Once again we are celebrating the mystery of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. This celebration opens every year a new liturgical journey with an invitation to prepare ourselves not only to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but moreover to welcome him into our lives. This is actually not a new experience for us but it finds us every year in different circumstances and realities. The central invitation remains that of seeing how Jesus can give us an experience that touches our hearts and breeds serenity and hope in the journey of life.

The times we are living are undoubtedly moments of continuous change, which we do not always manage to keep up with. For us as a Church, the most important mission remains that of bearing witness to Jesus, and thus we should never give up on promoting life, working for justice, supporting those who are burdened, offering meaning to those who feel lost, and above all spreading genuine joy. This is how we make sure that everything we do really gives birth to Jesus even if it requires an effort from us. The birth of Jesus was never a comfortable one. Not even when it happened in the cave of Bethlehem! On that day the family of Mary and Joseph felt unwelcome; then they had to accept the poor whereabouts of an animal cave; then they had to satisfy themselves with very little; but the most important thing was the fact that Jesus was born!

This said, we are continuously summoned to embark in a process of discernment leading to Jesus being born in our hearts. Then we also want to make sure that, even though we sometimes feel like we are becoming fewer, and time is changing us rapidly, we continue to be in one way or another a presence that makes a difference in our society both on a personal level but also as a collective witness, as Augustinians and as a Church.

In his catechesis  in the last weeks, Pope Francis is talking about discernment. In the Audience of the 19th October 2022, the Pope refers to the experience of Saint Augustine and talks about one’s personal story in the course of choices one is compelled to make in life. "Saint Augustine, a great seeker of the truth," - Pope Francis tells us - understood that sometimes we find ourselves searching in wrong paths when he decided to "reread his life, noting in it the silent and discreet, but incisive, steps of the presence of the Lord. At the end of this journey, he noted with wonder: “You were within, and I without, and there I did seek you; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty you made. You were with me, but I was not with you” (Confessions  X, 27.38). Hence his invitation to cultivate the inner life to find what one is seeking: “Return within yourself. In the inward man dwells truth”(cf. On True Religion, XXXIX, 72). This is an invitation I would extend to all of you, and even to myself: “Return within yourself. Read your life. Read yourself within, how your journey has been... With serenity. Return within yourself”.

All of our stories together make up a much bigger story; Our Story! I would like to wish from the bottom of my heart that this Christmas brings with it an invite to each and everyone of us to look at his own story and seek to open up more and more in the new year to a genuine journey of discernment. May this journey keeps Jesus always in the center thus giving meaning to everything we are and to what we do. It is only in this way that in the face of the  challenges and the signs of the times I am convinced that Jesus will continue to be born for us, and through us he will continue to be born in the hearts of others.

Fr. Leslie Gatt osa

Prior Provincial