The love of God that has taken human flesh and entered into the human spirit is an unparalleled event in the history of humanity that changed the human destiny once and for all. The song of the Angles on the Christmas night “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will” (Lk. 2:14) is not just a beautiful heavenly chorus but it is a promise and a challenge. It is a promise that the kingdom of God has been established among us with all its glory and beauty. It is a challenge that we toil and pray always to make God’s Kingdome accessible to us by becoming ourselves the ambassadors of “peace and goodwill”. I pray that His kingdom may come among us and I wish you all the joy and peace of a Merry and Happy Christmas!

Pope Benedict XVI says, “God’s sign is the Baby: we learn to live with him and to practice with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love” (Benedict XVI). God comes to our encounter, in the human form just as one among us. He appears in front of us with the humility of his swaddling-clothes: never before a “God-wrapped- in-swaddling clothes”! In the cold and the poverty of Bethlehem He begins to load his small shoulders with the weight of ordinary daily life. He continued to live the ‘human life’ in its most challenging and demanding ways. He had to toil hard for his daily bread that he taught us the best way is to pray to God the Father for our daily bread (Mt.6:11-12). Finally he has carried away our sins through his suffering and death and won for us the eternal life.

“Now I see why You had to do it” wrote Louis Cassels in A Christmas Parable. And indeed God had to do it, had to become one of us to make us understand because despite God’s best efforts throughout all the Old Testament we still didn’t get the message. Sometimes you have to, as we say, rub their noses in it to make them understand. Christmas is, in a sense, God rubbing our noses in it to make us understand. Christmas is God saying, “Maybe this will grab your attention.” The Letter to the Hebrews expresses it beautifully, “At various moments in the past and by many means, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets; but in our time, the final days, he has spoken to us in the person of his Son.” (Heb 1:1-2)

God has spoken to us, the Word has become flesh. Let us then allow God’s word to sink into our hearts. Let us live the & quot; Little-God” in our life and grow with Him just as He grew. May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give us a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring us to the full knowledge of Him.

Once again wish you all the beauty, blessings and joy of this sacred Season. Merry

Christmas and a Happy New Year 2017!

Fr. Jacob Arakkal John, CMF

Provincial             

Superior