At Christmas God shows us that He has not tired of us. Despite so many wars, injustice, torture, persecution, God has not stopped trusting in man and comes to his aid. The world lives of sterile immobility and apocalyptic terror. With Jesus' birth the world began to change and there are witnesses of hope in Iraq, in Hong Kong, in the Middle East. The revolution of solidarity.
Yet again, this year, tears flowed in the the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Not because of some strange "miracle", but simply because of deep emotion. I can say that every year, leading the Asia News pilgrimage to the Holy Land, when we celebrate Mass in one of the grottos or at the altar in the Church of the Nativity I cannot conceal the moistness in my eyes or my faltering voice. And I'm not easily moved. So why this sentimental feeling? I found the answer in the words of Pope Francis that we have chosen as a wish for Christmas: "The reason for our hope is this: "God is with us and God still trusts us. God the Father is generous. He comes to abide with mankind, he chooses earth as his dwelling place to remain with people and to be found where man passes his days in joy or in sorrow. Therefore, earth is no longer only "a valley of tears"; rather, it is the place where God himself has pitched his tent, it is the meeting place of God with man, of God's solidarity with men."(General Audience of 18 December 2013).
Emotion comes from the fact that with Christmas, once again we celebrate the fact that God has trusted us, chosen us as partners and as friends. Notwithstanding the betrayals, the meanness, the pettiness, the selfishness experienced in the course of a year, He never tires of me. On a global level this means that notwithstanding the wars, the injustice, the torture, the persecution, God has not given up hope that man will change and comes to his aid.
His passionate love for me and for the world restores dignity in our humanity that is wounded and battered, complicated and obscured by evil. In the face of disasters that occur in Asia and on the planet the temptation of many politicians and ordinary people is to turn away, to be distracted, perhaps making excuses for their impotence because "so many things should be done, but we can't do them." Or else there is the apocalyptic temptation, a perception of the end of the world, which leads to sterile immobility and hysteria.
But Christmas is a sign that something has started and that this something is not just an idea, but a beloved person, whom I have met and who has shattered my desperate loneliness and my helplessness.
How many witnesses to the dignity of man and faith in Him have we have encountered in this year marked by terrorism, disasters, by the evil of man! How much gratitude in discovering the many refugees from Mosul who fled to Kurdistan, and follow their pastors give up going abroad to stay to witness the faith and Arab Christian culture in the Middle East. And how much gratitude for the faithful of India that regardless of the violence and anti-conversion laws continue to bring the joy of the Christian faith to the values and to the scraps of their society. And what of the Occupy movement in Hong Kong, which showed us a face of the Chinese world that is not made of pragmatism and greed, but of interest for the common good and for justice? These witnesses of Christmas give hope to us all because they show us that a new dawn has begun, that the earth is not just "valley of tears". We can now look to the wounds of the world with courage and without fear because God has loved them and because they are inhabited by men and women who in His name care for them.
But what is a witness to all the plagues of the world? Perhaps almost nothing. The same question arose 2 thousand years ago: what is a child for all the needs of the world?
We must learn the logic of Christmas: that Child brought a revolution of hearts and mentalities that still today is hard to stop and keep in chains. True revolutions - not the ideological ones that turn into their opposite - start from the change within themselves and spread with human rhythms, not with abstract projects that have been drawn up at table, but with the sharing and the solidarity of everyone. Happy Christmas!
