(Nm 6,22-27; Lk 2,16-21)

Blessing the people was an ancient prerogative of the ruler who acted in the name of God and at first had priestly functions.

But in an attitude of encounter that makes God present in the midst of the crowds - the people of his Face - that of the ancient king also becomes an act of worship to be rediscovered.

We need to feel that we are blessed: in order not to be extinguished, in order to regenerate the affective truth that dwells in us and brings us back to life, thus contemplating it and thus setting off on any adventure.

The curse does not strengthen, it indicates rejection; it separates us. Blessing is the way to sharing and Peace, that is to say, to achieving wholeness.

In Israel, the divine blessing was (finally) expected in material guise. But the formula of the Armonite priesthood attests to the original idea that human life does not have its secret in the most obvious configuration.

In fact, even we know that partial and comfort-only situations, irenicism, well-being and security, turn into their opposite - they do not increase the integrity of life [authentic biblical sense of Shalôm].

Those who do not follow innate intuition, a more radical call of the self, or stunning proclamations (Lk 1:26-38. 2:8-15) do not develop their destiny, do not move, do 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 that they know.

But it is that simple hearth that draws them into God's new project, and into the proclamation of his scandalous unconditional Mercy - which did not electrocute them for impurity.

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 with a helpless image of God in front of them, they do not bother to engage in ethical discipline, which would have crumbled them.

They enjoy the wonder of a simply human reality - in a mysterious relationship of mutual recognition.

It is strange that the modest sign - a baby in a manger, an unclean place where beasts used to play - convinces them, makes them regain esteem, makes them evangelisers (perhaps not even regular evangelisers).

Like Calvary to which it refers, the resolving 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 the Magi, on the other hand, 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 (those far from the flocks) are those who hear the Announcement, readily verify it, and found the new divine 'lineage'.

People not tormented by static judgement, but now 'in the midst' of all men and no longer at high altitude.

Meanwhile Mary 'sought the meaning' of surprises (v.19). Thus she regenerated, for a new way of understanding and being together - to bring to light also the inner world of all a different people of wholeness.

She would 'put together' facts and Word, to discover their common thread, to remain receptive and not to be conditioned by the convictions of the devout, targetted and inflexible enclosures, which would give her no escape.

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

Her figure and that of the shepherds question us, demand the courage of an answer - but after having let flow the same kind of 'inner presences', 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 do this without effort, but by enduring the resistance of his arid environment....

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

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

Never before imagined.

The adventure of Faith is wide open. And the new Child has a Name that expresses his unprecedented essence as a Saviour, not as an executioner.

His whole story will also be fully instructive in terms of how to internalise uncertainties and hardships: these 'no' moments and precariousness teach us how to live.

Indeed, 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, 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 coming across and 'seeing' things externally 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.

In this way, she returned to her primordial being and to the sense of the Newborn Child - an ancient image, dear to many cultures.

He entered an Elsewhere and did not leave the field of reality: inside his Centre, without haste.

Searching for the Sun drowned in her being and which returned, emerged, resurrected in her innermost being, made her exist beyond.

Thus she did not allow herself to be absorbed by traditional ideas or external situations that wanted to break the balance.

In her veracious solitude - filled with Grace - that higher, concealed self in essence came more and more to her, became a new Dawn and guide.

She did not want to live inside thoughts, knowledge and reasoning around - none capable of amplifying life - all in the hands of the drugs of conventions, dehumanising the Enchantment.

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

Dreams sustained and conveyed his Centre - making new life flow from the Core of his Person, and the youth of the world.