The Hours of Dizzying Anticipation
Simone Riva - The sounds of the city, which are becoming more frantic and insistent in these days, make space for themselves among the less or not empty wishes of these hours. They propose themselves amidst the lights that try to prove a new thing that is no longer remembered.
And the silence of a giddy expectation, which no man could ever have thought of relishing and which, in these hours, in the eve hours, is looking for a heart still willing to welcome.
There could be a repetition of the insistent closure of that day when “there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 1:7), or the dogged unwillingness described in John's Gospel: “He came among his people, but his own did not receive him. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not acknowledge him” (John. 1:11, 10).
The most fearsome drama could even be realized, for a man who has not lost the taste for living with meaning, described by Christ's lapidary statement, “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness more than light because their works were evil” (John. 3:19). Benedict XVI recalls that the world in which the feast of Christmas arose “was dominated by a widespread sentiment very similar to ours. It was a world in which the “twilight of the gods” was not a figure of speech but a real fact.
Suddenly, the old gods were not real anymore. Men could no longer believe in what had given meaning and stability to their lives for many years.
But man can’t live without meaning; he needs it like daily bread. And so, the ancient stars having set, he had to look for new lights. But where were they?” Christmas doesn’t come to bring a harmless light that can be ignored as if nothing happened. Today is the eve of a watershed: between “where were they?” and “I don't care.”
In front of the stable in Bethlehem, two peoples are, in fact, born: that of the shepherds and Magi and that of Herod. Men and women are both moved by the same presence they seek. They are also strong destroyers of any clue that leads them back to who they are.
In reality, we know well that dividing humanity this way is impossible. Each of us has the heart of the shepherds and the method of Herod in us. That is why the announcement of Christmas is first and foremost a challenge to my freedom and yours. It is a no longer possible to put off testing what can truly stand up to life’s challenges.
Fr. Simone Riva is an Ambrosian priest who was ordained in 2008. He currently serves as a parochial vicar at Sant'Ambrogio in Monza, Italy. In addition to his pastoral duties, Don Simone Riva works as a religion teacher at the state institute "Mosé Bianchi"
