Christmas is incomplete without showing love to the poor, says Pope Francis

Pope Francis says Christmas is incomplete without an extension of love to the poor and the needy.

Presiding over Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on Saturday, Pope Francis said Christmas teaches that the things that are truly important are in relationships with people and not wealth and power.

He said the definition of the season is that God remains close to the people, even in the pervasive poverty and hopelessness that has gripped the world.

“Men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, consume even their neighbours, their brothers and sisters,” he said.

“There, in that manger, Christ is born, and there we discover His closeness to us. He comes there, to a feeding trough, in order to become our food.

“The Christmas manger, the first message of the divine child, tells us that God is with us; He loves us and He seeks us.

“No evil nor sin from which Jesus does not want to save us. And He can. Christmas means that God is close to us: let confidence be reborn!

“The poverty of the manger shows us where the true riches in life are to be found: not in money and power, but in relationships and persons.

“It is not easy to leave the comfortable warmth of worldliness to embrace the stark beauty of the grotto of Bethlehem, but let us remember that it is not truly Christmas without the poor.

“We see you as close, ever at our side: thank you, Lord! We see you as poor, in order to teach us that true wealth does not reside in things but in persons, and above all in the poor: forgive us if we have failed to acknowledge and serve you in them. We see you as concrete, because your love for us is palpable. Help us to give flesh and life to our faith.”