Christmas. Nativity of our Lord

7 January 1988

In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

(If the end (?) the fulfillment of all things is the total, perfect union of God and man, then in Christ the End has already come, the fulfillment is already revealed (?). And in this world of ours which is still in the making, in this world of (ours), the fullness which we expect, which we long for is already present. If we were truly Christian, not only (?) faith, but an actual vision, if we could see things as God sees them, we would see that our world is already transformed and already incipiently transfigured. (As a part) of this world there is God become man, and there is man, united with God perfectly, indivisibly, without confusion and yet completely. And so, let us learn from this feast of the Incarnation of the Son of God to look at the world in which we live with new eyes. Its aim is already present at its very core; and we are born, moving not towards an aim which is one day to be disclosed, but to an aim which already (which we already can see?). God, unsearchable, unknowable has now a human name, a human face, and transcendental (?) has become immanent to our created world. How wonderful this world is that it can be so vast, that the city of man can be, incipiently now, but perfectly later the City of God, in which Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the son of man is a citizen, (a brother of ours) in the flesh, akin to all creation that in Him can see its fulfillment, its perfection, its growing and its eternal joy. Let us learn to see what God sees, and let us also work attentively, reverently that the whole world might become what at is called to be. Saint Maxim the Confessor teaches us that man belongs to two worlds: the Divine world which he can not only know by faith, but participate in by the grace of God, and the material word to which he belongs by his flesh, his body. And the vocation of man is to stake this (his) all materiality spiritual and to lead all things material into being part of this spiritual mystery of reality. Let us begin with ourselves, and let us then find in that light which is God's own glory, and take a small part perhaps, but in making this world a world s a c r e d, a world holy, a world respected and revered, worthy of God, worthy of its own vocation. Amen.