I want to write to you. For many reasons. First of all, because I know you will certainly read me, and my letter will not risk ending up like yours. You have written so many of them, and they are all love letters, but we have not even opened them. At best, we have skimmed through them hurriedly and with a bored air.
Then, because I know that you do not stop at an aesthetic analysis of what I say. You always get to the heart of the matter, or to the root, and no one is better at reading between the lines. And this time too, I am sure that between the lines you can glimpse my heart swollen with fears and hopes, worries and tenderness.
Then, because you always reply, and never let anything pass in silence. There is never a time when you refuse to return the greeting or acknowledge receipt. With others, as you know, it is not always so. More than acknowledging receipt, they seem to acknowledge the blow.
But above all, I am writing directly to you because I know that at Christmas you will meet with countless people who will come to greet you. You know them one by one. Blessed are you, for you can call them all by name. I cannot.

Since they will come to visit you, if not in the Eucharist and the sacraments, then at least in the manger, why don’t you discreetly suggest to them that you will no longer leave the earth and that, although you may be elsewhere on your business, you have a permanent address in your Church, where they can meet you whenever they wish?
And, speaking of an address, don’t you think that your Church, whose womb you decided to inhabit forever after inhabiting your Mother’s for nine months, needs some restoration?
It will involve costly restorations, dear Lord, because she must go from being rich to being poor, from proud to humble, from overly self-assured to learning to share humanity’s anxieties and uncertainties, from a preserve for aristocrats to becoming the village fountain.
Those who are inexperienced in such matters think that this is restoration at almost no expense, on the cheap, because it involves reducing rather than increasing. But I know that it requires one of those very substantial allocations of your grace, because otherwise nothing will come of it.

Since I have started making requests, may I take advantage of our friendship to make a few more?
Help me and all my brother priests to let ourselves be led by the Spirit, who is the Spirit of freedom and not subjection. The Spirit of justice and not domination, the Spirit of communion and not rivalry, the Spirit of service and not power, the Spirit of brotherhood and not partisanship.
Give the laypeople of our Church the joy of you, who make all things new. Inspire in them the thrills of new beginnings, the freshness of morning, the intuition of the future.
Exorcise from our communities the fear of emptiness, the impression that we live only on words, the suspicion that, when it comes to daring, we love only metaphors.
Put in the hearts of those who are far away a profound longing for you.
Dry the secret tears of so many people who do not have the courage to cry in front of others. Enter the homes of those who are alone, who are expecting no one, who at Christmas will not receive even a postcard and, at noon, will have no one to share a meal with. Fill people's hearts with hope, hearts as flat as a wineskin dried out by the sun.

Remember the boys at the *** Institute who will not go home because no one wants them. Remember the *** family who live on *** Street in Molfetta, eight of them in one room without light. Remember the four old men who sleep in the cells of a former convent in Ruvo, with cardboard in place of windowpanes. Remember Giovanni, who takes drugs and occasionally calls me at night to tell me he is unwell. Remember Antonella, abandoned by her husband. Remember all the poor and unhappy, whose names have found sterile refuge only in my address book, but not yet in my commitment as a bishop, called to preside over charity. Remember, Lord, those who have everything and do not know what to do with it: because they lack you.

Merry Christmas, my brother Jesus, who, besides living and reigning forever and ever, dies and is despised, minute by minute, across the face of the earth, in the disfigured lives of the least among us.