The Christmas Eve homily of Pope Benedict XVI contained, in part, a short, but powerful discourse about our need for humility and simplicity and how these help us to become aware of God's closeness. Our Lord Jesus Christ appeared as a tiny baby so that we might know the simplicity of heart necessary to truly see and receive the Gift of God.
The New Evangelization requires us to present the Gospel in a clear way, also with humbleness and simplicity. And we can only accomplish this, if we heed the Holy Father's directive to "dismount from our 'high horse' of 'enlightened' reason and intellectual pride".
"Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway, five and a half meters high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half meters has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from attack, but above all to prevent people from entering God’s house on horseback. Anyone wishing to enter the place of Jesus’ birth has to bend down."
"It seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: If we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason. We must set aside our false certainties, our intellectual pride, which prevents us from recognizing God’s closeness. We must follow the interior path of St. Francis: the path leading to that ultimate outward and inward simplicity which enables the heart to see. We must bend down; spiritually we must, as it were, go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions, the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby."
"In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night; let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart."
~Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Eve 2011
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