Day 6 – The sign of a child
Pope Benedict XVI’s Midnight Mass Homily 2006:
We have just heard in the Gospel the message given by the angels to the shepherds during that Holy Night, a message which the Church now proclaims to us: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, 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” (Lk 2:11-12). Nothing miraculous, nothing extraordinary, nothing magnificent is given to the shepherds as a sign. All they will see is a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, one who, like all children, needs a mother’s care; a child born in a stable, who therefore lies not in a cradle but in a manger. God’s sign is the baby in need of help and in poverty. Only in their hearts will the shepherds be able to see that this baby fulfils the promise of the prophet Isaiah, which we heard in the first reading: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder” (Is 9:5). Exactly the same sign has been given to us. We too are invited by the angel of God, through the message of the Gospel, to set out in our hearts to see the child lying in the manger.
God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby – defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing from us other than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him.
Reflection:
Let us meditate on the little God who comes to us and welcome him into our arms and our hearts and love him.
We learn to see Him better as we become more like Him. When we choose to become little and we accept our weakness we draw closer to the Baby Jesus in the womb of Mary. As we love Him, we enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will and we enter into the heart and into the womb of Mary, to whom He first entrusted His life. We find ourselves pressed up against Him like two twins in the womb, experiencing His paradise in that place of perfect love.
Veni Sancte Spiritus
Ave Maris Stella or Sub Tuum Praesidium
Litany of Penance or Radiating Christ
Prayer of Entrustment to the Womb of Mary
Father, Thank you again for sending me these daily meditations and prayers of Marian Consecration. They help me keep focused on Jesus and Mary. The pictures are so beautiful. I wish I could find prints of them to frame for my children.
God Bless you Father.
How stunningly simple and beautiful this is. Yet how difficult our culture, which has embraced “the will to power” in its many “isms” , makes it for us to yield to being loved. For me, the mere sight of Jesus on the cross did exactly what Pope Benedict said – it led me spontaneously to enter into Christ’s mind, heart, and will. . . But I somehow dug my heels in when it came to allowing myself to be mothered by Our Blessed Lady. To become a humble child again and submit – in all my woundedness and pride – to being knit up and made whole again by Love . . . . that is the difficult part. Yet He did this! He is the Way and she is one who takes us there. To fully, truly yield to her motherly love. . . . That is my prayer.