{"id":3806,"date":"2006-12-24T23:57:28","date_gmt":"2006-12-24T23:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/a-baby.html"},"modified":"2006-12-24T23:57:28","modified_gmt":"2006-12-24T23:57:28","slug":"a-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/a-baby.html","title":{"rendered":"A Baby"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Pope Benedict’s homily at Midnight Mass:<\/a><\/p>\n

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God\u2019s sign is simplicity. God\u2019s sign is the baby. God\u2019s sign is that he makes himself small for us. \"Arc_navidad2_chica\"<\/a> This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby \u2013 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 other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will \u2013 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. The Fathers of the Church, in their Greek translation of the Old Testament, found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that Paul also quotes in order to show how God\u2019s new ways had already been foretold in the Old Testament. There we read: "God made his Word short, he abbreviated it" (Is<\/em> 10:23; Rom<\/em> 9:28). The Fathers interpreted \"Holyfam_na\"<\/a> this in two ways. The Son himself is the Word, the Logos<\/em>; the eternal Word became small \u2013 small enough to fit into a manger. He became a child, so that the Word could be grasped by us. In this way God teaches us to love the little ones. In this way he teaches us to love the weak. In this way he teaches us respect for children. The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all children who suffer and are abused in the world, the born and the unborn. Towards children who are placed as soldiers in a violent world; towards children who have to beg; towards children who suffer deprivation and hunger; towards children who are unloved. In all of these it is the Child of Bethlehem who is crying out to us; it is the God who has become small who appeals to us. Let us pray this night that the brightness of God\u2019s love may enfold all these children. Let us ask God to help us do our part so that the dignity of children may be respected. May they all experience the light of l ove, which mankind needs so much more than the material necessities of life.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Much, much more.<\/a><\/p>\n

And if you want even more, get yourself a copy of Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts – <\/em><\/a>a wonderful little book – one of the best introductions you could give to a Benedict-skeptic, in which then-Cardinal Ratzinger meditates on various aspects of faith, inspired by feasts and works of art. The content of this homily is contained in the chapter on St. Mary Major.<\/p>\n

From the homily:<\/p>\n

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He is no longer distant. He is no longer unknown. He is no longer beyond the reach of our heart. He has become a child for us, and in so doing he has dispelled all doubt. He has become our neighbour, restoring in this way the image of man, whom we often find so hard to love. For us, God has become a gift. He has given himself. He has entered time for us. He who is the Eternal One, above time, he has assumed our time and raised it to himself on high. Christmas has become the Feast of gifts in imitation of God who has given himself to us. Let us allow our heart, our soul and our mind to be touched by this fact! Among the many gifts that we buy and receive, let us not forget the true gift: to give each other something of ourselves, to give each other something of our time, to open our time to God. In this way anxiety disappears, joy is born, and the feast is created. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Image source<\/a><\/p>\n

Image source<\/a><\/p>\n

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From Pope Benedict’s homily at Midnight Mass: God\u2019s sign is simplicity. God\u2019s sign is the baby. God\u2019s 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 \u2013 defenceless and in need of our help. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}