Christmas is a beautiful feast, full of joy, full of emotion. Who is not moved by a child who is born poor, in a manger? Today I’d want to offer you a reflection of mine for these days. A question: why do I remember that Jesus was born for me only in a specific period of the year? Is it only an opportunity to party? Every day I should remember that the Word became flesh for me. I know very well that Jesus did not come to leave me in peace, but to get me moving, to help me make choices in line with his message of love, mercy, salvation. Let’s also celebrate Christmas, let’s rest, eat, drink but let’s think seriously about what St. John wrote to Christians in the first century. If you say: “I belong to Christ”, you must behave as he did; if you say: “I am one of Christ’s disciples”, as far as you can, you must oppose the evil that reigns in the world. The first thing that comes to my mind is: I should not be violent with words and actions, I should build peace in my family, in my community, in the society I live in, I should be honest and reject any kind of corruption and injustice, without being afraid to denounce them. But there is something more subtle. The world attracts us, fascinates us. We are looking for happiness and we think we find it in wealth, in power, in sex, in business, and so on. Then we realize that nothing is enough for us, that we always need something else and therefore we always remain unhappy. All these things belong to the world and lead us astray. We Christians know what the path to happiness is, the path that Jesus proposed to us, that of love, sharing, welcoming, generosity, even sacrifice.

Let’s think of Jesus. The ending of today’s Gospel tells that baby Jesus was growing up, that he was an intelligent and wise child, that he had God’s favor. Okay, that’s fine, everything is beautiful. But Jesus grows up in a normal daily life of which we know nothing at all. We call it “the hidden life of Nazareth”. Jesus enters the world in silence: there is silence about his childhood, his adolescence, his youth. He has chosen to live our daily life, with its lights and shadows, with its joys, its fears, its anxieties and its dreams, its desires. Everyone expected a great “Lord” and instead, they found someone like them and like us. I can imagine the adolescent Jesus working with Joseph, learning the trade. I can imagine that he was also a source of anxiety and concern for parents, like all children of this world.
We can say with certainty that Jesus entered history and never escaped from it, paying dearly for his consistency, for his fidelity to the Father to the last drop of blood. And who are we to escape from our history? And who are we to refuse the effort of building this humanity that God has chosen to share with it the gift of divinity? All this is not a walk or a picnic: it is fatigue, sweat, hard journey, calluses on the hands, shortness of breath.
Jesus announced from the beginning of his life that man’s happiness is in loving, in serving, in giving life; the cross and the resurrection were the signs that the road was the right one.
“So this is Christmas and what have you done?” sang John Lennon in the famous song War is over, one of the Christmas hits.
May this question accompany us on the journey towards the new year: what have I done? What could I have done and didn’t? what can I do now? And let us put everything into the hands of the heavenly Father: he will not let us lack his help.