[AI translation] My Christian Brothers and Sisters!
I have often felt that our Christmas carols have a special magic: they warm our hearts. Perhaps we feel, even involuntarily, that Christmas and carols go so well together! Angels on earth once sang these beautiful carols. The first Christmas began with angelic carols there, on that starlit night in Bethlehem. Since then, from Christmas to Christmas, from generation to generation, from century to century, the angelic carol has echoed on, and so it echoes now in our souls and from our lips: 'Glory to God in the highest heavens, and on earth peace to men of good will.' (Lk 2,14) In this then is the whole of God's Christmas message! Let us try now not only to sing this message, but to hear it!
Today, perhaps there is nothing for which souls, tired of so much warfare, long more than peace! Hundreds of thousands of people are praying today for the Christmas Gospel of peace to come true. Doubts often creep into our souls as to whether what the angels proclaimed at Christmas is true, or whether Christianity is just one of the many failed attempts to sort out the relationship between human beings? Well, my brothers and sisters, it is true that the angels proclaim peace on earth to men, but there is another part of their song that we never pay as much attention to as peace: 'Glory to God in the highest heaven'. Since they say these two together, almost in the same breath, it is clear that the two are related, and in the order in which they say them - that is, first glory to God, and then peace to men. Is not the fault there that we tend to reverse the order: we long for peace, and if it does not come, we doubt the whole divine household, and forget the glory to be given to God?!
This angelic message sheds light on one of our fundamental human weaknesses. I have found in myself, but also in serious spiritual conversation with others, that we would be willing to accept the consequences of the gospel - without the gospel. Or in other words, we want to possess all that Jesus Christ promises His followers: peace, security, provision, and His many rich blessings - without Jesus Christ. Put even more simply: we want peace, security and the many other treasures of God's kingdom - without repentance. This, Brethren, is like a marriage of convenience without love and love. When one covets only the wealth of one's spouse and not the spiritual communion with him. Such people are full of bitter complaints about how much they have prayed, or how much they have given, or how much they have tried to do good, and yet behold, their lives are involved in this or that misery that God does not want to solve. Once someone came to me with just such a complaint. He told me that his spiritual balance had been upset for some time, which was all the more distressing because there was no peace in the family at home. He had tried to ask God to help them, but he could not pray with the full faith he used to. At that time I tried hard to help him to solve the difficult issues in his life. I would do differently now. I would try to take him by the hand and lead him to the Lord, kneel with him, and help him to humble himself before God again, to surrender - not his problems, but his life to Christ again! Because that is his first real problem: separation from God, and only the consequence of all the unresolved difficulties in life.
The angels of Bethlehem teach us the order: first give glory to God - then you can hope for peace. God cannot be exploited. His blessing, His help, can be counted on by the one who has given Him glory. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount that we should not be anxious about anything, that we should not be troubled about clothing or food or any other cares of life, for all these things are provided for us by our Father in heaven. But to this promise he immediately adds, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and afterward all these things shall be added unto you as an addition, as a consequence. Here again the Lord emphasizes the order (cf. Mt 6,33).
Through the apostle Paul, the Lord also often emphasizes this, e.g., "He who did not please His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, in what way will He not also with Him give us all things?"(Rom 8:32) Here again, the "all things" that men would gladly receive from God are already a consequence of what is emphasized, that God gave His own Son. He gives everything with Him - that is, to the one who has already accepted Jesus! This is what the song of the angels expresses, that the giving of glory is the prerequisite of peace. So what does it mean to give glory?
This truth once became very clear to someone, and he exclaimed with great joy: 'All my life I have been struggling with what to believe, and now I see that it is not a thing, but a person in whom I must trust! Christmas means that God has placed His living, real divine person in visible and tangible form, in human form on earth, in history. In doing so, He wanted our faith not to be a knowledge of abstract doctrines, but to be connected to the living, real person of God today, so that our faith would be a living faith! To give glory to God is to say: I believe, I know, that it is not for this reason that heaven was opened, that the Word was made flesh, that the Son of God was not humbled from heaven to the stable straw, so that I might have the opportunity to buy a bull and a leaden child for my child - but it is a much more deadly, serious reality: the redemption of my sinful life!
