CHRISTMAS TRANSFORMS FAITH TO LOVE

VATICAN CITY, 24 DEC 2011 (VIS) - The Pope tonight celebrated Midnight Mass in the Vatican Basilica for the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord.

 In the course of the Eucharistic celebration, following the reading of the Gospel, the Holy Father delivered his homily.

  "This was the great joy of Christmas for the early Church: God has appeared. No longer is He merely an idea, no longer do we have to form a picture of Him on the basis of mere words. He has 'appeared'. But now we ask: how has He appeared? Who is He in reality? The reading at the Dawn Mass goes on to say: 'the kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed'. For the people of pre-Christian times, whose response to the terrors and contradictions of the world was to fear that God Himself might not be good either, that He too might well be cruel and arbitrary, this was a real 'epiphany', the great light that has appeared to us: God is pure goodness. Today too, people who are no longer able to recognise God through faith are asking whether the ultimate power that underpins and sustains the world is truly good, or whether evil is just as powerful and primordial as the good and the beautiful which we encounter in radiant moments in our world. 'The kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed': this is the new, consoling certainty that is granted to us at Christmas".

  "God has appeared - as a child. It is in this guise that He pits Himself against all violence and brings a message that is peace. At this hour, when the world is continually threatened by violence in so many places and in so many different ways, when over and over again there are oppressors' rods and bloodstained cloaks, we cry out to the Lord: O mighty God, you have appeared as a child and you have revealed yourself to us as the One Who loves us, the One through Whom love will triumph. And you have shown us that we must be peacemakers with you. We love your childish estate, your powerlessness, but we suffer from the continuing presence of violence in the world, and so we also ask you: manifest your power, O God. In this time of ours, in this world of ours, cause the oppressors' rods, the cloaks rolled in blood and the footgear of battle to be burned, so that your peace may triumph in this world of ours.

  "Christmas is an epiphany - the appearing of God and of His great light in a child that is born for us. Born in a stable in Bethlehem, not in the palaces of kings. In 1223, when St. Francis of Assisi celebrated Christmas in Greccio with an ox and an ass and a manger full of hay, a new dimension of the mystery of Christmas came to light. ... For the early Church, the feast of feasts was Easter: in the Resurrection Christ had flung open the doors of death and in so doing had radically changed the world: He had made a place for man in God Himself. Now, Francis neither changed nor intended to change this objective order of precedence among the feasts, the inner structure of the faith centred on the Paschal Mystery. And yet through him and the character of his faith, something new took place: Francis discovered Jesus' humanity in an entirely new depth. ... The Resurrection presupposes the Incarnation. For God's Son to take the form of a child, a truly human child, made a profound impression on the heart of the Saint of Assisi, transforming faith into love. ... In the child born in the stable at Bethlehem, we can as it were touch and caress God. And so the liturgical year acquired a second focus in a feast that is above all a feast of the heart".

  "It is right here, in this new experience of the reality of Jesus' humanity that the great mystery of faith is revealed. Francis loved the child Jesus, because for him it was in this childish estate that God's humility shone forth. God became poor. ... God made Himself dependent, in need of human love, He put Himself in the position of asking for human love - our love. Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God's humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light".

  "Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus' Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained. ... Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus' birth has to bend down. ... If we want to find the God Who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our 'enlightened' reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognising God's closeness. We must follow the interior path of St. Francis - the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God Who is so different from our prejudices and opinions - the God Who conceals Himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God Who reveals Himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God's kindness may shine upon them, that they - and we - may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of His Son in a stable".
HML/                                    VIS 20111228 (1090)