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Vatican City, Dec 24, 2017 / 02:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said the birth of Jesus is an invitation for all Christians to imitate him in reaching out to embrace the vulnerable and all those who are suffering, during his celebration of Christmas Mass.

The joy that we are called to celebrate, share, and proclaim at Christmas is “the joy with which God, in his infinite mercy, has embraced us pagans, sinners and foreigners, and demands that we do the same,” the Pope said the evening of Dec. 24 during his homily at St. Peter’s Basilica.

The faith Christians proclaim at Christmas, as they adore the infant who came to offer salvation to sinners, is one that enables us to see God “in all those situations where we think he is absent,” he said.

“He is present in the unwelcomed visitor, often unrecognizable, who walks through our cities and our neighborhoods, who travels on our buses and knocks on our doors,” Francis said, explaining that this faith is also an invitation to develop “a new social imagination, and not to be afraid of experiencing new forms of relationship, in which none have to feel that there is no room for them on this earth.”

Christmas, then, “is a time for turning the power of fear into the power of charity, into power for a new imagination of charity,” he said.

And the type of charity we are invited to live during Christmas is one “that does not grow accustomed to injustice, as if it were something natural, but that has the courage, amid tensions and conflicts, to make itself a ‘house of bread,’ a land of hospitality.”

In choosing to be born into the world as a tiny infant, Christ offers himself to us in a way that we are able to hold him, lift him up, and embrace him, Francis said. In the same way, we are also called “to take into our arms, raise up and embrace the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned.”

“In this Child, God invites us to be messengers of hope,” he said. “He invites us to become sentinels for all those bowed down by the despair born of encountering so many closed doors. In this child, God makes us agents of his hospitality.”

He noted how difficult it was for Mary and Joseph to be forced from their homeland and make a long, uncomfortable journey while expecting a child. The situation was exacerbated when they finally arrived to Bethlehem only to discover there was no room for them in the city.

And yet it was here, “amid the gloom of a city that had no room or place for the stranger from afar, amid the darkness of a bustling city which in this case seemed to want to build itself up by turning its back on others” that the “revolutionary spark” of God’s love was lit, he said.

“In Bethlehem, a small chink opens up for those who have lost their land, their country, their dreams; even for those overcome by the asphyxia produced by a life of isolation.”

Francis noted that there are many others whose footsteps are hidden in those of Mary and Joseph, including the millions of people “who do not choose to go away but, driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones.”

“In many cases this departure is filled with hope, hope for the future; yet for many others this departure can only have one name: survival,” he said, noting that there are many who must survive “the Herods of today, who, to impose their power and increase their wealth, see no problem in shedding innocent blood.”

Mary and Joseph, who are the first to embrace “the one who comes to give all of us our document of citizenship,” are faced with a similar situation, finding themselves fleeing to a new land where they have no home or roof over their head.

However, in the “poverty and humility” of his birth, Christ both proclaims and shows that “true power and authentic freedom are shown in honoring and assisting the weak and the frail,” Francis said.

Among the weakest and most frail members society at the time were the shepherds, he said, noting that because of their work, they were often forced to live on the margins. Because their state in life prevented them from participating in the traditional religious purification rituals, the shepherds were considered “unclean.”

“Everything about them generated mistrust. They were men and women to be kept at a distance, to be feared,” Pope Francis said, noting how they were widely considered “pagans among the believers, sinners among the just, foreigners among the citizens.”

However, these are the ones to whom the angel first appears with the announcement that the savior had been born, he said, adding that “this is the joy that we tonight are called to share, to celebrate and to proclaim” at Christmas.

Like Christ, who in his mercy bent down and embraced us as sinners, pagans, and foreigners, we must also learn to develop a new gaze that looks at others with charity and hospitality, he said, and urged Christians to imitate Jesus in lifting up and embracing the weak and marginalized.

He closed his homily by praying that the gift of the “little Child of Bethlehem” would move us, so that “your crying may shake us from our indifference and open our eyes to those who are suffering.”

“May your tenderness awaken our sensitivity and recognize our call to see you in all those who arrive in our cities, in our histories, in our lives,” he said, and prayed that the “revolutionary tenderness” of the Christ Child would “persuade us to feel our call to be agents of the hope and tenderness of our people.”

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Religious sisters of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, sing as the process with the body of their late foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, on May 29, 2023, at their abbey near Gower, Missouri. The sisters exhumed the nun’s body on May 18 and discovered that it was apparently intact, four years after her death and burial in a simple wooden coffin. / Joe Bukuras/CNA

Gower, Missouri, May 29, 2023 / 20:02 pm (CNA).

The body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, an African American nun whose surprisingly intact remains have created a sensation at a remote Missouri abbey, was placed inside a glass display case Monday after a solemn procession led by members of the community she founded.

