CHRISTMAS 2019 IN 3 STEPS
1- ON THE TRESHOLD OF THE STABLE
I was waiting for you on the clouds of the sky and here you appear in a
stable. I was figuring you shining like the sun but you are coming as a little
refugee child. I'm a little surprised, but you're welcome. I wanted to be nice by imagining you very tall and very above us,
but I see that your greatness consists in making you the smallest of us.
Perhaps you want to tell us that a big person is not someone who has
stopped being small, but a little one who simply has grown up. And that there
is no full life, no future, therefore no "salvation" without the "little one" in you and the
"little ones" around the world.
The "little one" in you is the innermost and most secret part
of your inner being, and the "little ones" around the world are the
children, of course, but they are also
families, neighbours, whole peoples that our old "way of being" has
maintained for centuries in a state of inferiority and misery by refusing them any
serious possibility of growing up ...
From your smallness, God, you want to tell us great things. Come on in, make
yourself at home ...
2- IN THE STABLE
I don't wonder wether Jesus was God or not. I just tell
myself that if God speaks through birds, wind, light and all the events of
life, he surely spoke through Jesus of Nazareth. In any case, that’s what his
early disciples ended up believing. And that's what I believe too.
When the evangelist Luke tells us about Jesus who
comes into the world in a stable, it is not a historian, a journalist or a
scientist who writes, but a believer, that is to say someone who is capable to
glimpse the Reality looming behind the signs that appear to him.
What this Luke story tells us is that our
“all-powerful” God is not scary. He comes to us as if on tiptoe, making himself
as small and fragile as us. Luke wants the world to know that, although our
home is nothing but a stable, God has chosen to move in with us. Why? Because
he believes in us and loves us a lot.
God knows that one day we will understand that our
future as humans is no longer in the laws, nor in the temples, nor in
petroleum, or mining, or drones, or growth at any cost, nor in the stock market
or in our armies, or in buildings a hundred times higher than the pyramids, or
in the famous LHC, or in ever more science, more police, prisons or bombs ...
but quite simply in a "way of being" totally different from what has
been ours so far…
Certainly, we have accomplished grandiose things with
our current "way of being", but the fact remains that of a paradise
we have made a "stable", our
Earth has become a huge trash can and half the world has turned into a
cemetery.
Why did we get there? Could it be because we are half
angels and half demons? No, but probably because we are humans who are not yet
completely born to their total humanity…
The way we see and we think, the way we live, our
"way of being" that brought us to the current situation, is creaking
everywhere. Everything tells us that we have to mutate. That we are ripe for a
huge leap forward which will lead us to "be born" for good to all
that we are wonderful at the bottom of our being.
Human evolution is sluggish, but according to science,
it occasionally takes great leaps. It is one of these leaps that the 21st
century invites us to.
At the start of the last two millennia, Jesus himself
made one of these dizzying leaps from a stable and a cross. Crossing our deaths,
he shook us to awaken the life powers that sleep in us. He opened the way for
us by training us towards another "way of being" where, since our
reality of flesh, we are allowed to live a truer, wider, deeper, freer
humanity. With him we are heading towards our true stature, where everything
will be integrated and unified, where in us and between us there will be no
more barriers, no more abyss that separates us from ourselves, from all of
humankind , of Nature and of God.
For this great leap forward, God himself, by pure
grace, comes to pick us up in our "stables". Whether we are believers
or not, the great features of heart and mind of this Jesus born in a stable but
who now stands on our tombs, will sooner or later become embedded in our DNA,
deep within our being. A new "way of being" will flourish in us. We
will begin to become more truly human.
There are 100 million
black holes in the universe
As Jerusalem, the capital city of the great king
Herod, approached, the Star of the Magi disappeared as if it had struck a
"black hole". The black hole is an astronomical monster that devours
the stars without letting the slightest spark of light escape from them. There
is therefore no possible peace between the Christmas Star and any system that
stands as a "black hole" in front of peoples' rights, in front of
democracy, in front of the voices of young people, women, natives, immigrants,
and which turns a deaf ear to the cries from the street and to the signs of
distress from the Earth itself ...
As soon as it approaches these "black
holes", the Christmas Star fades and disappears. But it always comes back.
