At Christmas, the angel’s message to the shepherds will resound: “Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news of great Joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” Lk.2 10,11.
So many messages within these few words!
On Christmas night, this joy of the Gospel will echo in every country across the world, in every culture and tongue and it will unite us as members of one religious family. May this joy which we welcome as God’s great gift become contagious and be multiplied as we share it among us and around us and may it echo in every heart and in every home.
The shepherds who were among the marginalized of those times became the first guests of this first Christmas night. Let us join them as they “set out with haste” to respond to the angel’s invitation and go to Bethlehem. In their company let us enter this sacred space and discover in the great poverty of a stable on the periphery, between a mother and a father full of love and faith, that “a Child has been born to us” Is.9,5.” Et Incarnatus est….
While our loving gaze rests in wonder and awe on this frail, tiny newborn infant, “wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger” we also meet the gaze of Mary and Joseph. Let us allow the Child in the manger, Emmanuel, God-with-us, to challenge us. Let us approach him with faith and trust. In order to meet him we need to bow down, to humble ourselves, to make ourselves small. He calls us to turn to what is essential, to renounce our insatiable cravings, in other words to live the culture of “enough.”
“With the shepherds, let us enter into the real Christmas, bringing to Jesus all that we are, our alienation, our unhealed wound, our sins. Then, in Jesus, we will enjoy the taste of the true spirit of Christmas: the beauty of being loved by God.” Pope Francis
Are we being called to be someone other than the innkeeper in Bethlehem who told Joseph and Mary: “there is no room here”? I might also ask myself: If Jesus was to be born in our world today where would he choose to be born? In a small tent set up in a refugee camp? In the porch way of a block of flats or that of a supermarket? Under a bridge or in the hold of a boat overladen with immigrants?
In the company of the shepherds let us bring to Jesus, our gratitude for his Divine generosity towards us and all the signs of this loving presence that have accompanied us throughout the past year. With Mary and Joseph as we contemplate him in the manger let us simply tell him: Thank you because you have done all this for me.
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