One of Us From The Beginning

The hearty lungs of a newborn who cannot be ignored

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:1-7)

How often do we step back and consider how radical and earth-shaking it was that God came to earth as a baby?

Jesus could have appeared miraculously as a full-grown adult, already able to preach and teach.

Instead God chose to take part in the fullness of human experience from the very beginning.

The vulnerability of pregnancy. The risk of birth. The helplessness of infancy. 

This baby shows up in the world of power and politics, his birth announcement tucked in at the end of a long litany of names and places that signal historical context and religious tradition: the world and work of adults.

But it is the Babe who will change everything: the Christ Child who has come to save us, now swaddled and soothed and sleeping in the only safe place his mother could find.

He will show up in simple, small, and surprising ways in this Christmas season, too. Perhaps tucked in a corner of your own whirling world. Perhaps in the middle of your best-laid plans. Perhaps right where you are convinced that God can’t reach. 

He will reach out his arms to you with the trusting love of a child seeking to be carried.

He will cry out to you with the hearty lungs of a newborn who cannot be ignored. 

Feast upon this truth today: He is Emmanuel, this infant in the manger. He will be born in our hearts, as in every Christmastide, the Babe who becomes our eternal hope.

“O, if only I were permitted to see that manger in which the Lord lay!…I marvel at the Lord, the Creator of the universe, who is born, not surrounded by gold and silver, but by mud and clay…Since we have touched on many things and have heard the Babe crying in the manger and have adored him there, let us continue our adoration of him today. Let us pick him up in our arms and adore him as the Son of God. Mighty God who for so long a time thundered in heaven and did not redeem humanity, cries and as a babe redeems him.”

St. Jerome, Homily 88, On the Birth of the Lord.

(From my book Emmanuel: A Christmas Feast)

Peace,

Laura

Find my books here: Everyday Sacrament | Grieving Together | Prayers for Pregnancy & Birth | To Bless Our Callings | Living Your Discipleship

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