Christmas is a beautiful time of year and, according to St. Paul VI, is a feast that should remind us of God’s love for us.
The reality behind Christmas is that God came into the world for each one of us. He did so out of his immense love for us and that love should fuel our own spirituality.
St. Paul VI explains this in a Christmas homily in 1963.
The heart of the Almighty opens! Behind the scene of the Crib there is the infinite tenderness of the Creator who loves. In a word: there is infinite goodness. God, loving us, wants to weave a conversation with men, to establish relationships of familiarity with us…The goodness of God! God is good! This is the message of Christmas … in Jesus Christ each of us was thought, each of us is loved … Each of us today must feel how much he is loved by God.
Through the incarnation, God comes to be with us and to raise us to new life.
Love spreads
This feeling of love that Christmas can stimulate should in turn impact our practice of the faith, as Paul VI explains.
[W]hen we think we are loved, don’t we feel that our whole psychology is changing? A child, if he feels that his parents love him, progresses in affectionate docility; and when one, in the course of life, feels, is aware that one loves him, he rectifies the path of his own existence on this track.
A similar transformation is found in the spiritual sphere. If we feel that we are loved by God, we find the right direction of our life ... when we feel loved by God, we become generous … In a word, we are capable of loving others, of doing good and being dispensers of charity, since we have intuited the secret of God, which is Charity. So that having received this great, infinite gift of his, we will, in turn, be ministers of charity and good for others.
At Christmas, may we feel the love God has for each one of us and let that love drive us in all our words and actions.
And today we celebrate...