Vatican
City, 18 December 2013 (VIS) – Pope Francis dedicated the final
general audience of 2013 to the birth of Jesus, “celebration of
trust and hope, which overcome uncertainty and pessimism”. “And
the reason for our hope is this: God is with us, and still trusts in
us! … He comes to live with mankind, he chooses to dwell on earth
in order to stay with man, and to be found there where man passes his
days in joy or in pain. Therefore, earth is no longer merely a 'vale
of tears' but rather the place where God Himself has pitched His
tent, it is the meeting place of God and mankind, of God's solidarity
with humanity”.
But
in sharing in our human condition, there is something even more
surprising. “God's presence among mankind did not take place in an
ideal, idyllic world, but rather in this real world, characterised by
good and bad things, marked by divisions, evil, poverty, abuse of
power, and wars. He chose to take part in our history as it is, with
all the weight of its limits and its dramas. … He is God-with-us …
Jesus has always been God-with-us, and is always with us in all the
suffering and pain of history. The birth of Jesus is the
demonstration that God placed Himself once and for all on the side of
mankind, to save us, to lift us up from the dust of our misery, of
our difficulties, and of our sins”.
The
great “gift” of Bethlehem is, therefore, “the spiritual energy
that helps us not to collapse under the weight of our labours, our
desperation, our sorrows. … The birth of Jesus brings us the good
news that God loves us immensely and individually”. Two
considerations may be drawn from the joyful contemplation of the
mystery of the Son of God, born for us.
The
first is that in His Nativity God shows Himself to be not as one who
remains on high and dominates the universe, but rather He Who bows
down, Who descends to our small and poor earth … if we want to be
like Him we must not place ourselves above others, but instead lower
ourselves, place ourselves in service, be small with the small and
poor with the poor. It is sad to see a Christian who does not want to
bow down, who does not want to serve. A Christian who parades around
is not Christian – this is pagan! … Let us ensure that our
brothers and sisters never feel alone”.
The
second consequence is that God, through Jesus, became involved with
mankind to the point of becoming one of us, which means that whatever
we would do to our brother or our sister, we would do to Him. Jesus
Himself reminds us of this: whoever nourishes, welcomes, visits or
loves one of the smallest and poorest among man, does so also to the
Son of God.
As
we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord, now approaching, the Pope
encouraged us to pray to Mary “to help us … recognise in the face
of our neighbour, especially in the weakest and most marginalised,
the image of the Son of God made man”.
As
indicated above, this was the final general audience of 2013, as it
is the last Wednesday before Christmas. Since his election to the
pontificate, Pope Francis has celebrated 30 general audiences for
which the Prefecture of the Papal Household has distributed 1,548,500
entry tickets, although there have been at times more than one
hundred thousand attendees and the crowds have often exceeded the
capacity of the Square. On these occasions, maxi-screens have been
installed in the adjacent Piazza Pio XII, and Via della Conciliazione
has been transformed into a pedestrian zone.