[AI translation] Many of you know that the celebration of Christmas, which we celebrate to commemorate the birth of Jesus, is also the birthday of our parish. This Christmas is the twenty-fifth such birthday. On the first day of Christmas 1937, the then-established Parish of Pasarét held its first service. Right at the beginning of my ministry here, I said, in the words of the Apostle Paul, "I want to know no one among you but Jesus Christ, and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:2) Twenty-five years have passed since then. Life has changed enormously, and so have we! A whole world has been transformed in a quarter of a century! But let me say this firmly: since then, I want to know no one among you but Jesus Christ! I am not ashamed of his Gospel today, in fact! Today I believe even more firmly, I know that He is the only hope of this world! In the passing years that we have lived through, it has become more and more true that we really need Jesus!That is why I am happy and grateful to God that I can now once again proclaim the everlasting Christmas Gospel, which our basic message sums up as follows. Yes, Christmas is such a beautiful and joyful celebration because it speaks of the greatest love, the love of God, being poured out into this world. Many other beautiful and joyful things happen at Christmas. It is also beautiful and joyful in itself to be able to take a break from the burden of everyday work and relax for a day or two in a nice warm room. It's nice and good to be able to enjoy visits from nice people, gifts, letters from old friends, without having to rush and hurry. It's nice and good to finally have a little time to play with children and let ourselves be carried away by their carefree joy. And it's also nice to look into the candlelight of the Christmas tree in the darkening room and dream back to our own childhood! Yes, it all makes this holiday so beautiful and joyful. And it's good that it does. I wish you all such good and beautiful Christmases, because the world of everyday life is so grey and difficult! But don't you know that's what Christmas is all about? Isn't it in all this goodness and beauty that God's love is made manifest among us! And so many people want to experience God's love in just such things. In this way, even those who do not otherwise need God's love celebrate Christmas.
And even if all this beauty and goodness is accompanied by a pious, religious flavour, that is to say, by the special festive and magical atmosphere that the child in the manger, Joseph and Mary, the shepherds and angels, Herod and the wise men of the east, evoke in the soul. Yes, for many people, Christmas is all about this gentle, sweet romanticism and the music of 'Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht'. It's interesting that even those who are otherwise so cold and indifferent to questions of Christian faith still cling to the devotion of the story of Bethlehem, because it is the best way to rise above the drabness of the everyday at Christmas. Many people expect the same from the Christmas service in church, to be enchanted for a few minutes in the fairy-tale world and to warm their souls a little in the atmosphere of the old Christmas story and the intimate carols.
Well, I say it again: that's not what Christmas is all about. It is not in such an atmosphere of sweet devotion that God's love was made manifest! It is witnessed by the many secret sadnesses which, at this time of year, in the depths of many souls, are most painful. Statistical data show that the suicide curve is at its highest on Christmas day and night. There are no statistics for secret tears. But there is no doubt that there is no other day on which so many secret tears are shed in lonely rooms as at Christmas. All orphaned souls are most orphaned at such a time, all pain is most painful at such a time. The prisoner behind bars, the sick in the hospital, the lonely soul in his home, feels most excluded from the joy of others. It is at such times that a kind soul, separated from his family and distant, misses him most. And the grief of the death of a loved one is also a time when the soul is struck with renewed force. Everyone has their own problems, burdens, troubles and miseries, which they cannot simply cast off at Christmas. Those things that are good and beautiful in human terms may be a pleasant way to relax for a few hours at Christmas, but they cannot really help us to carry our burdens and solve our problems. The romance of Santa Claus-angel-angel-angel-angel-romance may lull us into a special mood, but it does not give us the strength to stand firm in the face of life's harsh realities! Let me say again, it is not in the warm family togetherness, the gifts under the Christmas tree, nor in the religious atmosphere of Christmas that God's love is revealed to us, but in what we have heard so often: "God sent his only begotten Son into this world to live through us."
I have said so many times that Jesus is not a son of God like one of my sons, but in a very different way. The Bible says it this way because there is no other way to express in human language the miracle that the person of Jesus is on this earth. There is no other way to express the sacrifice that God has made for us - to express the love with which God seeks man! It is only in this way that you can have a conception of Him, if you can imagine that one's own sweet Son is not precious enough to give Him up, to sacrifice Him for you! Imagine! I wonder who could make a really great sacrifice for you? Who loves you enough to give up something that is really precious for you? Maybe you are lucky, you live in good circumstances, but there is no one around you who would be worth enough to give up a hand for you! Or maybe there is a dear soul who would be willing to make any sacrifice for you, and who does so unceasingly? But it is not a question here of a mother sacrificing herself for a dear person, for example for her child, but of something greater: of a man sacrificing his own sweet, only son for others, for strangers! Sending him to do good for them, to take their place, to serve them, to die for them! As if a father and a son would agree for the benefit of strangers to do their utmost to save them, to suffer and even die rather than let those people perish! And so they do. And the father gives in, gives the son up - the strangers, and puts the guilty before his own son! That's what happened!
