First Christmas Meditation
Dear friends, during the Christmas octave that is about to begin, I will leave the familiar framework of the daily interpretations of the Holy Scriptures a little behind me and instead will lay down simple meditations on the Christmas events – together with Christmas songs of the Harpa Dei Choir! I hope that the wonderful event of Christmas can come a little deeper into us!
Rejoice, Christ is born! This jubilation fills heaven and earth of all those who know this message!
Joyful and touching are the Christmas songs that bring our hearts into contact with the sweetness of the birth of the child! If the birth of every child delights us from the heart, how much then the birth of the Son of God, the birth of the Saviour of the world, who is born in a grotto!
Angels proclaimed this message to the shepherds who lay in the fields, and they immediately set out to find the new-born!
What splendour emanates from this grotto!
The search for shelter and all the hardships lie behind Mary and Joseph!
When a mother looks at her new-born child, she forgets all the pain of pregnancy in the delight and joy of the child who is now in her arms!
How much this will have been the case with the parents of the divine child, who are so graciously involved in the mystery of God’s Incarnation! The joy that fills them is connected with the joy of heaven over the firstborn, the only-born! They worship him and they marvel at the love of the Father, which now comes so close, so tangible.
Perhaps the word from Isaiah rises up in their hearts:
“Rain down you heavens , from above, and let the clouds pour down saving justice, let the earth open up and blossom with salvation and let justice sprout with it; I, Yahweh have created it” (Isa 45:8).
And the Lord has accomplished it!
The fulfilment of the long proclaimed promise is realized before them! And they may embrace the Lord of heaven and earth with their love and give him all their tenderness. God shows us in the birth of His Son that all forms of true love come from Him and their natural parental love unites and transcends to God’s love! A touching German-language Christmas carol in reference to the birth of the Son of God writes: “I want to immerse myself completely in his love, I want to give him my heart and all that I have”.
What, then, is the most beautiful thing we can bring to the Lord? It is the heart that the Lord wants to touch, so that everything may melt away that still stands in the way of the development of love, so that love may bear great fruit in the encounter and union with the Lord and make us strong to remain faithful to the Lord!