The courage to cross the threshold

“Come! Jesus is the Door of Peace”, Pope Francis said in his Urbi et Orbi message for Christmas. “Often we halt at the threshold of that Door; we lack the courage to cross it, because it challenges us to examine our lives”, he explained. “Entering through that Door calls for the sacrifice involved in taking a step forward, a small sacrifice. Taking a step towards something so great calls us to leave behind our disputes and divisions, surrendering ourselves to the outstretched arms of the Child who is the Prince of Peace. This Christmas, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year, I invite every individual, and all peoples and nations, to find the courage needed to walk through that Door, to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions!”, he concluded.

The Holy Father’s words are simple, direct and unequivocal. We can walk through the door only if we are unarmed. But people keep their weapons close, because they give them security and make them feel strong. They deceptively quieten their fears. There are always multiple fears whereas there is only one hope, and it unites us. To walk across the threshold also means to abandon the polytheism of fears, in order to embrace the monotheism of hope. The poet, Gianni Rodari, who wrote for children, like all poets, asked himself and asks us the following: “So please explain, do, in prose or even poetry if the sky is only one, why is the earth fragmentary?”.

The Pope knows it. For the last 12 years, he has been saying that we have to pray and live to bring a bit of heaven to this torn-apart earth. In order to do so, we have to take a small step — taking “a step towards something so great”. It takes courage to stand on the threshold. If we are there, on the threshold, we will be able to cross it. The problem is that we often would rather be somewhere else.

In the beautiful passage from the Bible in which Abraham sees the arrival of the Lord and goes out to meet him at the oaks of Mamre, Abraham is on the threshold. According to the passage, he was neither inside the tent, nor in the desert. He would have been lost and disoriented in the desert. On the contrary, inside the tent he would have been too “oriented”, too comfortable, numbed by his own habits and comforts. The example of the shepherds can help us, as the Pope said in his homily for Christmas Eve Vigil: “Let us learn a lesson from the shepherds. The hope born this night does not tolerate the indifference of the complacent or the lethargy of those content with their own comforts — and so many of us are in danger of becoming too comfortable”. Being like the shepherds — restless, poor and free — will help us remain on the threshold, which is a place of restlessness, freedom and hope, and to cross it.

Andrea Monda