The Beauty of the Manger

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“And in that region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they feared exceedingly.

“And the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which shall be to all the people. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of goodwill’” (Luke 2:8-14).

In Bethlehem Our Lord surrounds himself with humility. “God resists the proud, but he gives his grace to the humble” (James 4:6; Prov. 3:34).

The good news of great joy is announced to the shepherds, humble people who were keeping watch over their flock by night. The news is not announced to all the important people of the town, the mayor or the MP or the governor, but to some simple shepherds.

And we are told, “The angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them” (Luke 2:9).

It's all very beautiful: the angels are beautiful, the shepherds are beautiful, it's beautiful in its simplicity.

And as often happens in the pages of Scripture, in the presence of the supernatural, there is fear. The first words of the angel are words for the people not to fear, “Do not be afraid, for…I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10-11).

The angel brings good news. Ultimately the good news is Christ. And we are called to follow in the footsteps of that angel and announce the good news—the good news of Christ, the social teaching of the Church, the dignity of every human person—good news which will bring a great joy.

And this great joy is not just for some people, but it's meant to be to all the people. In some ways you could say this is the foundation of the missionary thrust of the Church: to bring the good news to every corner of society.

“For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you” (Luke 2:11-12).

God speaks through signs and symbols.

Pope St. John Paul liked to say, “We go to the great spiritual mysteries through physical signs and symbols” (John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them; Audience, February 20, 1980; Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1146).

God speaks to us often through the ordinary things of every day. And that means we have to be attentive to His voice and attentive to the signs that God gives us—maybe in a word, maybe in a phrase, maybe in a motion of grace or an idea deep down in our heart and soul. Or something that he lets us see in a new way, with a new optical angle about the beauty of Creation or about the mystery of our life.

And for the shepherds, this night is a very special night. It's one they will remember for the whole of their life. Some signs are very important. They have a perennial relevance.

“You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12). You will find something small, something tiny, in a very obscure place, the last possible place that you might imagine, the tiniest possible sign that you could think of.

The angel invites them to go on a treasure hunt. Like the treasure in the field or the pearl of great price (Matt. 13:44-46), it's worth everything.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of goodwill.’ When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us’” (Luke 2:13-15).

It's interesting how in Scripture when people discern the will of God in their life, they focus on fulfilling that will of God. Later on, the Magi are going to follow the star (Matt. 2:1-12). They're going to leave behind everything that they possibly have, take with them their finest gifts, and set out on their journey.

It's all a call to follow a vocation, a Christian vocation that God has given to us, which fills our life with meaning. And, somehow, this journey of the shepherds is transmitting that message to us: “Let us go over to Bethlehem.”

They don't say, ‘Oh, that was very nice. Let's turn over and go back to sleep and we'll think about it again some other day.’

They make resolutions; they move; they're people of initiative; they're dynamic. “And see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15).

In the life of each one of us, God has made known our calling to us, and what His will for us is. Like the shepherds, we have to try and follow that pathway.

“And they went with haste” (Luke 2:16). There's no dilly-dallying; this is top priority.

Very often in Scripture there's a great sense of urgency. Mary also went “with haste” (Luke 1:39). There's a hurry about them to fulfill the will of God.

“And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger” (Luke 2:16). It's a very important verb: they “found” Mary and Joseph.

Imagine if the story was a little different: They looked high up, and low down, and for all their searching they could not find the Holy Family. The whole of Christmas and of our lives would be very different.

“God resists the proud, but he gives his grace to the humble” (James 4:6; Prov. 3:34). How many people in your life do you know who are looking for God in their life and who perhaps do not find Him?

Somehow, we have to be the people who help them to find the Holy Family. Maybe this Christmas, with our effort in family life, in building up our home, in being there for our children, with our virtue, with our words, with our spiritual life, we have to help people around them, showing them the right way, pointing them in the right direction.

“And when they saw it, they made known the saying which had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them” (Luke 2:17-18).

The shepherds came with a beautiful message: confirmation of the divine plans.

It must have been a great joy to Our Lady and St. Joseph to hear the divine plans expressed to them in different ways, coming from different people, like a confirmation of all the things that God had made known to them, a confirmation that they had made the right decisions back in Nazareth.

Now every step of their journey, difficult as it was, to Bethlehem, was worthwhile. Like every step along the pathway of our vocation, in our marriage, in our family, in our work, in our health, in our finances—it's all worthwhile.

And we're told the shepherds came, “and they found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger” (Luke 2:16).

