Every year Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus as a human Child. Humanity would never be the same again. As a human being Jesus would reveal who we are as human persons and what we are called to be.Vatican Council II teaches: “In becoming one of us the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human person. Like all of us he worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, he acted by human choice and he loved with a human heart” (Gaudium et Spes Art. 22). Therefore, it is in the human life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels that we discover who we are as human persons, how we should live and what we are called to be. Did he not say about himself: “I am the way, the truth and the life”!
He tells us who the human person truly is and what we must do in order to be truly human. He shows us the way and the way is the truth. He also shows us the way beyond death. (Spe Salvi by Pope Benedict, on Christian Hope 30th November 2007)
The Teaching of Jesus survives:
The life and the teaching of Jesus have survived the test of time – the life that calls us to live in the love of God and of each other. Philosophies, Ideologies and Theologies have come and gone but the life and teaching of Jesus remains forever relevant for every moment of our lives. We all remember the learned men of the 40’s and 50’s who saw atheistic communism and fascism as the solution to all our problems.
Tragically millions of lives were massacred before communism collapsed and the world discovered that a state or a society without a soul can become. Fascism also had within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It too had no place for God or the spiritual dimension of life. It too destroyed the lives of millions.
Appeal: I appeal to all people to discover anew the beauty and the joy of Jesus in the Gospels. No one can challenge a single sentence that came from the lips of Jesus and say that it is not true, that it is not relevant to life.
The great tragedy of our day is that so many people in their desperate efforts towards personal freedom, autonomy and individualism have turned away from the only teaching that can set them free from the prison of selfishness, individualism and addiction and empower them to live a life of love for God and for others. Jesus was always and ever will be a man for others.
What I have been trying to say is expressed beautifully by the words of someone who remains anonymous.
It is entitled: “One Solitary Life”
“He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness.
He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of humankind’s progress.
All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that every sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on earth as much as that One Solitary Life”.
A call to rediscover Jesus:
If only our people and especially our young people could rediscover Jesus in their hearts as their greatest friend and their greatest guide on earth, indulgence in alcohol, drugs, sex and crime would cease overnight and they would discover the peace and joy of Bethlehem in their hearts and in their homes.
Alienation from God, alienation from family, alienation from community is in total conflict with the Lord who calls us to love God and to love each other in the family and in the community. The way of Jesus is the only way to peace, happiness and joy. Surely the meeting of Ian Paisley, Martin McGuinness and the President of the United States around the same table is proof positive that with God all things are possible.
May the peace and joy of Bethlehem fill all your hearts and homes this Christmas.
+Christopher Jones17th December 2007
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The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: DE)