Christmas | “Mercy lived out” according to Father Piumatti

From the diaries of Fr. Piumatti, fd of Pinerolo and missionary in North Kivu for 50 years. Telling Africa and giving it back its word is a gesture of mercy toward it

Christmas…
A little magic word that sparks the imagination, the heart, and fuels faith.
A gift, family, mass-midnight, snow:
A message, a wish, a card, a phrase:
Christmas with your folks – being together – God with us
I am close to you – I miss you … I wish I were near you.

Dreams, feelings and values that mix and coexist well.
Desire for … So many things, the possible ones. That we enjoy.
I’m not talking about measureless and meaningless illuminations: trees that remain
cold even if they have a thousand bulbs; nor am I talking about dinner parties without hunger,
not even of pontificals laden with incense and candles….

But I am talking about simple things, those that even Jesus did not disdain: the wine
at Cana, the meal at Martha and Mary’s.
Yes, craving for all these we have, even here in the forest of the
Congo, as you have it in Modica, in Pinerolo, in Turin.

And why should we be different?

We would like them; but it is difficult for us today: difficult to have them, difficult therefore to offer them to our loved ones here in Muhanga.
This also doesn’t seem right to us.
And I wonder: blame, too, the bloody war?

However He is here: we know that He still chooses to be on the margins as in the stable in Bethlehem. Whether He wanted to be born there, I really don’t know that; but I do know that that world made as it was, left Him only that space.

Certainly those sheep keepers were very happy.
We are also happy today, because we feel Him especially close to us.
He certainly chooses to live with man, with you, with us.

But the places, the moments … it is the world that imposes it, and we also know that these places and moments are not as He would like them to be.
He certainly didn’t want the stable, He didn’t want the ox and the donkey, even though they make poetry and tenderness … in the crib.

Just as He doesn’t want our muddy streets, He doesn’t want the bare feet of these beautiful children, He doesn’t want the huts that make water from the roof even tonight.

So we look around:
We see Elia, Almarosa and Andrea: they have been making this choice for years, choosing to spend Christmas with the people of Muhanga; and tomorrow
Piero and Cristiana, Karel and Ursula will also arrive.

We think of Bethlehem that night: Mary, she was but a little girl, and Joseph her husband, a young carpenter.
Out of the house, and she was about to give birth. They too longing for simple, small, warm, right feelings.

Something more…
the little dinner in a house nearby, with a few friends the beautiful psalms sung, smiling, in the village synagogue, with prayers,
some warmth, some attention….

Instead there was none for them, no room, and they were alone
the two of them there, in the stable, with that child in their arms. Alone.
Why?
Does God talk like that?

Source and image

• Padre Giovanni Piumatti, Fiori selvaggi… profumo d’Africa, pp. 20-21