In December 1992, an Italian missionary arrived in Singapore. On his way to his mission in the evening by taxi, he saw Christmas lights everywhere, with symbols of the Christian Christmas holiday. He told the taxi driver, “I have never seen anything like it.” Encouraged by this confession, the man remarked, “For us in Singapore, Christmas is the most important holiday of the year.” “But what are you celebrating?” asked the missionary, wanting to get to know the driver’s thoughts. But the man did not answer. Even in Christian countries, where Christmas is celebrated as the Nativity of the Lord, some people do not know the answer to this question or the meaning of Christmas. That is why the Church says, on the eighth day after Christmas, the following sentence of John the Baptist: “Among you stands one whom you do not know.”
What does it mean to “know Jesus”? In all ancient and modern languages, including biblical Hebrew and Greek, the verb “to know” has a wide range of meanings. It can mean visual knowledge of a person, knowledge of everything or almost everything related to him, and sharing life, feelings, joys, and suffering. For us to know Jesus, human knowledge and experience are not enough. Such knowledge is why the evangelists speak of angels who announced the mysterious birth, and—as we will read in tomorrow’s Gospel—the heavens will be opened, from which the Holy Spirit will descend, confirming Jesus’ divine nature. Even if a person possessed all the knowledge found in the Gospels and other Scriptures about Jesus, they would still lack the gift of faith. Jesus will remain unknown.
In June 1994, the police found Brother Ettore, a Camillian who lived for and with the poor, during a check near the central station in Milan, where drug addicts and prostitutes meet. The policeman asked for his documents, checked them, and said, “Brother, you cannot stay here. What kind of religion is he to be here at this hour?” Someone shouted, “Leave him alone; he is Brother Ettore.” He said with a smile, “Mr. Policeman. Our Lady fulfilled her duties, but allow me to fulfill mine too.” The policeman objected, “What is duty? Please leave!” Although this episode did not occur on Christmas Eve, it convincingly shows that, for many Christians today, Christ remains someone and something unknown.
