- svd-generalate
- / Fr. Anselmo R. Ribeiro / Homily / Superior General /
- December 25, 2024
Father General’s homily for the Christmas Vigil
“What a great and sublime example our Savior gave us in His entry into this world. He did not choose glory and riches as his right, but contempt and poverty. (...) Let us consider this well when we worship the Divine Savior in the nativity scene, and let's record his example in our minds so that we can imitate his humility.”
(Saint Arnold Janssen)
Dear brothers and sisters, we celebrate the Lord’s Christmas during a special time for our missionary family, marking our 150th anniversary of our foundation and the Church’s Ordinary Jubilee of the 2025th anniversary of the birth of Jesus.
When carrying the image of baby Jesus in procession during this celebration, for the third time, I felt the weight of being one of the successors of Saint Arnold Janssen. The first time was during the General Chapter, when the communications department published a sequence of photos of all the Superior Generals, from the founder, to myself at the end of the list. The second time was at the opening of our jubilee year, in Steyl, during the Holy Mass on September 8th this year. Entering in procession in the upper church of the Missionary House and presiding over the Eucharist in that place, where every detail was loved and cherished by our founder and achieved with effort, to build a missionary community, was profound. But I need to tell you that repeating Father Arnold’s gesture, of carefully carrying the baby Jesus, takes us all directly to the source and meaning of our missionary vocation.
Father Arnold wanted a congregation dedicated to the Divine Word in order to proclaim the Word of God. “Thus the Divine Word itself became the unifying principle of the spirituality of the Congregation in all its activities and, in fact, the very reason for its existence” (MIOTK, A. Untiring Missionary of the Word and the Spirit, 2022). In 1883 this procession was introduced by Arnold in Steyl and in 1902, all the Congregation’s houses in Europe were already performing performing the same rite.
When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation. God loved the world so much that he sent his son as its Savior (John 3:16). The event that marks the history of salvation and our spirituality is that the one sent by the Father enters the world in this way, small and vulnerable, in human flesh. I believe that this is one of the reasons for Arnold’s tenderness towards the baby Jesus: welcoming human vulnerability as the path chosen by God for the salvation of humanity.
If you allow me, I’ll go a little further. It seems to me that the vulnerabilities are found here: that of the child of God who needs comfort and warmth, and of the man with a heart for the mission, who recognizes that he is small so that God himself can guide him. It wasn’t just pity, I think it was identification. Each person is called to encounter and identify with the child Jesus, born on the outskirts, worshiped by the shepherds in the cold of the night.
“This will be a sign for you: you will find a newborn baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” Luke 2, 12
In the boy wrapped in swaddling clothes and in the ritual that we repeat according to our tradition, we do not simply remember. We take steps towards missionary transformation and conversion. “Father Arnold understood that the great message of Christmas Eve is that we cannot please God unless we become small.” (MIOTK, A. Untiring Missionary of the Word and the Spirit, 2022) This should be a sign for us!
As missionaries, over the past hundred and fifty years, we have accomplished great things. We were pioneers in founding cities, consolidating the Church, educating generations, defending the dignity of life and, of course, preaching the Word of God. We have become the sixth largest male congregation in the Catholic Church and the first among missionary congregations. However, if we do not identify ourselves with the newborn in the nativity scene, recognizing that we are also small, but sent to care for those who are injured along the way, we will not make the life of Jesus, the Divine Word, our life and His mission our mission.
Father Grosse-Kappenberg in his memoirs wrote: “The Superior General always held this ceremony (Christmas with the procession of the Baby Jesus) in the Motherhouse itself (…). He did so for the last time at Christmas 1907. I will never forget the impression the white-haired priest made when he knelt before the Baby Jesus and recited the prayers that welled up in his heart, his face radiant with devotion and holy joy. At that time, he was really in his own state of mind.” Once again I go further, he was in deep identification with the Divine Word incarnate for the salvation of the world.
May the image of the boy wrapped in swaddling clothes be for us, in this jubilee year, a sign of conversion. May our identification with the Divine Word and its incarnation be our testimony before all people. So let it be!
Father Anselmo Ribeiro, SVD
