These are hectic days, even though the health situation is trying to slow them down. Also in the brotherhood you can feel that it is Christmas: carols, living nativity scene, the Royal Page who collects the letters of the little ones, special attention to needy families. A continuous hustle and bustle. At the end it calms down and you return home, collected, to assemble your Nativity in which to prolong the Holy Night in your home and your soul.
If you want I can help you to assemble it.
The first thing is to ensure a good structure. It will not be seen, but it is the basis on which everything else is based. The legs of that structure are already prepared and defined in the aims of the Brotherhood: the Formation that the brothers must receive, the Charity that they must live and the Public Worship, liturgical, that is rendered to God in the name of the Church, by the person and in the form determined by her. The fourth leg, also comes in the Rules, check it out, is the effort to bring the Christian spirit to society.
These legs are assembled with the tail of freedom, because only from freedom can one love and obey, for there is no greater expression of freedom than obedience: to the Church, to the Pope, to her pastors.
On that support you can now spread the planks of human virtues - fortitude, sobriety, work, loyalty, sincerity and so many others - that will support the building of your inner life.
Now, in this solid structure, we can put, with constant care, the cork mountains, the houses, the river, the arid landscapes and the welcoming caves. Also the different figurines that will accompany us and to which we have to bring the joy of God made man with the good criterion of our example and doctrinal formation.
We can now let the water run from the Charity that pours generously through rivers and fountains, to end up in serene lakes where everyone comes to rest their bodies and wash their souls.
And design horizons of Esperanza. Sometimes they open up in the open countryside, others can be glimpsed through caves and gorges that seem to tower over us; but they always find a way out towards wide and luminous horizons.
Currents of Charity, horizons of Hope..., it still remains for us to place the lights of the Faith that illuminate every corner, giving unusual reliefs even to the simplest things. Sometimes the entire Nativity remains in darkness, with no more light than a sad lantern that flickers dying; but little by little, that lantern that never goes out completely, is accompanied by a soft glow in the background that grows until it fills with light and relief the entire Nativity, its landscapes, its rivers and each of the figures that we have been placing.
Everything is ready. All that remains is to place the Child, his Mother and St. Joseph. Take them out of the case of your heart, perhaps old and spoiled by the passage of time (there are already so many years!), where your parents or grandparents put them, and place them with the same care and the same excited innocence as when you were a child.
Thus, so simply, the Earth receives the dazzling irruption of the divine in ordinary life and what until then had been a secret, known only to Mary and Joseph, is now a reality admired by all who approach it with a clean heart.
You can now contemplate your work and present your offering.
"Lord, you are still very small, you have just been born, but you can do so much and I have so much to ask of you! From child to Child: in your hands I place my family, my Brotherhood, my work, my city, my Homeland and all the illusions, clean and noble, renewed every year before the endearing Mystery. Also the sorrows, worries, absences, loneliness".
The Holy Family thanks you for your effort and your affection in the assembly, because this Nativity of which I speak to you we began to build it on the day of our baptism and we will finish it when the Child invites you to enter the Portal; but there you will not be alone, you will meet the old figurines that preceded you and led you to the Manger, to sing with them an eternal carol. Behind you are the ones you have been placing and guiding towards the Portal, who one day will also join that eternal choir of bell ringers.
Christmas in the Brotherhood, Christmas in your home, Christmas in your soul, Merry Christmas!
D. in Business Administration. Director of the Instituto de Investigación Aplicada a la Pyme. Eldest Brother (2017-2020) of the Brotherhood of the Soledad de San Lorenzo, in Seville. He has published several books, monographs and articles on brotherhoods.
