What happened in Bethlehem 2 1000 years ago is impossible to grasp with human reason. The eternal God entered time, entered nature, entered human history. The eternal fact has become visible.
The word became flesh and inhabited among men. Christ the Savior of the planet was born. He came to bring people salvation, peace and joy. People of all ages, of all races, countries, states and nationalities. He became a man for the happy and enjoying life, but even more for the unhappy, weeping and despairing, for the healthy but even more for the sick; for those who have a home, household and safe existence, but even more for those who are homeless, unemployed, hungry and alone. He came for the free, but even more for the enslaved and persecuted.
This is why he was not born in the royal palace, but in the conditions under which the mediocre were born. They recognized him and paid homage to him by mediocre shepherds and actual wise men. The rulers, the rich, the men of interest, and the professed scholars--all those whose Scriptures describe the word "world"--did not admit their Savior. Blinded by their desire for power, greed, and pride, they persecuted him throughout their lives, and yet nailed him to the cross.
They did so due to the fact that he offered them to live differently. They did so due to the fact that he urged them to convert their hearts to abandon their sin. They couldn't take it. That's why they rejected him and killed him. Hence this thrilling complaint in the Prologue of the Gospel of St John read just now: There was a Word in the world, and the planet became by them, but the planet did not know Him. It came to its own property, and their own did not receive it.
But those who wanted to live differently accepted him. To live the way nobody has lived. By loving God and others. Believing in Him and all your life Worshiping him.
With what do Christian nations now enter the 3rd millennium through the open gates of our cathedrals? surely with large civilizational, technological and technological development. surely with a large deal of work in art and literature. surely with a tradition of highest praiseworthy achievements in the field of mercy and human rights.
But unfortunately besides with the reality of the inactive ongoing, even in these days, imperialist cruel wars destroying tiny nations and with the reality of the continuing persecutions – racial, national, spiritual and social. But unfortunately besides with the increasingly expanding civilization of death and contempt for a human person, expressed peculiarly in the form of abortion and euthanasia. But unfortunately with the cry for vengeance to heaven, injustice, which makes the rich more and more rich and the mediocre more and more poor; as a result, people lose their jobs, lose their chance of any development, and even die of starvation. But unfortunately besides with the increasingly popular relativism of cognitive and moral relativism, which rejects the existence of nonsubjective fact and nonsubjective moral good.
In many countries, for many centuries Christian, people who have been starving, unemployed, destroyed by diseases; to the unborn, to the sick and terminally ill, godless legislators—presenting in the name of selfish parties and social groups—are calling out present as the evangelical Oberist called to the Holy Family: “There is no place for you!” In many modern societies, in books, in the media, in lectures and in private conversations, is set up rhetorical, full of skepticism, Pilate’s question: “What is the truth? Is there any fact at all? Is it possible that God exists? That there's an afterlife? That all man will gotta stand before God's judgement to answer for all his actions?
In many societies, shaped for hundreds of years by the principles of the Gospel, 1 can see the process of people leaving God and Christianity. The members of these societies inactive live, though frequently superficially, as a legacy of Christianity. First of all, an inheritance in the sphere of tradition, external customized and folklore, but also, inactive still, an inheritance in the moral sphere of concepts and values formed by Christianity; specified values as: the integrity of the human person, respect for human rights, equality, respect for the word, maintaining agreements, etc. This Christian heritage inactive exists, but the relation of many people to Christianity as a religion that proclaims the fact about Christ the Savior of the planet and the request to convert people's hearts, weakens, and the spiritual beliefs of Christians, including especially Catholics, cease to be taken into account in many legislations that form the full social life, as well as moral societies.
In this situation, how should the true, i.e. the deep believer in Christ and His Good News, a Christian live?
Under no circumstances must he succumb to the false ideology of relativism, so commonly and intrusively imposed by various ideologies. He must not renounce the truth. He cannot believe the false thesis that strong religion in Christ and keeping his commandments in life is an ancient past. He must not lose the difference between good and evil. He must not get free of a conscience that knows well what is right and what is wrong, what must be done and what must not be done.
As the Gospel says, “the light of fact must not be buried under a root.” We must not halt preaching the fact about Christ, as we are frequently tried to persuade and even morally forced to do so by means of claims of alleged intolerance. The words of Christ apply to all baptized man: “Go into the full planet and teach all nations.” Each of us is to witness about Christ.
