The Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord
Dear
brothers and sisters in Christ,
We have come
today to the altar of the Lord heeding the call of those ancient shepherds who
said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has
taken place” (Luke 2:15). This “thing” is, of course, what the choir of angels
announced to them as they watched their sheep, namely, the Birth of the Son of
God and the Son of Mary, the mystery of Love made flesh.
Curiously, 70% of
the American people call themselves Christians, but 90% of the American people
say they celebrate Christmas.[1] Of
the 90% of Americans who celebrate Christmas, 55% observe it as a religious
celebration. Think about that for a just a moment. That means that almost half of
the Americans who celebrate Christmas do not recognize it for what it is. If
Christmas is not seen to be a religious festival, it can only be an occasion to
of greed, a time to save money on material things and to receive gifts; that
this is what it has in fact largely become should be no surprise. Culturally,
we have forgotten why we give gifts at Christmas. We do so in imitation of the Magi,
who gave to the Christ Child their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We
cannot give gifts directly to Jesus, but we can give gifts to each other. This
is why the custom of giving gifts at Christmas arose; if we divorce Christmas
from its religious foundations, it all becomes quite meaningless and an ox and
a donkey know more than we do.
Of the 90% of Americans
who celebrate Christmas, whether as a religious holy day or simply as a
cultural celebration, only 51% plan to attend religious services either on Christmas
Eve or on Christmas Day. If you are tracking the math, not every American who
claims to see Christmas as a religious feast will attend public worship in honor
of Christmas. This is, to be sure, curious, and seems to indicate a weakening
of faith in the Birth of the only Begotten Son of God. Today, then, we
must ask ourselves an important question: Have I come today recognizing
Christmas to be a religious event, or have I come simply to appease human
beings?
Of the various aspects of the celebration
of Christmas, one of the most profoundly religious aspects is the inclusion of
the Christmas Creche, the Nativity Set, without which our celebration of
Christmas would seem somehow incomplete. Simply consider what you would think
if you entered this church today and did not see the representation of the Lord’s
Birth.
The Nativity Set has its origins with
Saint Francis of Assisi who in 1223 asked Pope Honorius III for
permission “to portray the Child born in Bethlehem and to see somehow with my
bodily eyes the hardship he underwent because he lacked all a newborn’s needs,
the way he was placed in a manger and how he lay on the hay between the ox and
the ass.”[2]
Nearly eight
centuries later, we still erect Nativity displays in our homes, churches, and
in public places so everyone who looks upon them might also say with the
shepherds, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken
place.” Happily, this tradition is now embraced by many of our Protestant
brothers and sisters who join us in using statues both small and large to
envision what those shepherds saw that caused them to return to their fields
“glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20).
It is intriguing
that Saint Francis requested two particular additions to our Nativity displays
that are not found in the Gospels, the inclusion of the ox and the donkey. If
these two animals are not mentioned in the Gospels, why did the little poor man
of Assisi include them?
 |
| A late Ottonian depiction of the Nativity, from a manuscript in the Getty Library (1025-50 AD). |
Saint Francis is
the first person to portray the Nativity without painting or carving, but he is
not the first to include the ox and the donkey in depictions of the Birth of
Jesus. Many illuminations from the medieval manuscripts portray them closer to
the manger than Saint Joseph, and sometimes even closer than the Blessed Virgin
Mary. The ox and the donkey tend to gaze upon the Christ Child with looks of warm
affection and a sublime wisdom. Both Saint Francis and these artists knew that
many centuries before the Birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah foretold, “the ox
knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my
people does not understand” (Isaiah 1:3). Saint Francis and these artists
included these two animals to serve as striking questions to the onlookers: Do
you know your Master? Do you know his crib?
Who is it that
the ox knows? The ox knows, firstly, that he gazes upon a great mystery, “an
infinitely greater thing than anything” J.R.R. Tolkien said he “would dare to
write.”[3]
The ox knows that when he looks upon that Child, he looks upon the invisible
God made suddenly and unexpectedly visible. He knows he looks upon his master,
upon the omnipotent God who took unto himself a human face, the Creator of all
things who lowered himself to become one of his creatures, “the firstborn of
all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Do you know who this Master is? Do you know
the One the ox knows?
He is the Divine
Child who looks out upon his creation with his human face, with eyes full of
compassion, with knowledge, power, and tenderness. He looks upon all he has
made and calls out with a word of love and of command. “You are my friends,” he
says, “if you do what I command you” (John 15:14). “Love one another,” he says,
“as I have loved you” (John 15:12). “Be perfect,” he says, “as your heavenly
Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). “These things I have spoken to you,” he
says, “that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full” (John 15:11). He is
the one who acknowledges himself to be the “master and teacher” who says, “Take
my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (John 13:13; Matthew 11:29). This is the Master the ox invites each of us to know, to
follow, and to love.
But what does
the donkey know of the Master’s crib? He knows that the crib of his master is
the donkey’s own manger, nothing more than a feeding trough for the animals,
but in this humble trough is contained a very great mystery, for this Child
grew and called himself “the bread of life” and said quite emphatically,
“unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no
life in you” (John 6:35, 53). The Bread of Life was born in Bethlehem, in a
village whose name means “the house of bread,” and was placed in a manger, not
as food for the animals, but as food for those he came to save, as food for you
and for me. Do you understand what the donkey understands?
The ox and the donkey
bellow and bray to us today, beckoning us to approach their manger – the very
crib of the Master - so that we might look upon the Face of the invisible God
made visible and know who and what they know. They call us to pause in silence
and ask us: “Do you know your Master?
Do you know his crib? Do you understand and know his merciful love? Will you
eat of him and be nourished by him in order to love as he loves?” They call us
to ponder the tremendous love which God displays in his Incarnation, to
recognize that “God is so good that he can give up his divine splendor and come
down to a stable, so that we might find him, so that his goodness might touch
us, give itself to us, and continue to work through us.”[4]
This Christmas,
let us resolve to know the heart of the Infant Master, to allow ourselves to be
touched by and understand his love, to imitate his selflessness and allow it to
work through us in all we say and do. If we open ourselves in this way to love
and to be loved by this Holy Child, then we can bring the message of the angels
to everyone we meet: “A Savior has been born for you, who is Christ and Lord”
(Luke 2:11). Amen!
[1] Pew Research Center, “Americans
Say Religious Aspects of Christmas are Declining in Public Life, 12 December
2017.
[2] In Tomaso de Celano, First Life, XXX.84. In Brother Thomas of
Celano: The Life of St. Francis of Assisi
and The Treatise of Miracles. Catherine Bolton, trans. (Assisi, Italy:
Editrice Minerva), 80-81.
[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, Draft Letter to Michael
Straight, 1956. In The Letters of J.R.R.
Tolkien. Humphrey Carpenter, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000),
237.
[4] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 24
December 2005.
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