Filed under: Christmas
Here is a beautiful quote about Christ’s birth from the Council of Trent.
“The faithful should also consider the salutary lessons which Christ at His birth teaches before he begins to speak. He is born in poverty; He is born a stranger under a roof not his own; He is born in a lonely crib; He is born in the depth of winter!
For St. Luke writes as follows: ‘And it came to pass, that, when they were there, her days were accomplished that she should be delivered, and she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn’ (Luke 2: 6,7).
Could the Evangelist have described under more humble terms the majesty and glory that filled the heavens and the earth? He does not say, there was no room in the inn, but ‘there was no room for him who says: mine is the earth and the fullness thereof. (Psalm 50:12)’ As another Evangelist has expressed it; ‘He came unto his own, and his own received him not.’ (John 1:2) …
We must also take care lest to our great injury it should happen that just as there was no room for Him in the inn at Bethlehem, in which to be born, so likewise now, after He has been born in the flesh, He should find no room in our hearts in which to be born spiritually. For since He is most desirous of our salvation, this spiritual birth is the object of His most earnest solicitude.”
Catechism of the Council of Trent For Parish Priests. Second Part of Article III, “Born of the Virgin Mary”. (Thanks to Father Paul Donlan for bringing the Council’s teaching to our attention.)
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