About 5 p.m., dozens of religious sisters of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, carried their foundress on a platform around the property of the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus, reciting the rosary and singing hymns. Some of the thousands of pilgrims who visited the abbey over the three-day Memorial Day weekend followed behind.

The procession, held in bright, late-afternoon sunshine, culminated inside the abbey’s church, where the nun’s body was placed into a specially made glass case. Flowers surrounded her body and decorated the top of the case, where there is an image of St. Joseph holding the Child Jesus. The church was filled with pilgrims, including many priests and religious sisters from other orders. 

Sister Wilhelmina, who founded the Benedictine order in 1995 when she was 70 years old, died in 2019. Expecting to find only bones, her fellow sisters exhumed her remains on May 18 intending to reinter them in a newly completed St. Joseph’s Shrine, only to discover that her body appeared astonishingly well-preserved.

The sisters say they intended to keep their discovery quiet, but the news got out anyway, prompting worldwide media coverage and a flood of pilgrims arriving at the abbey in Gower, a city of 1,500 residents about an hour’s drive from Kansas City, Missouri. A volunteer told CNA that more than 1,000 vehicles came onto the property on Monday but no official count was available.

There has been no official declaration that Sister Wilhelmina’s remains are “incorrupt,” a possible sign of sanctity, nor is there a formal cause underway for her canonization, a rigorous process that can take many years. The local ordinary, Bishop Vann Johnston of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, has said that a “thorough investigation” is needed to answer “important questions” raised by the state of her body, but there has been no word on if or when such an analysis will take place. 

Before Monday’s procession, pilgrims again waited in line throughout the day for an opportunity to see and touch Sister Wilhelmina’s body before its placement in the glass case, where it will remain accessible for public viewing.

Among those who came on Monday were Tonya and William Kattner, of Excelsior Springs, Missouri.

“You’ve got to experience the magic and the miracle of it,” Tonya Kattner said.

“It’s a modern-day miracle and it was just something we had to come to,” William Kattner said. “Especially with everything going on in the world today, something like this brings hope.”

Kate and Peteh Jalloh, of Kansas City, Missouri, also didn’t want to pass up the chance to see Sister Wilhelmina.

“I strongly believe in the Catholic faith. I believe in miracles and I have never seen anything like this before. I’ve got a lot going on in my life and this is the best time to get that message from a nun,” Kate Jalloh said.

“It could take another hundred years for us to see something like this,” she added.

Janie Bruck came with her cousins, Kristy Cook and Halle Cook, all from Omaha, Nebraska. 

“I came to witness the miracle. I believe we’re in a Jesus revolution and he’s sending us lots of signs,” Bruck said. Kristy Cook, a former Omaha police officer, said she was surprised that Sister Wilhelmina’s body had no odor of decay.

The sisters have publicly thanked the many local law enforcement officers, medical personnel, and volunteers who helped manage the influx of pilgrims over the holiday weekend.

Among the volunteers was Lucas Boddicker, of Kearney, Missouri, who joined members of his Knights of Columbus council based at St. Anne’s Catholic Church in nearby Plattsburgh, Missouri, to guide visiting vehicles to a makeshift parking lot in an open field. Other knights from local parishes helped set up tents and handed out free hamburgers, fruit, and bottles of water.

“That’s one thing the Knights do pretty well,” Boddicker said. “They get the word out when we need manpower.”

Priests heard confessions in a large grass field for hours, some using trees for shade, as young children played on the abbey grounds.

Three religious sisters from the Poor of Jesus Christ order, based in Kansas City, Kansas, said they were inspired by seeing Sister Wilhelmina’s body. 

One of the religious, Sister Azucena, said she “wanted to cry,” while praying at the nun’s side. “I just had this feeling of peace and love. We share a vocation. Her fidelity to the Lord and her love, I could feel that there,” she said.

A married couple, Jason and Jessica Ewell, both of whom are blind, were visiting Kansas City, Missouri, from Pennsylvania when they heard Monday morning about Sister Wilhelmina’s body.

“It’s just kind of a neat thing to be a part of the beginning of this story,” Jessica Ewell said.

“I was asking for her intercession for children for our marriage,” she said. “A lot of people think ‘Oh, it’s the blindness,’ but no, it’s not that at all,’” she said.

“Yesterday I was kind of in a place where I said, ‘God, I need something right now,’” she said. “We always hear about these miracles. But they’re long ago and far away and always happen to other people.”

Trish Bachicha, Jessica’s mother, said she believes that God is sending a message. 

“He saying ‘I’m alive and well and I haven’t forgotten you,’” she said.

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Danie Ortega. / Credit: Shutterstock

ACI Prensa Staff, Apr 5, 2023 / 15:20 pm (CNA).
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