  KATH.NET REPORT: *INTERNET TRANSLATION* documented the sermon on the Christmas in the high Cathedral Cologne on 25 December 2011Cardinal Meisner: Dear Sisters, dear brothers! 1. "Maria wrapped him (the child) in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there is no place for them in the hostel" (Lk 2.7). So the evangelist Luke told the improbable mystery of the incarnation of God us in the Holy night.  Today, on Christmas day, John, the Evangelist reported the same fact by writing: "in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God." "The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of the only son of the father, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1,1.14). This Johannine Christmas message brings us back to the time - Yes, if so - speak as a man long before the world was created, and before there were people and was angels in heaven, as the only God. We repeatedly asked whether God was at that time lonely. No! He was not lonely, because he is a God in three persons, because he is love. And love may exist only to several. He is father, son and holy spirit as a God. God is pleased to itself. He was pleased but also the things that once wanted to create his omnipotence. In his spirit as it were all of these things flourished already on particular people without number like a starry sky with countless stars. Each star a man. And you were one of these stars. Because God was already your. Already at that time he has thought of you and your name called. Your actual origin and your destination is there - I speak again after human way - billion years and ages ago. And that God became even man, he knew so well before the creation of the world and man, said yes and loved. Christmas he is human, and thus he identifies bodily also with the people. 2. Jesus can say therefore that we people that he knows us, as he knows the father. Here, one senses which means Christmas. Just as God in Christ, no one is us humans. He, the son knows the father, as no one else knows it. No one knows the father as only the son from the roots of his divinity produced. In this way he knows even produced but also us people not instruction, but the roots of the human condition. He is out so, if one may say again after human way, man of nature God by nature and since Christmas. No one is in the human existence as deep as Christ. No one can be so close to the people as he. Since Christmas, he is called "the son of man". Neither is man as he so dearly, so knowing, so convincing. And therefore he knows like no one else. Therefore, touches and moves us his word in mark and leg, in heart and mind. And that is why, Dear Sisters, dear brothers, we people in Jesus are deeper and more widely understood than we could even ever understand Word. And so we must trust people to Christ's message deeper than on the word of the dearest and most intelligent fellow man. All people, also the favourite, also the most intelligent, the wisest are just other people, one of many others at this point. He is God and man, the son of man but. And therefore goes without saying, that he can call all of us by its name. "I thee by name called, you belong to me" (JES 43,1), it is called in the old Covenant. And therefore, it is apparent, when he says in the image word of the good Shepherd that he goes forth before us people and we follow him, because his call makes familiar it us. Since Christmas, we can say that now one, and only an only one, to the true and to the most essential and deepest of human existence has access, because he has become one of us as God: Jesus Christ. We want so touch at the origin of our lives, then we touch the today's Gospel, as it says: "In the beginning was the word…", and I was already at the beginning as a loving idea in his mind. Will I so according to speak, then I can and I have it, the human being that has become, eternal Word of God speak. The inner shape of all Christians is Jesus himself, is the true God and true man, so the Christ. Who wants to speak to another person, that is his word in the other, must speak through Christ he who is the Incarnate Word of God. He must have purify his own thought by he inserts it in the mind of Christ. It must be true making his speeches by giving into his speeches in his saying. But then thinking and talking properly because his thoughts and speeches from the body and returns to the place, which is Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God of. 3. The Christmas man aligns his intentions according to the spirit of Christ. He flexes his will to the will of Christ into which is the love in person. God has become compliant in Christ Christmas with us. Now, we are invited to live us after our human possibilities in this compliance. God knows us - as we have heard - since forever ago in his mind. The Gospel of John says Yes: he is the word that everything has become. And without the word, nothing that has became (cf. Jn 1.3). Of course we can talk as people who are bound to space and time, only in terms of space and time, which are not applicable for God. Since eternity produced and always we live in the thoughts of God. Of course not, like that is with us people, that we say: "You're me in the idea of always present". This has a very different and deeper level of reality in God. We celebrate Christmas the celebration of the birth of Christ, the arrival of God in human form. And I have actually always preached this sermon about the people. And in fact, Christmas is also the feast of man par excellence. In the Holy Mass we pray: "O God, you have the people in his or her dignity is wonderfully created and still wonderful renewed" by the coming of Jesus Christ. We feel that the distribution of the faith is of a so incredible importance, and not because God or the Church, but because of people? Man may in his immense dignity only be - access, if he knows about his origins of the triune God. And because of this, could the eternal, immense God man, i.e. include as we can live in space and time. We have now repeatedly said: now is the earthly man, thats the created manifestation of God, because God became true man in Jesus Christ. Because he has remained but true God, there is the possibility of becoming the invitation and the vocation of man as God now. This is not only the desire of God, but also the vocation of man by God. Wherefore, he will present as a true man in the celebration of the Eucharist in the poor figures of bread and wine and true God, so that all who communicate him are transformed into its form, just as he has been in the stable of Bethlehem and the day of the celebration of the Eucharist will continue. The blessed Pope John Paul II said: "The incarnation of God means to human speech a turning point in existence of Trinitarian and eternal and immutable God himself". Because God is love, he would like to infect us with his divinity. And where we have caught fire this love, we want to touch other people with this fascination of God so that they as God can be by the masses of people. This is our vocation and to God became man. Angelus Silesius says therefore very simply but impressively: "Were Christ born a thousand times to Bethlehem, but not in you: you lay yet eternally lost". And we add: "And not a single time in me and my family, my colleagues and in my then he would have been Christmas still work colleagues, with us not the goals". Forget we not, before this unlikely Christmas event stands as the first word to the shepherds and from there to the people: "Do not be afraid…", so the Angels said, "Today is born you in the city of David of the Savior" (Lk 2, 10-11). We fear not this divine dimension of our existence as human beings and we forward our appeal, we are not only called the children of God, but we are. Amen. + Joachim Cardinal Meisner Archbishop of Cologne |
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