Monday, December 31, 2012

Going over to Bethlehem

"Let us go over to Bethlehem, and let us see this word that is come to pass, which the Lord has shown us."  ~Luke 2:15

Let us go over to Bethlehem.... Trans-eamus is what the Latin Bible says: let us go “across”, daring to step beyond, to make the “transition” by which we step outside our habits of thought and habits of life, across the purely material world into the real one, across to the God who in his turn has come across to us. Let us ask the Lord to grant that we may overcome our limits, our world, to help us to encounter him, especially at the moment when he places himself into our hands and into our heart in the Holy Eucharist.... 

The shepherds made haste. Holy curiosity and holy joy impelled them. In our case, it is probably not very often that we make haste for the things of God. God does not feature among the things that require haste. The things of God can wait, we think and we say. And yet he is the most important thing, ultimately the one truly important thing. Why should we not also be moved by curiosity to see more closely and to know what God has said to us? At this hour, let us ask him to touch our hearts with the holy curiosity and the holy joy of the shepherds, and thus let us go over joyfully to Bethlehem, to the Lord who today once more comes to meet us.
 
~Pope Benedict XVI, Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord
Homily at Midnight Mass, December 24, 2012

O Divine Child of Bethlehem, fill me with holy curiosity and holy joy that I may make haste for the things of God.  Like the shepherds of old, may I run to Bethlehem to seek You, and finding You, hasten to bring You to the weary world.  Amen.



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