“No more deaths at work! And let’s commit ourselves to this “. It is the appeal that Pope francesco he addressed in the homily of the Mass of the Christmas night celebrated in the Vatican Basilica. “God – underlined Bergoglio – comes to tonight fill with dignity the hardness of the work. It reminds us how important it is to give dignity to man with work, but also to give dignity to man’s work, because man is lord and not slave of work“. The Pope explained the authentic meaning of the Christian Christmas: “Embrace Jesus in the little ones of today. To love him, that is, in the least, to serve him in the poor. They are the most similar to Jesus, born poor. And it is in them that he wants to be honored. In this night of love a single fear assails us: hurt the love of God, hurt him by despising the poor with our indifference. They are the beloved ones of Jesus, who will welcome us to heaven one day ”. And he added: “Let’s not lose sight of the sky, let us take care of Jesus now, caressing him in the needy, because he identified himself in them ”.
Francis recalled how “God does not ride greatness, but descends into littleness. Smallness is the way he has chosen to reach us, to touch our hearts, to save us and bring us back to what matters “. For the Pope this “is the Christmas challenge: God reveals himself, but men do not understand him. He makes himself small in the eyes of the world and we continue to seek greatness according to the world, perhaps even in his name. God lowers himself and we want to get on the pedestal. The Most High indicates humility and we pretend to appear. God goes in search of shepherds, of the invisible; we seek visibility. Jesus was born to serve and we spend the years a chasing success. God does not seek strength and power, he asks for tenderness and interior littleness. Here’s what to ask Jesus for Christmas: the grace of littleness”.
“But – asks Bergoglio – what does it mean, concretely, to welcome smallness? First to believe that God wants to come into the little things of our life, he wants live in everyday realities, the simple gestures we make at home, in the family, at school, at work. It is in ours ordinary lived that he wants to achieve extraordinary things. And it is a message of great hope: Jesus invites us to enhance e rediscover the little things in life. If he is there with us, what are we missing? So let us leave behind the regrets for the greatness that we do not have. We renounce complaints and long faces, greed that leaves us unsatisfied! But there is more. Jesus does not want to come only in the little things of our life, but also in our smallness: in our feeling ourselves weak, fragile, inadequate, maybe even wrong “.
Hence the invitation of Francis to look at the crib to see “that Jesus is at birth he is surrounded by his own little ones, by the poor. Who I am? The shepherds. They were the simplest and were the closest to the Lord. They found it because, spending the night in the open, they kept watch all night guarding their flock. They were there to work, because they were poor and their life did not have timetables, but depended on the flock. They could not live how and where they wanted, but they regulated themselves according to the needs of the sheep they looked after. And Jesus was born there, close to them, close to the forgotten of the suburbs. It comes where the dignity of man is tested. Comes to ennoble the excluded and it reveals itself above all to them: not to educated and important people, but to poor people who worked “. Adding, moreover, “that everything around Jesus it is recomposed into unity: there are not only the last, the shepherds, but also the learned and the rich, the wise men. In Bethlehem the poor and the rich are together, those who adore like the wise men and those who work like shepherds ”. With a final prayer: “May God grant us to be an adoring, poor and fraternal Church. This is the essential. Let’s go back to Bethlehem”.