«Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the King...» Matthew 2, 1

Thoughts of Saint Pio of Pietrelcina on Christmas

Some thoughts of Padre Pio on Christmas

The star marking the place where Jesus was born, in the Basilica of the Nativity, in Bethlehem

The tenderness of Christmas

«All the feastdays of the Church are beautiful... Easter, yes, is the glorification... but Christmas has a tenderness,
a childlike sweetness that takes all my heart»

Tears of gratitude

«How happy Jesus makes me! How gentle His spirit! But I get confused and can’t manage to do anything but cry and repeat: “Jesus, my food”»

The cries of Jesus

«There is nothing to be heard but the birthcries and weeping of the God baby and with these birthcries and with these tears He offers to divine justice the first ransom for our reconciliation... »

The least among us

«May the Child Jesus fill you with His divine charisms, make you experience the joys of the shepherds and the angels and fully bestow on you all the fire of that love for which He made Himself the least among us, and make you become a small child full of amiability, simplicity, love»

Sweetest Jesus

«May the Sweetest Child Jesus bring you all the graces, all the blessings, all the smiles that appeal to His infinite goodness... »

Jesus calls... moved by His grace they hasten

«Jesus calls the poor and simple shepherds by the angels to show Himself to them. He calls the wise by their own wisdom. And all, moved by the inner influence of His grace, hasten to Him to adore Him. He calls all of us through divine inspirations and communicates Himself to us by His grace»

Padre Pio

The justification of us sinners

«Our justification is such an extremely great miracle that Sacred Scripture compares it to the Resurrection of the Divine Master. Yes, my dear, the justification for our impiety is such that it can well be said that God showed His power more in our conversion than in drawing the sky and the earth from nothing, since there is more opposition between the sinner and grace than between nothingness and being. Nothingness is less far away from God than the sinner. Moreover in the creation it is a matter of the natural order, whereas in the justification of the impious it is a matter of the supernatural and divine order»

Jesus is more for sinners
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... He does so in order to make you more humble

«Our Lord loves you tenderly, my dear girl. And if He does not make you feel the sweetness of this love of His, He does so in order to make you more humble and abject in your own eyes. Don’t for that reason not resort to His holy benevolence with all trust, particularly at the time in which we represent Him as a small child in Bethlehem. Because, my dear girl, to what purpose does He take this sweet, lovable condition of the child if not to provoke us to love Him trustingly and confide ourselves lovingly in Him?»

We ask to be clothed in humility

«We ask this Divine Child to clothe us in humility, because only with this virtue can we enjoy this mystery full of divine tendernesses»