“We weren’t born to kill, but to grow peoples.” Pope Francis resumes the word, albeit with difficulty, to ask, once again, to pray “for peace, we do everything for peace”. The pontiff insists: “Don’t forget that war is always a defeat.” He asks that «We find paths of peace. Please, in your daily prayer ask for peace », insists. And remember “the battered Ukrainian, how much it suffers. And think of Palestine, in Israel, Myanmar in North Kivu, in South Sudan, many countries in war. Please pray for peace, we do penance for peace “.
Also this week the Pope speaks only in greetings in Spanish and Italian. First he began to read the speech and then pass the text to “a priest”, Don Pierluigi Giroli, “because I, with my bronchitis, cannot yet, I hope that next time it can”. However, Francesco had indicated this week’s theme. “In our jubilee catechesis path on Jesus who is our hope,” he said, “today we focus on the event of his birth in Bethlehem”
A birth that is linked to travel. «God enters history by making himself our travel companion and begins to travel when he is still in the womb. The evangelist Luca tells us that as soon as he conceived he went to Nazareth to the house of Zaccaria and Elisabetta; And then, at pregnancy now completed, from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census. Maria and Giuseppe are forced to go to the city of King Davide, where Giuseppe was also born. The much -awaited messiah, The Son of the very high God leaves himself to be registered, that is, counting and registering, like any citizen. He submits to the decree of an emperor, Cesare Augustus, who thinks he is the master of all the earth “.
Bethlehem, which means “home of bread”, welcomes the prophecy. “The angel Gabriele had announced the birth of the messianic king in the sign of greatness:” Here, you will conceive a son, you will give light and you will call him Jesus. It will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; The Lord God will give him the throne of David his Father and reign forever on the house of Jacob and his kingdom will end “». But Jesus “was born in a completely unpublished way for a king”. Not in a “royal palace, but in the back of a house, in the space where the animals are. Luke thus shows us that God does not come into the world with high -sounding proclamations, he does not manifest himself in clamor, but He begins his journey into humility. And who are the first witnesses of this event? These are some shepherds: men with little culture, foul -smelling due to constant contact with animals, live on the margins of society. Yet they practice the job with which God himself makes himself known to his people ». They are chosen “as recipients of the most good news ever resounded in history:“ Do not fear: here, I announce a great joy, which will be of all the people: today, in the city of Davide, a savior was born for you, who is Christ Lord. This is the sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands, lying in a manger “».
It is that, the manger, the place to meet the Messiah. “In fact, it happens that, after a long wait,” for the savior of the world, for the one in view of which all things have been created, there is no place “”.
And so the shepherds learn that the “long -awaited Messiah was born for them, to be their savior, their shepherd. A news that opens their hearts to wonder, praise and joyful announcement ».
The shepherds, “unlike many people intent on doing a thousand other things”, become “the first witnesses of the essential, that is, of the salvation that is donated. They are the most humble and the poorest who know how to accommodate the event of the incarnation “. On their example we too, concludes Catechesis, we must be “capable of amazement and praise before God, and capable of guarding what he has entrusted to us: the talents, the charisms, Our vocation and the people who puts next to us. We ask the Lord to know how to see the extraordinary strength of the Child God in weakness, who comes to renew the world and transform our life with his design full of hope for the whole humanity “.
