OFFICE FOR SOCIAL MINISTRY
“That is where God is, in littleness … God does not rise up in grandeur, but lowers himself into littleness. Littleness is the path that he chose to draw near to us, to touch our hearts, to save us and to bring us back to what really matters.” Pope Francis, homily, Christmas Midnight Mass 2021
It is often said that “good things come in small packages.” Perhaps you have received such a gift this Christmas. And while opening presents are indeed a pleasurable part of the season, Pope Francis’s Christmas message helps us refocus our attention to the significance of a great God coming to us in the form of a tiny baby: “Brothers and sisters, standing before the crib, we contemplate what is central, beyond all the lights and decorations, which are beautiful. We contemplate the child. In his littleness, God is completely present. Baby Jesus, you are God, the God who becomes a child.”
In his midnight Mass homily, our Holy Father urged us to turn to Jesus this Christmas and ask for the “grace of littleness.” By accepting the littleness factor in our daily lives, he says we are able to rediscover God, even in the most mundane activities: “He wants to inhabit our daily lives, the things we do each day at home, in our families, at school and in the workplace. Amid our ordinary lived experience, he wants to do extraordinary things.”
The pope emphasized that the main message God wants all to hear this Christmas is: “I love you just as you are. I became little for your sake. To be your God, I became your brother. Dear brother, dear sister, don’t be afraid of me. Find in me your measure of greatness. I am close to you, and one thing only do I ask: trust me and open your heart to me.”
Opening our hearts means to love Jesus by loving the least of our brothers and sisters and “serving him in the poor, those most like Jesus, who was born in poverty. It is in them that he wants to be honored.” Just as he chose to be born among the shepherds, our Holy Father asks all to reflect on why the Christ Child would choose to appear to the poor in a humble stable. “That is where Jesus is born: close to them, close to the forgotten ones of the peripheries. He comes to ennoble the excluded and he first reveals himself to them.”
The pope also encourages all to ponder: “The One who embraces the universe needs to be held in another’s arms. The One who created the sun needs to be warmed. Tenderness incarnate needs to be coddled. Infinite love has a minuscule heart that beats softly. The eternal Word is an infant, a speechless child. The Bread of life needs to be nourished. The Creator of the world has no home.”
Sharing Emmanuel, God with us, in little ways here in Hawaii this Christmas has been happening through outreach with homeless persons on the Big Island. (See story below.)
Our Holy Father’s homily encouraged all to “rejoice together, for no one will ever extinguish this light, the light of Jesus, who tonight shines brightly in our world. Amid all the many problems of our time, hope prevails, ‘for to us a child is born.’ He is the word of God, who became an infant, capable only of crying, and in need of help for everything. He wished to learn how to speak, like every other child, so that we might learn to listen to God, our Father, to listen to one another and to dialogue as brothers and sisters.”
This year the Christmas card of the Vatican’s Migrants and Refugees Section, which Pope Francis directs, shows a Nativity scene crafted in a prison workshop with wood from migrants boats, and these words: “The Son of God was born an outcast in order to tell us that every outcast is a child of God.”
Wishing all a blessed light-filled New Year of hopeful littleness.
Mahalo,
your friends at the Office for Social Ministry
