God – the King of the Universe – lay still inside His swaddling clothes and waited patiently for the day of His death. For after all, that was the whole reason He had been born…
We are fast approaching the day upon which we celebrate the birthday of Our Lord. This is an important day because it is the day that we traditionally recognise God as having come into the world. And when God Himself became Incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made Man, He allowed Himself to enter into Time and Space and therefore ensure our salvation.
Of all the beings ever born, it was God and God alone in the form of Christ, who was born to die. While all other creatures have been born on this earth so that we can die and be born again to eternal life, Christ Himself, did not require BIRTH to achieve Heaven – He came from Heaven. And so, the only reason why Christ was ever born in the first place was because He chose to suffer and die for our sins in order to redeem us.
And He did this in a way that was the most humble way possible. You see, Christ could have simply willed Himself into Human Form the night of His Passion. He could have divinely inspired the apostles on the day of His death so that they would understand what He wished for them to understand. He could have experienced His Passion and Death in that time and then rose from the dead afterwards… But He did not do it that way…
Instead, God Himself chose to be born of a human woman into a stable and to place Himself under the guardianship of a mere man, in Saint Joseph. He chose to lose control of His bowel and bladder. He chose to burp up the milk that He drank. He chose to rely on the ministrations of a young teenage girl. He drank of her milk and smelled her smell and listened to her voice. He copied the words she taught Him and prayed the way that she prayed.
And I have been thinking about that today, because it seems that God Himself took great care to become perfectly humble in this experience of Earthly life. He took no short cuts. He did not fly from one place to another. He did not live in the world where technology made his life easy. There were no cars for him or planes. The internet did not exist, and his message was passed by word of mouth.
And when he was born, and the shepherds came to adore Him, His mother swaddled Him in clothes that wrapped Him so tightly that He could not move. And when that happened – God the King of the Universe, looked about Him with His sleepy infant eyes – from inside a manger, where the animals eat. And God – the King of the Universe – lay still inside His swaddling clothes and waited patiently for the day of His death. For after all, that was the whole reason He had been born… That death to save me – was the whole entire reason…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.