Pope Leo XIV celebrates Christms Morning Mass at St. Peter's Basilica

 

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• Pope Leo XIV
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Pope Leo: Since the Word was made flesh, humanity speaks

Pope Leo XIV celebrates Christmas morning Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, recalling in his homily that in the Word of God made flesh, “humanity now speaks, crying out with God’s own desire to encounter us.”

By Christopher Wells

Pope Leo celebrated the Christmas morning Mass in St Peter’s Basilica, becoming the first pope to do so since Pope John Paul II more than thirty years ago.

In his homily, the Holy Father insisted that “a new day has dawned” and “we, too, are part of this new beginning, even if few as yet believe it: peace is real, and is already among you.”

Jesus, he said, sent His disciples as messengers of peace to reveal “the power to become children of God” who follow the Word that became human flesh – a Word that, in the Baby Jesus, “appears, but cannot speak.”

Pope Leo explained that “‘flesh’ is the radical nakedness that, in Bethlehem as on Calvary, remains without words – just as so many brothers and sisters, stripped of their dignity and reduced to silence, have no words today.”

And yet, he continued, since God’s Word became flesh, “humanity now speaks, crying out with God’s own desire to encounter us.”

“The Word has pitched His fragile tent among us. How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed to weeks of rain, and wind, and cold? And of those of so many other refugees and displaced persons on every continent? Or of the makeshift shelters of thousands of homeless people in our own cities?”

The Holy Father, recalled, too, the “fragility” of human flesh in all those suffering from war, and in the young people forced to take up arms, “who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.”

It is when the fragility of others “penetrates our hearts, when their pain shatters our rigid certainties,” that peace has “already begun.”

This, he said, is how Christmas gives a fresh impetus to the missionary Church, urging her onto the paths traced out for her by the Word of God.”

“This is the way of mission,” the Pope said: “A path to others. In God, every word is an addressed word; an invitation to conversation, a word never closed in on itself. This is the renewal that Vatican II promoted, which will bear fruit only if we walk together with the whole of humanity.”

“The movement of the Incarnation is a dynamic of conversation,” Pope Leo said in conclusion. “There will be peace when our monologues are interrupted, and when we, enriched by listening, fall to our knees before the humanity of the other.”