HOW GOD
BECAME A BABY has in the preceding chapters found isolated references. It
will now be accorded the hospitality of a complete chapter. In its
telling there are bound to be many familiar repetitions, for the truth of
it cannot change. Nor can it wear out its welcome.
Before ever there was a mother on earth, its
Creator predicted one. Satan had just made a fool of the only woman yet
in existence, who in turn made a fool of Adam—when the divine threat to
hell came. The voice that had uttered the sun and the stars now uttered a
prophecy beyond the combined wonders of the universe. It foretold with a
certainty which could not fail, that in due time would appear from among
the daughters of Eve a triumphant exception: over whom Satan would never
for an instant hold sway, and from whom would be born a Child to redeem
the fall from grace and reopen heaven to the free will of man. This first
of the Messianic prophecies, what else was it but a "Merry Christmas" to
the world already then from its merciful Creator?
In the Eternal Mind, as she was the virgin of
virgins, so was Mary the first of mothers. Never did her Creator tire of
proclaiming her destiny. He repeated His promise of a Savior to Abraham,
to Isaac, to Jacob, to David: and the promise invariably held a suggestion
of Mary. The patriarchs were proudly made to realize that from their line
would flower the maid whose beauty would enshrine "the Holy One," "the
Expectation of the nation," "the Messiah," "the Lord, our Just One," "the
Christ." One after another the inspired writers hailed the mother who
was, by centuries, not yet an infant herself.
Her sweetness enriched their prophecies, lent
delight to their least detail of information. Micah, to the surprise of
Jerusalem, said the birth of Mary's Child would take place in little
Bethlehem; Daniel from a distance of more than five hundred years
accurately determined the time; Balaam for his part predicted the very
star the Magi would see as a sign that the Great Birthday had out of an
eager past arrived at last. The prophets, each in turn having caught from
the Eternal Mind isolated gleams of the rapturous truth, kept the
expectations high. But no matter what particular phase of the Incarnation
it was theirs to announce, or what attendant circumstance—always,
inseparably blended with the divinity of the announcement, was the human
charm of the mother.
The prophecies, while they would have been
great without their association with Mary, could not have been great so
tenderly. Even when the words made no mention of the mother, the thought
of her was there, and the words sounded all the dearer on that account.
What indeed raises Isaiah to a supereminence among the prophets of the
Divine Birth is that he announced explicitly that a virgin would conceive
and bear a Son, whose name was to be Emmanuel since it means
God-with-us (Mt. 1:23). The audacious grandeur of that! The look of
impatient joy which the words must have put on the prophet's face the
moment there flashed into his mind a sunburst of their meaning!
That the Messiah would come, and come of a
daughter of Israel, and that his advent was not far off, were all at the
time a national conviction. But that he would be born of a virgin, the
most precise of the prophecies, did not gain wide credence. It is of
record that the Jewish teenage girl of that era sought marriage in the
hope she might become the Savior's mother, and accordingly did not want
the birth of a daughter. The prophets had left no room for
misunderstanding here: the Promised One would be a Son.
Then one day in this setting, where motherhood
was highly esteemed and still more highly desired, the rumor spread
through her neighborhood that St. Anne was having a baby. She had prayed
for a child, daughter or son, through years of barrenness into old age.
And now, when her neighbors had long since considered her day past, she
was privileged above every other mother of her immediate generation. They
would have been well advised to stop pitying her now. She was on her way
to becoming the most revered grandmother in all history.
The child, for whom the old lady had hoped
against hope, could not have failed to be. She could never have been a
miscarriage. Not a chance! She was a beautiful inevitability. Born pure
as the angels, and more endearing than they, she would have drawn their
every vote as the prize baby but One, of all time. Sent upon earth,
against the malice of hell, she was to grow, unimpaired, to a youthful
maturity. The reason could not have been more divine. The Second Person
of the Blessed Trinity wanted her for his mother.
Did the neighbors who dropped around to
congratulate St. Anne quite conceal the remnant of pity they still felt
because the infant was, after all, only a girl. Only a girl: only
the only creature of the whole human race whose soul no taint of sin ever
touched, whose body the tomb could not keep from the angels; the
imperishable flower of how many prophecies; her Creator's terrifying
answer to Satan; in a word, such a paragon of human pride as would give of
her flesh and blood that God might walk the earth, One of ourselves!
Did St. Anne, for that matter, realize all
she held in her arms? She scarcely could. Mary herself was to kneel in
devout surprise at the Annunciation. But we may be sure St. Anne had no
regret that she had been blest with such a birth. Whether she knew the
divine reason or not, it imposes no strain on the imagination to picture
her as sensing the superiority of her Mary and as willing, if need be, to
argue the fact up and down and across Palestine. How could an infant be
the special treasure and joy of the Blessed Trinity and its own mother
fail to glow with some of God's pride at what she beheld? How could a
mother take such a one to her heart, surrounded by angels, and her
lullabies not catch some of their ecstasy? And in truth, what a day it
was for heaven when this mother, her voice filled with the yearning of the
prophets, first told the child at her knee of the promised Messiah, and
saw the innocence of wonder on that little face!