Sometimes it comes back on where you least expect it, like in Iraq, and in
Lebanon and even in Iran. In Hong Kong, it holds out. In Chile, Haiti, Algeria
too. Sometimes a great corrupt leader leaves, a head rolls, but that is not
enough. Something new is wanted. At the sight of the White House, the Star runs
away... Around the Vatican, she looks
out of breath but she hangs on as tight as she can.
In fact, the Christmas Star never dies. When she
reappeared at the Magi, a celestial network came to warn them that their life
was hanging by a thread, because King Herod was very angry with them. His
secret services duly informed him that in Bethlehem these foreign Magi had
discovered a newborn baby in a stable, they knelt before him, greeted him like
the King of Kings and covered him with gifts. On hearing that, Herod was on the
brink of apoplexy. "I am the only king here!" he exclaimed, tearing
his clothes. Were it not for the Star which showed them a path by which to
escape, the poor Magi were cooked.
Cheated by them, Herod therefore entered into an anger
which is still spoken of today, because, to calm down, he ordered the massacre
of all the children of Bethlehem who were less than two years old. The idea was
to kill in the bud the slightest hint of possible sedition around this kid that
the Magi had worshiped as a kind of god.
The child of the manger, this improbable seed of
subversive, barely escaped the fury of the king, because Joseph, his father,
having already smelled the affair, took the toddler with his mother, and the three,
in the middle of the night, fled just in time to Egypt. In exile, in the same
country where 1250 years before the incredible saga of the people called
"People of God" began, the beautiful Star that Herod had almost
extinguished, refuelled with energy.
A year passed, then Herod, for once in his life, did a
good thing: he died. The Star danced with joy. Without wasting a minute, she
set off again and returned to the country with Joseph, Mary and the little one.
This time, she headed straight for the brawler Galilee, the former stronghold
of Nephtali and Zabulon. Normally, this little corner of the universe would
have been a paradise, if, for centuries, the whole world had not envied its
magnificent lake, its fertile land, its fish, its figs, its vines, its sheep
and its ideal location for trading with neighbouring and foreign countries. It
had been torn from all sides. Galilee was bled white. She couldn't take it
anymore.
It was in this Galilee that on returning from Egypt
the Star grew. It was there, on the lakeshore, that she took flesh, bones,
heart, blood and face and that she became "Jesus".
In the person of Jesus, she walked with the trampled
people of the country and made only one flesh with them. She raised them,
restarted them, took them out of their tombs. The Christmas Star, in the person
of Jesus, became the "light of the
nations".
It didn't last three years. The little Herods who had
replaced the old man who was dead, still made the country tremble. In addition,
the presence on the ground of the Roman Legion (real band of wild elephants
released in a shopping center) did not help matters. So the "black
hole" of Jerusalem - Bethlehem - Galilee still had a bright future ahead
of it.
Especially since he could count on the total
collaboration of the clique of high priests and religious experts who behaved
as if they were themselves the Living Truth. From the Temple fortress where
they sat enthroned, they waged a relentless war against all strong-headed
people who did not obey every beck and call.
Now our Jesus-Star was just one of those " strong-headed
people", because he was a free man.
He was not a yes-man (like a bunch who later claimed to be his disciples) ...
He was himself the headache of the Temple tenants. The latter, after having
accumulated an overwhelming case against him, threw themselves on him like
hyenas and they shattered him on a
cross. In midday the world plunged into the darkest night of the universe. The
Star this time was dead.
But, whether we believe it or not, in the very place
where there was nothing left but emptiness and death, the Star reappeared
smoothly in the same breath as the rising sun of the first day of a new
Creation. Simple fishermen who had not caught a single fish during an endless
night suddenly "awoke". They got up and launched joyfully on all the
paths of the great adventure of the humans by sharing without counting a fish
with flavour of resurrection and morning of eternal spring.
Today, after two thousand years, these brave fishermen
have aged. They are terribly tired. They can no longer find cheap labor to do
the work for them. They are unable to innovate, unable to invent. They no
longer know how to create. They are prisoners of their world, and although
still alive, they are already embalmed ... In any case, there is no longer a
great future for them. It is clear that the "Black Hole" has won.
Will the Star recover? Will she surprise again? Will
it come back on? ... I swear yes ... But I also swear that things will never be
the same again. NUNCA MÁS! Everything will be completely new!
ELOY ROY
"See, I make all
things new" (Revelation 21,5).
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