Bethlehem Revisited

Christmas is a time when we are invited to revisit Bethlehem and to reconsider its miracle. Bethlehem does not change and the miracle does not change, but we change, and the eyes with which we are able to see change. Hence what we see from year to year is not the same, which makes this annual visit an adventure rather than a routine pilgrimage.

If we are trying to reconstruct the original scene in the cave, we must wipe away this ceremonial splendor and see the work animals, oxen and donkeys, tethered in their stalls. Tended by her faithful husband and lying on the straw, a young woman has just given birth to her first child. The child has been wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.

Francis of Assisi could make all of this more vivid to us than the bejewelled crypt, for he had the custom on Christmas Eve of reenacting this scene in an Italian barn, and for him the placing of the child in the company of animals and straw of the fields was so naturally right. Francis had passed through the needle's eye of God's mercy and his fear had been taken from him: fear of nature, fear of animals, fear of men; fear of death.