With hours to go before the miraculous birth of the Child God takes place again among us and before our eyes, we gladly invite the readers of Catholic Digital Missionaries to walk together through the pages of the Holy Scriptures.
What is Christmas? What does ‘God-made-man’ mean? Without having looked it up in the dictionary, or rummaged through ecclesiastical documents, I dare say that both events are the greatest and most generous acts of love we can ever witness. The Almighty Lord, who was let down by the creature He created out of love, goes out to meet him and fortifies His faith in His beloved creation, by giving birth to His son, Jesus, among us, to renew His covenant of love forever and ever.
The image of a new-born child awakens in those who contemplate it, a great wave of tenderness. But the image of this child, who came into the world thousands of years ago, should be contemplated bearing in mind what would happen to him thirty-three years later. Because this child is born or was born, out of love for us, to give his life and reconcile us with his father; the Father. In one of the letters to the Corinthians, St. Paul says that if he did not have love, nothing else would have any value. That is something that God is clear about. For it was God’s love that moved Him to create us; to give us the world, and, when the time came, to offer the life of His beloved son. After reading and meditating these seven selected verses that show me, from the Old Testament to the New one, the immense love that God has for me…what should I do? Pope Francis suggests that every day, little by little, I try to be worthy of God’s love through small gestures. This is the Love which I know will never end.
Thus the LORD passed before him and cried out, “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity,
Exodus 34, 6.
I will pour out water upon the thirsty ground, and streams upon the dry land; I will pour out my spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing upon your descendants.
Isaiah 44, 3.
But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
Matthew 5, 44-45
For God so loved the world that he gavehis only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
John 3, 16-17.
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8, 39.
See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
1 John 3, 1.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.
1 John 4. 9.
