Holiday greetings are a nice custom, but they are also an opportunity to assess how much we care about each other, how much we have grown closer or, on the contrary, how much we have grown apart over the past year.
When writing a season’s greeting to someone you care about, it is hard to avoid the touch of the conventional. You may feel that you’re being superficial, distant and cold. Even with the best of intentions, inwardly you suspect yourself of formality.
Another thought follows: do others feel the same? If you look at their seasonal greetings, you may suspect a similar sort of formalism or superficiality. A superficiality that seems harmless, at least as long as it remains consequence-free and undeclared—sometimes even directed at ourselves. We even act in spite of it: we get in touch with our fellow human beings, we pass on kind thoughts, generous encouragements and exhortations, wishes for the better—all in response to the simple need to hope for a more promising future, a more generous life. Anyone who wants to develop, to rise, to improve, will look forward and leave behind (or think they are leaving behind) all their shortcomings. Once a year we renew, if not our real life, at least the hope with which we resume life after the last second of the old year.
But where does the shadow of melancholy that hangs over us when we read the messages we send or the ones we receive originate?
From cold season’s greetings…
A cause could be found in the way we do things: short, often uninspired, unoriginal and non-personalised messages are sent by text message or e-mail, with the excuse of being, well, speedier—as if speed were the most important criterion. However, it often happens that lack of time forces us to use them to ensure that our greetings arrive at the right time. We also use this as an excuse for preferring them to a phone call, so as not to call at a bad time.
It is precisely these excuses that show how distant and cold we have become if we no longer consider it desirable to create a special closeness through dialogue, or at least through a handwritten greeting card addressed to someone in particular. Do you remember the greeting cards of the pre-digital era, which we carefully selected and wrote in advance, thinking of a heartfelt message that suited the personality of the recipient? There is an undeniable difference in the warmth of the soul between then and now, when we send the same message to the “collective soul” of computer addresses or mobile phone numbers.
It is an imitation of communication, similar to the English greeting “How do you do?” to which the answer is the same—”How do you do?”—and nothing more, although it is a question. Or similar to ultra-processed meals that are bought frozen and are supposed to be reheated later to become a proper meal.
But what about our communication outside the holiday setting, the everyday kind? I once came across a motto on the blog of a priest friend of mine that intrigued me: “The apocalypse will come when we all go offline”. I asked him what it meant, and I understood that he was paraphrasing, for us in the civilised world, a warning from the Egyptian Patercary, which said that the end of the world would come when the paths between the monks’ monasteries disappeared—in other words, when the proximity of those who are isolated from the world but close in spirit will no longer generate friendship and the need for communication between people. And for those of us who communicate on the virtual “paths” of the Internet—when we will no longer follow them either.
This gives us food for thought, especially as we have come to a point where we have become so accustomed to transmitting information on a daily basis that we have thwarted genuine, calm communication and openness towards our fellow human beings. Because of the constant lack of time, we postpone this genuine openness to more relaxed times, to times of respite, such as the holidays. But when even during the holidays we become cold and hurried, it is time to ask ourselves what is happening to us, why we stop giving each other time.
A diffuse guilt, difficult to put into words, arises within us, as if towards someone we have wronged; that someone is first and foremost our better self, perhaps from a long time ago, or perhaps the one we had imagined as an ideal but who we have misplaced. Then we become aware of our alienation from our fellow human beings, that we are less and less interested in what they do, how they are, what their needs are, what they want, what they think and so on. Formal greetings are merely the surface effect of our social desensitisation.
…to the Good News
The echo of the Saviour’s words seems to have caught up with us: “…the love of many will grow cold.”[1] A cold shiver comes over us when we think that if our greetings and well-wishes indicate a worldly distraction and estrangement between us, this detachment will be all the more evident when concrete help, deeds and actions are needed for the benefit of our fellow human beings.
The Saviour also points out the solution. There is no doubt as to the cause of this progressive coldness of our love, for He declares: “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.” Therefore, the only way not to be affected by the “global cooling” is to oppose lawlessness, that is, sin, the violation of the divine law that springs from divine love.
But if maintaining this soul-warming love means doing God’s will, we wonder how exactly and by what powers we are to do this. It seems clear that this is a task beyond us, and the Saviour warns: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”[2] But He goes on to promise: “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”[3] By receiving His teaching, the words of the Word, we are moulded by His love so that we can love our neighbour.
It has been said of the Holy Gospel that it is God’s love letter to us human beings. As its name indicates, it is the Good News of salvation, of the grace given to us to become children of God. It is a very old but priceless letter that reminds us of ourselves, the transformed ones that we might one day become, sharing in divine love.
The Word contained in this love letter and in this Good News is the Saviour Himself. In other words, God writes to us with Himself, in the form of the Word revealed and incarnate, in order to form us as His children. A higher pedagogy than this cannot exist or be imagined.
The mature are often complacent with they think that for them the period of education is over. At the beginning of a new phase of life, a new profession, or even a new year, they concentrate on their “adult” activities. Hardly anything could make them feel like children again, with something to learn (or unlearn), or make them wish for a new educational process. But the pedagogy God proposes is one of love, and this nourishing love is what everyone needs: it gives the strength to behave like adults, to care for each other, but also to remain children, His children.
This is what God offers us: the joy of allowing ourselves to be transformed by love, to be protected, comforted, inspired and, not least, educated. It is consoling to know that at every stage of life, even in old age, when everything that makes up your horizon is behind you, a good Father promises you this. The message that concerns you is that, wherever and however you are, you are His beloved child and His letter is waiting for you.