Not all of us can do so by a word spoken from pulpit, printed or otherwise published. But all can do so with their lives, especially in their own family, at work and at school; their regular conduct – honest and loving - kindness to their fellowmen; their conduct according to Christian commandments, and with the state and profession known to each other.
If we did not believe that Christ, the boy of the surviving God, was the Eternal Word of God; that, 2 1000 years ago, he came into the planet and became a human nature to save mankind as God-Man; that His words in Scripture preach the truth--then indeed, all Christianity could be for us only a custom, only a folklore, only a tradition; and Christmas could only be a Christmas tree, a wafer, a Christmas gift and a carol, and nothing more.
If we truly did not believe in Christ God-Man, we would indeed have the right to justice Christianity (as non-religious historians do) exclusively from his position of merit for the improvement of European culture, science, art, morality, law, etc., but without any individual commitment; but as we would have judged any other, already thousands of years ago an extinct civilization.
But for us Christianity is life, due to the fact that there is inactive and always a actual and surviving God in it. That is why Christianity cannot be treated as a beautiful, wonderful, but already dead tradition. It is alive and inactive gives birth to us; to eternal, infinite life. And only as specified gives our present life – life on the way – meaning.
For a dead tradition, there is no intent in living, working, sacrificing, suffering, or dying. Meanwhile, for the Gospel and for the religion of Christ they sacrificed, suffered, and even died countless martyrs of the barrier – Archbishop of Nowowiejski and Bishop of Wetmanski, who were elevated by the Church to altars to show us how a actual Christian lives and dies.
Christianity is not a tradition, a customized and a folklore. Christianity is simply a living, steadfast religion that transforms the planet and human hearts. Christ did not say of himself: I am folklore, customized and tradition. Christ said of himself, I am the Way, the fact and the Life.
The submissive pagans of society, guided by all kinds of ungodly ideologies, reject God's commandments, and in their place establish their own, which, unlike God's commandments, let to kill, born and unborn, let to destruct families and marriages, allow, in the name of various imaginary theories, to hatred and rob, let idolatrous worship of various chiefs and idols, introduced in place of worship of the actual God, allow, in the name of unrestrained greed, to destruct the atmosphere of the holy day, etc.
On these new, ungodly commandments, happiness cannot be built. These people's lives won't make sense. The dramatic past of our century, which unfortunately consists, in addition to the wonderful achievements of the human head and human heart, besides of criminal ideologies, wars, concentration camps and gulags – confirms this sufficiently strongly.
We Christians believe that 2 1000 years ago Christ entered history. History, however, is not abstract. past consists of the past of millions of individual people. 1 of those stories is your story. It's your communicative that should be entered by God. Otherwise, Christmas will stay abstract and empty for you.
Your past is your life, your work, your cares, your tragedies, your disappointments, mistakes, sicknesses; but besides your joys and successes; your good will, but besides your weaknesses; the comfort, goodness and kindness you bring to others, but besides the courage to live and the goodness others give to you. Only then will Christmas live in joy if all that constitutes your story, you entrust the Savior to fill you with specified peace and specified joy that no 1 else can give you.
On the past Holy Night of the Birth of the Lord, with the beginning by the Holy Father of the Holy Door in the Basilica of St Peter in the Vatican, the Grand Jubilee of the 2000th Year began. This door – the Roman basilica and all Catholic basilicas and cathedrals of the full planet – through which the faithful pass present solemnly under the leadership of the bishops, is simply a symbol of the transition of humanity to the 3rd millennium of Christianity and a symbol of the transition of the planet of sin into a planet of grace, are the act of the Grand Jubilee of the 2000th Year.
To live participation in this Jubilee, the Church invites all Christians and all people of good will.
He invites them to pray praise and thanksgiving, especially for the gift of the Incarnation of the boy of God and for the gift of the Redemption made by him. He invites them to give thanks for all the good that has been done through Christianity to all mankind, including our homeland during its over a 1000 years of existence.
I wish, with all my heart, that Christ, the Prince of Peace, Goodness, and Love, would change their hard destiny to environment them with his care, to strengthen them in moments of suffering and anxiety, and to pour deep conviction into their hearts that they were called to eternal happiness. Amen.
Bishop Stanisław Wielgus
Flock Cathedral, 25.12.1999.
Think Poland, No. 51-52 (15-29.12.2024)
