Christmas

 

Caesar Augustus sat in his palace by the Tiber. Before him was a map. He was about to issue an order for a census of the world; for all the nations of the civilized world were subject to Rome. There was only one capital in this world: Rome; only one official language: Latin; only one ruler: Caesar. To every outpost, to every satrap and governor, the order went out: every Roman subject must be enrolled in his own city. On the fringe of the Empire, in the little village of Nazareth, soldiers tacked up on walls the order for all the citizens to register in the towns of their family origins.

Joseph, the builder, an obscure descendant of the great King David, was obliged by that very fact to register in Bethlehem, the city of David. In accordance with the edict, Mary and Joseph set out from the village of Nazareth for the village of Bethlehem, which lies about five miles on the other side of Jerusalem.

Joseph was full of expectancy as he entered the city of his family, and was quite convinced that he would have no difficulty in finding lodgings for Mary, particularly on account of her condition. Joseph went from house to house only to find each one crowded. Up a steep hill Joseph climbed to a faint light which swung on a rope across a doorway. This would be the village inn. There was room in the inn for the soldiers of Rome who had brutally subjugated the Jewish people; there was room for the daughters of the rich merchants of the East; there was room for those clothed in soft garments, who lived in the houses of the king; in fact, there was room for anyone who had a coin to give the innkeeper; but “There was no room in the inn.” for the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

Out to the hillside to a stable cave, where shepherds sometimes drove their flocks in time of storm, Joseph and Mary went at last for shelter. Joseph began removing manure with a shovel, laying down straw and starting a fire.

At the moment of His birth, Mary didn’t suffer labor pains because She was preserved from original sin. One of the punishments for original sin was labor for women giving birth. It is a dogma of the faith, the birth of Jesus was miraculous. St. Ambrose said, “Mary is the gate through which Christ entered this world, when He was brought forth in the virginal birth, and the manner of His birth did not break the seals of virginity.” As light passes through glass without harming the glass, so too Jesus passed through the womb of Mary in a miraculous manner without any harm to Mary’s physical virginity. When He was born, there the God-Man lay, utterly clean and pure. And from Him radiated such marvelous light and splendor that the sun could not be compared to it.”

In the filthiest place in the world, a stable, Purity was born. He, Who was later to be slaughtered by men acting as beasts, was born among beasts. He, Who would call Himself the “living Bread descended from Heaven,” was laid in a manger, literally, a place to eat. Centuries before, the Jews had worshiped the golden calf, and the Greeks, the ass. Men bowed down before them as before God. Now the ox and the ass are present to make their innocent reparation, bowing down before their God.

There was no room in the inn, but there was room in the stable. The inn is the gathering place of public opinion, the focal point of the world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly, the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But the stable is a place for the outcasts, the ignored, the forgotten. A stable would be the last place one would have looked for Him.

No worldly mind would ever have suspected that He Who could make the sun warm the earth would one day have need of an ox and an ass to warm Him with their breath. His birthplace dictated by an imperial census; that He, Who clothed the fields with grass, would Himself be naked; that He, from Whose hands came planets and worlds, would one day have tiny arms that were not long enough to touch the huge heads of the cattle; that the feet which trod the everlasting hills would one day be too weak to walk; that the Eternal Word would be unable to speak; that Omnipotence would be wrapped in swaddling clothes; that Salvation would lie in a manger; no one would ever have suspected that God coming to this earth would ever be so helpless. And that is precisely why so many miss Him.

Now the infant Child lays on the lap of the Virgin, She kisses the face of God never seen before. A Mother’s heart races with love. She touches His fingers and He in turn smiles. Angels are heard in the distance singing Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth.

The manger and the Cross thus stand at the two extremities of the Savior’s life. He accepted the manger because there was no room in the inn; He accepted the Cross because men said, “We will not have this Man for our king.” Disowned upon entering, rejected upon leaving, He was laid in a stranger’s stable at the beginning, and a stranger’s grave at the end. An ox and an ass surrounded His crib at Bethlehem; two thieves were to flank His Cross on Calvary. He was wrapped in swaddling bands in His birthplace, He was again laid in swaddling clothes in His tomb — clothes symbolic of the limitations imposed on His Divinity when He took a human form.

The greedy and the prideful cannot grasp that “a rich man becoming poor that through His poverty, we might be rich.”

Only two classes of people found the Babe: the shepherds and the Wise Men; the simple and the learned; those who knew that they knew nothing, and those who knew that they did not know everything. Only the humble can find God.

In His First Advent, He took the name of Jesus which means “Savior”; it will only be in His Second Coming He will take the name of “Judge.” Jesus was not a name He had before He assumed a human nature; it properly refers to that which was united to His Divinity, not that which existed from all eternity. The name given to Him by the angel and conferred on Him by Joseph, Jesus means Savior, because “He will save the people from their sins.”

And when we look into the manger at the tiny Babe, how in the world could anyone ever say, “God does not love us”. For truly, when we see the face of God as a Child, we see in His face a God who loves us, so much He became one of us for us.

Mostly taken from Bishop Fulton Sheen