On Christmas morning at 10 a.m., the Holy Father Leo XIV presided over the Holy Mass during the day on the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Here is the full text of the English translation of his homily:
Dear brothers and sisters,
“Break forth together into songs of joy” (Is 52:9), cries the messenger of peace to those standing amid the ruins of a city in desperate need of rebuilding. Though dusty and wounded, his feet are beautiful, writes the prophet (cf. Is 52:7), because, along rugged and weary roads they have carried a glad announcement in which everything is reborn. A new day has dawned! We too are part of this new beginning, even if few as yet believe it: peace is real, and it is already among us.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you” (Jn 14:27). Thus Jesus spoke to the disciples, whose feet he had just washed. They were to be messengers of peace, sent to journey tirelessly through the world to reveal to all the “power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12). Today, therefore, we are not only surprised by the peace that is already here; we also celebrate the way in which this gift has been given to us. In this “how,” in fact, shines the divine difference that causes us to break forth into songs of joy. For this reason, throughout the world, Christmas is a feast par excellence of music and song.
The prologue of the fourth Gospel is itself a hymn, with the Word of God as its protagonist. The “Word” is a word that acts. This is a hallmark of God’s Word: it is never without effect. Indeed, many of our own words also have effects, sometimes unintended. Yes, words “act.” Yet here is the surprise that the Christmas liturgy presents to us: the Word of God appears but cannot speak. He comes to us as a newborn baby who can only cry and babble. “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). Though he will grow and one day learn the language of his people, for now he speaks only through his simple, fragile presence. “Flesh” is the radical nakedness that, in Bethlehem as on Calvary, remains even without words – just as so many brothers and sisters, stripped of their dignity and reduced to silence, have no words today. Human flesh asks for care; it pleads for welcome and recognition; it seeks hands capable of tenderness and minds willing to listen; it longs for words of kindness.
“He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:11-12). This is the paradoxical way in which peace is already among us: God’s gift invites us in; it seeks to be welcomed and, in turn, inspires our own self-giving. God surprises us because he leaves himself open to rejection. He also captivates us because he draws us away from indifference. Becoming children of God is a true power – one that remains buried so long as we keep our distance from the cry of children and the frailty of the elderly, from the helpless silence of victims and the resigned melancholy of those who do the evil they do not want.
To remind us of the joy of the Gospel, our beloved Pope Francis wrote: “Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people’s lives and know the power of tenderness” (Evangelii Gaudium, 270).
Dear brothers and sisters, since the Word was made 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 for weeks to rain, 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? Fragile is the flesh of defenseless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds. Fragile are the minds and lives of 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.
When the fragility of others penetrates our hearts, when their pain shatters our rigid certainties, then peace has already begun. The peace of God is born from a newborn’s cry that is welcomed, from weeping that is heard. It is born amidst ruins that call out for new forms of solidarity. It is born from dreams and visions that, like prophecies, reverse the course of history. Yes, all this exists, because Jesus is the Logos, the Meaning, from which everything has taken shape. “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (Jn 1:3). This mystery speaks to us from the nativity scenes we have built; it opens our eyes to a world in which the Word still resonates, “many times and in many ways” (cf. Heb 1:1), and still calls us to conversion.
To be sure, the Gospel does not hide the resistance of darkness to the light. It describes the path of the Word of God as a rugged road, strewn with obstacles. To this day, authentic messengers of peace follow the Word along this path, which ultimately reaches hearts – restless hearts that often desire the very thing they resist. In this way, Christmas gives fresh impetus to a missionary Church, urging her onto the paths that the Word of God has traced for her. We do not serve a domineering Word – too many of those already resound everywhere – but a presence that inspires goodness, knows its efficacy and does not claim a monopoly over it.
This is the way of mission: a path toward others. In God, every word is an addressed word; it is an invitation to conversation, a word never closed in on itself. This is the renewal that the Second Vatican Council promoted, which will bear fruit only if we walk together with the whole of humanity, never separating ourselves from it. The opposite is worldliness: to have oneself at the center. The movement of the Incarnation is a dynamics of conversation. There will be peace when our monologues are interrupted and, enriched by listening, we fall to our knees before the humanity of the other. In this, the Virgin Mary is the Mother of the Church, the Star of Evangelization, the Queen of Peace. In her, we understand that nothing is born from the display of force, and everything is reborn from the silent power of life welcomed.
