By James M. Kushiner, Executive Director, The Fellowship of St. James

So we are just a day before Christmas Eve when we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ. This is no ordinary birthday, and not only because the Child is no ordinary Child. Birthdays of extraordinary people sometimes may be celebrated by a nation: The Queen’s Birthday (U.K. & Commonwealth), the Emperor’s Birthday (Japan). Sometimes even after an important person is long dead: Washington’s & Lincoln’s birthdays (U.S.). In the case of the latter, we remember the significance of their lives to the nation. For ordinary folks like us, when we celebrate, say, grandpa’s 90th birthday, we are marking the full 90 years of his life as it has unfolded until today. Neither for grandpa, nor the Queen, nor the Emperor, nor a President is it necessary to have a baby picture or recall the setting or any details surrounding the birth of the child in order to celebrate the birthday. It’s not about the baby.

This is not the case with Jesus. It is about the Baby, even 2,000 years later. Even while we know the full significance of his whole life as Savior–and refer to it in Christmas hymns–“born that man no more may die,” i.e., through the Cross and Resurrection–we shine the light of our celebration on the Babe in a manger, wrapped in swaddling cloths. Is there anyone else in human history whose infancy itself we so cherish? There is something that draws us to this Child as a newborn babe. What is it?

I think there is a clue in our general response to babies; and it is more than that. I have been in settings where strangers, even folks who speak different languages, or family members who disagree sharply on many things–all forget their differences in the presence of a child. A couple of toddlers can entertain a group of adults for the better part of an hour just by playing peek-a-boo, running, crawling, laughing, hiding, chasing and so on. Both the play of children and the sweetness of a newborn speak a universal language.

But it’s not that we would like to play peek-a-boo with the Baby Jesus. There is something more. I sense in the birth of each child a new beginning, an innocence, a purity, a hope not articulated but represented by each new life. Every parent wishes only the best for his newborn’s life, and that neither the parents nor anyone else “screw it up.” Indeed, Our Lord’s severest warning of punishment was reserved for those who caused little ones to stumble. We get that. So, what I think is happening is that when we look at the Babe of Bethlehem, we see this kind of newborn-inspired hope infinitely magnified in Him. In this Child is the re-birth of Man, the long-awaited Second Adam, mankind’s “rebooting” (to use an inadequate modern technological image!). Here is the new Man, God the Son of the Holy Trinity incarnate, who will love perfectly and live in full obedience from beginning to end of his life, in that perfection we hope for and see, dimly, reflected in our attraction to a newborn child.

This glimpse of purity that attracts us in a newborn is a reflection of that lost glory which our Creator brings into newborn human flesh, born of the Virgin Mary. Yes, we know the doctrine of the Incarnation; but now our “eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to enlighten the gentiles, and the glory of thy people, Israel.”

Christ’s Crucifixion and Tomb are not the stuff of easy celebration for the nations; these lie down an arduous road. At the gate stands the Manger of Bethlehem. Many are curious about that Babe, even if they know him not yet as Immanuel, the Savior. Christmas in this sense is opened to all; the invitation to behold this Child comes from heaven itself to even lowly shepherds keeping watch in their fields by night, and to the rest of mankind.

In Bethlehem’s Manger, the feeding trough, the shepherds beheld a miracle: from the old tree stump of Jesse, a new green little shoot sprouts forth, one full of grace and truth and eternal life. For us to receive that new birth, to be born again, we too must become like children. “Like newborn babes” our instinct must be to “long for the pure spiritual milk” of the Incarnate Word who feeds us in the feeding trough. That tiny life, the slightest shoot, will become in us, in the fullness of time, Christ in us, the hope of glory, if we only give him room and rightly adore him.