Christmas was celebrated with public festivity in Bethlehem for the first time since 2022.
“Caesar’s decree seems to dominate the scene: the emperor who counts, records, organizes and govern,” Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, OFM, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, preached at Midnight Mass in Bethlehem (video). “Yet, without knowing it, that very decree becomes an instrument of a greater design.”
“This is one of the great announcements of Christmas: God does not wait for history to get better before He enters it. He enters while history is what it is,” Cardinal Pizzaballa continued. “Thus, He teaches us that no time is definitively lost and no situation is too dark for God to dwell in.”