(Alleluia pro feriis Adventus, die 17 mensis decembris)

TO ALL THE BROTHERS AND SISTERS

PEACE AND GOOD!

In the holy night of the birth of Jesus, the angel of the Lord brought us a Gospel which was a great joy for all the people: “today a Savior has been born to you, He is Christ the Lord” (cf. Lk 2, 11).

Today, history –that of mankind with God, that of God with mankind- has come to fullness, because the Word of God, the Word which enlightens all, was made flesh and pitched His tent among us (cf. Jn 1, 14), and the Light without-end dawned for all, the Sun of justice, the Day of salvation.

Today, through Christ, the goodness of God has been revealed (cf. Tit 3, 4), mercy has come to meet the miserable, purity offers itself to the stained, grace dawns for sinners.

Today, through Christ, loyalty and fidelity meet, justice and peace kiss, fidelity springs forth from the earth and justice descends to us from heaven (cf. Ps 85).

In truth, Jesus was born and our God reigns, a child was born to us and, through Him, joy comes to us, we were given a son and He is our peace, our good, our salvation (cf. Is 9, 5-6).

Today, in Christ, the victory of our God has been revealed and the most distant parts of the earth can contemplate it (cf. Ps 98, 3).

Today we also contemplate the mystery of the Word made flesh, the eternal Word of the Father, who was with God and pitched His tent among us; today we see His glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father full of grace and truth (cf. Jn 1, 14).

All that mankind, in its finitude, could have asked through its prayer, all that God in His magnificence could have given it, all is fulfilled through the incarnation of the Son of God, for the salvation which had been awaited until then, since it had been promised, is now salvation which faith embraces, because it has been realised.

Making idols of God, in which we project the imaginations of our desire for greatness has been a constant temptation for mankind, a temptation born of spiritual pride. That idol-god, the work of our hands, which knows all we pretend to know, and can do all we wish to be able to do, is necessarily our rival, since he fully occupies the place which we all wish to occupy. At the very time that we prostrate before that rival and become adorers of it, we discover that we are also its natural imitators, since, in reality, we have made it in our own image and likeness. And so, from the very beginning of our idolatries, we experience that we are rivals, not only of a poor imitation of divinity, but also one of many, those of everybody, since we all wish to occupy the place of the idol which we have made.

But the grace of the Lord comes to help our weakness. In deed, the mystery we contemplate in the liturgical celebration of Christmas allows us to approach the truth of the face of God with discernment.

Before our eyes there is only a child, the weakness of a child, the truth of a child, something so close and so small that we can wrap Him in the tenderness of a glance and, however, that child is, for us, the truth of God, that child is, for our faith, “the splendour of eternal glory [...] and the mirror without blemish” (4LtCl 14), that child is He “whose beauty all the heavenly hosts admire unceasingly, whose love [...], whose glorious vision will be the happiness of all the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem” (4LtCl 10-13).

In that holy night, the angel of the Lord said to the shepherds: “you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2, 12). And we, like those shepherds, find a child, a man child of man, a human word, which is almost always silence and, at times, weeping. However, before the eyes of faith, He is “The Word of God, God, Son of God” (cf. Leo the Great, Question XXI, 2).

Before our eyes there is the humility of man and our faith contemplates the majesty of God. We see only the weakness of a child and in faith we adore the power of God. In this child love has united time and eternity, the impassive nature of God with the passive nature of humanity (cf. Leo the Great, Question XXI, 2).

God, our God, does not present Himself as a rival whom we must fear, but as a small child whom we must care for and as the brother whom we have to love.

Being like God has been a seductive temptation for humanity from the beginning, but not precisely like God the Creator who is always love, but like the idol of God, a creature of humanity, subject to a capricious power which is only the source of death. From the beginning we have tried to build towers that reach to heaven. From the beginning we have fled from ourselves.

The mystery of Christmas now places the face of a new man for a new creation before our eyes.

Obeying the mandate of the angel of the Lord, we went to Bethlehem with the shepherds and we met Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger (cf. Lk 2, 16). And there we learned the sentiments of Christ: there all vanity was nullified and all rivalry disappeared; there humility was recreated in poverty, joy in the humility and praise in the joy; there the consolation of love, the intimate compassion and communion in the Spirit were made guests in our house.

