2023-12-25 04:00:00
The first Christians did not express special interest in determining the day on which Jesus was born. They paid special attention to the Easter festival, which commemorates the entire mystery of Christ. Not knowing the exact day of his birth They felt free to opt for the most suitable date and chose the time of year when the days in the northern hemisphere begin to grow longer, there is more light. They took advantage of the movement of nature – already celebrated by the cults of the cultures in which they lived – to express that they were celebrating a new light, “a light for the nations,” as the prophet Isaiah had announced.
The Christmas party in which we commemorate the birth of Jesus, beyond any secondary chronological precision, includes a double dynamics of novelty and fraternity.
Indeed, every birth is a novelty in itself. It grows immensely when we celebrate that God became human. The Christian faith confesses that Jesus is the Emmanuel (which means ‘God is with us’). It is no longer fundamentally regarding searching for God blindly or by trial and error, but rather he came to look for us to live in our midst.
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Christmas tells us that it is not so much regarding making a effort to recognize and please God but to understand that “love is not that we have loved God, but that God loved us”, God loved us first. And this is confirmed by anyone who understands that life is a gift. On the contrary, those who walk through life in a self-sufficient, self-centered way do not perceive the gratuitousness of their existence; they live as if blind to the novelty that comes upon them.
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The account of Jesus’ birth also notes, to our surprise, that: “He came to his own and his own did not receive him”. Another novelty that baffles us. How is it possible? The most prepared, those who believed they were the first to observe the Law and considered themselves superior to the others, were too focused on themselves and ignored its presence.
Los shepherds They were not only very simple people but also despised, they are part of the last. However, they quickly came in the middle of the night to meet Maria and Joseand of the newborn lying on a mangersince forced migrants as they were, they did not find a place elsewhere.
Now, every encounter with God in which He takes the initiative, as the dynamics of His birth among us indicates, is not an invitation to immobility or quietism on our part.
Love invites reciprocity and this is the second characteristic of the essential dynamic of the Christian life started at Christmas. God becomes our brother in Jesus. From then on, everyone else is also my brother because whoever says that he meets God and despises his neighbor, John tells us in his first letter, is a liar. Encounter with God and brotherhood are inseparable.
*Graduate in Philosophy, Coordinator of the Education, Ethics and Development Extension Cycle at the USAL Faculty of Social Sciences
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