcomed the presence of God. As Elizabeth said to Mary, 'Blessed is she who believed' (Lk 1:45), so we can say, 'Blessed is Joseph who believed: thanks to him, God was able to fulfil his plan of salvation'. Matthew uses the word "genesis" twice (Mt 1:1, 18), as in the book of Genesis when speaking of the descendants of Adam. This suggests that the entire history of humanity is recapitulated in Jesus: he is the New Adam, as St Paul will say.

Most important elements to remember: Break in the genealogy: Jesus is not "begotten" by Joseph but through adoption fulfils the plan of salvation. Joseph's freedom is fundamental in the fulfilment of God's plan. Title "son of David" and Joseph's legal role. Name of Jesus = "The Lord saves" mission of salvation from sins. +Virgin conception: mystery of faith, true man and true Son of God. +Quotation from Isaiah 7:14 according to the Greek translation ("virgin"). +Jesus and Emmanuel: salvation as the constant presence of God. +Parallel with Elizabeth's beatitude: Joseph's faith. +Jesus as the "New Adam" according to the reference to "Genesis".

Commentary by St Augustine, Sermon 51, on the Incarnation

"Joseph was greater in silence than many in speech: he believed the angel, accepted the mystery, protected what he did not fully understand. In him we see how faith does not consist in understanding everything, but in trusting God who works in secret." Augustine thus emphasises Joseph's unique role: his faith is trusting obedience; he welcomes Christ without possessing him; he becomes the guardian of the mystery that saves the world.

+Giovanni D'Ercole

(Lk Christmas)

It would make no sense to put a cake filled with candles in front of the Nativity. We sing another Wonder: the discovery of a Treasure, hidden behind our dark sides.

Christmas is not an anniversary or birthday, but an event of Revelation of the divine Face: not absolute Sovereign, but poor naked and unarmed among ordinary people, lying on unclean place.

Do we feel "badly done"? We are on the right track - which is not that of the exasperated controls.

God did not "become superhuman", but «Flesh». Reality that the Father makes breathe, embraces and recovers - enlightens and doesn’t discard.

The meaning of Christmas is to let all the uncertain but unrepeatable implications of imperfection pass through us. Not like a fault.

"Weak" points and eccentricities will become strong points.

It takes unpredictable time to trace the way of growth - an unexpected path; and God accepts it.

Incarnation is an irruption of Eternity between our walls and crises: the dreaming Unexpected, that invests the suburbs and doesn’t place distances.

In the shepherds - who we are - the rough, alternate and impure, become priority appointees.

Strident judgment compared to the ephemeral authentic: that of ceremonial opinions.

It’s not an extrinsic redemption, aimed only for the misfits of society, of course. It concerns us.

Under the momentary rind of our "certain things" intrigues a seed that will make our new Child.

The inner Jesus wants to be nursed, guarded, nourished, so that he may grow according to an intimate Drawing, a process of sacred (but unprotected) Exodus that saves.

Mystery that’s not at natural external reach, because in tune with the Call by Name, with its unique innate, multifaceted, vital character - which should not be extinguished.

The development of emotions, inclinations and passions, of our Roots, should not be disturbed by weights of thought, by cloaks of habits, or conditioning.

[Even accelerations hinder evolution: e.g. the desire to deal with insufficiency, in order to solve it immediately].

In general, it harms the battle we set up with ourselves to be accepted - by conforming to the outline.

So the commitment is to sit in an armor that doesn’t belong to us.

Day after day a Flame is giving birth to another and different Infant - in appearance contradictory, unbalanced, unsteady, dented.

This vigorous adolescent doesn’t enjoy lacerating programs, but an awareness of Faith: the Creator wants to walk-with our discrepancies.

There is an intimate Jesus, perhaps not yet weaned: he smiles at us calmly and with open arms.

There is no truth more beautiful than in the vertigo of being able to give birth and express the hidden Little that each one is in the soul’s face.

In his last Christmas Vigil, Paul VI wanted to emphasize that in the arrival of the Logos «Everyone can say: for me!».

May this Time help us to understand this personal dimension; we are not the ones who have to fight against ourselves.

For a Christmas that is already Easter. The punctured cocoon will make our butterfly.

Mary, the Art of Perception that breaks the mould

(Lk 2:19) (Lk 1:26-38)

For a life from the authentic self to the unknown Apex

"Now, Mary kept and treasured all - really all - these event-words, putting them together and comparing them in her heart" [sense of the Greek text].

What about her, her Son, and all the others?

He wanted to understand the essential affinities - with the soul and elsewhere: the meaning of the strange and simple happenings. Golden rule for us too.

In the portrait of Jesus suckling, his silence did not linger - and he did not allow himself to be demotivated: he dug.

That is why he knew far more expressive things than many minds - sublime and yet incapable of breaking out of automatisms, already flooded with remarkable doctrines and traditions.

We are gladly there too, with Mary; in a culture that invades our senses and pollutes our souls with noisy opinions, with models that are apparently eloquent but which bring us to our knees: stressful and futile.

All emphatic, impactful reproductions - but external.

Yet they overflow into the innermost, and despite glittering appearances, lock the personality into a confined space of unhealthy habits, only to be exhibited.

In fact, we force ourselves to run from one side to the other, often acting out prototypes. Precisely, forcibly intrigued by plans, organigrams and thoughts, even devout ones, which however become forms of personal and social trivialisation.

We are becoming accustomed to the fear of our discreet, reserved, non-gossipy, secluded, hidden side, all our own and close to the Source: in a word, guardian of the Calling by Name - which wants to pause to return to the ancient Listening of the new.

A side we do not yet know: it never has the same tone as always. It is all our own, but it alludes to real encounters.

By sharpening our inner vision, we grasp our source and the meaning of history; and its folds - so we can still give birth to the precious world inside and outside us.

We do this from the intangible that pivots the essence. And guards the Fire within.

For a stretch - ever so briefly - the official pundits delude us that we are at the centre of the world.

They want to inoculate us with a false sense of prominence and permanence that quickly fades away; in reality, they overwhelm us.

We feel the need for a rediscovery of being and essence, not dissolved in the realm of night and illusion [to have power appear, to hold back rise dominate]. Without escapes, nor rhythms that do not belong to us.

We seek involvement, and distance.

We want to 'perceive' like Mary and like the shepherds - disconcerted by others' religious views - to become and be reborn, and to become again. Recovering the frenzies, the surprises, the wounds; without dispersing the centre.

"Taking refuge" in a secret space was not for her a rediscovery of the self expected by all, stereotypical and adequate as always.

Rather, she was expressing her being - escaping from conventional ways.

In order to live intensely, she did not wish to enter the nomenclature - then to be normal, and subservient - rather to get away from it, but to stay there. So she did not exclude anything.

She also recognised herself in those vagabonds.

Never would she have imagined herself the (acting) protagonist of a tradition that placed her on pedestals, forms, solemn attributes, and constraints - the very ones that would have made her sweetly but decisively rebellious.

She did not revisit herself to bask in it, but to verify and reactivate her 'way' - which she did not want to lose: it could be overwhelmed by external opinions and buried by [impelling but horizonless] circumstances.

She did not want to lose her address within common, homologated goals, losing sight of what she really was, and introduce her into the sky of the timeless - nor did she want to resemble the majority, or be above them.

The one we built for her was not her home.

Mary did not look out into reality and into us today [to help us look at 'our' Mystery] with a conformist face; sweetened and artefactual, or intimist, swampy.

His soul was always on the move. To know the unknowable, she would never stop - even without knowing in advance where to go.

Her character did not want the certainties of accommodation. Without wavering, even within herself she preferred to intuit and live the Passion of love.

He allowed himself to be guided and saved, but from his own sacred centre, sanctuary of the God-Con. He who unlocks, sets us free.

He could not allow his Vocation to be covered by idols, nor by any plot, which was nevertheless unfolding.

In the 'here and now' he found his affinity from his very being as a wayfarer, who by advancing put hardship behind him.

As she developed her inner eye, she also transmuted her inner self to find the step of the Annunciation hidden in the misfits, which still led her on.

Only this lasted her through the years - not the functional side.She did not dream of a quiet life, but of understanding her personal mission.

Without naivety, she wondered about the meaning of intimate callings, happenings, and her own motions - alien only to the anxiety of pleasing everyone.

She wished to understand how best to fit in, moving towards the new promised land [cf. Lk 1:29: "But she was greatly troubled by the Word and wondered what greeting this was"; Lk 1:34: "How shall this be?"].

The stillness within was not uniform, but filled with the vicissitudes and unpredictable 'news'.

Never to become a model: an expired identity document - plastered, dogmatic. Never an icon of privilege, and ostentatious - like a woman who extinguishes her consciousness, and makes herself identified, empty, disjointed.

In the midst of others - even the lazy, indiscreet ones - Maria let herself be, perceiving the inaudible sounds of the silence of the soul.

Notes that produced her figure and - even better - her evolution and Destination, without disturbing her with separate intentions.

Removing the gaze from conformist intention.

To really exist, intensely, she changed or broke through; she recovered history but listened to the inside of herself.

Grasping her own deep layers, perceiving herself in her innermost voices, she became aware of the meaning of her life, and of the unfolding story. 

In the intervals of thought, he reactivated the energy of the 'gaze'.

And without mortification, he would bring his attention to another dimension, gradually entering the Wind that ceaselessly disengaged it.

In this way, he learnt not to expect something aligned with normal intentions and predictions, nor with social and cultural rankings: he had to enter into the events, and detach himself (to contemplate their importance and depth).

Mysteriously - thus scrutinising without doing too much - he read the 'notes', chose the right registers; he interpreted the score.

Epiphany of God in a creature utterly devoid of hieratic or courtly style; rather, delicate and gypsy.

She did not rush to put things in place: she sensed 'inside' the summary life, rather than leading it and organising it, or arranging it.

She waited for her eminent self to lead the strange, non-directed, non-voluntarist path that was unfolding, truly all eccentric and unexemplary.

She did not act to please.

We also learn in her: to see the domestic God happen, the 'visits' we would not expect; the intensity of different colours.

They then lead us to a different look into the soul too; involved and detached.

Like the surrounding reality, Maria was not always the same.

She did not have in mind a champion to be pursued to the end, only to find herself chronicled in the exemplarity of others - uprooted, external, dissipated and discharged.

Situations and emotions had value, not only and not primarily on the basis of the - now useless - paradigm register with which they were interpreted.

In the hope of things present and in their sensitive listening, they were acquiring fluidity.

In this way, it passed unforced from the religion of the fathers to the Faith, to the risk of friendship in the unpredictable proposal of the one Father.

Retreating into the Abode of the Spirit, within a Hope that unveiled itself wave by wave, she learned to understand relationships and inner energies, unpacked.

Once heard and taken in, they could deviate, and take just the unexpected path.

Step by step, the attentive eye, ear and heart also introduce us - like Mary - into a territory of suspension of closed intentions. Where the love and destiny of the Newness of God dwells.

He expands the Vision not just from around.

By deploying his losing himself in the We, not selectively, but only from his own sacred centre, the horizon also expanded in the sensation of infinity in action.

In the contemplation of events, she would flesh out and even reinvent the figure of the heart that had guided her there.

She was still reinterpreting the expressive image of her Vocation. And she changed her destiny - giving no weight to one-sided angles.

No obligations and chiselled intentions - against the tide but natural, without the laceration of titanic efforts.

So even the hardships brought her closer to her Mission as Mother of the new humanity, in her Son.

And each one equally rediscovers the energy of the primordial suggestion that leads him, so that in Meditation he re-embraces the Calling that still wants to snatch him from the mire.

Echo of the primordial Call that is woven into the events and is already the Destination.

Witness every moment to be rediscovered in the "intimate and full void" to be made within, to wait for something we do not know what it is first.

