I am a hundred per cent sure that most of us know the popular song White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin in 1942.

"I am dreaming of a white Christmas". That is how the song starts.

The context which brought it about was that of the Second World War.

The latter separates and prompts nostalgia. Even nowadays, in the midst of the international upheaval of wars and huge influx of migrations, we too need to be dreaming of a special Christmas. A humble Christmas.

Because the hub and kernel of the Christmas solemnity is none other than humility!

I am reminded of this powerful fact by one of Pope Francis' weekly public audiences in St Peter's Square, precisely that of 18 December of last year. In his address to groups of visitors who spoke different languages, the Holy Father said: "God abases himself, descends to earth as someone small and poor, which means that to be like him we should not put ourselves above others, but on the contrary, abase ourselves, give ourselves in service, make ourselves small with the small and poor with the poor." He also said that "the birth of Jesus is the evidence that God has taken man's side once and for all, to save us, to raise us up from the dust of our miseries, our difficulties, our sins".

In saying this Pope Francis was clearly simplifying Pope Saint Leo the Great's teaching regarding how the mystery of the Incarnation is an appropriate theme for joy both to angels and human beings. On the Feast of the Nativity, this great Roman Pontiff wrote: "Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who in the beginning was with God, through whom all things were made and without whom was nothing made (John 1:1-3), with the purpose of delivering man from eternal death, became man: so bending Himself to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty, that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher impaired by its new associate. Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with possible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other."

This wonderfully humble joining of what is eternal with what is temporal, thus the unfathomable mystery of incarnation, essentially takes place in every Eucharist we celebrate. It was Saint Francis of Assisi who, in his first writings about the Lord's Body, makes us fully aware of this outstanding yet humble reality.

 "Behold daily He humbles Himself as when from His 'royal throne' He came into the womb of the Virgin; daily He Himself comes to us with like humility; daily He descends from the bosom of His Father upon the altar in the hands of the priest. And as He appeared in true flesh to the Holy Apostles, so now He shows Himself to us in the sacred Bread; and as they by means of their fleshly eyes saw only His flesh, yet contemplating Him with their spiritual eyes, believed Him to be God, so we, seeing bread and wine with bodily eyes, see and firmly believe it to be His most holy Body and true and living Blood. And in this way our Lord is ever with His faithful, as He Himself says: 'Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world'."

If Jesus is with us why not celebrate Christmas all year round by receiving Him daily in the Eucharist and generously serving Him in the needy? Is this not humility?

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

Paola