Christmas: unfathomable mystery of love
Christmas is man’s liberation day: the miracle of divine charity, from which human liberty springs. Where the master is Mammon (or a tyrant representing it), liberty is in danger and has to be condemned. Where God is the master, liberty is the prime value, for which man is a son of God «So you are no longer a slave, but a son» (Gal. 4, 72). The population does well to solemnize this feast which has always been and remains popular. In fact it celebrates the birth of He who came to liberate the masses and make them God’s people.
Igino Giordani, «New City» n. 23-24, December 1967, pp.12-13.
Christmas is the sublime mystery of the love who loved mankind so much, that he made himself man. As was written, the mystery of the Incarnation is the document of God’s excessive charity. To embrace all through it, upon being born in a grotto amid the animals, He put himself below all: the poorest among the poor contemplated him under the guise of their own misery.
Igino Giordani, «New City» cit., pp.12-13.
To celebrate Christmas means to revive the conscience of the precept of love, brought down from heaven to earth by Jesus, and spread by him with his life and words. And today there is a special need for a revival – and cleansing – of the concept of love, not only because this word is abused in vile films and books, but also and above all because human coexistence risks to become increasingly sadder, and despite the neon lights, even gloomier, due to the lack of love.
Igino Giordani, «New City» cit., pp.12-13.
Christmas stirs up the air of innocence and simplicity: rediscovering that source of joy, which is Christ in our midst, as in the crèche amid Mary, Joseph and the shepherds. The Lord was born so that we could be born with him. He is Life and we were – and are in sin – in death. We pass from death to life if we love our brothers. The Gospel educates mankind to liberty: baptism embeds them in a free coexistence; the Church engages them in a militia of charity.
Igino Giordani, «New City» cit., pp.12-13.
Now, that the Word has become man, turning from All into Nothing would seem like a folly of divine love, almost like the emptying of divinity to become one with the misery of creatures. But in this way it destroys the evil of men, taking upon itself to make man die in its own death. This is why he bowed down to be born in a grotto – from the stars to a stable – and took on human struggles. And dying, above the shouting sea of the benefitted, affirms his solidarity up to the end: «Father, forgive them since they know not what they are doing.» (Lk. 23,34).
Igino Giordani, The Only Love, New City 1974, p.141
The Church enjoys the melodies of violins and bagpipes amid tree branches, along the imaginary rivlets of Christmas. But it also remembers the salvation adopted from this child and the life he gave, which is not a sloshy effect but the fruit of opposition, detachment from the family, and even from the country. It is blood and thorns, and insults and death. And his followers are called to embrace a cross, because precisely out of this love which makes the immense God a babe in rags, the trials, work, and abandonment are accepted, in order to be co-redeemers with him through his priceless blood.
No wonder that the first witnesses of his faith are innocent children, who upon dying profess their faith.
Igino Giordani, the Two Cities New City 1061, p.27