Mary let herself be traced in time by Love without a patent.

Such are the Dreams of creatures totally immersed in the true passions, which grasp, anticipate and actualise the timelessness in time.She did not give up wondering what - with its many aspects - was inhabiting her and silently guiding her.

We still imagine her (v.19) 'as with eyes closed': a situation our culture often ignores.

She did not think of the efficient causes: it was to rediscover otherwise her opening the door to visitors, and to every new thing by astonishment.

She was already nursing, not only her Son; at the same time she was feeding herself.

Not out of vain intimism did she rediscover the subtle Mystery nested in the different - and the raw, changing - unpredictable within and without.

Without realising it, she was already nourishing the world, preserving herself.

True, she comes to us and in us, tending the nest of essence and history... without any appearance of banners and shop windows - respecting only what happens.

Similarly, his entire Family becomes the true fruitful lady of an impossible Feast of the Announcement around - which we do not understand where it came from (Lk 1:20).

Certainly from nothing external. Therefore decisive.

Totally adherent to the circumstances and present in himself, he became completely - in the clear and spontaneous movements, also of others.

Certainly he had no people around him who could boast of screens. Only strange individuals, but who ceaselessly let their vital instincts emerge.

They too did not tell each other beforehand where to go. That is why they found themselves in an incessant pregnancy.

All they had in store was the experience of distance; often frost and rejection. 

Never knew a figure who helped them to recognise themselves completely, and to look at things from the point of view of the timeless gentleness they discovered.

Even capable of tending to the wider and more inclusive global [we would say, to the helpful eternity of the angelic condition].

Instead, they are set ablaze by the everlasting Flame - that of the whole world (past, present and future) that knows how to recover and stand hidden, apart but in the cosmos - as the dawn and day of the Lord.

In the culture of the time, the condition of the spirits of the heavenly throne service, who glorified and praised God (v.20) "for all that they had heard and seen".

Faced with the domestic Church Family, in Mary and Jesus the shepherds have a decisive experience.

No longer of one-sided lack and judgement, but of rebirth in esteem; of another world, available and inclusive - of another kingdom, unison without uniformity.

The Mother of God is a possibility to strive for the eternal present, no longer exclusive: but like a dance, where the changing whole puts one perfectly at ease - with no tracks to retrace.

Society's oddballs, pilgrims and prairie dogs, skilled only in transhumance, had perhaps never had the ability to recognise the ecstasy of being well and intensely in the brief.

Perhaps they had never had the experience of recognising in an accurate creature their own sensitive, tender and feminine side.

Appearance that in the authentic Woman Church becomes the guardian and differently announcer [in the shaky] of the treasure chest of Life.

From the warmth of Mary and the Cradle, amidst their labyrinths, they now bring to their own secluded place an exciting blessing, and the indestructible intimate side; even elsewhere.

To question us too.

We seek a silent soul, for an art of rebirth.

Here was Maria: she had noticed, as she meditated, that others reflexively did too.

When she carved out preparatory energies, even those around her disposed themselves in a more balanced, fuller way to the Announcement.

He walked through life to guard and nurture new fathers and mothers of humanisation. 

Not to comment, but to intuit and dissolve; not to extinguish the dreaming side with the 'up to date', old side.

His realm of truthfulness that cures the I and the Thou was the heaven and earth of new powers.

Reliable virtues because they sprang from the Silence of the Way that was completely renewing her - loving contradictions. 

Because everything can now happen, regenerate; and each day bring its tide (of the unseen) in the presence of Spirit, without routine.

A genuine soul, devoid of pretense, can do it.

For an adventure that pushes away continuity, filled with foundational Eros; for a direct exploration to the unknown Culmination.

Maria: Slowing down a little, one is born

Whoever does not follow innate intuition, a more radical call of the self, or stunning proclamations [Lk 1:26-38. 2:8-15] does not develop his destiny, does not move; does not set things right.

Common proclamations end up incinerating personalities.

It is true that the shepherds find nothing extraordinary or prodigious, except a family reduced to an ordinary condition, which they know.

But it is that simple hearth that draws them into the new Project, and into the proclamation of its scandalous unconditional Mercy - which did not electrocute them for impurity.

Archaic religion had branded them forever: lost, despicable, remorseless beings. Now they are free from identification.They have another eye - like that of the first time. An eye that will take them one hundred per cent.

Exodus facing a helpless image of God, they do not bother to engage in ethical discipline: it would have crumbled them.

Rather, they enjoy the wonder of a simply human reality - in a mysterious relationship of mutual recognition.

A baby in a manger, an unclean place where beasts would play.

Strange that the modest sign convinces them, that it makes them regain esteem, and makes them evangelisers - perhaps not even assiduous evangelisers.

Like Calvary (to which it refers), the Resolute Manifestation of the Eternal is a paradox.

But the affective geography of this Bethlehem devoid of conformist circuits remains intact, because it is spontaneously rooted in us.

There is a sense of immediacy, without any particular entanglement or ceremony.

The Child is not even worshipped by the now 'pure' gazes of the little, vilified prairie dogs and transhumance - as, conversely, the Magi will do (Mt 2:11).

They did not even know what it meant, reflecting Eastern court ceremonials - like the kissing of red slippers.

[This is why Pope Francis rejected them, along with the ermine - after Paul VI had had the courage to lay down the pluridirigist sign of tiaras, with its three overlapping crowns; a little more intricate was the affair of the anachronistic gestatorial chair].

The wretched of the earth and the distant of the flocks are those who hear the Announcement, readily verify it, and found the new divine lineage.

People untroubled by static judgement - men in the midst of all; no longer at high altitude.

In the meantime, Mary sought the meaning of surprises and thus regenerated, for a new way of understanding and 'being' together - to give birth also to the inner world of a different people of fullness.

She would put facts and Word together, to discover the common thread.

And to remain receptive; not to be conditioned by the convictions of the devout and inflexible fences, which would give her no escape.

The Mother herself, though taken by surprise, prepared herself for God's eccentricity, without departing from time and her real condition.

Her figure and that of the shepherds question us, demand the courage of an answer - but after having allowed the same kind of inner Presences to flow: worthy visitors, who are allowed to express themselves.

Like us, you too had to move from the beliefs of the fathers to Faith in the Father.

From the idea of love as reward to that of 'gift'.

From the practice of cults and closures that do not make one at all intimate with the Eternal, to the opening of the mind and of the exits.

He did not achieve this without effort, but rather by enduring the resistance of his arid environment.

Jesus was indeed circumcised - a useless rite that according to custom claimed to change the Son of God into the son of Abraham.

The Good News proclaims a reversal: what religion had considered distant from the Most High is very close to Him; indeed, it corresponds fully to Him.

Never before imagined.

In the Annunciations of the Gospels, the adventure of Faith is opened wide.

And the new Child has a Name that expresses the unprecedented essence of Saviour, not executioner.

His whole story will also be fully instructive from the point of view of how to internalise uncertainties and discomforts: these "no moments" and precariousness that teach us how to live.

In fact, we too, like Mary, 'recognise' the presence of God in the enigmas of Scripture, in the Little One 'wrapped in bandages' - even in the ancestral echo of our inner worlds.

And we let ourselves go - we don't really know where. But so is the Infinite, the immense Secret, the inexplicable Breath, in its folds.

The wise Dream that inhabits the human knows of ancient humus, but its echo is reborn every day, in the tide of being that directs one to truly 'look', without veils.

A conformist demeanour of 'seeing things' would not solve the problem.

Sometimes, in order not to be conditioned, it is necessary to re-establish oneself in silence, like the Virgin; to build a sort of hermeneutic island that opens different doors, that introduces other lights.

Within her sacred circuit, the Mother of God also valorised innate transformative energies, precisely by rooting them in questions...

Thus returning to her primordial being and the sense of the Newborn Child - an image steeped in primordial meaning and life-wave, dear to many cultures.

Mary entered an Elsewhere and did not leave the field of the real.

She was 'inside' her Centre, unhurried - searching for the Sun drowned in her being and which returned, emerged, resurrected; from within, it made her exist beyond.

Thus she did not allow herself to be absorbed in energy by the conformist ideas of others or by [external] situations that wanted to break the balance.

In her veracious solitude - filled with Grace - that higher and hidden self in essence came more and more to her. She made herself a new Dawn and guide.She did not want to live within thoughts, knowledge and reasoning around - none capable of amplifying life - all in the hands of the drugs of procedures, dehumanising the Enchantment.

The happy magic of that Frugolo of flesh brought his Peace.

Dreams sustained and conveyed her nest and intimate core - causing new life to flow from the core of her Person, and the youth of the world.

"Now Mary kept all Words-events by comparing them in her heart".

(Lk Christmas)

When the weaver

When the weaver raises one foot, the other one lowers. When the movement ceases and one of the feet stops, the weaving stops. His hands throw the bobbin that passes from one to the other; but no hand can hope to hold it. Like the weaver's gestures, it is the union of opposites that weaves our lives [Peul Oral Tradition].

It would make no sense to put a cake stuffed with candles, in front of the Crib. We would be praising another Wonder: the discovery of a Treasure, hidden behind our dark sides.

Christmas is not an anniversary or birthday, but an event of Revelation of the divine Face: not absolute Master, but poor naked and unharmed among ordinary people, lying on unclean ground.

Do we feel 'wronged'? We are on the right path - which is not that of exaggerated control.

God did not 'become superman', but 'Flesh': a term that in the Semitic world describes our totality as transient, vulnerable, transient beings, subject to all forms of death.

Realities that the Father makes breathe, embraces and recovers - enlightens and does not discard.

If the life we lead is already balanced in the environment, we become habitual; green things in gestation abort.

When we slumber, what then beats in our heads are the usual idols: weights of conditioned reason, calculations and fixations, together with problems of perhaps unhappy events.

With such a burden, we forget what we are led to.

We overlook the vital characteristic: our child wants to come into the light and is a unique being, more than rare.

The meaning of Christmas is to surrender; to lay aside the ancient religious idea: rather, to let all the uncertain but unrepeatable implications of imperfection pass through us.

Not as a fault.

It is the logic of every process of activation and development, with its pauses and recoveries, losses and recoveries. The 'weak' points and eccentricities will become strengths.

There is a need for unpredictable time, to chart the path of growth - an unexpected path; and God accepts it.

Incarnation is an irruption of Eternity between our walls and crises, a dreaming Imprevent that invades the peripheries and places no distance.

In the shepherds - who are us - Lk brings all the outcasts of history into the field, making them owners, without any merit.

They were the despised and doomed; they are the first to whom the Announcement is addressed. Maxims to experience the Face of the God-Con; astounded by the trust the Father bestows.

The crude, substitutes and impure, become priority appointees.

Strident judgement compared to authentic ephemerality: that of ceremonial opinions.

This is not an extrinsic redemption, aimed only at society's misfits, mind you. It concerns us.

Beneath the momentary bark of our 'certain things' brims a seed that will make our new Bimbo.

The inner Jesus wants to be nursed, guarded, nurtured, so that he can grow according to an intimate Design, a sacred (but unprotected) Exodus process that saves.

Mystery that is not at natural external reach, because it is in tune with the Calling by Name, with the unrepeatable innate, even multifaceted vital character - which is not to be extinguished.

The development of emotions, of inclinations and passions, of our Roots, is not to be disturbed by tares of thought, by cloaks of habit, or conditioning.

[Even accelerations hinder evolution: e.g. the desire to confront insufficiency, in order to resolve it immediately].

In general, it harms the battle we set up with ourselves to be accepted - conforming to the contour.

But so the commitment is to sit in armour that does not belong to us.

Day after day, a Flame is giving birth to another and different Infant - seemingly contradictory, unbalanced, shaky, pockmarked.

