Remain confident and ready to do anything for Our Lady, and she will do for you incomparably more this Christmas than what you do for her

A Christmas Address

We now turn to the celebration of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ and our souls anticipate the joys of this day, despite the year’s trials.

And that is because, as the angels said, the joy of Christmas comes down to us not only from heaven, but from the highest heaven in that place where glory is eternally given to God. And that is why the joy of Christmas transcends all earthly trial and pain, a comfort to our souls despite all else.

A true Catholic knows that Christmas is an occasion for unspeakable graces, and deep seated joy. Christmas night has an unction that brings down upon men a special feeling of elation at the palpable realization that the Word of God became man and dwelled among us. We now know that Our Lord Jesus Christ’s goodness and meekness, come down to earth 2011 years ago, has never ceased to smile upon mankind and will never cease to smile until the end of the world.

And this realization transports the human soul to a higher zone, to a place where we disconnect from everyday upsets, where we feel that this transcendent, religious fact fills us with a joy that eclipses all earthly sadness and joy.

Christmas transports us to another zone, we feel Our Lady’s smile upon us, and we feel the promise beyond all pain; we feel that beyond this life there is another life where awaits us a God who is infinitely good, accessible, meticulously tender, always ready to forgive, to help; a God who willed to make Himself obedient to her who is also our Mother, solicitous to her every wish and therefore ready to help us at every turn as well.

Thus at midnight, at the momentous hour in which Our Lord Jesus Christ left the maternal cloister of the Most Holy Virgin Mary and entered earth, and the Angels sang, and the shepherds woke, and the star shone, and St. Joseph went into ecstasies and all of nature rejoiced–at that moment, I pray that Our Lady may touch each of your souls with a torrent of graces for 2012, as in the year of the Great Return, of great battles but also of great mercies and conversions.

Never was this hope more legitimate as in these days of aridity, and unimaginable indifference, because it is when the unimaginable is manifested so brutally that we have the right to hope for the special graces and help of God.

So, my dear friends remain confident, battle-ready, looking ahead, and ready to do anything for Our Lady, and she will do for us incomparably more than what we do for her.

(This address was delivered in an informal setting in 1971 to members of the TFP by Plinio Correa de Oliveira and has been translated and edited and adapted by Andrea Philips without his revision.)