Dear reader friends,
with the number you have in hand we have arrived at Christmas: I would like to wish each and every one of you, together with the entire editorial staff, best wishes Merry Christmas.
There Holy night comes to tell us once again that there is a God who became man out of love: a God close to each of us, who shares our condition. No situation, however difficult and painful, is far from him.
«God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son»,
the evangelist John reminds us succinctly (3,16).
God gives us what is most precious, his Son. And in Him he gives us the utmost intimacy: become his children (John 1,12-13).
It’s a big message “simple” How much difficult to accept.
And, with all our efforts, we risk don’t even notice it.
For a few weeks now, in our cities there has been a rush for purchases, toasts and preparation of the “great dinner”.
Haste risks doing us “passing by” Christmas without enjoying its meaning.
Not just the objective sense, but the sense it has for me, for us.
Pope Francis said, in his Christmas 2022 homily:
“We know many things about Christmas, but we forget its meaning.”
If we go and reread his Christmas homilies, we will find a great wealth of ideas.
I will briefly recall some of them.
The Pope refers us first of all to the heart of the event, to «Word that became flesh»to the God who went this far
“because God cares about everything about us, he loves us to the point of considering us more precious than anything else”.
An announcement that is not easy to accept due to a widespread mentality for which everything ultimately depends on man and his initiatives.
«But today, please, leave the initiative to Jesus, who tells you:
“For you I became flesh, for you I became like you”».
Like the shepherds who have left their flocks, leave the enclosure of your melancholy and embrace the tenderness of the child God.
It is the acceptance of faith, which Pope Francis declines in many ways, indicating to us Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the wise men as models from which to learn the right attitude towards Christmas:
«They are with their gaze fixed on Jesus, with their hearts turned to Him. They do not speak, but they adore».
From God’s attitude to man’s attitude:
the faith that welcomes, but also a life that lets itself be shaped by God’s attitude, which learns from his povertyfrom the smallnessfrom his become a childfrom the richness of love and relationships around Him…
«God wants to come into the little things of our lives, he wants to inhabit everyday realities, the simple gestures we perform at home, in the family, at school, at work. It is in our ordinary life that he wants to achieve extraordinary things.”
Dear friends,
to experience Christmas we need contemplate the evangelical announcement with the amazement of childrenwe have to let it «May Christ dwell in our hearts through faith» (Ephesians 3.14), so that even our little lives are a reflection of this Goodness which we remember every year.
This is the best wish we can make.
Merry Christmas to all of you!
