Beloved Child, we could exult with joy without ceasing, especially when we look at Your incomparable Mother and Saint Joseph….
What warmth surrounds the Holy Family! With its humanity, permeated by the Spirit of God, it sanctifies the core of human society: the family.
How must Mary and Joseph have felt, having you in their midst and understanding who He is who had been entrusted to them?
What a grace, what a choice, what a trust the Father placed in Mary and Joseph, what a constant delight Your presence is for them! And you yourself, in what good hands your Father has placed you!
Later You will make Your Mother the Mother of all men (Jn 19:25-27).
But, Beloved Child, despite all the holy rejoicing at Your coming, despite the joy of the angels, the astonishment of the shepherds, the reverence of the wise men from the East and the happiness of Your earthly parents, You have not come to a paradise.
Herod pursues You and wants to kill You. He is afraid of you, he fears for his power (Mt 2:1-3). Your parents have to flee with you to Egypt (v. 13-14). The evil spirit that moves Herod does not rest… He is the “murderer from the start” (Jn 8:44), who in his fit of madness wants to destroy everything that testifies to the love of the Father, and especially Yourself.
Do you know, Beloved Child? Today, when I speak to You, this evil spirit is still raging. It wants to erase Your testimony and to annihilate every trace left by Your coming into this world.
When You were born, he had all the children killed who would have been about your age (Mt 2:16). A cry was heard: “It is Rachel who weeps for her children and does not want to be consoled, because they no longer exist” (v. 18).
Today, dearest Jesus, so many people are deceived by this evil spirit. Many mothers and fathers no longer rejoice for the child who is on its way. They do not understand that, with every child, You yourself come to them (Mt 18:5). Therefore they allow Herod and his executioners to take their lives.
The angels weep… What suffering, who can bear it?
You, Beloved Child, know well what the world is like to which you have come… Herod makes it clear. But still you have come, because you wanted to make the Father known to us and to redeem us (Jn 17:26)!
This is our comfort at all times; how can we ever thank you enough?