Advent Retreat Online
 


Christmas!






by:Most Rev. Gérard PETTIPAS , C.Ss.R., Archbishop of Grouard-McLennan




We are told that the first Nativity crèche was designed by St. Francis of Assisi. This doesn’t surprise me. St. Francis was a disarming sort of fellow – very humble and simple. I imagine him being able to make a simple statement or ask a fundamental question that would leave the learned masters scratching their heads. He was a literalist when it came to Holy Scripture. Legend has it that even the birds and wild animals would sit in attention and listen to him preach.


I can see that sort of person being the first one to design a scene of the Nativity. It is all so imaginative… you’ve got animals and angels, shepherds and wise men, a very attentive and focused Mary and Joseph. There’s straw in a manger, and a baby in the straw. How simple, and imaginative. This is not the stuff of high scholasticism. It is the domain of the small, the simple and the ordinary. It’s such a wonder that the Son God would be born in such conditions.


The infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew differ considerably. Matthew’s gospel, written for Jewish converts to Christianity, makes the point that the birth, events and teachings of Jesus’ life and ministry have parallels in the Old Testament, and in fact are their fulfillment. Luke, on the other hand, has a very simple approach. Not for him the fie robes of kinds or magi bearing expensive gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Luke’s snapshot focuses on Mary, the child, the shepherds. All very beautiful, with a noble simplicity.


How like God this is! God comes to us not in wonder and awe (except wonder and awe at a baby). He doesn’t come in power and magnificence. He does not force his way in to our world or into our life or into our heart. God comes in weakness and meekness, and in Jesus, God is made loveable.


This is how St. Alpohonsus Liguori says it in one of his _Discourses for the Novena of Christmas_: … to render himself still more attractive in our eyes, he would make his first appearance as a little child that in this guise he might be the more charming and irresistible; he showed himself an infant that he might make himself the more acceptable in our eyes … he abased himself to the humble condition of a little child in order to make himself more agreeable to our hearts.


Reflection Questions

  • What is the smallest and simplest thing in your life that you deeply appreciate? Where did it come from? What is it that you like about that thing?
  • When a group of people is shown several wrapped gifts of different sizes and shapes, from which they are to choose one for themselves, why will they most consistently select the largest gift?