Christmas highlights love and peace

By Lionel Wijesiri

Christmas in Singapore is a grand festival, celebrated with a highlight on shopping, entertainment, Christmas lights, and Santa showing up in full furs despite the fact that Singapore is smack in the middle of the tropics. The shopping districts of Orchard Road and Marina Bay explode in a shower of light, while adjoining malls and shopping centres put on extended hours and special deals to attract sightseeing tourists.

I was in Singapore a few days ago and while experiencing the sparkle and glitter of the season, I was truly confused. What does Christmas mean, really, I asked myself.

Santa Claus, sleigh bells, reindeer, Snow falling, icicles forming, Christmas music playing, Christmas lights, Christmas trees, Christmas presents, Shopping, cooking, eating, visiting with friends and family! Today this is what Christmas is all about not only in Singapore but all throughout most of the nations.

I felt that somewhere in the midst of the hustle and bustle of all the festivities, we have lost the real meaning of Christmas.

At the airport, I met Rev. Josef Rayan, a preacher in USA on his way home.

We were having a casual chat for a while and I asked him the same question.

He opened up his hand luggage and took out a bundle of printed papers. He leafed through them and picked up two sheets. "I am sure this might answer your question. Take them along with you and share," he said.

The two sheets carried a part of the Christmas Message delivered by Pope John XXIII delivered exactly 53 years ago, on December 23, 1959 It was a thought-provoking message full of deep philosophical meanings. What he delivered over five decades ago, is quite relevant even for today.

The message says: In the world of today, how many roads of peace have been proposed and imposed? And how many roads have been suggested even to us, who rejoice indeed, with Mary and Joseph, in the sure knowledge of our path and have no fear of the possibility of going astray?

From World War II right up to the present time, what a variety of utterances, what an abuse of this sacred word: "peace, peace".

We pay homage to the good will of the many guides and proclaimers of peace in the world: statesmen, experienced diplomats and influential writers.

But human efforts in the matter of universal peace-making are still far from the point where heaven and earth meet. The fact is that true peace cannot come save from God. It has only one name: the peace of Christ. It has one aspect that impressed on it by Christ who, as if to anticipate the counterfeits of man, emphasised: "Peace I leave you, my peace I give to you" (John 14:28).

The appearance of peace is threefold:

Peace of the heart

Peace is before all else an interior thing, belonging to the spirit and its fundamental condition is a loving and filial dependence on the will of God. Peace is the happy legacy of those who keep the divine law. "Much peace has they who love thy law" (Psalms 118:165). For its part, good will is only the sincere determination to respect the eternal laws of God, to conform oneself to His commandments and to follow His paths - in a word, to abide in the truth.

This is the glory which God expects to receive from man. "Peace to men of good will."

This is solidly based on the mutual and reciprocal respect for the personal dignity of man. He "loved me and gave himself up for me." Thus spake St. Paul to the Galatians (Gal. 2:20).

And if God has loved man to such a degree that indicates that man is of interest to Him and that the human person has an absolute right to be respected. Such is the teaching of the Church which, for the solution of these social questions, has always fixed her gaze on the human person and has taught that things and institutions - goods, the economy, the state - are primarily for man; not man for them.

The disturbances which unsettle the internal peace of nations trace their origins chiefly to this source: that man has been treated almost exclusively as a machine, a piece of merchandise, a worthless cog in some great machine or a mere productive unit.

It is only when the dignity of the person comes to be taken as the standard of value for man and his activities that the means will exist to settle civil discord and the often profound divisions between, for example, employers and the employed.

No peace will have solid foundations unless hearts nourish the sentiment of brotherhood which ought to exist among all who have a common origin and are called to the same destiny.

The knowledge that they belong to the same family extinguishes lust, greed, pride and the instinct to dominate others, which are the roots of dissensions and wars.

It binds all in a single bond of higher and more fruitful solidarity.

The basis of international peace is, above all, truth. For in international relations, too, the Christian saying is valid: "The truth shall make you free" (John 8:32).

It is necessary, then, to overcome certain erroneous ideas: the myths of force, of nationalism or of other things that have prevented the integrated life of nations. And it is necessary to impose a peaceful living together on moral principles, according to the teaching of right reason and of Christian doctrine.

Along with this, and enlightened by truth, should come justice.

This removes the causes of quarrels and wars, solves the disputes, fixes the tasks, defines the duties and gives the answer to the claims of each party.

Peace of Christmas

Justice in its turn ought to be integrated and sustained by Christian charity. That is, love for one's neighbour and one's own people ought not to be concentrated on one's self in an exclusive egotism which is suspicious of another's good.

But it ought to expand and reach out spontaneously toward the community of interests, to embrace all people's and to interweave common human relations. Thus it will be possible to speak of living together, and not of mere coexistence.

Pope John XXIII was absolutely correct. There is little peace in the lives of men and women everywhere.

The genuine meaning of Christmas is simple. Christmas is about peace. It means peace with your family, peace with your neighbour, peace with your society and peace with the world. The peace of Christmas is not a mere absence of strife, but the active experience of a harmony that promotes total well-being regardless of circumstance.