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Christmas Reflection

“Though Christ is born ten thousand times, a new despair, O Man, unless he is born in you.”

Christmas is the day we Christians all over the world commemorate the historical birth of Jesus Christ which took place 2001 years ago in the humble cow-shed at Bethlehem. In a very special way this feast is dear to us Franciscans, because, our founder St Francis of Assisi, who had a special love for Jesus, wanted to re-create this nativity scene of Bethlehem at Greccio in the year 1223. He invited all the friars and the villagers from the surrounding villages, to come with lighted lanterns and with their cattle to Greccio. Francis had prepared a manger with hay. When the people arrived, he asked them to bring the ox, donkey, and sheep, to the manger. During the Christmas Mass, Francis preached a delightful sermon. After the mass he went to the crib he had prepared for Baby Jesus. With great devotion he bent down at the crib, and lo and behold, to everyone’s amazement, they saw the Baby Jesus in the loving arms of Francis. The empty manger was now filled with the radiance of the new born King. The crowd who had gathered rejoiced at the divine experience and praised God for making the Baby Jesus alive to them. To this day, the villagers of Greccio celebrate this event with gaiety and gratitude to St Francis. The whole village is filled with cribs, at street corners, at window sills and at every turn on the road. The friary at Greccio has a permanent crib.

In our life too, every year this commemoration of God becoming man (Christmas) comes and goes. However, has this event made an impact on our life? Because, the Christmas seems an external celebration of Cribs, Carols, Cakes, Decorations etc. If Christmas is just considered as an external celebration, I think, the Shopping Malls in the city and the business streets are the best celebrators of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, is this so? Christmas is all about Christ being born in us. God lies like a child in the stable. We ourselves are like a stable. Not everything in us is pure, and there is a bad smell. Much is in disarray. But still God searches humans who are sinners (Lk 5:32). God is seeking our consent to make everything new and good, genuine and unadulterated, so that the true image of God may unfold in our human faces. Both the Bible and Christian tradition seek to show us in ever new images what this mystery of the divine birth within us means. We cannot fully grasp this mystery. It wants to tell us that God is “Emmanuel” (God-is-with-us). Just like the awesome request to the virgin girl in Nazareth, the same request is made by God to incarnate himself in each of us. If he can find no place in us, then, as a medieval mystic wrote:

“Though Christ is born
ten thousand times,
a new despair,
O Man,
Unless He is born in you.”

So, may this birth of Jesus be yours during this Christmas and all through the New Year.

Br. Adarsh Y. OFM
St. Anthony’s Friary Bengaluru.

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