CHRISTMAS IN NICE – On December 24 and 25, RCF sets up its studios at the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption basilica, in Nice. Broadcasting of the Christmas night mass live, but also reports and round tables: to celebrate Christmas in communion with the inhabitants of a bruised and bereaved region, we offer you a special program.
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“I am with you until the end of the world”, says Jesus at the end of Saint Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 28:20) and in him it is God who promises us his presence at every moment of our lives, this God who comes to live among us at Christmas.
But this presence, this covenant of God with man does not spare us trials. Nice and its region remind us of this. At the beginning of October storm Alex hit the Alpes-Maritimes, killing 11 people in the Roya, Vésubie and Tinée valleys, leaving behind a landscape of desolation. Less than a month later, on October 29, an attack was perpetrated inside the Notre-Dame de l’Assomption basilica in Nice, killing three people. And how can we not associate with these tragedies the 86 victims and the numerous wounded of the attack of July 14, 2016 on the Promenade des Anglais?
If we add to this litany the current pandemic, isolation and various crises, we are entitled to wonder about the meaning of these trials … This is what we suggest you do in our special program, where it will also be a question of solidarity, mutual aid, hope!
A few hours away from the Christmas celebrations, how not to wonder about the tragic dimension of our lives? Face the reality of our lives, marked by ordeal, by the incomprehensible, the sometimes unthinkable … Mgr André Marceau, the bishop of the diocese of Nice, asked us when he gave his agreement that RCF broadcast live the Nativity celebrations: okay, but on condition that nothing morbid is done. This is what we will try to do in this special program: look reality in the face, envision it, but never forgetting that we are made for life, and that we are not alone.
Christmas is God who becomes man even if it means dying on the cross. But with him death no longer has the last word, he leads us into darkness, he tells us that hope is possible and that he is with us until the end of the world.
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