Christmas in Rome: many of the student priests went down to St Peter's last night and this morning, and are helping with communion at the pope's masses. I have preferred to stay home at our community house on campus at the UPS. Actually, I'm getting out my Christmas greetings, and it takes me a long time because every card (real or virtual) brings up memories of friends and loved ones.
On campus there is a Buddhist Monk from Japan and he is celebrating Christmas with us. I was a little surprised to see him every night at the novena services, and asked what this meant for him.
"All these other feasts of light are national or ethnic celebrations," he told me in his halting Italian. "Christmas instead is about the Divinity become small and entering our world as a defenseless child among the outcast and the poor, far from the powerful and the controllers of the world. It is to be light in the depth of darkness, to be compassion in the midst of our poverty that Jesus comes. So Christmas has meaning for us in a way that no other feast does."
Maybe my Japanese Buddhist friend was being kind to me as an Italian Catholic… but it makes me think that Christmas is more than a religious observance. If this young Buddhist monk is correct, Christmas is universal and it belongs to everyone on the planet. Well, I know that Christ belongs to everyone, whether they know it or not, but so does Christmas.
So, without feeling un-PC, I can say "Happy Christmas" to everyone. "Buon Natale a tutti!"
No comments:
Post a Comment