This is what God did, this is why he sent Jesus into the world. I know it's incomprehensible, but that's how much God loves you! Only God can love someone like that! In the fact that God sent His only begotten Son to earth, in this God condensed His love for people. The goodness of God, the idea that He wants to help us, that He wants to stand by us, this love of God was embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. Once someone rejoiced like this: I see the love of God in that even a man like me is needed by God! Even as I am, fallen and ugly, undeserving and unworthy, deserving of wrath and under judgment, yet God wants me! Indeed, we are all needed in earthly life, but only as long as we live, and as long as we are of some use to them. But when we become helpless, when we grow old, few people need us any more. And when we die, no one needs us. They rush to get us out of the way.
Well, God has a greater and more universal claim on us: He needs us even when everyone has abandoned us - in life and in death! In fact, He needs us in life so that we can be all His in death! Well, we need you and you need us! He needs us so much, loves us so much, that He gave His only begotten Son, so that we would not be lost to Him! Jesus - this precious name means that God is bending down to you from the world of invisible light, embracing you and whispering in your heart: you are my Son, do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you, I love you forever! As our Word says: "God's love for us has been made manifest in us through the sending of his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him".
You know what's great? When a person opens his heart - not his mind, because it doesn't fit: his heart - to God's love, then his whole being is truly overflowing with an inner joy. That certain joy that the angels of Bethlehem sang about, that the shepherds felt, that made Anna and Simeon so happy, that is always the first experience of everyone again when they prostrate themselves before Jesus. But it really is the heart that must be opened to Him! Not in a fleeting festive mood, but in daily prayer. Then one can experience the true joy of Christmas, even if one is alone or in fresh grief. It is not the world that changes around us. This world looked no different after the first Christmas than it did before. It is us who see the world through different eyes. Life doesn't get easier, the external circumstances remain the same, maybe our worries don't get less, our loneliness remains, maybe those dark clouds over our heads don't disperse, but in all of this, God is above us. We are warmed and strengthened by the love of God! God's love keeps us, lifts us, protects us, helps us, covers us, surrounds us!
Isn't it good to be loved? It really gives you strength, lifts you up, saves you from bitterness. It is the one who feels that no one loves him who becomes bitter in life. The one who loses the will to live is the one who feels he doesn't need anyone. But God needs you! You are the one God longs for with compassionate love! And then you are not just a small wheel in the great world factory, not just a nameless, forgotten nobody among millions, not just a number in the great crowd of people! Not even when you enter the factory gate and the wheels are turning. But you are the highest man, the highest quality of man! You're the kind of man God loves! In that love you become a different man than you were. It's a well-known phenomenon how much a man becomes beautiful, how much he blossoms when he's loved! Well, even one whom God loves, and knows it! He becomes really different. Indeed: more beautiful, better, deeper, richer, more fruitful, more useful, truer, purer, more understanding, more natural - more human! God's love means life, a surplus of vitality by which we can rise above the general human level in goodness, joy, radiant life.
Whoever is animated by God's love will not be broken even when everything around him falls to pieces. It remains balanced even in the midst of upheaval. He remains morally sound in an immoral environment. A beggar's life that always wants to receive becomes a kingly life that always and everywhere has something to give! This love that one receives from God in Jesus is used to comfort others, to serve in a blessed way, to lavish love. I know that God loves me, and I also know that God loves everyone around me in the same way. Not only does this love apply to me, who have heard of it and rejoice in it, but there is no one in the world who does not belong to this wonderful story! Fortunate and misfortune-stricken, believers and doubters, Easterners and Westerners, are all equally interested! The same love applies to them all. Only there are some who know it not, and suspect nothing of it! So let them know through you who already know!
A believer once said, "I have not begged God for mercy in this oppressed world for a long time, because the Lord once rebuked me for it, and I said: I have already had mercy on this world, now it's your turn! Yes, God had mercy on this world two thousand years ago. Now it is our turn to let the world know! Every good word, every good deed, every expression of helping love is a sign that God's love has been made flesh on earth! The most credible proof is not a convincing argument, but a good deed that radiates something of Christ! That is how the world sees that there is a God! It encourages even the cold, desperate, sad man that, behold, God loves him too! That is how God's love lives!
And so our hymn says: "God's love is made manifest in us, in that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him". So it was not that God's love was made flesh in Jesus, so that we might delight in him or sway in a sweet mood of emotion, but that we might live through him! To live happier, more meaningful, eternally! So let us live! Would that, on the quarter-century anniversary of our congregation's formation, we had such a Christmas!
Amen
Date: 25 December 1962 Christmas.
Lesson
Lk 2,1-14