Papal preacher tells Curia to rediscover power of 'littleness' during Advent

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — With Christmas just days away, Christians must embrace the human quality of “littleness” as a path toward living out God’s humility exhibited in Advent, the papal preacher said.

Littleness, Capuchin Father Roberto Pasolini told Roman Curia officials Dec. 20, “is not only a characteristic of ours, but it is one of the ways that God’s essence is manifested” throughout all of salvation history, from the Old Testament to the life of Jesus Christ.

The Advent reflection, offered for members of the Roman Curia and their staff in the Paul VI Audience Hall, was the last given by Father Pasolini before Christmas. Although Pope Francis ordinarily attends the reflections he was not present among other members of the Curia Dec. 20 and had several other audiences that morning.

“God sees littleness not as a limitation but as a precious resource,” he said, recounting how God selected Gideon to save Israel despite his poverty and how David was destined to become Israel’s king despite being the youngest and least significant of his family.

The biblical theme of littleness culminates in the Incarnation, Father Pasolini said, “in the fragility of a newborn child, one who cannot even speak — he who is the Word of the Father.”

Additionally, Jesus taught about the divine value of littleness, he said, preaching that “only those who make themselves small, like little children, will enter the kingdom of God.”

Father Pasolini offered the example of St. Francis of Assisi as one who “took seriously this destiny of littleness” to the point of asking his friars to make it the guiding principle of their lives.

The saint “understood that the primary task of the church was not just to do good for others but to allow others to do good for us,” the papal preacher said.

Yet he noted that today, “the sin of pride has created a discomfort toward our littleness.”

“At first, we were all naked and unashamed,” he said, referencing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, “but now this littleness has become a source of embarrassment. The fear and shame of not being enough, of not being capable, drive us to assume roles and actions to feel important in the eyes of others.”

Father Pasolini urged the officials, however, to shed their fear of littleness and rediscover the transformative power of humility during the Holy Year 2025, which will be inaugurated Dec. 24.

“After two thousand years of wonderful Christian history, as disciples of the Risen Lord, I believe we could take the liberty to present ourselves with a little less fear and without the unnecessary shame of being smaller than what we once were, or perhaps even than what we thought we should be, to manifest ourselves as witnesses of the Gospel,” he said.

The papal preacher added that entering the Jubilee in a manner of “sincerity” offers members of the church an opportunity to be witnesses of hope in a world “which we often perceive as hostile.”

“In Christ Jesus, we can present ourselves to one another and to God in one spirit, to share the same inheritance and to be partakers in the same promise through the Gospel,” he said.