This vigorous Infant does not enjoy lacerating programmes, but an awareness of Faith: the Creator wants to walk with our dissimilarities.

There is an intimate Jesus, perhaps not yet weaned: he smiles at us serenely and with open arms.

The unveiling of the authentic God distracts us from the entangled idea we have of the world, of the tangle of events, and of our own person.

It gives us a clearer gaze, less focused on the outside.

Christmas makes us realise that we are not a swamp covered in failures, harassment, petty judgements, wrongs, disappointments, abandonments, betrayals.

In the Lord who wants to continue incarnating, our burdens go away like a breath.

The soul becomes free again and unfolds wings that are developed and strong; incomparable.

There is no more beautiful truth than in the vertigo of being able to give birth to and express the hidden Little One that each one is in the face of the soul.

In his last Christmas Vigil, Paul VI was keen to emphasise that in the arrival of the Word "Each one can say: for me!".

Let this Season help us to understand this personal dimension; we are not those who have to fight against ourselves.

For a Christmas that is already Easter. The pierced cocoon will make our Butterfly. 

Eve, Night, Dawn, Day: genealogy, today is born for you, the shepherds found, the Logos became flesh

Genealogy

Dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world!

Christ is born for us! Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to the people he loves. May the echo of the proclamation of Bethlehem, which the Catholic Church makes resound in all continents, beyond all boundaries of nationality, language and culture, reach everyone. The Son of the Virgin Mary is born for all, he is the Saviour of all.

Thus an ancient liturgical antiphon invokes him: 'O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, hope and salvation of the peoples: come and save us, O Lord our God. Veni ad salvandum nos! Come and save us! This is the cry of the man of all times, who feels he cannot make it alone to overcome difficulties and dangers. He needs to put his hand in a greater and stronger hand, a hand that reaches out to him from on high. Dear brothers and sisters, this hand is Christ, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary. He is the hand that God stretched out to humanity, to bring it out of the quicksand of sin and set it on the rock, the firm rock of his Truth and Love (cf. Ps 40:3).

Yes, this is what the name of that Child means, the name that, by God's will, Mary and Joseph gave him: his name is Jesus, which means "Saviour" (cf. Mt 1:21; Lk 1:31). He was sent by God the Father to save us above all from the deep evil, rooted in man and history: that evil that is separation from God, the presumptuous pride of doing one's own thing, of competing with God and replacing Him, of deciding what is good and what is evil, of being the master of life and death (cf. Gen 3:1-7). This is the great evil, the great sin, from which we men cannot save ourselves except by relying on God's help, except by crying out to Him: "Veni ad salvandum nos! - Come and save us!".

The very fact of raising this invocation to Heaven already puts us in the right position, puts us in the truth of ourselves: for we are those who have cried out to God and have been saved (cf. Esth [Greek] 10:3f). God is the Saviour, we the ones in danger. He is the physician, we the sick. Recognising Him, is the first step towards salvation, towards getting out of the labyrinth in which we ourselves shut ourselves up with our pride. Lifting our eyes to Heaven, stretching out our hands and calling for help is the way out, provided there is Someone who listens, and who can come to our rescue.

Jesus Christ is proof that God has heard our cry. Not only that! God has such a strong love for us that He cannot remain in Himself, that He comes out of Himself and comes into us, sharing our condition to the full (cf. Ex 3:7-12). The response God gave in Jesus to the cry of man infinitely exceeds our expectation, reaching such solidarity that it cannot be only human, but divine. Only the God who is love and the love that is God could choose to save us through this path, which is certainly the longest, but it is the one that respects his and our truth: the path of reconciliation, of dialogue, of collaboration.

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world, on this Christmas 2011, let us turn to the Child of Bethlehem, to the Son of the Virgin Mary, and say: "Come and save us!" We repeat this in spiritual union with so many people in particularly difficult situations, and as the voice of the voiceless.

Together we invoke divine succour for the peoples of the Horn of Africa, who suffer from hunger and famine, sometimes aggravated by a persistent state of insecurity. May the international community not fail to help the many refugees from that region, who are sorely tried in their dignity.

May the Lord bring comfort to the peoples of South-East Asia, particularly of Thailand and the Philippines, who are still in grave distress as a result of the recent floods.

May the Lord come to the aid of humanity wounded by the many conflicts, which still today stain the planet with blood. May he, who is the Prince of Peace, grant peace and stability to the Land he has chosen to come into the world, and encourage the resumption of dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Bring an end to the violence in Syria, where so much blood has already been shed. Promote full reconciliation and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. Grant renewed vigour in building the common good to all parts of society in North African and Middle Eastern countries.

May the birth of the Saviour sustain the prospects for dialogue and cooperation in Myanmar, in the search for shared solutions. May the birth of the Redeemer grant political stability to the countries of the African Great Lakes Region and assist the efforts of the people of South Sudan to protect the rights of all citizens. 

Dear brothers and sisters, let us turn our gaze to the Grotto of Bethlehem: the Child we contemplate is our salvation! He has brought the world a universal message of reconciliation and peace. Let us open our hearts to him, let us welcome him into our lives. Let us repeat to Him with confidence and hope: "Veni ad salvandum nos!"

[Pope Benedict, Urbi et Orbi Message 25 December 2011].

Today he is born for you

Dear brothers and sisters,

"A child has been born for us, a son has been given to us" (Is 9:5). What Isaiah, looking far into the future, says to Israel as consolation in its anguish and darkness, the Angel, from which emanates a cloud of light, announces to the shepherds as present: "Today, in the city of David, a Saviour is born for you, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:11). The Lord is present. From this moment, God is truly a "God with us". He is no longer the distant God, who, through creation and through consciousness, can somehow be sensed from afar. He has entered the world. He is the Near. The risen Christ has said this to his own, to us: "Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28: 20). For you the Saviour is born: what the Angel announced to the shepherds, God now recalls to us through the Gospel and its messengers. This is news that cannot leave us indifferent. If it is true, everything has changed. If it is true, it concerns me too. Then, like the shepherds, I too must say: Come on, I want to go to Bethlehem and see the Word that happened there. The Gospel does not tell us the story of the shepherds without purpose. They show us how to respond in the right way to the message that is also addressed to us. What then do these first witnesses of God's incarnation tell us?

First of all, it is said of the shepherds that they were vigilant people and that the message could reach them precisely because they were awake. We must wake up, for the message to reach us. We must become truly vigilant people. What does this mean? The difference between one who dreams and one who is awake consists first of all in the fact that the one who dreams is in a particular world. He is enclosed with his self in this dream world that is his alone and does not connect him with others. Waking up means leaving this particular world of the self and entering into the common reality, into the truth that, alone, unites us all. Conflict in the world, mutual irreconcilability, stems from the fact that we are enclosed in our own interests and personal opinions, in our own tiny private world. Selfishness, that of the group as well as the individual, keeps us prisoners of our own interests and desires, which conflict with the truth and divide us from one another. Wake up, the Gospel tells us. Come out into the great common truth, into the communion of the one God. To wake up thus means to develop sensitivity for God; for the silent signs with which He wants to guide us; for the many signs of His presence. There are people who say that they are 'religiously devoid of a musical ear'. The perceptive capacity for God seems almost a dowry that is denied to some. And indeed - our way of thinking and acting, the mentality of today's world, the range of our various experiences are apt to reduce our sensitivity for God, to make us 'devoid of a musical ear' for Him. And yet in every soul is present, in a hidden or open way, the expectation of God, the capacity to encounter Him. To achieve this vigilance, this awakening to the essential, we want to pray, for ourselves and for others, for those who seem to be "devoid of this musical ear" and in whom, nevertheless, the desire for God to manifest Himself is alive. The great theologian Origen said: If I had the grace to see as Paul saw, I could now (during the Liturgy) contemplate a great host of angels (cf. Lk 23:9). Indeed - in the Sacred Liturgy, the Angels of God and the Saints surround us. The Lord himself is present in our midst. Lord, open the eyes of our hearts, that we may become vigilant and visionary, and thus be able to bring your nearness to others!

Let us return to the Christmas Gospel. It tells us that the shepherds, having heard the Angel's message, said to one another: "'Let us go up to Bethlehem' ... They went, without delay" (Lk 2:15f.). "They hastened" says the Greek text literally. What had been announced to them was so important that they had to go immediately. In fact, what they had been told there was totally beyond the ordinary. It changed the world. The Saviour was born. The long-awaited Son of David came into the world in his own city. What could have been more important? Of course, they were also driven by curiosity, but above all by excitement about the great thing that had been communicated to them, the little ones and seemingly unimportant men. They hurried - without delay. In our ordinary life things are not like that. The majority of men do not consider the things of God to be a priority, they do not immediately press upon us. And so we, in the vast majority, are quite willing to put them off. First we do what appears urgent here and now. In the list of priorities, God is often found almost at the last place. This - one thinks - can always be done. The Gospel tells us: God has top priority. If something in our lives deserves to be hurried without delay, it is, then, God's cause alone. A maxim of the Rule of St Benedict says: 'Put nothing before the work of God (i.e. the divine office)'. The liturgy is the first priority for monks. Everything else comes next. At its core, however, this phrase applies to every man. God is important, the most important reality in our lives. It is precisely this priority that the shepherds teach us. From them we want to learn not to let ourselves be crushed by all the urgent things of everyday life. From them we want to learn the inner freedom to put other occupations - however important they may be - on the back burner in order to move towards God, to let Him into our lives and our time. Time committed to God and, from Him, to our neighbour is never time wasted. It is the time in which we truly live, in which we live the very being of human persons.

Some commentators point out that first the shepherds, the simple souls, came to Jesus in the manger and were able to meet the Redeemer of the world. The wise men who came from the East, the representatives of those with rank and name, came much later. The commentators add: this is quite obvious. The shepherds, in fact, lived next door. They only had to "cross" (cf. Lk 2:15) as one crosses a short space to go to one's neighbours. The wise, on the other hand, lived far away. They had to travel a long and difficult way to Bethlehem. And they needed guidance and direction. Well, even today there are simple and humble souls who live very close to the Lord. They are, so to speak, His neighbours and can easily go to Him. But most of us modern men live far from Jesus Christ, from the One who became man, from the God who came among us. We live in philosophies, affairs and occupations that fill us up completely and from which the path to the manger is very long. In many ways, God must repeatedly push us and give us a hand, so that we can find our way out of the tangle of our thoughts and our busyness and find our way to Him. But for everyone there is a way. For everyone the Lord has signs that are suitable for each one. He calls all of us, so that we too can say: Come, let us "cross over", let us go to Bethlehem - to that God, who has come to meet us. Yes, God has come towards us. Alone we could not reach Him. The way is beyond our strength. But God has descended. He comes to meet us. He has travelled the longest part of the way. Now He asks us: Come and see how much I love you. Come and see that I am here. Transeamus usque Bethleem, says the Latin Bible. Let us go beyond! Let us go beyond ourselves! Let us be wayfarers to God in many ways: in being inwardly on our way to Him. And yet also in very concrete ways - in the liturgy of the Church, in service to our neighbour, where Christ is waiting for me.

