Fr MARCO GAMBAROTTO Archdiocese of Luanda – Angola The Gospel of this Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, surprises us with an unexpected, almost untimely proclamation in the face of even the difficulties that the world, the peoples and the difficulties that every person is still experiencing. This announcement is, "Rejoice, rejoice." Today the Church, in its prophetic function, invites you to rejoice. Rejoice for what? For light. This Sunday's Gospel speaks of light. Light in John's Gospel is always related to life. Even today, when a child is born when it is delivered, we say that it comes to the light, that it sees life. Here, this light, this life that the Lord wants to give you, is the gift He has prepared for you this Christmas. The Lord wants to give birth in you to a new way of life. This is what the Lord wants to do with you this Christmas. And in the face of perhaps even your inabilities, your limitations, the situations that you do not accept about yourself, that you would like to change about yourself, even in your sins, your sufferings, the Lord wants to give birth to a new you. And so today the Lord, suffering the pains of childbirth, wants to freely give you this new way of life, which is a gift. And if you ask the Lord today, on this solemnity, the Lord wants to give it to you because He promised it to the world. Notice that the center of this solemnity is not us, it is not the lights, it is not the parties. We are important, but the center is Christ. Christ today who wants to come to you. Sr VALENTINA SALA, sja Midwife As a midwife, I have been involved in so many labors, I have met women and even midwives for whom childbirth assistance came as a fulfillment of a waiting. And it was the waiting for someone, for that baby to be born, imagined, desired, waited for so long. But also it was a time when women were expected. It meant that at that moment their being a mother became concrete with a baby in their arms. And I met, especially in the years that I worked at St. Joseph's, here in Jerusalem, Palestinian women, Jewish women and foreign women and all at that moment there, they become such fragile people and so strong at the same time. And so we say disarmed. Because life takes all the attention. And it was always very beautiful, even in the painful moments, even when things didn't go according to expectations. Because certainly there is a concrete expectation of an event to be fulfilled. But there is also an anticipation of some expectations, so this accompanying also becomes the trying to help accept what reality then presents. Because it is true that we always imagine and see things how we want them to be, but then the fulfillment of the expectation is rather an acceptance. And then always I see the labor of childbirth as the paschal passage. Through that pain, in which one has to be and in which one has to help to be, there is always a strong hope and also a certainty that what awaits us is life.