We went quickly to Bethlehem and we found our Saviour, the Messiah, the Lord, and we felt the flight of peace, offered to us from heaven, over the face of the earth. O ineffable Mystery of divine wisdom!: The Lord has come to serve; the Messiah has been anointed by the Spirit to heal and liberate; the Saviour has been born a child to attract us to Himself and to reconcile us with our littleness; the Word of God became flesh so that we could return to our Maker and could recognise Him, who gave us life, so that we, who were slaves, could be free and could see ourselves raised to the conditions of children of God, who, through our disobedience, had distanced ourselves as strangers from His house (Cf. Leo the Great, Question XXV, 5).

In that holy night we went to Bethlehem and grace opened the eyes of our mind so that we could know the mystery of a new birth: the humanity from which mankind, jealous of God, had made itself absent, God, enamoured of mankind in Jesus Christ, had embraced (cf. Phil 2, 6-7).

In the holy night of Christmas, contemplating God, small and poor, we learned to recognise Him in all little people and in all the poor of humanity, and the tenderness of our affection for the Child of Bethlehem made us, in His hands, bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, closeness to the sick, compassion for the imprisoned and help for the needy.

We, who, through profession, surrendered our life to the most beloved God and set out under the action of the Holy Spirit to follow our Lord Jesus Christ more closely, need to live attentive to the different means through which the will of God is manifested to us if we really wish to respond faithfully to the call we have received from God.

Our brother Francis of Assisi lived in this way, in discernment, from his conversion; we feel that we are called to live in this way, in discernment, especially in this the first year of preparation for the VIII Centenary of the Foundation of our Order, since, like our brother and father Francis, we also wish to live a radically gospel life.

The Word of God was, for Francis, an illuminating means to knowledge of the divine will and it is called to be so for us also, especially that which is proclaimed in the liturgical celebrations of the Church community.

I wish to bring to your notice, Brothers and Sisters, some words of our seraphic father in which his love for the Word of the Lord is reflected: “Because whoever belongs to God hears the words of God (cf. Jn 8, 47), we [...], must not only listen to and do what the Lord says but also care for the vessels and other liturgical objects that contain His holy words in order to impress on ourselves the sublimity of our Creator and our subjection to Him. I, therefore, admonish all my brothers [and sisters] and encourage them in Christ to venerate, as best they can [...], honouring the Lord in the words which He spoke (cf. 1R 2, 4). For many things are made holy by the words of God (cf. 1Thim 4,5) and the sacrament of the altar is celebrated in the power of the words of Christ” (Letter to the Order 34-37).

The word of God, proclaimed in the Eucharist –in every liturgical celebration- and accepted in faith, is the first, fundamental and necessary form of our communion with Christ the Lord. We cannot receive communion, eat the body of the Lord, if we have not made communion through believing the word of the Lord: We will not desire His body if we do not desire His word; we will not receive His body if we do not listen to His word. The word of God received, the word that fills the heart with happiness, the word that arouses song, the word that turns us, in the most intimate depths of self, into a dialogue of love with Love, the word which seeks the fullness of His truth in us through sacramental communion with the body of the Lord!

That Word, in which God surrenders Himself to us, also carries within it the news of the Anointed One of God, Jesus the Messiah, for he speaks to us throughout Scripture, Scripture speaks of Him and He is the Word which was with God and was made flesh and lived among us.

And so, not only do we feel questioned by the Word which is proclaimed, but, in order to learn and discern, we also contemplate the mysteries of the incarnate Word. And thus, at this time of grace, holy Christmas, let us fix our eyes of faith on this child who was born for us, on this child who has given Himself to us. We, following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “the mother of all goodness” (cf. Thomas of Celano, First Life, 21), wish to guard all these things and meditate on them in our heart (cf. Lk 2, 19).

May each and every one of the Brothers and Sisters bear in their heart the prayer of the Church, which lives in a permanent attitude of advent: “Come, O Wisdom, and show us the path of salvation”.

May the light of Christ enlighten you all. May the blessing which is Christ be upon you. Happy Christmas!

Br. José Rodríguez Carballo ofm

Minister General