Let us again listen directly to the Gospel. The shepherds tell each other why they are setting out: "Let us see this event". Literally the Greek text says: "We see this Word, which happened there". Yes, such is the novelty of this night: the Word can be seen. For it has become flesh. That God of whom no image is to be made, because any image could only reduce him, indeed misrepresent him, that God has made himself, Himself, visible in the One who is his true image, as Paul says (cf. 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). In the figure of Jesus Christ, in all his living and working, in his dying and rising, we can see the Word of God and thus the mystery of the living God himself. God is like this. The Angel had said to the shepherds: "This is the sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger" (Lk 2:12; cf. 16). God's sign, the sign given to the shepherds and to us, is not an exciting miracle. The sign of God is His humility. The sign of God is that He makes Himself small; He becomes a child; He lets Himself be touched and asks for our love. How we men long for a different, imposing, irrefutable sign of God's power and greatness. But his sign invites us to faith and love, and therefore gives us hope: this is how God is. He possesses power and He is Goodness. He invites us to become like Him. Yes, we become like God, if we let ourselves be moulded by this sign; if we learn, ourselves, humility and thus true greatness; if we renounce violence and use only the weapons of truth and love. Origen, following a word of John the Baptist, saw the essence of paganism expressed in the symbol of the stones: paganism is a lack of sensitivity, it means a heart of stone, which is incapable of loving and perceiving God's love. Origen says of pagans: "Devoid of feeling and reason, they turn into stones and wood" (in Lk 22:9). Christ, however, wants to give us a heart of flesh. When we see Him, the God who became a child, our hearts are opened. In the Liturgy of the Holy Night, God comes to us as man, so that we may become truly human. Let us listen to Origen again: "Indeed, what would it profit you that Christ once came in the flesh, if He does not come to your soul? Let us pray that He may come to us daily and that we may say: I live, but I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20)" (in Lk 22:3).

Yes, for this we want to pray on this Holy Night. Lord Jesus Christ, you who were born in Bethlehem, come to us! Enter into me, into my soul. Transform me. Renew me. Make me and all of us from stone and wood into living persons, in whom your love becomes present and the world is transformed. Amen.

[Pope Benedict, Homily of the Night 24 December 2009].

The shepherds found

"A holy day has dawned for us: come all to worship the Lord; today a splendid light has descended upon the earth" (Christmas Day Mass, Gospel Acclamation).

Dear brothers and sisters! "A holy day has dawned for us. A day of great hope: today the Saviour of mankind has been born! The birth of a child normally brings a light of hope to those who anxiously await it. When Jesus was born in the cave of Bethlehem, a 'great light' appeared on earth; a great hope entered the hearts of those who awaited him: 'lux magna', sings the liturgy of this Christmas Day. It was certainly not 'great' in the manner of this world, for it was first seen only by Mary, Joseph and a few shepherds, then by the Magi, old Simeon, the prophetess Anna: those whom God had chosen. And yet, in the concealment and silence of that holy night, a splendid and timeless light was kindled for every man; the great hope bringing happiness came into the world: "the Word became flesh and we have seen his glory" (Jn 1:14)

"God is light," says St John, "and in him there is no darkness" (1 John 1:5). In the Book of Genesis we read that when the universe originated, "the earth was formless and deserted and darkness covered the abyss". "God said, 'Let there be light!' And the light was" (Gen 1:2-3). The creative Word of God is Light, the source of life. Everything was made through the Logos and without Him nothing was made of everything that exists (cf. Jn 1:3). That is why all creatures are fundamentally good, and bear within themselves the imprint of God, a spark of His light. However, when Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, Light itself came into the world: "God from God, Light from Light", we profess in the Creed. In Jesus, God took on what was not and remained what He was: "omnipotence entered into an infant body and was not removed from the government of the universe" (cf. Augustine, Serm 184, 1 on Christmas). He who is the creator of man became man in order to bring peace to the world. That is why, on Christmas night, the hosts of Angels sing: "Glory to God in the highest / and peace on earth to men whom he loves" (Lk 2:14).

"Today a splendid light has descended upon the earth". The Light of Christ is the bearer of peace. At the night Mass, the Eucharistic liturgy opened with precisely this hymn: "Today true peace has descended to us from heaven" (Entrance Antiphon). Indeed, only the "great" light that appeared in Christ can give men "true" peace: that is why every generation is called to welcome it, to welcome the God who became one of us in Bethlehem.

This is Christmas! A historical event and mystery of love, which for over two thousand years has challenged men and women of every age and place. It is the holy day on which the "great light" of Christ, bearer of peace, shines forth! Of course, to recognise it, to welcome it requires faith, it requires humility. The humility of Mary, who believed the word of the Lord, and was the first to adore, bent over the manger, the Fruit of her womb; the humility of Joseph, a righteous man, who had the courage of faith and preferred to obey God rather than protect his own reputation; the humility of the shepherds, the poor and anonymous shepherds, who welcomed the announcement of the heavenly messenger and hurried to the cave where they found the newborn child and, filled with astonishment, adored it, praising God (cf. Lk 2:15-20). The little ones, the poor in spirit: these are the protagonists of Christmas, yesterday and today; the protagonists of God's history, the tireless builders of his Kingdom of justice, love and peace.

In the silence of the night in Bethlehem Jesus was born and was welcomed by caring hands. And now, at this Christmas of ours, when the joyful announcement of his redemptive birth continues to resound, who is ready to open the door of their hearts to him? Men and women of our age, to us too Christ comes to bring light, to us too he comes to give peace! But who keeps watch, in the night of doubt and uncertainty, with an awake and prayerful heart? Who waits for the dawn of the new day, keeping the flame of faith burning? Who has time to listen to his word and allow himself to be enveloped by the charm of his love? Yes! It is for all his message of peace; it is to all that he comes to offer himself as a sure hope of salvation.

May the light of Christ, who comes to enlighten every human being, finally shine forth, and be consolation for those who find themselves in the darkness of misery, injustice, war; for those who are still denied their legitimate aspiration to a more secure livelihood, health, education, stable employment, a fuller participation in civic and political responsibilities, free from all oppression and sheltered from conditions that offend human dignity. Victims of bloody armed conflicts, terrorism and violence of all kinds, which inflict untold suffering on entire populations, are particularly the most vulnerable, children, women and the elderly. While ethnic, religious and political tensions, instability, rivalries, injustice and discrimination, which tear at the internal fabric of many countries, exacerbate international relations. And in the world, the number of migrants, refugees, and displaced persons is growing, also because of frequent natural disasters, often the consequence of worrying environmental disasters.

On this day of peace, our thoughts go above all to where the clang of arms resounds: to the martyred lands of Darfur, Somalia and the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the borders of Eritrea and Ethiopia, to the entire Middle East, in particular Iraq, Lebanon and the Holy Land, to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, to the Balkan region, and to the many other crisis situations, often unfortunately forgotten. May the Child Jesus bring relief to those in trial and instil in those in government the wisdom and courage to seek and find humane, just and lasting solutions. To the thirst for meaning and value that the world feels today, to the search for well-being and peace that marks the life of all humanity, to the expectations of the poor Christ, true God and true Man, responds with his Christmas. Let individuals and nations not be afraid to recognise and welcome Him: with Him "a splendid light" illuminates the horizon of humanity; with Him opens "a holy day" that knows no sunset. May this Christmas truly be for all a day of joy, hope and peace!

"Come all and adore the Lord". With Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, with the Magi and the innumerable host of humble worshippers of the newborn Child, who down the centuries have welcomed the mystery of Christmas, let us too, brothers and sisters of every continent, let the light of this day spread everywhere: let it enter our hearts, brighten and warm our homes, bring serenity and hope to our cities, give peace to the world. This is my wish for you who listen to me. A wish that becomes a humble and trusting prayer to the Child Jesus, that his light may dispel all darkness from your lives and fill you with love and peace. May the Lord, who has made his face of mercy shine forth in Christ, satisfy you with his happiness and make you messengers of his goodness. Merry Christmas!

[Pope Benedict, Urbi et Orbi Message 25 December 2007].

The Logos became Flesh

"Verbum caro factum est" - "The Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14).

Dear brothers and sisters, who are listening to me from Rome and from the whole world, with joy I announce to you the message of Christmas: God became man, he came to dwell among us. God is not far away: he is near, indeed, he is the "Emmanuel", God-with-us. He is not a stranger: he has a face, that of Jesus.

It is a message that is always new, always surprising, because it goes beyond our wildest hopes. Above all, because it is not just an announcement: it is an event, a happening, that credible witnesses have seen, heard, touched in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth! Being with Him, observing His deeds and listening to His words, they recognised in Jesus the Messiah; and seeing Him resurrected, after He had been crucified, they became certain that He, true man, was at the same time true God, the only-begotten Son come from the Father, full of grace and truth (cf. Jn 1:14).

"The Word became flesh". Faced with this revelation, the question once again arises in us: how is this possible? The Word and the flesh are opposite realities; how can the eternal and omnipotent Word become a frail and mortal man? There is but one answer: Love. He who loves wants to share with the beloved, wants to be united with him, and Sacred Scripture presents us with precisely the great story of God's love for his people, culminating in Jesus Christ.

In reality, God does not change: He is true to Himself. The one who created the world is the same one who called Abraham and revealed his name to Moses: I am who I am ... the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ... a merciful and gracious God, rich in love and faithfulness (cf. Ex 3:14-15; 34:6). God does not change, He is Love from everlasting and for ever. He is in Himself Communion, Unity in the Trinity, and His every work and word aims at communion. The incarnation is the culmination of creation. When Jesus, the Son of God made man, was formed in Mary's womb by the will of the Father and the action of the Holy Spirit, creation reached its apex. The ordering principle of the universe, the Logos, began to exist in the world, in a time and a space.

"The Word became flesh". The light of this truth is manifested to those who accept it with faith, because it is a mystery of love. Only those who open themselves to love are enveloped in the light of Christmas. So it was on the night of Bethlehem, and so it is also today. The incarnation of the Son of God is an event that happened in history, but at the same time goes beyond it. In the night of the world, a new light shines, which can be seen by the simple eyes of faith, by the meek and humble heart of those who await the Saviour. If truth were only a mathematical formula, it would in a sense impose itself. If, on the other hand, Truth is Love, it demands faith, the 'yes' of our heart.

And what, indeed, does our heart seek, if not a Truth that is Love? It is sought by the child, with its questions, so disarming and stimulating; it is sought by the young person, in need of finding the profound meaning of his or her life; it is sought by the man and woman in their maturity, to guide and sustain their commitment in the family and at work; it is sought by the elderly person, to give fulfilment to earthly existence.

"The Word became flesh". The proclamation of Christmas is also light for the peoples, for the collective journey of humanity. The 'Emmanuel', God-with-us, has come as King of justice and peace. His Kingdom - we know - is not of this world, yet it is more important than all the kingdoms of this world. It is like the leaven of humanity: if it were missing, the force that drives true development would fail: the drive to work together for the common good, to selfless service of neighbour, to peaceful struggle for justice. Believing in the God who wanted to share our history is a constant encouragement to engage in it, even in the midst of its contradictions. It is a reason for hope for all those whose dignity is offended and violated, because the One who was born in Bethlehem came to free man from the root of all slavery.

May the light of Christmas shine once again in the Land where Jesus was born, and inspire Israelis and Palestinians to seek a just and peaceful coexistence. May the consoling proclamation of the coming of Emmanuel soothe the pain and comfort the dear Christian communities in Iraq and throughout the Middle East in their trials, giving them comfort and hope for the future, and inspire the leaders of nations to active solidarity with them. Let this also be done in favour of those in Haiti who are still suffering from the consequences of the devastating earthquake and the recent cholera epidemic. Likewise let us not forget those in Colombia and Venezuela, but also in Guatemala and Costa Rica, who have suffered the recent natural disasters.

May the birth of the Saviour open up prospects of lasting peace and genuine progress for the peoples of Somalia, Darfur and Côte d'Ivoire; promote political and social stability in Madagascar; bring security and respect for human rights to Afghanistan and Pakistan; encourage dialogue between Nicaragua and Costa Rica; and foster reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula.

May the celebration of the birth of the Redeemer strengthen the spirit of faith, patience and courage in the faithful of the Church in mainland China, so that they may not lose heart in the face of restrictions on their freedom of religion and conscience and, persevering in fidelity to Christ and His Church, keep the flame of hope alive. May the love of 'God with us' grant perseverance to all Christian communities suffering discrimination and persecution, and inspire political and religious leaders to commit themselves to full respect for the religious freedom of all.

