Prayer Society Intentions for December, Month of the Nativity

“Eternal Father, I offer to Thy honor and glory, for my eternal salvation and for the salvation of the whole world, the sufferings of Jesus in the manger where He was born, the cold He suffered, the tears He shed and his tender, infant cries.” — The Raccolta

+St. Peter Chyrsologus; Doctor, St. Barbara, Virgin Martyr+

For the season of Advent I wish to share with you these excerpts below from a little work by Frances Caryll Houselander, entitled The Passion of the Infant Christ (1949).  It follows the themes often expressed in other articles and blogs here, particularly the love of St. Therese of the Child Jesus for spiritual childhood. May it lead you to the manger on ChristMass Day.

The Passion of the Infant Christ, Chapter Five

Bethlehem is the inscape of Calvary just as the snowflake is the inscape of the universe. As we have seen, the pattern of the universe in a snowflake is not only an accidental likeness but is something essential to its being, entirely in every part of it, interpenetrating it. This pattern is not all visible to the naked eye but some aspects of it are; for example, in the dazzling movement of the snowflakes as they spin around and round to earth, we see the perpetual rotation of the stars and movement is as essentially in the pattern of the universe as symmetry. But there is a design of extraordinary loveliness which cannot even be seen through an ordinary microscope and repetition of the design of the whole snowflake in every minute particle of it, hiding the unity of the whole universe in less than a pinpoint of it.

In the same way the passion of the man Christ on Calvary is at once revealed and hidden in the infant Christ in Bethlehem. Some of this mystery is visible to our eyes but much of it can only be known inwardly, when, after we have knelt in wonder for a long time before that which we can see, Christ chooses to reveal it secretly to us, illuminating the darkness of the spirit with his light, as the star of Bethlehem shone in the dark night of his birth. The gospels are economical, direct, beautiful in their economy and austerity.  They tell us the basic facts; that is all. Mary and Joseph came from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem to be enrolled. On the day of their arrival the birth of Mary’s child was due. They could get no accommodation in Bethlehem — the inns were full. If they could have stayed at an ordinary inn, they would gladly have done so. They tried to get in but they were refused. For that reason they went to a stable and their Jesus Christ was born wrapped in swaddling bands and laid in a manger.

There is no mention of our Lord having been born in a stable but only that there was no room for Him in the inn and that he was laid in a manger. There were shepherds outside Bethlehem probably on the hills that looked down to the little city who were keeping night watches over their flocks. An Angel came to them. He came quite close and stood by them and he told them that a Savior was born. Then suddenly a host of angels, a multitude the gospel says, appeared not as we picture them in the sky but close to the shepherds, with the other who “stood by them.” It is probable and pleasing that since these angels stood close to the shepherds and their flocks, they were allowed to assume the human bodies which by nature they have not got.

When the angels had vanished, the shepherds went in haste to find the Infant, and they found him lying in a manger. After this, wise men came from the East. They came following a star. Wise in astronomy but over-simple in human affairs, for they fell at once to Herod’s craft. He asked them where the Child was to be born and they would have come back to him as he asked them to do and have directed them to where the infant Jesus lay; but they were told in a dream not to do so and consequently they went back to their own country by another road, circumventing Herod. these wise men adored the infant and gave him treasures: gold, frankincense and myrrh. When they had gone, an angel came to Joseph in his sleep and warned him to fly from Herod into Egypt, and he took the Child and his Mother and fled into the darkness of the night. Then Herod slew all the little boys of two and under who were in Bethlehem or its outskirts.

That is the story of the birth of Christ as the gospel tells it but it has become part of the collective consciousness of mankind, invested with light and loveliness which was certainly hidden in the darkness and crudity of Bethlehem, and supplied with details that are dear to the whole world from another source. This other source however originates in the gospel too and is an expression of truth. It is the Christmas crib, which is put up year after year in our churches and our homes. The crib showing the nativity and all the cities and villages and Catholic homes of the world is not only there to commemorate Christ’s first coming to earth, it is there as a symbol of Christ’s birth in us. Christmas does not only mean that God became man and was born as a human infant on a certain night in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. It means that, but equally that because of that, Christ is born in us today. Christ is born in all the cities and villages, all the streets and homes of the world today. He is born in prosperous cities lit up and noisy with pleasure whereas in Bethlehem His crying is not heard. He is born among the ruins of devastated cities, where few would recognize Him without His crown of thorns. He is born in New York, Berlin, Warsaw, Paris, London, everywhere where a single human soul repeats — even perhaps almost doubting it in themselves — Our Lady’s Fiat: “Be it done unto me.”

