SW News: The “poverty of the manger” shows believers where the true riches in life are to be sought, said Pope Francis while preaching the homily during the Christmas Mass in St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday evening. The pontiff said that those precious things are not in money and power. Instead, one can find them in relationships and people.

Pope Francis said that the greatest gift one can achieve is Jesus Christ. This, he said, can be done when people learn how to love and serve “His poverty in the poor”.

His Holiness the pope said that it was not an easy task to “leave the comfortable warmth of worldliness to embrace the stark beauty of the grotto of Bethlehem, but let us remember that it is not truly Christmas without the poor.”

During the Holy Mass, concelebrated by top prelates in the Vatican and attended by hundreds of nuns, male religious, seminarians, and believers from several nations, the Holy Father also emphasized the “concreteness” which is manifest in the Baby Jesus lying in a manger.

“A child lying in a manger presents us with a scene that is striking, even crude,” he said. “It reminds us that God truly became flesh,” the pontiff added.
According to him, the love of Jesus for each one is palpable and concrete in every moment of his life. He reminded believers of the fact that Jesus embraced the “roughness of the wood and harshness of our existence.” He wants each member of the faithful to be wrapped in the love for the needy, said the pope, pointing to how the Divine Child lay in the manger wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Throughout his sermon, the Holy Father’s sermon was focused on the importance that Luke the Evangelist places on the manger in which Mary lay her Son.