AI translation:
Beloved in Christ the Lord.
In the collect of today’s Holy Mass, the Church cries out: O God, who hast enlightened this most holy night with the brightness of the true light: grant, we beseech Thee, that we may enjoy His happiness in heaven, whose mysteries we have known on earth. Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. And indeed, this Christmas night is illuminated by a supernatural radiance—a radiance difficult to comprehend, a radiance surpassing any light we know on this earth.
But at the same time, my dear ones, every year I repeat that this feast of Christmas is perhaps the saddest feast in the liturgical calendar. Why? Imagine that you are celebrating your birthday. You invite relatives and friends. You prepare food, you decorate your home. When the day of your birthday arrives, the guests come, but no one greets you. No one brings any gifts. The guests have a wonderful time in their own company. They have no need for you; you are completely unnoticed, disregarded. When you think of it, when you imagine this scene, indignation surely arises within you. How can one treat the person whose birth is being celebrated, who is having a birthday, in such a way?
But is it not exactly like that with Christmas? We Catholics—nominal Catholics—have learned to celebrate Christmas without the One who was born; without Christ, and therefore without meaning. We celebrate the feast of Christmas without realizing, or while forgetting, Who was born and why.
This Divine Infant lying in the manger does not arouse much interest in us. It is simply another opportunity to eat, to drink, to talk, to gossip. And for another year in a row, in the majority of supposedly Catholic homes in Poland, it was likely the case that at the Christmas Eve table—and now at the festive table—the names Tusk, Kaczyński, and Braun will be declined through every grammatical case, but no one will mention the name of Jesus. These modern Christmas holidays of ours, which we have learned to celebrate without God, without the One who was born, are terrifyingly sad.
Dear faithful, we may ask ourselves: why is this so? Why Christmas without the Divine Infant? The light has come into the world, we read in the Gospel of St. John, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Modern man flees from this light that comes into the world because he fears this light. This light fills us with terror because in the light, everything is visible.
Look—when you enter a dark room, your first instinct is to look for a source of light. You want the room to be illuminated so that you can see what is around you. That is our natural, reflexive reaction. But it is terrifying that in our spiritual life, we act quite differently. We prefer to remain in darkness than to turn toward the light. We Catholics flee from this light that has come into the world; we turn our eyes away from it; we reject this light because our deeds are evil.
And this light, which comes into the world, comes to illuminate the darkness of our lives. It comes so that we may also know the truth about ourselves—a truth so often uncomfortable, painful; a truth that differs significantly from the image we have of ourselves.
Dear faithful, how much misery in the modern world results from this flight from the light—from the light coming from heaven, the light whose source is God Himself. How much misery results from the fact that modern man prefers to live in darkness—in the darkness of sin, in the darkness of error—rather than turn toward the light.
We gather on this night of Christmas, rejoicing that the shadows of this night are brightened by the light. It is brightened by the light coming from heaven, the light coming from God Himself. May we, my dear ones, no longer flee from this light. May we stand in this light, see what we are truly like, and realize how many changes are still necessary in our lives. How far I fall short of that ideal, that model, which is the Immaculate Virgin, given to us by God as a pattern to follow. How much work on ourselves, my dear ones, still remains in my life.
May we, my dear ones—we Catholics, Polish Catholics living in the 20th century*—never follow in the footsteps of those who have learned to celebrate a "winter holiday," an undefined holiday, a holiday without meaning. The light comes into this world to dispel the darkness of our lives.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ.
ORIGINAL POLISH
Topic: Resistance Bishop Stobnicki Christmas sermon (Read 3357 times)