Christmas speaks to us about a God who chooses the hard way by calling a person to be a person. That’s what Christmas is: an invitation to be born again, to be wrapped in swaddling clothes. But it will be a rebirth for each of us only if we learn to take upon ourselves the wounds of our brothers and sisters. Only if we learn to move from a violence that injures to a gentleness that heals. The swaddling clothes of the grotto of Bethlehem are an invitation to us to move toward tenderness, toward protection, toward cultivating every fragile sprout of life. They are bands that close old wounds, that heal grudges.
Jesus is not born to solve our problems but to show us that the only possible way to emerge into the light–to be born, or reborn, to a new and positive life–is to become bread for our brothers and sisters.
Jesus will always be found in places different from where we think he should be because he is impossible to contain. He is a constant invitation to us to set out on a journey.
An invitation to go forth, to move ahead, to take risks. A new humanity can be born only if we abandon the darkness of night.
The birth of Jesus gives rise to a humanity capable of care. His birth is a plea to become like Mary and Joseph: persons capable of closeness to one another. Capable of swaddling clothes, bread and a journey.
