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Was it a naïve devotion? Not at all. For Francis of Assisi, it was the undertaking of a faith that was simple, but also true and absolute.
There is much more than Francis of Assisi as the initiator of the Christmas crèche. His own explicit intention was to rehearse the physical inconvenience of the Divine Child and His mother! Hence, he requested John of Valetta to represent the external circumstances of the inconvenience that the Poor King had to undergo along with his mother. The crib making of 1223 and the crib making of 2023 can fill the dots to reinforce his sense of the meaning of Christmas! Besides, this year marks the 800th anniversary of the Crèche event at Greccio!
Among all the events of the life of Christ, the one Saint Francis remembered most was the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. His first biographer writes, “He used to observe the Nativity of the Child Jesus with an immense eagerness above all other solemnities, affirming that it was the Feast of Feasts, when God was made a little child and hung on human breasts. He would kiss the images of the baby’s limbs thinking of hunger, and the melting compassion of his heart toward the child also made him stammer sweet words as babies do. This name was to him like honey and honeycomb in his mouth.”
Francis would be surprised to find himself in the company of the first disciples of Jesus, especially John: “This is what we proclaim, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands – concerning the Word who is life. This life was made visible, and we have seen it and bear testimony to it; and we proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and has now appeared to us” (1Jn 1-2).
Was it a naïve devotion? Not at all. For Francis of Assisi, it was the undertaking of a faith that was simple, but also true and absolute. According to I.E. Motte, “Totally respecting the way in which God gives Himself to us, Francis’ devotion reaches out to meet the incarnation. Since the love of God wanted to become perceptible, visible, and tangible, is there any better attitude for man than to perceive and touch?” Francis went deeper and made everything incarnational. From God’s way of incarnating, Francis got a cue to let his spirit go the way of the Eternal spirit.
This way of God emptying Himself in human form made Francis to reflect on the immensity of God’s self-emptying act. He took a further cue from Paul’s description of God’s emptying: “His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave and become as we are, and being as we are, he was humbler yet, even accepting death, death on a cross” (Phil 2:6-8). Francis was wonderstruck by this downward mobility of God.
Henri Nouwen expresses his reflection on this whole event very movingly: “The One who was from the beginning with God and who was God revealed himself as a small, helpless child, as a refugee in Egypt, became obedient to adolescent and inconspicuous adults till his 30th year and submissive to them, joined the ranks of sinners, though he was without sin, in the Jordan, as a penitent disciple of the Baptizer, became a preacher from Galilee, followed by fishermen, as a man who ate with sinners and talked with strangers, as an outcast, a criminal, a threat to his people. He moved from power to powerlessness, from greatness to smallness, from success to failure, from strength to weakness, from glory to ignominy. The whole life of Jesus of Nazareth was a life in which upward mobility was resisted. Even though he was full of divine power, he believed that changing stones into bread, seeking popularity and being counted among the great ones of the earth were temptations. Jesus chose to descending way over and over again. Again and again, you see how Jesus opts for what is small, hidden and poor and accordingly declines to wield influence.”
This stupendous act of God so impressed Francis that his first biographer, Thomas of Celano, expressly says that “the humility of the incarnation and the charity of the passion” of Jesus Christ occupied Francis’ memory so much that he wished to think of nothing else. This catechetical tool of visually portraying the external circumstances of Jesus’ birth at Christmas 1223, visually portrayed to the inhabitants of Greccio and the nearby countryside, significance of the birth of Christ who, up until then, had been dead. Though there was no statuette in the re-created creche of 1223, what is admirable is that through his preaching on that Holy Night, it is reported that all the inhabitants of Greccio, who witnessed Francis’ preaching, experienced Jesus being awakened from his deep torpor in the hearts of people. Thomas of Celano says, “This vision was not in contradiction to the reality of things, since through his servant Francis, the child Jesus had awakened again in the hearts of many who had forgotten him.”
Will the centenary of the first crib awaken the Christ-child in the hearts of the people of our day?
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