Christmas isn't only a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, but a reason to slow down and accept God's "invitation to let His only begotten son be reborn within our hearts and souls," New York City Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in a Christmas interview airing Sunday.
"I like the idea of quieting down and silence," Dolan told "Fox News Sunday" host Shannon Bream. "We have the tradition of midnight Mass. That's the quietest time of evening, 'Silent Night Holy Night,' so silence had a lot to do with it."
During the advent season, the church urges believers to "prepare our souls and hearts" for the arrival of Jesus, Dolan said.
"If that's going to happen, well, whenever you are going to have a visitor to your house, you've got to get the clutter out of the way and you've got to make sure the guest room is ready," said Dolan. "Let's make sure the guest room is ready for the Christ child, our savior."
However, much of the world has forgotten God, said Dolan.
"We often use that term 'secularism,'" he said, adding that it has a "lot of different definitions."
"One of the tidiest I have ever heard is that secularism means, humanity desires to forget about God and get along just fine without him. The fact of the matter is, we can't get along fine without Him. We have seen the mess we got. A lot of people say, 'why does God allow this to happen?' God does not want all this to happen. He wants us to accept Him or His message or his way of life or commandments."
If that would happen, Dolan said, "we'll see a lot less division."
"Do you think if Vladimir Putin was a believer and trusted in God, which he claims to be, he would have invaded Ukraine?" the cardinal continued. "Do you think kids if they had faith, would shoot up a shopping center or a classroom? I don't think so. There is a problem there. I don't know why we need a Billy Graham to say that."
It is also a "bit chilling" that many young people are saying they have no religious affiliation or when they say they believe in God, they don't need a religion, said Dolan.
There is also a great deal of division concerning differences in belief in matters such as marriage or abortion, and Dolan encouraged people to listen to Jesus "who always said to hate the sin but love the sinner."
"Even if there are certain things that people do that we can say all right, I can never really accept that and I can never really encourage somebody to that style of life, I love that person, I will respect and I will love them and I will protect that person's dignity with my own love and respect," said Dolan.
Many people find the holidays to be a difficult time, but Dolan said that shows there is a loss in their lives, and "that means we need it filled up."
Dolan further encouraged people to never give up, noting that as a historian, he knows that matters can always be worse. Also, he said that most people, even if they say they don't believe in God, in times of crisis and trauma and tension, "admit there are certain things in life that I can't handle, that I am not in control of. I don't know what to call the one that is, it can be a sense of recovery of the power beyond."'
And with Christmas, "God became incarnate in a baby," said Dolan.
"For a young couple that gets a baby, [they say] our life has purpose. Every waking moment is for this little baby," said Dolan. "If we can say that about the sign of God, you watch, we'll be in better shape this time next year."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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