Pope Francis offers Christmas Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 24, 2021 / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Dec 24, 2021 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
Below is the full text of Pope Francis’ homily for the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, delivered Dec. 24, 2021 in St. Peter’s Basilica.
In the darkness, a light shines. An angel appears, the glory of the Lord shines around the shepherds and finally the message awaited for centuries is heard: “To you is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:11). The angel goes on to say something surprising. He tells the shepherds how to find the God who has come down to earth: “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger” (v. 12). That is the sign: a child, a baby lying in the dire poverty of a manger. No more bright lights or choirs of angels. Only a child. Nothing else, even as Isaiah had foretold: “unto us a child is born” (Is 9:6).
The Gospel emphasizes this contrast. It relates the birth of Jesus beginning with Caesar Augustus, who orders the census of the whole world: it presents the first Emperor in all his grandeur. Yet immediately thereafter it brings us to Bethlehem, where there is no grandeur at all: just a poor child wrapped in swaddling clothes, with shepherds standing by. That is where God is, in littleness. This is the message: God does not rise up in grandeur, but lowers himself into littleness. Littleness is the path that he chose to draw near to us, to touch our hearts, to save us and to bring us back to what really matters.
Brothers and sisters, standing before the crib, we contemplate what is central, beyond all the lights and decorations, which are beautiful. We contemplate the child. In his littleness, God is completely present. Let us acknowledge this: “Baby Jesus, you are God, the God who becomes a child”. Let us be amazed by this scandalous truth. The One who embraces the universe needs to be held in another’s arms. The One who created the sun needs to be warmed. Tenderness incarnate needs to be coddled. Infinite love has a miniscule heart that beats softly. The eternal Word is an “infant”, a speechless child. The Bread of life needs to be nourished. The Creator of the world has no home. Today, all is turned upside down: God comes into the world in littleness. His grandeur appears in littleness.
Let us ask ourselves: can we accept God’s way of doing things? This is the challenge of Christmas: God reveals himself, but men and women fail to understand. He makes himself little in the eyes of the world, while we continue to seek grandeur in the eyes of the world, perhaps even in his name. God lowers himself and we try to become great. The Most High goes in search of shepherds, the unseen in our midst, and we look for visibility, to be seen. Jesus is born in order to serve, and we spend a lifetime pursuing success. God does not seek power and might; he asks for tender love and interior littleness.
This is what we should ask Jesus for at Christmas: the grace of littleness. “Lord, teach us to love littleness. Help us to understand that littleness is the way to authentic greatness”. What does it mean, concretely, to accept littleness? In the first place, it means to believe that God desires to come into the little things of our life; he wants to inhabit our daily lives, the things we do each day at home, in our families, at school and in the workplace. Amid our ordinary lived experience, he wants to do extraordinary things. His is a message of immense hope. Jesus asks us to rediscover and value the little things in life. If he is present there, what else do we need? Let us stop pining for a grandeur that is not ours to have. Let us put aside our complaints and our gloomy faces, and the greed that never satisfies! The littleness, the wonder at that small child – this is the message.
Yet there is more. Jesus does not want to come merely in the little things of our lives, but also in our own littleness: in our experience of feeling weak, frail, inadequate, perhaps even “messed up”. Dear sister or brother, if, as in Bethlehem, the darkness of night overwhelms you, if you feel surrounded by cold indifference, if the hurt you carry inside cries out, “You are of little account; you are worthless; you will never be loved the way you want”, tonight, if you hear this, God answers back. Tonight he tells you: “I love you just as you are. Your littleness does not frighten me, your failings do not trouble me. I became little for your sake. To be your God, I became your brother. Dear brother, dear sister, don’t be afraid of me. Find in me your measure of greatness. I am close to you, and one thing only do I ask: trust me and open your heart to me”.
To accept littleness means something else too. It means embracing Jesus in the little ones of today. Loving him, that is, in the least of our brothers and sisters. Serving him in the poor, those most like Jesus who was born in poverty. It is in them that he wants to be honored. On this night of love, may we have only one fear: that of offending God’s love, hurting him by despising the poor with our indifference. Jesus loves them dearly, and one day they will welcome us to heaven. A poet once wrote: “Who has not found the Heaven – below – Will fail of it above” (E. DICKINSON, Poems, P96-17). Let us not lose sight of heaven; let us care for Jesus now, caressing him in the needy, because in them he makes himself known.