And what did they find? They found something beautiful, something they would never forget: Divine Beauty Incarnate. They were told, “You will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger” (Luke 2:12). And God's promises were fulfilled.

[Richard Paul Evans] says, “The beauty of Christmas blesses us with a promise of breathtaking happiness and fills us with certainty that people of today will believe if they discover authentic beauty.” Bethlehem is all about authentic beauty.

Beauty attracts. That's why we're attracted by the Christ Child in Bethlehem. St. Basil has said, “Human beings by nature desire the beautiful” (St. Basil, Wider Rules).

Consider this in relation to the stable in Bethlehem, and how important the crib is in your home, so that the messages of Bethlehem enter through the eyes of your children.

Another writer says, “A human being's first sentiment is attraction. The motivation for saying ‘yes’ to something that comes into our life, defeating all preconceptions, is beauty” (Luigi Giussani). We find beauty irresistible.

John Paul II said, “Reality, with its beauty, makes one feel the beginning of fulfillment and seems to whisper to us: ‘You will not be unhappy; the desire of your heart will be fulfilled; what is more, it is already being fulfilled” (John Paul II, Message, August 19, 2002).

God has filled nature with beauty. We admire the beauty of a sunset, or the beauty of a sunrise, or the beauty of works of art or something in sport. We see beauty all around us. The clean pure heart detects beauty in greater ways. We're attracted by it. It makes us feel the beginning of fulfillment.

And so, in a special way we are attracted to Bethlehem because we find the beautiful irrepressible and irresistible. Our attraction to beauty reaches right to our core.

One Russian writer says, In its essence man is created with a hunger for the beautiful.

There's a subliminal message tied into these words of the shepherds: “They found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger” (Luke 2:16). They found the meaning and the purpose of their life; they found the greatest treasure they could possibly ever find. It was something incredible. Their journey was worthwhile.

Dostoevsky liked to say that “the world will be saved by beauty” (Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot).

When the [Magi] saw the Christ Child, “falling down they adored him, they worshipped him” (Matt. 2:11). They were adoring the Savior of the world, their own Savior: the beauty that was going to bring them to heaven.

That same Dostoevsky says, “There is only one, absolutely beautiful thing in the world, whose apparition is a miracle of beauty: Christ” (cf. F. Dostoevsky, Letters, 135).

And that's why John Paul II says that that in Christ we find the meaning and the purpose of our life (cf. Pope John Paul II, Homily, World Youth Day, August 14, 1993). We find it in beauty, and Christ is beautiful. Everything He says, everything He does.

That's why we try to read the Gospel every day, not just at Mass, but maybe a few words or even one word or a phrase. It feeds our soul with beauty in a regular way.

Or the doctrine that comes to us through the teaching of the Church that we try to get to know over the course of time, particularly the social doctrine—all aspects of the beauty that Christ has come to reveal to us, to fill our lives with beauty, to transmit it in all sorts of ways.

Pope Benedict liked to say we're all taken up in the cult of the beautiful, because the world presents ugly things, materialistic things.

Pope Francis has recently said there is a great spiritual emptiness in the world (cf. Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Querida Amazonia, Point 108, February 2, 2020; Angelus, June 19, 2016).

The Christ Child, this Christmas, has come to fill that spiritual emptiness with His beauty. And beauty provokes wonder. Watch out for that word ‘wonder’ in the liturgy of the Church over Christmas.

The Second Preface of Advent says, “In his love, Christ has filled us with joy as we prepare to celebrate his birth, so that when he comes he may find us watching in prayer, our hearts filled with wonder and praise.”

Beauty sways without needing to be explained. It speaks of itself. The bridegroom is beautiful; the wedding feast is beautiful.

The beautiful, said Thomas Aquinas, is that quality of an artwork or object of nature, which, once experienced by the senses, pleases by stirring desire, arousing a feeling of admiration and producing love and contemplative delight.

Think of these words in relation to the intimacy of Bethlehem.

Von Balthasar, a spiritual writer, says, “The beautiful brings with it a self-evidence that it enlightens without mediation” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord).

Hence, little children can enter into the stable in Bethlehem, and somehow understand the message that is there.

Pope St. John Paul says, “The brilliance of contemplative beauty opens the spirit to the mystery of God” (John Paul II, Message, August 19, 2002).

We find the same in the mountains and the sea: God speaks to us through nature. But He also speaks to us through this little baby in Bethlehem.

