Dear friends,

We are celebrating one more Christmas. The time when our churches, otherwise almost empty during the year, are packed with people. Familiar faces which have disappeared for months, show up again. Children who I had baptized as little babes now come walking inside the church with their parents

As a priest, your Pastor and your friend, I was looking for the best sermon for this golden occasion so that, through it, God might reach and touch your hearts.

I have been praying over it a lot, drafted several different ideas and drafts, to discard all of them because either too lofty and theological, or  too irrelevant and far away from your lives.

I feel empty and dry, exhausted by the workload of these days, because left alone I let the beauty of this church do the greetings and the sermon. Everything has been done with great love in the hope of being of some help to you to celebrate a joyful Christmas.

In the confusion, tensions and contradictions of our lives one more Christmas has come upon us. A babe has been given to us. A babe that has the power and the desire to soften our hearts otherwise so hard.
He has come from God to tell us: “I love you. I was missing you. Without you Paradise is empty and the choirs of the angels are sad. I was missing you. You had run away from me and this is why I came searching for you. Let us spend sometime together. Give me a hug: I need it.”

He is begging us to let us in. Thirsty for happiness we are looking for it in the wrong places as if to quench out thirst with the salty water of this world and not with the freshwater of His Holy Spirit.

Jesus is knocking, will we allow Him in?

Merry Christmas and God bless you