The child grew to the readiness of maidenhood.
Her growth had about it a finality and secret grandeur, as of stars moving
on schedule. All the while the world paid no attention. It was too busy
wondering of whom the Messiah would be born. For the traditional hope of
brides in the Chosen Land had never been stronger, now that the "seventy
weeks" of years were drawing to their close. But the general tone of
expectancy left untouched the humble dreams of "the handmaid of the Lord."
Content to forego every other ambition but that
of heeding the divine whispers in her soul, she had early vowed a life of
virginity. She was a woman apart, a select darling of the Holy Spirit.
She was all God's. From the time the use of reason had been hers, she
prayed as naturally as angels sing. And heaven, gazing down upon the
daughters of men, recognized a future Queen. The Creator, looking down
from the resplendent ranks of his nine choirs, through a brilliant maze of
stars, found on earth his supreme delight in all creation: the adoring
love that emanated from the heart of one girl. Every throb of that
immaculate heart invited the advent of the Messiah. Every prayer on
Mary's lips held the desire of four thousand years. And God would not
long refuse the world now.
The mother for whom the Savior had waited out
the centuries was ready. She had been his eternal dream. Long before the
prophets had announced her, before the earth had taken shape from
nothingness or the hills of Bethlehem stood up from their valleys, the Son
of God had lovingly anticipated his mother. His words lie majestic in
Holy Scripture, with a foreknowledge that pictures the future as already
accomplished. "Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I
was brought fort," says the eternally Begotten. But then he foresees,
mindful of his mother, his days as a Child rejoicing in his Father's
"inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men" (Prov. 8:25, 31).
The adorable Child need not have come to us so
humbly as he did. He might have walked into the world, an unmothered
Savior in the full stature of manhood, showing forth His Divinity,
announced by a blare of angelic trumpets. He might have, to be sure! But
he preferred this more endearing way: to be a Babe under a mother's care:
our tremendous little Christmas Gift from heaven, through Mary.
The invitation to the chosen mother-to-be came
in secret. It showed just that indifference to worldly circumstance which
marked it as of heaven. Did it, in accord with a popular tradition, come
in the solitude of night? Whether then or in the day, what matter! The
secrecy was there. The unhurried sublimity of the message stole into the
world when all around the kneeling figure of a solitary girl a nation
slept, or might as well have slept. She was enough. The message wanted
no other pomp than her presence. She had the appeal of innocence, she had
the ardor of youth, and every throb of her young heart was awake to the
glory of God.
Suddenly, in that little room at Nazareth, she
was not alone. An angel hovered there. She looked up at the heavenly
distraction to hear breathtaking words.
"The Eternal God," the angel was saying in
effect, "has chosen you from among women. Would you be His mother?"
Had she heard right: she who as a child had
spent time in the Temple and been educated to contemplate the All-Perfect,
she who with the angels adored without ceasing the illimitable grandeur of
God? How could this be? Who was she to have this overwhelming invitation
directed to her? She from among all the centuries of women! The
look of wonderment which it was Gabriel's privilege to see at that moment
was the most beautiful he had yet seen on a human face.
He answered it. Courteous to her bewilderment,
he repeated, explained, left no doubt. But there came a question to her
lips, a look of resolute candor in her eyes: didn't the angel understand
that she had dedicated her virginity to the Most High?
The angel had God's reply ready for her. She
would remain a virgin: but, under the breath of the Holy Spirit, her
chastity would flower to an infinitude of grandeur such as the history of
motherhood had never known before, and never would know again. She had
only to say the word, and the miracle would happen. God would obey.
She spoke that word. And at the sound of her
voice, the first sanctuary lamp might well have been hung in that little
room in Nazareth. Her motherhood had begun. The prophets were
vindicated. The long-expected Birth was but a matter of months.
Those months were ecstasy to Mary. Nor was the
ecstasy broken when she went to live with her saintly spouse. Joseph
often prayed with her in silence. He understood, since he had himself
been told by an angel. He could see it, too—the truth of what the angel
had said—in the adoring intentness of this heavenly maid. Her every look
spoke to him of the Unborn: and Joseph felt he was not worthy to live in
his own house.
Joseph was God's own man to companion the
sacredness of Mary. And that in itself was another defeat for Satan, that
a descendant of Adam could be found whose purity of heart qualified him
for that divine environment. Reverent, gentle, faithful, he belonged
there. He stood between the world and the Virgin Mother, to guard her
adorable secret. He made a home for her in which she could give herself
over, undisturbed, to the divine business that was her chief delight.