Dear brothers and sisters, "the Word became flesh", he came to dwell among us, he is the Emmanuel, the God who became close to us. Let us contemplate together this great mystery of love, let us let our hearts be enlightened by the light that shines in the grotto of Bethlehem! A Happy Christmas to all!

[Pope Benedict, Urbi et Orbi Message 25 December 2010].

"For me"

Dearest brothers and sons!

You await from us a word, which already resounds in your hearts; and the fact that you hear it again on this night and in this place acknowledges its perennial newness, its power of truth, its marvellous and beatifying joy. It is not ours, it is heavenly. Our lips repeat the annunciation of the Angel, who shone in the night, in Bethlehem, 1977 years ago, and who comforted the humble and frightened shepherds, keeping watch over their flock in the open air, and foretold the ineffable event that then took place in a nearby crib:

"I announce to you a great joy, which shall be to all the people: there is born to you this day in the city of David (Bethlehem) a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Luc. 2 , 10-11).

So it is, so it is, Brothers and Sons! and so it is, we wish to extend our humble and fearless cry to those who "have ears to hear" (Matth. 11:15). A fact and a joy; here is the twofold great news!

The fact: it seems almost insignificant. A child is born, and in what humiliating conditions! Our children know this when they compose their cribs, naive but authentic documents of the Gospel reality. But the evangelical reality is transparent of a concomitant ineffable reality: that Child is living of a transcendent divine Sonship, "Filius Altissimi vocabitur" (Luc. 1, 32). Let us make our own the enthusiastic expressions of our great Predecessor, St Leo the Great, who exclaimed: "Our Saviour, O beloved, is born today: let us rejoice! There is no place for sadness, when it is the birth of life, which, having extinguished the fear of death, infuses us with the joy of the promised eternity" (S. LEONIS MAGNI Sermo I de Nativitate Domini).

So that while the supreme mystery of the Trinitarian life of the one God is revealed to us in the three distinct Persons, Father begetting, Son begotten, both united in the bond of the Holy Spirit, another mystery integrates our religious relationship with God with unquenchable wonder, opening heaven to the vision of the glory of the infinite divine transcendence, and, overcoming in a gift of incomparable love every distance, the nearness of Christ-God made man shows us that He is with us, He is seeking us: "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men" (Tit. 2, 11; 3, 4).

Brothers! All men! What is Christmas if not this historical, cosmic event, extremely communal because it is aimed at universal proportions, and at the same time incomparably intimate and personal for each one of us, since the eternal Word of God, by virtue of Whom we already live out our natural existence (cf. Act. 17, 23-28), has precisely come in search of us; He eternal has inserted Himself in time, He infinite has almost annihilated Himself "by assuming the condition of a servant and becoming like men, He has appeared in human form, He has humbled Himself by becoming obedient unto death, and death on a cross" (Phil. 2, 6 ff.). Our ears are - alas! - accustomed to such a message, and our hearts deaf to such a call, a call of love: "Thus God loved the world ..." (I. 3:16). (I. 3:16); indeed, let us be precise: each of us can say with St Paul: "He loved me, and gave his life for me..." (Gal. 2:20).

Christmas is this arrival of the Word of God made man among us. Everyone can say: for me! Christmas is this wonder. Christmas is this wonder. Christmas is this joy. The words of Pascal return to our lips: Joy, joy, tears of joy!

Oh! may this nocturnal celebration of Christ's Christmas truly be for us all, for the whole Church, and for the world a renewed revelation of the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation, a source of unquenchable happiness! So be it!

[Pope Paul VI, Midnight Homily 24 December 1977].

And Mary: the Question that is the Answer

(Lk 2:15-20)

We ask ourselves: in this time, what can make us intimate with the Lord?

The shepherds experience the preference of a real and excessive Love, by blessing of the eccentric - and Wonder.

Preference that is not granted in exchange for merits, but because of needs.

Lk wants to emphasise that - by praising and glorifying God (v.20) just as the Angels do - the imperfect and defaulters paradoxically find themselves closer to the divine throne than the ever-arrogant position of the sterile pious.

We, too, become aware of a Father who, instead of incinerating us because of our insecurities, not only shrouds us in light (v.9), but builds his Newness on those very insecurities.

We all thought we were born to be dutiful and obedient children. Instead of putting us under stress, the Father wants us to rediscover the pleasure and wonder of gratuitousness and being together. Regardless of obligations, ways, times, places, duties, reverences, prostrations and kissing of any kind!

God knows that we are surrounded by spheres, urges, moves, chores, which take us away. But neither does he demand a minimum of his own, for he does not act like the wayward child who wants the big slice of cake at snack time [corresponding to his rank].

The relationship with Him is not a continual effort, to be laboriously kept up with. It is a lightening, and even strengthening in the counterweights.

In Advent we have already emphasised: that of the coming Lord is a Ray that does not enter the horizon of normal expectations, adapting itself to our outer dreams - those that live of expected goals, and then become a torment.

Throughout life, the encounter with such a wise Light that pierces the darkness of night is in the difficulties that force us to shift our gaze, in the failure that compels us to regenerate creativity, in the bewilderment that makes us contact new ways of being.

The life of Faith does not endure the demon of perfection imagined by archaic religions.

They willingly replace all gratuitousness with a sense of adult duty - which inevitably gives birth to nerve-wracking and even compensatory strategies [thank God, today less and less hidden].

According to Chinese thought, in order to gain polish and escape a polluted and worn-out servility, the saints 'are taught by beasts the art of avoiding the harmful effects of domestication, which life in society imposes'.

Indeed: 'Domesticated animals die prematurely. And so do men, whom social conventions forbid to obey spontaneously the rhythm of universal life'.

"These conventions impose continuous, self-interested, exhausting activity [whereas it is appropriate] to alternate between periods of slow life and jubilation".

"The saint does not submit himself to retreat or fasting except in order to achieve, through ecstasy, to escape for long journeys. This liberation is prepared by life-giving games, which nature teaches".

"One trains oneself for the paradisiacal life by imitating the amusements of animals. To sanctify oneself, one must first brutalise oneself - that is to say, learn from children, from beasts, from plants, the simple and joyful art of living only in view of life."

[M. Granet, The Chinese Thought, Adelphi 2019, kindle pp. 6904-6909].

The shepherds immediately place both guilt and the obligatory time of fulfilment in the background of their real existence, retaining their charge and enthusiasm.

In this way, for us too, nothing in life seems an insurmountable wall any more - apart from the prejudice of the righteous [those of the 'conditional': the 'ifs', the 'buts'].

Even routine does not take away energy and willpower - how come? Because spontaneous souls have no need to concern themselves with the external look, with pleasing the opinion of others; and so on.

Without even realising it, having no artificial screens to hold up, the genuine can face life head-on, and get off on the right foot.

Thus, attracting great opportunities for change.

They may not go too deep, but they listen to needs.

And they expand their space without asking permission from those who will never grant it; they sense the essentials that flow from freedom of mind and code.

Their 'having to be' has no artificial expectations: it is simple attunement with nature and with themselves.

A decisive position, because on such a ray they are able to see the weak side as a container of great strength, which activates capacities capable of building a whole other destiny.

They do not pose the problem of having to look good, or of not being what they are. Then of not being able to give themselves time in abundance, and of being seen to be tidy and good-natured, without discomfort; in harmony with everyone. 

They follow their story, and without too many expectations or intentions, they learn to trust the flow of events, even intimate ones.

They know how to welcome all their inner states as worthy guests, without feeling guilty.

In their own motives, they are clear. So they do not fall into neuroses.

The encounter with serene Authenticity has retrained them.

Light that has conquered self-esteem.

They feel empowered instead of targets. And the regained confidence makes them open and welcoming towards others.

They have realised that they must rely on deeper knowledge than that inoculated by the prejudices of decision-makers.

God is the exact opposite of the veterans' catechism: it is only the encounter with Him that purifies - not the apparent vice versa.

We too wish to open ourselves to the new Mystery. Experience that is preparing the womb of our souls at this time.

We are in a transhumance full of discoveries and adventures: we can learn how to be with what is coming and reinterpret it, learning to walk on our own legs and putting our attitudes into action.

Side by side with the shepherds, who ceaselessly put energies back into circulation - our lives can turn out to be much richer than the affair of the precise and impeccable.

We want to turn routine into an adventure that glimpses the authentic Sacred in the small Seed that inhabits us.

We will do this without too much efficiency: perhaps we will also build a regenerating highland refuge, to train intuition - and from there recreate the Vision, and the world.

No one should feel inadequate, excluded from the action of God's Love and the ability to radiate it.

As in the Gospel of Easter morning, we can peer into the darkness and intuit even amidst signs of death the great energies of Life.

The world of shadows is no longer in the same trim as before.

Among the humbled, even Mary is astonished, but seeks to understand and makes her own way. Indeed, she understands that the Answer is already in the Question.

Comparing within herself Word and events around her Son, she realises that in the 'problem' (which surprised her) there was already the energy of the 'solution'.

Who is Jesus?

The contrast between the extraordinary figure of the awaited and misunderstood Messiah, and the obtuseness of the elusive judgement of popular doctrines, ended up leaving things as they were.

Indeed, worse: it enclosed the Mystery - the most normal one in the world [but one that remains forever]: the humanity of God.

And he lost his 'whereabouts'.

He could not understand the Person of Christ from the things he knew or by trying to frame him in the familiar criteria of the First Testament; in the common feeling, with the magical models of the time.

His Master pupil could not be satisfied with an improvement of the situation.

He had to replace it, announcing the Truth of the Father; of the authentic man and woman.

Proposing a germ of an alternative world to the ruthless and pyramidal society; the one that establishes what to think and say, how one must be and behave.

God intends to bring out and enhance the intuition of consciences more than to impose duties or cravings for analysing behaviour.

This is the incredible.

Each religious group enclosed the Messiah in its own interpretative model, consonant with an environment tinged with ancient hopes: defence of goods and customs, well-being at the expense of others, expansion, prodigies.

The children's revolution poses an issue that seeks its Way Elsewhere - after all around the corner, but not relegated 'inside' a corner.

For to question the Person of Christ is already to begin to overcome petty, habitual interpretations, and to embrace the irruption of God.

The ever-childlike Lord will overturn the fortunes, the destiny of man's kingdom, and its claims that cage the soul, immobilising life.

The knowledge of his story, the adhesion to his Person, and the Action of the Spirit, will not allow the fixed thoughts, attachments, clichés, window dressing that then impregnate the whole soul, depriving it of intoxication and fruitfulness, to persist in Mary's mind.

It is in the Son that she becomes a Mother, a totally personal Presence, a new Sense.

Maternity hers, of innate Wisdom, which opens horizons: in the Church she is leading us to different Dreams of being.

Woman who wants to express herself by humanising us.

(Lk 2:1-20)

The (humanising) quantum leap of the Incarnation

(Lk 2:1-14)

In ancient literature, only the events of public life were considered significant, certainly not those of childhood - even of the greats of history.

Paul and Mark, the earliest New Testament authors, did not consider it appropriate to refer to the events of the Lord's human birth, adolescence and hidden life.

In the earliest times, the sole and substantial reference was the presence of God through the new and authentic Passover, now in Christ completely devoid of sensational epics.

Even for the last of the Gospels, God's dwelling among men and his elevation (on the scaffold of rejection) has nothing glorifying and luminous in a trivial and marginal sense. Rather of permanent depth.

But the early Christians were faced with major objections: thus they were forced to give a theological answer, and present the centre of the churches' Message [salvation in Christ] in a different way.

The first objection, raised by the followers of the Baptist; in short: "You say that Jesus is the true Messiah, but do you not remember that he was a pupil of our teacher?".

