Fr. Manuel João Pereira Correia, Comboni missionary : “Today, the Smile is Born!”

Dear friends,
for my Christmas reflection and wishes, I would like to take inspiration from a Christmas meditation by my illustrious compatriot, Saint Anthony of Lisbon, whom the people of Padua adopted, loved, and honoured. In one of his Christmas sermons, the Saint declares:

“The Angel said to the shepherds: I bring you good news of great joy. Today, a Saviour has been born to you. This corresponds with what is said in Genesis: Isaac is born. And Sarah said: God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears of this will laugh with me. Sarah is interpreted as princess or coal. She is a figure of the glorious Virgin, princess and our Queen, inflamed by the Holy Spirit, like burning coal. Today, God has made her a cause for laughter, for from her our laughter has been born: 'I bring you good news of great joy, for laughter is born, Christ is born.' Today, we have heard this from the angel: Everyone who hears it will laugh with me. Let us laugh, then, and rejoice together with the Blessed Virgin, for God has given us laughter, that is, the cause of our rejoicing with Him and in her: Today, a Saviour has been born to you. If someone were on the brink of death or in a painful prison and was told: Look, here is someone to save you, would they not laugh, would they not rejoice? Certainly. Let us also rejoice with pure consciences and sincere charity, for today a Saviour has been born to us!”

The celebration of Christmas each year brings a joy that, unfortunately, contrasts with the tsunami of injustices and suffering that seems to overwhelm every glimmer of hope for a world of peace, justice, and brotherhood that we all dream of. The joy of this Christmas 2024 seems particularly threatened by a terrifyingly high wave of violence and hatred, which forcefully infiltrates through the screens of our televisions and other media, often amplifying it and feeding our fears.

In the tragic context in which we live, can we still find a reason to rejoice in the Christmas celebration?

Many of us think that Christmas is a children’s celebration, and all of us, as if by magic, become children again at Christmas, if only for a day, dreaming of a different world: good, beautiful, harmonious, free from wars, injustices, and divisions. Oh, blessed innocence! Sadly, the next day – St Stephen’s Day, the first martyr – seems to wake us up to harsh and cruel reality. And for the most determined dreamers, on the third day, the inevitable news of another massacre of innocents arrives, carried out by yet another “Herod,” waking them brutally! Yes, sadly, Christmas was just a dream: beautiful, but still a chimera.

Yet Christmas truly is a dream, but not ours: it is God’s dream! Every year at Christmas, the Angel of the Father, His Messenger and Apostle, comes to us as a Child, poor among the poor, crying like any other human being, to remind us that God is faithful to His promises.
It is beautiful and comforting to contemplate the Infant in the manger, with arms open and a smile on His face. He manages to draw a smile from us, like any child, after all. Every birth is a smile of hope; the birth of Jesus is God’s smile.
The Saint is absolutely right when he says: “I bring you good news of great joy, for laughter is born, Christ is born,” and invites us to laugh: “Let us laugh, then, and rejoice with the Blessed Virgin, for God has given us laughter!”

Laughter, however, does not seem to have a good reputation in the Church, dating back to the times of the ancient Fathers, our first theologians. “Christ never laughed,” says Saint John Chrysostom. Others confirm that in the Gospels, we read that He wept, but never that He laughed. In this context, Nietzsche seems to be right when he says Christianity “killed laughter.”

Yet God laughs! Paradise is the Homeland of Laughter, and God is its author. One could say that God creates to share with us the fullness of His happiness. In creating the universe, He imbues it with joy, noting seven times that what He created is good and beautiful. It makes one think that the Holy Spirit is not only the Love between the Father and the Son but also the Joy of the Father and the Son, whom He generated. Joy and Laughter dwell in the heart of the Trinity!

How sad it is to see that many of us, both in society and in the Church, have become “permanent observers” of the evil reigning in the world. It seems that for many, generalised criticism has become a sort of daily adrenaline.

Perhaps today, the Angel of the “great joy” would invite us, as he once did the prophet Isaiah: “Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion! Lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem! Lift it up, do not fear; say to the towns of Judah: ‘Here is your God!’” (40:9).

Here is my wish for Christmas and for the Jubilee of Hope: that each of us becomes a “permanent observer” of the good in the world, capable of recognising the infinite silence of acts of love that nourish hope and make God smile.
These acts are the invisible seeds of goodness, scattered by that “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language,” seen by John in Revelation (7:9).
This immense crowd is like small streams or even modest drops of pure water, which together flow into the great river that still springs from Eden today and divides into four branches to water the whole earth (Genesis 2:10).

Merry Christmas to you all, with a smile!

Fr. Manuel João Pereira Correia, mccj