Adoration of the Magi [PD-US-expired]

Gentile da Fabriano (c. 1370-427) an Italian painter in the Gothic style who worked in central Italy, mostly in Tuscany. His best-known work is this painting from the Strozzi Altarpiece (1423), now in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

By Pope Benedict XVI, Public Catechesis, January 4 2012, continued:

It is only by seeing that God is with us that we can see light for our being, that we can be content to be human beings and live with trust and joy.

And where does this wondrous exchange become truly present, so that it may work in our life and make it an existence of true children of God?

It becomes tangible in the Eucharist.

When we participate in Holy Mass we present what is ours to God: the bread and the wine, fruit of the earth, so that he will accept them and transform them, giving us himself and making himself our food, in order that in receiving his Body and his Blood we may participate in his divine life.

I would like to reflect, lastly, on another aspect of Christmas. When the Angel of the Lord appeared to the Shepherds on the night of Jesus’ Birth, Luke the Evangelist notes that “the glory of the Lord shone around them” (Lk 2:9); and the Prologue of John’s Gospel speaks of the Word made flesh as of the true light coming into the world, the light that can enlighten every man (cf. Jn 1:9). The Christmas liturgy is bathed in light.

Christ’s coming dispels the shadows of the world, fills the Holy Night with a heavenly brightness and reflects the splendor of God the Father on human faces.

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Reprinted from Inside the Vatican magazine, December 2019