The second, from the pagans: "You claim that Jesus is the Son of God, but how is it that he was born like all other men, in a normal way, of a woman?".

The need then arose for an apologetic on the part of the family and non-public story of Christ, prior to his Manifestation.

The Infancy Gospels are not intended to provide historical news and details - as some apocryphal gospels fancifully do. They are testimony to popular faith consolidated in community liturgies.

The new Word is a proclamation of a News to us that encompasses the entire life of the Master.

In His all-human life He revealed the divine condition - right from His Baptism, with the testimony of the rent heavens; and from His birth itself.

But the entire narrative and literary background is used by the evangelists to outline a kind of synthetic narrative of 'circumstances' designed to convey the meaning of the figure of the 'Son of Man'.

In this way, in fact, he liked to call himself Jesus - who became Lord: as he was announced in the apostolic preaching, and lived in the communities.

In this logic, Lk leads us to Bethlehem, the village of Israel's promises - to emphasise a contrast with the expected Davidic Messiah.

Christ is [paradoxically] his descendant - yet alone, abandoned in the unclean place of a manger.

The Message for those far from the ceremonial also breaks the mould of greatness: 'a Saviour has been born for you today' (v.11).

A call for all the little ones of the earth, and an appeal-happy news also for the unnamed.

In several passages, in order to emphasise the Lord as the culmination and overcoming of the First Testament, Lk and Jn parallel Christ and the Baptist.

Here too the purpose is to proclaim the superiority of the Son of God over the last of the prophets, anchored in the 'religious' idea of the Most High as Lawgiver and Judge.

The Father does not annotate or make enquiries: he only transmits life and continues to generate it, always new.

God, the Creator and Redeemer of our intelligence and freedom, is revealed in his whole story, meaning, and Word, already from Christmas and not only from the beginning of public life.

With Him we are no longer bound to a subordinate relationship of blind obedience, but one of sympathy, collaboration, resemblance.

In the Child with open arms, it is the Father himself who winks at us and recognises himself in our helpless precariousness, poor among the poor; even an accomplice.

Not mighty sullen, equipped with everything, watchful and pretentious.

A revelation unthinkable for ancient philosophies and religions, including the albeit dignified thinking of John [the Baptizer was famous and considered more convincing than Jesus himself - even when he took off].

On the level of the Faith that was to overcome devout or rigid ideologies, the new Rebbe proposed an unbelievable identification with any institution or creed.

He proclaimed the identity between the divine condition and the fullness of humanisation.

The belligerent instincts of the violent and triumphant had nothing to do with God. Rather, He recognised Himself in the class of the helpless and voiceless.

Therefore, the Father could not be a protector who demanded recognition, but a Parent who always wants to grow.

By recognising and uniting with us, the Eternal One expands life; He does not humiliate it, nor does He shrink it.

This is what we call Incarnation, in the proper sense.

Every gift of Heaven does not fall by the sympathy of the gods, blind fortune, or their random predilection; nor by merit and fulfilment, but by need. 

Now the needs of woman and man drive the Exodus and pass through a dimension of completion, of fullness of being that exceeds the pre-human, revealing a God among us and with us.

The Eternal One who comes down, comes, and knocks, asks to be welcomed, not obeyed.

The face of a disembodied, sympathetic, welcoming Child - sometimes in tears - is the trait of the authentic person, who replaces the old man, all of a piece, resembling the god of war.

The Most High does not demand submission, nor does he demand that we meet him halfway, setting up useless scaffolding to climb us to Heaven - as with the tower-of-Babel type religion, inexorably destined to collapse.

With the unveiling of the new Face of the true God and true man, new times begin.

We are no longer called to live according to the Almighty: we live of the Father and in Him, with the Son, for us and our brothers.

Here is the Light from below and above together, which pierces the darkness of this night.

That Child breaks the artificial veins, puts us back in touch with the energies of the primordial.

It extinguishes the thoughts and torments that perhaps [by "demerit"] we had to endure.

It breaks the isolation; it opens the dreaming part of the old, chronic, closed man, who would not want the leap.

In such an open gaze, Jesus the brother comes to find our consciousness.

The divine condition breaks through to position itself in the imagination.

It demands space... to make us lose our minds - so it pushes away from continuities and rigid controls, offering a full, new existence.

Christmas aurora

The place for us

(Lk 2:15-20)

In the cages of our devotion, perhaps there is still no place for Jesus who offers himself. He continues to be born a child like the others, distant and poor, rejected.

Only those on the margins of society seem capable of waiting, openness to the mystery, and searching: keeping watch at night (v.8), passing by and seeing (v.15), coming in haste (v.16), praising (v.20).

The Mother is already making her way from the religiosity of the fathers to the Faith in the Father: Contemplative who listens, meets her deepest states and tries not to miss anything.

Those who are nobodies but feel anxious searching and prayerful hearts can sing a new song.

In this way, he will be able to decipher the signs of the divine Presence inscribed in events, and welcome Christ into his inner dwelling (v.7) [cf. commentary on the Prologue of John].

In the simplicity of the Son - in the Freedom of children - the Eternal God points out to the wretched and abandoned multitudes a new Way, capable of valuing the limits and even the eccentricities of each one.

Throughout the first century, both in Palestine and Asia Minor [Johannine and Lucan churches] the different schools of theology and servants of God - of traditional Judaism, of Jesus, of the Baptist - confronted each other in alternative ways.

Where there were communities of Jews, there was no lack of controversy between Christians and various (more or less radical) observers of the religion of the fathers - as well as people who had been baptised by John, or at least in contact with his pupils. The Master and the first apostles had also been.

Rather than confusion, there was real competition between the group of Christ's disciples and those of the Baptizer.

This, even though both proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, and proposed social justice and the forgiveness of sins in practical life - instead of through rituals and sacrificial gestures at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Yet, thanks to the Son of God, the apostles grasped the depth of the Father's heart, which never resembles a justicialist, but works exclusively for the good and the promotion of life.

Hence in Faith they themselves achieved inexplicable recoveries - precisely by gratuitously integrating people's weak sides - without works of mortification of the insecure woman and man, nor claiming impossible preventive perfections.

Even today, precisely from the dark sides of our personality, the Father creates in the Spirit of the Beatitudes his Newness, which turns the tables.

A completely unexpected change, impossible to imagine and propose; at least on the basis of prejudices or established ideas - all of which compete with self-esteem and joie de vivre.

The God of unconditional and guilt-dispelling love was precisely the exclusive prerogative of the new people of Faith in Christ, who had overcome the accusatory, moralistic and fussy cloaks of tradition.

Even then, diversity brought into play the question of the purifications required by creeds and identity rites.

Jesus seemed completely alien to the mentality of cultic ablutions.

It was the habit of life with Him that regenerated souls in the round, even from the eccentricities of each one.

Precious uniquenesses, interpreted as a sign of vocational exceptionality. 

He taught the wretched and those condemned by religion how to get back on their feet by appealing to the possibility of encountering the different faces lurking in each one's soul: taking them on and investing them rather than denying them.

Personalities all... not pre-emptively sterilised; even by the extravagant expressions, or by the unconscious, shaky, unexpressed sides - in which Jesus taught to discover the traits of the personal missionary Call.

And it is from here - it seems incredible - that we too are sent to the Annunciation.

All this remains fundamental every day.

Indeed, the pious proposals may present themselves in very dignified forms - but they remain only outposts of the new quality leap.

The latter, capable of astonishment and all humanising: without the tare of feeling marked for life by external opinions.

Obviously, these forms of familial looseness and immediacy towards the Eternal God aroused the envy of the veterans still caged in the old fears of retribution and the heap of works of law.

In no fulfilment, but only in Christ, did his friends and brothers recognise the Voice of the loving God.

He does not distinguish between the pure and the impure, the able and the unable, friend and foe; veterans, the elect, the predestined, and the not.

In short, in our real life we do not wait for a phenomenon that continually disturbs and oppresses us, filling us with fears and deviations to be corrected [that sap all energies].

Let us only look for a Friend who allows us to express ourselves in an unprecedented way and have a long - even undeserved - hope.

Let us be like the shepherds: no one has ever understood what convinced them, except the astonishment of the unpredictable gratuitousness (vv.15-18.20).

Paradoxically ready to found a new people - without too many regulations - starting from how and where each one found himself.

By now we too no longer need the imprimatur of sectarianism.

Our most childish oddities [cf. commentary on the Prologue of John] can bring the human condition closer to the divine condition.

So they have the approval of the Lord of all cosmos.

Genealogy

Dear brothers and sisters of Rome and of the whole world!

Christ is born for us! Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to the people he loves. May the echo of the proclamation of Bethlehem, which the Catholic Church makes resound in all continents, beyond all boundaries of nationality, language and culture, reach everyone. The Son of the Virgin Mary is born for all, he is the Saviour of all.

Thus an ancient liturgical antiphon invokes him: 'O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, hope and salvation of the peoples: come and save us, O Lord our God. Veni ad salvandum nos! Come and save us! This is the cry of the man of all times, who feels he cannot make it alone to overcome difficulties and dangers. He needs to put his hand in a greater and stronger hand, a hand that reaches out to him from on high. Dear brothers and sisters, this hand is Christ, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary. He is the hand that God stretched out to humanity, to bring it out of the quicksand of sin and set it on its feet on the rock, the firm rock of his Truth and Love (cf. Ps 40:3).

Yes, this is what the name of that Child means, the name that, by God's will, Mary and Joseph gave him: his name is Jesus, which means "Saviour" (cf. Mt 1:21; Lk 1:31). He was sent by God the Father to save us above all from the deep evil, rooted in man and history: that evil that is separation from God, the presumptuous pride of doing one's own thing, of competing with God and replacing Him, of deciding what is good and what is evil, of being the master of life and death (cf. Gen 3:1-7). This is the great evil, the great sin, from which we men cannot save ourselves except by relying on God's help, except by crying out to Him: "Veni ad salvandum nos! - Come and save us!".

The very fact of raising this invocation to Heaven already puts us in the right position, puts us in the truth of ourselves: for we are those who have cried out to God and have been saved (cf. Esth [Greek] 10:3f). God is the Saviour, we the ones in danger. He is the physician, we the sick. To recognise Him, is the first step towards salvation, towards getting out of the labyrinth in which we ourselves shut ourselves up with our pride. Lifting our eyes to Heaven, stretching out our hands and calling for help is the way out, provided there is Someone who listens, and who can come to our rescue.

Jesus Christ is proof that God has heard our cry. Not only that! God has such a strong love for us that He cannot remain in Himself, that He comes out of Himself and comes into us, sharing our condition to the full (cf. Ex 3:7-12). The response God gave in Jesus to the cry of man infinitely exceeds our expectation, reaching such solidarity that it cannot be only human, but divine. Only the God who is love and the love that is God could choose to save us through this path, which is certainly the longest, but it is the one that respects his and our truth: the path of reconciliation, of dialogue, of collaboration.

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters in Rome and throughout the world, on this Christmas 2011, let us turn to the Child of Bethlehem, to the Son of the Virgin Mary, and say: "Come and save us!" We repeat this in spiritual union with so many people in particularly difficult situations, and as the voice of the voiceless.

Together we invoke divine succour for the peoples of the Horn of Africa, who suffer from hunger and famine, sometimes aggravated by a persistent state of insecurity. May the international community not fail to help the many refugees from that region, who are sorely tried in their dignity.

May the Lord bring comfort to the peoples of South-East Asia, particularly of Thailand and the Philippines, who are still in grave distress as a result of the recent floods.

