CHRISTMAS 2021
FROM CREATION TO THE BIRTH OF JESUS
At the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, there are Adam and Eve: with them God establishes a pact and invites them to live in peace, beauty and simplicity, but evil bursts into their life and causes a fracture between them and God.
Going forward we meet Noah, the emblem of the righteous: with him God establishes a Covenant that anticipates the one He will stipulate with Israel on Sinai. From the ark - whose dimensions were exorbitant (it was 156 meters long) - God saves, through Noah and his family, all the righteous by taking them away from a corrupt land full of violence to give rise to a renewed humanity.
The long history of the Jewish people continues... and reveals a God who shows himself merciful, always willing to choose upright men (Abraham, Jacob, Joseph) to continue his Covenant with the chosen people.
Moses, the meekest of all men to appear on the face of the Earth, will become Israel's great guide to the Promised Land. His birth begins with a particular event, that of abandoning him in a papyrus basket along the Nile. But God guides events and makes him the liberator of Israel from the slavery of the Egyptians. Particular attention is given to the crossing of the Red Sea with the separation of the waters, the Covenant established on Mount Sinai through the Tablets of the Law, the wrath of Moses who throws the Tablets at the foot of the mountain in the face of the betrayal of the people who, in his absence, had built a golden calf to be raised like a god.
The event of the Annunciation prepares the New and Eternal Covenant between God and man: "The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a Virgin betrothed to a man of the house of David called Joseph . The Virgin's name was Mary ... The angel told her: the Holy Spirit will descend on you. The one who will be born will therefore be Holy and will be called the Son of God ".
While Mary is pregnant, Caesar Augustus orders a census of the whole Earth. Then Joseph and Mary from Nazareth go to Bethlehem, the city of David, to be registered.
While they are in that place, the days of childbirth are fulfilled for Mary and she gives birth to Jesus, wraps him in swaddling clothes and places him in a manger because there is no room for them in the city.
With the birth of Christ the fullness of time is realized because He is the Truth, the Way and the Life, that is the complete Revelation of the Father. God celebrates in space and time his marriage with humanity to which he gives Himself without reserve.
Finally, the presence of a dove flying from the grotto of the Nativity to St. Peter's Square is intended to represent and remember, 130 years after his birth, Lanza del Vasto, the great non-violent philosopher and pacifist from San Vito. In fact, during the Lent in 1963, in between two sessions of the Second Vatican Council, he fasted for forty days in anticipation of "... a strong word on peace from the Church". Shortly after the thirtieth day, the Secretary of State handed Chanterelle, Lanza's wife, the text of the encyclical Pacem in Terris: "Inside there are things that have never been said, pages that could be signed by her husband!"