By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Just before blessing statues of the Infant Jesus in St. Peter’s Square yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI said the Nativity scene is not just a tradition, but is “a school of life where we can learn the secret of true joy.”
AsiaNews is reporting that more than 2,000 children were on hand in the Square yesterday to hear the Pope’s Angelus address for the third Sunday of Advent and to have their statues of the Infant Jesus blessed before placing them in their mangers this Christmas Eve.
“I see here in St. Peter’s Square so many children and teenagers, along with parents, teachers and catechists,” the Pope said. “It gives me great joy to know that in your family the tradition of the Nativity Scene is still kept. But it is not enough to repeat a traditional gesture, however important. Try to live in the reality of every day what the crib is, the love of Christ, his humility, his poverty.”
He then referred to St. Francis of Assisi and the living manger scene he created in Greccio hundreds of years ago. “(H)e created a living Nativity scene, to be able to contemplate and adore it, but above all to know how best to put into practice the message of the Son of God who for our sakes was stripped of everything and became a little child.”
He went on to say: “The crib is a school of life where we can learn the secret of true joy. This does not consist in having so many things, but in feeling loved by the Lord, in becoming a gift for others and loving one another.”
He also referred to the obvious poverty of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph in the manger scene when he said that they “do not seem like a very lucky family, they had their first child in the midst of great hardship, and yet are filled with deep joy, because they love each other, help each other and, above all, are certain that in their history God is at work, present in the Infant Jesus.
“And the shepherds? What reason would they have to rejoice? That baby will not change their condition of poverty and marginalization. But faith helps them to recognize in the ‘infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger’, the ‘sign’ of the fulfillment of the promises of God for all men ‘whom he loves’ (Luke 2,12.14), even for them!”
He concluded, “This . . . is what true joy is; the feeling that our personal and community lives are visited and filled by a great mystery, the mystery of God’s love. . . . We pray that every man, like the Virgin Mary, may accept as a centre of their lives the God who became a Child, the source of true joy.”
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