In an Anglican church in a poor part of London the painted background to the crib shows the actual street in which the church stands, with its narrow little houses, its crooked chimney pots and its public house. It tells the people of that parish where Christ is born today. Christ is not only born at Christmas though it is at Christmas that we keep the feast of the Incarnation. He is born day after day in every infant or adult as they are baptized; in every sinner who is sorry for sin and is absolved; in everyone in whom God’s grace quickens the supernatural life which is the Christ life, for the first or the millionth time. The first crib was given to the faithful by St. Francis of Assisi in the year 1223. It was his sermon for the Feast of the Nativity to the people of the little town of Greccio. The Saint had a real manger and hay brought an an ox and ass led in. Mass was said over the manger assisted by Francis as deacon and all the townsfolk came with lights and the night was filled with their singing.

The eyewitness who tells this lovely incident says men and beasts were filled with joy and again verily in that hour Greccio became a new Bethlehem. We can say the same on any night anywhere in a tenement, prison, hospital, school, church — wherever Christ is born or reborn in a human life — that place becomes a new Bethlehem. Saint Francis could not separate our Lord’s passion from his sensitivity. He made the first crib, he said, so that men should see with their own eyes the hardships he suffered as an infant. A man who was present on that night had a vision; he saw the Infant Jesus lying dead in the manger but when St. Francis came near, He woke to life. Thomas of Celano, who was one of the friars who tells the story, makes a comment on this which could be taken with absolute sincerity as a comment on the world as it is today. This vision was not meaningless, for had not the Child Jesus died the spiritual death of oblivion in many hearts to be wakened to new life and to reign forever in the hearts by God’s grace and the ministrations of St. Francis?

The crib, besides showing the world something of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, besides giving us the Mother of God and bringing the angels down to the earth, shows that the Incarnation embraces in its limitless tenderness even the humble animals. Just as Adam’s fall involved the whole animal world in suffering — “All things groan together with him”… — the birth of the new Adam brought its blessing to the animals paying fallen man’s enormous amount of pity to beasts of burden; drawing them into the service and even close to the suffering of their creator and Lord. On the night of His birth, when he first gave his body to us, lambs were brought to Christ. On the night before He died, when He gave us His body in the Holy Communion, He kept the ritual of the paschal lamb. The lowly beast came into the stable to stand close to Mary and Joseph and warm them with their great shaggy flanks. The breath of cattle is fragrant with clover; old men and children believe that this is so because the ox was to breathe on the nakedness of the little Lord to warm Him.

At all events, it was the yoke of the ox that Christ used as a symbol of the cross laid on the shoulders of all those who would follow Him through the ages. “Take my yoke upon yourselves and learn from me; I am gentle and humble of heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt.11: 28-30). A donkey stood by the manger and Christ rode on the donkey on the eve of His passion, which we are told is the reason why every donkey has the cross marked out in soft dark fur on his gray back. Long ago the prophet had foreseen the hour of Christ’s birth and Christ’s death in one inseparable vision: “In the midst of two animals thou shalt be made known. When the years shall draw nigh, thou shalt be known. When the time shall come, thou shalt be known” (Habacuc 3: 2-3); Good Friday Mass of the Presanctified, Tract).

On Calvary He is set between two thieves; in Bethlehem He is set between two animals. On Calvary he is poor with the poverty of destitution; in Bethlehem He is poor with the poverty of destitution. He is deprived of his home in Nazareth; the cradle made ready for him is empty. “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9: 58; Matt. 8:20). On Calvary he was naked, stripped of his garments and of all that He had; and He was naked and stripped of all that he had in Bethlehem. On Calvary He was stretched and straightened and fastened down to the cross; in Bethlehem He was stretched out and straightened and fastened in swaddling bands. On Calvary He was lifted up helpless and held up for men to look upon; in Bethlehem He was lifted up helpless to be gazed on: “Lo, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me!” On Calvary He was laid upon a wooden cross and in Bethlehem He was laid within a wooden manger. By the cross stood Mary His mother; by the crib knelt Mary, His mother.

