2024 ends. A year that was rich in joyful, dynamic, painful, or destabilizing events…
Many of us ask ourselves an important question: where are we going?
What if the answer was: “In Bethlehem”? Indeed, on Christmas night, in this locality, a sign is given to us:
“a newborn baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12). Night calls day. For the baby, there is
the promise of growth, of a freedom that flourishes.
An active charity
Among the great biblical texts meditated on during Advent, the prophet Isaiah (40, 1) transmits this cry from God: “
Comfort, comfort my people…” We have heard many people cry, many peoples, many
nations during this year.
Among the graces of Christmas there is compassion, this ability to suffer with those who suffer. Let's carry in our
hearts of people who experience war, great poverty, displacement, insecurity… People
for whom Christmas is not a day of celebration because they are isolated or sick, marked by all kinds of precariousness.
It is towards them that this Christmas time pushes us! There will be no Christmas without active charity!
Face of God
In his work “The Friend of God”, Pope Francis comments: “Even the incarnation, the fact that God assumes
taking a human body, wanted to signify that God Himself could not remain love without becoming a face…
Love demands, demands a face, and anyone who knows Scripture knows it: whoever seeks God seeks a face. »
We become human in a face-to-face encounter; it is the fundamental human experience. On this Christmas day God bless
each of our families, our friends, our colleagues… May God bless our interpersonal relationships which
allow us to grow in Love!
Let us be faces of God who wants to make all human beings his children! The more human we will be
with others, the more divine we will be, radiating the face of God!
Encounter
Bethlehem, ultimately, is the land of encounters, of novelty, of action, of a future now possible!
Invited to welcome the face of God, let us set out towards one another, in particular towards those
who are suffering! Let's open the paths of hope together!
Merry and deep Christmas 2024. We will walk together on the paths of God and humanity in 2025!
Isabelle Gerber, President of the Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine
Mgr Philippe Ballotbishop of Metz
Mgr Pascal DelannoyArchbishop of Strasbourg
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