The poverty of the crib has created a Christmas season of generosity among people and nations! Even businesses offer discounts!
Today, Christmas and the Crib have become commercial seasons anad business ventures. Ironically, Peter Bernadone the physical father of Francis of Assisi, did not realize that his son, who wastefully gave away the drapes and cloth he brought from France, would bring the Church and society itself, a month’s season of financial profits that would be a cause of distress to Francis and his followers. Francis’ attachment to the virtues of Poverty and Humility, would become the “foundations of endless disputes and interpretations.
No one can deny, that Greccio, an unknown place on the top of a rock hill, would become a place, renowned throughout the world. Greccio, even today, attracts many tourists of all sorts.
1 Celano §§ 84 to 87 give a picturesque description of what took place. Francis of Assisi was in love with Jesus Christ and the Gospel.
But his love for Jesus Christ was unlike the love of our great Moghul Emperor, Shah Jehan, for his beautiful wife, Mumtaz. Shah Jehan built a grand Monument in pure white marble to keep the memory of his love for Mumtaz eternal! But no where in that spotless marble, is his love for Mumtaz depicted. This love of his was not even reflected in the little mirror, where he was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb. The light of the moon and the stars on the Taj Mahal, do not let us see or feel the warmth of Shah Jehan’s love for Mumtaz. One also wonders about the hands of skilled artisans who worked at producing the Emperor’s love Monument! Some sources claim their hands were chopped off after they finished their unique masterpiece, lest they produce another masterpiece that would excel the Taj Mahal! That structure, even today, remains alone in it’s location on the banks of the Jamuna! Today, a descendant of the owner of that land, claims that land! Such is the story of earthly grandeur! Vanity of vanity!
Greccio is also a Fancy story of love. It is an Early Medieval Play. But Greccio is not a Fantasy of Francis of Assisi’s love. It is a story of Francis of Assisi’s love for his Lady “Poverty” as played out by the Lord and Redeemer of all humankind at time of his birth on earth amidst all creatures and humankind. St. John says; “He was in the world that had come into being through him, and the world did not recognize him. He came unto his own, and, his own people did not accept him . But those who did accept him, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn. 1: 10 – 11) St. Luke 2: 4 – 20 is more detailed. St. Luke includes shepherds (known thieves) as witnesses to Jesus’ birth. I Cel 83 tells us that Francis saw in all the poor around him, He even envied poverty!(1 Cel 83.)
In short, the “illiterate” and “simple” Francis of Assisi, like Jacques Derrida(1930 – 2004), “mantled” and dis-mantled” (Jacques Derrida), “constructed” and “deconstructed,” like the “Archaeology of Knowledge” of Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984), The Crib Managed Information, Market Electronically (MIME) and asked how we can legitimate truth since 1975 – like “What is Postmodernism? of (Jean-François Lyotard (1924 - 1998), Like Richard Rorty (19930 – 2007), who defends plurality and plurisense and pleaded in his magistral work: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature(1978), that Philosophy does not search for “essence” but “keeps the conversation going in the pluricentric, pluriversal, and, plurisense of the world of diverse nations and peoples in which we live.
Francis of Assisi sought through the crib to re-live Bethlehem. The Crib of Greccio, produces the birth of Jesus in a Crib. But this Crib of Greccio is today in every “Heart/Hearth, Language, People, Nation, Believer and Unbeliever!
The Poverello of Assisi, initiated a Transnational culture and Business! The Crib is ever since in every Home. It challenges every Heart and Home. The Poverty of the Crib has created a Christmas Season of generosity among People and Nations! Even Businesses offers discounts!
Thus the Crib of Greccio should create hearts that are full of love and compassion and Hearts that are full of generosity, like the Lord had. “Although he was rich, he became poor for your sake, so that you should become rich though his poverty. (2 Cor. 8:9.)
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