He was crucified outside the city wall; He was born outside of his own village and crowded out of Bethlehem: “I am a worm, and no man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people.” At His birth he was called King of the Jews. At his death he was called King of the Jews. The claim to be king threatened His life in Bethlehem. The claim to be king cost Him His life in Jerusalem. Three times the mysterious title is heavy with doom: at His birth, at His trial and at His death.  At His birth there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem saying, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews, for we have seen His star in the east and are come to adore him” (Matt. 2:2). At His trial Jesus stood before the governor and the governor asked Him, saying, “Art thou the King of the Jews? Jesus said to him: thou sayest it” (Matt. 26:27) At His death they put over His head His cause, written: “This is Jesus the King of the Jews” (Matt. 27:37). He was mocked at His birth by Herod; He was mocked at His death by the Roman soldiers. In both cases the derision was a mockery of adoration.

Herod was the pioneer of those hypocrites who for their own pride slayed the Christ Child in the heart of the world: “Go and diligently inquire after the Child and when you have found Him, bring me word again that I also may come and adore Him” (Matt. 2:8). The Roman soldiers were the pioneers of those egoists, too, for passing entertainment and sensation, ridicule and blasphemed the suffering Christ in the heart of man motivated — like so much cruelty today — by group mentality: “Then the soldiers of the governor, taking Jesus into the hall, gathered together unto Him the whole band. And stripping Him, they put a scarlet cloak about Him and platting a crown of thorns, they put it upon His head and a reed in His right hand. And bowing the knee before Him, they mocked Him saying, ‘Hail, king of the Jews. And spitting upon him they took the reed and struck His head” (Matt. 27: 27-30). Two crowns are set side by side — a crown of gold at His birth, a crown of thorns at His death. The crown of gold is too hard and heavy for His infant head: His head bowed and died in the crown of thorns.

Tradition named the wise men with three melodious names: Balthazar, Melchior and Caspar. To children they are three kings who travelled under a solitary store wearing their crowns and their royal robes, bringing scarlet and gold and ermine and blue clouds of incense into the stable. One of the kings is a black man. His offering his myrrh, for he carries the sorrow of the colored people in his humble, adoring heart. At Bethlehem myrrh was brought to Him and myrrh was brought to anoint His body for burial. Each time it was brought by a rich man who came by night  — first by the wise king and then by Nicodemus: “And Nicodemus also came, (he who at the first came to Jesus by night) bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a100 pound weight” (John 19:39). Another king brought incense, frankincense that was poured into a sensor of gold and lit with a flame filling the stable with an aromatic smell mingled with the smell of hay and the ox’s breath of clover. Myrrh and frankincense were poured out for Him in Bethlehem and spikenard and ointment were poured over His body in Bethania for His burial. “And when Jesus was in Bethania, in the House of Simon the leper, there came to him a woman having an alabaster box of precious ointment and poured it on His head as He was at table. And the disciples seeing it had indignation saying, ‘To what purpose is this waste? For this might have been sold for much and given to the poor. And Jesus knowing it said to them: ‘Why do you trouble this woman, for she hath wrought good work upon me. For the poor you have always with you, but me you have not always. For she in pouring this ointment upon my body hath done it for my burial” (Matt. 26: 6- 12).

There in the stable at Bethlehem began the lovely waste that is the extravagance of love that is and will always be scandal to the loveless. Already as a useless crown of gold that the Infant’s head could not support shone at His feet, clouds of incense hung in the rafters of the stable and the air grew fragrant with the smell of myrrh. The box of precious ointment was broken to anoint the beloved for his burial. Already before God the great cathedrals arose going up to him like forests of stone. Jewels from the crowns of kings and queens were set on in chalices of beaten gold. Already contemplatives, drawn by an inner compulsion mysterious as the migration of birds, flocked to God. Carmelites, Carthusians, Trappists, Poor Clares, were received into the Infant’s open hands and their nailed into the man’s hands nailed to the cross. Nailed by the three vows that are the three nails that hold Christ in us, to the cross of suffering and love that redeems the world. To what purpose is this waste for this might have been sold for the much and given to the poor.

