The thick white creamy layer on a cake often seduces the customer into purchasing the cake only to discover on cutting it, he or she was thoroughly cheated. The real cake is buried deep into the cream. The cream is only an attractive coffin entombed with white marble slab soon to be decayed! Such is the picture of Christmas for thousands. It has been an annual indulging in fun and frolic, food and drink, regardless of the enormous expenditure on all spheres and regardless of human predicament which surrounds daily life. Numbing one’s senses towards human wounds, affliction and despair on the faces around is what often Christmas is made of. It is turned into a mere cream in the name of the cake! There ends the story of the profound and immense birth of the child who had a precarious birth, passionate life, painful death and glorious resurrection. Limiting oneself to a cream-surfaced happy-comfort, the “Great Story” disappears quickly from the scene leaving the human interior empty and wasteful. Christmas is turned into an illusion each passing year, moving away from Christmas as a life-reality. It has become the celebration of the white cream rather than the delicious cake!
Occurring on the threshold of the Holy Year 2025, Christmas this time can regain its original significance of a new hope to humanity by the practice of human rights as the thick war smoke hovers over the Middle East nations and Ukraine leaving thousands dead or displaced, in injury and pain, even as the responsible parties in the conflict are not willing to find a peaceful solution to provide hope for a better future. The Child of Christmas Himself was born as a pilgrim, with the insidious enemy Herod plotting to eliminate Him, threatened by what he perceived as a powerful and arrogant presence. However, the “Hope of the world,” born in a manger among the animals was determined to live on, on the road all His life as a stranger and pilgrim. He wished to be with those who live the experience of people on the move—the migrants, refugees, and unemployed—seeking a bit of physical comfort in a world that is self-enclosed and attached to attractions. As opposed to the spectacular, the Child whose nativity we celebrate willed to be a ‘Pilgrim of Hope.’ The birth of this Child points out the evils in our society: communalism, hate crimes, violence against people. It is a time to look beyond one’s needs, to cross borders of one’s interests, embrace empathy and bridge the divides among people. It is a time to be purified of our ego and focus on a wider world of human beings whose struggles never seem to be ending.
Gerry Lobo, OFM
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