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December 19, 2024Dear faithful of the Filipino community of the Parish of Saint Michael,
May the Lord give you Peace and joy.
I am very happy to be here with you and to celebrate the Holy Mass during the Simbang Gabi that leads us to the celebration of Holy Christmas.
It is a beautiful tradition linked to your homeland, the Philippines. In our Apostolic Vicariate, this tradition is very much alive. In these first years of my ministry as Bishop in this part of the world I have had many opportunities to celebrate masses for the Filipino communities in the different parishes. I admire your faithful participation in these celebrations.
I take advantage of this celebration to express my joy for your commitment in our Church. I greatly appreciate your dedication in the parish. I see you are involved in many ministries and services with love. May the Lord reward you and bless you.
Perhaps some of you attend church only on the occasion of these celebrations in preparation for Holy Christmas. You are welcome. I cordially greet you all. The Church is open to all. Nobody should feel excluded. The Church is the house of God, it is the house of the people of God, it is your home. Please do not hesitate to visit this house regularly. It is beautiful that the faithful gather in the Church to celebrate the love of Jesus. We are all children of God our father, we are all brothers and sisters among us.
How beautiful it is to prepare for Christmas! This year the Advent brings us a special Christmas because this Christmas will also mark the beginning of the Jubilee of the Lord 2025, a jubilee dedicated to hope: Jesus is our hope! Pope Francis will open the holy door in the saint Peter Basilica in Rome.
In order to have spiritual fruits from the Christmas celebrations and from the Jubilee of the Lord, we must prepare well. There are many external gestures that we do to prepare for Christmas: we decorate the Christmas tree in our homes with a lot of lights, because Jesus is the Light of the World. We prepare the nativity scene with the statues. Because we want to see with our own eyes the scene of the birth of Jesus; we want to imagine what happened on that night more than two thousand years ago, when the Son of God became man, born of Mary; born in poverty. All these external signs must be an expression of an internal, spiritual preparation, a preparation of our heart to welcome Jesus.
The tradition of Simbang Gabi is a very beautiful tradition because it is a visible expression of our preparation like the one today, you left your homes to come to Church: it is an external gesture, but it expresses our spiritual preparation.
Let us therefore purify our hearts, free ourselves from the sins that weigh us down. I invite you to pray more in this time and to rediscover within you the desire for salvation, the desire for happiness, the need to be loved with a gratuitous and free love, so that we too can become capable of loving our neighbor.
The Gospel we heard tells us about how Jesus was born, in a mysterious way, through the work of the Holy Spirit. Saint Joseph, Mary's betrothed, is surprised and does not know how to behave. He almost seems to step aside and let Mary go away in secret. But then an angel speaks to Joseph in a dream, who is called the son of King David, revealing to him that what happens in Mary comes from God and that he is called to be the guardian of the redeemer. In this way Jesus is presented as the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy, as royal lineage: he is called Emmanuel. It means: God with us. Dear faithful, Jesus is God with us, he is God's closeness and company to everybody. This is the foundation of our joy. In solitude there is sadness and darkness; with Jesus there is Light, joy, peace and reconciliation; forgiveness of our sins.
Dear Filipino community, you are a joyful people! The foundation of the true joy is the love of God, in the presence of Jesus. He is born among us as the light of the world. We know how much darkness there is in the world and sometimes even in our hearts. Let us therefore welcome Jesus, the prince of peace.
Dear faithful, I wish you a Christmas full of joy in the Lord. Always be united with Jesus and always be united with the Church. May the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, who brought us Jesus, bring us to Jesus and keep us always united with him.
I may not see you on Christmas day, so I wish you today. Merry Christmas!
