Cardinal Felipe Arizmendi, Bishop Emeritus of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and responsible for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Mexican Episcopal Conference (CEM), offers Exaudi readers his weekly article.

FACTS

Christmas, a precious time for contemplation and celebration of the mystery that changed history; a time for family and friendship; a time when we yearn for peace and harmony; a time of winter, of cold, when everything dries up, but as a process for the long-awaited spring.

However, for many it’s a time for vacations, parties, gifts, excesses, and unrestrained shopping, with nothing to do with Jesus, nothing to do with attending liturgical celebrations, no traditional posadas, and no conversion in life. A Christmas without Christ! A Christmas with a spirit completely contrary to the Gospel!

LIGHTNING

Pope Leo XIV, in his exhortation Dilexi te, on love for the poor, guides us once again on what the Incarnation of the Son of the Father implies. He says:

“ GOD CHOOSES THE POOR. God is merciful love, and his plan of love, which unfolds and is realized in history, is above all his descent and his coming among us to free us from slavery, from fear, from sin, and from the power of death. With a merciful gaze and a heart full of love, he turned to his creatures, taking on their human condition and, therefore, their poverty. Precisely to share the limitations and frailties of our human nature, he himself became poor, was born in the flesh like us, we have known him in the smallness of a child placed in a manger and in the extreme humiliation of the cross; there he shared our radical poverty, which is death. It is easy to understand, then, why one can also speak theologically of God’s preferential option for the poor, an expression born in the context of the Latin American continent and in particular at the Puebla Assembly, but which has been well integrated into the subsequent Magisterium of the Church. This ‘preference’ never indicates an exclusivism or discrimination towards other groups, which in God would be impossible; this wishes to emphasize the action of God who has compassion on the poverty and weakness of all humanity and, wanting to inaugurate a Kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity, is particularly concerned about those who are discriminated against and oppressed, asking us also, his Church, for a firm and radical option in favor of the weakest  (16).

From this perspective, we can understand the numerous passages in the Old Testament where God is presented as the friend and liberator of the poor, the one who hears the cry of the poor and intervenes to free them (cf. Ps 34:7). God, refuge of the poor, through the prophets—let us remember in particular Amos and Isaiah—denounces the iniquities committed against the weakest and addresses to Israel the exhortation to renew worship from within, because one cannot pray or offer sacrifices while oppressing the weakest and the poorest. From the beginning, Scripture manifests with great intensity God’s love through the protection of the weak and the poorest, to the point of being able to speak of a genuine ‘weakness’ of God toward them. The heart of God has a preferential place for the poor. The entire path of our redemption is marked by the poor  (17).

Jesus, the poor Messiah. The entire Old Testament history of God’s predilection for the poor and the divine desire to hear their cry—which I have briefly mentioned—finds its full realization in Jesus of Nazareth. In his incarnation, he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form” (Phil 2:7), he brought us salvation. This is a radical poverty, founded on his mission to reveal the true face of divine love (cf. Jn 1:18; 1 Jn 4:9). Therefore, with one of his admirable summaries, St. Paul can affirm: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9)  (18).

Indeed, the Gospel shows that this poverty affected every aspect of his life. From his birth, Jesus experienced the difficulties of rejection. The evangelist Luke, recounting the arrival in Bethlehem of Joseph and Mary, who were about to give birth, observes bitterly: “There was no room for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7). Jesus was born in humble circumstances; as a newborn, he was placed in a manger, and very soon, to save him from death, his parents fled to Egypt (cf. Mt 2:13-15). At the beginning of his public ministry, he was expelled from Nazareth after announcing that in him the year of favor, which the poor rejoice in, had come (cf. Lk 4:14-30). There was no welcoming place even at the time of his death, as he was led out of Jerusalem to be crucified (cf. Mk 15:22). This condition clearly summarizes the poverty of Jesus. This is the same exclusion that characterizes the definition of the poor: they are the excluded from society. Jesus is the revelation of this privilege of the poor. He presents himself to the world not only as a poor Messiah but as the Messiah of the poor and for the poor  (19).

There are some clues regarding Jesus’ social standing. First, he worked as a craftsman or carpenter, téktōn (cf. Mk 6:3). This was a category of people who lived by their manual labor. Furthermore, since they did not own land, they were considered inferior to the peasants. When the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple by Joseph and Mary, his parents offered a pair of turtledoves or young pigeons (cf. Lk 2:22-24), which, according to the prescriptions of the Book of Leviticus (cf. 12:8), was the offering of the poor. A significant Gospel episode recounts how Jesus, along with his disciples, picked heads of grain to eat as they walked through the fields (cf. Mk 2:23-28), and this—gleaning—was only permitted to the poor. Jesus himself later says of himself: “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests; But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8:20; Lk 9:58). He, in fact, is an itinerant teacher, whose poverty and precariousness are a sign of his bond with the Father and is what is also asked of those who want to follow him on the path of discipleship, precisely so that the renunciation of goods, riches and the securities of this world may be a visible sign of trust in God and in his providence  (20).

At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus appeared in the synagogue of Nazareth reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah and applying the prophet’s words to himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” (Lk 4:18; cf. Is 61:1). He thus presented himself as the one who comes to manifest in the present moment of history the loving closeness of God, which is above all a work of liberation for those imprisoned by evil, for the weak and the poor. The signs that accompanied Jesus’ preaching were a manifestation of the love and compassion with which God regards the sick, the poor, and sinners who, by virtue of their condition, were marginalized by society, but also by religion. He opened the eyes of the blind, healed lepers, raised the dead, and proclaimed good news to the poor; God drew near, God loved them (cf. Lk 7:22). This explains why He proclaims: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God!” (Lk 6:20). Indeed, God shows a predilection for the poor; the Lord’s word of hope and liberation is addressed to them, and therefore, even in the condition of poverty or weakness, no one should feel abandoned. And the Church, if it wants to belong to Christ, must be the Church of the Beatitudes, a Church that makes room for the little ones and walks in poverty with the poor, a place where the poor have a privileged position (cf. Jas 2:2-4)  (21).

The destitute and the sick, unable to provide for their own needs, were often forced into begging. Added to this was the burden of social shame, fueled by the belief that illness and poverty were linked to some personal sin. Jesus firmly opposed this way of thinking, stating that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45). Moreover, he completely overturned this view, as is well exemplified in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus: “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony” (Lk 16:25)  (22).

It is clear, then, that from our faith in Christ, who became poor and was always close to the poor and excluded, springs our concern for the integral development of the most abandoned members of society. I often wonder why, even though the Holy Scriptures are so precise about the poor, many continue to think that they can exclude the poor from their care  (23).

ACTIONS

Let us sincerely examine what God tells us through the Pope and let our Christmas be faithful to the example of Jesus.