«
<
>
LUI E' QUI
The living crib comes from the experience of St. Francis.
The desire to recall the birth of Jesus comes to Francis during a trip to Palestine. Having obtained permission from Pope Honorius III, Saint Francis returned to that Greccio where he "remembered Bethlehem" and said to John Velita:"I want to celebrate Christmas night. Choose a grotto where you'll build a feeder trough and lead a beehive and donkey there, and try to reproduce as far as possible the Bethlehem cave! This is my desire, because I want to see, at least once, with my own eyes, the birth of the Divine infant ".
And so, on December 24,1223, the birth of Jesus as a child was staged.
It is Don Giussani who brings us back to the provocation of Christmas for contemporary man:
"It is not a commemoration of ours. It is the presence of Christ, our life, to be recognized. It is not a commemoration that we are doing, but it is a Presence that we must recognise.
This is faith: to recognize a Presence, and that is enough; to recognize a Presence which is the meaning of the blood that circulates, of the child that is born, of the husband or wife that one has.
Faith is to recognize an event that reappears again every time we think about it.
When Isaiah prophesied:"Not an angel, but He Himself will save you" (Is 63:9), he described this event which is God made companion to man; the same when Moses, in chapter 33 of Exodus, asks:"Lord, if you do not accompany us on the way, then rather do not let us start here" (Ex 33:15).
The desire to recall the birth of Jesus comes to Francis during a trip to Palestine. Having obtained permission from Pope Honorius III, Saint Francis returned to that Greccio where he "remembered Bethlehem" and said to John Velita:"I want to celebrate Christmas night. Choose a grotto where you'll build a feeder trough and lead a beehive and donkey there, and try to reproduce as far as possible the Bethlehem cave! This is my desire, because I want to see, at least once, with my own eyes, the birth of the Divine infant ".
And so, on December 24,1223, the birth of Jesus as a child was staged.
It is Don Giussani who brings us back to the provocation of Christmas for contemporary man:
"It is not a commemoration of ours. It is the presence of Christ, our life, to be recognized. It is not a commemoration that we are doing, but it is a Presence that we must recognise.
This is faith: to recognize a Presence, and that is enough; to recognize a Presence which is the meaning of the blood that circulates, of the child that is born, of the husband or wife that one has.
Faith is to recognize an event that reappears again every time we think about it.
When Isaiah prophesied:"Not an angel, but He Himself will save you" (Is 63:9), he described this event which is God made companion to man; the same when Moses, in chapter 33 of Exodus, asks:"Lord, if you do not accompany us on the way, then rather do not let us start here" (Ex 33:15).
