December 2023

Since the dawn of time, Lord, the Child has danced with the wind, the stars have come to life beneath his feet, and his steps have woven gold into the void: Blessed art thou for He who saves us!

The Child is born with a gaze from which there is no escape. A gaze capable of stopping all the world’s wars in an instant. A mirror of the Mystery. Summoned to live, the Child in turn summons.

The Child casts his gaze over the world like a watchful radar, a lie detector, a blotter of truth. He summons us to be who we are, in the truest sense of ourselves.

The new-born Child in the midst of uncertainty tells us that we are permanently vulnerable, that there is not much earth under our feet and not much shelter over our heads. But it also tells us that being vulnerable can be the best part of our lives.

The Child who is born is the emergence of Life at the height of chaos. The intimate intertwining of life and danger. It is the cross that our baptisms as the living draw on all our foreheads. Blessed are you, Lord, for He who saves us!

Lord, God of the impossible, this morning a newborn child bears the Hope of the world. He stands there, in the breach, in almost nothing. But in height and depth, everything is immense: everything is possible. May we know how to stand there with the Child, in the vibrant moment of perhaps, in you, God, at the Source of Life, to carry the Hope of the world, together.

As COP 28 gets underway, bless you for reminding us, along with Pope Francis, that the suffering of mankind and the earth are inextricably linked.

Blessed are you for reminding us that we all have a share of responsibility, however small our gestures of conversion and sobriety;

Blessed are you for reminding us that our horizons touch and that what happens far away has origins and repercussions in what we have set in motion here;

Blessed are you for reminding us that thousands of brothers and sisters must flee a land that has become uninhabitable and that we have a duty to welcome them because we are responsible for what has ruined their economic balance, their land and their cultural know-how;

Blessed are you for reminding us that neither the earth, nor the oceans, nor the forests belong to us and are not commodities that can be bought and sold for the benefit of the rich.