Sunday December 22
a first lesson: in God’s plans, the most opportune moment for salvation is the one that seems humanly the most inopportune and improbable. Perhaps this year, when I am not in optimal spiritual conditions, the grace of “my Christmas”, “the Christmas of my life”, may be waiting for me
Monday December 23
A second lesson that we can find: he does not give us bright but poor signs of his presence. The center of the world that Christmas night was not the great world census, but the Child, the swaddling clothes and a manger.
Tuesday December 24
Mary finds herself with the flesh of God in her arms, she sees him, hears him, touches him, kisses him, swaddles him. This scene of God placed in our hands is already a prelude to the cross. The Most High becomes very small; the almighty, the needy; infinite joy has become the tears of a baby. It is the mystery of God’s love that exposes itself to all smallness and all humiliation, in order to reach the one who loves.
Wednesday December 25 Christmas
third teaching : from his birth, the Lord needs to show us his desire to nourish us as a mother does her children with her own substance. He waits only for our love and our welcome. In his life, he accepted what we gave him:
a cave and a manger to be born, a cross and a borrowed cave to die and be buried. He comes to our reality because he loves us and because he is a gift without conditions. For those who welcome him, even in his distance, in his sadness, in his sin, in his hardness, he becomes salvation and food. This is the overwhelming message of Christmas: God who offers, man who rejects and God who gives a surplus.
Thursday December 26
Saint Francis de Sales tells us in one of his letters: “You are well near this sacred crib in which the Savior of our souls teaches us so many virtues by his silence. But, what does he not tell us by being silent? His little heart, panting with love for us, should well inflame ours. But see how lovingly he has written your name in the depths of his divine heart, which beats there on the straw for the affectionate passion he has for your advancement, and does not throw a single sigh before his Father in which you have no part, nor a single witticism except for your happiness. The magnet attracts iron, amber attracts straw and hay: whether we are iron by hardness, or whether we are straw by imbecility, we must join ourselves to this sovereign little Baby, who is a real heart-puller.” (OA XVIII p.334-335)
Friday December 27
This year, Christmas brings us an additional gift, because in Rome the Pope will open the Holy Door of the Jubilee, a gift of divine mercy for all humanity. Let us collaborate on our part, let us listen to the invitation of Saint Francis de Sales to remain close to the cradle of Jesus, in the silence of Mary and Saint Joseph, in the silence of the poor, in the silence of our poverty.
Saturday December 28
Let us reflect on what the deepest poverty of our hearts is, let us give Jesus this empty hole so that he can be born there and let us offer him the humble effort of working the earth of our heart to please him. It is not difficult to please a child.
Source: Annecy Visitation Monastery