IMAGE: CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Only when Christ is the focus of the
Christmas season do all the colorful lights, carols, special meals and
traditions help create a festive and joyous atmosphere, Pope Francis said.
“If we take him away, the lights go out and everything
become fake, illusory,” he said at his weekly general audience Dec. 27.
“Without Jesus, there is no Christmas. It’s some other
celebration, but it isn’t Christmas,” he said to applause.
Dedicating his audience talk to the true meaning of
Christmas as a celebration of Christ’s birth, the pope greeted pilgrims
gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI audience hall, which was decorated with a
Christmas tree and a life-size Nativity scene.
The creche, the liturgies and the seasonal songs all help
the faithful relive today the birth of Christ the savior, he said.
However, especially in Europe, he said, Christmas is being
stripped of its true nature “in the name of a false respect for those who
are not Christian.” But, often the true motive behind eliminating any
reference to the birth of Christ is a desire to “marginalize faith.”
Just as God gave the world his son — born at night to a
poor girl in a stable in Bethlehem — he still sends Christ into a world that
is enveloped by darkness and slumbers, the pope said.
“And still today we witness the fact that often
humanity prefers darkness because people know that light reveals all those
actions and thoughts that would shame and prick one’s conscience,” he
said. “So, people prefer to stay in the dark and not disturb their erring
ways.”
Instead, people are called to be like the shepherds, seeking
out that true guiding light, who appears first to those who are marginalized
and poor, he said.
“Jesus establishes a friendship with the lowly and
despised,” the pope said; he offers hope and encouragement for building a
better world, where “there are no longer any people who are turned away, mistreated
and destitute.”
“God opened for us the way to a new life, built not on
selfishness, but upon love,” he said.
In that context, he said, exchanging gifts on Christmas is a
sign of accepting God’s example and teaching: to freely give oneself, one’s
love and tenderness to others.
“The true gift for us is Jesus and, like him, we want
to be a gift for others,” especially for those who have never experienced
any love, care and tenderness in their lives, he said. The Christmas season
“encourages us” to do this for others, he added.
At the end of the audience, members of Italy’s “Golden
Circus” performed for the pope. After two giant costumed polar bears did a
little dance, female acrobats dressed in green, dragon-print leotards balanced
high atop one another before a male troupe in fake leopard skins leapt into
more gravity-defying poses. A muscular “strong man” bent a piece of
metal and gave it to the pope, who thanked him for the present.
He thanked the performers for the show, saying the circus —
just like all real art — “always brings us closer to God. You, with your
work, with your skill, bring people to God. Thank you for what you do.”
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