On every winter at the end of December the world gets into an indescribable panic. All the people crowd the stores, there are huge queues to spend the last money from the pocket with a strange frenzy, merchants who sell everything, even souls I would say, are at every street corner promising you happiness or at least a drop from it. The most hostile people smile to the children, the innocent fir trees are cut down with fury if they are younger than 2 years old to be suitable to welcome Christ, the consumption of electric energy explodes as for a month called the month of gifts in the sad past times, all the people buy lights, glitter, tinsel, light systems, glittering Santas go inside on windows and steal from the Christmas tree and climb the chimney…The people eat more, listen to carols at computer, cook everything they like, some eat in excess and you hear the ambulance very often. There is a huge indescribable hustle everywhere especially where it is something for sale so sometimes you have the impression these people will die in a few days and they try to live the last moments of their lives with an increased even huge intensity.
Some sour moralists grinning quietly wil say this is pure vanity, incompetence, indolence, artificiality the curse of matter, the pride of flesh, an insipid discourse of this kind.
However there is something hidden behind this huge hustle which is the mystery behind the millions of colorful lights, where is the meaning of the meat piles or of then endless queues from supermarkets, the purpose of the cries with champagne smell from the public squares, the trembling delirium in the middle of winter.
The answer is easy. The people seek for happiness, eternal life, the everlasting light, the love of the heavenly Bridegroom, the union with God, the look of the lines of Saints, the choruses of the myriads of angels, the eternal Liturgy of the Lamb of God. It is stunning.
Who, the people who shout in the Constitution Square, the drunkards from the buildings, the people who are obsessed by firecrackers in the fringe town neighbourhoods, the noisy singers of Oriental music with open windows, the breakers of cheap champagne bottles with a taste of rotten peach, the creatures hidden in night clubs where the decibels, the smoke and darkness are the prophesies for the future age, the masked people who beat the drums with frenzy causing the despair of the mothers with small children? Yes, it`s them indeed. They only don`t know where to seek. They seek – as the Holy Fathers say – ephemeral things with an infinite longing, they seek eternity in flesh and the light in garbage.
It is as if when you are hungry you would go to the garbage can instead to go to the hang desperately of matter to appease their thirst for spirit and they rummage the trash in the hope they might find heaven and they seek the sky with the eyes fixed on earth.
The people who are greedy for food in excess are some poor victims of their stomach but they hunger can`t be appeased with anything else except with the feeding with God in the HOly Eucharist. The debauchers are people lost between bodies in their search for true love in the wedding chamber of the Lord. The drunkards are thirsty without knowing it for the true water coming from skies and which turns the man into a spring leading to eternal life.
The listeners of melodies which are empty of content are some seekers of angelic choruses lost on ways without return in a point of no return.
The feasts are the huge and desperate cry of the people in their search for eternity. It is the huge pain of those who know they will die. It is the quake of the being before abyss, the big refuse of those who are earthed. It is the answer of millions of immortal souls which cry in a chorus: `NO, we are not going to die, we are made for heaven, we have ideals, wishes, experiences, plans for eternity. Unfortunately just a few know where the real food is and the real music, the true gifts, the true light and the true life. There where Christ is born, Christ the bread of heaven, the Eternal Hymn of Love, the Supreme Gift made by God to people, the Light of the world, the Path, the Truth and Life.
