“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among
men with whom he is well pleased”.
Saint Leo the Great, Pope
Dearly
beloved, today our Savior is born. Let us rejoice. Sadness should have no place
on the birthday of life. The fear of death has been swallowed up. Life brings
us joy with the promise of eternal happiness. No one is shut out from this joy.
All share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death,
finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he
sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the
offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.
In the
fullness of time, chosen in the unfathomable depths of God’s wisdom, the Son of
God took for himself our common humanity in order to reconcile it with its
creator. He came to overthrow the devil, the origin of death, in that very
nature by which he had overthrown mankind. And so at the birth of our Lord the
angels sing in joy: Glory to God in the highest, and they proclaim peace to men
of goodwill as they see the heavenly Jerusalem being built from all the nations
of the world. When the angels on high are so exultant at this marvelous work of
God’s gooess, what joy should it not bring to the lowly hearts of men?
Beloved, let us give thanks to God the
Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, because in his great love for us
he took pity on us, and when we were dead in our sins he brought us to life
with Christ, so that in him we might be a new creation. Let us throw off our
old nature and all its ways and, as we have come to birth in Christ, let us
renounce the works of the flesh. Christian, remember your dignity, and now that
you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base
condition. Bear in mind who is your head and whose body you are a member. Do
not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought
into the light of God’s kingdom.
Through the
sacrament of baptism, you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive
away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil,
for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.
“Today the king of heaven has deigned to be born of a
virgin for us, to recall fallen man to his heavenly kingdom”.
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