23rd December
A CHRISTMAS NOVENA
VIII. What Jesus Wants From Us
1. Let us contemplate Jesus lying on a rough pallet of straw in the manger. When we see Him looking at us, let us ask ourselves what it is that He requires of us. In fact, He wants many things from us. First of all, He wants us to weep for our sins and to promise never to fall again as long as we have the assistance of His grace, for which we should pray continually. For this He has become man and has entered into the world. For this He will work miracles, preach His doctrine, and shed His Precious Blood on die Cross. All this He will do to redeem us from sin and to win Heaven for us.
If we return to the path of sin, we destroy the divine work of redemption in as far as it applies to ourselves. We make Christ's passion, death and resurrection useless in our case. We brush aside the chain of favours with which His love has girdled us—the Gospel, the Sacraments, and the Church, our good mother who is always at our side to instruct and direct us, to rescue us from peril, and to distribute to us the gifts of her divine Founder. When we sin, we commit an act of base ingratitude to Jesus and accomplish our own eternal ruin.
The Infant Jesus longs for us to give our hearts to Him. Since He has given us His own, why should we be unwilling to give ours to Him? Who or what can we love if we do not love Jesus? Nothing else is capable of giving us peace of soul and resignation in suffering. Jesus alone can bestow these gifts on us as long as we love and follow Him and abandon ourselves completely to His holy will.
2. “Unless you turn and become like little children,” the Infant Jesus says to us, “you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 18:2) He wishes us to be humble, simple, and innocent like children. As we grow older, unfortunately, many of us become proud, complicated, and vain. We lose the straightforward candour of childhood. Worldly pretentiousness cannot possibly appeal to Jesus since He, Who is truly great, chose to become a tiny Infant. He wishes us to renounce the self-important airs and the intricate methods which we employ in order to conceal the truth, to disguise our lack of virtue, and to assume the appearances of learning and of authority, regardless of the fact that the highest achievement of which we are capable is to be humble, the most necessary knowledge of all is to know Jesus Crucified, and the best kind of authority is the ability to control our passions and to subject ourselves to the will of God. It is in this sense that we must become little children before God and before man. Then Jesus Christ will love us and will grant us His favours.
3. There is one last thing which the Infant Jesus requires of each of us. Nobody else can know what it is, but we know well what He wants. There is bound to be some resolution which we have formed many times in the past but have never properly fulfilled because it cost us too much. Let us not refuse Jesus this sacrifice, for He has loved us so much and has sacrificed Himself entirely for us. As a result of this meditation, let us at last put this resolution into effect with generosity and firmness.
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