Our wishes

Dear Friend.

We wish you who visit our site and thus in some way are our guest a Christmas of peace and serenity.

Our wishes are accompanied by a homily of Saint Jerome for Christmas: “There was no room for them”. We desire to be close to all those persons who today do not find a place because we do not make a place for them in our land, in our city, in our house, at our table, in our mind, and in our heart: the poor, migrants, refugees, persons who are alone or abandoned.

The feast of Christ’s birth is a reminder that the Lord is there, by those who do not find a place, that Christ is present in them.

The brothers and sisters of Bose

There was no room for them

"Because there was no room for them in the inn." [...] He found no room in the Holy of Holies that shone with gold, precious stones, pure silk, and silver. He is born in the midst of gold and riches, but in the midst of dung, in a stable (wherever there is a stable, there is also dung) where our sins were more filthy than the dung. He is born on a dunghill in order to lift up those who come from it; "from a dunghill he lifts up the poor." (Ps 113:7) He is born on a dunghill, where Job, too, sat and afterwards was crowned.

"There was no room for them in the inn." The poor should take great comfort from this. Joseph and Mary, the mother of the Lord, had no servant boy, no maid servant. From Nazareth in Galilee, they come all alone; they own no work animals; they are their own masters and servants. Here is a new thought. They go to the wayside inn, not into the city, for poverty is too timid to venture among the rich. Note the extent of their poverty. They go to a wayside inn. Holy Scripture did not say that the inn was on the road, but on a wayside off the road, not on it, but beyond it; not on the way of the Law, but on the byway of the Gospel, on the byroad. There was no other place unoccupied for the birth of the Savior except a manger, a manger to which were tethered cattle and donkeys. O, if only I were permitted to see that manger in which the Lord lay! Now, as an honor to Christ, we have taken away the manger of clay and have replaced it with crib of silver, but more precious to me is the one that has been removed. Silver and gold are appropriate for unbelievers; Christian faith is worthy of the manger that is made of clay. He who was born in that manger cared nothing for gold and silver. I do not find fault with those who made the change in the cause of honor (nor do I look with disfavor upon those in the Temple who made vessels of gold), but I marvel at the Lord, the Creator of the universe, who is born, not surrounded by gold and silver, but by mud and clay.

St. Jerome, Homely on the Nativity of Christ IV, PLS 2,189