A Christmas for all: let's add a place for everyone in our heart

Merry Christmas from Sant'Egidio

 

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Christmas is coming. It’s a celebration that brings light and joy. An ancient book of the Bible, the one of the prophet Isaiah tells us “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light”.

Christmas is a light that illuminates so many dark places of human existence, many places of sorrow.The face of the child in the crib reminds us the faces of poor, vulnerable children, the faces of street children, those of the children forced to flee with the boats, children among the ruins of war and bombed cities, children who cannot go to school because they have been living for so many years of their lives in refugee camps where there is no school.For all of them Christmas comes.

Sant’ Egidio wishes a Christmas for all. It is the feast of generosity in which to imagine a new generosity with so many new things which also concerns the daily life of each of us.Because as it is the feast of the great Christmas Lunch we would like to live every day: without excluding anyone and leaving no one outside the door, because the Christmas child wants everyone to be included.

While from Sant'Egidio I wish on behalf of the whole Community a  very happy Christmas, for a Christmas of peace, joy and light, I also wish you a Christmas of generosity for no one to be forgotten, for no one to be left out of the Christmas celebration. And for the human family to be really extended to all especially to those who need it most and those who would be excluded.

Let’s add a place at the table for the great Christmas meal. Let’s add a place for everyone, in our heart. And let’s think and live like generous people. This is what Christmas asks us.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to all.

May it be a Christmas of peace, of joy and serenity.

Marco Impagliazzo

President of the Community of Sant'Egidio