On Christmas eve, Leo urges believers to welcome Jesus in every human life

ROME – Pope Leo XIV inaugurated the Christmas season on Wednesday, telling believers that receiving the infant Jesus in current times also implies respecting and welcoming every human life, including migrants.

In his Dec. 24 homily for the Christmas Eve vigil Mass, the pope said that to find the savior, “one must not gaze upward, but look below: the omnipotence of God shines forth in the powerlessness of a newborn.”

“The need for care and warmth becomes divine since the Son of the Father shares in history with all his brothers and sisters. The divine light radiating from this Child helps us to recognize humanity in every new life,” he said.

Leo said God chose to heal humanity’s blindness by revealing himself “in each human being, who reflect his true image, according to a plan of love begun at the creation of the world.”

Quoting his predecessor Benedict XVI, he said that as long as this truth is obscured by error, “then there is no room for others either, for children, for the poor, for the stranger.”

“These words of Pope Benedict XVI remain a timely reminder that on earth, there is no room for God if there is no room for the human person. To refuse one is to refuse the other. Yet, where there is room for the human person, there is room for God,” he said.

Pope Leo is currently celebrating his first Christmas since his election to the papacy, with celebrations including the vigil Mass on Christmas Eve, as well as morning Mass and the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing on Christmas day.

Celebrated earlier in recent years due to Pope Francis’s ailing health, this year’s Christmas Eve vigil Mass was celebrated at 10p.m. local time in St. Peter’s Basilica on a day of heavy rainfall.

Leo in his homily reflected on the image of the star, an important symbol in Augustinian spirituality signifying holiness and proximity to the divine.

“There is no darkness that this star does not illumine, for by its light all humanity beholds the dawn of a new and eternal life,” he said, urging believers to “marvel” at the wonder of Christ’s birth and the “wisdom” of his incarnation at Christmas.

In the infant Jesus, God does not just give the world a new life, but his own life, which will be offered for all in the act of salvation, he said, saying God “does not give us a clever solution to every problem, but a love story that draws us in.”

“In response to the expectations of peoples, he sends a child to be a word of hope. In the face of the suffering of the poor, he sends one who is defenseless to be the strength to rise again,” he said.

Faced with violence and oppression, God’s response, the pope said, was to kindle “a gentle light that illumines with salvation all the children of this world.”

Taking a shot at market inequalities which he has repeatedly criticized since his election, Leo said that “while a distorted economy leads us to treat human beings as mere merchandise, God becomes like us, revealing the infinite dignity of every person.”

“While humanity seeks to become ‘god’ in order to dominate others, God chooses to become man in order to free us from every form of slavery,” he said, asking, “Will this love be enough to change our history?”

The answer to this question, the pope said, “will come as soon as we wake up from a deadly night into the light of new life, and, like the shepherds, contemplate the Child Jesus,” putting God back into the center.

Pope Leo noted that scripture, in describing the night of Jesus’s birth, says that above the stable where Jesus was born, a “heavenly host” of stars adorned the sky.

“These are unarmed and disarming hosts, for they sing of the glory of God, of which peace on earth is the true manifestation,” he said, and referred to the opening of the Jubilee of Hope last year on Christmas Eve, when Pope Francis inaugurated the jubilee by opening the holy door in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Quoting Francis’s homily last Christmas Eve, Leo said that Jesus’s birth and its commemoration at Christmas rekindles in Christians the “gift and task of bringing hope wherever hope has been lost,” because “with him, joy flourishes; with him, life changes; with him, hope does not disappoint.”

“With these words, the Holy Year began. Now, as the Jubilee draws to a close, Christmas becomes for us a time of gratitude and mission; gratitude for the gift received, and mission to bear witness to it before the world,” he said.

The pope closed his homily urging Christians to announce the joy of Christmas, which he said is a feast of faith, hope and charity.

“It is a feast of faith, because God becomes man, born of the Virgin. It is a feast of charity, because the gift of the redeeming Son is realized in fraternal self-giving. It is a feast of hope, because the Child Jesus kindles it within us, making us messengers of peace,” he said.

“With these virtues in our hearts, unafraid of the night, we can go forth to meet the dawn of a new day,” he said.

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