It is called “Everything Belongs to Love,” Pope Francis’ new apostolic letter dedicated to St. Francis de Sales on the fourth centenary of his death. And, in announcing it, Pope Francis dedicates the entire general audience precisely to rereading the mystery of Christmas from the thought of the bishop of Geneva, the patron saint of journalists, forerunner of the free press for his information work to counter the Reformation.
What, then, did St. Francis of St. Sales say? In a letter to St. Jeanne Frances de Chantal that he preferred “a hundred times to see the dear little Child in the manger, rather than all the kings on their thrones.”
Pope Francis comments, “Jesus, the King of the universe, never sat on a throne: he was born in a stable, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; and finally he died on a cross and, wrapped in a sheet, was laid in the tomb.”
The mystery of God humbling Himself and becoming man for us is seen “concretely in the focal point of the manger, that is, in the Child lying in the manger,” which is the sign that “God gives us at Christmas,” and which shows “God’s style.”
God’s style, Pope Francis continued, “is closeness, compassion and tenderness. With this style of his, God draws us to himself. He does not take us by force, he does not impose his truth and justice on us. He wants to draw us with love, with tenderness.”
And again, St. Francis de Sales writes to a nun, “The magnet attracts iron and amber attracts straw and hay. Well, whether we are iron because of our hardness, or whether we are straw because of our weakness, we must be drawn to this heavenly little Child.”
Pope Francis comments, “Sometimes we are ‘iron,’ that is, we are hard, rigid, cold. Other times we are ‘straw,’ that is, fragile, weak, insubstantial. So God has found the means to draw us however we are: with love. Not a possessive and selfish love, as unfortunately human love so often is. His love is pure gift, pure grace, it is all and only for us, for our good.”
God thus draws us “with this disarming love.” And with poverty, another aspect that stands out in the crib. Poverty that means “renunciation of all worldly vanity.” “How much money is spent on vanity,” comments Pope Francis bitterly.
And, in the wake of St. Francis de Sales, Pope Francis warns to be careful “not to slip into the worldly caricature of Christmas, reduced to a consumerist and corny celebration. It takes us to be festive. It takes it. But this is not Christmas. Christmas is something else. God’s love is not honeyed, Jesus’ manger shows us. It is not a hypocritical goodism that hides the pursuit of pleasures and comforts.”
In short, Pope Francis explained that “our elders who had known war and also hunger knew this well: Christmas is joy and celebration, certainly, but in simplicity and austerity.”
Finally, speaking to the Visitandine Sisters two days before his death on December 26, 1622, St. Francis de Sales said, “Do you see the Child Jesus in the manger? He receives all the insults of the weather, the cold and everything that the Father allows to happen to Him. He does not refuse the small consolations that his mother gives him, and it is not written that he ever stretches out his hands to have his Mother’s breast, but left everything to her care and foreknowledge; so we must neither desire anything nor refuse anything, enduring everything that God will send us, the cold and the insults of time.”
Pope Francis concludes that the teaching found in these words is to “desire nothing and reject nothing, accepting all that God sends us. But be careful! Always and only out of love, because God loves us and always and only wants our good. Let us watch Jesus preach, let us watch Jesus in the manger. This is the way Jesus offers us, it is the way to happiness.”