We gaze once again at the crib, and we see that at his birth Jesus is surrounded precisely by those little ones, by the poor. It is the shepherds. They were the most simple people, and closest to the Lord. They found him because they lived in the fields, “keeping watch over their flocks by night” (Lk 2:8). They were there to work, because they were poor. They had no timetables in life; everything depended on the flock. They could not live where and how they wanted, but on the basis of the needs of the sheep they tended. That is where Jesus is born: close to them, close to the forgotten ones of the peripheries. He comes where human dignity is put to the test. He comes to ennoble the excluded and he first reveals himself to them: not to educated and important people, but to poor working people. God tonight comes to fill with dignity the austerity of labour. He reminds us of the importance of granting dignity to men and women through labour, but also of granting dignity to human labour itself, since man is its master and not its slave. On the day of Life, let us repeat: no more deaths in the workplace! And let us commit ourselves to ensuring this.
As we take one last look at the crib, in the distance, we glimpse the Magi, journeying to worship the Lord. As we look more closely, we see that all around Jesus everything comes together: not only do we see the poor, the shepherds, but also the learned and the rich, the Magi. Everything is unified when Jesus is at the center: not our ideas about Jesus, but Jesus himself, the living One.
So then, dear brothers and sisters, let us return to Bethlehem, let us return to the origins: to the essentials of faith, to our first love, to adoration and charity. Let us look at the Magi who make their pilgrim way, and as a synodal Church, a journeying Church, let us go to Bethlehem, where God is in man and man in God. There the Lord takes first place and is worshipped; there the poor have the place nearest him; there the shepherds and Magi are joined in a fraternity beyond all labels and classifications. May God enable us to be a worshipping, poor and fraternal Church. That is what is essential. Let us go back to Bethlehem.
It is good for us to go there, obedient to the Gospel of Christmas, which shows us the Holy Family, the shepherds, the Magi: all people on a journey. Brothers and sisters, let us set out, for life itself is a pilgrimage. Let us rouse ourselves, for tonight a light has been lit, a kindly light, reminding us that, in our littleness, we are beloved sons and daughters, children of the light (cf. 1 Thess 5:5). Brothers and sisters, let us rejoice together, for no one will ever extinguish this light, the light of Jesus, who tonight shines brightly in our world.
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If people of good will hope that “religious leaders” will meet to advance “world peace,” the podcast discussion btw Damian Thompson and Father Benedict Kiely of UK suggests that Pontiff Francis and his like-minded colleague Kirill are not two of the characters that people of good will can rely on.
Let the staff pass to good shepherds, not these two operators.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/in-ukraine-and-china-a-power-obsessed-vatican-is-betraying-heroic-catholics
I would not read secular media “spectator” or any other to provide me good Catholic news. I would prefer a good Catholic site like wherepeteris.
Read this about one of the religious leaders you call an operator. https://wherepeteris.com/how-to-participate-in-the-consecration-of-ukraine-and-russia/
Putin chose to unilaterally attack a nation smaller than his which posed no threat. Ukraine is by no means a US satellite nation.In addition this is not simply a military incursion but he has been attacking civilians at will, even preventing them from fleeing. How Kirill can twist this into an attack on Russia is a mystery. One would like to hope that Popes and Patriarchs are above politics but it seems not. One day they will need to account to God for themselves and their failures. In addition, nations like our own are lead by the weak and fearful, who watch and do almost nothing of substance to help. Meanwhile, innocent people die.
The conflict in Ukraine is a border dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Observers who care about the tragic loss of life the war is producing should be encouraging dialogue between the warring parties. To provide additional arms and other military aid to Ukraine can only serve to prolong the conflict, resulting in more casualties. Furthermore, for the United States to provide material aid to the Ukrainian forces is in fact an act of war against Russia on our part. The warmongering psychopaths who play a large role in our government are pushing and pushing for the US to play an ever larger role in fighting Russia in this conflict. They are putting the security of the entire world at risk as they are openly flirting with the possibility of starting WWIII. World War III will have no winners, only losers. The Ukrainian government has killed between 13 and 14 thousand ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine since the Minsk agreements of 2015. Where are your tears for these people? The United States is using Ukraine as a proxy in their war against Russia. That is the goal of our government, to destroy Russia and install a puppet leader. The coup of 2014, which removed a pro-Russian, democratically elected leader, was instigated by our own government. This coup is what has led to the present crisis. Instead of encouraging our government to get more involved in this conflict, we should be telling them just the opposite. They should be trying to help put out the fire, not pour gasoline on it.
