INGLÉS - Navidad 2017

“For a son has been born for us, a son has been given to us.” (Is 9,5)
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“The kindness of God our Saviour  and his love for humanity have been revealed.”
(Tt 3,4)

1.- That screech. When evil encloses us, it makes us groan, it breaks our voice, we complain… But evil has its own sound when it hurts us, it’s the screech of existence, the strident sound that is out of tune in life as a whole. We are not made for evil the same way our ears cannot bare that unpleasant sound, unharmonious, long-lasting. There’s a disproportion when it comes to evil, an excess, that makes us fall or think that it has the last word, but we are mistaken there precisely because neither does it have the last word nor does the mystery of evil prevail in this life.

The experience we all share is that against evil we could verify the presence of goodness. Of so much goodness! Maybe the most profound question we should ask ourselves is not “Why evil?” but rather “Why goodness?” And bet on good in order to openly declare it present in the world, around us, so as to recognize it, to prove its evidence or, for us to admit as well, our inability to leave what abducts our life daily and pay attention to that goodness that is there and is not greeted. 

2. Who do we owe so much goodness to?
“The extent of evil is measures by the power of its antidote”. The antidote against evil won’t be another but INNOCENCE, that of the Child and of the Man who will die on the Cross and this way, evil will be assumed by He who does not commit evil, who is only Goodness. It will be for evil itself an unbearable challenge because the Innocent, he who does no harm, he who will never answer back to evil with evil, never the less, has in his innocence the definite strength against it. 

We owe so much goodness as there is in the world not to any innocence, but to an INNOCENT LOVE. God, who has heard our cry, and has made himself present, like he did from the beginning with a love of mercy and tenderness, has a power against the afflicting evil but his power passes through the most radical truth: his own, his own innocence that assumes our pain and our suffering. 

Incarnation is God’s hug to our human condition that suffers the stinger of evil but it’s also the mortal strike to evil: the Innocence of the God made man to save us will be the stinger against evil.

3. To whom we owe so much goodness. We adore, there for, He to whom we owe so much goodness, He who made himself present when we had no one to protect us, he who assumed our guilt or our feeble condition up to the point of laying in a manger, He who can do us no harm because He presents himself unarmed, wrapped in swaddling clothes, new born, in the arms of Mary, his Mother, and of Joseph.
Our world, with no guilts and with no apologies or, on the contrary troubled by guilt with no defendant or the guilt as an eternal and lacerating punishment, longs for this freedom, the one that we receive from Jesus’ innocence, today a Baby in Bethlehem. 

Our world in constant tension due to the forces that collide up to the point of causing division among us, that void our longing for reconciliation and forgiveness, has in the devine Innocence of the New Born the Saint Way along which to transit until peace is achieved. 

Our world, attacked by anguish, despair, loneliness and selfishness, will only be saved by this loving Innocence that restores the first Beauty of the devine plan for Creation.

Only the Innocent one can give forgiveness and achieve the definite reconciliation because only He who is not guilty can forgive the guilty one. That is why, in Him, in Jesus, lies our hope for forgiveness, reconciliation and peace. 
Before He to whom we owe such goodness as we all experiment throughout the day, throughout our life, we want to prostrate giving thanks, blessing his Name worshipping with no truce, adoring Him. Before Him we want to learn of his Innocence and we want to hold on to It in order to be saved by the hug of his limitless goodness. If only a wave of true love would extent itself through our world, if it started in the secret of our heart and were covering the face of the earth until a new birth were made possible, a novelty in love and the goodness that He who does no harm to anyone brings to us.
May our desires burn next to this Bonfire of innocent Love and the hard rocks of our heart soften, of our human relationships, of our social structures, so that the wave of evil may come to an end and be defeated by the Wind, the soft Breeze of Goodness that Jesus of Nazaret brought to Earth.

Merry Christmas 2017!


Augustinian Sisters, OSA
Monasterio de la Conversión, Sotillo de la Adrada (Ávila), España
Monasterio de la Encarnación, Pueblo Libre (Lima), Perú