[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! It is commonly believed that Christmas is a time of giving. It is touching to see that almost every person feels a little love and tries to please others with small or large gifts, with something small. And the strange thing is that on this occasion, we do not even shy away from the obligatory material sacrifice to please others. Almost all over the world, a strange wave of love is sweeping through the world, which manifests itself in small and large gifts.But have you ever wondered why it is Christmas? Because it's no coincidence! I am convinced that this great, general Christmas gift-giving is in fact an unintentional allusion and an unconscious recollection of the greatest love that God has bestowed on this earthly world on the occasion of the first Christmas in the person of Jesus. Since then, the real, the greatest Christmas gift is not the one you found wrapped in tissue paper under the decorated tree, but the One to Whom all other gifts point and point: Jesus! Behold, the Apostle Paul says, "God did not give favor to His own Son, but gave Him up for us all!" God has literally given this earthly world the gift of Jesus. But why? The gift is usually intended to please one person over another. Isn't that what we were trying to do? That is what God wants! God wants to please people. Not a little joy, but real, great joy. God definitely wants people on this earth to rejoice, to be able to rejoice, to dare to rejoice, to have a reason to rejoice. That is why God gave Jesus, and why the Bible calls everything about Jesus, His birth, His earthly ministry, His death and resurrection, everything, everything, the gospel, the good news of God. Therefore, the greatest good news, the gift of God for us is.
Of course, there are times when someone cannot rejoice in the gift he has received. I can imagine that last night, too, when someone opened the gift he had received, a thought or a feeling crossed his mind: 'This is not what I expected. I wanted something else, I needed something else. Then he tries to smile, so as not to show disappointment on his face. I can also imagine that at this very moment there is perhaps someone - perhaps more than one - in whose soul there is a feeling lurking, unspoken and unconfessed: is Jesus the greatest gift of God for us? I would expect something else! Perhaps better health, or perhaps a more balanced family life. Maybe better nerves. Maybe a solution to our problems, or relief from financial burdens. More love from my children. Something like that. Sure, God gave me Jesus, but I need something else right now.
It's such a terrible thing, Brothers and Sisters, that we don't want to believe, when God is making the ultimate sacrifice for us, that we really need what He gives us! For we do need Jesus in order to truly rejoice. That is why the apostle immediately goes on to say, "God did not please His own Son, but gave Him up for us all," and then continues, "how shall He not with Him give us all things?"
Again it is a question of giving. In fact, the apostle goes so far as to say that He gives us everything with Jesus. What is everything? Not what we usually think of, of course. Not youth and good health, not more money and a good job. But it is all that we need, young or old, healthy or sick, poor or rich, to make our lives truly liberated, happy and truly balanced. This is all that money cannot give us, no man can give us, nor can favourable circumstances or good fortune. But it is everything that only God can give, and God can only give it through Jesus, as the apostle says. Perhaps the best way I can sum it up is that it is everything that embraces man's past, present and future.
Let us try to elaborate a little! The past. I said before that God wants us humans to rejoice. I can imagine that perhaps someone cannot really rejoice in this life on earth because something from the past is unconsciously weighing on their soul. One of the most fearsome fears is the fear of the past. Indeed, fear of our own past. One thinks that something is over. It's buried deep down, buried in the years that have passed since then. He thinks his past is long dead. Then it turns out it's not. Suddenly it comes back to life, appears like a ghost and confronts us. He asks us questions and we have to answer him, and we just don't know what to say. Long forgotten faces from somewhere in the past emerge. Do you recognize him? Maybe someone's crying. You're making her cry! Or maybe an old verse comes to mind. God warned you of it once upon a time, long ago. But you didn't listen, you didn't want to take it seriously! Or maybe it's a painful face. You hurt him once! You never made it right. Maybe it's a tiny baby hand reaching out to you. You killed it once because you didn't want it to be born. The conscience rises up, begins to speak - and in its voice all the past cries out. All the sins of the past, and it accuses. Almost unbearably. The memory of our sins can be terrible. Even though they are behind our backs, they are not done away with, because they come with us, accompany us, and the memory of the forgotten sin is stored up inside us. Even if we don't think about them, they weigh on our souls and bind us in fetters. They reach out and make us sad.
I recently saw a sad scene on television. A young man is involved in murder almost against his will, he has slid so far down the path of debauchery. Sitting in his prison cell, absorbed, then walking up and down, he keeps saying: I cannot escape the past. I keep carrying it like a backpack. I can't start a new life because of it. Isn't there anyone who can take this awful bag off me?- I wanted so much to sit next to him, take his hand, look him in the eye and tell him: Yes, there is! There is only one person who can actually take this burden off. There is only one person who can take it off by taking it on himself and really freeing me from it. This is why God did not favour His holy Son, and this is why He gave Him to us, so that He, Jesus, might suffer and be punished for all that weighs on your soul. So that we may be liberated in reality, and not be bitter, not oppressed, not saddened by the memory of our ruined past. Dare, therefore, to overcome your past, for God has already dealt with it through the death of Jesus. The forgiveness of sins that God gives through Jesus is everything in itself.