“Rather, the long-term policy goal should be the return of Russia to the community of nations”
“community of nations” = unipolar Anglo-American Empire
Ridiculous.
You are entirely correct, sir.
https://orthochristian.com/139273.html – good to read about the efforts and focus made by Patriarch Kirill , in desiring to make Russia more prolife, ‘we are a large land and need more people ‘ .
Holy Father caring much that life be protected for its sacredness ..
The Lord desiring unity in The Churches – as in the well narrated prayer on the fifth day of D.M. Novena ; ‘the domestic churches’ too , not to be tearing at His Body in rebellion ..
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/devotions/divine-mercy-novena-fifth-day-13371
The mystery of the fear in The R.O . Church keeping same from acknowledging the sacredness and grace in The Catholic Church , effects of that fear impeding the desires to see own lands flourishing , also leading to the wars against the little and those who are seen as little ..
May the call of Heaven be heeded , to shed the fears , to be open to Life as The Spirit of trust and its fruit of unity ,the walls of the hardness of hearts broken for the fruitfulness in families near and far as holiness , peace and new saintly lives all around ..
I did believe that reaching out to Kirill was the way to go. Right now, I do not. I have a strong feeling that Kirill is a Taliban type of Christian leader. He is a religious nationalist who wants all Russians to be under his control. It is possible that Putin was prompted and blessed by Kirill, and so we had this Taliban type of attack.
Perhaps, we should call this Kirill’s invasion of Ukraine.
All war is brutal, it goes with the act. The US has fought wars for «security concerns» in various regions far beyond its continent since the 1950s. The current conflict in which
Putin is engaged, whether Washington likes it or not, is rather similar
I suspect that his Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’ has in mind the reclaiming of Kiev for Russian Orthodoxy. A «holy war» indeed, at one time Supreme Pontiffs unashamedly engaged in such.
The devil is in the historic detail.
“And now the Western leaders are imposing economic sanctions on Russia that will be harmful to everyone. They make their intentions blatantly obvious–to bring sufferings not only to the Russian political or military leaders but specifically to the Russian people.”
Kirill is not wrong here. The West needs to stop meddling in other nations’ business. Sure Russia began the physical leg of this conflict, but we’ve been poking the bear for so long now. And these stupid sanctions will only hurt the citizens of Russia, America, and any other country involved.
“The West needs to stop meddling in other nations’ business.” Yes, we should leave that to Russia and China….for a better world.
Russophobia has reached astronomical levels. Why? It cannot be the war, because it started shortly after the Soviet Union fell apart. I look to Hollywood films to tell us what is going on. Yes, Hollywood functions as the arm of the Globalism and the demoralization of the West. In “Air Force One,” (1997) the villain was a Russian “ultranationalist” played by Gary Oldman. The hero, played by Harrison Ford, is a Globalist, a man who would send Americans to anyplace on earth to die for “democracy,” meaning in real terms, abortion, sodomy and transgenderism. Of course, none of this is mentioned in the film, but that is what it means in Globalese. Another film of interest is “The Equalizer,” (2014) with Denzel Washington playing the lead, a former special forces assassin who now works in a big box hardware store. Washington is Black, yet he takes pity on a young White woman whom Russian mobsters force into prostitution. Of course, the Russians are loathsome and sadistic criminals with bizarre tattoos, some even suggesting Christian themes. Yes, the subtext is definitely anti-Christian in this film, even though in real life, the criminal mobsters that came to the US from Russia were mostly Jews. Many other films have the same anti-Russian themes. This is how it all works. Hollywood prepares the US public way in advance for Globalist moves to gain power. So, today, Putin is the bad guy–not because he invaded Ukraine–but, because he resists, successfully, the Globalist agenda of sodomy, abortion, transgenderism and Christophobia, the same agenda which Catholics should be resisting with all their might in the US.
You are ENTIRELY correct, sir. Thank you for posting your opinion.
“Of course, none of this is mentioned…, but that is what it means…”
Ah, the classic Traditionalist thought process at work!
Helping other countries is a Christian or, shall I say, a Godly thing to do. However, exploiting other countries needs to be condemned – regardless of which country does the exploiting.