Colombo Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith called on all to celebrate Christmas in giving, sharing, and avoiding all forms of extravagance.

Issuing a message the Cardinal said:”Once again, we are celebrating Christmas, and it is a most joyful occasion on which we remember the birth of Jesus Christ in the history of mankind. Therefore, this is a joyful occasion, but at the same time, I would like to ask you to reflect deeply about the meaning of this Christmas event. The gospel traditions speak about a very humble and poor situation with regard to his birth.

“Mary and Joseph had left their hometown and had gone to Bethlehem to get themselves registered under the census organised by the emperor. So they were basically travellers and people who had been migrants into that area. They went to Bethlehem, which was their hometown, original hometown, and so they had to have this childbirth somewhere, and they could not find a place in the inn, and that is why they found refuge in a grotto.

“A rocky, cold grotto on that cold night.The shepherds were looking after their sheep in the valley below, and guided by a star, they came to the grotto because they were told that there is great news was that the saviour had been born. The saviour expected by the people of Israel is born.

Therefore, they came running to find who it was, and they came to this grotto. Surrounded by these lonely and poor shepherds and surrounded by the cold of the night in a very chilly, rocky grotto, Jesus Christ is born. Therefore, there is a divine option seen in this whole episode of choosing to be born in the simplest possible way among human beings.

“The saviour of the world, the son of God, the almighty’s only begotten son, chooses to be born extremely poor and vulnerable, and therefore Christmas celebration is a deeply spiritual event about which we must be conscious and we must try to emulate the values that are enshrined in this birth such as choosing to be humble in the way we celebrate this event. Therefore, this Christmas, especially having had a disastrous cyclonic storm affecting Sri Lanka and rendering two million people homeless, as well as nearly a thousand people having lost their lives. In this situation, we Christians cannot forget about them and celebrate Christmas egoistically, only by ourselves.

“We must try to share this Christmas with the poor. Therefore let us on the one side be humble in our celebration, avoid extravagance, avoid in any form scandalising the poor and try to share whatever we have with them so that we will experience the real birth of the Lord in the surroundings in which it took place so that our crib is not a crib that we build in the church or at home or a Christmas tree that we adorn ourselves with in the church or at home but we make that crib become a real crib of values in which we welcome the Lord Jesus among us. I wish that you will all celebrate Christmas in that manner of giving, sharing, and avoiding all forms of extravagance, celebrate it in a humble fashion, so that you may share the Christmas with others and find and give happiness to them.

“I would wish that all of you be good examples of Christian discipleship and the following of Jesus in the grotto in Bethlehem, and I wish you all a very happy and a very holy Christmas. May God bless you. Amen.