Spiritual Thoughts for the week

December 25th

The Christ Child

Christmas was the favorite holy day of St. Francis of Assisi, one of our most beloved saints. In fact, St. Francis "invented" the Christmas crèche, or manger scene. One Christmas Eve he, as a deacon, was called upon by the village of Grecchio to preach at the Midnight Mass. He wanted the worshippers to experience the Incarnation more deeply, so he brought in live animals, and asked real people to play the Holy Family and shepherds. Tradition goes that the Child Jesus miraculously appeared for a moment in what had been an empty manger!

Why was Christmas so special to St. Francis? He was carried away by what the event of Christ's birth tells us about our invisible Father God revealed in Jesus Christ, about what God is like and how He wants us to be. To Francis, the lessons of the Incarnation are that:

*Our God chooses to be as vulnerable & dependent as an infant child (the Almighty God of the universe!.) We are to choose vulnerability.
*Our God reveals himself dwelling among the poor and destitute. We are to reverence the poor.
*Our God, who is the source of all Richness, chooses poverty as His human vesture. We are to acknowledge how poor we are in spirit in comparison to God's great love, and strive for material simplicity to make room in our hearts for God's riches.
*Our God, the King of Kings, apprentices and labors as a carpenter/craftsman. Work is holy and God sees & respects the labor of those who toil.
*Our God, King of Kings, is so humble that he is born in a livestock stall, is born into a poor family, and dies, stripped of all possessions, in disgrace. We are to think nothing of ourselves, but to prefer the well-being of the other.
*God was born, lived, suffered and died as one of us. We are loved beyond all telling.
*In His humility, God offers Himself to be consumed by us in the Eucharist in the fragile form of bread. We are to die to self, to be willing to be consumed and all our resources poured out, for the cause of Love and the Holy Gospel.
"We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You, because by Your holy cross (and crib!) You have redeemed the world." (St. Francis of Assisi)