«A Christmas full of profound meaning, of light, which can help us live in these dark and stormy times».
It is from this wish, intense and realistic at the same time, that the Christmas message of Claudio Maniago, Metropolitan Archbishop of Catanzaro-Squillace, begins, which invites us to look at Christmas not as a reassuring parenthesis, but as a light capable of crossing the hardships of the present.
Christmas, the Archbishop recalls, is first and foremost the living memory of an event that has forever marked the history of humanity: the birth of Jesus. Not a simple celebration to be celebrated, but the irruption of God into the flesh of man, a God who chooses to come close, opening “a glimmer of light on the deepest meaning of our existence”.
Christmas becomes an opportunity for renewal
A light that does not remain abstract or distant, but which is called to enter the concreteness of everyday life, even “in those corners that almost always remain a little darker, a little darker”. Mons. Maniago does not hide the fragilities that inhabit everyone’s experience: tiredness, confusion, moments of fatigue that mark the personal and collective journey. Precisely for this reason, Christmas becomes an opportunity for renewal, capable of restoring breath, enthusiasm and hope even when time seems burdened by fatigue or desperation.
The Christmas message, however, does not end in the individual dimension. The “God with us” – underlines the Archbishop – “becomes an announcement for every man and every woman of good will”. Beyond the more external aspects of the holidays, the heart of the Christian message emerges: the revelation of the highest potential of human nature takes shape from the life of Jesus of Nazareth, when he chooses self-giving and recognizes love as the fundamental law of existence.
A law that does not remain theoretical, but asks to be embodied in history. «Gestures and attitudes – Maniago recalls – that can touch personal life, the life of our families, of our society, the life of States», called to seek new paths, not marked by conflict, but oriented towards peace.
In this horizon, the Archbishop’s Christmas wish takes on a particular strength: allowing oneself to be illuminated by Christmas means allowing that light to transform everyday life, to guide choices, to open glimmers of hope in complex and restless times. A wish that does not remain confined to words, but becomes a concrete invitation to live, day after day, in the light of that God who chose to inhabit the history of men at Christmas.