With this situation “it seems that man has lost the taste for generating and caring for others, and perhaps also the taste for living. A crib, on the other hand, symbolizes the joy of a child coming into the world, the commitment for him to grow up well, the expectation and hope for what he can become.
“The cradle tells us about the family, a nest that welcomes and is safe for children, a community founded on the gratuitousness of love; but it also tells us about caring for life at each stage, especially when the passing of the years or the difficulties along the way make the person more vulnerable and needy.”
Regarding the carpentry, Pope Francis recalled that in the past it was also the workplace of Jesus in Nazareth. In a world like today’s, “in which there is so much talk, perhaps too much, about making weapons for war,” carpentry “reminds us of man’s fundamental vocation to transform God’s gifts not into means of death, but into instruments of good.”