Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow, and I think what the Church has always understood that to mean is, we should suffer for other people as well, in imitation of Christ, and in that we will find our ultimate happiness and fulfillment.

We pray, too, today, in a very special way, for our world and for the Church, which are beset by so much confusion and error, by violence and death. And we ask Our Lord, in a particular way, to come to our aid. We have probably never been more conscious of the fact of how powerless we are on our own to do anything about the situation in the Church and in the world. But we know that, if we remain faithful in doing all that we can, that it is God who will accomplish the victory of the life, the victory of the joy and peace of His birth at Bethlehem.

Our Saviour, dearly Beloved, was born this day. Let us rejoice. Sadness is not becoming upon the Birth Day of Life Itself, which, now that the fear of death is ended, fills us with gladness, because of our own promised immortality. No one is excluded from sharing in this cheerfulness, for the reason of our joy is common to all men. Our Lord, the Conqueror of sin and death, since there was no one free from servitude, came that He might bring deliverance to all.

…the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. From this mistaken conception of the person there arise both a distortion of law, which defines the sphere of the exercise of freedom, and an opposition to private property. A person who is deprived of something he can call “his own”, and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.

In contrast, from the Christian vision of the human person there necessarily follows a correct picture of society.

       Thus says the LORD:
    Shout with joy for Jacob,
        exult at the head of the nations;
        proclaim your praise and say:
    The LORD has delivered his people,
        the remnant of Israel.
    Behold, I will bring them back
        from the land of the north;
    I will gather them from the ends of the world,
        with the blind and the lame in their midst,
    the mothers and those with child;
        they shall return as an immense throng.
    They departed in tears,
        but I will console them and guide them;
    I will lead them to brooks of water,
        on a level road, so that none shall stumble.
    For I am a father to Israel,
        Ephraim is my first-born.