Christmas, God's answer

The news from all over the world is not encouraging. Epidemics, the effects of climate change, displaced populations, wars... All of humanity is suffering. She cries out, often with revolts, sometimes with prayer.

Christmas is God's answer to this cry. This is a surprising answer because it is expressed in the weakness, the fragility of a newborn child. God chooses fragility to tell us his presence.

To hear God's response to the cry of distress of humans, we can contemplate the representations of the baby Jesus in our mangers, and let this child who does not yet speak invite us to trust and hope. But also, from the time of Advent, we receive as a command given by Jesus; he invites us to watch and pray. Pray, maybe we know what it is, but "watching"? To watch is to be attentive, to be vigilant. When He advises us to watch, Jesus advises us to be attentive to the signs that reveal God's presence and action in a suffering world.

Remember what the gospels tell. In Jesus' time women mourned the death of a child; but Jesus gave back life only to the son of the widow of Naim; and the blind or paralytic were undoubtedly numerous in Israel and in the world, more numerous than those whom Jesus healed. Jesus' activity was admirable but limited. It is that she was a sign.

To watch is to be attentive to the signs given today: a gesture of fraternal attention, sharing, reconciliation... they are responses to human distress. They pass through the weak and fragile humanity of which we are a part. They are signs of the presence in our midst of the immense and mysterious reality that we call the reign of God.

In the prayer of the Our Father, we ask " Thy Kingdom come." Jesus told us that He is already in our midst. But god's reality far exceeds our ability to perceive His presence.

To pray is to ask; it is also to be attentive and to watch. It is to perceive the signs that are given to us of the presence of God. And also to give thanks for these signs and for this presence. I like the words of Pope Francis: "Joy and peace grow with praise and thanksgiving"! Let us give thanks for the "God's response" heard at Christmas.

Blessed are you, Lord, for this newborn, so small, so fragile, who tells us, in the silence of Christmas, the active presence of your love in us and in our midst.

Father François Maupu,

Ecclesiastical Assistant of LAI