May the Lord come to the aid of humanity wounded by the many conflicts, which still today stain the planet with blood. May he, who is the Prince of Peace, grant peace and stability to the Land he has chosen to come into the world, and encourage the resumption of dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Bring an end to the violence in Syria, where so much blood has already been shed. Promote full reconciliation and stability in Iraq and Afghanistan. Grant renewed vigour in building the common good to all parts of society in North African and Middle Eastern countries.

May the birth of the Saviour sustain the prospects for dialogue and cooperation in Myanmar, in the search for shared solutions. May the birth of the Redeemer grant political stability to the countries of the African Great Lakes Region and assist the efforts of the people of South Sudan to protect the rights of all citizens. 

Dear brothers and sisters, let us turn our gaze to the Grotto of Bethlehem: the Child we contemplate is our salvation! He has brought the world a universal message of reconciliation and peace. Let us open our hearts to him, let us welcome him into our lives. Let us repeat to Him with confidence and hope: "Veni ad salvandum nos!"

[Pope Benedict, Urbi et Orbi Message 25 December 2011].

Today he is born for you

Dear brothers and sisters,

"A child has been born for us, a son has been given to us" (Is 9:5). What Isaiah, looking far into the future, says to Israel as consolation in its anguish and darkness, the Angel, from which emanates a cloud of light, announces to the shepherds as present: "Today, in the city of David, a Saviour is born for you, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:11). The Lord is present. From this moment, God is truly a "God with us". He is no longer the distant God, who, through creation and through consciousness, can somehow be sensed from afar. He has entered the world. He is the Near. The risen Christ has said this to his own, to us: "Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matthew 28: 20). For you the Saviour is born: what the Angel announced to the shepherds, God now recalls to us through the Gospel and its messengers. This is news that cannot leave us indifferent. If it is true, everything has changed. If it is true, it concerns me too. Then, like the shepherds, I too must say: Come, I want to go to Bethlehem and see the Word that happened there. The Gospel does not tell us the story of the shepherds without purpose. They show us how to respond in the right way to the message that is also addressed to us. What then do these first witnesses of God's incarnation tell us?

First of all, it is said of the shepherds that they were vigilant people and that the message could reach them precisely because they were awake. We must wake up, for the message to reach us. We must become truly vigilant people. What does this mean? The difference between one who dreams and one who is awake consists first of all in the fact that the one who dreams is in a particular world. He is enclosed with his self in this dream world that is his alone and does not connect him with others. Waking up means leaving this particular world of the self and entering into the common reality, into the truth that, alone, unites us all. Conflict in the world, mutual irreconcilability, stems from the fact that we are enclosed in our own interests and personal opinions, in our own tiny private world. Selfishness, that of the group as well as that of the individual, keeps us prisoners of our own interests and desires, which conflict with the truth and divide us from one another. Wake up, the Gospel tells us. Come out into the great common truth, into the communion of the one God. To wake up thus means to develop sensitivity for God; for the silent signs with which He wants to guide us; for the many signs of His presence. There are people who say that they are 'religiously devoid of a musical ear'. The perceptive capacity for God seems almost a dowry that is denied to some. And indeed - our way of thinking and acting, the mentality of today's world, the range of our various experiences are apt to reduce our sensitivity for God, to make us 'devoid of a musical ear' for Him. And yet in every soul is present, in a hidden or open way, the expectation of God, the capacity to encounter Him. To achieve this vigilance, this awakening to the essential, we want to pray, for ourselves and for others, for those who seem to be "devoid of this musical ear" and in whom, nevertheless, the desire for God to manifest Himself is alive. The great theologian Origen said: If I had the grace to see as Paul saw, I could now (during the Liturgy) contemplate a great host of angels (cf. Lk 23:9). Indeed - in the Sacred Liturgy, the Angels of God and the Saints surround us. The Lord himself is present in our midst. Lord, open the eyes of our hearts, that we may become vigilant and visionary, and so we may bring your nearness to others!

Let us return to the Christmas Gospel. It tells us that the shepherds, having heard the Angel's message, said to one another: "'Let us go up to Bethlehem' ... They went, without delay" (Lk 2:15f.). "They hastened" says the Greek text literally. What had been announced to them was so important that they had to go immediately. In fact, what they had been told there was totally beyond the ordinary. It changed the world. The Saviour was born. The long-awaited Son of David came into the world in his own city. What could have been more important? Of course, they were also driven by curiosity, but above all by excitement about the great thing that had been communicated to them, the little ones and seemingly unimportant men. They hurried - without delay. In our ordinary life things are not like that. The majority of men do not consider the things of God to be a priority, they do not immediately press upon us. And so we, in the vast majority, are quite willing to put them off. First we do what appears urgent here and now. In the list of priorities, God is often found almost at the last place. This - one thinks - can always be done. The Gospel tells us: God has top priority. If something in our lives deserves to be hurried without delay, it is, then, God's cause alone. A maxim of the Rule of St Benedict says: 'Put nothing before the work of God (i.e. the divine office)'. The liturgy is the first priority for monks. Everything else comes next. At its core, however, this phrase applies to every man. God is important, the most important reality in our lives. It is precisely this priority that the shepherds teach us. From them we want to learn not to let ourselves be crushed by all the urgent things of everyday life. From them we want to learn the inner freedom to put other occupations - however important they may be - on the back burner in order to move towards God, to let Him into our lives and our time. Time committed to God and, from Him, to our neighbour is never time wasted. It is the time in which we truly live, in which we live the very being of human persons.

Some commentators point out that first the shepherds, the simple souls, came to Jesus in the manger and were able to meet the Redeemer of the world. The wise men who came from the East, the representatives of those with rank and name, came much later. The commentators add: this is quite obvious. The shepherds, in fact, lived next door. They only had to "cross" (cf. Lk 2:15) as one crosses a short space to go to one's neighbours. The wise, on the other hand, lived far away. They had to travel a long and difficult way to Bethlehem. And they needed guidance and direction. Well, even today there are simple and humble souls who live very close to the Lord. They are, so to speak, His neighbours and can easily go to Him. But most of us modern men live far from Jesus Christ, from the One who became man, from the God who came among us. We live in philosophies, affairs and occupations that fill us up completely and from which the path to the manger is very long. In many ways God must repeatedly nudge us and give us a hand, so that we can find our way out of the tangle of our thoughts and our busyness and find our way to Him. But for everyone there is a way. For everyone the Lord has signs that are suitable for each one. He calls all of us, so that we too can say: Come, let us "cross over", let us go to Bethlehem - to that God, who has come to meet us. Yes, God has come towards us. Alone we could not reach Him. The way is beyond our strength. But God has descended. He comes to meet us. He has travelled the longest part of the way. Now He asks us: Come and see how much I love you. Come and see that I am here. Transeamus usque Bethleem, says the Latin Bible. Let us go beyond! Let us go beyond ourselves! Let us be wayfarers to God in many ways: in being inwardly on our way to Him. And yet also in very concrete ways - in the liturgy of the Church, in service to our neighbour, where Christ is waiting for me.

Let us again listen directly to the Gospel. The shepherds tell each other why they are setting out: "Let us see this event". Literally the Greek text says: "We see this Word, which happened there". Yes, such is the novelty of this night: the Word can be seen. For it has become flesh. That God of whom no image is to be made, because any image could only reduce him, indeed misrepresent him, that God has made himself, Himself, visible in the One who is his true image, as Paul says (cf. 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). In the figure of Jesus Christ, in all his living and working, in his dying and rising, we can see the Word of God and thus the mystery of the living God himself. God is like this. The Angel had said to the shepherds: "This is the sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger" (Lk 2:12; cf. 16). God's sign, the sign given to the shepherds and to us, is not an exciting miracle. The sign of God is His humility. The sign of God is that He makes Himself small; He becomes a child; He lets Himself be touched and asks for our love. How we men long for a different, imposing, irrefutable sign of God's power and greatness. But his sign invites us to faith and love, and therefore gives us hope: this is how God is. He possesses power and He is Goodness. He invites us to become like Him. Yes, we become like God, if we let ourselves be moulded by this sign; if we learn, ourselves, humility and thus true greatness; if we renounce violence and use only the weapons of truth and love. Origen, following a word of John the Baptist, saw the essence of paganism expressed in the symbol of the stones: paganism is a lack of sensitivity, it means a heart of stone, which is incapable of loving and perceiving God's love. Origen says of pagans: "Devoid of feeling and reason, they turn into stones and wood" (in Lk 22:9). Christ, however, wants to give us a heart of flesh. When we see Him, the God who became a child, our hearts are opened. In the Liturgy of the Holy Night, God comes to us as man, so that we may become truly human. Let us listen to Origen again: "Indeed, what would it profit you that Christ once came in the flesh, if He did not come to your soul? Let us pray that He may come to us daily and that we may say: I live, but I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20)" (in Lk 22:3).

Yes, for this we want to pray on this Holy Night. Lord Jesus Christ, you who were born in Bethlehem, come to us! Enter into me, into my soul. Transform me. Renew me. Make me and all of us from stone and wood into living persons, in whom your love becomes present and the world is transformed. Amen.

[Pope Benedict, Homily of the Night 24 December 2009].

The shepherds found

"A holy day has dawned for us: come all to worship the Lord; today a splendid light has descended upon the earth" (Christmas Day Mass, Gospel Acclamation).

Dear brothers and sisters! "A holy day has dawned for us. A day of great hope: today the Saviour of mankind has been born! The birth of a child normally brings a light of hope to those who anxiously await it. When Jesus was born in the cave in Bethlehem, a 'great light' appeared on earth; a great hope entered the hearts of those who awaited him: 'lux magna', sings the liturgy on this Christmas Day. It was certainly not 'great' in the manner of this world, for it was first seen only by Mary, Joseph and a few shepherds, then by the Magi, old Simeon, the prophetess Anna: those whom God had chosen. Yet, in the concealment and silence of that holy night, a splendid and everlasting light was kindled for every man; the great hope that brought happiness came into the world: "the Word became flesh and we have seen his glory" (Jn 1:14)

"God is light," says St John, "and in him there is no darkness" (1 John 1:5). In the Book of Genesis we read that when the universe originated, "the earth was formless and deserted and darkness covered the abyss". "God said, 'Let there be light!' And the light was" (Gen 1:2-3). The creative Word of God is Light, the source of life. Everything was made through the Logos and without Him nothing was made of everything that exists (cf. Jn 1:3). That is why all creatures are fundamentally good, and bear within themselves the imprint of God, a spark of His light. However, when Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, Light itself came into the world: "God from God, Light from Light", we profess in the Creed. In Jesus, God took on what was not and remained what He was: "omnipotence entered into an infant body and was not removed from the government of the universe" (cf. Augustine, Serm 184, 1 on Christmas). He who is the creator of man became man in order to bring peace to the world. That is why, on Christmas night, the hosts of Angels sing: "Glory to God in the highest / and peace on earth to men whom he loves" (Lk 2:14).

"Today a splendid light has descended upon the earth". The Light of Christ is the bearer of peace. At the night Mass, the Eucharistic liturgy opened with precisely this hymn: "Today true peace has descended to us from heaven" (Entrance Antiphon). Indeed, only the "great" light that appeared in Christ can give men "true" peace: that is why every generation is called to welcome it, to welcome the God who became one of us in Bethlehem.

This is Christmas! A historical event and mystery of love, which for over two thousand years has challenged men and women of every age and place. It is the holy day on which the "great light" of Christ, bearer of peace, shines forth! Of course, to recognise it, to welcome it requires faith, it requires humility. The humility of Mary, who believed the word of the Lord, and was the first to adore, bent over the manger, the Fruit of her womb; the humility of Joseph, a righteous man, who had the courage of faith and preferred to obey God rather than protect his own reputation; the humility of the shepherds, the poor and anonymous shepherds, who welcomed the announcement of the heavenly messenger and hurried to the cave where they found the newborn child and, filled with astonishment, adored it, praising God (cf. Lk 2:15-20). The little ones, the poor in spirit: these are the protagonists of Christmas, yesterday and today; the protagonists of God's history, the tireless builders of his Kingdom of justice, love and peace.

