[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! When the 25th and 26th of December return to the calendar year after year, people tend to wish each other a Merry Christmas. And I believe they mean it, that on these two days at least, they really want something good for each other. Well, through the Word that was read, I now hear it as if God is wishing us a truly Merry Christmas! To all of us! To those who didn't have a table full of festive treats, to those who didn't spend Christmas Eve as they would have liked or imagined because they were missing someone, and to those who were left all alone for Christmas. For those whose spiritual pains have been exacerbated by this precious holiday: yes, for everyone! For all of us! God wants us to have a truly merry Christmas! So let us try to follow in spirit the so-called "wise men of the sunrise", because they had a truly happy Christmas. There were three stages to get there. It is through these stages that our celebration can deepen into a blessed Christmas!1) The first is, "Going into the house." (Mt 2,11a) Yes, into the house where the child Jesus lay. Whether it was the stable in which he was born or some other dwelling is not important. In any case, it was a very poor, unadorned, makeshift dwelling. And why they went into this house, how they knew that this was the house they were looking for, is also written in the previous verses: the star led them. Thus we read, "And, behold, the star which they saw in the east of the sun went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was." (Mt 2,9) For surely this house was not otherwise a conspicuous building. There was nothing special about it that would have made one immediately realize: surely this is the house in which the newborn King of the Jews dwells! No. In fact! The fact that they went into the house they had to go into was because of the star's guidance. And how this was so, let us not now spend time on; it is enough that they did so by some divine direction. I can imagine that when they were standing in front of the house, they looked at each other in astonishment: is this the house? Let us not forget that they were looking for a king! Would this be the home of that special great king? And then they went into the house. Perhaps they looked up once more, at the star, and then they went in! It's true that they didn't imagine it, they didn't expect it, they perhaps found it incomprehensible, but they went in! They obeyed the celestial signal alone.
This moment is important because to this day there is a house where Jesus lives! For, although it is true that His presence is not bound to time or place, there is always and everywhere a specific place, a house, let us say, which He Himself has built for Himself in this world, and into which one must enter if one wants to meet Him. And this house is His Church. 'You are God's dwelling place,' Paul says to the church. "Do you not know that you are the temple of God?" he asks on another occasion. (1 Cor 3,16) So the star, God's heavenly guidance in Scripture to this day points exactly to the place where Jesus is located. The Word of God does not tell people who are looking for Jesus to immerse themselves in the mysteries of their own hearts, or in the piety of their own piety, or in some candlelit Christmas atmosphere, nor does it tell you to look for him in the sciences, in the arts, in history, but the Word of God - because for us it is that particular star! Well: go to church! There you will find Him! He Himself said, "Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Mt 28,20) With you: the community of believers, the church!
Perhaps we too find this divine instruction strange. Perhaps many of you are looking at this house as perplexed as those wise men from the East, at the simple, poor home of Joseph and Mary. Is this the dwelling place of the Lord Jesus in this world? The church? This unadorned, this insignificant, this so often discredited institution? This vile little society about which so much bad and ugly can be said? This? - You are right! I, who know the past and present of the Church throughout the world, could say more bad and ugly things about her than any of you - and yet, by divine guidance, I say, yes, this is His house! Jesus can be found by all only where the Word of God is preached - however miserably; where His sacraments are lived - however feebly; where His name is worshipped - however simplemindedly; where a church is formed around Him - however stumblingly believers may be formed! So: here! Now, for us: here! According to His own promise, Jesus is here, in His church. It is here that we must come, not just for a Christmas or Good Friday service, saying that it is proper to go to church on the great feast days, but in the Spirit, dismounting from the high horse of our own thoughts, systems and ideas, like the wise men of the sunrise, and joining in the simple community of believers of all ranks, while the simple, human words of the Word of Jesus are preached. Here is Jesus! Here we find Him! Right now!
2) But this is only the first stage. The next is "there they found the child with his mother Mary!" (Mt 2,11b) And again, this may have disappointed them just as much as the house did. For the child was a very ordinary little child, no external adornment, no power, no glory! Was this the great king they were looking for? But yet, it seems, these wise men found something in him-something strange; they saw something else in him-something quite extraordinary; they saw beyond the poverty and weakness of this child, for otherwise they would not have bowed down before him with such reverence. Wise men, scholars, kings, do not kneel down for nothing! They recognized in this Child something of the deepest mystery of Christmas, something of the glory of the Child touched their souls.
