Is 52: 7-10; Salm 97; Heb 1: 1-6; Jn 1; 1-18

1. “The people who walked in darkness … upon those who dwelt in the land of deep shadow …” (Is 9: 1). These words of the prophet Isaiah concern us. Proceeding – or maybe living – in the darkness is hard and we are tired. Wearied and devastated is the world states with an acute realism Chesterton. More or less aware, this is the reason why we have gathered here on this Holy Night: here we search light because: “of the world the desire this is” Chesterton continues.

The light is this “child born for us” (Is 9: 5). In the stable of Bethlehem, as here now, in our resplendent basilica, the light shines. In the stable of Bethlehem as in every church in the world, thousands of years after creation rises the first dawn of the world. With the birth of Jesus the virtue of hope in its infancy grows anew for every man. Christmas is the inexhaustible source of revival – and God knows how much this word is precious today for each one of us -.

2. “And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David” (Lk 2: 3-4). In the meticulous account of the fact that has changed the sense of history the Evangelist Luke records a decisive datum: Joseph belongs to the house and family of David. He describes the origin. Today this information seems irrelevant, because birth is reduced to the mere biological beginning. Instead, it is mainly a genealogical question as John Paul II brilliantly acclaimed. It is, above all, origin and not only a beginning. Each one of us is rooted in the history of his o her generation. And not only, because the origin owns a further vertical dimension: we are created by God. Obscuring this fact means breaking the generation chain. The educational emergency which troubles us today is the result of this interruption.

3. “Mary … gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2: 7). The Greek word used here is found only in one other quotation in the New Testament to designate the room in which the Last Supper was to take place. In the following verses, the proclamation to the shepherds, some facts are repeated: “And this will be the sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Lk 2: 12). The description of St. Luke is not an idyllic account, on the contrary it overshadows a deep reflection upon the sense of this birth. In these words there is already a reference to the mystery of the Passion and of the Eucharist.

The Fathers of the Church arrive at saying: “God has reduced himself” to the point of becoming “visible to the eyes, palpable to the hands, portable on the shoulders”. Actually some Fathers use a Greek verb in which the “reducing himself” is connected to his “being impoverished”: God has impoverished himself, he lowered himself, he emptied himself, in order to talk to us the language we speak. Jesus did not only learn Aramaic, as all the children of his country did; Jesus was willing to learn the language through which human creatures could recognize Him.

4. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son”(Heb 1:1). The Old Testament offers us the letters of the alphabet through which God has revealed himself to men, but only Christ is the Word in whom the old alphabet finds sense and meaning.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us …” (Jn 2: 14). “He gave himself for us”(Titus 2: 14), up to point of “make himself eatable” in the Eucharistic banquet, involving us in the movement of His self giving.

This is the good news of Christmas: God makes himself familiar to us. And if God is familiar to us, we can surely recognize Him in one way or in another. Through grace the convinced believers are apt to recognize that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnated Son of God. But, observing attentively we can deduce that every man can recognize Him through the primary experience possible to everyone, that is: being open towards reality and to love our fellow creatures, because as St. Irenaeus declared: “Man is the glory of God”.

And if we recognize him our life changes. In today’s culture signed by trial, His humility becomes a question of simplicity. We all perceive the urgent need of simplifying our life. A simplification which goes from the overcoming of an ill-omened consumerism (we could use the word obscene because it has the same meaning), to the overcoming of complicated and equivocal affective styles, often false. All this causes suffering to the partner and transforms the beauty of love in exploitation and this does not help to experiment a rescuing love, on the contrary it tends to induce the partner in a tying love.

5. Christmas is God’s endlessness charity towards us and through this gift we become charity subjects: “As the objects of God’s love, men and women become subjects of charity” ( Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, 5). As a matter of fact, the horizon of charity is at 360 degrees which goes from all those who live in poverty (and the number of these is in continual increase and preoccupies) to the engaging-passion in the edification of the common good. We must be tireless in wide spreading the reasons of ‘philia’(civic friendship) over all the conflicts even in the ambit of direct political involvement. Moreover, we should not forget that politics – as Paul VI used to say – is the highest form of charity.

6. “The true light that enlightens all men was coming into the world” (Jn 1:9). It is necessary that the light we receive transforms us in sons of the light. The great need which comes to us from this Holy Christmas is to persevere in every relationship without taking anything fore granted and avoiding every never ending prejudice.

His nativity purified ours/ His life taught our life/ His death destroyed our death” (St. Bernard, Sententiae). Baby Jesus, beyond our merits, realizes the deepest desire of our heart. Let us ask the simplicity of the shepherds, the first testimonies of Christmas, that we may prepare an adequate space for Him and go, as they did, to proclaim Him to our fellow brothers: “All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God” (Is 52: 10). Amen!

It is by now a commonly shared idea that it is necessary to translate the concepts deriving from one’s various religious and cultural traditions into public argumentation. In other words, it is vital that the foundations, which cannot be relinquished in any substantiated view, be translated into a series of axioms. Similarly to mathematical logic, they must be understood as a formal system of properties that implicitly define their expression (which is, in this case, a vision of the world), quite apart from a priori recognition or negation of their absoluteness by everyone concerned. On this basis the subjects living in a pluralistic society are called to work at continuous dialogue, and to tell others tirelessly of their own identity within a spirit of reciprocal recognition, allowing orientations and directions in the interest of the common good to emerge. On this subject, as Benedict XVI wrote in his lecture for the university “La Sapienza” (Rome 17th January, 2008), the very experience of democracy shows that numerical majorities and their relations of strength are not enough to guarantee and maintain it; democracy needs to be characterized also by «a process of argumentation that is sensitive to the truth».

A civil society conceived in this way has no need to neutralize religions, nor need it hurl itself against universal absolutes of which the various social subjects may be convinced. Its only must is to accept dialogue between equals, leaving to the state institutions which promulgate and interpret laws the task of recognizing which opinion is the most advantageous, and which tradition the prevailing or dominant one which the sovereign people, either directly or indirectly through its representatives, indicates as the one to which their society wishes to adhere. This does not imply the dictatorship of a majority that claims to establish the truth, nor the negation of the fundamental rights of any minority or individual (including objections on grounds of conscience). It is merely a question of not making the necessarily secular nature of the State coincide with an impossible neutrality.

The Christian community also wants to contribute to building good life in society. In society, the Christian faithful, sustained and guided by the authentic Magisterium of the Church, learn to get to know Jesus Christ, the living fulfilment of moral law. By adopting Jesus’ action, Word, and precepts as their moral law, Christians find the adequate reason for the moral sense of existence. Indeed, Christ proposes himself as the essential and original principle of Christian morality. But, in so far as he is the principle of universal morality, he carries within himself and gives value to the path of human moral experience as such (common morality), which Revelation reveals, rather than denies. Within the framework of common morality, the legal and economic dimension of common praxis can be worked out.

On these bases, Christians can contribute to the building of a good life, even within areas full of pressing issues, like bioethics, on which you will be reflecting in your meeting.

I am certain that your exchange of views on multiculturalism, religions and bioethics, conducted with scientific rigour, will be able to show how the Truth – towards which mankind yearns – always promotes freedom that is adequately understood.

I wish you all that your work may be fruitful and send you heartfelt greetings.