Jacques Maritain says, “The beautiful, goes straight to the heart, it's a ray of intelligibility, which reaches it directly and sometimes brings tears to the eyes” (Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism).

Beauty can make us weep. The famous English poet Edgar Allan Poe says, “When beauty moves us to tears, we weep through an impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem or through the music, we obtain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses” (Edgar Allan Poe, The Poetic Principle).

We see a little bit of the beauty now, but it's just a little glimpse of the beauty that is waiting for us: eternal beauty in heaven.

When we cry at the experience of something beautiful, our tears “are not only manifestations of delight, but more deeply, they are pointers to the nameless yearning for a transcendent beauty, something more that must be attainable but cannot be achieved” (Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty).

We are created for eternal beauty, eternal goodness. That's why the limited goodness of this world somehow doesn't satisfy us; we have an appetite for the infinite.

And that's why the Church invites us year after year to enter into the stable in Bethlehem, and to contemplate, once again, the beauty of the scene.

Von Balthasar says, “Often people have wept over the beautiful, but only because through it, Jesus touched their heart without their knowing it” (H. U. von Balthasar, Heart of the World).

We might observe something beautiful, but we might not see all of its beauty. But if Our Lord gives us the grace to see that special beauty and penetrate the beauty in the word, in the phrase, in the gesture, in the heart, it’s because Jesus has touched our hearts.

The tears that accompany the experience of beauty convince us that we cannot produce what our stirred-up spirit so craves. We have a yearning for the beautiful, but we cannot fully satisfy it. And so, every Christmas carol touches our hearts a little bit.

“Elegant splendor,” says another writer, “reawakens our spirit’s aching need for the infinite, a hunger for more than matter can provide” (Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty).

Jesus Christ, Divine Beauty Incarnate, is the answer to that primal human hunger.

St. Thomas Aquinas speaks about the four-fold beauty of Christ. He says, “In his divine nature, he has beauty, for he is God the Son, the Splendor of the Father. In his human nature, Jesus has the beauty of grace and the virtues, for he is full of grace and truth.”

In Christ we see the beauty of moral conduct. Human actions of the Son of God are more upright, and therefore, more beautiful, than any other man's.

Christ has the beauty of body, a beauty befitting the man who is God, in whose face the spiritual beauty of the Godhead shone. In this visible baby in Bethlehem, we go to the invisible. We sense the invisible beauty of God. This is the beauty born for us to behold on Christmas.

One of the [ascetics] says, “When grace perceives that we greatly desire the heavenly beauty, it grants us the mark of likeness” (Diadochos of Photiki, Philokalia).

Thanks to the human flesh of Jesus, our natural attraction to beauty will lead us to share in the supernatural perfection of Christ.

If beauty is so special, so important, so great, so central, Dostoevsky says, “We shouldn't be surprised that beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend for the hearts of men” (cf. F. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov).

The devil presents ugly things to us; the world is full of ugly things. We have to try and make the world beautiful. We're involved in the cult of beauty.

This Christmas we have to help our children and people around us to get a glimpse of the beautiful, so that they might want that beautiful.

On that battlefield we're not alone. The Byzantine liturgy says, “The indescribable Word of the Father has made Himself describable, by becoming Incarnate from you, Mother of God. Having re-established the defiled image in its original dignity, the Word united it to the Divine Beauty.”

“I wonder, then, that only beauty,” says Dostoevsky, “is absolutely indispensable. For without beauty there is nothing left in the world worth doing” (F. Dostoevsky, Demons).

This Christmas, God wants us to rediscover beauty.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “Every desire for the Beautiful which draws us on in the ascent to the infinite is intensified by the soul's very progress towards it. And this is the real meaning of seeing God: never to have this desire satisfied.

“But fixing our eyes on those things which which help us to see, we must ever keep alive in us the desire to see more and more. And so, no limit can be set to our progress towards God, because no limitation can be put upon the Beautiful” (Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses).

We need to feed our eyes, our mind, our heart on the beautiful, in art and in culture, everywhere we can.

Tolkien liked to say, “All my own perception of beauty, both in majesty and simplicity, is founded upon Our Lady” (John Ronald R. Tolkien, Letters).

And so, with the shepherds, we can enter the stable in Bethlehem, admiring the beauty of Mary, which leads us to the beauty of Jesus.

Mater amabilis, Mater admirabilis, toto pulchra. Mother most amiable, Mother most admirable, all beauty.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

CPG