This past year, the whole world and all of us experienced a difficult Christmas, and we wished for a peaceful Christmas to come. The latest international events and tragedies experienced by numerous families prevent us from thinking of a joyful Christmas this year as well. Our hearts are so pained for the many children struck down in their tender childhood and for their parents that it seems impossible to “bear the splendor of a Christmas tree: and even the tiniest gift would be too heavy a burden for our hands” — as the great Austrian poet Rilke wrote to his mother for the war Christmas of 1916.
Perhaps all this pain is an invitation to make us go beyond ourselves to celebrate that invisible Child who returns to test us, to ask us — like the shepherds and the Magi — to go and find Him today, here, among us.
Even for us, there are signs; even for us, there is a star that can lead us where we struggle to go.
They are our children, our little grandchildren, and the children of our friends, who expect from us a sign of dedication that will not be showering them with gifts — they have far too many — but taking them by the hand and slowly guiding them towards a life as men and women of peace, of “compassion” towards those who suffer and who are alone, of free and spontaneous service.
They are the distant children who every day beg from us the bread and water that should be theirs by right, which we don’t know how to offer, which we should give simply out of justice.
They are the mistreated, sick, abandoned children who wait for something to change for them, so unjustly consigned to an inconceivable life in a land of Christian brothers.
Lastly, there are children who from birth bear the signs of great difficulties. Sometimes victims of difficult births, other times struck by severely disabling diseases; and still others, children without diagnosis, without the possibility of knowing the reason for their serious difficulties.
We know, and we strive to convey in these pages, how much progress has been made for them too — at least in our countries.
Surrounded, as they often are, by endless love from their parents, supported by medical care and increasingly appropriate therapies, followed by kindergarten classmates and older friends, they too are no longer alone as they were in the past.
Their little lives, so tested by so many difficulties, make them dearer to us than others.
They seem to represent indeed a big question mark — what is the meaning of their life? — but also a sign of the great mystery of innocent suffering that humanity always clashes with. This mystery has no answer.
Before them and their families, it is our task not to forget them and their families, to reach out to them to alleviate the fatigue and burden of those who take care of them; to make a great place for them in our hearts, because they help us to put our small pains into perspective; so that finally they make us more eager to reach, every day, the cradle of Bethlehem.
by Mariangela Bertolini, 2002
