The night of God

Dear friends,

"Here it is, the night of God, from which the day will be born like a fire" ...  Those of you who have already participated in our Christmas liturgies will recognize here the words from our nocturnal celebration opening song. So, at last, this long-awaited night is here... but for the first time, we celebrate it without you. We gather within the depth of our heart, in each of our houses, and this "confined Christmas" feast takes on a more intimate meaning: only a few of us around the crèche. This may perhaps better illustrate that Jesus is born for each of us. 

The whole world is in the night, that of trial and worry, and just like the birth of Jesus 2000 years ago, it would seem that it changes nothing. Only a few shepherds - rejects of the time - found themselves enveloped in Heaven’s clarity while the world follows its course: oppression of the Roman power, social misery, disillusioned hopes... so many reasons to give up on what the next day may bring. And yet God comes, not as a triumphant emperor entering a conquered city but as a baby entrusted to a woman and a man. While some dreams of power can seduce us, like the illusory solution to so many problems, God offers us the spectacle of his vulnerability and his magnificent poverty. "A sign is given to you," say the angels to the shepherds, “a newborn swaddled and lying in a manger":  an inaugural predication yet at the summit of a God "who is not the Almighty we think he is," as Florin said.

Yes, "God was born a baby":  this is the title of the text we want to share with you on this Christmas fest, a transcript from Roger’s preaching on Christmas night 2017. A beautiful and intense look, given to us by Roger, which takes us into the soft light of Bethlehem’s cave, stronger than the night of this world.
 

To each and every one of you, from all of us, a very beautiful and merry Christmas!

Olivier Sournia
25 December 2020

God was born as a baby!

This afternoon, while preparing myself for the vigil of Christmas, two words rose from within me: The first isn’t obviously linked to Christmas. One day when Jesus was speaking in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem. Soldiers were sent to arrest him. The people around him were quite crowded together and the soldiers had to make a path among them. But as they made their path, they heard, they listened and when they went back to give an account of their mission to the doctors of law they were asked: “You didn’t bring him?”. The men replied: “Never has a man spoken like this man.” [Read more...]

French to English translation by Debbie Garrick and Cécile Simon