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DEAR BABY JESUS

It is already December; looking back, 2023 has flashed past in record time. The end of the year brings a big joy as we end the calendar year with the Advent season, which prepares us for the anticipation of the coming of Baby Jesus. This Christmas, I want to write about a letter that was found from Pope Benedict XVI's (the then Joseph Ratzinger) childhood. 

@Pope_news, Twitter

The young Pope referred to Our Lord as "Baby Jesus" and asked for two spiritual gifts in his letter and received them quite literally later on in his life. I had to search what this "green chasuble" is, and it is a priestly vestment worn to celebrate the Eucharist. In other words, he was indirectly asking Baby Jesus to become a priest. The second request was for a Sacred Heart of Jesus. This showed his early desire to love Our Lord and eventually led him to be called by the Holy Spirit as the Pope. 

Christmas makes the mystery of all that Our Lord did for us come alive. When we speak about Jesus to Noah and Leo, we often talk of Baby Jesus. They see images of Mary and Joseph holding Baby Jesus, which they can relate to as relatively older babies themselves. At the same time, Noah also recognises Jesus on the cross. We then also explain during Mass that Jesus is also in the Eucharist, and we genuflect before the tabernacle in reverence for Jesus. As an adult, this is an intricate mystery to get your head around. It struck me the other day how do you even explain to your children that the little Baby Jesus will in Lent soon be the same Jesus on the cross?! 

I realised this is precisely why we have the seasons of Advent (Christmas) and Lent during the liturgical year and why they are so important to not simply let slip by. God is not a creature like us bound on earth by our understanding of time. This is where our experience becomes limited as humans. We can only think in terms of the here and now. Yes, our Baby Jesus was born more than 2,000 years ago to the Virgin Mary and Mother of God. That is a fact and is now part of history. So why bother celebrating Christmas if Jesus was born already? A weak counter-response is why celebrate your birthday if you were born already! We celebrate a birthday to commemorate the day we were born, as it is a special moment, the day we took our first breath of life. Our existence brought the ultimate joy to our parents, grandparents and family. 

We thank God for the grace of expecting our third little baby. From the 6-week scan, the doctor could already measure the heartbeat of the tiny little baby, no more than one centimetre long. The tiny heart beats at 164 beats per minute (the equivalent heart rate of doing a good workout). In the blessed womb of Our Lady, the little heart of Jesus raced for the love of us. He would grow up, and his heart would grow in love for His people (that is, all of us believers, non-believers and atheists). He would grow to be an adult, be rejected and mistaken as a fraud, and then suffer a gruesome death for the love of us. When Jesus hung on the cross, it is believed his heart was under such strain from the torture. While struggling to breathe, the walls of his heart ruptured and burst. This tiny heart that once raced for the love of us now also burst for tremendous love of us. 

For now, the season we are in is about the coming of this tiny little baby. Jesus came helpless and utterly dependent on his parents, as any baby comes into the world. When we receive Jesus in the Eucharist in the Mass, He again comes so vulnerable to us in the form of the most humble bread. I encourage you this Christmas when receiving Jesus in the unworthy palm of your hand or upon your tongue. Reflect on how He comes to you as vulnerable as He did to Mary and Joseph. Let him enter you by gently caressing the Baby Jesus in your heart with your thoughts and speaking to Him as if He were your little baby. Tell him how much you love Him and care for Him. 

As a parent, you may sometimes get this feeling when loving your child that you hug them so tightly and say, "I love you so much I could eat you up", and I often wondered to myself why I would express it that way? One, I would have heard my Mom say the same to me when I was young. Two, I think it tells something profound. The only way to love more than holding someone is for that person to become one with you as if they were to crawl inside you and reside in your soul. 

I believe that this is why the Baby Jesus chose to come to us in the Mass in the form of bread and wine. There is scientific proof that scientists tested a spot of blood that, in a miracle, appeared on the Eucharist wafer and confirmed that this spot was heart muscle tissue. Wow! That means that when we receive the Baby Jesus, we accept that tiny heart formed as an infant in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. We can receive Jesus in the Mass through the mystery of His death. We can then, with confidence, say to Jesus I love you so much I could eat you up. I say this not in a blasphemous way. Instead, I say this as an expression that the only way I could love you more is for you to really enter the innermost part of my heart and soul and stay a little while with me for Christmas. 

We can learn something from the young Pope this Christmas, and that is to ask for a spiritual gift and not a material gift. Ask the Baby Jesus for something that 10, 20 or 50 years from now will manifest into the greatest gift and make this Christmas your best. 


"I don't want a lot for Christmas

There is just one thing I need

I don't care about the presents

Underneath the Christmas tree


I just want you for my own

More than you could ever know

Make my wish come true

All I want for Christmas

Is you"

(Mariah Carey)



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