Jesus was born in hiding: and how much we, on the contrary, want to appear! Jesus is born, God reveals himself to the world, and all around people don't seem to notice. It always amazes me to think how a few meters from that cave one could have seen nothing, not noticed anything. In Herod's palace, in the homes of the powerful, it was basically a night like many others: yet the world was changing. It seems to me that Jesus invites us, when we contemplate this scene and meditate on this mystery, to live like him: that is, to prefer not appearing, accepting and wanting others to eventually appear in the eyes of the world rather than ourselves. All the great works of God are consummated in hiding: we could also say the same for the scene of the Crucifixion, and so for the Eucharist, and for the life of Mary, all under the sign of non-appearance. Today we all long to appear: if not on television or on a website, at least in our parish, in our work environment, in our own family: for everyone to know how much I work, how many things I do, how good I am. Jesus tells us that whoever does this already has his reward.

Jesus teaches us poverty: it is extremely difficult to follow him while living in wealth, and the disordered care for the things of the world, the immoderate affection for money and career are always an illusion, when they are not oriented towards the necessary sustenance of oneself and one's Dear. We can live soberly, that is, love poverty, only when we are rich in God, when our heart is attached to him: ours is not an ascetic effort, a work on ourselves to demonstrate to others how we can live by doing less than many things. We simply don't feel the need for many things when Jesus fills our lives and our hearts: and when He is there, then even things change meaning, they are there but they don't make us slaves, we take care of them without them taking care of us. In this sense, contemplating the nativity helps us ask to be free, to live in the truth of ourselves, of what we do and of what we are; for those who have a family, it helps to remember that without the union of hearts, material goods are not enough to be a family. And the union of hearts occurs by basing itself on Him.

Finally, it seems to me that the mystery we contemplate helps us see the greatest gift that God has given us: peace. Glory to God and peace to men, the Angels sing. Peace is that between God and men, no longer strangers or aliens to Him, but capable not only of recognizing Him, but also of loving Him as children. “To those who welcomed him he gave the power to become children of God”, says the evangelist John. And these children, it is interesting to note, are not the scribes or Pharisees, the "first" of the society of Jesus' time, the observants of the Law, but the shepherds, that is, not only the poorest and most ignorant, but also those who, according to the prescriptions of Moses, carried out an impure profession, which made one impure. What I mean to say is that the shepherds are not only the last on the social scale, but also on the religious one: and these are precisely enveloped in the light of the Angels, who sing that in that Son there is their peace with God, the their exit from being distant and their entry into the enclosure of their children. We can pray for those who no longer even care about Jesus, they feel he is distant, they no longer believe that what God says can concern them anymore: these are the new "shepherds", those who would not even know how to set foot in church anymore. We can, while saying the Hail Marys, listen to the singing of the Angels, and ask to be made like the Angels, that is, transparency of the love of God that manifests itself, as Christ himself is this transparency. God the Father has sent, so to speak, to the earth a sack full of his mercy, and this sack is Jesus; he will be pierced and torn asunder during his Passion, but we will all receive from his fullness.