“On Christmas, the most important are relations: meetings with another man and thus also with God,” Father Samuel Pacholski, the Prior of Jasna Góra said. “God’s love means God’s desire to save man from his demons, from loneliness,” he pointed out.
Asked what one should do to be able to truly and deeply experience Christmas every year, the Prior of Jasna Gora answered that first of all one should slow down and leave everyday worries, affairs, plans.
“We always have a lot of urgent things to do, but the most urgent one is not always the most important. The most important ones are the relationships we build – with people and with God. We often explain that we don’t have much time for it, so we don’t care about these relationships, which are becoming more and more occasional or virtual,”
the friar remarked.
“It’s important to meet in the same place, looking eyes with each other, sharing the wafer. Because that is the deep dimension of humanity! I think that if we lose this, somewhere we lose a part of human nature, human sensitivity,”
he warned.
“We will be more and more strangers to each other, more and more isolated. And a man who is a stranger, who is isolated, and therefore alone, is certainly unhappy,”
he stressed.
“In fact, in Catholic theology, hell means eternal solitude. So, we want to cultivate the opposite: to do everything so that people want to meet, want to get to know each other, want to talk, want to be curious about each other,”
Fr Pacholski explained.
“And this curiosity also comes primarily from faith in the mystery of Christmas – because God was curious about man, about humanity. His love also means this curiosity and desire to save man, and so to save him from himself, from his demons, from his loneliness,”
he clarified.
“That’s why this is so important. It is not only about symbols, external signs but about what touches human nature most profoundly and, in my opinion, is imperishable,” the Prior of Jasna Gora has stressed.
the Prior of Jasna Gora has stressed.
He added that he was aware of that when he met the visitors to Jasna Góra on Christmas Day or when he went to meetings outside the monastery – to acquaintances, friends and family. “This is the kind of moment when, as I encourage others, I decelerate from my daily responsibilities,” he pointed out.
“They’ll come back to us after Christmas anyway. So, let’s give ourselves a break: put down the smartphones, put down the laptops and let’s want to meet, despite the pandemic, as much as possible here and now, in the real-time dimension,”
Fr. Samuel Pacholski appealed.