Opening the catechesis at Wednesday’s General Audience in the Paul VI Hall, Pope Francis said: “In our Jubilee journey of catechesis on Jesus, who is our hope, today we dwell on the event of his birth in Bethlehem.” As he did last Wednesday, the Holy Father then entrusted the reading of the text to Fr. Pierluigi Giroli, with these extemporaneous words: “And now I would like to ask the priest, the reader, to continue reading, since my bronchitis still prevents me from doing so. I hope it will be possible for me to read next time.” Finally, during the greetings to the Italian-speaking faithful, Francis took the floor again – as he had done only for the summary and greetings in Spanish – to renew his appeal for peace: “My thoughts go to so many countries at war. Sisters, brothers, let us pray for peace, let us do all we can for peace. Never forget that war is always a defeat,” he stressed: “We were not born to kill, but to allow peoples to grow. May we find pathways to peace.” “Please ask for peace in your daily prayers,” was the final invitation. “Pray for the tormented Ukraine, which is suffering so much! Remember also Palestine, Israel, Myanmar, North Kivu, South Sudan, so many countries at war. Please, let us pray for peace,
Let us do penance for peace”.
God, “who comes into history, does not dismantle the structures of the world, but wants to illuminate them and recreate them from within”, reads the text of the catechesis. “Jesus is born a way entirely unprecedented for a king”, Francis remarked commenting on the episode of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, in the context of the cycle of catechesis on “Jesus Christ our hope”, that runs throughout the Jubilee year. “The Son of God is not born in a royal palace, but at the back of a house, in the space where the animals are kept”, continues the Pope’s catechesis: “Luke thus shows us that God does not come into the world with resounding proclamations; he does not manifest himself with noise, but begins his journey in humility.”
The first witnesses of Jesus’ birth, Francis notes, are shepherds: men of little culture, malodorous from constant contact with the animals, they live on the margins of society. And yet they practice the occupation by which God himself makes himself known to his people.”
“The shepherds thus learn that in a very humble place, reserved to the animals, the long-awaited Messiah is born, and he is born for them, to be their Saviour, their shepherd”, the Pope continues: “This news opens their hearts to wonder, praise and joyful proclamation. “Unlike so many other people, busy about many things, the shepherds become the first to see the most essential thing of all: the gift of salvation. It is the humble and the poor who greet the event of the Incarnation”. “Let us, too, ask for the grace of being, like the shepherds, capable of wonder and praise before God, and capable of cherishing what He has entrusted to us”, the concluding exhortation: “the talents, charisms, our vocation and the people he places beside us. Let us ask the Lord to be able to discern in weakness the extraordinary strength of the Child God, who comes to renew the world and transform our lives with his plan full of hope for all humanity.”
