Prayer of the Christmas season

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Reading of the Word of God

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Glory to God in the highest
and peace on earth to the people he loves.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

1 John 2,29-3,6

If you know that he is upright you must recognise that everyone whose life is upright is a child of his. You must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God's children -- which is what we are! The reason why the world does not acknowledge us is that it did not acknowledge him. My dear friends, we are already God's children, but what we shall be in the future has not yet been revealed. We are well aware that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is. Whoever treasures this hope of him purifies himself, to be as pure as he is. Whoever sins, acts wickedly, because all sin is wickedness. Now you are well aware that he has appeared in order to take sins away, and that in him there is no sin. No one who remains in him sins, and whoever sins has neither seen him nor recognised him.

 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia

Love--agape--is the substance of Christian life, because it is the very substance of God. Those who live in love come from God. The apostle knows well that we find ourselves in the heart of the mystery of God and he calls us to contemplate it: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are." The love of God which saves from sin and death, makes Christians "incomprehensible" to the mentality of this world. In fact, there is an insuppressible aspect of the Gospel as being outside the mentality of the world. And this characteristic calls disciples to a heroic kind of witness. God's love indeed is total gratuitousness, which is a borderless love even towards enemies. In a world in which interest for oneself and idolatry of profit are the undiscussed commandments, the Gospel cannot but sound as a scandal. In the history of the Church, in fact, there has never been a lack of Christians who have witnessed the heroism of this love to the point of shedding their blood. But the time will come in which the victory of love will be evident, it will impose itself, and Christians, who now see as if in a mirror, will see the face of the Lord "as he is" John writes, echoing the words "face to face," that Paul told the Corinthians (1 Cor 13:12).