“The Infant in the Crib” – Christmas has become in the market-place a festival of light in the dark despair of midwinter, a darkness relieved by city neon, electronic reindeer scampering across store-fronts, bare branches loaded with thestrange fruit of electric bulbs, a fairyland to children’s eyes.
Not so visible now amid all the glitter is the visual symbol which is at the root of all the excitement, which remedies a despair worse than winter gloom. It is the Christmas Crib. It may be in silent country chapels or Roman Basilicas or family sittingrooms;wherever we catch site of a Crib, the Christian in us must contemplate it with the eyes, not of sentiment, but of faith.
That Child figure reminds us that the Lord of Ages chose to hide in human flesh in order that a shaft of eternal light might pierce our winter gloom and that the hope of eternal peace and happiness might dispel our looming despair. The true light of Christmas shines from the Infant in the Crib.
Monsignor Brendan Devlin
December 2001