A glance at the present reality

CChristmas is drawing near and this yearly appointment invites us once again to meditate on an extra-ordinary event: the Incarnation of the Son of God.

The journey of faith leads the faithful to reflect on his being, yet the atmosphere we breathe orients this event towards the squares, the fun, hubbub and frenzy.

Today’s men and women, busy as they are in a thousand of things, seem to have lost the contemplative dimension of life. There are people who structure their time in the search of something that may satisfy them, others who, influenced by relativism, flee away from deep questions and still others who, because of fear, do not get involved, do not try or risk.  

Today’s individual, who keeps on feeling the attraction of many idols or the idol of his own person, sometimes lives the present moment in the company of an existential emptiness, which claims its rights. In his thirst for independence, he frees himself from everything: religion, tradition and authority. He erects himself as subject and owner of his own destiny, maker of his own history, reference and measure of himself. He worries only of creating a grandiose self-image, without minding people around him and the world beyond him.

Subjectivisms along with the wave of emotions slow down his journey towards the infinite and make him to lose his contact with the fresh sources of humanity.

In the apparent running of life, we sometimes perceive the fatigue of men and women who never stop looking with their heart at the fragments, trying to join them again, to welcome with gratitude the beauty of the humanity they have received as a gift.

Let us stop at the grotto

The Baby, who is born, stays among the ferial reality of these events. Many people know him others ignore him. It seems that the birth of Baby Jesus does no longer speak to today’s men and women, just now that fear and confusion want to outbid the situation. War rages in many places; they trample upon the fundamental rights of the person, disfigure and exploit irrationally creation with its beauty. It seems that humanity has lost the capacity of perceiving God’s presence in the world, because the individual is no longer able to cultivate spaces of deep interiority.

Only in an atmosphere of silence, man can individuate the boundary of the land he inhabits and respect that of others. It is in silence that he learns how to believe in the mystery that enwraps the universe.

It is in the silence of solitude that God reveals himself to the heart of naked and vulnerable creature. He reveals himself to those who have nothing to exhibit, to prove or defend. He reveals himself to the shepherds who keep vigil at night and whom the glory of the Lord enwraps (See: Luke: 2, 8-9).

Even today, we find God in the silence of a Baby robed in swaddling and lying in the manger.

God continues to answer those who seek him in the silence, in an undefended and tender Baby, who has come to live in poverty and to announce the love of the Father to the whole world. .

Seeing that these days, people are busy in many things and that Baby Jesus seems to be the great absent one and to find no place anywhere,  though we celebrate his feast, we feel the need to stop before the grotto.

Looking at the Emmanuel, in silence, each of us acquires the awareness of oneself as a gift and a value.  Our stupor before the Incarnation of the Son of God gives birth to the capacity of giving a new meaning to our tiny actions, joyfully and enthusiastically, penetrating the great ones with the simplicity of a child.

As we enter the grotto, we find in Baby Jesus the courage of daring, the condition to be a door open for every stranger” (E. Mounier), for the marginalised, the rejected and those who think of existing for no one.

Let us depart from the grotto

Stopping before the grotto helps us to enter our deepest being and discover our capacity for tenderness, for a delicate, sensitive, not possessive, disarmed and disarming love.

Faith in the Incarnation of the Son of God who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are” (Philippians; 2,7), leads the person to welcome God into one’s life with renewed faithfulness.

«… and the Word became flesh, he lived among us” (John: 1, 14). The Emmanuel the poor and undefended Baby in the grotto has still something more to tell today’s men and women.

We see near him also Mary and Joseph. They live their existence as a resonance of their being in God. In that grotto, they re-propose a new way of living life in its essential reality, in sobriety and simplicity, based on free love and on the certainty that the Lord welcomes and loves each of us.  

In the grotto, we see also persons who fight for power or seek the alms of generalised consents through protagonist and spectacular actions. Only the witnesses of love donate themselves unconditionally, persons who realise God’s call without calculations or expectations.  

The grotto is open, without locks or defences. There is room for everyone in the house chosen by God for His Son. Even today, men and women of good will can celebrate the Christmas of the Lord, the presence of God on earth, the visible action of the Spirit in every history.

Only after adoring the Emmanuel in the grotto of Bethlehem, we can return to our field of life, bringing hope to all who feel lost and communicating the joy of Christmas to them. 

Diana Papa