December 2012 - Lessons of the crib

Christmas approaches, Christmas is near.

Hope is reborn in our weary hearts. Many signs show it: in a few days we will have again the joy of celebrating Christmas and of forgetting our discouragements and sorrows.

This is a time of truce. We will rediscover our child-like hearts, filled with wonder at the sight of the Child-God; we will sing our wonder in ancient melodies that defy fashions and time. God is among us, as one of us. Who would dare to be against us? A profound joy, an inalienable hope.

Dear friends and benefactors,

Christmas approaches, Christmas is near.

Hope is reborn in our weary hearts. Many signs show it: in a few days we will have again the joy of celebrating Christmas and of forgetting our discouragements and sorrows.

This is a time of truce. We will rediscover our child-like hearts, filled with wonder at the sight of the Child-God; we will sing our wonder in ancient melodies that defy fashions and time. God is among us, as one of us. Who would dare to be against us? A profound joy, an inalienable hope.

And yet, experience teaches us that this joy does not last long and that our hope fades away far too quickly. Christmas is not a truce that restores our forces, but rather a dream that passes away, fugitive, without leaving in our souls any more traces than the waves left by a boat on the ocean.

How can this be? God is among us, and we do not remain with Him. Mystery of human frailty, focused on trifles and forsaking the essentials.

So that we do not pass another fruitless Christmas, but rather, have the occasion to be born anew, we must answer the angelic invitation and come to the crib to receive the King of the Kings hidden in his cradle of straw.

The crib speaks to our hearts, in silence, without the din of vain words. In its poverty, it gently introduces us into the mystery of the Incarnation and teaches us to receive and keep the divine Child in our souls.

But so that it can exert in our souls this maternal influence, we must consent to approach it. Indeed, the crib is a private, intimate place, safe from the agitation of the world. The crib is a refuge. To discover it, we are obliged to leave our daily occupations, to change our habits. In a word: we are invited to abandon ourselves. We must consent not to be any more the center of our own thoughts, not to be centered on our constant and materialistic desires.

To go in search of the crib is to understand that we must leave the deep valleys carved out by the rivers of our pride, in which we are trapped; these hopeless, barren places, these small, personal cities of Man; we must ascend the steep mountain of God who relieves us of our useless burdens.

God is, and He is among us, in this very simple crib that escapes superficial glances that are attracted only by the glare or the hustle of the world.

Even more, before the crib and its silent lesson, it is necessary to take time to contemplate.

Christmas is the time of childhood, of the newness of astonishment found again, the simple glance that stops, is filled with wonder and penetrates the intimacy of things. Glance of the child who in his new-found purity discovers or rediscovers the beauties hidden to those proud of having seen and understood everything.

We do not understand this mystery of love. We stop, astonished and happy, and ask humbly, beyond our mean human designs, the grace to understand or, rather, to be seized by the mystery that infinitely exceeds us. We ask for the grace of graces, the grace of receiving and accepting.

Then we will be able to admire the simplicity, the destitution and the majesty of the crib, which will cure us from our complications, our exhausting search of ourselves and our propensity to vulgarity.

Then our souls, released from themselves, will be ready to let themselves be seized by the presence of the Child-God and, becoming again children, we will enter the kingdom of grace and will make the new year a hymn of praise to the Glory of God, living in poverty and trust; living in the Peace that belongs to souls of goodwill.

In Christo sacerdote et Maria,

Fr. Yves le Roux