It is not to wonder how this could have happened, but rather to wonder: how is it that God loves me so much?! To give glory to God is to see in that little newborn baby the Son of God with a deep, intimate, supernatural conviction.
See there not only the "little Jesus", the dear child with whom you have many sentimental memories of children - this is the way many people insult His glory most of all! In sending Jesus into the world, God has spoken the last word. He says and does no more and no more for your salvation. Accept the way of salvation that God has chosen and prepared in Jesus Christ! You give God the greatest glory by receiving with joy the One He gives - not what He gives, but the One He gives: Jesus Christ.
When He first came into the world, He had nowhere else to go but into a stable. In your soul, in your heart, in your life, what place do you reserve for Him? In fact, it is not just a question of whether you have a place for Jesus, but whether He has the main place, whether He has all the places? Is He the centre of your life, the one who controls everything and to whom everything in your life is directed?! You glorify God when you bow down to Christ, and you make this bowing down known to the world, not so much by your words, but by your actions, by your life.
So this is what is meant when the angels sing, "Glory to God in the highest heaven!" But when men cannot and will not give this glory to God, when the greatest driving force in all of us is the primordial instinct to give glory to me - then let us not wonder if the other half of the angelic song, the part about peace, has been a pipe dream of mankind for two thousand years! Let us not change the order! But it also follows that, with Christ, peace has come and has been realized on earth among men. Peace on earth? - even believers shake their heads in disbelief. Yes, here is our most painful disappointment, and here is the disappointment of men in us. Can there still be peace on earth?! For we already know from experience, we have seen that it is indeed, as a witty saying puts it: all war is preparation for peace, and all peace is preparation for war!
Were the angels of Christmas not mistaken? - Surely not! - Let us remember that first Christmas Eve: then, too, there was peace only for the holy family and those around them. There was a lot of commotion and upheaval in the world outside. In the world around the world, there was a lot of commotion in the streets. In the land where the angels sang, there was even a cruel, arrogant viceroy, jealous of his power, Herod, who had organised that famous bloodbath among the little children! Yet, even in such a turbulent historical situation, there was true peace: in the manger at Bethlehem. Those who waited for Jesus, those who came to Him from far away, those who worshipped Him: they had peace!
Jesus once said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. (Jn 14,27) The world imagines peace as a peaceful, tranquil state of mind, where the soul is at rest, where the soul is at peace. This is the fantasy of the false Christs, who always try to go inward from the outside, to rebuild the outside world so that the soul becomes something else! The work of Christ is from the inside out! Christ reconciles your soul to God, and so sends you into the boiling world with a great, happy peace in your heart, to spread that peace!
Have you such peace? Brother, living in a world without peace, do you know, have you received the one who can create peace in you today? But it is also true in reverse: without Christ there is no peace, neither in you nor in the world! There may be a cease-fire, there may be a crushing of one or other of the warring parties, there may be an end, there may be a spasm, but there is no peace! True peace must flow out of the souls of men reconciled to God in the world! That is how you can be a part of peace on earth! For we have all caused this war. Whoever has once wronged another, whoever has once caused suffering, whoever has once uttered a hateful word: all of them have taken part in the great war preparations. War is a great, common river, in which the sins of us all rush like a flood of destruction! In the same way that war is made up of the sins of millions of men, peace would be projected into the world from the souls of reconciled men!
Receive Christ, let Him reconcile you to God - and that means you have done all you can to bring about true peace on earth!
"Glory to God in the highest heavens, and on earth peace to men of good will!"
This precious Christmas carol of the angels of Bethlehem should not remain just a beautiful, devout festive praise, which it is good for us to sing together with the angels at this time, but should be for us - today, on Christmas 1943 - a promise, a prophecy, a programme, the opening of new times, and let us all begin today to make it a reality!
Amen.
Date: 25 December 1943 (the first day of Christmas)