"God becomes a child, placing himself gently and respectfully in our hands so that we may adore him, kneeling before his smallness"
Thus spoke Benedict XVI at the Christmas midnight Mass last year. But what have we made of Christmas? With what "gentleness and respect" do we celebrate the greatest feast of the liturgical year? How did we manage to reduce this event to something so ordinary?
Every year, walking streets decked out sometimes excessively, entering shops glittering with lights and merchandise, we find ourselves saying: "Lord, forgive us—what have we done to your Christmas!" The tradition of the small gift exchanged as a gesture of affection has vanished, swept away by an ever-growing army of jingling Santas urging us to buy more and more.
But that Child who asked only to be welcomed with infinite tenderness continues to question us: "Why have you turned the day of my birth into a pagan festival?"
So in these days I have tried to meditate on this Jesus who comes, who returns, who wants to celebrate his birthday with us. Thinking it over and over, three important reasons have come to my heart to share with him for a great celebration!
It seems to me there are three lights that can illuminate this year's Christmas: joy, silence, and peace.
Can you describe joy? In itself it is not a complicated feeling—we have all experienced it. What is hard is to possess it; to carry it within ourselves as a treasure that cannot be taken from us, as a jewel hidden in the heart that we draw out to offer to those around us when we see they need it. How beautiful it is to share a smile, for instance, in a hospital ward where, among the twelve patients, the youngest is seventy-three! How important it is to notice that timid initial smile spreads little by little and becomes shared by everyone!
Silence is something we welcome gladly, like stepping into a cool room. It is hard to live whole days surrounded by noise, by chatter, by endless small talk, by criticism and judgment. How much easier and more peaceful it is, in these special days, to communicate without too many words, to think, to pray. To remember together moments of kindness, of courage, of self-sacrifice. To let the silence of the holy night wrap around us, make us feel united, brothers and sisters across every distance.
And so it is that, with joy and silence, we are able to live peace—we are able to fill the spaces of our days united in reconciliation, and to share that feeling which gently binds us all together: love.
Mariangela Bertolini, 2013