Every year, the Movement of Communion and Liberation proposes an artistic image and a text to help live the mystery of Christmas.

This year, the image is The Adoration of the Magi by Gaetano Previati.
The text is composed of two passages. The first, by Benedict XVI, is drawn from the homily of the Holy Mass concluding the meeting with the “Ratzinger Schülerkreis” (Mariapoli Center, Castel Gandolfo, September 2, 2012).
The second, by Fr. Luigi Giussani, is from the book At the Origin of the Christian Claim (McGill-Queen’s University Press 1998, p. 53).

Here are the two passages:

No one can say: I have the truth—this is the objection raised—and, rightly so, no one can have the truth. It is the truth that possesses us, it is a living thing! We do not possess it but are held by it. God came so close to us that He Himself became a man: this should disconcert and surprise us again and again! He is so close that He is one of us. He knows the human being, He knows it from within; He has experienced all its joys and all its suffering. As a man, He is close to me, close “within earshot.”

Benedict XVI


The greatest miracle, which left a deep imprint on the disciples every day, was not the healing of crippled legs, the cleansing of diseased skin, or the restoration of sight to the blind. The greatest miracle of all was that truly human gaze which revealed man to himself and was impossible to evade. Nothing is more convincing to man than a gaze which takes hold of him and recognizes what he is, which reveals man to himself. Jesus saw inside man. No one could hide in front of Him, and before Him the depths of conscience had no secrets.

Luigi Giussani

Translations are available in various languages and can be viewed on the home page of the CL International website: clonline.org.