By Plinio Correa de Oliveira
The secret to the proper organization of earthly life is found in the words the angels sang to the enraptured shepherds on Christmas night: “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to men of good will.”
When men recognize the plenitude of all perfections in God and glorify Him as a result, their hearts come to possess the good disposition that makes them men of good will. It is the birth of this disposition in their souls that brings the reign of Christ’s peace to this earth.
We should think of this in these days when, no matter where we turn, we find confusion, discord, hatred, voluptuousness, immorality, dishonesty, and all kinds of other evils multiplying among mankind.
If mankind would but turn to Christ Our Lord, we could have an end of century very different from its beginning, which was already characterize by positivism, agnosticism, and materialism.
Statue of the Holy Family at the Basilica of St. Martin in Italy. Photo by Berthold Werner
Let us remember that Christmas night is a night of mercy and goodness, a night of forgiveness and hope. Next to the cradle of the Christ Child is Mary, whose supplications before Her Divine Son are omnipotent. She has the heart of a mother who loves each one of us more than all the mothers of the world would love a single son, and is therefore disposed to obtain from Her Child the forgiveness of our faults, the amendment of our errors, and the firm resolution to follow the law of god in everything.
Thinking of these truths, we will realize that however great the evil, all the gateways of hope are open for us so long as we turned to the Child born in Bethlehem. That is the consoling hope that I would like to bring to your attention.
When the midnight bells announce that Christmas is here, when the faithful calmly had to church, when the families gather to pray before the Nativity scene, remember this great hope and, setting aside the afflictions of our days, seek to understand the words of St. Paul: “Jesus Christ, yesterday and today, and the same forever.”
This Child born in Bethlehem⸺the God-Child, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity made man⸺ is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the first letter and the last, the beginning and the end of everything. Through Him we receive all good.
Museum of Sacred Art in São Paulo, Brazil
Kneeling before the crèche, let us ask Him for everything we lack and need. Let us ask Him, above all, that we will love Him, understand Him, and the united to Him, so that when He calls us one day to render account of our lives, we may look to Him with confidence and see Him open His arms to admit us into eternal beatitude.
