India (LifeSiteNews) – The joy of Christmas is contagious. Even as we live in the midst of this broken world desperately in need of healing, it’s difficult to shrug off the happiness and joy of Christmas.
Two thousand years ago, the angel proclaimed, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” That news of great joy for all the people rings true even today.
Pope St. John Paul II writes, “The source of this ‘great joy’ is the Birth of the Saviour; but Christmas also reveals the full meaning of every human birth, and the joy which accompanies the Birth of the Messiah is thus seen to be the foundation and fulfilment of joy at every child born into the world.”
The birth of every child is a joyful event. It’s a joy that’s experienced not just by one individual but by the society at large. In countries like India, sweets are distributed and the whole community rejoices at the birth of the child. If we as a society and community are filled with joy at the birth of every child such that it is contagious then wouldn’t its opposite be true as well? That just as rejoice at the birth of every child, we mourn at the death of every child. If great joy accompanies the birth of every child wouldn’t great distress and unhappiness accompany the brutal murder of every child?
The U.N. World Happiness Report released earlier this year revealed that India ranked 139 out of 149 countries in terms of how happy its citizens perceive themselves to be. Earlier this year India increased its abortion limit all the way up to 24 weeks.
This year also marked 50 years of the legalization of abortion in India. According to the world, abortion should have made us happier as a country, it should have made us freer, it should have empowered us and yet we rank a pathetic 139 of 149 countries. And isn’t this obvious, how could we as a country allow the slaughter of about 15.6 million of our own children and still hope to be happy?
Our world is trying really hard to be joyful and peaceful while it rejects the greatest Joy and the Prince of Peace. Mother Teresa said in her Nobel Lecture:
“Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today — abortion which brings people to such blindness. And for this I appeal in India and I appeal everywhere — ‘Let us bring the child back.’ The child is God’s gift to the family. Each child is created in the special image and likeness of God for greater things — to love and to be loved.”
Let us bring the child back, indeed! The Christ child is missing from our Christmas and children are missing from our country. A world that hates children can never be happy and a world that kills children can never be peaceful. Mary’sfiat at the Annunciation made her the Mother of God and at the foot of Calvary she became our Mother. Our Mother of Sorrows grieves at the killing of her children in the womb by the thousands every single day.
Pope Benedict XVI said in his Christmas message of 2005:
“At Christmas we contemplate God made man, divine glory hidden beneath the poverty of a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger; the Creator of the Universe reduced to the helplessness of an infant. Once we accept this paradox, we discover the Truth that sets us free and the Love that transforms our lives.”
Indeed, this season exhorts us to remember our Savior who came to the earth as an unborn child in the womb of our blessed Mother; it asks us to remember John the Baptist who was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb; it reminds us of the joyful visitation when the unborn child in the womb of Elizabeth acknowledged the Savior of the world yet unborn in the womb of Mary; it reminds us of the difficult circumstances in which our blessed Mother gave birth to the Son of God; it asks us to remember the horrifying massacre of the newborn babies by Herod, and it asks us to remember St. Joseph who was willing to sacrifice for his family.
The Christmas story is a Pro-Life story. May the Truth and Love of Christmas empower us to share the Gospel of Life with our own friends and family.
Happy Christmas!