In the silence of the night in Bethlehem Jesus was born and was welcomed by caring hands. And now, at this Christmas of ours, when the joyful announcement of his redemptive birth continues to resound, who is ready to open the door of their hearts to him? Men and women of our age, to us too Christ comes to bring light, to us too he comes to give peace! But who keeps watch, in the night of doubt and uncertainty, with an awake and prayerful heart? Who waits for the dawn of the new day, keeping the flame of faith burning? Who has time to listen to his word and allow himself to be enveloped by the charm of his love? Yes! It is for all his message of peace; it is to all that he comes to offer himself as a sure hope of salvation.

May the light of Christ, who comes to enlighten every human being, finally shine forth, and be consolation for those who find themselves in the darkness of misery, injustice, war; for those who are still denied their legitimate aspiration to a more secure livelihood, health, education, stable employment, a fuller participation in civic and political responsibilities, free from all oppression and sheltered from conditions that offend human dignity. Victims of bloody armed conflicts, terrorism and violence of all kinds, which inflict untold suffering on entire populations, are particularly the most vulnerable, children, women and the elderly. While ethnic, religious and political tensions, instability, rivalries, injustice and discrimination, which tear at the internal fabric of many countries, exacerbate international relations. And in the world, the number of migrants, refugees, and displaced persons is growing, also because of frequent natural disasters, often the consequence of worrying environmental disasters.

On this day of peace, our thoughts go above all to where the clang of arms resounds: to the martyred lands of Darfur, Somalia and the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the borders of Eritrea and Ethiopia, to the entire Middle East, in particular Iraq, Lebanon and the Holy Land, to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, to the Balkan region, and to the many other crisis situations, often unfortunately forgotten. May the Child Jesus bring relief to those in trial and instil in those in government the wisdom and courage to seek and find humane, just and lasting solutions. To the thirst for meaning and value that the world feels today, to the search for well-being and peace that marks the life of all humanity, to the expectations of the poor Christ, true God and true Man, responds with his Christmas. Let individuals and nations not be afraid to recognise and welcome Him: with Him "a splendid light" illuminates the horizon of humanity; with Him opens "a holy day" that knows no sunset. May this Christmas truly be for all a day of joy, hope and peace!

"Come all and adore the Lord". With Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, with the Magi and the innumerable host of humble worshippers of the newborn Child, who down the centuries have welcomed the mystery of Christmas, let us too, brothers and sisters of every continent, let the light of this day spread everywhere: let it enter our hearts, brighten and warm our homes, bring serenity and hope to our cities, give peace to the world. This is my wish for you who listen to me. A wish that becomes a humble and trusting prayer to the Child Jesus, that his light may dispel all darkness from your lives and fill you with love and peace. May the Lord, who has made his face of mercy shine forth in Christ, satisfy you with his happiness and make you messengers of his goodness. Merry Christmas!

[Pope Benedict, Urbi et Orbi Message 25 December 2007].

The Logos became Flesh

"Verbum caro factum est" - "The Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14).

Dear brothers and sisters, who are listening to me from Rome and from the whole world, with joy I announce to you the message of Christmas: God became man, he came to dwell among us. God is not far away: he is near, indeed, he is the "Emmanuel", God-with-us. He is not a stranger: he has a face, that of Jesus.

It is a message that is always new, always surprising, because it goes beyond our wildest hopes. Above all, because it is not just an announcement: it is an event, a happening, that credible witnesses have seen, heard, touched in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth! Being with Him, observing His deeds and listening to His words, they recognised in Jesus the Messiah; and seeing Him resurrected, after He had been crucified, they were certain that He, true man, was at the same time true God, the only-begotten Son come from the Father, full of grace and truth (cf. Jn 1:14).

"The Word became flesh". Faced with this revelation, the question once again arises in us: how is this possible? The Word and the flesh are opposite realities; how can the eternal and omnipotent Word become a frail and mortal man? There is but one answer: Love. He who loves wants to share with the beloved, wants to be united with him, and Sacred Scripture presents us with precisely the great story of God's love for his people, culminating in Jesus Christ.

In reality, God does not change: He is true to Himself. The one who created the world is the same one who called Abraham and revealed his name to Moses: I am who I am ... the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ... a merciful and gracious God, rich in love and faithfulness (cf. Ex 3:14-15; 34:6). God does not change, He is Love from everlasting and for ever. He is in Himself Communion, Unity in the Trinity, and His every work and word aims at communion. The incarnation is the culmination of creation. When Jesus, the Son of God made man, was formed in Mary's womb by the will of the Father and the action of the Holy Spirit, creation reached its apex. The ordering principle of the universe, the Logos, began to exist in the world, in a time and a space.

"The Word became flesh". The light of this truth is manifested to those who accept it with faith, because it is a mystery of love. Only those who open themselves to love are enveloped in the light of Christmas. So it was on the night of Bethlehem, and so it is also today. The incarnation of the Son of God is an event that happened in history, but at the same time goes beyond it. In the night of the world, a new light shines, which can be seen by the simple eyes of faith, by the meek and humble heart of those who await the Saviour. If truth were only a mathematical formula, it would in a sense impose itself. If, on the other hand, Truth is Love, it demands faith, the 'yes' of our heart.

And what, indeed, does our heart seek, if not a Truth that is Love? It is sought by the child, with its questions, so disarming and stimulating; it is sought by the young person, in need of finding the profound meaning of his or her life; it is sought by the man and woman in their maturity, to guide and sustain their commitment in the family and at work; it is sought by the elderly person, to give fulfilment to earthly existence.

"The Word became flesh". The proclamation of Christmas is also light for the peoples, for the collective journey of humanity. The 'Emmanuel', God-with-us, has come as King of justice and peace. His Kingdom - we know - is not of this world, yet it is more important than all the kingdoms of this world. It is like the leaven of humanity: if it were missing, the force that drives true development would fail: the drive to work together for the common good, to selfless service of neighbour, to peaceful struggle for justice. Believing in the God who wanted to share our history is a constant encouragement to engage in it, even in the midst of its contradictions. It is a reason for hope for all those whose dignity is offended and violated, because the One who was born in Bethlehem came to free man from the root of all slavery.

May the light of Christmas shine once again in the Land where Jesus was born, and inspire Israelis and Palestinians to seek a just and peaceful coexistence. May the consoling proclamation of the coming of Emmanuel soothe the pain and console the dear Christian communities in Iraq and throughout the Middle East in their trials, giving them comfort and hope for the future, and inspire the leaders of nations to active solidarity with them. Let this also be done in favour of those in Haiti who are still suffering from the consequences of the devastating earthquake and the recent cholera epidemic. Likewise let us not forget those in Colombia and Venezuela, but also in Guatemala and Costa Rica, who have suffered the recent natural disasters.

May the birth of the Saviour open up prospects of lasting peace and genuine progress for the peoples of Somalia, Darfur and Côte d'Ivoire; promote political and social stability in Madagascar; bring security and respect for human rights to Afghanistan and Pakistan; encourage dialogue between Nicaragua and Costa Rica; and foster reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula.

May the celebration of the birth of the Redeemer strengthen the spirit of faith, patience and courage in the faithful of the Church in mainland China, so that they may not lose heart in the face of restrictions on their freedom of religion and conscience and, persevering in fidelity to Christ and His Church, keep the flame of hope alive. May the love of 'God with us' grant perseverance to all Christian communities suffering discrimination and persecution, and inspire political and religious leaders to commit themselves to full respect for the religious freedom of all.

Dear brothers and sisters, "the Word became flesh", he came to dwell among us, he is the Emmanuel, the God who became close to us. Let us contemplate together this great mystery of love, let us let our hearts be enlightened by the light that shines in the grotto of Bethlehem! A Happy Christmas to all!

[Pope Benedict, Urbi et Orbi Message 25 December 2010]

1. “Today is born our Saviour” (Responsorial Psalm)

On this night, the ancient yet ever new proclamation of the Lord’s birth rings out. It rings out for those keeping watch, like the shepherds in Bethlehem two thousand years ago; it rings out for those who have responded to Advent’s call and who, waiting watchfully, are ready to welcome the joyful tidings which in the liturgy become our song: “Today is born our Saviour”.

The Christian people keep watch; the entire world keeps watch on this Christmas night which is linked to that unforgettable night a year ago, when the Holy Door of the Great Jubilee was opened, the Door of grace opened wide for all.

2. It is as if the Church had never ceased to repeat day after day during the Jubilee year: “Today is born our Saviour”. This proclamation, with its inexhaustible power to renew us, echoes once more on this holy night with special force: this is the Christmas of the Great Jubilee, a living remembrance of Christ’s two thousand years, of his wondrous birth, which marked the new beginning of history. Today “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14).

“Today”. On this night, time opens to eternity, because you, O Christ, are born among us, coming from on high. You came to birth from the womb of a Woman blessed among all women, you “the Son of the Most High”. Once and for all your holiness made all time holy: the days, the centuries, the millennia. By your birth, you have turned time into the “today” of salvation.

3. “Today is born our Saviour”.

On this night we celebrate the mystery of Bethlehem, the mystery of an incomparable night which is, in a sense, within time and beyond time. From the Virgin’s womb was born a Child, a manger became the cradle of immortal Life.

Christmas is the festival of life, because you, Jesus, born like all of us, have blessed the moment of birth: a moment which symbolically represents the mystery of human life, joining labour to expectation, pain to joy. All of this took place in Bethlehem: a Mother gave birth; “a man entered the world” (Jn 16:21), the Son of man. The mystery of Bethlehem!

4. With deep emotion I think back to the days of my Jubilee pilgrimage in the Holy Land. My thoughts return to the stable, where I was given the grace to pause in prayer. In spirit, I embrace that blessed land that saw the blossoming of imperishable joy for the world.

I think with concern of the Holy Places, and especially of the town of Bethlehem where sadly, because of the troubled political situation, the evocative rites of Christmas cannot be celebrated with their usual solemnity. Tonight I would like the Christian communities in those places to feel that the whole Church is very close to them.

We are close to you, dear brothers and sisters, in a particularly intense prayer. We share your anxiety for the destiny of the entire region of the Middle East. May the Lord hear our plea! From this Square, the centre of the Catholic world, let the angels’ proclamation to the shepherds ring out once more with new strength: “Glory to God in the highest heavens and peace on earth to those whom he loves” (Lk 2:14).

Our confidence cannot be shaken, nor can our wonder at what we are celebrating ever fade. Today is born the One who brings peace to the world.

5. “Today is born our Saviour”.

The Word cries in a manger. His name is Jesus, which means “God saves”, because “he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21).

It is not a palace which sees the birth of the Redeemer, destined to establish the eternal and universal Kingdom. He is born in a stable and, coming among us, he kindles in the world the fire of God’s love (cf. Lk 12:49). This fire will not be quenched ever again.

May this fire burn in our hearts as a flame of charity in action, showing itself in openness to and support of our many brothers and sisters sorely tried by want and suffering!

6. Lord Jesus, whom we contemplate in the poverty of Bethlehem, make us witnesses to your love, that love which led you to strip yourself of divine glory, in order to be born among us and die for us.

As the Great Jubilee moves into its final phase, pour out your Spirit upon us, that the grace of the Incarnation may inspire in every believer a determination to respond more generously to the new life received in Baptism.

Grant that the light of this night, brighter than day, may be cast upon the future and guide the steps of humanity in the way of peace.

You, O Prince of peace, You, O Saviour born for us today, be with your Church on the road which stretches before us into the new millennium!

[Pope John Paul II, Midnight Homily 24 December 2000]