Christmas is over, but it stays with us throughout the year. Christmas is an invitation. An invitation to conversion and to opening our hearts to the King of Peace, as the Queen of Peace calls us. Our Lady’s message is both an invitation to examine conscience and a question: Where am I today, a few days after Christmas, and where was I at the beginning of Advent? Have I moved from where I started or have I stayed where I started with promises and good desires?

This Christmas, too, Our Lady brings Jesus to us and desires to give birth to Him spiritually in our hearts with her love and grace. This is the desire of her Immaculate Motherly Heart. As the mystic Angelus Silesius said, “Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born, if He’s not born in the, Thy soul is still forlorn”.

From the Gospel accounts, we do not know the exact date of Jesus’ birth, nor do we know whether he was born in a cave or in a stable. We only see the exact historical period – the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus, who carried out a census. The day of Jesus’ birth is not the day Jesus was born as God in the hearts of the evangelists. The evangelists record very accurately the birth of Jesus in their hearts, not only the day, but the exact time. Just as Jesus was born in the hearts of so many before us, He can and wants to be born in our hearts today.

By the power and might of the Holy Spirit, Jesus wants to be born in us today. The apostles came to understand who Jesus was only after the descent of the Holy Spirit. After the descent of the Holy Spirit, they no longer fear for their lives and are able to undergo martyrdom for Jesus.

   Christmas is an invitation to conversion. Conversion is an encounter with the living God. It is the moment when Jesus Christ is born as God in someone’s heart. And today it is most important to ask: When was Jesus born in my heart? Was he born at all?

   Jesus can be born in us and can give us new birth. Like shepherds, let us have the courage to go to Jesus and worship him. Let us come to Jesus in humility and with a humble and contrite heart. In the Gospel of Luke we read, “Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock” (Lk 2:8).

   The shepherds were given to experience the glory of God. Perhaps God will also give us the gift of experiencing his glory if we draw near to him. This is what the Queen of Peace invites us to do in Her message, “I am with you and am praying for you to open yourselves to receive the King of Peace”

May the motherly call of Our Lady encourage us to open ourselves to Jesus, the King of Peace, who alone can fill our hearts with purpose and peace.  

Let us pray:

(The prayer was written by Cardinal John Henry Newman. It was the most favored prayer of St. Mother Teresa)

„Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine. It will be You shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You. Amen.“