Luke 1,57-66 – Feria proper of 23 December
The birth of John the Baptist occurs in an atmosphere of surprise. Everyone expected that child to follow the normality of traditions, to bear a name already known. But no: God breaks patterns, opens new paths. It is as if he were saying: “I have not come to confirm what you already know, but to show you what you do not yet imagine.” In the Christmas Novena, when we prepare for the fulfillment of the promises, this detail becomes fundamental: God does not repeat, he creates. Zaccaria, mute for months, finds his speech precisely at the moment in which he accepts the novelty, the mystery, the diversity of his son.
And then his tongue loosens. As if to remind us that many of our words remain sterile until they align with the will of the Lord. We find our voice again when we stop talking about life as if it were ours alone and we begin to recognize that it is a story shared with God. The fear that grips those present is not fear, but awareness: they are witnessing something bigger than them. It is the amazement before a God who makes himself present in a concrete way, within a familyinside a village, inside a normal story. And it is the same amazement that Christmas wants to reawaken in us.
God never stops visiting usbut often we are the ones who don’t recognize him because we wait for him where we think he should be, and instead he arrives where he decides to be found. “What will this child be?” everyone wonders. It is the question that every birth brings with it, but here it becomes a prophecy: John will be the one who prepares the way. We too are called to become “forerunners”, to straighten out what is crooked, to make room in the heart. Christmas is not just a memory of a past eventbut an opportunity to ask God to give birth to something now. And if this happens then let’s do like Zechariah, and move from fear to gratitude.