There was never an irritable word in his conversations with Mary, who
never gave him the slightest cause for one. They respected each other,
loved each other, and enjoyed a mutual relaxation from their chores in the
holy silence: a silence full of desire for the sound of a little voice.
And in this sublime expectancy, did the village carpenter plan as a
masterpiece of his craft the making of a crib? To have concentrated the
ardor of his great soul upon such a task would agree with everything we
know of the foster father.
But if such a crib did stand in some corner of
that humble home, a birthday present from Joseph to Mary's Child, it was
destined to remain empty of its intended little Occupant well beyond his
birth. For as the longed-for time approached, "a decree went forth from
Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled" (Lk. 2:1).
The decree stirred the solitude in Joseph's
heart. Knowing what it would mean, he looked with concern upon the living
tabernacle of his God, of whom the law was demanding a journey to
Bethlehem. It was her ancestral home as well as his, the City of David.
It was there they would have to register in person. The emperor had so
stipulated: excuses were out of the question. Inconvenience of travel,
under whatever circumstance, would receive no consideration. Nothing, the
emperor had decreed, overshadowed the importance of obeying his wish. The
emperor ruled the world.
So it happened that in submission to the
decree, the two set out. The evangelist does not relate, as the legend
does, that a beast of burden carried the expectant mother, with Joseph
walking aside and directing the way. It was a distance of some
ninety-five miles to their destination, but they didn't seem to mind the
inconvenience. Not a word of complaint from them was there to record.
They were content: they had with them the little Savior. In truth, every
person who met them ought to have knelt at their passing—had the person
but known. As it was, the Secret of heaven remained all along the route
theirs alone. Unheralded, they arrived after days at their destination,
or what they had hoped would be their destination, the village inn. It
had no room for them. Its keeper turned them away.
Out of the village into the night they went.
Stars shone in the sky, crowds of them, which had once shown down on David
in these very fields. How often out here, tending his flock, had he not
longed for this holy night! And now, his own village had closed its doors
to his Dream of dreams. Lamps were going out in home after home as the
village settled down to sleep. The inn stood dark in the night. Was its
keeper wondering what had become of the couple he had turned away? Could
he ever forget the urgency in Joseph's voice, the sweet inwardness of the
young girl's look? Not that it made any difference now. The Mystery
which could have transformed his inn overnight to a cherished shrine,
which could have drawn pilgrimages to it from around the world, was moving
through the starlight, over the grazing ground, to a hillside cave where
the shepherds were wont to stable flocks against the threat of inclement
weather.
To the shepherds keeping watch in those fields
around Bethlehem, it didn't look as though the night would suddenly turn
brighter than day. They heard nothing more unusual, and expected to hear
nothing more unusual, than an occasional bleat from their sleeping
flocks. They waited out there, as they had waited every previous night,
for nothing more unusual than the dawn. They were in for the surprise of
their lives.
For in the deep calm of the night, hours before
daybreak, in an instant beyond the power of words to describe, those
flocks were aroused and those shepherds stood up in the strange light:
"the glory of the Lord shone around them." An angel was addressing them
from the sky, and presently whole flights of angels were there, all
singing and radiant. It was the pent-up joy of great prophecies bursting
free. It was jubilee breaking out of heaven, flying on the wings of these
angels, thrilling on their lips, shining from their faces, pouring the
magnificent blend of song and splendor down into the world, down upon the
plains around one cave. For in that shelter for cattle, before the
brilliant Gloria faded back to starlight, lay the little Cause of
it all in his mother's arms at last—under his first kiss.
Divinely inspired, it is a story of such tender
simplicity but awful grandeur as to bring to the most obdurate eye tears
of holy joy. Infidels, like H. L. Mencken, have been known to admit it.
The human heart cannot resist that description of the little God, who once
set the stars in the firmament, lying needful of a mother's love in a
manger. The human mind cannot but thrill to the thought: that on that
night of long ago the angels turned their flight and song upon our favored
planet, broke through the skies to serenade out of the entire whirling
system of stars our own significant earth. A Baby won it the respect of
angels.
The discouraged who despise their human nature,
who despair of it, either have lost the Faith or never have had it. They
are dead wrong. They are suffering from delusions of inadequacy. They
need to remind themselves of the grand reality: that the Son of God, born
of a mother, has fixed a splendor upon human life that will be there when
the sun and the stars go out. It has lifted our prestige to a divine
importance in the universe. It has so ennobled our humanity that every
man or woman, boy or girl, may stand upon the earth a fellow child of
Jesus Christ and ride the circuit around the sun as on a hallowed
merry-go-round, in the rollicking spirit of Christmas.
It even means that over all heaven, sharing the
full, indivisible, unified divinity of Father and Holy Spirit, reigns a
sacred Figure we know as Christ the King: and that beneath that supremacy
of the Blessed Trinity, yet transcending the grandeur of angels, shines
the glorified form of the girl from Nazareth, the mother of Bethlehem, the
queen of Creation.