Over the last seven weeks, we have been following a study guide on Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, Fratelli Tutti. Today, as we still experience the glow of Christmas, I thought it important to interrupt and share with you a meditation penned by Bishop Oscar Romero. We can pick up next week on Fratelli Tutti. And as I have been mentioning, if you have not done so, download the encyclical, then when you have a moment here or there, you will have it handy. www.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html.
Christ Loved and Awaited (Oscar Romero)
Christ is now in history.
Christ is in the womb of the people.
Christ is now bringing about the new heavens and the new earth.
Christ became a man of his people and of his time:
He lived as a Jew, he worked as a laborer of Nazareth, and since then he continues to
become incarnate in everyone.
If many have distanced themselves from the church, it is precisely because the church has somewhat estranged itself from humanity.
But a church that can feel as its own all that is human and wants to incarnate the pain, the hope, the affliction of all who suffer and feel joy, such a church will be Christ loved and awaited, Christ present. And that depends on us.
A Christian knows that Christ has been working in humanity for twenty centuries and that the person that is converted to Christ is the new human being that society needs to organize a world according to God’s heart.
Advent should admonish us to discover in each brother or sister that we greet, in each friend whose hand we shake, in each beggar who asks for bread, in each worker who wants to use the right to join a union, in each peasant who looks for work in the coffee groves, the face of Christ.
Then it would not be possible to rob them, to cheat them, to deny them their rights.
They are Christ, and whatever is done to them Christ will take as done to himself.
This is what Christmas is: Christ living among us.