At Bethlehem He was wrapped in swaddling bands and laid in the manger. On Calvary He was wrapped in swaddling bands and laid in a tomb. Both the manger and the tomb were borrowed. Both had been made for their owners. They were not made for Christ. All that had been prepared for Him God had set aside. God chose what men should give to His Son and He chose these things so shaped or worn to the givers life that they had become part of them, so warm with the giver’s touch that they could not be given without the giving of self. Christ accepted these offerings in which self was given; not what man had made for Him but what man had made for himself. The gifts were self at the core, involving the surrender of the giver’s will, even in the choice of the gift. So it is today and always. We would like to give God gifts of our own choosing which even if they are in one sense part of our life are yet things added on, on purpose to give, without having to pull up anything of ourselves at the roots. We are often surprised when after we have offered God several litanies a day and a pest of little mortifications, He chooses instead something that is really ourselves; our solitude, for example, or the sweetness of the feel of love, or, as is very frequent now, our home.

It is what God chooses that kindles in the crucible and burns the flame of love. He accepted with both straw and gold — He did not despise the humble animals, or the humility of their giving. He accepted the warm breath of the cattle on His cold hands and feet, the soft touch of the sheep’s wool, the joy that shone from the violet eyes of the little red calves. There was no distinction of color or race or class or education or money in Bethlehem; kings and shepherds, colored men and white men, angels and beasts adored together. The treasure of kings lay at the feet of the foot of the manger with the sheepskin coats the shepherds had taken off to give in their scarlet gourds of milk and wine. In Bethlehem the Mother of Christ gave Christ’s human body to us. She had given her own flesh and blood to Him to be His flesh and blood. Now she gave herself to us and Him. Giving Him to us, she gave His body to cold, to thirst, to light and darkness, to sleep. In Bethlehem began the thirst of Calvary, the terrible thirst of bloodlessness that withers the tongue and the hands and feet and the whole body. In Bethlehem came the infant blindness and blindness came again on Calvary, filling Christ’s eyes with the darkness of dying. In Bethlehem Christ slept his first sleep in his mother’s arms; on Calvary Christ slept his last sleep in his mother’s arms.

In the inscape of Calvary and the passion of the infant Jesus, we beheld His resurrection from the dead. Christ came out of the darkness of the womb. He was the light of the world. He came to give the world life. The life of the whole world burned in the tiny flame of an infant’s life. It began the age-long fight with death in the least and frailest that human nature can be; in the helplessness, the littleness and blindness of an infant, life prevailed. The light of the world shone in darkness. At Bethlehem love and death met in the body of Christ and Love prevailed. Over and over again and every human life love and death meet to face to face. No human power or splendor or strength, no material might or wealth can overcome death — the death of the soul. But if the life in the soul is the tiniest spark of the life of Christ, love prevails and death is overcome in us. Christ came out of the darkness of the tomb. He came back from the helplessness and blindness and silence of death and His feet that walked on earth bore the wounds of death and His hands that touched the flowers and the grass bore the wounds of death. He had overcome the world; He had died all our deaths and overcome death.

All over the world and generation after generation, men rose from the dead all over the world; everywhere there was resurrection and Easter morning in the heart of man. At Bethlehem, angels stood among the flocks and around the stable door; angels stood beside the empty tomb. The message of the Incarnation is peace. On the hills above Bethlehem, the angel song was peace: “Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of goodwill.” And peace was the word on the tongue of the risen Christ, His greeting to the world: “Peace be unto you.” At the nativity it was to shepherds that the angels brought the message of peace and shepherds who came first to the Divine Child. On the night before He suffered, Christ keeping the Feast of the Paschal Lamb, gave His peace — the peace of the Lamb of God. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you” (John 14:27).

When the season of the risen Christ had come, warm with light and flower and fruit and the abundance of His life, it was to a shepherd that Christ came, entrusting the giving of His life and love and peace to him. He came to Peter, the shepherd of His own flock, the shepherd for all time of his shearlings and his sheep. “Simon, son of John, lovest thou me more than these?” Yea Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. “Feed my lambs. Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?” Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. “Feed my lambs. Simon, son of John, lovest thou me?” Lord thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. “Feed my sheep.”