We
have all read many times that Our Lord was wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid
in a manger, and we may have wondered exactly what these are. I post here an
answer to some questions on the birth of Christ, which contains a number of
very interesting observations from Pope Benedict.
I
take advantage of the occasion to wish you and your loved ones a very happy and
holy Christmas and a New Year filled with God’s blessings.
I
have three questions on the birth of Christ.
1.
Why
do we say he was born in a stable when the Bible doesn’t make any mention of
this?
2.
What
are swaddling clothes?
3.
And
what exactly was the sign announced by the angel of a child wrapped in
swaddling clothes lying in a manger?
The birth of Christ has a number of extraordinary aspects and your
questions touch on some of these. The first is that the Son of God, the King of
Kings, was born in such humble surroundings. Surely God in the flesh should
have been born in a palace, a castle, or at least a dignified inn. And he
should have been laid in a bed or a cot, not in a manger, a feeding trough for
animals.
But
God’s ways are not man’s ways, and God clearly wanted it to be that way in
order to teach us something. From the humble circumstances of Christ’s birth we
learn, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that “To
become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom.
For this, we must humble ourselves and become little” (CCC 526).
And
from the poverty of the stable we learn that the possession of material wealth,
with all its attending comforts, is not as important as the possession of God.
Mary and Joseph, while poor in the material sense, were truly rich in having
the very Son of God, the King of Kings, in their family.
A
Stable?
Returning
to your questions, why does Christian tradition, and even the Catechism, say
that “Jesus was born in a humble stable” (CCC 525) when nowhere in the
Scriptures do we find any explicit mention of it?
Indeed,
St Matthew limits himself to saying that “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea”
and, significantly, when he tells of the arrival of the magi he says that
“going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother” (Mt 2:1,
10).
The
reference to a house can be explained by the possibility that after the birth
in a stable, Mary and Joseph were finally able to find a house in which they
lived at least until the presentation of Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem forty
days after his birth.
St
Luke doesn’t mention a stable either but he does say that after Jesus’ birth
Mary wrapped him in swaddling cloths “and laid him in a manger, because there
was no place for them in the inn” (Lk 2:7).
Since
a manger is a feeding trough for animals it has always been assumed that Jesus
was born in some sort of stable.
The
Manger
Pope
Benedict XVI, in his book Jesus of Nazareth – The Infancy Narratives,
comments on the significance of the manger:
“The
manger is the place where animals find their food. But now, lying in the
manger, is he who called himself the true bread come down from heaven, the true
nourishment that we need in order to be fully ourselves. This is the food that
gives us true life, eternal life. Thus the manger becomes a reference to the
table of God, to which we are invited so as to receive the bread of God” (p.
68).
We
might add that the name Bethlehem means precisely “house of bread”.
Presence
of Animals
But
why do we associate the birth of Christ with the actual presence of animals, in
particular an ox and an ass?
Pope
Benedict XVI, acknowledging that the Gospel makes no mention of animals,
writes:
“But
prayerful reflection, reading Old and New Testaments in the light of one
another, filled this lacuna at a very early stage by pointing to Is 1:3:
‘The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not
know, my people does not understand” (ibid., p. 69).
Swaddling
Cloths
And
what are swaddling cloths?
In
ancient times, as often seen in icons of the nativity scene, the newborn child
was customarily wrapped round and round with a narrow band of cloth like a
mummy. It was thought this would help the limbs to grow straight.
Pope
Benedict comments:
“The
child stiffly wrapped in bandages is seen as prefiguring the hour of his death:
from the outset, he is the sacrificial victim… The manger, then, was seen as a
kind of altar” (ibid., p. 68).
The
swaddling cloths can be seen too as a reference to Christ’s kingship and his
descent from King Solomon, the son of King David. Solomon, in the book of
Wisdom, writes: “I was nursed with care in swaddling cloths. For no king has
had a different beginning of existence; there is for all mankind one entrance
into life, and a common departure” (Wis 7:4-6).
A Sign
Finally,
why did the angel say to the shepherds, “And this will be a sign for you: you
will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Lk 2:12).
Certainly
a baby lying in a manger would be a sign, since this was most uncommon.
But
probably, since the angel mentioned the swaddling cloths specifically, this too
must have been part of the sign.
So
there is much symbolism and much to be learned from these simple aspects of
Christ’s birth in Bethlehem.
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