Real salvation isn't found by looking upward for answers, but by looking down, toward humility, care for the poor, children, and the excluded, Pope Leo XIV said Wednesday during his first Christmas Eve Mass.
"For millennia across the Earth, peoples have gazed up at the sky, giving names to the silent stars and seeing images therein. In their imaginative yearning, they tried to read the future and the heavens, seeking on high for a truth that was absent below amidst their homes," Pope Leo said before thousands during a service at St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.
"Yet as if grasping in the dark, they remained lost, confounded by their own Oracles. On this night, however, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness on them has light shined," he added.
"Behold the star that astonishes the world, a spark newly lit and blazing with life. To you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior who is the Messiah, the Lord. Into time and space in our midst comes the one without whom we would exist."
Pope Leo also expressed that Christmas, in turn, is not a clever fix to the world's problems but a love story that demands response: gratitude for the gift, and a mission to carry faith, charity, hope, and peace into a broken world, unafraid of the night, moving toward a new dawn.
"Therefore, announce the joy of Christmas, which is a feast of faith, charity, and hope," he told parishioners.
"It's a feast of faith because God becomes man born of the Virgin. It's a feast of charity because the gift of the redeeming son is realized in fraternal self-giving.
"And it's a feast of hope because the child Jesus kindles it within us, making us messengers of peace with these virtues in our hearts, unafraid of the night, [and] we can go forth to meet the dawn of a new day."
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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