Love

Christmas Day

I clearly remember when seven years ago it was the first time I was going to miss the midnight mass. Ever since I was little, my parents used to take me to that mass and it was an appointment that year after year I never missed. When I was young it was more the fruit of tradition and commitment to mass through singing, but when I grew up I also began to understand the value of overtime in the most important feasts of the Catholic Church.

I couldn’t go seven years ago. I became a mother for the first time, and had a baby just over two months old who had not yet settled into a routine. This difficulty combined with the cold of a winter evening led me to the decision that it would be better not to go to this mass this year. I remember almost ‘crying’ for the man who was going to play on this holy night and I had a little black heart for the fact that I was going to watch it on TV.

However, as only the baby and I stayed at home, I felt something I had never experienced in every wake I had gone through in all the previous years. As I look at my baby – tiny, totally dependent on me and her father, I feel that this is exactly what we are celebrating at Christmas: that God – that neither heaven nor heaven, has no beginning and no end, which out of his hand came every living thing around us he chose to shrink in a way that is difficult to explain by human mouth. God loves man so much and I wanted so much to enter into a relationship with him that he chose to come among us in the poorest, most vulnerable form – in the most fearless creature of any human being: a tiny baby.

That night, in the old days, except for the baby crying, I was given the grace to understand a little more about what Christmas really means. By the power of the Spirit, God created the world and everything in it; with the same power, on the first Christmas his Word took the form of a man. And today, this Spirit wants to turn us into His witness; it must make it a light that no darkness can extinguish.

Christmas also reminds us that the Lord is coming again, to renew everything in him but every day Jesus also wants to be born in our hearts. All around us, and even within us, we can see a lot of darkness. The Pandemic has also brought darkness not only to part of the world we live in – but to all of it. However, Christmas comes just to remind us that ‘darkness shines in darkness, but darkness has not overcome’. May this Christmas we believe this Word more, and enter the new year confident that we are carrying in us a light that no darkness can extinguish.

In Saint Luke’s Gospel we read:

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrolment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town. And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

What comes to mind when reading this story?

There is the decree; people from all over the world went to be enrolled, including Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary. There is also the couple’s search for a place to stay in, but Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary did not find a place in the inn and they had to stay in a place where animals are usually kept. It was precisely in this place that the Virgin Mary gave birth to her son; it was precisely in this place that Jesus – the Son of God made man – was born!

In the Gospel we read that the Virgin Mary laid Jesus in a manger. But do you know what a manger is? A manger is an open container from which animals eat or drink out. It is a little bit strange, isn’t it, that the Son of God made man – the all-powerful one who has just become a fragile creature like us – was placed in a container from which animals eat or drink. If we take a closer look at the story of Jesus, however, perhaps we can better understand who God truly is.

We would have placed Jesus in a huge palace, and we would have him surrounded by servants. Jesus, however, did not want to be served. The manger, therefore, becomes a sign – a symbol – of Jesus’s whole life. Jesus was born, lived and died poor; with his resurrection from the dead, therefore, he would remind us that what truly matters is not what we have and what we own, but rather how we behave and who we are.

The birth of Jesus (Luke 2:16-17)

The manger reminds us, therefore, that amongst the Christmas decorations that we have in our homes, that little child in the manger is the only reason why we celebrate Christmas. We must therefore pray to God to be able to live Hope, Faith, Joy and Peace – the themes which we have discussed in the last couple of weeks through different characters – in our daily lives. And we can truly be hopeful, faithful, joyful and peaceful if we love God and one another, as Jesus himself taught us.

While drawing the pictures of baby Jesus in the manger, we think of all those people whom we love: our parents, our relatives, our teachers, our catechists and our friends. We say a prayer for each and every one of them. Let us also think of those whom we do not necessarily love: Jesus loves everybody, and we say a prayer for them as well so that they too follow Jesus’s example in their own lives.

Then put the image of baby Jesus right at the heart of the crib, surrounded by the other characters that we have learned from during this Advent! Well done for bringing together the different characters in the Christmas story in this crib! And don’t forget to send us a picture of your crib so that we can upload it on our website.

We wish you all a merry Christmas!

Baby JesusDownload