Christmas 2025
Blessed and Joyous Christmas to You!
At Christmas in 1992, I received a simple but heartwarming book entitled “The Heart of Christmas,” by Susan Florence. It was a simple read and a powerful message: that the first Christmas is a reminder that the Christ child brought love into the world. He also brought joy and peace.
When we look at the conditions reflected throughout the world today, the love of Christ is needed more than ever. With so much anger and distrust—not only among people but especially among nations—love must be the answer: a genuine, self-giving love that the Christ Child brought into the world. This authentic love of Christ, when both given and embraced by all, becomes a healing force that enriches us with true and lasting peace.
That is the real point of Christmas. As Pope Benedict XVI so beautifully reminded us:
“Christmas says to us, amid all our doubts and bewilderment: God exists. Not as an infinitely distant power that can best terrify us; not as being’s ultimate ground that is not conscious of itself. Rather, he exists as One who can be concerned about us; he is such that everything we are and do lies open to his gaze. But that gaze is the gaze of Love. For anyone who accepts this in faith and knows it by faith, there is no longer any ultimate isolation. HE is here. The Light that one man became in history and for history is not an accident or something powerless, but Light from Light. Hope and encouragement that emanates from this light thus acquires a whole new depth. Because it is entirely divine hope, we can and should accept it as also an entirely human hope and pass it on to others.”
Every Christmas—which does not exist for only one day but unfolds within the Octave, eight days of true rejoicing in His gift to us—invites us into this mystery. The Christmas story is not just a simple or sentimental manger scene. It is the central story of God’s saving power entering the world to redeem His children. This power of God’s love embraced and continues to embrace shepherds and kings alike—the Magi, men of wisdom—and everyone in between.
Christmas is love in motion. It is not only a day to remember but a way of live—lived in generosity, surely in compassion, and above all in joy. We are to embrace this spirit of the season and allow it to move us to touch the lives of others. I see more than ever the multitudes of the homeless, the poor, and the discouraged. These individuals live quite literally below our hill at the Abbey, in bushes, in tents, or just barely surviving. They seek the dignity and respect owed to every human person, regardless of the circumstances that affect society today.
In a Christmas meditation, Father Peter John Cameron, O. P. writes: “Word became flesh, you make your dwelling among us. Yet you do not live your life for yourself, but for us. And you enable us to live in you all that you lived. Help me to embrace this truth with all my mind and heart. Come and live your life in me. Empty me of my willfulness, my petulance, my hardness, my cynicism, my contemptuousness. Fill me with your truth, your strength, your fortitude, your purity, your gentleness, your generosity, your wisdom, your heart, and your grace.”
The true gifts of Christmas do not come wrapped in colored ribbons and colored papers. Instead, they draw us to a manger, where the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, born in a stable and wrapped in swaddling clothes, freely gives Himself so that we might discover what true love, joy, and happiness truly are.
Christ is the birth of a new world. The birth of Christ transforms our world and forms a people who belong to Him. What a gift! Christmas meets our hope in one way, yet it also calls us to await something more. It prevents us from closing in on ourselves within the present world and stirs us to abandon ourselves to the Spirit of the Lord, so that He may complete His work of renewal. May this Christmas fill you with lasting joy, steadfast hope, and a deep love for God and for all humanity.
In Christ,
Abbot Sharbel Ewen, O.S.B.
Prince of Peace Abbey