And that is what makes Christmas truly Christmas for us too: to find that Child as these wise men did. To sense in him, to glimpse something - even if only a little, a little, but something - of the divine wonder that the "flame of the wise cannot touch", that can only be adored. For a child is in itself a mystery, a miracle! It is the embodiment of the love of two different persons, the realization of the mystery which the Word says of the spouses: "Two shall become one flesh." (Eph 5,31b) I look at him and say: I am, you are, we are! Eggyé válva, egy testté. Such a miracle of a child! And the Child of Bethlehem! The incarnation of two very different beings, the love of God and the love of man. I look at him, I say: it's me. God also looks at him and says: I am I! Both God and I look at him and say: you are! I see God in him, God sees me in him! Earth and heaven, time and eternity, divine omnipotence, omnipotence and human weakness, Creator and creature together, in one, in one body. They will be two, God and man, God and you: one flesh! One flesh in this Child!
Do you hear in him that glorious message from another world? Today's scientists have been searching for years for a link with other celestial bodies, with the Moon, Mars, Venus. And they've already got answers from the Moon, for example. True, in a way that was not an answer. The Moon didn't give them an answer, they got the answer themselves. As you know, the signals that were sent to the Moon came back to Earth. This is what makes the vast space in which our Earth wanders so uncanny. The fact that it echoes only our own voice. The fact that our signals, our signals that disappear in space, reverberate back to us from somewhere, like a giant echo chamber. No response, no dialogue, no contact: we are hopelessly alone!
Well, the great mystery of Christmas is precisely that the answer came from outside the Earth. A voice came, for once not the echo of our own voice: the echo of someone else's! Not from the moon, not from Venus, not even from the Andromeda Nebula, but from a world much further away and much closer, from a place much more mysterious and yet much more real: from heaven, from God! Do you hear? Behind the visible universe beats an invisible heart. It is the voice of that Child! The beating of the loving, fatherly heart of God - on this Earth! To this Earth, which is so small in the universe that if the whole planet were to burst, with its 3 billion struggling people, no one in the great silent universe would miss it or even notice it. And this world, and this Earth, and the people living on this Earth, was so loved by Almighty God that "he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (Jn 3,16b)
Now that is the mystery of Christmas! Have you ever found that Child this way? As we just sang, "I look on you with a glad heart and cannot help looking at you" (Canticle 329, verse 4).
3) Finally, the third degree follows, "bowing down, they do him homage." (Mt 2,11c) That is, they have humbled themselves before Jesus by giving Him the gift! Christmas also lives in the popular consciousness as a day of giving. Everyone tries to give a gift to the one they love. And how strange that we don't think of giving a gift to the One whose birth, so to speak, we celebrate on this day. What if, for once, we wondered what we could do to please Him, the one we are celebrating? Surely we would be closer to a truly merry Christmas! Well, why not do it? You know what gift we could bring Him? Something with the love that was embodied that Christmas in that Child on this Earth!
For example, you could say a word of reconciliation to someone you are angry with. Or you could make peace with someone who has hurt you badly. Or you could visit someone who spent Christmas Eve alone. Or you could give something from your holiday lunch, or from your free time, or from your pocket, to someone who needs it. Or you could go home from church and hold the hand of your spouse, your child, and say to them (maybe they've been waiting for a long time): from now on, let's read the Bible together and pray together! Or you could try to be more understanding and loving towards the people who used to annoy you. Yes! These are gifts we can all bring to the Lord, and believe me, it is gifts like these that please Him the most. For He has said, "If you have done this to one of the least of these, you have done it to Him. (Mt 25:37) So we give Him, the celebrant, a gift when we make someone, an earthly man of flesh and blood, feel that love which covers everything, even the sin of another; - believes everything, even the good in another; - hopes everything, even the salvation of that other; - endures everything, even the impatience of another. Let us try! All of us! And we will have a Christmas as merry as the wise men of the East, who "opened their treasures and gave him gifts" (Mt 2,11d).
In conclusion, let us learn from them only this. (Mt 2,12) Let me now interpret this symbolically to mean that those who have had a real Christmas somehow return by a different route: they leave the old road they have been on and go on another way. From the festive atmosphere of Christmas, he does not return to the old, unloving, grey everyday life from which he came, but continues in a different way. It brings the celebration, the worship, Jesus into the everyday! But let Christmas not be limited to one or two days! Let all of life be a celebration of love! Why only on these few days do we try to do something good for each other, to be more understanding and humane? After all, it is in the everyday world that people most need the happiness we wish for! This is the other way, and if we start now, we will have a very merry Christmas, because it will not end with the holidays!
God wishes us such a Merry Christmas!
Amen
Date: 25 December 1966 Christmas.
Lesson
Lk 2,1-11