Christmas and true liberation

On Thursday we celebrate Christmas, one of the greatest feasts for all Christians. Christmas means a radical development for the history of humanity. God became man so that humans could have a share in the nature of God.

Quite naturally this has myriad implications on the level of personal, communal and political way of living of all men and women. Christmas should be the guarantee that all humans live in true freedom, dignity and solidarity. The evangelising message of Christmas leads to human promotion and liberty.

While last week we emphasised the micro-consequences of Christmas today we would like to emphasise the macro ones. It is interesting to note that this week the Pope spoke to the new ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the Holy See and addressed these themes.

When in Santo Domingo on December 12, 1992, the Pope spoke on the fifth centenary of the start of the evangelisation of the Americas he said: "Human promotion must be the logical consequence of evangelisation, which tends to the integral liberation of the person." When he last week addressed the ambassador of that country he again said that the "work of evangelisation and human promotion" are actions "that are not opposed but are intimately connected".

The Pope also stressed that the law of the market and globalisation does not guarantee justice, so there must be solidarity to give people precedence over profits.

"In today's world, it is not enough to limit oneself to the law of the market and its globalisation... Solidarity must be fomented, avoiding the evils that stem from capitalism, which put profit above the person and make (the latter) the victim of so many injustices.

"A development model that does not take into account and address these inequalities cannot prosper in any way," he said.

"Those who always suffer most in the crises are the poor. This is why they must be the special object of the vigilance and attention of the state," the Pope continued. The message was also delivered to us directly by Fr Gustavo Gutierrez, who visited Malta as a guest of Discern.

"The struggle against poverty must not be reduced simply to improving their conditions of life, but to removing them from this situation, creating sources of employment and adopting their cause as one's own," he added.

The themes the Pope addressed are not only intimately tied with the message of Christmas but are also very relevant to us in Malta. To address the economic difficulties that we are facing we will be tempted by the neo-liberal theories that value the market more than the human person. Such a temptation must be resisted.

The Church has a very important role to play in this scenario. The Pope explained:

"Although in her service to society it is not the Church's role to propose solutions of a political or technical order, nevertheless she must and wants to point out the motivations and orientations that come from the Gospel to enlighten the search for answers and solutions.

"At the root of peoples' social, economic and political ills is usually the rejection or neglect of real ethical, spiritual and transcendental values," he added. "It is the mission of the Church to recall, defend and consolidate them.

"In the solution of these problems, it must not be forgotten that the common good is the objective to attain, for which the Church, without claiming competencies that are foreign to her mission, lends her collaboration to the government and to society," he concluded.

A really happy Christmas can only be enjoyed if its social and political dimension is discovered and incarnated in our society.