1942 Christmas Message of Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII's Christmas address of 1942 called Christians to be the crusaders and guiding lights in the darkness of the secular world. Even a brief excerpt serves as timeless inspiration.

“Where could this noble and holy crusade for the cleansing and renewal of society have a more significant consecration or find a more potent inspiration than at Bethlehem, where the new Adam appears in the adorable mystery of the Incarnation? For it is at His fountains of truth and grace that mankind should find the water of life if it is not to perish in the desert of this life; ‘of His fullness we all have received.’ His fullness of grace and truth flows as freely today as it has for twenty centuries on the world. His light can overcome the darkness, the rays of His love can conquer the icy egoism which holds so many back from becoming great and conspicuous in their higher life.

Do you, crusader-volunteers of a distinguished new society, lift up the new call for moral and Christian rebirth, declare war on the darkness which comes from deserting God, on the coldness that comes from strife between brothers? It is a fight for the human race, which is gravely ill and must be healed in the name of conscience ennobled by Christianity.”