But there is also a problem of the present that increasingly overshadows the life of modern man. It is a common or, in fashionable terms, a sense of cosmic loneliness. What is it? Some mysterious sense of fear! A sense of the precariousness and meaninglessness of our tiny existence. Because just think, Brothers and Sisters, it was one thing when we humans were looking at the Moon from below and quite another when we were looking back at the Earth from almost the Moon. It is now that man will really perceive, know, what he has known since Copernicus - in theory, of course - that in this immense universe, populated by millions of solar systems and galaxies, the Earth we inhabit, which we once considered to be the centre of the universe, is a tiny speck of dust. In the vast proportions of millions of worlds and millions of light-years, all of humanity shrinks to almost the size of a single microsphere in a single grain of dust in an infinite ocean. The man who was once so haughty, so confident, now, in the distance of infinite time, suddenly begins to feel insecure. He begins to feel disheartened and forced to feel how microscopic his own 50, 60, 70, or even 80 years of life must be. A fleeting moment, a time-atom, a fading chord between two frozen zones of eternal silence. And even if he believes in God, he still wonders, involuntarily, how, in these proportions of an immeasurable world, can he even notice the nothingness of eternity that is me? Is it not arrogant conceit on man's part that God, this intelligence that rules over the whole universe, should be interested in me at all? That it cares at all for the individual man on this small earth?
Of course, his heart is becoming more and more constricted by this sense of his cosmic loneliness, this anxiety of his abandonment. I don't wonder if one cannot be truly happy, liberated. Now think, Brothers and Sisters, in this very anxiety, in this great abandonment, how unspeakably great is the joy that God did not favour His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. I don't know what is going on elsewhere in the universe at all? But the fact that on this tiny Earth, at a geographically definable point, in Bethlehem in Judea, God laid out His heart in a manger, and the fact that again at a geographically definable point, on Calvary, a cross once stood, slick with divine blood - all this proves that God takes account of this tiny planet of His and He cares very much for the poor people who live on it!
That manger at Bethlehem and that cross at Calvary all cry out to you, "Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine" (Is 43:1b) So personal, so personal to each individual. Well, this is why God did not favour His only begotten Son, and why He gave Jesus into this world, so that you might feel His care through Him, be assured of His love. Think of yourself as one whom God counts as His child and loves as His child. He hears your voice as you cry out to Him or sigh and responds. He sees your hand stretched out to him and takes it. You are closer to his heart than all the universe. So don't let go of his hand. Brothers and sisters, this sense of security, this sure knowledge of being protected by God, is all in itself.
And the future! Perhaps one doesn't dare to truly rejoice in life because one feels the shadow of death hanging over everything. What is the point of everything that is good in this life, or even of everything that is bad in this life, if death is the inexorable end of everything? If all that can be said for everything is what I once read on a grave, "fuit", was. Everything was. In the shadow of approaching death, one is indeed discouraged and cannot orient oneself correctly. In fact, you don't even know where you are. So he tries to live in the present. In the shadow of death, life has no perspective, the horizon narrows. One sees only the small stretch of the road one is on, but one does not know where it leads. The whole of life, the whole world, becomes oppressive, without perspective. He feels that what he sees or what he is experiencing is everything. But this everything, too, will inevitably pass away.
Well, that is why God gave His own Son, Jesus Christ, into this world, so that His own person might as it were connect this visible world with the invisible, this transitory life with the eternal, this earthly existence with the heavenly existence. This precious Christmas gift means that there is not only as much life as you see of it, but as much as you can fit into the - oh so short - space between the cradle and the coffin. It is only one part, one form of life! There is another part, another form of life! An invisible form, an eternal form, and these two are connected. The same life we live here and now will be fulfilled there and then, beyond death, in heaven. See your life in this perspective now! So dare to look serenely into the future, to see beyond death. This perspective of eternity that God gives us in Jesus Christ is life itself!
Look what God has given us with Jesus! All the warmth of his fatherly heart. Even God could not give us more! This is His greatest, most precious Christmas gift for all of us. This is Jesus! So then:
"Open my heart, see me more,
Who lies here in the manger?
Surely this child
The Lord Jesus, the Son of God."
(Canto 316, verse 7)
Amen
Date: 25 December 1969.
Lesson
Lk 2,1-14