A good friend recently gave me a copy of the book, “We Are Still Here: An anthology of resilience, grief, and unshattered hope from Gaza’s university students.” The book contains the poignant reflections in prose and poetry of Gaza’s university students. They speak about the destruction of their university campuses, the loss of opportunities to continue their studies, and the suffering and death of many people. Here is one poem that hit me hard:

We died…you scrolled
                                                                    Wissam Yousef

Someone asked me, Why do you speak out? Why do you write?
Because they want us to die in silence – to vanish without a trace,
            Without a story.
We write because writing is resistance.
We share because silence is complicity. Silence is a witness that lies.

Yes, many know there’s famine in Gaza –
But knowing isn’t enough.
We don’t write just so the world “knows”.
We write so no one can claim they didn’t.
We write so they can’t look away without guilt.

We write to expose.
We write to disturb their comfort – to rattle sleeping consciences.
We write so that the child who died of hunger is not forgotten.
So that the hungry have names.
So that the killers are named too.

Hear the voices of the vulnerable people of Gaza. Hear them cry out to our world, defiant of the forces that oppress and kill. Hear their voices pierce our comfortable consciences and challenge our faith and call us out to prayer and action.

In the Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius invites us to contemplate the Incarnation (SpEx 101-109). We imagine the Blessed Trinity looking at and hearing the cries of suffering humanity. Humanity has chosen the path to “hell”, that is, the way of hatred, violence, destruction, war, and death. The three Divine Persons decide to send the second Person to become one like us to save humanity, sending the angel Gabriel to our Lady and inviting her to become the mother of the Saviour.

Such is our God, who is madly and foolishly in love with us. God has not lost hope in humanity and invites us to participate in our salvation. Like Mary, our mother, we are invited to say yes to God’s redeeming act in Jesus Christ. We are invited to say yes to the path that brings life and not death. This invitation challenges us to listen to the cries of our vulnerable sisters and brothers in our respective communities, nations, and the world. Amid seeming hopelessness in the world, we are invited to find creative ways to respond to those cries.

For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord.

 

And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2: 11-12)

At Christmas time, we pause and kneel in silence to listen to the cry of the vulnerable Child in the manger. It is Immanu-El, God-with-us, who cries out to us, begs us to pay close attention to the plight of our suffering sisters and brothers. God chooses to intervene in humanity’s insanity in choosing sin and death. God intervenes not by the worldly ways of power, prestige, and pride but through the unimaginable act of becoming one of us so that he may teach us instead to choose God’s grace and life.

Dear friends, may our hearts this Christmas yearn for the Child in the manger, yield to his pleading cries, and move us to embrace his desire to save our wounded humanity through the gift of faith that does justice, through a love that shows itself more in deeds than in words.

Have a truly blessed and joy-full celebration of our Lord’s birth!