Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birth: God for Christians, a prophet for other religions, and a reference of goodness and wisdom for humanity.
Gandhi Speaks of Christmas...
... Jesus preached a new life. He called men to repentance... For though we (sing), "All glory to God on High and on the earth be peace," there seems to be today neither glory to God nor peace on earth. As long as it remains a hunger still unsatisfied...
When, therefore, one wishes "A Happy Christmas" without the meaning behind it, it becomes nothing more than an empty formula. And unless one wishes for peace for all life, one cannot wish for peace for oneself. It is a self-evident axiom, like the axioms of Euclid, that one cannot have peace unless there is in one an intense longing for peace all around.
And so, as the miraculous birth is an eternal event, so is the Cross an eternal event in this stormy life. Therefore, we dare not think of birth without death on the cross. Living Christ means a living Cross, without it life is a living death. Jesus lived and died in vain if he did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal Law of Love.
It is my firm opinion that (the West) today represents not the spirit of God or Christianity... It is really worshipping Mammon. 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom.' Thus really spoke Jesus Christ. Here you have an eternal rule of life...
Christ died on the Cross with a crown of thorns on his head defying the might of a whole empire. The message of Jesus, as I understand it, is contained in his Sermon on the Mount unadulterated and taken as a whole. This teaching was non-retaliation, or non-resistance to evil.
The virtues of mercy, non-violence, love and truth in any man can be truly tested only when they are pitted against ruthlessness, violence, hate and untruth... by devoting the season to a real moral stocktaking and emphasizing consecration to the service of mankind for which Jesus lived and died on the Cross.
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