In pondering the mystery of Jesus’
Christmas, this year I was struck by the phrase of the evangelist Luke who says
that Mary put the baby Jesus “in a manger because there was no room for them
in the inn”. The reason for this birth, which is very squalid humanly
speaking, is plausible, Nazareth’s family was poor and could not afford the
inn! I then asked myself, if Jesus were to be born today, in our opulent
society, where would he be forced to be born? Since there are fewer stables
and, in any case, not as poor as that of Bethlehem, Jesus would probably be
born today in the places frequented by the poor and the homeless: makeshift
places, unhealthy, maybe abusive... where human beings should not live but
animals in Bethlehem. Who could consider a child born in such conditions? Who
could recognize in him the Messiah, the Son of God? I leave the answer to you.
But it is not of the physical place where Jesus could be born today that I want to talk to you but of the spiritual one which is our daily life. Today, unfortunately many people exclude Jesus from their horizon, there is no place for him! His presence is not welcome because, just as the poor annoy the rich, so the Son of God annoys those who care only about the bank account, those who trample on the rights of the poor, those who do not look in anyone’s face and deny their “inn” to those who cannot pay, those who think only of themselves or at most of those close to them.
How many people even today as in the days of Jesus find the doors of our 'inns closed! In our society the presence of Jesus, in the poor, is no longer welcome because there is less and less room for the values that He represents: faith, gratuitousness, honesty, justice, solidarity, humility, sobriety, respect for the different... for creation! Everything is more monetized than ever, even our time, so as to become slaves, moved as we are by a frenzy that corrodes us from within and leaves no room for inferiority, reflection, enjoyment of the present moment, in a healthy break from daily toils to give time, for example, to meaningful and gratuitous relationships, to commitment to the common good, etc. And then we complain that people are distrustful, afraid, depressed, that families break up, that our compound is insecure, that our society and our world are so divided.
The reason
is obvious, though we might be church goers in our real life often we put God
aside! God is the opposite of us and that is why, in Jesus, he wanted to be
born poor, humble, merciful, just, true, able to give his life out of love.
This is the lesson he wished to give us starting from the birth of his son
Jesus.
So, if we want to live a different, authentic Christmas we should try to be less superficial, soberer, more open to those who suffer or are in need, more capable of true relationships and not only virtual, more just and capable of building communion and not division.
Let
us simply try to follow more consistently that Christ of which great majority
of us bear the name. Then He, who in Bethlehem found a place only in a stable
could finally be born in the “inn” of our life and make our CHRISTMAS a
really MERRY one!!!
I wish you and all your family members a Christmas full of blessing and a new year 2023 full of initiatives that motivates you to collaborate with the plan that God carries through you.
