Br LUCA DI PASQUALE, ofm Seraphic Province of St. Francis - Assisi (Italy) If we were to leap back in time 2,000 years and come here to the Holy Land we would find Joseph, a simple man, a worker with dirty hands, a man who knows how to listen to the Word of God and the facts around them. And God chooses this very man to create a story of salvation. God knows that in this man he can find room in his life because he is a man capable of welcoming. Welcoming is nothing more than making room for God. He could have chosen more deserving and more dignified people. Yet he chooses precisely Joseph. And from him an important mission: that of taking with him Mary and Jesus is beautiful. The original text uses the Greek verb "paralambano" which means to take with him into intimacy. So Joseph is given the opportunity to take with him in custody Mary, a woman who becomes pregnant without knowing how, Jesus, a son who is not his own, and at the same time he is asked to take the family with him to come even to Egypt in a difficult situation. Here, these are the conditions that allow Joseph to create with God this story of salvation. Despite his frailty. Then Joseph also points us to this very thing: in spite of the facts around us. This year we will experience a different Christmas. Christmas not made of lights, of joy, but of suffering. It is not the context that prevents God from writing this salvation, but it is up to us to accept or reject it. So we choose to follow Joseph in the way of acceptance. Fr GABRIEL ROMANELLI Priest of Gaza The Gaza community, the whole Christian community, as well as the whole civilian population of Gaza, so the majority of the population, is suffering so much because war is not an easy thing. Everyone feels the bombings, and the casualties are everywhere, even within the Christian community, We try to create an oasis, that it is an oasis where Jesus is protected, as he was protected by Joseph and Mary when they fled from Bethlehem to Egypt and passed through Gaza. To protect the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, to protect the presence of the Trinity in the souls of the baptized and then to pray for everybody and to bear witness of our charity to everybody, the majority is Muslim and so we live among them, we do so many activities. The situation is very serious: they told us we feel safer with Jesus and providence will help us. They start the day at 8 a.m. with a Mass, - although at night they sometimes sleep half an hour or an hour - and then they pray the rosary at Our Lady throughout the day and when they can they do Adoration. And after that they celebrate the afternoon Mass. Praying, praying, asking for prayers, because it's not easy to be all together, to become a refugee. They pray, they ask for prayers, and they ask that everyone who has a word put it for peace, for a cease-fire, for this war to end. They pray for the good of everyone.