Christmastide
| ‘May the Lord give you peace.’ This is the greeting which Francis and his early brothers used as they went around Italy, preaching the gospel and serving the poor. Francis tells us that it had been revealed to him by God. In that spirit he also told his brothers that when they entered a house they were to echo the words of Jesus’ own disciples, and say ‘Peace to this house.’ At Christmas God’s gift of peace becomes visible and tangible, in a child born in poverty, in an occupied land.
Because of the birth of the child Jesus at Bethlehem we can be at peace with ourselves, since God has valued our humanity enough to become one of us; we can be at peace with one another, friends and strangers and enemies alike, since in each human face we can see the face of Jesus, which is the face of God; and we can be at peace with all of creation, since the creator of the world has united in himself the divine and the human, the creator and the created. So let us join in Francis’ prayer:
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