Here is an excerpt of the Pope’s Epiphany reflection before praying the midday Angelus:
… So let us look at Him, let us wonder at His humility. Contemplating Jesus, staying before Him, adoring Him in the Eucharist: It is not wasting time, but giving meaning to time. To worship is not to waste time, but to give meaning to time. This is important, I repeat: to worship is not to waste time, but to give meaning to time; it is rediscovering the course of life in the simplicity of a silence that nourishes the heart.
And let us also find the time to watch children, like the Magi watch Jesus: the little ones who also speak to us of Jesus, with their trust, their immediacy, their wonder, their healthy curiosity, their ability to cry and laugh spontaneously, to dream. God is made like this: a Child, trusting, simple, a lover of life (cf. Wis 11:26).
With our children; patiently, as grandparents know how to do! If we stay before the child Jesus and in the company of children, we will learn to be amazed and we will start out simpler and better, like the Magi. And we will know how to have new outlooks, creative outlooks on the problems of the world.
Let us ask ourselves, then: In these days, have we stopped to adore, have we made a little space for Jesus in silence, praying before the crib? Have we dedicated time to the children, to speaking and playing with them? And finally, are we able to see the problems of the world through the eyes of children?
May Mary, Mother of God and ours, increase our love for the Child Jesus and for all children, especially those burdened by wars and injustice.
And today we celebrate...