During my service, he no longer was going down to the Nativity scene as often as he used to – recalls the Archbishop. – He was older and he had less strength. But, he really liked to visit it. How many times we were passing by, so many times he stopped and prayed at the manger. Several times a day he looked at the manger from the window. The Archbishop is convinced that for John Paul II it was more than just a memory of children’s years, and a longing for what he remembered from Wadowice and then from Krakow. That it was a deepening of the mystery of Christmas; an element of a puzzle without which it is impossible to understand this mystery. But certainly, also longing for childhood – says the Archbishop. In the letter to children, John Paul II wrote: ” I can almost see you: you are setting up the Crib at home, in the parish, in every corner of the world, recreating the surroundings and the atmosphere in which the Savior was born. Yes, it is true! At Christmastime, the stable and the manger take center place in the Church.” He was explaining to his small friends that he writes to them because he, as a child, was also very much experiencing Christmas, and as they did today, when the Bethlehem star looked bright, he rushed to the manger and looking at the Newborn, he was praying with the words of the Christmas carol: “Rise Your hand, God’s Child…”
With the permission of Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki, “A place for everybody”
‘Znak’ Publishing House, Krakow 2013
