Faith and Family / Sean Gallagher

The magnetism of babies and Christ’s birth in Bethlehem

The birth of our Savior at Christmas is a profound mystery that is ultimately impossible for our minds to take in.

How is that God, who is infinite and all-powerful, who is being itself pervading and undergirding all time and space, the source of all that was, is and ever will be, could be born as a tiny baby in a stable in a small backwater town of the Roman Empire?

Faithful Catholics—from simple lay men and women to deep-thinking theologians—have wrestled with this mystery for 2,000 years.

It was expressed beautifully in a responsory composed about 1,000 years ago and used for centuries in the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours for Christmas: “O great mystery and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord lying in a manger. O blessed virgin, whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord Jesus Christ. Alleluia.”

At the same time, the birth of the Son of God in Bethlehem can seem entirely familiar—and perhaps even should be.

St. Josemaría Escrivá, a 20th-century Spanish priest, shared these words on this in his book of spiritual maxims, The Way: “He has become so small—you see, a child—so that you can approach him with confidence.”

As a father of five boys, I have many fond memories of my wife Cindy and I taking them to church as little babies and having friends and strangers alike come up to us without hesitation after Mass. These people, often a good bit older than Cindy and me, didn’t come because of us. It was the baby that drew these people, often likely parents or grandparents themselves. Nothing would keep them from fawning all over them. There’s just something magnetic about babies.

And I can say that with confidence because I’m at the age where I’m now the older person who can’t keep away from babies when I see them at church and other social settings. That’s especially the case with the baby daughter of a niece of mine, who was a baby herself at the time of the wedding of Cindy and me almost 25 years ago.

There is a multitude of mysterious reasons why the Word of God took on human flesh and was born in Bethlehem.

But I will echo St. Josemaría and say that the incarnation and birth of Christ is a dramatic way that God used to encourage us to feel confident in approaching him, like strangers coming up to see a baby after Mass.

Jesus continued inspiring us to be confident in approaching him throughout his public ministry in his relationship with his disciples, in his preaching and in his miracles.

One of these miracles that continues today is the Eucharist. He chose to give us confidence to approach him through coming to us under the appearance of simple bread and wine.

Yet the profound mystery of the incarnation remains alongside the familiarity of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. How many of us sit rapt in awe before the Blessed Sacrament in adoration chapels or during times of adoration in our parish churches?

The grace God offers at Christmas can help us at one and the same time both plunge into the mystery of the infinite God becoming an ordinary baby and taking simple joy in him becoming just that—an ordinary baby like any other that we might fawn over in our parish churches.

Maybe you should do just that if you see a baby at Christmas Mass here in a few days. †